Work Text:
The Giza sun is a welcome blanket of warmth over Vaan’s skin, and does nothing to help his dreamy state; he stares blankly down at the hollow Shadestone in his hand, his thoughts wandering to a different plane altogether.
“Vaan, come on! We need to fill at least ten of these each if we’re going to have any lights around the square for our performance at midnight!”
Shook from his reverie, Vaan blinks up at the massive flicker of magicite thrumming with sunlight, pulsing with heat. “Right.” Personally he doesn’t know why they can’t just use the giant fire that'll be in the middle of the square as light, but it’s tradition in part of the harvest, he supposes. He holds up the blackened stone, one of many from the satchel at his waist, and feels the familiar hum vibrate like a magnet in his palm. Vaan’s fingers curl around the warmth tightly as it rises in temperature; only when it gets too hot to comfortably hold is the stone saturated with magick, and so he places it in his satchel and digs out another to repeat.
“Earth to Vaan? Helloo? This is supposed to be fun?” Penelo waves her hand in front of his face before immediately realizing what, exactly, is plaguing Vaan’s state of mind. She rolls her eyes. “Ugh, come on Vaan, I already told you twelve times what to do with your issue.”
Vaan shifts along the loose topsoil of Giza. The movement kicks clouds of dust into the air. He bites on the dry skin of his lower lip and groans. “What if I asked him to dance?”
Penelo snorts, loud and only once; in the presence of others she has some semblance of propriety but in the private company of her best friend, she is merciless. “Yeah Vaan, sure. Ask the Archadian sky pirate to dance. I’m sure he’d totally be head over heels for you in a Mesminir stampede of shirtless, high desert people.”
Vaan perks at the implication. “So there’ll be snakehyps.”
Penelo shrugged. “Probably? There always is.” She starts to walk towards the direction of the next beacon, a glowing sway in the midday heat. “And anyway, I told you already what to do. Just suck his dick.”
Vaan nearly trips over himself. They’ve had this talk before, many times, ending in Penelo waving him off and suggesting some absolute insane thing in a shite attempt at getting Vaan to woo the sky pirate - yet every time it still has him speechless.
“Penelo. That’s not. That’s not how things work.”
“Sure it is. It worked on Tomaj, didn’t it?”
Vaan wishes he could just bury himself in Giza, wait for the rains to pour down, and drown in the wadis. “Tomaj was different.” His voice cracks.
“Boys aren’t different.”
“Balthier isn’t a boy!”
They’re walking as they banter, under the privacy of a beautiful midday sun, and Vaan’s flush is hot against his face. Penelo turns on her heel to look at him, the gesture simple but graceful - no doubt she’s warming up for the performance ahead. “Vaan. Balthier’s a guy. And guys are boys. Boys are guys. It’s all the same. And I’ve told you a million times, I’ve noticed the way he’s been looking at you lately. It’s almost as bad as you looking at him. Really, I’m not sure how you can be so oblivious. I guess it’s a girl thing to notice stuff like this, so let me throw you this bone… throw him your bone already.”
“Penelo. Where do you read this stuff.”
She shrugs and turns back ahead, pigtails swaying in the breeze. “Those ten-gil novels old ladies leave in the box behind the Sandsea. Also, I just know stuff, okay? Trust me on this. Go for it already, so I can stop hearing you gripe about it. Either bang him or don’t, but it’s been months and I can’t watch the googoo eyes anymore.”
Vaan waves his arms side to side in a fit of exasperation. “Whaddyou want me to do?” he stammers in one fast breath, “Just what, corner him and suck his dick? Just like that? Penelo what the hell?”
Penelo holds the Shadestone up to the next gleaming hunk of magicite and shrugs. A giza hare tries to get a little too friendly with her leg, and she kicks it off idly. It rolls away in a collage of squeaks. “I mean, that’s one way to do it.” She is still staring up at the pulsing light but she smiles, a little too coy. “At the very least, he wouldn’t expect it.”
She fills her Shadestone until it’s sated, pops it into her rucksack, and winks. “But sure, ask him to dance. Maybe in ten years you might hold hands and in twenty, you might kiss.”
Vaan watches her prance off, and only catches up when he’s made up his mind.
—
“So, the dance invite didn’t work.”
