![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
FFVIII: Origins (3)
Pairing: Irvine/Selphie, developing Seifer/Squall
Warnings: Angst
Chapter: Three
Rating: PG13
Summary: Setting off on a journey is always a long process.
Xu rolls her eyes at Quistis as Squall goes through his mental list of important things. He doesn’t notice, though, and she manages to nod along seriously enough despite Quistis’ quiet laughter. “You’ll be able to reach my cell phone if you really need us, too, don’t hesitate to ring if you need to.”
Rinoa laughs, slipping her arm through Squall’s and nudging him gently. “Xu has been administrating Garden for a long time, Squall. Everything will be just fine, so stop worrying about it. This is supposed to help you relax, not get you all tense like this. Everything will be fine, and if it isn’t, yes, she knows how to contact you, but she can probably deal with it just as well on her own.”
Squall huffs softly. “Sorry, Xu.”
“It’s okay.”
“You’ll be able to reach me, as well,” Quistis says, controlling the laughter and looking more serious again. “
“If we really need you, we won’t hesitate to call.” Xu rolls her eyes and then smiles as Selphie comes up. “Will you please tell Squall and Quistis to stop being all doom and gloom and destruction? Garden can manage just fine without them, I’m sure. And you all deserve a holiday.”
Selphie rolls her eyes. “Come on, guys, stop being like that. We’ve got to go, before Squall puts down roots or something. I’ll be driving one car –
“Why do I get the feeling you’re giving me the troublemakers?”
“I’m doing Rinoa a favour.”
Quistis raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t get chance to ask. Seifer arrives – followed closely, of course, by Raijin and Fujin – and Fujin’s voice rings out louder than any other, still as clipped and military as ever. “TAKE CARE.”
“I will, Fu,” Seifer says, looking amused. Fujin looks startled when he hugs her, quick and tight, but looks pleased, as well, smiling a little as Seifer embraces Raijin – even more briefly, and with some of that we’re-men-so-we-have-to-be-masculine embarrassment. “I promise I will.”
“Hope ya find ‘em, ya know,” Raijin says, scratching the back of his head.
Fujin rolls her eyes. “GOOD LUCK. GET GOING.”
“Alright, alright,” Seifer says, holding his hands up in surrender. The amusement doesn’t quite fade from his face as he moves towards the car, raising an eyebrow at Selphie. “Right, you. Which car have you put me in?”
Selphie smiles brightly. “Quisty’s. With Squall and Rinoa.”
If Seifer is troubled by that, he gives no sign. He just nods and moves closer to the car Quistis stands beside, nodding amicably enough at her and even raising to smiling at Rinoa. He says something teasing to her and she laughs, making a face back at him. Squall rolls his eyes and gets into the car, hoping Rinoa isn’t going to force him into sitting next to Seifer.
“We should all sit in the back together,” Rinoa says, crawling into the car and smiling brightly at Squall, crushing his hopes of being able to mostly avoid Seifer. Thankfully, though, she’s decided to sit in the middle, and he takes that as a hopeful sign, in that she might have given up on her matchmaking.
He rather doubts it, though.
Selphie looks excited as she gets into her car, and Squall can see Irvine saying something teasing to Zell, who obviously isn’t taking being up at this time very well. And then Quistis starts the car and they’re off, and Squall is more glad about that than he thought he’d be. There’s something to be said for leaving work and responsibility behind for a little while, especially when you’ve only been doing it for a little while and can’t get used to it.
It’s quite a long time before anyone speaks. Rinoa appears engrossed in thought, and Quistis concentrates on driving. Squall’s eyes stray to Seifer, flicking over him, watching him as his eyes focus on things outside the window, scenery flicking by. Squall shifts slightly and forces himself to look away from that strong profile, fidgeting a little as he looks out of the window himself. All the land it takes hours to walk over flicks by in a moment of minutes and he sighs softly to himself.
Rinoa nudges him gently, an elbow in his ribs. “No sighing.”
“I’m not unhappy,” he says, before she can ask him what’s wrong. “I’m quite glad to get away from Garden.”
“Good,” she says, and smiles brightly. “I was getting quite afraid they’d brainwashed you – more than ever, I mean – with the whole work, duty and responsibility thing. It has its place, but you’re eighteen, not eighty. You need some fun once in a while.”
“I have fun once in a while when I stay in Garden, too,” he says, defensively.
“Like what?”
“The Garden festival.”
She laughs and elbows him again, looking sparkly, happy, delighted to be with him, delighted to be on the road again. It makes him smile, too, despite himself. “Don’t give me that. Even Selphie admits that Garden festivals often cause more trouble than they’re really worth. It has to create more work than ever for you. You must have nightmares about paperwork coming to get you.”
He has to laugh at that, too, shaking his head. “It’s not that bad, but there is a lot of paperwork, I suppose.”
