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Entry tags:
FFVIII: Get It For Myself
Fandom: Final Fantasy VIII
Pairing: Quistis/Selphie
Warnings: Alternate Universe, sap, not realistic
Rating: G
Summary: Quistis visits a therapist because people think she's wound so tight she'll break. Inspired by the song What Do You Hear In These Sounds? by Dar Williams. The song mentioned in the fic is that very song.
"Quistis? You can come in now. Sorry about that. Had to tidy up a little."
The girl smiles at Quistis. She's tiny -- tiny and pretty, with expressive eyes and a hairstyle that might've looked ridiculous on someone else and manages cute on her. Inviting as her smile and her attitude are, Quistis stands up stiffly, deliberately cold as she walks past the girl. Bad enough that she has to come to a therapist. Worst that the therapist acts like it's all fun and games and doesn't even bother with starting out formal.
Quistis is big on formality. She's very refined and restrained and held in tight.
Which is, of course, one of the reasons she's here. Wound tight as a spring, people worry that she'll break. That she won't be able to take it. So here she is, to please her employers. And she hates it. But ever the dutiful one, she does it.
She doesn't have anything to hide, after all.
"My name is Selphie. Selphie Tilmitt, but please just call me Selphie," the girl instructs her. She seems so young. And irresponsible. Quistis' eyes flick disapprovingly around the messy room. No wonder Selphie had to tidy up. It didn't do much good, though.
"I see. I'm -- "
"Quistis, I know. I'll just call you that, if it's okay?"
The request is so simple, so open, that Quistis finds herself nodding wordlessly without meaning to in the least. It's not really okay, not really, and yet at the same time, Quistis doesn't really mind it.
"Take a seat," Selphie offers, curling up in an armchair herself. She runs a hand through her hair and it bounces up again immediately, and that almost makes Quistis smile. Almost. She takes the offer, going to sit down on the sofa, her posture exact. She's ready for questions. Probing. She has nothing to hide, she's open, just doing what her job says -- and she shouldn't have to. There's a moment of silence, Selphie's eyes closed, a happy smile on her face.
Finally, Quistis runs out of patience. "Aren't you going to say anything?"
Selphie opens her eyes, placid, offering another of her smiles. "Aren't you the one here for therapy? Doesn't that mean you should be the one talking?"
"I..."
But she doesn't have an answer for that.
Selphie doesn't really ask her questions. She asks light, meaningless questions, of course -- what music does she like, does she have any hobbies, does she like her job, was she always good with computers? Quistis answers mindlessly and feels glad when the hour is up. It almost feels like freedom, she thinks.
Except not really, because talking with Selphie didn't feel that much like therapy. More like friendship. Companionship.
Something Quistis hasn't had in a long while. Ever since she switched from teaching to computing. She misses the children, the parents, the other teachers, the feeling of accomplishing something when a boy hardly younger than herself finally stepped into line. Seifer, that was his name. And Squall, the boy he always fought with.
She misses them, teaching, school.
And damned if she was ever going to admit that.
So in a way, she is and isn't glad when the hour is up.
-----
"Are you any good at art?"
Quistis looks up from her hands, her lap, and finds Selphie looking at her with a smile. She has her arms looped around her knees, her knees drawn up to her chest, her chin resting on one knee. Smiling. Always smiling. "Not really."
"You should try drawing, sometimes."
"Let me guess. It's therapeutic?"
Selphie shakes her head. She gets up, fussing with something in a drawer for a moment, shuffling papers and rattling a box. Her voice is almost absent minded. "No. It's just fun. Some people might say it's therapeutic, I suppose, but that's just a side effect of the fun. Here."
And Quistis suddenly finds herself presented with a box of crayons and five sheets of paper.
For a while, she isn't sure what to draw. And then, childishly, she draws a stick figure hangman, just to be annoying and maybe a little cliché. Selphie just laughs. "Getting out hidden frustration? Stop thinking of it as therapy. Just have fun. Let your hair down."
