I tend to get Balthier and Vaan together in about twenty different ways. Here's one set in the Estersand before the trip to the Nam Yensa.

The Nebra River shimmers like a gemstone in an inferior setting; the sun on the water just serves to further exaggerate the differences between dull sand and glittering river shore. Balthier shades a hand against the sunlight to appreciate the sight. It's been a long few days in the desert and their water is running low.

They are following up on a Hunt out in the desert before the trek to the Nam Yensa. Balthier is beginning to regret leaving the lush confines of Rabanastre.

"A jewel in the desert, water is called," Fran says. "Though decidedly more precious to her people than stone."

"I've never been out this far," Vaan says. His eyes are glued to the river when Balthier glances his way. "It doesn't smell as bad as the water in Lowtown."

Balthier drops his hand and sighs. "I daresay this river is not used as a latrine quite so often." The people of Lowtown did not seem to grasp the fundamental idea that one should not... defecate in the same water source that one drank and bathed in. As a result, the water in Rabanastre was a festering plague waiting to occur.

"Hey, it all runs through the sewers anyway." Vaan shrugs out of his vest, sword dropping down on top of the discarded garment. "I'm going to go wash some of this stuff off, alright? Don't leave me here."

Vaan is coated in blood and assorted grime, most of it not his own. There's a particular stretch of skin in the middle of his back that Balthier has been staring at in horror for a good forty minutes; he cannot decide if the organ mashed into the churl's clothing is a heart, a spleen, or the remnants of a lung. It's particularly loathsome when combined with the long streak of excrement from where an unlucky bow shot split a wolf's bowel just as Vaan ran past.

Quite frankly, Balthier has never met a person more in need of a good bath than Vaan, including Jules and assorted other miscreants.

"We'll wait," Balthier says magnanimously.

Vaan leans forward to peel his boots off. "You should probably wash down too," he says innocently, "You kind of smell like the back end of a chocobo after that cockatrice got you."

He would very much like to be incredulous over Vaan comparing him to an odiferous bird, but at this point the sheer tactless idiocy that Vaan spews has become common place. As it is, he raises an eyebrow at Fran, silently asking her opinion as Vaan cheerfully strips down with a lack of anything approaching decency.

"The stench is becoming overwhelming," Fran admits, "Like an ill-wind born in the Feywood."

"Did you just compare me to a malboro passing gas?"

"She did," Vaan says, "And she's right. So come on."

Balthier stares at Fran until he feels she is sufficiently chastised (he is ignoring the smirk curling her mouth, for her sake), then mournfully sets his gun to the sand. He doesn't know when he last stripped and swam in a river as opposed to the civilized man's bath, but he can admit that even he can smell the need for it. His fine shirt is practically brown with old blood.

He leaves his under things on, for modesty's sake. He is certainly no Dalmascan peasant to risk exposing himself to a village maiden out for a stroll.

The churl, on the other hand, is naked as a newborn babe, splashing quite happily in the shallows of the river. Balthier shakes his head. "Do Dalmascan's lack the basic virtue of modesty?" he queries.

"Huh?"

"Why are you naked in public, Vaan?"

"Why're you trying to get clean wearing dirty clothes? That's sort of stupid, Balthier." Vaan tucks his hands behind his head and rocks back on his heels, seemingly unconcerned with the fact that the water is barely tickling his thighs. "It's not like I'm deformed or anything."

Balthier wades out into the river's gentle current and resists the urge to dunk the boy. "The presence of a lady should be determent enough."

Vaan's eyes skip from him to Fran before he shrugs. "She doesn't seem to care," he points out, and throws himself backwards into the water.

"I do not find humes so attractive as to be concerned with their nudity," Fran says in the moment before Vaan resurfaces, shaking his head like a wet pup. "You have missed a spot, Vaan. I advise you entreat Balthier to remedy it."

The churl turns grey eyes on him, sizing him up. Balthier does his best to ignore his traitor of a partner and the boy slowly shuffling towards him; he knows now he should have kept his grudging appreciation of Vaan's body to himself. Fran has always been a bit of a romantic.

It does not help that Vaan is clean for the first time since he laid eyes on him, with water sliding down his skin in most enticing ways. His hair has darkened from nearly colorless blond to the same lackluster hue as the desert sand, but it is more than made up for by the way the water is bringing out the color of his eyes.

He's a beautiful boy, make no mistake about that.

A beautiful boy who suddenly clambers onto Balthier's back, crowing with delight. "Gotcha," he says, "You need to pay more attention, what if I'd been a gator or something?"

Balthier closes his eyes in frustration and firmly tells himself that just because he can feel Vaan's manhood pressed against him does not mean it is an invitation to tilt the churl onto the shore and take him in the sand. For one thing, Fran would insufferably correct his technique. For another, he has only once been so stupid as to make love on sand and never again.

"Vaan," he says very carefully, "If you value your hide at all, you will get down. Immediately."

Golden brown arms drape themselves across his chest as Vaan's head nuzzles his own. "Nah," he says, "I'm pretty comfortable. The water's cold by yourself."

"Vaan. Now."

"Nope." Hands scrub into his hair, damp with sand clinging to the digits, before Vaan slides insidiously down his back and presses a hot face into his shoulder. "You do know that even most Dalmascans don't really run around naked in front of non-desert people, right?"

Balthier pauses in the midst of cocking his elbow for a devastating blow to the ribs. "No," he says, "I didn't."

"Yeah. Fran said it'd probably be the easiest way to get your attention, though. You ignore me a lot." A hand runs down his flank before cheerfully heading inwards; the water, however, is chilly and while Balthier jumps, he does not… otherwise react.

"Fran," he says flatly, eyeing the viera even as his traitorous body relaxes against the solid one at his back. "You've spoken to Fran about this."

She flicks an ear at him and smiles with all her teeth from the shoreline. "For a leading man," she says, "You can be remarkably short-sighted. Perhaps as dense as a supporting roll."

He is distracted from stomping through the water towards his partner by Vaan leaning heavily into him and saying, "There's supposed to be a village a near here. There'll probably let us have a tent." He leans over Balthier's shoulder to catch his eye. "I'm not messing around with someone in the sand again."

"You're assuming we're going to be 'messing around.'" Balthier says. He slides away from Vaan's wet embrace.

Vaan squints. "Did the naked thing not work? Fran helped me come up with this scarf thing if this didn't work."

Despite himself, Balthier pauses on the shore, his filthy shirt in his hands. "Scarves?" he asks faintly. He has a fatal weakness for scarves and handkerchiefs. Damn Fran anyway for knowing of it.

"A dance," Fran murmurs to him. "It is most enthralling."

Vaan smiles slowly, standing naked in the water with his hands on his hips. "Wanna see?"

Balthier can do nothing but agree.