Disclaimer: I hate disclaimers. They're annoying. But at least they take up space and look shiny, right?
a/n: My first Final Fantasy fic EVAR. Totally written for all the FFXII fans who are dying for some well-written Balthier/Vaan. Not that I'm bragging, but at least I can spell. Hell, I'm allowed to preen after writing nearly five thousand words in one day; a far cry from my usual word count. Oh yeah, there's really no spoilers to speak of, since I got the game late and have only recently watched the Dawn shard blow up an entire air fleet. Good times. XD
Enjoy, guys. Because slashing these two is just as enjoyable as playing a great game.
Just Because
Balthier is not one for startling revelations, epiphanies, or any matter of sudden surprise. (A life of a sky pirate is full of unexpected circumstances, of course, but that doesn't mean he has to enjoy it, or even stick around for the show.) He is not one for many things, including mindless infatuation, attraction, besotting, or any of their derivatives, including love.However, on the third day - cheerlessly slumped against the balcony and watching the crowds underfoot with a twisted sense of expectancy - it strikes him how badly he is acting the part of a lovelorn fool.
He takes a moment to consider. Then proceeds to kick his boot into the balcony and slam his heel around the iron-wrought design in a small tantrum.
On the fourth day he wakes up to an empty bed again (again!) and has to come to terms with the fact that yes, he is going to kiss the bloody boy senseless, and take immense pleasure in it.
And then Balthier will toss him onto the unused bed and sully it a few dozen times. For a little piece of mind.
It all starts on the day their band of merry folk stumble back into Rabanastre, windswept, sandswept, and generally in need of a soak.
In the end, it is agreed that they must try to keep their party as inconspicuous as possible, and it isn't made any easier by the six of them tramping throughout the city together. Until they can depart on the Strahl, they decide to take separate lodgings - Basch and the princess leave for the local inn.
Balthier is not terribly pleased to learn he'll be venturing into Lowtown and does nothing to hide it. Penelo seems almost embarrassed, and clutches her hands behind her back, while Vaan bristles defensively. "Well sorry we don't have a nice house for you. I'm sure if you asked, Migelo'd let you stay at his shop, if you didn't mind a little retail work. Other than that, Lowtown's all we got."
His cheeks start to tinge pink, like Penelo's. Balthier doesn't have the energy to say he knows all that and more - and has more to lose than most if caught by the Empire - and does little more than wave his hand helplessly as Fran says, "It is the only safety we have in this place. Few questions are asked, and even fewer answers are given."
Balthier makes his peace offering by hopping the last step, opening the stairway gate with a flourish, and giving a mock bow. "Well then, by all means, lead the way," he drawls, enough to make Penelo smile.
He sighs, and wonders what he's really gotten himself into when he follows them inside.
Lowtown itself is an undeniable den of thieves, no place for a pirate who pillages the skies; it's dim, cramped, and has the distinct aroma of too many bodies and too few accessible bathing pools, just as he knew it would be. What surprises him is the collective murmur of the people. It wraps around him like a colorful scarf - loud, excitable, with its anti-Imperial talk, snubs against Vayne and all manner of Archadian customs. A woman calls across a corridor to another, laughing, "There's no room for a prude Consul in a city of Dalmascans!" There's a slight cheer, and in front of him Vaan lifts a loose fist, grinning.
He cocks an ear with honed experience, but there's no talk of him nor Fran, nothing of the two strangers lead in by a couple of orphan children, just mundane things, merchants, and the Empire. As they move further into the broken labyrinth of Rabanastre's people, the smell of the sewer grows, and so does the chatter, until he is surreptitiously glancing around for Imperials at every corner. Fran gives an amused smile - she always knows before he does - but he pretends not to notice.
After they've travelled deep enough into the belly of Lowtown as to be utterly swallowed up in its little underground kingdom, they come to a stop just off the corner of a central square, hanging by twined cord and other refuse over a pool of water large enough to hold a good two dozen people. By its color, he wonders what it could possibly be used for, and comes to the sad conclusion it's not for bathing. Maybe residents of Lowtown have some ingenious way to purify water...
