January was bitter after the Winterfest, with the theatre district practically shut down until April. Snow and ice festooned every gable and rail, and Lindblum looked like a frosted ginger cake, sparkling and cold. In the clock tower Tantalus lived off the fat of holiday festival earnings, lifting a purse here and there for individual pocket-lining and waiting out the thaw. All in all it was the time the players liked the most, spending long hours at the pub with tankards of mulled cider and sitting well out of the doorway draft, playing cards until long after the last chimes.

One night, with their purses heavy at their belts and the ice-sharp wind outside too slick for walking back to the clock, Blank suggested that if they pooled their winnings and the profits from Zidane's nimble fingers then they could have a feather mattress for the night. Something buxom walked by with a tray full of mead, her eyelashes lowered not quite enough to be shy. A few more heavy gil pieces clinked for a warm body in the bed between them.

Blank, much to his pride, had taught Zidane the fine art of wenching, and as Baku rightly called them the pretty faces of the troupe they were the only two to do it successfully. Not that either minded the other's company. Two handsome young men were far better than one, dressed in the sort of gallant finery only worn by actors and rogues. Blank's easy grin and Zidane's innocent eyes won them more as a pair than they could ever get on their own.

So it wasn't the first time that Blank had leaned back in a soft feather ticking, warm with spiced mead in his belly, sated pulse between his legs, watching Zidane bring his considerable charms to bear on a giggling barmaid. Zidane quoted lines like they were his own words, scraps of poetry and soliloquy strung together with honeyed smiles and artful kisses, and she melted at his feet. It didn't take much for Blank to admit that Zidane had the knack for it; it made him doubly good an actor and a thief. Blank had known that for ages. What he couldn't exactly place was when he'd stopped watching the girl and started watching Zidane.

Zidane's hips had a touch more curve than they ought, almost feminine the way they tapered into his thighs. They were usually disguised by the cut of his breeches so he wouldn't be mistaken for a Boyplayer, a girl bending gender for the sake of the better roles. But down to his hair-ribbon in the fire-lit in room there was no mistaking who was prettier, even with the girl's cheeks flushed and her lips parted. Zidane whispered just the right dialog as he graciously accepted his accolades, and Blank found himself envious of the audience.

Hours later Blank woke to the sound of the latch lifting, the barmaid giving an apologetic smile as she tugged the lacings straight on her bodice. He waved her on out the door lazily, they knew each other from years back and she had her own lover to get home to. She hurried out gratefully and Zidane slept on, sprawled in the sheets, his hair having long since escaped its tie. Blank scooted over into the warm space the girl had left behind, and tugged the down comforter a little more firmly around Zidane's shoulder. The window was the icy dark blue of midwinter moon on snow, and cold still seeped through the small glass panes even in a room this nice. Zidane made a sleepy sound, his fingers trailing over the sheets, face pressed into the pillow. He slept on his stomach, no doubt his extraneous appendage made lying on his back uncomfortable.

The curiosity had always been there, Blank supposed, even as his hand slipped under the quilt with a cutpurse's guilty grace, finding the ridge of Zidane's spine between the other thief's shoulder blades and sneaking downwards. It was just as well that Zidane slept like the dead, because even Blank's jaded attitude towards the unusual and his light fingers couldn't disguise the open fascination as his hand encountered a trail of kitten-soft fur in the small of Zidane's back. It continued, gradually thicker, right to where most people would keep their tailbone, and there it blossomed into the full fledged tail that Zidane was so good at twitching up barmaids' skirts, or using to steady a silk purse while his blade parted the strap. Blank had somehow not realized how much of it would be muscle and weight, as he wrapped his hand around it and slid down the heavy velvet length. The tip of it twitched out of his grasp as if Zidane was a restless feline, but Zidane slept on and did not stir when Blank pushed the quilt aside to do it again.

He wasn't precisely sure when Zidane started to purr.