Seifer snorts softly. “I remember you with your homework, Leonhart. Even after Quistis’ lessons when your bag was so full of stuff it was splitting under the pressure, you never counted it to be ‘that bad’.”
Quistis huffs softly, listening with half an ear to the conversation. “I didn’t set that much homework. Only just before exams, and it always annoyed me, Seifer, that somehow you managed to do those well whilst completely ignoring the homework I’d set you.”
He shrugs. “Natural talent, what can I say?”
Rinoa rolls her eyes at him. “He studied more than he’s telling. I remember when he was dating me –”
“Ew, did you have to bring that up?”
“ – and he’d study for a few hours every day,” Rinoa finishes, glaring a little at Seifer for the teasing comments. He smirks at her a little, settling more comfortably into the seat and stretching his long legs out as much as possible.
“So, Leonhart,” he says, a little louder, a little more confrontationally. Squall recognises the tone with an inner cringe, sitting up straighter to somehow meet the challenge head on. He keeps his eyes, though, on the scenery outside, the blur of green and grey and blue, grass and trees and mountains and sky.
“What?”
“Why’re you on this picnic? I mean, you’ve found your daddy, yay for you, why do you need to throw everything at Garden over to Xu for a month and come along with us? Don’t give me the bullshit excuse that you needed a vacation, either. I know you, you refuse to believe you need a vacation even when you’re in desperate need of a few years off. And why are you letting me come along? Apart from not having much of a choice once the human bouncy ball took it into her head that I was welcome.”
Squall sighs. “Believe it or not, Seifer, I’m not heartless and I do care about my friends.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’ve met my father now,” he says, softly. He turns from the window to look at Seifer, surprised to see honest curiosity there now and not just anger, not the usual challenging edge that Squall had grown to expect came whenever he was anywhere near him. “I’m glad I have. He’s a good person, and he… It’s good to know where I came from. I do know, though, what it’s like not to know. It doesn’t matter, but it does. It doesn’t hurt, but at the same time, yeah, maybe it does, just a little, just maybe. When you think about it. I…” He hesitates, now, taking a deep breath and saying it almost defiantly. “I want to help everyone else find out whatever they can. Including you.”
Seifer bites his lip. There’s a long moment of silence, and Squall turns to look out of the window again, aware that Rinoa is smiling and that Seifer is shocked, stunned, suddenly realising that in the time between that fight between them on that stormy morning and this time right now, he’s grown.
“One day, there’ll be a plaque put up on the balcony of Garden. ‘Commander Squall Leonhart actually smiled here’. But he does smile. And,” Rinoa says, softly, looking at Seifer meaningfully, “he does care.”
“Apparently so,” Seifer says, sounding almost troubled. Squall turns to look at him again, but already, his eyes are focused on something out of the window. Something far away.
---
“Are we there yet?”
“No.”
Seifer smirks briefly at Squall, making a move as if to lean forward and then remembering Rinoa, sleeping peacefully on his shoulder, and staying where he is, gently settling her head back into place with a brief look of tenderness. And then he spoils it, looking up with a touch more of the smirk about his face. “Are you sure?”
To her credit, Quistis knows his game, and keeps her temper remarkably well. “Yes.”
“Not even near?”
“A few hours away. You knew the journey would be long. We had to get to the ferry point and then get on the ferry, and we were on the ferry for hours, and now we have to drive to almost the other side of Esthar to where Matron is living now. It looks tiny on a map of the world, but even you should have gathered that it takes quite a while in real life,” she says, with just the slightest exasperated sigh. He smirks a little, satisfied and not at all offended, settling back properly, knowing now, at least, when to stop.
“Sorry, mommy.”
Squall can almost feel Quistis rolling her eyes. He bites his lip to hold back brief laughter, and focusing outwards instead, on the weather outside: rainy, now, with a little patch of sunlight and blue, and a rainbow arching overhead. It’s a pretty sight, he supposes, or most people would find it so, but his mind is on something else, something closer.
“So, tell me about your dad, Squally-boy,” Seifer says, idly. They both look up at the same moment and their eyes meet, and Seifer smiles, just a little, just a tiny bit, and Squall can't help but hope they can be, well, if not friends, then closer than they were, less antagonistic.
“He's a moron,” he says, self-consciously, smiling a little as well, smiling more when Seifer actually laughs.
“I've seen him and that's what I thought, but you like him. You don't tend to like morons, Chickenwuss being a notable exception. So I thought there'd be more to it than that.”
“He's... he's a nice guy. He acts as if he has no idea what to do, but still he gets things done. He gets into things by accident and somehow they come out okay. People like him, people see him and talk to him and then they'd follow him to the ends of the earth or further. I don't understand it, but...” Squall shrugs, aware that he can't capture Laguna in words like this, annoyed by it and yet unable to do any better. “I'm glad he's my father, and I'm glad we found each other in the end, even if he did leave my mother. I thought I'd be angrier about that, after all, but I can't be angry with him. He just... does things like that without ever meaning any harm.”
