A.N.: A bit of humor. I usually don't write for XII, but this was just too much fun :) X-posted on livejournal.
What Happens in Balfonheim, Stays in Balfonheim
Balfonheim: by definition, a pirate's port, a den of thieves, a place inhabited by a debaucherous lot. If Ashe thought long and hard enough, she could think of at least a dozen or more unpleasant associations to the sea-side city where the pirate Reddas made his home.
Basch shared her sentiments to a tee, and Ashe had noticed that upon entering the city, his mood had darkened considerably. Either the corruption or the constant threat to her personal safety kept the knight in perpetual distress, but at this particular moment, he looked green more so than vexed.
Had he grown ill in the underbelly of Archades and not told her for all this time? Whatever the reason or the cause, Ashe had already expressed to Balthier their need to find an inn as quickly as possible.
The inn they found lay almost within the surf of the sea. Coin was dropped at the counter, and Ashe accompanied Basch up the stairs, tottering unsteadily as he was.
The rooms were divided amongst each other; Penelo and Vaan together, because who would dare separate the intrepid youngsters? Basch with them also, deeming that his presence might prevent them from making mischief late in the night (that is to say, piracy and the like), though Ashe found this unreasonable, him being ill. Fran and Balthier took the second room, and Ashe received a small room with only one bed, and was secretly relieved for the privacy having had little respite to look to her own counsel in some time. She would have offered it to Basch had the stubborn man not practically slammed the door in her face and shooed her out, insisting that he'd be fine, but this was just as well.
Gear was laid to rest against the wall of the corridor, and Ashe stepped into her small room, taking a deep breath, inhaling the scent of sea-foam and the sweet-honeyed fragrance of the flowering vine that covered the windowsill.
She turned when Balthier poked his well-groomed head in and threw her gear into the room.
"Fran and I are going to reacquaint ourselves with the natives," he announced, then added slyly, "You're welcome to join us if you're feeling bold."
"I'd rather not," she replied, folding her arms.
He frowned and sauntered again into the hall. "It could do you some good!" he called back.
Ashe scowled, and watched as the pirate and his Viera partner passed her open doorway to leave on their foray. She waited a few minutes before seeking out Basch again. He was leaning against the wall of his room, gray-faced, when she found him, while Penelo scolded Vaan for goodness knew what.
The moment Ashe entered, Vaan ran out, Penelo in hot pursuit. Apparently, the very prospect of piracy around every bend, had consumed the entirety of Vaan's head. Ashe hoped that their absence would help cure her headache, and allow Basch some peace himself.
She placed a speculative look on the knight, her guardian.
"Will you be all right if I leave you here for a few hours? Reddas suggested we prepare for the trek to Giruvegan, and I wish to browse this city's goods before all of our coin mysteriously vanishes from my purse by unconventional means. I'll be armed, in case you're concerned."
The tired knight nodded and sat himself down on the edge of a bed, bags under his eyes and his ashen face paling further. Ashe was hesitant to leave him, but he obviously needed rest, and she had the bedside manner of a drill sergeant. A few hours rest should do him a world of good, and she could take a few hours to unwind. She hadn't been in the best of moods since Archades.
Unfortunately for Ashe, this was only the beginning of a very long and eventful evening. She left not knowing that when Balthier had distributed everyone's gear, he hadn't bothered to look to see which was which. Basch's pack had found its way to Ashe's room, Ashe's to Basch's, and a singularly potent sleeping draught Balthier kept to sleep through Vaan's incessant nattering, was somehow now upon Basch's pack by mistake (or devious design).
Basch, wishing to take some water after everyone had left him, found that the pack in his room with Penelo and Vaan was not his own, and set out to the only room that he held a spare key for, that being Ashe's. He indeed found his pack there, and clutching up his canteen, took a swig of the liquid within, curiously noting the sweet and almost tangy flavor, but feeling too ill to make much sense of it. That is, until the room began to blur and spin together and he realized his predicament. He hit the mattress so hard the bed skittered a little across the floor, never giving him a chance to close, let alone, lock the door.
What happened afterwards…No one could have expected, least of all, the persons involved.