So she draws a circle and wonders what it says about her that she draws a face with a straight grin mouth and hair all pinned back.
"Stop trying to make it serious. Or," Selphie smiles with her contradiction, "take it seriously. Just draw whatever comes to mind. I swear I won't judge you on it. I don't have any expertise on therapy through art. I think it's... not very useful anyway. It's just fun."
"Why are you so concerned with making me have fun?"
"I'm concerned with making everyone have fun."
After a while, Quistis really does start to draw. She's reminded of those sullen boys more and more in Selphie's presence and she has no idea why. Seifer. Squall. The complete opposites of Selphie, she thinks. Closed up and shut away and incomprehensible. Except maybe to each other, and they always fought each other rather than anything else. She used to want to make them have fun. Open up. Lighten up.
Especially Squall. He was always scowling, like -- flick of the pencil and then she turns it to shade a little, remembering art lessons from an age ago -- like that, so annoyed, so closed up. "He never let me anywhere near him. Only Seifer got to him. I wanted to help them both. Make them -- make them have fun."
And then she looks up, shocked that she said that aloud, shocked that she even thought it. But Selphie doesn't say anything, her eyes fixed on the drawing.
"I was their teacher, for a while," she says, drawn out all of a sudden by the silence. "They were my problem students. But I liked them the most, despite the challenge they were... or maybe because of it, I don't know. I thought I was attracted to Squall at the time, but I think... I wanted to be more of a role model. His big sister, maybe. They weren't much younger than me when I first taught them."
There's a silence again, not uncomfortable, and Selphie's hand slides across the table for a moment to squeeze Quistis'.
"Maybe you could draw Seifer?"
Quistis does.
The rest of the hour passes too quickly.
"You lied," Selphie says, softly, when she gets up to go.
"Hm?"
"You are a good artist."
-----
Selphie meant it about letting Quistis' hair down. She took it down herself in one daring, snatching movement, pulling out the clip and letting it cascade down. Quistis sits a little stiffly as Selphie combs her hair, not sure how to react.
Selphie smiles. Leans down. Whispers into her ear, sending a shiver up and down Quistis' spine for no reason she wants to examine. "Relax."
And, miraculously, she does.
It's hard not to, around Selphie, or so she's found. She gets now why the girl is a therapist. She doesn't force people open and examine their insides. She just waits. Gaining trust, smiling, trustworthy and friendly. And people give.
Quistis is learning to love therapy sessions, her natural distaste for the need of them aside. She enjoys the feeling of Selphie combing her hair right now, smoothing it out and making it shine with all the brushing. After a while, the brushing stops, and then Selphie's slim arms slip around Quistis' shoulders in a hug. She rests her chin on top of Quistis' head.
"You're a beautiful woman."
"I -- "
"Relax, it's just a compliment," Selphie teases, and pulls away from her to brush her hair again. "Your hair is lovely. You should wear it down more often. Don't straighten it, though. It's straight enough to look tidy, naturally wavy enough to look pretty that way."
"Are you a hairdresser or a therapist?" Quistis teases back, and Selphie laughs.
Quistis likes the idea of making Selphie laugh, even if Selphie's laugh is something easy and natural and everyday. It's nice to think she's the cause of those smiles, even if it's just for a little while, even if she's not the only one. She likes Selphie despite herself, despite Selphie's profession, because Selphie isn't all analysis and forward thinking and how-are-we-feeling-this-week.
She's pure feeling, and that's the only way Quistis can describe it.
She has a feeling the bouncy girl could make even Squall and Seifer open up, and wonders again why she's so fixated on those two. She misses more than she really should, she thinks, frowning a little.
"Hey."
"What?" she asks, startled suddenly from thoughts.
"Don't frown like that. I thought we discussed this having fun and relaxing thing already? Besides, frowning all the time causes wrinkles."
"Are you my beautician, now, too?"
