Title: The Cost of a Kiss
Rating: T, I guess, for drunkenness and some femlove.
Author’s Notes: Written for the Kiss Battle meme on ElJay. Also, a perfect chance to see how terrible I am at fluff.

X

Yuna and Beclem.

Yuna crouched down in front of him.

Beclem grunted a bit, and shifted on his seat. “What do you want?”

She was smiling. It was a tad disconcerting, and he took a long swig of his beverage.

“Where did you learn to play blitzball?” she asked, still smiling.

“What’s it to you?” he rewarded her question with another question. There was something almost put on about his acerbic tone, and he let his shoulders slump a bit.

It wasn’t a bad smile, he decided.

“Just curious, that’s all.”

“All right,” he began. A lazy grin spread slowly over his features, and he leaned back. Another swig for courage. “I’ll tell you… for a kiss.”

Her eyes widened, and her ears tinged pink. He bit back laughter at her reaction. “The kiss of a former Summoner. I could tell my grandkids about it one day,” he continued, purely to bait her. She was making it rather easy.

“Just a kiss?” she ventured tentatively.

“Just a kiss,” he confirmed.

Yuna rocked back and forth on her heels briefly. It was a party, she could always blame whatever inappropriate actions she was caught at to the alcohol. And it wasn’t as if she was betraying Tidus… he was the one who had made the bet with Rikku they couldn’t coerce Beclem to confess. Finally, she planted a chaste kiss on his grizzly cheek.

“Now you have to tell me,” she grinned.

The sentence was barely finished before Beclem passed out face first in the sand. Yuna choked back a sigh, and began counting out the gil she owed Tidus.

X

Balthier and Ashe.

Balthier sighed tiredly at the curtains, currently swatting at his legs with the press of the wind.

Up before the crack of dawn, on the guarantee of Vaan that the catacombs they meant to rob was an in and out job – only to have them be trapped in the tomb for the better part of the morning, trapped a labyrinth of unlit corridors. The treasure had turned out to be little more than the decrepit, bone-dry corpses of animals intended to guide the way of the dead to the Final Arbiter’s Palisades.

The smell alone had been enough to unnerve Vaan, who had promptly been rid of the contents of his stomachs on Balthier’s shoes. The day had barely gone upward from there.

“Ashe?” Finally batting the curtains aside, he glided into the expanse of her chambers.

She lay on the top of her silk comforters, clad in a simple austere gown, her head buried in her arms. It took a moment, but with another call of her name, she stirred and raised her head. At the sight of him, she smiled a sleepy smile. “Hey you.”

His smile mirrored hers, and he crossed the width of the room in a few confident strides. His silk blouse was half unbuttoned by the time he reached her side, lying down next to her.

“How did it go?” she asked. Balthier hesitated for a second, playing with some wayward strands of her hair.

“Do we really want to discuss the inner machinations of piracy?”

Ashe shook her head, not losing the sleepy smile. “You’re late, you know,” she added.

“Better start making up for it, then.”

He moved closer to her, capturing her mouth in a kiss so fervent it made his insides blur a bit. When they broke apart, it was reluctant, and he could only watch as Ashe’s brows dipped in a fair imitation of her usual frown.

“You would call that making up for it?”

He doesn’t respond, but busies himself tickling her. Her laughter rings through out the entire chamber, and he couldn’t help but feel there was no better place to end the day.

X

Quistis and Ellone.

"Do you... do you think someone will ever do that for me?"

"Hmm?" Ellone barely glanced up from the half-stitched quilt upon her lap. Tetchy thing.

“Go dashing into space to save me.” Quistis did not move from her position, leaning against the window, the moonlight bathing over her skin, giving her a goddess’ glow.

Ellone quirked an elegant eyebrow. “Would you want them to?”

“Yes.” Pause. “No. I don’t know. Maybe.” She turned away from the window. “What’s that?”

“This?” Ellone gently fingered the quilt, half finished and draped across her lap. “History that hasn’t happened yet.” There was something in her voice, something hidden, something that Quistis did not want to place as sadness. Instead, she moved to sit at her foster sister’s feet, kneeling with a student’s awe.

“It’s a story,” Ellone continued. “I see probabilities—ripples. What could happen. The rest of it… is in the hands of them.”

Children, playing in the quad. Future SeeDs. Groomed into bloodshed.

“Any one of them could change history. But none of them have to carry it with them.” Ellone held the folds of the quilt with a claw’s grip, suddenly seeming so much smaller than she was. “It was easier… before Ultimecia.”

A shadow behind her eyes, a glimmer of exhaustion; the gift of time was weighing heavily on the young woman.

“Before she came?”

“No.” Ellone bit back a gulp. “Before she split time into fragments.”

She was no longer the older sister Quistis had remembered. She was a house without a door; a blessed sanctuary slightly off kilter. Quistis moved tentatively, gently prying one of Ellone’s hands from the quilt. Her skin was so soft, so smooth. An unbidden rose hue tinged the elder girl’s cheeks, as if the thoughts of the younger girl were spoken aloud.

They might have been, to Ellone. Thought and word as one… who knew what abilities lurked behind the eyes of a time witch?

Quistis leaned forward, bolstering herself up on her toes. Still, she remained knelt, but she put herself on even ground with the woman whose shadow she had unwittingly lived in for so many years. She had been foolish, then.

Now… now she could make up for it. Gently, she covered Ellone’s mouth with hers, tasting the skin and the breath of the time witch, and found nothing amiss, nothing lacking. After a few seconds of bliss, she pulled away, and with mixed feelings found Ellone’s eyes misty with tears, yet crinkling at the corners with the weight of her smile.

“I think that was a bit better than a trip into space,” she said, and both girls laughed amid tears.