Some of these are outtakes or different versions of drabbles I've written before. Some are entirely new. Please tell me what you think, and enjoy!

#1: Muse

"I've found it again," Baralai mutters, his brush flying over the canvas, his eyes flickering over Gippal's candlelit face, following the shadows that dance across his long toned body. There is a look of intense concentration on his face, and lazy content on Gippal's, and Baralai has never felt so intent on anything in his life. There is wild joy in his eyes. "I've got it back, and I can't understand how I ever could have lost it."

#2: Home

"You're home, you're home," Gippal gasps into his shoulder, so afraid this will be just another dream and that when he wakes Baralai will be halfway across the world again. He's pressed so close to Baralai he can actually feel the other man's heartbeat against his own, and his fingers grasp at the back of Baralai's shirt like a lifeline. "Oh, God, you're home."

#3: Dance

"It's not hard, it's just…" Gippal pauses, trying to think of the right way to describe it. Baralai looks up at him stubbornly, jaw set, eyes betraying his anxiousness. "It's letting your heart beat with the beat of the music, and your body will follow, too. If you think too hard you'll look stiff and nervous."

"I am nervous," Baralai mutters, but there's a new song starting up and the bass pulses through him, the vibrations in the floor scurrying up his body and making his heart thrum with the beat. Gippal is pushing a leg between his two, and an arm around his waist, and starts to move, and Baralai is amazed to find his body moving, too.

#4: Trust

"I've seen scars before." Baralai tangled his fingers through Gippal's blonde spikes and stared steadily into the single, wary green eye. "I can take it. You're not going to be any less handsome or charming and I'm not going to love you any less for one little scar."

"It's ugly," Gippal snapped, self-consciousness making him irritable.

"But you're not, and it can't do anything to change my opinion of you."

In the end, it wasn't the words, but the look in Baralai's warm, dark amber eyes that kept Gippal from ducking away when slender brown fingers peeled away the patch. Baralai slid into his lap, his body fitting to the blonde's like a lock and a key, his perfectly unscarred lover kissed the marks – and for once in his life, Gippal didn't regret the ugliness one bit.

#5: Rational

He's the Praetor of New Yevon; he's supposed to think logically, reasonably. He's supposed to be considering his actions and watching his words but Gippal is taking all the sense out of him as he catches Baralai's lips with his own – deep and hungry and wanting – and then presses open-mouthed kisses down his throat and across his collarbone, peeling away layers of thick embroidered cloth and the lies and solicitousness that come from being a politician. Baralai has never felt so real and so naked. He rips shoulder armor and the shirt underneath from Gippal, splaying his fingers across the tanned bare chest, relishing the smooth skin and hard muscle beneath his hands. All rational thought has left him, even with boring old men only a few feet away on the other side of the storage closet's door, sipping champagne and chattering about the latest blitzball game or the new business opening up somewhere on the Highroad.

Gippal groans, deep and hoarse, when Baralai, whose legs are wrapped around his waist, thrusts up and grinds their hips together. He muffles the sound in a soft brown shoulder, and some distant part of Baralai's mind wonders idly what the party guests might think if there was a sudden need for a mop. Then Gippal's pants are off, and the rest of Baralai's robes fall to the floor, and they are skin on skin, hot and smooth and hard, need blossoming like a fire and spreading throughout his entire body, and the rest of him surrenders, because for once, he wants to be anything but rational.

#6: Lullaby

Gippal never knew he had any talent for singing until one night in the Crimson Squad, Baralai woke screaming, his eyes wild and his body shuddering, blind with fear. Gippal had been at a loss, and at last pushed him with a gentle hand on his shoulder back down to his bedroll with a quiet, just a dream. Gippal remembered soothing Rikku one night after she'd woken up to find a spider the size of her fist crawling up her arm, and so he started an old Al Bhed lullaby; a soothing, slow song in his native language. The words slid so much easier off his tongue than clumsy Spiran, and the lullaby served to soothe him a little, as well. Baralai, for his part, dozed off peacefully, his head resting against Gippal's thigh.

The next night, as they were slipping into their bedrolls, Baralai asked in an embarrassed mumble if Gippal would sing another lullaby.

#7: Denial

Sometimes, it is more intimate not to kiss – to simply hold his face so close to Baralai's that his breath blew warmth over Gippal's face; so close that their lips brushed with every word they spoke. The lack of contact makes the temptation of a kiss as potent as the kiss itself.

Of course, Gippal has to grip Baralai's shoulders and hold him there. Baralai cranes his neck to try and make their lips meet and Gippal has to lean back to keep the embrace steady. Only when Baralai is nearly growling – only when his hands are everywhere and his leg sliding between Gippal's thighs and his hips pressing against Gippal's, all in an attempt to make Gippal let it go – only when every muscle in his body is straining to reach out to touch another's – only then does Gippal dive in and give his entire being to a kiss.

#8: Fight

Gippal brushed his teeth with a vigor usually reserved for battling fiends. His shoulders were tense and his back was rigid. Every movement he made was jerky and he slammed cupboard doors as he searched for the floss.

Baralai's anger was quiet. His eyes were colder and harder than glass, and though his movements were fluid and his muscles relaxed, his jaw was set as he combed his hair. He refused to meet Gippal's stare in the mirror, a green-eyed gaze that dared him to pursue their fight. It wasn't until Baralai's hand was on the lightswitch that either of them said a word.

"Hey." Gippal didn't look at Baralai as he spoke, but though the word was tight with anger, there were soft edges to its tone. "You know I love you, right? Because I don't want to go to bed with you thinking I don't. No matter what. I do love you."

Baralai's smile was as tight as Gippal's voice. "Yes. We'll sort it out in the morning." He flipped off the light, and, as though the darkness had given him an extra burst of courage, he added in the barest whisper, "I love you, too."