"Trust me, Quisty, you don't need one," Selphie says with a tiny smile.
Quistis lets the comment get to her. She lets it make her happy and as she leaves Selphie's office building later that day, she lets it put a shine in her eyes and a flush on her cheeks and a smile on her face. She even catches herself feeling light and happy and wanting to spend more time in the sun.
-----
"Have you ever heard of Dar Williams?"
Quistis looks up from her drawing. She's never quite been able to capture Seifer -- the set of his eyes, the flat line of his mouth, the straight, strong line of his nose. She wants to. Somehow, that's important. She sets the pencil and paper aside for a moment. "No."
"She's a singer. Sings a lot of lovely songs. Sings one about therapists."
Selphie's smile is entirely too alluring, Quistis thinks. Traps you and pulls you in and keeps you close. Not that it's a fault. Not in her. But still.
Still.
"Play me it?" she asks, because Selphie wouldn't mention it if she didn't want to. Selphie nods and bounces up and puts the CD on and the room is all music and light. More so than usual. And it makes sense, the song, but mainly the way Selphie likes it. The way Selphie sings along and smiles at her and says in all but words that yes, this is my view.
And she's so kind, I think she wants to tell me something, but she knows that it's much better if I get it for myself.
And Quistis is in love -- with the song, with Selphie, with trying to capture Seifer and all his problems on a single piece of paper, with the world and the smiling person who passed her in the street on the way here. It doesn't make sense, and it doesn't have to.
She doesn't have the answers. Not yet. But all of a sudden she's more willing to try. And she doesn't tense up when Selphie comes to hug her, arms wrapped around her tight. She doesn't protest when Selphie tries to make her dance and a quarter embarrassed, a quarter amused and half just plain having fun, she goes along with it just because.
She still doesn't like the fact that she needs this. Therapy.
But nobody said she has to.
-----
"I've decided what to do now, about my promotion..."
"Oh?"
It's something they've discussed before, just briefly and idly. Selphie hasn't pushed. Hasn't asked anything Quistis isn't willing to volunteer and has offered advice in a way that makes it seem more like friendly advice than professional opinion. Quistis has almost wanted to volunteer the information, but not quite. Not quite, not quite yet.
Well. Now is the right time but it wasn't before.
"I'm not taking it."
"What are you doing, then?"
"I'm... I'm going to become a teacher again. I've been thinking about Seifer and Squall a lot... I always wanted to help them. I figure now I've learnt to help myself, I might be able to help people like them better. A little better, anyway."
And she'll be thinking of Selphie, her smiling laughing therapist, the whole time.
"How arrogant," Selphie teases.
She shrugs. "I said I might be able to. I just feel like I could. Maybe."
"I think you could," Selphie says, nodding, smiling with a fond look in her eyes. She leans across, takes Quistis' hands in hers, slim fingers lacing. "I think you can do whatever you put your mind to because you're a talented, clever and beautiful young woman."
"More compliments? Is that the true secret to being a therapist?"
Teasing, now. Teasing, all the time. It's something so out of character and so natural that it's become her character like it always was, like it was meant to be if she didn't push herself through life thinking that you got nowhere by enjoying what you were doing.
When she stands up to leave, she hesitates. Looks down into Selphie's eyes, resists the urge to cup her cheek. "I won't be coming back here."
"Don't need me anymore?" Selphie asks, almost sadly, but still smiling. Oh, always smiling.
Quistis kisses her. For one heartstopping moment everything is perfect, Selphie's lips on hers and Selphie quiet and soft and startled. She draws back. "I didn't say that. I love you."
Words that were once too hard to say. Words that once meant something Quistis thought she'd never have, and didn't really want anyway. Or so she'd told herself and oh, how wrong she'd been.
Now the words mean a therapist with a friendly smile and a ridiculous hairstyle and warm hands.
"Visit me sometime," Selphie says, and Quistis nods. She will. Of course she will.
