Playing to the Cheap Seats

[shinon]

Fandom: Final Fantasy IX
Characters: Zidane/Garnet, with background Steiner/Beatrix
Word count: ~1800
Warnings: None
Notes: For Nixxi for Phoenix Down exchange 2024.

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Queen Garnet walked her fingers along the map of the proposed parade route, a skeptical expression creasing her brow. "And this intersection here," she said, deadpan, "is where I rip my clothes off."

Zidane, whom some called the consort and some the Royal Boy Toy, flashed her a toothy grin. "I mean, only the train's designed to tear away, but if you wanna put on a real show -"

"Would you be jealous? If I went topless in the street?" (From the doorway: muffled sound of Steiner choking.)

"Dagger. Babe. The stuff I could get up to, with the Queen of Alexandria making a diversion like that -" He inched around behind her and slid a hand slowly up the front of her blouse, like he was about to palm some precious stolen treasure or, indeed, her breast.

She clamped a hand around his wrist, halting him, and looked up over her shoulder. "Aha. And that's why you didn't write yourself a part in the ceremony."

"You know me," he said. "Real shy and retiring type. Couldn't take the publicity."

"Mm-hmm." She leaned back against him, letting him take her weight. She felt him adjust to it, felt his relaxed sigh ruffle her hair, and then jabbed an elbow into his stomach. "Zidane."

"Ow!"

"If there's a heist happening - Steiner, cover your ears, please - I want my cut."

Zidane backed away, and when she turned to face him, put on an exaggerated grimace of pain. "Nothing formal, but maybe if you're nice to me I could whip something up."

"You do realize that raises even more questions?"

"You'd have to be really nice to me, though. Your elbows are sharp."

"Zidane."

"How's this: if you pet my hair and tell me I'm handsome, I'll put you onto this Mognet scam me and Blank cooked up -"

Garnet huffed in irritation and turned back to the drafting table. Alexandrian businesses submitted a huge volume of proposals for every reconstruction project she could think of, and many she hadn't yet. Of course everyone wanted their beautiful city restored to its old glory, or even raised to a greater one, and of course everyone wanted to help, and get the bragging rights for doing it, and the Queen's endorsement. All this was quite natural. But as the Queen in charge of deciding what to endorse - she had batted aside Zidane's first suggestion of "go by feel" and his second suggestion of "have you tried half-assing it?" - she wondered if she was going to need reading glasses by age twenty. Then too, despite knowing that whatever she decided would stand for decades, even centuries, a testament to whatever kind of queen she would become... for the first little while after a project began, all anyone got was closed streets and brick dust. And all Queen Garnet got, from everyone whose bid didn't win, was complaints about new traffic patterns.

That was why it was important to celebrate completed projects. Draw people's eyes to the progress that was already being made, the investment that paid off. Honor the hard, patient work of the craftsmen and builders. "Give people an excuse to stand around and drink beer," Zidane had said, "yeah yeah, I follow."

But despite his flippancy, there had been a glint in his eyes. And - this part was odd - over the next week he'd become one of those people who kept sliding her charts. Maps like this one, tables of expenses, blocking diagrams for a staged performance. They were all anonymized, in keeping with her common practice - Garnet insisted on reviewing such proposals on merit alone, and only confirmed who'd sent what when she had made her choice, and it was time for money to change hands. All anonymized, and yet. Why else would he be doing it, unless he was trying to covertly shuffle some Tantalus enterprises to the top of the deck?

The subterfuge wasn't even necessary. Baku and the gang did good work.

Zidane had been quiet a while now, while Garnet shuffled papers back and forth. She decided to wait him out. She decided to count down from twenty and see when he caved in.

At fourteen he said, "Oh well! Back to the drawing board, huh? More ideas where that came from. Dozens."

"I don't need dozens more ideas, Zidane." She looked back at him. "I'm trying to narrow the field down."

His shoulders slumped, fractionally. His smile stayed cheerful. "Okay, no, I got it. You still wanna meet up later for dinner, or do you have too much queen stuff to do?"

Garnet glanced over toward the door. Steiner, in the absence of any orders to the contrary, still had his hands over his ears. Then again, if she had told him he could start listening again, how would he know? Then again - for all that she was the Queen and the potential for true privacy was limited, Steiner did his best not to eavesdrop on her meetings with Zidane specifically. It was decent of him to keep the illusion going. She said, "Dinner sounds lovely. I'll be in disguise by five-thirty and you can abduct me at six."

