Another Man's Shoes, a final fantasy xii fanfic

[A/N: I decided to use the Notes a little more freely, because I couldn't really come up with an idea from the Bazaar thing and couldn't really seem to fit this in my head into the canon. I've been rereading a lot of Pratchett lately, so expect some minor crack.

fandom: Final Fantasy XII
pairing: Basch/Balthier (this one sure is rare, hum?)
Notes: There are a lot of items on the Bazaar, right? so what if one of them didn't have a description, maybe twin bracelets or something like that, and nobody knew what they did. So those two tried them on to find out its effect and end up switching bodies. Basch would suffer with this one, I'm sure.
Prompt: Body Switch

Another man's shoes

"First, you are supposed to address me as 'Boy'," said Balthier's voice, an inch from his ear and (to his instantly blushing shock) indicating that the warm weight against his back was the pirate's familiar frame. "And, your brother did not e'er blush."

"Nor take much weight of the words of pirates, I should think," Basch hoped the breathless hitch in his voice wasn't obvious, but there was a short, curt chuckle, further away now, and the vise-like grip on his elbow loosened.

"Certainly, certainly," Balthier's urgency faded to his usual silky honey, with only the slightly upturned mouth and the keen calculation in his eyes as warning to the new Magister. "You look well, Gabranth."

"You say that each time." Basch inclined his head, fighting the heat in his cheeks. He knew Balthier knew. He just wasn't sure why Balthier chose not to do anything about knowing, other than regular (and sadly and strictly platonic) visits to Archades, but had a fair idea of the reason, as the sky pirate circled him to the entrance of the alley with the arrogant confidence of beautiful men who knew they were beautiful and, in particular, knew that they were in the presence of other people who were in love with them.

Pure caprice.

More fool he, mayhap, Basch felt, with no real bitterness, as he followed, sunlight edging back over his bared scalp and shoulders, which felt uncomfortably light for the lack of armor, left back in the Department. He who pins his hopes on a-

Balthier's note had told him to meet the pirate just off the Central Square, which housed the Equinox Bazaar, a motley tumult of music, spice scents, food, shouted conversation, barely legal alcoholic spirits and performers. Basch sidestepped a silver clown and ducked around a glowering chocobo, wondering why Balthier wasn't slowing. "Balthier."

The pirate paused to allow a harassed mother and her three young children to pass, their tiny fingers holding tightly to rainbow pinwheels, then was off again, leaving Basch to shoulder his way hurriedly through conversing merchants and duck under a paper dragon, its gaily painted paper coil upheld over the throng by a group of whooping performers.

"Boy."

Balthier turned, and smiled, playful and boyish and handsome, framed by gaily chaos, and disappeared like a silverfish into the crowd. Basch sighed.

He disliked games.

Balthier bored of play after an hour. The Equinox bazaar was far larger this year than he had estimated, and he had thoroughly lost Basch, having tired of staying just teasingly out of reach half an hour ago. Knowing the man, he would likely as not have done something distressingly sensible at this point, such as return to the Aerodrome to wait by the Strahl. Pity.

It wasn't that the thought of that annoyed Balthier (but it did, just a little) since that wasn't particularly a mature reaction, but that… well. It wasn't that he wanted the poor man to chase blindly after him for an hour (of course), or indeed conduct any business with him that would conclude in a distressingly conventional manner in the way of bedroom tangles (and those tended to end as such a bore, and he didn't want to lose interest in Basch, at least not yet). People whom Balthier were interested in didn't tend to interest him for very long more, after he went past second base, for he found that it was around that time that 'fun' seemed to become synonymous with 'settling down'. So he kept Basch firmly and carefully at first base, and whenever he felt like moving a little further he would leave again until he felt the impulse had died down enough to come back.

So far it had led to a satisfactory continuing period of fun and, concurrently, had entrenched Fran's opinion in the surpassing needless complexity of Hume relationships.

Balthier smiled to himself and considered the stalls, pushing aside the uncomfortable and repetitive problem of Basch away for another day (and yet again). He was gravitating naturally towards a stall tucked between a large one with jars of colorful biscuits and another with racks of carefully foreign gewgaws, and he knew what that meant. Pirates lived as much on the luck of adventure as on flight, and the wizened old lady (only wizened old people seemed to man Mysterious Tiny Stores You Won't See the Next Day) smiled toothlessly at him. Before her, on a tattered velvet cloth draped over a tottering table, were a tarnished crown, a pack of cards, an empty gilt bird cage, a stack of old tomes, a scroll wrapped in green ribbon, and a pair of wooden bracelets trimmed with gold.

