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“Table eight. The one in the corner, by the hydrangea.”
I could practically hear Fuu’s voice in my head as a mantra, reciting exactly where I was supposed to go for my blind date. I didn’t dare tell her I didn’t know what a hydrangea was. Turns out, it’s a big flower made up of piles of little flowers, and even that only half helped me. It was early spring, and it wasn’t flowering yet. All in all, the day of my first date in two years, and my first ever blind date was not going well.
Still, I found the one she meant. After a quick search on my part and eventually just outright asking one of the waitresses which one table eight was.
I watched the guy sitting at the table for a couple of minutes. You know, paranoia is still a thing and I wanted to be sure he wasn’t… I dunno, some kind of crazy axe murderer or something before I got involved. He didn’t seem to be hiding any axes, at least.
It was one of those cool early spring days where the sun makes promises that it can’t keep, so there was still a chill in the air, especially in a slightly more shady spot like the table he was sitting at. He’d dressed in a hooded jacket, and he had the hood pulled up as he reclined in the seat a little, resting a book against the edge of the table and supporting it one handed. The other alternated between turning the pages, and occasionally reaching for his drink perched on the table. He paused, drink lifted from the table but not yet all the way to his mouth as he lingered over some interesting scene, fingers wrapped around the pint glass tight.
A quick sip, and the glass was set back down again, his fingers brushing along the edge of the page until he could lift it and turn it. Maybe if I could have seen the title, I’d have had a better idea about the axe murderer thing. What did axe murderers even read?
Time and text message wait for no man, sadly, and my phone beeped to warn me I’d received a new one. I knew it was Fuu before I even pulled it out of my pocket and swiped my thumb over the screen to show it.
‘YOU’D BETTER BE THERE.’
Somehow the capital letters made it all the more intimidating. I could practically hear it in her harsher monotone. She had me as well trained as she had Raijin.
I unlocked the phone to send a quick reply, ‘I’m here, stop bitching already’. With that electronically winging its way to my best friend and wing person, I shoved the phone back in my pocket. A moment to straighten my jacket and steel myself for whatever odd torture my friends had planned for me, and I was strolling as nonchalantly to the table as possible.
Maybe three steps from the guy I’d been set up on a blind date with, he rested his hand against the pint glass, his thumb absently stroking at the side, and I stopped dead. Not because of the thumb, but because on the ring finger of his right hand, he had a silver ring. A silver ring with a raised surface in a familiar shape. Clear across the courtyard, I’d not been able to recognise it, but this was just close enough for a gut punch of a memory to hit me. Black leather gloves and a cerulean blue blade. No… further back. Same gloves hiding the ring, but a silver blade and eyes like a stormy afternoon.
When this was over, I was going to kill Fuu.
Despite the faltering moment, I finished up just behind him and rested my hand lightly on his shoulder, testing him. I was expecting a flashy blue blade to come up and threaten to remove parts of me that were vital to a pleasant lifestyle, but it didn’t happen, though I did feel the tension flood through him briefly. He turned his head just enough to eye my hand instead of threatening parts vital or otherwise. “When Fuu told me I was your type, I didn’t realise she meant just for duelling.”
He twisted his head up to look at me, pushing the hood back with one hand.
I don’t know what I expected, but his eyes… I’d never been able to forget his eyes. Not the angry focused glare that would meet me across a duelling space, or the confused, pained gaze of a young man I was torturing. They were just as beautiful as I remembered, but then he smiled and I swear my heart stopped in my chest for a minute. Squall’s smile took my breath away.
Squall had never smiled much. The orphanage was hard on both of us, the kids left behind, the kids that never got picked. Then we were shuffled off quietly to Garden, him a year after me and he wasn’t the same kid I’d left behind. Hell, I wasn’t the same kid he’d said goodbye to either. No, Squall was all about quiet thought and barely listening to anyone but his own internal monologue, not big on smiling. Squall was leather, and cold steel and eyes with Shiva’s rime of frost around the edges of the stormcloud.
Suffice to say, I wasn’t used to it. And just from that first glimpse of it, I was hooked.
