Team Bonding | Dissidia Fanfiction | (2022-2024)

✨Confiding✨

With the sun higher now, Vaan is sitting by his lonesome in a maze of thoughts. Bartz drops by to shoot the breeze.

✨

With a slide, a skid, and a slap on the back of Vaan's chair, Bartz joined Vaan on the dulled silver balcony.

"Hey!" he said, slipping into the seat across and beaming a smile. "Morning."

"Morning," Vaan replied, a little forced, a little sluggish. His finger was paused on the bridge of his nose and his eyes didn't leave that potted plant in the corner. Just how long had he been sitting here? It didn't even seem like he ate breakfast.

"So . . ." Bartz ignored it for now—Vaan didn't like people smothering him. "How's your kiss hunt going? No dice here yet. I have no clue who I'm gonna pick."

The second the words flipped out Bartz's mouth, Vaan's face made a weird, red-dusted wrinkle. His silver-blue stare made a break for the nearest tuff of lint on the floor, and suddenly Bartz's vision got a whole new crystal clearer.

"Oh my god," Bartz gushed. He couldn't stop a smile from spreading to his ear nor his stomach from stirring up frantic giggles. "For real, Vaan? Wow, that was fast! The month literally just started!"

Finally, Vaan's finger had some moving bones. It made a weak, embarrassed curl to scratch his nose. Then Vaan laughed a quiet, shaky sound that got lost in a breeze. "Yeah . . ."

"Dude. Way to go, you got the badge." Bartz hovered out his chair only to land a quick blow to Vaan's shoulder. "So? Who was it? I mean, best that I know now so I don't ask the same person. You can spare me that awkward conversation."

Vaan's face wasn't getting any less colorful. He rubbed at it hard until his cheeks flashed white and back red again. "Ugh, fine," he groaned. "It was Aerith."

Bartz was frozen in a jaw-dropped grin. "No way. Aerith? The new girl?"

"Shh!" Vaan waved a fast, disheveled hand and mercilessly shushed him, even though Bartz was pretty sure no one else was up here. "Sheesh, can you keep it down, Bartz? Don't need the whole tower knowing."

"Sorry, sorry, just . . . Wow. You scored big, y'know that?" Bartz lowered his voice to a caterpillar crawl, smoothed back his static brown locks, and watched Vaan continue to melt into a puddle. Was Vaan really just that embarrassed? He hadn't cracked a real smile even once—there wasn't a single celebratory twitch in his body.

Just what's going on here?

"I mean, how did it go?" Bartz prodded.

Vaan's hands retreated back to his face, still burning so much Bartz was sure he could see the steam from ten miles out. "It was . . . a lot," Vaan croaked.

"A lot?"

"Yeah, like, it was way more than . . . just one kiss."

Now Vaan wasn't the only one getting overheated. Fire spread from Bartz's nose to his ears, and he leaned back in his chair with an air-cutting gasp. "Dude. Wait. Just what happened? Holy crap!"

Vaan cringed, snapped his head around wildly. "Calm down, would ya? Just let me explain, okay? Try to, at least . . ."

"Okay, then explain!" Bartz spoke through a breathless, giddy laugh. "Did you two go the whole nine yards?"

Vaan quirked up a sandy brow, but then he choked on air. "N-no. We didn't go the whole nine yards. But we came close."

Bartz let his back collapse onto his chair again. He exhaled a slow, ant-sized whistle before casting his gaze above and around himself. His stomach was a butterfly flurry at the thought of Aerith and Vaan being anything closer than side by side at the dinner table, let alone sharing each other's lips and nearly melting to the point of no return. It was a sea he never thought they would cross—one he didn't have the guts to cross himself—and the breeze up here shifted about twenty notches warmer every time Vaan opened his mouth about it. The subject was constricting and strange and turned the whole balcony colors Bartz had never seen.

But that didn't stop him from leaning forward again, lacing his fingers together in inappropriate interest. "How close was it?"

"Like, this close." Vaan pinched his fingers together air-tight. Suddenly his aura eclipsed a shade darker, his rose glow shifting to a palette more frustrated, more straight-up done with the world. Vaan groaned out a sound like crunching stones. "Dude, I'm surprised I was even able to stop it. That was going way too far."

"You broke it up?"

Vaan just nodded, followed by a tiny "yeah" that didn't really have a voice. Again, he went to torture his face with more scrubs. Bartz was sure he'd rub himself down to bare bone if he let him.

A screech on the floor later, Bartz's chair was closer to Vaan's. Bartz's hand wasn't as warm as it was when he first got here, but he hoped it still radiated some kind of power—some kind of magic to comfort, to heal, to figure out the hell is going on here.

"You, uh, seem pretty down about this, though." Bartz claimed Vaan's arm, pulled it down so he could squeeze and massage his wrist. "I mean, shouldn't you be kinda beaming that a girl as cute as Aerith wanted to make out with you like that?"

"Yeah, well, that's the thing. I don't . . . I don't think she was doing it because she likes me." Vaan's voice lowered to the level of goosebump-worthy, so Bartz's hand froze, lost its purpose amidst this new dark haze.

"Huh? What do you mean?" Bartz's chest tensed, his chills tingled louder. "You think she just did it for her own pleasure or something?"

Vaan bristled. "Maybe. It just seemed really off." His head turned away, eyes locked on nothing and everything again, and Bartz could see for the first time just how exhausted Vaan was. His posture was a dead, crunchy leaf barely dangling on life, and his face was puffy and dark-rimmed from confused, restless thought-mazes. "I mean, yeah, we've talked other times before and they went just fine. But nothing ever happened between us that would ever lead up to . . . that. The more I thought about it, the more it didn't make sense." Vaan's gaze went upward and sideways, carefully picking his words out of a jumbled, thorny pile. "It kinda seemed like . . . even though she was kissing me, she was thinking about somebody else. Or something like that. That's just the vibe she gave off."

For a single, airless moment, Bartz watched Vaan cringe at his own words. And as far as words went, Bartz couldn't think of anything at least half-ass helpful to say. Nothing seemed right. Nothing seemed good or meaningful. One thing was for sure—this was not the time to spring out one of his old chocobo jokes. It's tempting . . . But no. Bartz didn't know Aerith that well, but he did know that if Vaan was right about what she did, that was pretty messed up.

"Ohhh. I see. Damn, I'm sorry, Vaan." Just those words alone seemed irritatingly useless, but Bartz spit them out anyway. "Even though it's just a challenge in the end, that kinda bites when something like that happens. Kinda takes away the whole  better connection part."

For a second, Vaan seemed like he reeled to outer space and back—like memories slashed him from toe to head in a sickening frenzy. Then he blushed all over again, unleashed a growl that sent some rare Dissidia birds to places unknown. "Dammit! I hate this stupid badge challenge!"

"Well . . . at least you won't have to do it anymore?" The sentence rolled sheepishly off Bartz's tongue, with a lopsided grin to match.

"Yeah, but now that this happened, things are gonna be crazy awkward between me and Aerith." Vaan's sandy hair got manhandled by his crooked, strained hand. "Dammit. If I just hadn't given in like that . . . ugh. Yeah. I'm pretty much screwed."

Bartz never saw Vaan hang his head much, but today marked the calendar. His head looked way too heavy for his blood-drained hands, and all Bartz could do was rub Vaan's shoulder in hopeless little circles. Some clearing opened up in the layers of Bartz's mind. He all of a sudden didn't think this whole team-bonding challenge was such a good idea anymore. If it could make someone as warm and sunny as Vaan turn as limp as a windless sky, what would it do to everybody else?

What would it do to Bartz?