Balthier looked between the items, the little problem of Basch already forgotten, deliberating between the cards and the scroll. "What coin do you accept?" he asked the old lady.

"You are a child of the sky, Balthier," the lady said, and Balthier nodded. Wizened old people of strange little shops naturally knew their customer's names. "You know my wares have no price."

Which wasn't the same as not paying, of course, but favors made a story move around, and perhaps someday he would find a scrawled note in the engine of his ship that would make him, briefly, a cog in another person's adventure. His hand hovered over the scroll-

-and he yelped as warm fingers closed over his shoulder. "There you are," Basch said, looking satisfied, even if the Magister seemed to be sweating a little from the press of bodies and the warm flares of heat from the food stalls. "Now, can we have coffee somewhere quieter? Preferably without you attempting to disappear?"

Balthier scowled over his shoulder, then froze as the lady said, "And done."

He looked down. His fingers had jerked to the right in his shock, and brushed the bracelets. "But what-"

"You will see," the lady said, and seemed eerily amused.

The bracelets dissolved into golden mist, and parted, half springing onto his right wrist, encircling it, to settle and coalesce into one of the bracers, and the other up, to his shoulder and the hand around it, to Basch's wrist. He managed a gasped "Oh…"

"…fuck," in a deeper voice, and blinked in the sunlight.

He was looking at himself.

He was looking at himself staring at himself and gaping with an expression of particularly undignified horrified disbelief. At himself. And…

With great deliberation, Balthier removed his hand from 'his' shoulder and reached up to his face. The scar was smooth under his fingers.

The disbelieving panic settled after the second cup of coffee, and Basch watched himself, or rather, Balthier-as-himself inspect his fingers and experimentally roll his shoulders. The smirk sure as hell looked out of place on 'his' face, he felt, made him look more like… his… brother…

"Balthier," he said finally, when Balthier continued to say nothing after the arrival of yet another pot of coffee, "Can I have the explanation now, please?"

The silky voice seemed absolutely out of place.

And his headache was worsening.

"Professional secret, I am afraid," Balthier said playfully, which sounded odd as hell in his voice. "Adventures happen naturally to sky pirates."

"You told me this earlier and it still makes no sense." Basch kept a tight lid on his composure.

"It's not supposed to. Most adventures do not make sense, they only make convenient narrative," Balthier pointed out.

Basch pinched at the bridge of his nose. "I have to be back at work in a few hours."

Balthier's smirk widened.

Basch felt his heart drop slowly and inevitably towards his stomach. "Oh no."

"Come on," Balthier said, earnestly and with obviously false innocence, "I have done the work before. I was aide to Magister Zargabaath."

"You ran away from the Department!"

"It won't be for long," Balthier said soothingly, which fed Basch's panic. "Just a day or two. Then we can sort matters out, I am sure."

"That little shop just vanished!"

"What if I promise not to make trouble?"

Basch took a deep breath, but let it out in a sigh, and took a firmer hold of his composure. The damned bracelet had refused to come off, and, as Balthier had gaily pointed out, destroying it could force them to stay in each other's bodies forever.

"If it is much comfort to you," Balthier continued to say, "I do not wish this state of affairs to continue indefinitely, either."

"Good."

"After all, you are the one now fourteen years younger and handsomer," Balthier said, with just the hint of a mischievous wink. Basch felt the beginning of a flush creep up his collar, and wished that there was a mirror. Seeing 'Balthier' blush would have been one for the-

"And," Balthier continued, smirking again, "You can now, after all, see me naked."

Basch choked on a biscuit. "What?"

"Come now, Magister. Surely you have considered the possibilities of disrobing, mirrors, and exploration?"

Oh. Oh.

"I have not!"

"You are now," Balthier pressed, with that damnable smirk that looked out of place on his own damned face. "The Strahl is in the eighth dock. I suppose you should explain matters to Fran."

"I… you…"

"I am returning to the Department to have a little fun," Balthier drawled, rising to his feet.

"Balthier."

"Which you will allow me if you do wish my aid in returning matters to the way they were as soon as possible."

He gave up. "I'll brief you on my schedule."

Zargabaath felt better about the explanation only after a glass of cognac. His old mentor was indeed getting more flexible with age, Balthier felt.

"So this magical accident, you say," Zargabaath repeated, with a Judge's suspicious emphasis on 'accident', "Has made you switch bodies with Gabranth."

"Indeed," Balthier said, in as impassive a way as he could manage, following his memories of Basch's twin, and watched Zargabaath shoot him a glare from under his gray-speckled eyebrows. In the old man's case, under all that armor, his horned helmet on his desk, muscle had, over time, simply hardened into whipcord steel.