"Thank you," she says, softly, and Selphie just waves.
Pairing: Quistis/Selphie
Warnings: Alternate Universe, sap, not realistic
Rating: G
Summary: Quistis visits a therapist because people think she's wound so tight she'll break. Inspired by the song What Do You Hear In These Sounds? by Dar Williams. The song mentioned in the fic is that very song.
"Quistis? You can come in now. Sorry about that. Had to tidy up a little."
The girl smiles at Quistis. She's tiny -- tiny and pretty, with expressive eyes and a hairstyle that might've looked ridiculous on someone else and manages cute on her. Inviting as her smile and her attitude are, Quistis stands up stiffly, deliberately cold as she walks past the girl. Bad enough that she has to come to a therapist. Worst that the therapist acts like it's all fun and games and doesn't even bother with starting out formal.
Quistis is big on formality. She's very refined and restrained and held in tight.
Which is, of course, one of the reasons she's here. Wound tight as a spring, people worry that she'll break. That she won't be able to take it. So here she is, to please her employers. And she hates it. But ever the dutiful one, she does it.
She doesn't have anything to hide, after all.
"My name is Selphie. Selphie Tilmitt, but please just call me Selphie," the girl instructs her. She seems so young. And irresponsible. Quistis' eyes flick disapprovingly around the messy room. No wonder Selphie had to tidy up. It didn't do much good, though.
"I see. I'm -- "
"Quistis, I know. I'll just call you that, if it's okay?"
The request is so simple, so open, that Quistis finds herself nodding wordlessly without meaning to in the least. It's not really okay, not really, and yet at the same time, Quistis doesn't really mind it.
"Take a seat," Selphie offers, curling up in an armchair herself. She runs a hand through her hair and it bounces up again immediately, and that almost makes Quistis smile. Almost. She takes the offer, going to sit down on the sofa, her posture exact. She's ready for questions. Probing. She has nothing to hide, she's open, just doing what her job says -- and she shouldn't have to. There's a moment of silence, Selphie's eyes closed, a happy smile on her face.
Finally, Quistis runs out of patience. "Aren't you going to say anything?"
Selphie opens her eyes, placid, offering another of her smiles. "Aren't you the one here for therapy? Doesn't that mean you should be the one talking?"
"I..."
But she doesn't have an answer for that.
Selphie doesn't really ask her questions. She asks light, meaningless questions, of course -- what music does she like, does she have any hobbies, does she like her job, was she always good with computers? Quistis answers mindlessly and feels glad when the hour is up. It almost feels like freedom, she thinks.
Except not really, because talking with Selphie didn't feel that much like therapy. More like friendship. Companionship.
Something Quistis hasn't had in a long while. Ever since she switched from teaching to computing. She misses the children, the parents, the other teachers, the feeling of accomplishing something when a boy hardly younger than herself finally stepped into line. Seifer, that was his name. And Squall, the boy he always fought with.
She misses them, teaching, school.
And damned if she was ever going to admit that.
So in a way, she is and isn't glad when the hour is up.
"Are you any good at art?"
Quistis looks up from her hands, her lap, and finds Selphie looking at her with a smile. She has her arms looped around her knees, her knees drawn up to her chest, her chin resting on one knee. Smiling. Always smiling. "Not really."
"You should try drawing, sometimes."
"Let me guess. It's therapeutic?"
Selphie shakes her head. She gets up, fussing with something in a drawer for a moment, shuffling papers and rattling a box. Her voice is almost absent minded. "No. It's just fun. Some people might say it's therapeutic, I suppose, but that's just a side effect of the fun. Here."
And Quistis suddenly finds herself presented with a box of crayons and five sheets of paper.
For a while, she isn't sure what to draw. And then, childishly, she draws a stick figure hangman, just to be annoying and maybe a little cliché. Selphie just laughs. "Getting out hidden frustration? Stop thinking of it as therapy. Just have fun. Let your hair down."