Zidane gave her a florid bow - an uneasy hybrid of courtier to queen and leading man to adoring crowd. "At six, then. Okay if I come dressed as myself?"

Garnet frowned. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"Well, you haven't said what your disguise is. I wouldn't wanna be too big of a mismatch."

Then it clicked into place. A big mismatch. "Zidane."

"Dagger?"

"Is that what all this has been about?"

"The who to the what now?"

"This sudden interest you have in event planning." She tapped the parade route map. "Do you think that's necessary? Do you think I've gotten too lofty for you?"

"'Gotten?' No, no." In what had to be a deliberate reference to last year's staging of The Summer Story by the Red Chocobo Theater Company, he dropped to one knee and took her hand in both of his. "You always were." The adoring way he stared up at her was also a theatrical reference. And also sincere. Many things he did were both.

Garnet said, "I hope there's a big monologue here where you lay out your character's whole motivation and the audience starts seeing you in a new light."

She could see him reaching for something grandiose and poetic - something with two or three layers of allusions, plus a covert dick joke she wouldn't twig to until five minutes later. But he said nothing for a beat, and then two, and then he got up and brushed his knees off, not quite looking at her. When he did speak all he said was, "I'm just some guy, y'know?"

"You're not."

"Okay" - his expression turned wry - "but all conquering armies from outer space aside, I'd like to be."

"That's not what I meant." It was her taking his hand now. It was her hoping that the royal reserve she had had to learn didn't prevent her from conveying with a glance the same depth of admiration that he did to her. "Whatever and whoever else you are, you'll never be some guy to me."

"Faint praise."

"Be quiet, I wasn't done. You'll always have a place in my life, even though I'm the Queen. Because I want you here, and I'm the Queen, and I said so." She sighed. "That said. If you think having an official position would help -"

Zidane brightened. "Can I have a corruption scandal?"

Garnet looked over in the direction of the door, and Steiner. Steiner had taken his hands from his ears, but he wouldn't be listening anyway: the guard was changing. He was handing his post off to Beatrix - and along with the post, a rose. If it was somewhat crumpled from having spent his watch concealed under his breastplate, the gesture was redeemed by the fact that roses weren't yet in season. Beatrix was expressionless as she pinned it to the front of her uniform and saluted. Steiner's face was invisible from this angle, but no doubt looked just as stern. Neither of them ever smiled on duty. They always exchanged notes and tokens with the same over-the-top professional stoicism. They make it work, Garnet thought. We will too.

"Just a little itty-bitty one," said Zidane. "Just to keep it spicy."

"Would you like to keep finding talented people for me?" said Garnet. Zidane looked confused. She nodded back toward the table and its burden of papers. "You like the arts. You travel. You have connections in ... less reputable, more avant-garde areas. Maybe to people who wouldn't think to reach out to royalty. You could recommend people for me to consider for patronage -"

"And make more work for you?"

"I'll always have the same amount of work. You can make it interesting."

"Well, you're in luck." He stretched, lazily, and gave her a smug hooded look. He was lucky she loved him, or she would spend a lot more time pushing him over. "'Interesting' is a specialty. We were talking about scandals..."

"By all means, take every bribe they offer you. Then recommend whoever you were going to recommend anyway."

"I'll say, 'thanks for your generous contribution to Tantalus's operating funds! What, did you have other plans? No, but I wrote it all down. I've been writing it all down for months. I wasn't planning on submitting this ledger to Her Majesty, but hey -'"

"But what do you think? Do you want to do this?"

"Can we talk about it at dinner?"

"No, at dinner I'll be Dagger." Not that Zidane ever called her anything else - it was another thing she cherished about him, how he treated it as self-evident that she was both things at once - but sometimes in her own head she had to draw these bright lines. And he never argued, either.

"Okay. Well then - gut feeling - sounds fun, let's give it a go. We can reevaluate whether you've given me too much power after I abduct you a couple stonemasons and a surrealist painter."

"Lucky stonemasons."

He grinned. "I promise, babe, no one's more fun to kidnap than you. See you at six." He blew her a kiss and, because of course he did, climbed out the window.

Leaving Garnet alone with her papers. Not for very long, but...

At length she picked one up and went to Beatrix at the door. "Beatrix," she said. The same deathly serious nod of acknowledgment. "What do you think about ripping one's entire skirt off at a library dedication?"