Balthier turns his head back around only to listen in on their two guides instead, who are arguing on the stoop of a sad-looking two-story building. He shudders to think he could be spending the next few nights here, but ever since he joined in on this misadventure, luck hasn't had his back, so he suspects it's true. The ground level is silent and black, while a dark yellow glow peeks through the tattered cloth curtains of the second story window - he absently wonders how these children could ever survive living in their tunnels and their squat ruins.
"Penelo, c'mon! You're going to stay with Fran!?"
Fran's ears twitch ever so slightly in acknowledgment; she has the decency to turn her head as though she can't overhear. Balthier does no such thing. He crosses his arms and stares at Vaan's mussed head of hair. A bowl of water and a cloth. That's all he would need, just a chance to wipe the grime off...
"What's your problem, Vaan? After all we've been through you think Fran's going to hurt me or something?"
"No, that's not it. But that means I have to stay with Balthier!"
"So? I don't see what you're getting at."
"Um, hello! It's Balthier."
Balthier can't help but to raise one eyebrow. What to make of that?
"So?" At Penelo's oblivious and rather stubborn stance, Vaan stops gesturing with his hands and seems to deflate slightly.
"Okay, fine... When are we leaving again?"
"Vaan!"
The thief winces, and this time when he raises his hands, it's in submission. Penelo turns her back to him, and wriggles a little ways into the doorway. There's the sound of something being pushed across the floor; when Balthier steps up and peers around her shoulder, he realizes she has to kick a few stacked boxes and debris out of the way with her foot to fully open the door. Being as dark as it is, he can't see it, but he can certainly smell it: the dusty innards of an old, abandoned house. Wonderful.
He dutifully helps her with the door when Vaan stands pouting, nonetheless. Just a bed. He'd be happy with just a bed.
When the four of them make it inside, Penelo ignites an overhead light with a little bit of magic. Balthier is relieved to find it isn't as bad as he feared, although the remains of squatters is evident in some abandoned potion bottles and food bags. It's small, with one bedroom apparent down the hall and a staircase leading to the upper level on the opposite side. In fair shape, though. Still, Vaan laces his fingers behind his head in what Balthier has learned is a sign of self-consciousness.
Penelo glances at him and back. Again with her hands behind her back. "Sorry, I know it's not much. We knew no one was using it right now, and it's safe. It's in better shape then it looks, too." She gestures to the light filtering down the stairs. "Some of the kids play in here and leave the lights on. Since they're out in the street right now, it'll probably be a little noisy."
"If a little pandemonium bothered me, I would have perished from exhaustion long ago," Balthier replies easily, going so far as to ruffle Vaan's hair (to the boy's indignant surprise) on his way to the staircase. He puts one boot on the first step and turns back, arms crossed on the old wood banister. "Well? Shall the men take the upstairs then?" He holds Vaan's gaze as he says it, just to see his expression of unabashed horror when Fran nods once and starts for the bedroom.
Penelo rushes forward and jumps onto the bed in view, sighing happily, before Fran shuts the door.
Vaan stares at it. Balthier stares at him, unable to suppress his amusement.
Aside from catnaps on airships or prison cells, or their makeshift camps in the Dalmascan wilderness, none of them have slept in close quarters before. With the time needed for their next departure, a bed is a luxury they can afford, and although Balthier can't completely understand Vaan's reluctance, he can at least take humour in it.
"What's the matter, did you think you'd be sharing a bed with one of the ladies?" he says. "Sorry to disappoint you, but I guess you'll simply have to settle for the companionship of the leading man." He even goes so far as to wink teasingly, offering his most winning smile.
Under the dirt and sand of the past few days (and who knew how many years before that without a proper scrub) Vaan's cheeks turn a deep red, and it quickly passes to the rest of his face, his ears, and his neck, until he looks like he's shoved his head into the mouth of the sun itself. "It's... there's two beds!" he splutters.
Balthier noticeably perks up at that. "Oh, good. I hadn't expected that."