"This is not a matter of play, boy," Zargabaath said severely.

"Of course not, ser," Balthier said, lapsing into his usual cheek, which he had to admit sounded odd in Basch's gravel, "But seemingly not a matter of surpassing importance, for you've not insisted that I immediately find a solution."

Balthier watched his mentor debate agonizingly with himself. On one hand, Zargabaath was unflinchingly honest and honorable; on the other hand, he was a Judge Magister. Duty and personal interests warred briefly and painfully with each other over the old man's gaunt features, then Zargabaath sighed.

"There is currently a contractual case of remarkable complexity before the Bench. Evidence and examinations have already been heard, and Judgments are due."

"Aye ser. I read the brief." Which had a distressingly large number of explanatory notes attached to it, some of it Akademy-level, and all in Basch's painstakingly spidery handwriting, as the poor soldier attempted to grasp centuries-old precedence and legal logic without formal training.

"And I must say, in all confidence, that I do not believe that, well-"

"That Basch is quite as yet qualified enough to be Gabranth? Ser." Balthier grinned, with all the mercy of a cat, and Zargabaath's sigh was deeper, now.

"The lad means well," the old Judge said ponderously (Zargabaath tended to insist on calling anyone younger than himself lad, and this included the late King Reddas Zecht), "But unfortunately he is as yet not sufficiently equipped with, er, the discipline and knowledge…"

"I will not disappoint you, ser."

"At least try not to look as though you are enjoying yourself, Ffamran."

"Trying my best, ser."

Fran had tilted her head at him when Basch had entered the Strahl, dropped her eyes to his feet, then thoughtfully at his wrists, and flicked her ears. "Where is Balthier?"

The explanation he had been rehearsing on the walk to the Aerodrome was forgotten. "How… what…"

"Is it the bracelet, Basch?"

"Aye… aye. The bracelet." Basch flinched when Fran approached and gently held his arm in her claws, turning his wrist this way and that without touching the object.

"Hn. One of those." Fran shrugged. "Is he wearing your form?"

"Aye."

"We room in the East Skybird, close to the aerodrome." Fran said, striding back into the engine room from which she had previously emerged. The lights in the Strahl dimmed, and the background hum petered away.

"You do not seem the least concerned, Fran," Basch ventured, as Fran circled around to give the cockpit a final check.

She turned, and for a moment, from the expression on her feral, inhumanly perfect face, Basch grasped what it would be like to live with Balthier. Then there was only a long-suffering shrug: evidently, as far as Fran was concerned, this was just yet another of Balthier's strange mischiefs, of which there were too many to keep track, such that worrying about any single one would be simply too exhausting, even for an immortal race, and that it was best to leave matters be and let the pirate's luck play its course.

"Should I be?"

Balthier contrived to arrange matters such that he met Basch at breakfast in the Skybird tavern. He had just had an entertaining night reviewing the briefs and the draft opinions from Basch's associate team, as well as Basch's attempt at a draft Judgment, and had been highly amused. Small wonder Zargabaath had seemed almost relieved at the unexpected turn of events.

Basch looked exhausted, as though he hadn't slept, and Balthier couldn't resist the playful jibe. "Do try not to tire myself out. Think of it as a holiday."

"I have a case…" Basch began, then paused when Balthier smirked. "Are you handling the matter?"

"I do have experience," Balthier pointed out, with an arched eyebrow, as he sliced bacon onto toast. "And I daresay I can at least perform as well as you."

"Ah," Basch said, and 'his' ears reddened. "I mean, er, thank you, I think."

"So," Balthier leant a cheek on a callused palm, "Did you have a good look last night?"

"No!"

"I'm not extending you the same courtesy, by the way."

Basch stared at him, openmouthed. It was not particularly dignified, and Balthier was briefly glad that they were not in Balfonheim. Basch-as-himself could do his reputation uncountable damage.

"You're… with my…"

"Just curiosity," Balthier said, watching 'himself' redden even further with a sense of evil accomplishment. He had spent an instructive hour in the Magister's private bathroom to satisfy his curiosity about scars and sizes. The man's body was quite desirable in an unrefined way: it was really rather a pity about personal rules.

Basch hovered anxiously around Fran until the Viera tired of his presence, then after a dry, not unkindly word from her, he settled for lurking in 'his' room in the tavern.

The single, full-length mirror in the wardrobe stared at him through an inch of pinewood.

Surely it wouldn't hurt to… no.

Just a look…?

Or just shirtless. Shirtless was practically innocent, wasn't it? Not in the least (oh Gods) voyeuristic… not in the least… at all…

Basch sat down on the bed and groaned. He wasn't quite sure if there was anyone else in the world more capable of torturing himself over a matter of existential morality.