So she draws a circle and wonders what it says about her that she draws a face with a straight grin mouth and hair all pinned back.
"Stop trying to make it serious. Or," Selphie smiles with her contradiction, "take it seriously. Just draw whatever comes to mind. I swear I won't judge you on it. I don't have any expertise on therapy through art. I think it's... not very useful anyway. It's just fun."
"Why are you so concerned with making me have fun?"
"I'm concerned with making everyone have fun."
After a while, Quistis really does start to draw. She's reminded of those sullen boys more and more in Selphie's presence and she has no idea why. Seifer. Squall. The complete opposites of Selphie, she thinks. Closed up and shut away and incomprehensible. Except maybe to each other, and they always fought each other rather than anything else. She used to want to make them have fun. Open up. Lighten up.
Especially Squall. He was always scowling, like -- flick of the pencil and then she turns it to shade a little, remembering art lessons from an age ago -- like that, so annoyed, so closed up. "He never let me anywhere near him. Only Seifer got to him. I wanted to help them both. Make them -- make them have fun."
And then she looks up, shocked that she said that aloud, shocked that she even thought it. But Selphie doesn't say anything, her eyes fixed on the drawing.
"I was their teacher, for a while," she says, drawn out all of a sudden by the silence. "They were my problem students. But I liked them the most, despite the challenge they were... or maybe because of it, I don't know. I thought I was attracted to Squall at the time, but I think... I wanted to be more of a role model. His big sister, maybe. They weren't much younger than me when I first taught them."
There's a silence again, not uncomfortable, and Selphie's hand slides across the table for a moment to squeeze Quistis'.
"Maybe you could draw Seifer?"
Quistis does.
The rest of the hour passes too quickly.
"You lied," Selphie says, softly, when she gets up to go.
"Hm?"
"You are a good artist."
Selphie meant it about letting Quistis' hair down. She took it down herself in one daring, snatching movement, pulling out the clip and letting it cascade down. Quistis sits a little stiffly as Selphie combs her hair, not sure how to react.
Selphie smiles. Leans down. Whispers into her ear, sending a shiver up and down Quistis' spine for no reason she wants to examine. "Relax."
And, miraculously, she does.
It's hard not to, around Selphie, or so she's found. She gets now why the girl is a therapist. She doesn't force people open and examine their insides. She just waits. Gaining trust, smiling, trustworthy and friendly. And people give.
Quistis is learning to love therapy sessions, her natural distaste for the need of them aside. She enjoys the feeling of Selphie combing her hair right now, smoothing it out and making it shine with all the brushing. After a while, the brushing stops, and then Selphie's slim arms slip around Quistis' shoulders in a hug. She rests her chin on top of Quistis' head.
"You're a beautiful woman."
"I -- "
"Relax, it's just a compliment," Selphie teases, and pulls away from her to brush her hair again. "Your hair is lovely. You should wear it down more often. Don't straighten it, though. It's straight enough to look tidy, naturally wavy enough to look pretty that way."
"Are you a hairdresser or a therapist?" Quistis teases back, and Selphie laughs.
Quistis likes the idea of making Selphie laugh, even if Selphie's laugh is something easy and natural and everyday. It's nice to think she's the cause of those smiles, even if it's just for a little while, even if she's not the only one. She likes Selphie despite herself, despite Selphie's profession, because Selphie isn't all analysis and forward thinking and how-are-we-feeling-this-week.
She's pure feeling, and that's the only way Quistis can describe it.
She has a feeling the bouncy girl could make even Squall and Seifer open up, and wonders again why she's so fixated on those two. She misses more than she really should, she thinks, frowning a little.
"Hey."
"What?" she asks, startled suddenly from thoughts.
"Don't frown like that. I thought we discussed this having fun and relaxing thing already? Besides, frowning all the time causes wrinkles."
"Are you my beautician, now, too?"