The purr wasn't like a cat's, well, not really. It wasn't unlike those old toms with the rusty sort that rumbled somewhere in the backs of their throats. Perhaps the fact that Zidane was several times the size of most of the cats in Blank's acquaintance made up for the difference in tone. He only knew he'd never heard anything quite like it, not in all the nights they'd spent together. Unexpected, really. They all teased him about his tail, more monkey than feline with his acrobatics that won him the most action roles. But spread languid on white sheets and purring under Blank's petting Zidane was a cat burglar indeed, marmalade-colored and drowsing.

As he sifted through metaphors in his mind, Blank unconsciously developed a pattern to his touch. A long scrape of his fingernails down Zidane's back until they encountered soft gold fur, a gentle pull down his tail until Zidane would, without fail, whisk it sleepily out of Blank's hand to flick restlessly across the backs of his calves before settling it quite appealingly in the valley between his thighs.

Blank found himself trying to remember what it would do when Zidane came. Zidane's face was easier to picture, probably because he had watched it more, but the tail was more evasive. What did Zidane DO with the thing, anyway? It must be rather understated, for Blank to have missed it. So intent was Blank on dredging up details that it took a moment for him to realize the item in question had not slipped properly out of his hand. It was, in fact, wound tightly three times around his wrist, holding him back with the same strength Zidane used to swing from it onto the stage. His slit eyes were narrowed on Blank's face, and for the first time Blank thought of them as being feral, not set wide in the way that gave Zidane's face its open look. The pitch of his purr had changed rather ominously.

Zidane was, for the most part, an easygoing sort of fellow. Blank had slashed Zidane's arm clean open once during a rehearsal, making a mistake in the fight choreography and doing a surprising amount of damage with the rickety stage weapon. Zidane had laughed it off as Ruby doctored him up and scolded Blank's ears scarlet. Zidane only joked that Blank was going to have to get him a new arm if the current one fell off from exposure to rust. There were moments, though, tense with stage adrenaline or bellies pressed flat to a rooftop, waiting for the nightwatch to pass by, when Blank wondered if Zidane's "so what" shrug and wave were just as much pantomime as combat on the boards was. Now, with those cat-slit crystalline eyes glaring at him, was most acutely one of those times.

Blank bent down his fingers to the very tip of tail still curled between his thumb and forefinger, and stroked the bit of fur he could reach. He half-smiled, the apologetic joke ready on his lips, when Zidane's eyelids lowered a bit, his tail loosening its grip on Blank's wrist. Blank hesitated, thinking maybe he should be glad to get off easy, but he wasn't in his line of work because he liked keeping his hands to himself. He reached down one more time to stroke from shoulders to tailbone, wondering if his fingers would make the circuit intact. He reached the small of Zidane's back, fingers lingering over the soft fur. Zidane turned his face into his pillow, the purr stuttering slightly, his hips lifting with unmistakable encouragement into the touch.

The golden second, Tantalus called it. It was when you knew the audience was in the palm of your hand, when you knew the gil pieces were going to shower down like rain. It was when the last purse-lace came free, when the door latch clicked and a small tremor ran through the steel thieves' pick. It was when you knew you were going to get exactly what you were after.

It was when Zidane Tribal damn near mewed in his throat to keep Blank from taking his hand away.

Had to happen sometime, Blank told himself, fingers straying from the usual path to confirm the too-sweet curve of Zidane's backside, swallowing back his heartbeat. They'd shared a bed often enough, on the ship during tour or in a cramped inn in Treno. Zidane had played ladies opposite Blank when Ruby couldn't double up all the roles, his tail concealed under layers of skirt and he was never the type to fake a kiss onstage. More than once Blank had been tempted to do more than help him out of his costume. He'd shrugged it off, usually. Zidane was a good actor and Ruby did good makeup, that was all.