“I suppose it's good to know your dad is a good guy?”
“Yeah,” Squall says, though he never really imagined it any other way, and barely imagined anything at all. “I hope your dad was a good guy, too.”
Seifer shrugs slightly, running his fingers through his hair and sighing. “I hope I can find out. Though if he wasn't, I think I'd prefer not to. But I doubt I'll find out anything. Anyway, I'm glad your dad is a good guy and that he cares about you. It could so easily have happened some other way.”
Squall bites his lip, and then, quietly, partly because Rinoa is starting to stir, and partly because it sounds so ridiculous for him to say it, he adds, “I hope your family love you. Loved you. Whatever is more relevant.”
For a moment, Seifer looks stung. He takes a deep breath, looking out of the window as if Squall hit a nerve. Squall wonders what he did, what it is about what he said that caused a problem – because he doesn’t want to fight and bicker anymore. He wants to be friends, he doesn’t want to see that angry, closed off look falling down over Seifer’s eyes anymore. He huffs softly and looks away as well.
“Sorry,” Seifer says, after a moment. Neither of them turn to look at each other: Seifer feeling that he can’t, that that’s too much pride lost, to look his former rival in the eyes and apologise for taking something he said wrongly, Squall feeling that he shouldn’t, that this is enough of a surrender for Seifer – perhaps too much of a surrender. He just smiles a bit and nods, barely acknowledging it aloud, and wonders how much Quistis is catching of this conversation, noticing how straight and rigid she sits just in front of him.
Rinoa shifts slightly, making a sleepy sound, and Seifer laughs as she moves her head from his shoulder. “Hey baby, welcome to the waking world.”
She huffs softly at him – glaring a little, even, when he ruffles her hair. “Your shoulder is really uncomfortable.”
“I’m awfully sorry, but we can’t do refunds.”
Rinoa rolls her eyes at him and leans forward, undoing her seatbelt so she can almost move right into the front of the car. She smiles at Quistis, even though she's busy driving and can't see her. “How far away do you think we are?”
“Don't bother asking her, Rin, she's in a mood.”
“I am not in a mood,” Quistis says, huffing softly. She shifts a little, reaching up to push her hair back from her face and speaking a little louder. “I'd appreciate it if someone else did the driving for a while.”
Squall shrugs slightly. “I'll drive.”
“I'll stop soon and switch with you,” she says. She glances at the map on the front seat beside her, biting her lip for a moment as she works out time and distance. “Rinoa, we'll be there in about two hours, I think. It's been good going so far, I think Selphie's about ten minutes behind us.”
“You took a short cut?”
“Just a little one,” Quistis says – smiling in a way that's almost pleased, for some reason the others can't understand. Seifer glances at Squall behind Rinoa's back, raising an eyebrow slightly in confusion, wondering why she's so quick to talk to Rinoa when she was short at best with him – even if she wasn't entirely snappish until he started nagging. Squall just shrugs, his eyes on Rinoa's bright, interested expression. He wonders, for a moment, whether it's the joy of being on an adventure again, or whether it's something else. He doesn't know her, her moods and her whims and her dreams, as well as she does him, he quickly realises. He’s not sure whether he thinks of that as a bad thing or not.
Women have always, after all, confused him.
“So we'll beat them there?”
“Looks like it.”
“It's not a race, but...” Rinoa laughs softly. “It'll be easy to tease Zell about it, though.”
Seifer raises an eyebrow slightly. “I thought everyone realised that it's my job to tease the Chickenwuss. I've been making a career out of it for... well, most of his life, after all.”
“Oh, I’m not going to impinge on your fun, if you’ve decided to tease him about it,” she promises, laughing.
“I hadn’t, but it sounds like a grand idea.”
Squall rolls his eyes at Seifer.
---
“I don’t get why Selphie and Rinoa arranged it so we’re in one room and they’re in the other.”
Seifer snorts softly and flings a half-contemptuous look at
Squall and Zell exchange a glance, and Seifer even catches sight of, of all things, a smile on Squall’s face. Zell looks around at Seifer and
Seifer snorts softly. “You know you want me, Zell.”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“You’d be jealous. Do I hear you admitting to a crush, Chickie?”
“No way!” Zell huffs softly. “You’ll pay for that, one day, Almasy.”
“You’re all talk and no action,” he replies, comfortably, rolling his eyes at
“Boo-fucking-hoo. What a wonderful sob story.”
Zell and Squall exchange looks again and Seifer is surprised when they both lunge at
Seifer lets his eyes linger on Squall for a moment, thinking about it. Certainly not a kid anymore, all muscle and height, all six feet and one inch of it. Still not taller than Seifer, but taller than Seifer’d imagined he’d get. He looks good, healthy, even happy, especially now that he’s been a day away from Garden and paperwork and the relaxation is showing already.