He's up the stairs and out of earshot before Vaan can spit out, "Y-you didn't think we'd - we'd actually be sharing a bed... did you!?"
The upstairs room is so small they might as well have been sharing one bed, instead of two.
After his thirteenth inquiry or so, Vaan finally drags the pillow off his face and mumbles something about pinching some time at this hole-in-the-wall bathhouse somewhere in Lowtown tomorrow. He shakes his blankets out a little more and curls up tighter underneath them, pulling them up over his face in the process, while Balthier watches. The only thing he removed from his person before tunnelling under the bed sheets were his boots, and even those are stored nearby for easy access.
Dribbling a little more water onto his fingers, Balthier strokes his hair out thoughtfully. "Vaan." He waits for the muffled 'What?' before continuing in the same casual way, "Have you ever kissed a man?"
The lump called Vaan goes deathly still. After a moment a much more irritated 'What!?' flies out, and the possible area of his head shifts around.
"I asked you if you've ever kissed a man. You could probably hear better if you took that pillow off your head."
He hasn't even finished when said pillow shoots nearly a foot in the air and falls, forgotten, to the floor. Vaan is sitting ramrod straight now, his fists curled in his lap. Balthier keeps his expression bland even when he notices a single lock of Vaan's hair is sticking out at a ninety degree angle.
"Why," Vaan starts, "do you want to know if I've kissed a man before?" The small lamp soldered into the wall between their beds casts strange shadows around the room. Vaan's eyes look black from where Balthier's sitting on a stool in the corner of the room.
He ties his water flask back onto his belt. "You seemed to have such a problem rooming with another man, I assumed this was some sort of embarrassing flashback for you."
Vaan doesn't bat an eyelash at the insinuation, just rolls his eyes. All right, so no fear of male contact. Next.
"You were eager to spend the night with your girl?"
The choked face makes a reappearance, along with a slight flush around the cheekbones. Hmm. Balthier pulls off a boot.
"N-no - as if! Penelo and me aren't like that," Vaan replies hastily, and Balthier catches the slight anymore tacked onto the end.
He wriggles his foot around, testing for any signs of desert rot. "Ah, I see. Childhood romance gone sour."
Vaan appears to forget his disinclination to honestly answering questions, for he shoots Balthier a look and says, "Not sour. Just... y'know... not there anymore," he finishes in a murmur, turning his head away as though pretending he should be speaking to someone other than Balthier. His mouth opens and closes, apparently looking for more words, but Balthier doesn't really need an explanation. He knows all too well how easily youthful attraction ebbs and flows. Although any person with half a mind could see the way Penelo sometimes glanced at the young man, so perchance... Balthier turns his thoughts away, tugging off his other boot. Not his concern.
Vaan continues on, oblivious. "... I just don't see her that way anymore, I guess. I like us better as friends. I thought I really wanted her to be with me when we were young, but... I dunno... It was... " He slips into the expression Balthier had come to credit to the boy - head tipped to one side, corners of his lips quirked unconsciously, a sort of charming puppy-like expression of curiosity. "... Just because."
He thinks he must have missed something Vaan said. "Just because what?"
The thief rewards his witless reply with a crooked smile, like he knows the secret to eternal life. He shrugs. "Just because."
"How articulate. If Penelo should ever inquire as to your failed amour, I wonder at her reaction to such a well-thought out explanation," Balthier says wryly. He reaches up to loosen the neck of his shirt thinking the matter of Vaan's uncharacteristic shyness closed, when the boy's eyes widen perceptibly and he snaps his head away, staring at the cobweb in the opposite corner.
Balthier pauses at that, now truly curious. Not an issue with an old male flame, or with his girl Penelo, so what, then? He doesn't even have to think on it before the suspicion begins to creep up. He lowers his hands into his lap, slowly. "Vaan." He'd seen guilty miens much like this, when one past acquaintance or the other had tried to sell him down the river, but it doesn't seem likely in this situation... did it?
He waits for a third 'What?', mumbled very softly.
"Vaan," he says, and the boy in question almost jumps at the unexpected steel in his voice. He takes a moment, then starts off with, "Vaan, are you attracted to me?"