“Not really the best place for a duel anyway,” he inclined his head to the other tables, not exactly thronged with punters but there were more than a few people outside. I swear his voice was deeper, softer, more measured. Something different to the 17 year old biting back screams of pain that I remembered in my nightmares. “Hello, Seifer.”
Not Almasy. Seifer. And he was still smiling.
Squall was older, of course. Although I felt like that was unfair to the image I had in my head of him, this hero among men, this lion of Balamb. Did anyone even realise who he was? That the guy who’d quite literally saved all their asses was sat just a few feet away from them? Of course not. People forgot that shit quicker than they forgot where they left their keys. Or worse, they just didn’t care. Then again, they didn’t care who I was anymore, either. Seemed unfair that I got the good deal out of all of it.
Yeah, he was older. A little thinner faced, and more man than I remembered too. His hair was longer, long enough to be pulled back in a ponytail. At a year younger than me, he would have been coming up on thirty-five, and he still looked maybe ten years younger than he should have been. Maybe more. The scar was still pretty obvious on his pale skin though, my mark shown now as a puckered silver line in the flesh cutting down between his eyes. Eyes that didn’t have Shiva’s frost in them interestingly.
“Squall. Or should I call you Leonhart for old time’s sake?”
He gave me a casual shrug and gestured to the chair opposite. “Whatever makes you comfortable. Going to join me?”
“Sure, why not?” I shrugged and settled myself in the chair he’d gestured to. If only for curiosity, I was going to stay now. No weapon pulled on me and he actually spoke. Temptation enough without the more interesting feature of actually smiling. “You look good.”
“Thank you. So do you,” he gave me a brief glimpse of that smile again. “Would you like a drink?”
“That would help make this day slightly less surreal. Sure. I’ll have whatever you’re having.”
He stood and headed to the bar, leaving his book on the table. It was some horror novel with a dramatically stark text on a black cover. Nothing I’d actually read myself - not that I had much time to read with work and everything else. I worked too much. I worked to fill gaps I was far too aware of.
Squall wasn’t gone long before he returned with two more pint glasses, filled with a dark beer and a frothy white head.
“Thanks,” I took one of the glasses from him and took a sip. Stout. A deep, dark stout with an almost coffee like aftertaste. Squall had taste. Squall drank. That was also weird. We were plumbing entirely new depths of not what I expected, to be honest. “Is it weird that this is weird to me? It’s been… eighteen years or so since I saw you.”
Squall finished the dregs of his first pint and set the glass aside, pulling the new one closer. He sat leaning forward, his arms folded on the table and one hand loosely cupped around the glass. I couldn’t stop watching him, all these little cues, all the little hints of interest. Squall had always been so introverted that he’d barely shown interest in anything. Hell, I was always the one that had to drag him out to duel. This Squall was more active, more aware, and every moment of it was focused on me with an ease I’d never imagined I’d see from him. “If it was easy, we’d probably have done it earlier.”
“True. So… I’m assuming you’re not in Garden anymore.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “What made you think that?”
The way he talked. The fact he gave a shit. The way he seemed more alive than I’d ever even thought possible. I went for the most obvious. “You’re alive past thirty.”
Squall gave this soft chuckle that practically had me on the edge of my seat too. Squall smiled now. Squall laughed now, even if it was a really understated laugh. This was strange. And I liked that it was strange and new but with those same Squall eyes behind it all. I wanted more. “Garden changed a lot after the war, but yes. I left a few years back now.”
“So what do you do to keep yourself busy?”
“Write a little. Travel a little. Whatever I want to, really,” he gave me an almost apologetic shrug.
“The writing how you met Fujin again?”
“Mm,” he gave a short little nod and smiled that glorious smile again. The smile that I was already getting addicted to seeing. “They’re publishing something I wrote.”
Made sense to me, and I was willing to bet Fuu’s eye had just lit up when she’d seen his name attached to whatever project he’d submitted to the publishers she worked for. Anything to mess with me in a way she thought might be even slightly positive. Squall must have been one of those things, right? Surely this wasn’t a date. “Does this feel really surreal to you too?”
He laughed. A breathless, soft laugh that had me leaning forward on instinct as if I’d somehow hear it more. “Yeah. I don’t remember if we ever had a conversation this civil and this long without reaching for a gunblade.”
