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With Hyperion’s hyperjunction a familiar weight on my hip, I drove through the outskirts of the city centre to the address Squall had given me.
The rest of our first “date” had gone almost… disappointingly normally. I talked a little about me and asked a lot about him. He didn’t answer absolutely everything and I didn’t pry when he dodged stuff. It was obvious that there were some things that he either didn’t want to share with me specifically or just didn’t want to share at all. That was fine. I understood.
I just ignored the little paranoid voice in the back of my head that suspected otherwise. For Hyne’s sake we were adults. He was allowed to have secrets.
So we talked about things we enjoyed. He asked a little about my work - more Fujin meddling I was sure - and the next thing I knew it was after nine and he was apologising for having to leave. That was when he’d suggested a duel for our next date and yeah, I’d jumped at the chance. To be honest, I didn’t get out to hunt nearly often enough and even the kata sets I’d been using just weren’t satisfying anymore. I missed the singing of steel on steel. Or adamantine on steel, at least.
Besides… I wanted to see how good he was after all this time. How getting older had changed him. Some weird part of me probably thought I’d be able to find out more from fighting him than talking to him, but that was the crazy part of me that followed mind controlling sorceresses through swirly portals, so I tried not to listen to it too closely.
Squall was perched on a low garden wall in front of an apartment building. When I slowed the car on approach, he rose to his feet gracefully with one hand trailing on the strap of a bag beside him absently. When I pulled up to the kerb in front of him and he recognised me, that beautiful smile caught his lips again. His blue-grey eyes locked with mine for a moment, smile never faltering, and I swear the world was just the two of us again. Then he swung the bag up onto his shoulder and crossed the pathway to my car, opening the door and settling into the seat beside me.
He sat the bag on his lap and I caught a glimpse of the hyperjunction hooked to it as he fastened his belt. Squall was dressed in blue jeans washed to the point of softness with threadbare patches on the knees. He had just the one belt, not the crossed ones he wore in my memories. A thin black teeshirt clung to him, tight enough to be a second skin beneath a leather jacket. No fur collar this time, but close enough to spark a few brain cells, at least. He tossed his hair out of his eyes and fixed me with a look and yet another dazzling smile. “Seifer. You’re staring.”
“I spent a lot of time staring, you just never really noticed when I used to do it,” I said, pulling back out into the fairly free stream of traffic, but not before I got to appreciate the little flush on Squall’s cheeks at the statement. Totally true. I just hadn’t realised at the time what the staring had been all about. That’d taken a few years and some serious soul searching. If only someone had given me a map to get out of the closet.
“Hard to see that kind of thing when you have your head up your own ass,” he shrugged, folding his hands on top of the bag. He knitted his fingers together, one thumb stroking the back of the other restlessly. I didn’t know his tells anymore, I didn’t know what I was looking for to see if he was uncomfortable - was this one? Was this what he did now?
I wanted to push further. Ask how the quiet, stoic little introvert I’d practically had to drag out to duels and push into doing work had become this full, open person beside me, but I was not quite that stupid yet. I still barely knew the new him, it was far too early to be a creep. “You were a kid. I think it’s pretty much part of the territory. Not to mention… well, we were kids being taught how to try and kill each other.”
“More issues than weapons monthly, hm?” he lifted his head to smile at me, and I glanced over to appreciate that as quickly as I could and nearly got lost in his eyes. The way he looked at me now was so different. He’d been so bland, so… empty before. A shell filled with magic and guardian forces and a practiced talent with a blade that part of me had wanted to dominate, to own, to… break. Fuck. No wonder that bitch had been able to control me so easily.
I shook it off as quickly as I could, my heart still a lump in my throat. “To say the least, yeah,” I picked my way through the other vehicles to the road out of the city and into the open countryside. There were a few spots I’d considered for our duel and now with that realisation behind me, I was reconsidering some of them. Nothing too dramatic… there was a stretch of open land with a few trees that wasn’t too bothered by geezards Decent distance from the main roads, so we wouldn’t be bothered by gawkers either. It was about as perfect as I could make it. And about as far from any places where that dumbass side of me could do something stupid as we could get.