He isn't sure if he's closer to the truth than he has been all night, or if he's completely off the mark: Vaan jerks as if he's been shot, makes a movement like rolling up onto his feet, and only succeeds in slamming his back against the wall, half-balanced on the balls of his feet. His head makes a dull thud as it falls back.
His wide eyes hold an equal amount of wariness, only coming from Vaan it might as well have been the reaction one paid to a child predator.
"It was only a theory," Balthier says simply. He comes to the conclusion it might not be wise to take his shirt off for another moment or two.
Vaan doesn't let up with the hairy eyeball, but he does slide back to a sitting position. "Sure." Then, more animatedly, "Wait - theory for what!?"
"Why you seem so spooked about sharing a room with me."
Sometimes Balthier forgets Vaan is far from a veteran in subtlety; it's so much easier to just be up front about it. Understanding dawns on Vaan's face, and he gives a second eye roll, much more exasperated than before. "I'm not 'spooked'."
Balthier pointedly relocates to the bed opposite before his roommate can so much as drop his jaw. His knees are almost touching Vaan's bed frame. It's enough of an answer when Vaan shifts to the side, further away. By the discomfort he's rewarded with, Balthier knows he's prying into something personal; still, sometimes his preaching about curiosity falls deaf to his own ears. He's interested in a small facet of Vaan, even if he shouldn't be.
"It'll be easier for us both to get it in the open," he tests, intent on this perplexing behaviour.
Vaan groans in a frustrated fashion, rubbing his hair with a heavy hand (finally flattening that clump of hair), and under Balthier's watchful gaze, finally says firmly, "It's not a big deal. Really, it's not. It's just... I'm used to sleeping alone, all right? I haven't slept in the same room with somebody since my brother - " He abruptly swallows the rest of the sentence.
"Your brother?" Balthier tries.
Vaan gives him a look with unmistakable meaning, and the conversation is over.
In the morning, the six of them meet in the abandoned warehouse at the end of the bazaar, during what could be construed as day zero if Balthier were counting.
There's no rest for the wicked or the weary; Basch pulls outs a map garnered during the night and spreads it out along the table. Balthier makes a concentrated effort to wipe the gunk from his eyes and regain his good humour, knowing full well what sort of payment he may receive for this good deed, but it becomes a bit of a lost cause. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices Penelo sitting at attention, listening closely to Ashe, and behind her, on the stack of forgotten sandbags: Vaan.
The boy's face is pinched into an indeterminable expression; he stares unblinking out a slit in the wall, not even pretending to heed the conversation going on around him.
Odd. Balthier wishes he wasn't curious as to what is going on in that head, but he is.
Eventually, Penelo suggests spending the day on a mark for some easy money, and the consensus falls into agreement. They move to leave - Balthier in prime position to demand an answer for his lack of enthusiasm - when Vaan suddenly jumps to his feet, as if he wasn't just sitting quietly for the last half of the hour.
He darts towards the door, lifting an arm in a farewell. "Hey, you guys go ahead. You're not leaving for a couple of days, right? I'll send any news your way if I hear anything, so, uh, don't wait around for me, I - uh, I gotta go." The last few words are faint as Vaan is already sprinting away; Basch calls out a 'Wait, boy!', clearly heard, but Vaan ignores it and ducks into the crowd, the type of movement one uses when they wish not to be caught.
Bash and Balthier stop at the doorway at the same time, one in confusion, one in mild aggravation.
"You're just going to let him run off with no idea what he's up to?" Balthier asks Ashe over his shoulder, keeping his voice bland.
She seems unhappy as well; glancing down at her hands, her lips press tightly in some sort of internal debate. When she raises her head, she says, "Thieves live by their own code, do they not? Perhaps he will return to lend his arm, perhaps he will not. I have no right to bind any of you to my will if you do not wish to pursue this task further. I... somehow I doubt he would speak of what he's seen..."
Balthier ignores her, and turns on Penelo -
- she is also long gone.
He makes a face at that, and Fran catches him. She inquires him with her eyes, and all he can do is shrug.