Vaan’s staring up at the ceiling with his mouth agape as Penelo hunches over him with a fresh-smoldered kohl stick. It smells of subtly burnt cloves and cork in the small stockroom above Migelo’s sundries - their old shared bedroom. She traces the stick around Vaan’s grey eyes, light pressure on the inner corners and bolder at the outer edges. They are no stranger to this ritual. Kohl-darkened eyes are tradition in Dalmascan dance regardless of gender, and besides, Vaan has no qualms with being pretty.
Penelo, for what seems like the umpteenth time that day, snorts again. “Big surprise there, Romeo.”
“But I invited him to watch you dance.”
“Me?” And then she pauses and laughs. “Wait, you didn’t tell him you’re dancing too?”
“No… was gonna keep it a surprise.” Vaan blinks (he doesn’t mind the kohl but hates the process) and tries not to let his eyes water - the cloves and mastic keep the bold lines from running, but he’d still rather not risk it. Especially because Penelo would have a fit. She prides herself in this, and no doubt loves putting makeup on her friend when she can get him to sit still enough.
“Well then…” Penelo straightens up, looks down at her seated best friend as if he were a canvas she’s been doting on for months now, a masterpiece she is debuting tonight, “Guess I’ll have to smudge this out extra sexy, huh.” And she hunches back down to continue her work. Vaan's lips curl upwards with his gaze.
“Sweet. Yeah. Make it sexy.”
“Oh, it’ll be sexy,” she smirks affirmatively, smudging out the corner with an experienced pinky finger. “It’s gonna scream, come and get me you naughty sky pirate, plunder my booty, make me your apprentice all night, baby.”
And here, Vaan laughs, laughs at the absolute ridiculousness of it all. He jerks upwards, and the stockroom is filled with Penelo’s curses. “You messed it up!”
When he catches his breath, he chuckles, “Well, fix it. We’ve got time. It’s only ten.”
Penelo grumbles, licks her pinky, and fixes away the unruly smudge tainting her canvas. “I swear, this is the most time I’ve ever spent on this. You better get something out of it and it better be more than a maybe-dance.”
It’s Vaan’s turn to snort. “I feel like you’re living through me with this. Pen, do you have something you wanna tell me?”
“Please. Balthier is hardly my type.” Penelo’s voice is flat. She thinks of Basch for only a half-second, gets a little hot for a half-second, and says nothing on the matter. “Besides, it’s not like I’m getting any. Might as well coach you.”
Vaan doesn’t say that if anyone should be coaching Penelo on how to get dick it should be him, because he’s a nice friend and nice friends don’t do that when the other friend in question has a burning stick to your eye.
She continues to ramble on, because she’s a little stoned herself. The snakehyps permeate the stockroom, not because they have their own tiny stash of it slowly burning on a copper plate in the corner or anything.
“Like—if you’re gonna do anything, at least make it something to remember, y’know? Corner him! And uh, make out with him, bite his earring or something.”
“Bite his earring?”
“Yeah. Try it. I don't know, just do it. He probably loves that crap.” Penelo’s starting on his other eye now and Vaan can’t hide his grin. She's too funny when she’s stoned.
“I dunno, Pen.” Vaan is quiet for a bit. “Maybe I’ll just ask him to dance after the performance instead? He might change his mind after he sees how fun it is.”
Penelo’s groan is so loud it drowns out Vaan’s laughter.
—
The following morning, Penelo is found at a table in the Sandsea, enjoying the annual post-festival brunch buffet. The line is out the door with the aftermath of the snakehyps prying at people’s empty stomachs. She’s snarfing down a popover too big for her mouth when Vaan saunters over and plops himself unceremoniously next to her. She merely grunts in greeting, far too invested in sating her post-dance-craze hunger to be bothered with words. It’s not like Vaan cares anyway.
Vaan plucks a glass from the center of the table and pours himself some juice from a pitcher. “Well, you were right,” he admitted somberly, over the sound of her inhaling the food, “He didn’t wanna dance after the performance either. In fact, he kinda ran away.”
She glances at her friend, his hair sleep-mussed and skin aglow with...something, and slathers the popover with more honey before taking another heaping bite. “Well,” she manages in between lazy smacks gracelessly, “I could’ve told you that one.”
“Yeah…” Vaan looks distantly at the pitcher and sighs, keeping a straight face with little trouble. “But I did suck his dick, though.”
The glass of juice is already held in front of Penelo by the time she’s choking on her breakfast.