Nevermind that Zidane's skin was warm gold in the tallow candlelight, like a pool of gold shadow, and the heat between his thighs hot and inviting, his legs shifting in the sheets, spreading obligingly. Blank found him, heavy and aching and ripe for stealing, and there was no question to Zidane's kneeling posture, all the permission needed in the ragged sound he made. Invitation, pure and simple as an unlocked chest, as Blank drew back his hand just so to touch what was hidden just under Zidane's tail and felt the shudder run from base to tip in response.

"Zidane--"

He lifted his head, waved his tail vaguely at the chair with their combined clothing dripping off into the floor. "Left inside pocket." His grin might have been sheepish, but was more likely pure trouble as he rested his face on his folded arms, hips lifting a little higher with an insolent wiggle. "Never know when a wench might be tricky, you know."

"Why am I not surprised?" Blank muttered.

Zidane went still, breath moving in slow stage-controlled rhythm as Blank administered the necessary preparations. His tail arched up and out of the way, and he was doing damnably distracting things to Blank with it that should at least be under severe restriction in civilized countries. Blank lingered more than he needed to, drawing out Zidane's low moan with a simple stretch of his fingers, feeling Zidane's body respond, watching the slide of muscle across his back.

Zidane's low laugh interrupted the purr, and Blank could feel the tremor of it inside him. "Blank." the tip of his tail was dead ticklish across Blank's belly. "Don't drag the scene out."

"Hn." Blank slipped his fingers out, pushing Zidane's knees a trifle farther apart with his own. Zidane flicked his tail to the side, obligingly. "You have a problem with my pace-" Blank closed his eyes, Zidane's breathing faltering with a long slow sigh of acceptance. "Mist, Zidane..." He was perfect, slick and tight and better than anything Blank could remember.

Zidane made a noise, not quite articulate as Blank shifted his hips and brought his weight down. Some part of Blank's brain wondered where Zidane had learned to press back into it, canting his hipbone just so Blank could go in as far as possible and making the most intricate little mewling noises in his throat when Blank did.

"Blank," Zidane's usually smooth voice was rough, his breathing ragged as his body adjusted to Blank's. "You're gonna make me forget my lines."

Blank slipped his hand down to close around Zidane's sex, and felt the other thief buck pleasantly underneath him. "You've always been a master of improv."

Zidane's low moan dissolved into a purr, deep down inside and Blank caught his breath, feeling it.

"Zidane..." Blank closed his eyes, the sensation so intense it almost hurt. "dammit..."

Zidane, only purred harder, until Blank could feel it at the base of his spine, shivering and warm. He lost his slow cadence and Zidane did not stop, the low thrum inside him only getting fiercer in response. They mock-sparred in perfect counterpoint of thrust and parry, and had their interplay been so good onstage they wouldn't need to lift coin for a living. Blank drove blindly into him until the rising action inevitably arched into climax, and he spilled himself into Zidane's body, aching with the sweetness right down to his toes. Zidane made a noise Blank did not recognize, artless and sincere as he came into Blank's hand, no poetry but Blank's name on his lips.

Zidane's tail had left a strange, spiraling bruise on his left thigh.

"You hurt yourself," Blank said, his breathing slowly steadying, fingertips winding around it as Zidane busied himself with a silk handkerchief. "Why'd you wrap it around your leg like that?"

"I really don't think you wanted to get smacked in the face with it, that's why." Zidane made a noise of distaste and let the kerchief fall to the floor. "It's hardly romantic to get clubbed with the thing." He shivered, groping for the covers.

"I had wondered what you did with it. You know." Blank scooted in behind him, and made a stifled ticklish noise as said tail curled up between his legs.

"You'll just have to find out, won't you?" Zidane said, with an impish grin over one shoulder before settling himself down in Blank's body heat. "But do me a favor and wait until at least morning, would you?" He sighed comfortably into the pillow. "I want to enjoy a featherbed and a lack of Marcus' snoring while I still can."

Blank chuckled, winding an arm around Zidane's waist and trailing his fingertips over his stomach, feeling Zidane's breathing evening into sleep. "Well, with the gil we save from not buying barmaids, we could bed here until spring."