Thought you wanted to pilot the Strahl, he thinks to himself. Thought you wanted to fly the skies, go on an adventure. So where are you off to?
"Wonder if he's coming back," Basch murmurs to himself.
Who can say what goes on in the mind of a thief? One thing they have in common with pirates is their ability to drop everything and disappear at the slightest inclination, never to be glimpsed again. Somehow that idea never bothered him until now.
Penelo returns just as they are setting out at high noon (she remains so tight-lipped about the subject of Vaan that Balthier could happily tap her on the back of the head with his weapon just to see if the words might spill out of her mouth.)
He succeeds in not pondering the bizarre behaviour of a seventeen-year-old pickpocket all day. That is, until the group returns from the hunt at dusk, and Vaan is still nowhere to be seen. No, it does not bother him in the slightest, dangerously questioning though he truly is.
What could have set off such a flight? A thief's job? Cowardice at Ashe's plight?
The real explanation of his concern circles around his growing idea that perhaps something he had said during the previous night may have set the boy off. Vaan had been so distant ever since the mention of his brother... Not that he's feeling the slightest bit of troubled conscience. Not at all. He doesn't care.
Balthier takes Fran out for a drink at the Sandsea just to prove how much he doesn't. He doesn't ask the young bartender - who wears the same clan sigul as Vaan - a thing outside of drinks, and he doesn't so much as broach the subject with Fran.
It is well past sundown, and he still doesn't care when he climbs the creaky stairs of the house in Lowtown to find the second bed untouched. He doesn't care when he realizes Vaan has broken his word concerning the trip to the bathhouse. He doesn't care that for an orphaned thief, Vaan had yet to break his word about anything.
He goes to bed uncaring, and makes sure to leave his things lying about to trip up any late-night callers. Because he simply doesn't care.
On the first day he opens his eyes, notices that no one has entered the room, and greets the sunrise with, "I don't care."
In fact, he doesn't care all afternoon.
Until he is stocking up on Phoenix Down in Migelo's shop and just happens to overhear Migelo speaking to a little girl in the backroom.
"Vaan ain't around. Can't find him."
Migelo pats the girl's head, and Balthier can clearly see the pity in his frown from all the way across the counter. "Poor boy, poor boy." What was that supposed to entail?
He is willing to admit he may be slightly... ill at ease.
The bed is still unused. It's the second day, still dark.
Balthier sits on his own lumpy mattress and wonders who taught Vaan to make a bed so neatly. Even the corners of the bedspread are folded in.
Probably his brother, a cheerfully glib part of himself says, to which he replies, Sod off.
Penelo knows something, obviously. Did Vaan tell her he was simply skipping town? Or did he explain his reasoning, his method of travel, his destination, why he wouldn't pass word around to his fledgling companions?
If Balthier had known this would happen, he would've torn his shirt straight off in front of the boy while he'd had the chance. Fran mentioned he didn't seem to have slept well, and he begins to agree with her when a tiny voice from somewhere southbound pipes up, You've taken worse than a good-looking Dalmascan street rat. At least have a taste before they run off, eh?
A young, healthy man like himself can't be blamed for having a libido, but he slams his head against the wall despite this.
It was so unfair, it truly was.
Fran has avoided him for the past twelve hours, and he can't decide whether he should be insulted, grateful, or play the fool to it all.
It's the fifth day, and he's already given Penelo the look, loitered the Sandsea with the ears of an experienced criminal, and bribed the boy Kytes for information. Nothing. Not a thing within his grasp, as if they're all keeping a decidedly large secret from his prying hands. They probably are. Ashe had already paid him to lift the Strahl the day after tomorrow; the least they could do is give him a damnable crumb!
Fran probably thought him crazy, with just cause.
He forgoes personal safety for a topside bath in the public pool, because if he can't ravish Vaan, he can at least be clean. Afterwards, Penelo giggles her fair way into coaxing lunch out of him, so off they go back to the Sandsea, where the girl sits opposite him and smiles like a refined monarch who has just extorted a small fortune out from under him. No wonder Vaan dropped her like a burning stone. She obviously enjoys scheming to make a person's life miserable at every turn.