Zargabaath had a few points of criticism to discuss about Balthier's draft judgment, as usual, but had to admit, grudgingly, that it was very much in Gabranth's style and that the ratio decidendi was 'quite' sound. There was also a very faint undercurrent of relief that made Balthier smirk.

However, personal experience told Balthier that in the Department, fun had a distressing tendency to become 'work', and then 'routine', and then 'life', and as such, he carefully ignored the old Judge's attempts to get him to let matters remain for 'just another week', and left as quickly as he could for the Skybird.

After, of course, orchestrating a few matters and amusing misunderstandings (which Balthier would have termed 'a bit of fun' and which Fran would have titled 'making trouble') with which to make life for Basch a little more interesting for the next few months. It wouldn't do for the man to get bored when Balthier left for his next heist, after all.

Heheheh.

He was feeling a little less pleased with himself, however, when he entered 'his' room in the Skybird to find Basch sitting on the carpet, knees drawn to his neck, fully clothed, staring blankly at the wardrobe mirror. The man looked… lost, for want of a better word, and he yelped when Balthier poked him on the arm.

"I didn't hear you come in," Basch said weakly, getting to his feet.

"You were thinking?"

"Aye." Basch guiltily closed the wardrobe door.

Balthier smirked. "Did you…"

"No!"

The sky pirate sighed. He hated to think this of a man nearing middle age, but Basch really had to get out more. "Follow me to the Strahl."

All in all, Basch felt cheated, as he watched Balthier go through a chest of strange implements, scrolls, potions and other odd trinkets. "You mean you probably had the solution all along?"

"No self-respecting pirate will not have a solution to curses and inconvenient magical items. After all, we do raid a lot of treasuries, tombs and the like," Balthier said dryly, as he fished out a battered book with many inserts and started turning the pages. "Bangles that switch bodies are hardly a unique occurrence."

"But you had the solution all along."

"You have already said that." Balthier said mildly, as he opened an insert. "Give me your hand."

"All along," Basch repeated, feeling hurt (and yes) and just a little irritable, but obeying. Balthier murmured a line of words of some strange language he did not recognize, antique and rasping, and the bracelets clicked open into halves that clattered on the ground.

Basch breathed, then clenched and unclenched his fists in relief, as Balthier pushed the rings gingerly with his boot into a cloth bag, dumped that into the chest, and stood up.

"Now, that was not too bad, was it?" the sky pirate grinned.

Very thoughtfully, having already considered things over the night before, Basch hit him.

Fran shot her young companion a sidelong glance. Balthier was still sulking, although they were already far from Archades, above the clouds, on course for the Chimera Purveema. The bruise had been long healed, and as such, the Viera found that she was little inclined towards further sympathy, if at all. He had quite deserved that, after all.

Besides, she knew that eventually Balthier would feel the need to fill her silence with his neverending chatter, so she waited.

"He did not have to," Balthier finally muttered, a hand going up to finger his jaw.

Fran said nothing. The Viera had long found that silence was likely one of the best weapons in a war of words, particularly against Humes.

"It was all in a bit of fun."

Fran glanced at the clouds, then at the radar.

"Granted he did heal me afterwards, but the man did not even apologize."

She checked the fuel gauge and their latitude, then allowed herself to relax against her seat.

"And 'tis not as though the incident was of my making from the very beginning."

Fran smiled.

"It was not," Balthier said, turning to look reproachfully at her. "So it was entirely unjustified."

"Which is why you did not retaliate," Fran tilted her head. Viera had found rhetoric to be yet another amusing verbal instrument, despite having learnt it from Humes. "And which is why after this matter we are returning to Archades."

Balthier scowled at her and turned his stare back toward the horizon, pointedly ignoring his companion.

Fran closed her eyes, satisfied and a little amused. It wasn't often that Balthier's ego took a blow of any sort, and novelty tended to entertain Viera. "After which he will apologize again to you."

"Oh?" Balthier sounded almost childishly sullen.

"And then the both of you will scent each other in mating and that will settle the courtship ritual," Fran said, having analysed her young companion's curious problems against her experience of Hume mating rituals and found that to be the most likely outcome. "Which you may find will lead to a particularly extended involvement ritual."

Balthier glared at her. "That," he said, as haughtily as he could, "Will never happen."

Basch was not particularly surprised when Balthier took a thorough shower immediately after they had (incredible, tender, and very satisfying) sex, the pirate having struck him as the fastidious sort, but he was surprised when Balthier flinched visibly when he mentioned sending word to Fran about his whereabouts.

-fin-