He looks, well – Seifer isn’t ready to think about quite how exactly he looks.
“Over my dead body,” Zell says, half a growl, though Seifer notices the humour creeping into that. Dincht never could keep a straight face, he remembers. Never ever. He rolls his eyes, watching Squall again as he moves back towards one of the beds – wondering what he’s up to, knowing that look of determination even though right now it’s more playful than he’s ever seen it.
How people do change, he thinks.
He has to laugh when Squall snatches the pillow, flicking it towards Irvine in a neat throw calculated accurately enough that for a moment, Cowboy is eating pillow. Seifer smirks a little at Squall and grabs a pillow of his own. “I figure I should take the losing side, being a noble knight and all,” he says, sneering a little at
Squall rolls his eyes. “Well, my chances for winning overall just rose.”
“Oh, Leonhart?”
It’s nothing like their duels, and yet it is: their eyes meeting for a moment, unspoken communication snapping across the space between. And yet now it’s full of laughter, softened, by time, and by experience. All that tension between them – Seifer knows, now, why he just had to fight Squall, and he hates himself for being stupid and blind and an idiot.
And the look in Squall’s eyes just makes him want to kiss him.
And, of course, they’re holding pillows and not gunblades. He has to laugh at the absurdity of it, even as Zell snatches up a pillow and swings it at him – even as his reflexes bring his own pillow up as a shield and he deals Zell a hefty whack on the side of the head. He’s sure the pillows won’t stand the beating for long, but he’s also sure that this is the first time he’s really played with any of them, despite having gone to the same Orphanage as them.
It seems like a chance that shouldn’t be missed, really.
Squall is next to get a mouthful of Seifer’s pillow, and then – of course – its war and Seifer finds himself pushed back towards the door.
Squall finds himself thinking that this is how it should have been, even if a part of him that still clings to the way he was before the war tries to tell him that this is stupid – immature, immature and babyish and pointless. He thinks he knows now, though. That it doesn’t matter whether it’s pointless or not, as long as it’s actually fun.
For a moment, Seifer and Squall stop, eyeing each other. “Draw?”
Seifer nods slightly, lowering his pillow – cursing softly as Squall smiles wickedly and catches him in the face one more time with his much abused pillow. He’s quick to grab Squall, pushing him against the wall and slapping his ass once, quickly, not hard enough to really hurt. “Asshole.”
“You always cheated back when we used to fight,” Squall says, shrugging. He doesn’t move for a moment and Seifer is tempted to smack him again – just for the satisfaction of it.
Zell raises an eyebrow at them. “Can you two keep the kink behind closed doors? In sound proofed rooms? Preferably ones that are also locked?”
For a moment, Squall considers kissing Seifer. He’s right there, after all. Right there, and this could be his one chance, and if Rinoa could see him right now, she’d tell him to. He knows she would, knows she’ll roll her eyes at him and make that annoyed, disbelieving face and accuse him of being too scared to take what he wants. And he has to admit there is that, that he’s worried about losing this sudden unexpected warmth between them that can’t yet be put into words. He can wait, for the sake of saving this, until another time when it might be right.
Seifer considers it, too. And then, ashamed of himself for thinking about it in such detail while Squall blinks up at him in almost confusion, he pushes away, going to sit down on one of the beds that aren’t already occupied by
Squall nods and goes to sit down on the other. Zell fidgets with something for a moment, and then looks up with a grin. “You know, Seifer, you can be surprisingly fun. I mean, just now, that was kind of fun and I never expected you’d act like that, I didn’t think… I mean, no offence, but…”
Seifer rolls his eyes. “You’re surprised about me acting like that?”
“We’ve got used to Squall surprising us,”
After another moment of silence, Seifer sighs, shrugging slightly. “I admit, I’ve always been a bit of an asshole, always had something to prove to the world and made an ass out of myself doing it, I know. I don’t… Can we forget about that and start over?”
Squall’s response is instantaneous. “Yes.”
Irvine nods slightly, glancing at Squall in surprise at the quick answer, and Zell takes a moment longer, looking as if he wants to say no, but somehow can’t bring himself to with Seifer sat there looking so serious and so apologetic. Finally he nods. “Yeah. But let’s not go through the whole introductions rigmarole again.”
Seifer snorts softly.
Squall gets up, undoing his belts and starting to get ready for bed. Seifer looks away from him quickly, though all he wants to do is watch, watch him get undressed, remind himself of every line of Squall’s body and commit it to memory for when he’s alone. He keeps looking away, even when Squall speaks. “We all know what happened, and we all know why. It’s time we forget it all.”
Seifer does look, then. And they smile at each other.