Balthier can't be too sure how far he's slipped until he catches himself scowling at her, at his plate, at his glass of water, at the man beside him, at Basch as he walks in the door. Most likely at himself, too, should he have a mirror handy.
He decides it's fair to overlook the two teenagers the next time they're being bratty. Well. If Vaan ever returns. Out under the hot Dalmascan sun, Balthier palms a paper off a merchant's stall just to make himself feel better.
Slinking back to their little crumbling residence, he takes perch on the brick hedge out front, resting his back against a nearby column and petulantly whipping open his paper. He tries the old 'I don't care' mantra, but that falls flat rather quickly, because even if he didn't feel somewhat, sort of guilty over possibly sending Vaan off on a vanishing act, he certainly cares in the place where he somehow managed to break all of his own rules and gain a taste for clumsy, ill-mannered, tactless thieves.
A heartbeat later he hears Vaan's voice chiding Kytes for accepting bribes, and a moment after that, the familiar head of unkempt hair rounds the corner, whistling absently with hands in pockets.
He's even smiling, for the love of the gods.
Balthier doesn't quite jump to his feet, but oh, he wants to, if only to put his boot somewhere it doesn't belong.
He flicks the paper crisply, projecting his voice over the din. "Well, if it isn't Vaan. Thought you'd taken it on the lam for good."
"Oh, Balthier!" Vaan exclaims after he's realized who it is. It must only be the second time in their acquaintance he's spoken Balthier's name to him directly. He struts down the corridor toward him like he hasn't just put Balthier through a miniscule hell, and when he comes within comfortable earshot, has the audacity to give him the sheepish version of the charming puppy look. "Hey, sorry. Penelo said she thought you were kinda mad. I... er."
Balthier isn't as terrible as head-hunters would make him out to be. He gives Vaan ten seconds before something irreversible happens.
"Look, you probably don't care, but... well, when you mentioned my brother - I mean, I almost forgot - see, my parents are dead, and every year I go down to their graves, and this time I almost forgot to go..."
Understanding comes to Balthier. So he hadn't flown the coop after all. He almost feels sheepish himself, if not for the loosening in his chest eclipsing all else. Still, when Vaan becomes nervous he likes to talk, Balthier has come to realize. His silence probably isn't aiding matters. He begins to meticulously fold his paper up into four halves, and sets it aside.
"And there's these lilies my mother always used to put in her hair - yeah, I know, kinda stupid, but I almost always get some, and they're hard to find this time of year - it took me a while, you know, and -"
The ten seconds of lenience come to an end.
Vaan lets loose a terribly fetching squeak when Balthier rises, plants a foot between his legs, catches him around the waist, and enfolds him flush against his body, more than close enough to comfortably draw the tip of his tongue along Vaan's bottom lip, then dip inside... an intake of breath he feels throughout the entire line of his body... Mmm, what a delectably musky scent. Vaan's knees lose support, sagging downwards, and Balthier gladly takes his weight. A light flick of the tongue, a soft sound... Vaan has enough sensibility to drag his head away, gasping, before Balthier's other hand can do more than twine in his hair.
"What-" he tries to step back, but Balthier has him caught in his grasp too firmly. The squirming only makes Balthier want more kissing... this time, he lets Vaan deflect it to the side with a smirk, although now that he's back here... "What-" he stumbles again as Balthier's mouth attaches to his neck, "Ungh..."
Mm. Sensitive.
A handful of minutes later the full question of "What was that for?" finally makes it out of Vaan's mouth bit by panting, gasping bit.
Balthier gives the boy a momentary reprieve to think on an answer. Finally, he presses his mouth to the hollow of Vaan's jaw and mouths, "Just because."
He earns a wrinkled nose for that, and a faint, "That's not an answer," before it's taken over by an obscene groan as Balthier teases his pulse point. That was going to be deliciously enjoyable to play with.
"I know," he eventually murmurs into warm skin. "Give me a sixth day to consider a better one."