"Trust me, Quisty, you don't need one," Selphie says with a tiny smile.
Quistis lets the comment get to her. She lets it make her happy and as she leaves Selphie's office building later that day, she lets it put a shine in her eyes and a flush on her cheeks and a smile on her face. She even catches herself feeling light and happy and wanting to spend more time in the sun.
"Have you ever heard of Dar Williams?"
Quistis looks up from her drawing. She's never quite been able to capture Seifer -- the set of his eyes, the flat line of his mouth, the straight, strong line of his nose. She wants to. Somehow, that's important. She sets the pencil and paper aside for a moment. "No."
"She's a singer. Sings a lot of lovely songs. Sings one about therapists."
Selphie's smile is entirely too alluring, Quistis thinks. Traps you and pulls you in and keeps you close. Not that it's a fault. Not in her. But still.
Still.
"Play me it?" she asks, because Selphie wouldn't mention it if she didn't want to. Selphie nods and bounces up and puts the CD on and the room is all music and light. More so than usual. And it makes sense, the song, but mainly the way Selphie likes it. The way Selphie sings along and smiles at her and says in all but words that yes, this is my view.
And she's so kind, I think she wants to tell me something, but she knows that it's much better if I get it for myself.
And Quistis is in love -- with the song, with Selphie, with trying to capture Seifer and all his problems on a single piece of paper, with the world and the smiling person who passed her in the street on the way here. It doesn't make sense, and it doesn't have to.
She doesn't have the answers. Not yet. But all of a sudden she's more willing to try. And she doesn't tense up when Selphie comes to hug her, arms wrapped around her tight. She doesn't protest when Selphie tries to make her dance and a quarter embarrassed, a quarter amused and half just plain having fun, she goes along with it just because.
She still doesn't like the fact that she needs this. Therapy.
But nobody said she has to.
"I've decided what to do now, about my promotion..."
"Oh?"
It's something they've discussed before, just briefly and idly. Selphie hasn't pushed. Hasn't asked anything Quistis isn't willing to volunteer and has offered advice in a way that makes it seem more like friendly advice than professional opinion. Quistis has almost wanted to volunteer the information, but not quite. Not quite, not quite yet.
Well. Now is the right time but it wasn't before.
"I'm not taking it."
"What are you doing, then?"
"I'm... I'm going to become a teacher again. I've been thinking about Seifer and Squall a lot... I always wanted to help them. I figure now I've learnt to help myself, I might be able to help people like them better. A little better, anyway."
And she'll be thinking of Selphie, her smiling laughing therapist, the whole time.
"How arrogant," Selphie teases.
She shrugs. "I said I might be able to. I just feel like I could. Maybe."
"I think you could," Selphie says, nodding, smiling with a fond look in her eyes. She leans across, takes Quistis' hands in hers, slim fingers lacing. "I think you can do whatever you put your mind to because you're a talented, clever and beautiful young woman."
"More compliments? Is that the true secret to being a therapist?"
Teasing, now. Teasing, all the time. It's something so out of character and so natural that it's become her character like it always was, like it was meant to be if she didn't push herself through life thinking that you got nowhere by enjoying what you were doing.
When she stands up to leave, she hesitates. Looks down into Selphie's eyes, resists the urge to cup her cheek. "I won't be coming back here."
"Don't need me anymore?" Selphie asks, almost sadly, but still smiling. Oh, always smiling.
Quistis kisses her. For one heartstopping moment everything is perfect, Selphie's lips on hers and Selphie quiet and soft and startled. She draws back. "I didn't say that. I love you."
Words that were once too hard to say. Words that once meant something Quistis thought she'd never have, and didn't really want anyway. Or so she'd told herself and oh, how wrong she'd been.
Now the words mean a therapist with a friendly smile and a ridiculous hairstyle and warm hands.
"Visit me sometime," Selphie says, and Quistis nods. She will. Of course she will.
"Thank you," she says, softly, and Selphie just waves.
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