. ♥poetry love♥.

. ♥terrismoon♥.

5-22-07

ashe/balthier pairing

au/balthier meets ashe in a local little coffee shop while she's penning down things for her English class. conversations ensue and then they learn to appreciate each other despite her stalwartness and his flirtatiousness. summary

author's disclaimer I do not own Balthier or Ashe but I DO have their names etched into my palms via tattoo inking gun. Seriously.

Okay, the character featured here (including Penelo, Vaan, Larsa, Fran and Basch) belong to SQUARE-ENIX. I just own the creative license to write total crack fics.

romance/drama/general

author's notations I'm back and I jotted this down as quickly as my mind would allow it and it was all done for you guys because ... I love you THAT much. Yeah, I do, I really, really do.

Anyway, this is set in an alternate universe in New York and the gang's in high-school (How typical, gee, can't she think of anther scenario, you must be thinking, right?) Well I would, but this popped into my head.

Happy Reading!

Love

TBP

------ 00000 ------

It was a Monday today, when the sky was spewing out fountains of red, blue, bleeding oranges and smeared speckles of candy-pinks. The sidewalks she'd trod upon were cracked and had deep chalk markings etched into it so deeply that it seemed to take off little chunks of the cement. Ashe clutched her black and white notebook to her beating chest, the one with the peeling tape smudged with inkblots and erasure marks. That book that Penelo and Larsa had purchased for her from an aristocratic street merchant who'd sold all manner of wares near some tall glass skyscraper (so they'd said).

Her stormy irises were flitting about, catching slivers of warm yellow glows from rusted streetlamps and blurs of creams and burnt sienna tones. Her leather boots were frayed and wrinkled and marred and scuffed so she'd have to get new ones because they irritated her pinkie toe and rubbed the skin off of it. Ashe swore she'd seen spots of blood staining the sole from where her finger had smudged it.

She left that off for later though as thoughts of her oncoming assignment swirled into her brain. The vivid image of her teacher, that blonde-haired one with the Cheshire cat grin, and the black horn-rimmed glasses kept on ravaging her mind. Ashe glanced around to see if the sunshine-yellow taxis and the speeding rainbows of cars had passed. When they did she curried across the puddle splattered street unto safety. Nicotine and burning marijuana crumbled into rolled-up papers mixed with exhaust and stinky perfumes – a haze of too many smells that brought on a throbbing pricking headache for Ashe.

Just have to write out a haiku on something ... anything

... As long as it's an emotion, then it's passable. Yes.

There was a small little café about two blocks down if she could conjure up the memory from the wisps of what she'd already gathered in her head. It had a red and white striped awning that had a curving pattern like rolling ocean waves. Ashe marked it into her mind and only noted it because the chairs around the small round tables outside had mosaic tiled '9' designs curling across it. Creative was the only way she could describe it. It was creative and avant-garde and she loved it.

Coffee beans that smelled like something cultivated from the farthest jungles of Colombo wafted into her nostrils and she sniffed those vapors until they streamed right into her pores and her thoughts dribbled out over each other. She settled herself down into one of those nice black curved chairs and set her notebook down on the round '9' table. Her fingers were deft, snatching things out of her groovy green and purple satchel. She carefully placed miscellaneous items (fruit-scented erasures, crumpled pieces of paper, unfinished caricatures, and her house keys) on the table, on the chair, and beside her feet even. She found a half-sharpened pencil, the point too dull for her liking, and the erasure half chewed from when Vaan had borrowed it for Chemistry Class that time.

But she still used these overused writing tools because she was feeling too groggy to be picky about it.

I hate it when he chews it as if it were food for him to consume...

Then she set to work, penning things down, scratching them out, chewing on her bottom lip, and trying to desperately rack her brain despite the fact that the dreamy pop/jazz ensemble was putting her to sleep. Then she saw him, spotted him with one of those stormy eyes that looked like thunderstorm clouds – cumulonimbus-like. The glance shared between them was fleeting however, his honey-bee eyes never lingered unto her gaze for long. His long fingers bore colorful bright yellow, green, pink, and blue rings in some odd order. His hair was spiked and cut fairly short, clipped beneath his rounded ears, and she thought him to be quite handsome.

He approached her, rings inaudibly clicking against each other as he flexed his fingers, popping bones softly, and cracking his knuckles. Ashe pretended to not be annoyed by the sound and so she pursed her dry lips, wondering if she should order a cup of steamy frothy mocha. But then that lanky man with his scent of gunpowder and expensive French cologne from some long-named company sat next to her and his scent overrode her senses.

