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“All things considered, you do make a rather fetching cactoid.”
Vaan’s face contorts to something as sour as serpentwyne, and he braces himself when Balthier presses the tweezers against the tender, rent flesh of his arm.
“Just get it over with,” he grits out through his teeth.
Balthier cannot contain his incredulous laughter, assessing the damage before him. Vaan sulks on his cabin bed like a petulant child, sporting innumerable needles from his arm all the way up his neck. It looks...awfully painful, and he doesn’t envy the boy a bit as he sits there, rigid and mussed and drinking all his damn whiskey.
“Easier said than done.” Balthier pulls the first of many cactoid quills from Vaan’s arm. “They certainly did a number on you, didn’t they.”
“A thousand, Balthier. The number’s a thousand.”
Balthier’s brow quirks.
“I always thought that was just an expression.”
He drops the quill into the bowl on the bedside table, and goes in for the second of what will be many pluckings. Vaan hisses in pain as the pointed edge of the tweezer grazes pinkened flesh, inflamed and angry.
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t exactly counting,” Vaan seethes lowly, and takes another swig from the flask. His breath already reeks of whiskey, but at least by the end of it, he’ll be drunk enough to sleep. Moreso it’s just annoying that it’s his good whiskey (though he’d be quick to say he only has good whiskey), and Vaan is none the wiser to appreciate it. Balthier speculates he could have given the boy engine oil and he’d drink it with the same lack of regard.
"Well, we certainly have the time for it now." With a steady hand, Balthier works at the needles peppering Vaan’s arm. Some are larger, protruding from the twitching muscle in his bicep, while others are smaller, more transparent - sneaky little bastards that sift right below that first layer of flesh. He can feel Vaan tense up like a rabid Worgen beneath the unpleasant ministrations, and Balthier sighs.
“This may take a while,” he adds a bit uselessly. “You’re lucky I’ve nowhere to be today.”
Vaan doesn’t say anything, but Balthier can nearly feel those eyes roll at him as he tweezes away at spine after spine. There’s blood, and like to be more at this rate. When Balthier manages to clear out a patch of skin - not much, barely an inch - he presses the antiseptic rag gently to Vaan’s arm. Vaan jolts, hisses again, and brings the flask to his mouth like a pacifier to a wailing infant. Balthier can feel the flesh burning beneath the cloth, and does not envy his apprentice in the slightest.
“What exactly did you do to provoke the ire of the ever-docile cactoids, Vaan?” he queries, never not-baffled at Vaan’s tendency to piss off everything he meets.
“Nothing,” he slurs, voice rasped with pain and libation alike. Balthier silently counts down from five, and waits for Vaan to admit the truth. He makes it to two before, “ Fine . I wanted to test out this new fire spell.”
Balthier hums thoughtfully, yanking another needle out with no shortage of growing satisfaction. It’s proven to be strangely meditative. “And how did that work out for you, I wonder?”
“Not so hot,” Vaan deadpans. At least he still has his humor intact, though his pride is another story, buried somewhere in the Estersand underneath one irate cactoid dancing upon its grave.
“You know,” Balthier says after most of the bowl’s bottom surface is covered in thin spines yet he looks barely a fraction better for it, “I should really charge you for this. A Gil a Quill.”
Vaan snorts. “Shut up, Balthier.”
“What?” he blinks, faux-innocent as he plucks another - maybe a bit too hard, for that disrespect, “does my proposition needle you?”
But there’s still a long way to go, and Balthier shifts on the stool he dragged up next to the bed. “Look at me, plucking away at you like some bed-nurse. The least you could do is hold still, dammit.”
“It hurts,” Vaan seethes. A thin layer of sweat covers his brow and Balthier feels a touch sorry for the fool. It must smart like the devil.
“Be glad it was your arm and not your rear,” Balthier tries another attempt at humor, "Though the view would have been a touch nicer.”
Vaan groans, and takes another swig from the flask, only to find it regrettably empty. “You’re out of whiskey,” he pouts, and Balthier clucks his tongue.
“No, you’re out of whiskey,” he corrects, and Vaan groans, fisting his hand into the sheets. He sits there, taut as a bowstring, throat tightened with suppressed whimpers.
The only sound in the Strahl’s cabin is that of quills hitting the bowl and Vaan’s sharp breathing. Balthier’s looks at Vaan to find his face twisted in quiet agony, and Balthier frowns - even if he is a damn fool, Vaan is his damn fool, and he’ll not have the boy sulking around his ship, sore and sour-faced. There is nothing more unsightly than a pouting Dalmascan, he’s found with the combined company of Vaan, Penelo, and Ashe.
“Tell you what,” Balthier starts after a while, pressing another antiseptic rag to Vaan’s flesh, who shudders at the sting. “When this is all said and done, how about I give you a flying lesson,” he promises out of nowhere, his own generosity startling him. But Vaan freezes, and lifts his head to stare at Balthier. The wonder on his face is as plain as day, even through the pain, and that speaks volumes.
“Really?” Vaan asks, before hiccuping once. Balthier rolls his eyes.
“When you’re sober, that is. Now sit tight, would you? I’d like to get through with this before I’m grey.”
And Balthier isn’t sure when, exactly, he became prone to the whims of a Dalmascan street thief - to offer his patience, his whiskey and his mentorship without even having to be asked - but he can’t say he’s entirely displeased with it all the same.