How could anyone have anticipated the strength of the sleeping draught Basch had mistakenly drunk? Or, for that matter, known that the nearest bed the sick and drugged man would lay anchor in was Ashe's? Not even the violence of an earthquake could stir the sleeping knight, and perhaps this was fortunate for the events that transpired throughout the rest of the night. For, as luck should have it, Balthier, surrounded by his own unruly kin, would drink himself to blathering and amorous and also find his way to the bedchamber where the poor knight lay unconscious.
Needless to say, that when Ashe herself arrived at the inn after a long afternoon of bartering with slippery pirates, she found the door to her room open, and thinking there might be intruders, or worse, that everything within had been stolen, she stepped inside, with a dagger drawn. She paused upon passing the threshold when she heard drunken mutterings from a voice all-too-familiar, and determined to discover why in Archades she was hearing Balthier slurring sweet nothings through the darkness of the room, and wondering immediately if he had dared bring a wench to her bed.
She stepped further into the room, unconcerned by whatever intimate moment she might be interrupting, and decided to put an end to it. She blinked in surprise when she reached the bed's foot and saw Basch sprawled to one side, dead to the world, with Balthier, drunk to the greatest extreme Ashe had ever witnessed, clutching Basch by the torso, nuzzling into the other man's side, and murmuring how much he loved the other—though Ashe was uncertain if he knew to whom he was speaking.
How to separate these two, she wondered, pushing her flaxen hair away from her forehead. Spending an evening with Penelo and Vaan was not a friendly thought for the headache that had now bloomed into something monstrous.
She walked to the side of the bed, poking the sky pirate in the ribs. She hoped he was conscious enough to respond.
"Pirate," she said crossly, and when that failed. "Balthier!" she hissed.
He didn't move for a moment, so Ashe leaned forward. Then, with a terrific feat of drunken acrobatics, Balthier detached himself from Basch and clapped both arms around her back instead, pulling her down and onto the bed. She yelped in surprise, and elbowed Balthier in the sternum on her descent.
"Soo ffeisty," he murmured. "Shhhhh, quiet, don't wvake…don't wvake the angry pwincessh…"
By the gods, he smells like a distillery, Ashe thought in dismay, trying to extricate herself from the tangle of arms and legs in which she'd discovered herself.
The sky pirate's grip was strong, goodness he's well muscled, she thought, but the more she struggled, the more Ashe found herself pulled into the center of the bed between the two men. Her right arm gave out unexpectedly, and falling downward, she suddenly discovered her lips squashed atop Balthier's. Within instants, he was pursuing her lips with avarice, sloppy from drunkenness, but still filled with leading man finesse.
Ashe found herself caught off-guard, both pleasantly, and angrily. He tasted of spicy rum, and while under other circumstances, Ashe might have ruminated over it more thoroughly, now was neither the time nor the place.
She wrenched herself free and launched herself toward the edge of the bed, but Balthier grabbed her ankle, and while she contorted her body in order to better kick him, it was only then that she looked up and saw the unusual shadow of Fran spilling across the Bujerban rug of the room from the doorway.
The light from the corridor kept the Viera swathed in shadow, but Ashe could imagine the look on Fran's face—wry with a touch of suspicion, maybe exasperation. For several long moments they stared at each other, Ashe feeling like she'd been caught in the middle of something horribly illegal. Then slowly, delicately, Fran spoke.
"Keep this up and you'll scare the children," was all she said as she pulled the door shut and left Ashe stranded with the two men.
"Fran—wait! This isn't—oh, blast it, Balthier, are you trying to engage in some new form of piracy or are you begging me to murder you?!"
He slurred an incoherent response, and Basch twitched for the first time since the chaos began. With an undignified jolt, Ashe fell off the bed.
She'd kill him. In the morning she was definitely going to kill him. But standing up in a huff, and straightening her clothes, she came up with a better idea. She was going to spend the evening with Fran, let the insufferable pirate wake up to the worst headache of his life and spend the day explaining why he woke up in a bed with poor Basch.
And when morning finally did dawn and twin cries of surprise pierced through the stucco wall, a smile graced Ashe's lips. Her headache gone, herself avenged upon pirate kind. Yes, today was a good day. And maybe, she thought, just maybe she didn't mind this city so much, after all.
She couldn't, however, say the same for Basch.