Ashe's fingers had ceased the original action of dragging her pencil across that lone sheet of loose leaf paper long ago. She stared down at the empty emotionless words that glimpsed back at her and reached for it with short fingers, ready to chuck it into the nearest trash can. Then his words deterred her from doing that.

"Don't, I mean it looks like the beginning of a fine piece of work," That nameless man was speaking to her now. His voice sounded like soft tinning metal bells and teaspoons of honey like his eyes. Ashe shook her head, cleared her jumbled thoughts, and stared up at him, hands cupping the sides of her rounded face.

"What could you possibly mean? It's awful, "Blistering sunsets and stars ..." it sounds like something from a parody of a Jane Austen novel." Ashe nipped at her own work, making half-circles with her finger. The dark-haired teen watched this simple action, transfixed by it, lips twitching, and then he replied to her ever so softly.

"You never know how people such as me may react to it. They might end up favoring it." He spooned his latte and sipped it thoughtfully.

"May I ask for your name ... or title as it seems as if you're from some affluent family – judging from your attire," Ashe asked, her voice sounding like a lazy slur, her words stringed together in some low whisper. Ugly, she thinks to herself as she compares her own scratchy voice to his smooth velvety tone. It was odd how that sentence sounded, considering the fact that she wasn't feeling all that sluggish.

"Balthier, and do not be so quick to judge. Contrary to your opinions I am not what you as an individual would call "rich". My parents live well within their means and I only received these as gifts from my relatives who do not live within their means at all."

"They live above it?" Ashe queried as she distractedly waved the cheeriest looking waitress over who had hair the color of flaxseeds and eyes the color of blueberries, the girl introduced herself as "Penelo".

"One mocha, please with some whipped cream as a topping, not too frothy and not too hot please. Thank you." The girl smiled, waved to Balthier who seemed to be a regular customer there, and sauntered off, scribbled order in hand. Ashe followed the dot of white and blonde until she was on the other side of some well hidden swinging maple wood door. It led to the kitchen the woman assumed.

"Yes they do. Do you attend New York College?" Balthier asked fingering his shirt cuffs and fiddling with them absentmindedly. Ashe caught wind of this and smirked to herself, she found it unbearably cute when he did that.

"Yes, what gave it away?" All of a sudden Ashe was acutely aware of the buzz of millions of other conversationalists swarming within the café and outside of it on the terrace and near the street corners. It never occurred to her how alone she felt, how comfortable she felt with him; how it had made her almost completely tune out the rest of the world.

"Your crest bears its insignia so that made me guess it."

"Ah, I see, very observant. Do you go there too perchance?"

"Yes I do, Ashe." At this point the girl called Penelo returns with the warm cup of mocha and asks the chatty dusk-haired young woman if she'd like a biscotti with that and she declines politely. The girl nods, slips the bill across to Ashe, Balthier offers to pay for it and the girl places a blue light-up pen beside it and goes off to attend to some boisterous high-school freshmen inside the little coffee-selling establishment. Then Ashe knows how he figured out her name, he'd taken a look at her notebook and had seen it scrawled out all informally and whatnot.

"Oh, you frequent this café too I'd presume?"

"Correct, you are. Do you?"

"Oh no, I only passed by it a few days ago, remembered it today, and came in to have a little coffee and a little well-earned inspiration."

"...For your assignment," Balthier smiled as he gently picked up the paper and read it over quietly. Ashe sat back admired his rings from afar and saw sunray glinting off of his rings making them appear to just glow.

"Hm, for my assignment."

Balthier glanced at his wristwatch which Ashe had never seen until now and then he smiled ruefully at her. He'd have to depart for now. College business, he'd said and he'd hope to meet her soon? She nodded, laughed all tinkling and girlish and said "yes, of course they would see each other again." With a small smile he brushed his soft lips across her hand, making it tingle with the ghosted imprint he'd marked there, and he left. The only sound that indicated he had left was the jingling bell hanging from the pristine glass doorway.

It was only when she'd glanced at her assignment paper that Ashe had noted the little haiku he'd hastily finished along with his cell phone number and locker number, the clever little sneak.

Blistering sunsets and stars

Set me live

Coming straight from you.

(117)-902-212-42

LOCKER # 1041

And so he'd nestled his way into her heart quite comfortably.


♥fin♥.

additional author's notations Don't even consider this a vignette or a one-shot it's too long. I'm thinking that five-and-a-half pages are too long for something of this sort, my right? 'Course I am. This is just a long-winded-wannabe-one-shot, yeah?

Yeah.

Anyway, nothing to say except I don't remember if New York's area code for cell phone numbers is entirely different than the one for New Jersey. Oh, and my eyes hurt.

Comments and advanced criticisms are always appreciated. I'm out!

x The Blearing Phoenix