"You're more sadistic than Wakka."

"Sure am! Enjoy your break."

They spend the rest of the afternoon going through the practice Azym had planned for them to do on the boat yesterday, and actually Botta gets to teach Azym some things, magical techniques that are allowed in blitzball. The players find it kind of bizarre that he doesn't know that so he just states flat out that he is not going to tell them why he doesn't and they shouldn't ask and that works well enough.

He won't be able to make a tournament-winning team out of these people in a week but hopefully they'll be good enough to not suck.

Zei finishes the communion with the fayth in the middle of the night and dithers a bit then decides to ask for directions to Azym's room.

Azym is extremely unused to being woken up in the middle of the night and says a very confused "Bwuh?" when he opens the door to his guest bedroom after Zei's knocked.

"Hi. Can I sleep with you? It's fine if not."

???

"Uh, sure?" he says, stepping aside.

"Um, it's just that, uh..."

"Y'don't need to explain just come in and shut the door," Azym says, deciding to instead immediately return to his bed rather than wait for Zei to come in.

"...'kay. Thanks."

He closes the door behind himself then quickly strips and joins Azym in bed.

He hopes Zei literally meant sleep because Azym does not in fact have the energy for anything else.

Yeah he did. Just sleep.

Cool, they can snuggle then.

Yeah. Good. He'd like that.

And obviously Azym wakes up before him again, between Zei being naturally a late sleeper and having gone to bed really late. He grabbed a local book to pass the time, last night after blitzball practice, some light fluffy fiction that is nevertheless somewhat revealing of local culture, so he resumes reading that while he waits for Zei.

He does in fact take a long time to wake up, and even after he does he takes a little bit longer to properly come to. The first thing he says when he does is a mumbly "I could get used to this."

"To what? Hot men in your bed?"

"Waking up next to someone, after... you know. Trials and tribulations."

"That's a little bit too much emotional honesty for this early in the day."

"I'm an open book, take it or leave it."

"I'm taking it, I'm taking it. Was it very trying, then, with the fayth? Or is it a secret?"

"The content of the cloister of trials is secret but that's not really the hardest part. It was the communion with Ifrit. I gotta focus on aligning my heart with the fayth, and with their desire to rid the world of Sin. And after two days ago..."

"...I had a lot of feelings about it. To put it mildly."

"...ah. Yeah." He squeezes Zei closer into a one-armed hug.

"Thankfully Ifrit is the fayth of fire and he was in full agreement with me about how I need to really destroy Sin. Being full of righteous anger was an asset, there."