“I don’t even remember us having a conversation. You were so quiet.”
“One word for it,” he gave a little shrug. “She said you run your own business?”
I had no doubt that Fuu had mentioned my work for a reason. She was firmly convinced that I worked too hard and I mostly agreed with her, but it had been a tough couple of years. I’d needed to be busy, to distract myself, and rebuild the remains of everything that had been left behind. “Looks like we’re both doing okay, despite all the bullshit we had to deal with.”
“I guess so,” he replied with a little nod and sat back, hand still wrapped around his glass. For a moment, I could see the old Squall again, the quiet contemplation and his pale lips set in a line.
“Despite all of my bullshit that you had to deal with.”
“...Everyone makes mistakes, Seifer,” his eyes snapped up to meet mine again, his voice firm. Almost sounded like I’d struck a nerve. Maybe I had, Hyne knows if anyone was going to be affected by my fucked up years of obsession it was going to be him. He had to see the evidence of that every fucking day, just like I did. Every time I looked in a mirror.
“But not everyone makes ones that try to destroy the world as we know it.”
“Go big, or go home.”
My turn to laugh at that, and in turn I got to see the pretty smile again. “Fuu tried to tell me she’d set me up on a date.”
“Aren’t we on a date?” he asked, arching one eyebrow at me.
“The last time I was someone's type, I was donating blood.”
“Well, we did enough of that in duels,” he gave me a wry smile. “Isn’t that good enough?”
“Wait, you really wanted to go on a date. With me,” I was scarcely able to believe what I was hearing. Squall was… wait, Squall was gay? Since when was Squall gay? What the hell? “What…? Are you…?”
“Would it be easier to start over? Like hi my name’s Squall, enter cliche about long walks on the beach here?”
“...I don’t think I deserve something that easy, Squall,” I said his name hesitantly, like some part of me still wasn’t all that sure if I deserved to have that gift yet. Still, it felt good to say it. Like it was…. Meant to be. Funny how fate always had him right there. Following me into garden, into blading, into being a knight. Funny how I’d never really thought about that.
Well… I had thought about it in the past. In less than wholesome or pleasant terms, jealousy getting the better of me in ways I probably shouldn’t have admitted to. But still, even that had been years ago, when I was young and bitter about being the heel that I was.
Squall leant forward on his elbows again, arms folded on the table. A small, sweet smile took his lips again and he shrugged. “I’m not so sure I deserve it either. But this isn’t about what we deserve - more about what we might want.”
“Might?”
“Well, I’m sure we’ve both changed a lot. I’d like a chance to get to know you again. Maybe without the head wounds?”
I leant forward too, just a scant few inches between us now, both interested and maybe far too aware of the other for our own good. “Does that mean you don’t duel anymore?” I asked, almost disappointed. I wouldn’t blame him, given the hell he’d been through mostly courtesy of me and my crazy sorceress but damn, it’d be a crime for the world to lose a gunblader like him.
“Hunt yes, duel… not so much. But maybe if we make it to a second date, that might change,” he shifted his weight enough to reach one hand towards me. That hand with the familiar silver band. “Assuming you still duel yourself.”
I’d held on to two things from my days at Garden. The first was my silver necklace, a familiar and reassuring weight against my chest beneath my clothes, the long plate still as blank as it ever had been. The second was Hyperion. I’d put her away for a while after the war, angry and broken and hurt in ways I couldn’t ever quite put a name to, but that had only been temporary. I think it’d only been a year or so when my hands ached to hold her again, that familiar weight, that strength. And she’d been the constant in my life since, just as faithful a friend as Fujin and Raijin ever were.
I smiled at him, resting my hand lightly over his. Yeah, I could feel the familiar calluses. His hands were warmer than I’d expected, too - lack of Shiva, maybe? “I could be convinced. Hard to find a worthy opponent, y’know?”
His hand closed around mine gently. I was surprised at how right it felt. Graceful fingers that might have been more suited to anything but what they’d wound up doing, wrapped around the hilt of a gunblade.
“I hope you find me worthy,” he said softly, his eyes locked with mine.
Somehow I didn’t think he was talking about gunblades.