Well, other than duelling, but needs must.
I pulled on to a hard, open piece of land just off the road and turned off the engine. As soon as I did, Squall sat up, alert, checking out our surroundings. His eyes darted over what was going to become our latest battlefield a couple of times and for a moment I could imagine the years of SeeD just layering right back over him like they’d never been shed. Then he broke into a smile and gave me one of his soft eyed looks. “Good choice.”
“Only the best empty fields in the middle of nowhere for you Squall,” I joked. He gave a soft chuckle and stepped out of the car to get a better look.
Yes. I checked out his ass. No one would blame me for that.
Without the crossed belts to hide it, I got a much better look. And yes, it was damn fine.
I stepped out of the car too, checking my hyperjunction as I did, more through force of habit than anything else. I wore her as often as I dared, but I was still a little paranoid of her being taken from me, or worse, being lost. Thankfully she was still safely there, my safety. What was left of my sanity.
“So do you want to do this unjunctioned, or not?” he asked, leaning against the car. He unhooked the hyperjunction from the bag without even having to look at it, switching it to his belt with a practiced ease.
“Oh no the temptation. Well, kind of be a shame not to go all out here while we still have the chance. You still got Shiva?”
He locked eyes with me, smiling so wickedly that I nearly jumped him clear across the car. He blinked once, and that was all it took. His blue grey eyes closed and when they opened again, they were a brighter, colder blue, rimmed with an edge of ice like silver. I could feel the power radiating from him, waves of ice tumbling onto a frozen shore. “Yeah, she still likes to play sometimes.”
I swear I could feel the ice in his voice, too. “No kidding…” I ground out, managing to keep my voice from cracking through sheer force of will. I was not supposed to find that attractive. No. No matter what fucked up little shattered pieces of my psyche thought, that was just Squall showing off and I wasn’t supposed to be half hard at it.
Even if I was.
“How’s your magic, do you need anything?”
“You can just check, tell me what you think,” I held my hand out to him and his chilled fingers curled around mine. My heart skipped a beat like a schoolgirl getting to hold her crush’s hand. Why the hell was he the only one who’d ever managed to do this to me?
He got a faraway look in his eyes as he checked through my junctions. “...you don’t have a lot of offensive magic.”
“Kind of figured it was safer that way.”
His eyes snapped into focus again, glaring at me. “Seriously?”
“It’s… too tempting in the office,” I joked, but Squall’s hard gaze never faltered for a moment. Shit, maybe more observant Squall was a bad thing after all, if I couldn’t shine him on so easily as when we were kids. “It’s just… Less likely to get me into trouble if I get picked up for something.”
“More acceptable as an answer, but... still bullshit, I suspect,” he gave a little shrug and our fingers grew warm where they touched as he transferred me several stacks of spells. I swear his eyes even glowed brighter while he did it too. He flashed me a brief smile as his fingers eased away from mine again. “That should be enough to put us on equal footing.”
I ran through the magic he’d given me. Full stacks of Firaga, flare and more than half a stack of several ridiculously powerful spells, like Full-Life, and even Aura. “Squall… I can’t take these,” I started, but he held his hand up to silence me.
“Seifer, with the way I’m junctioned right now, you’re going to need them.”
Cocky little shit. I could still tell stubborn Squall from the sharp edge to his voice. It was still as aggravating as it had ever been and to be honest, still as fucking sexy as it had ever been too. “Fine, I can give you them back when we’re done.”
“If you honestly think you don’t need them, I’ll take them back then, sure,” he gave me a shrug and turned on his heel to stroll out onto our new training ground. With one smooth motion he pulled the vibrant, cerulean blade I remembered from my dreams, and from my nightmares, out of its hyperjunction, resting the back of the blade on his shoulder.
I had to pinch myself.
Yes, it was real, it was amazing and apparently I was on a date with it.
I pinched myself again for good measure.Yep. Still not dreaming. The dream in blue jeans with a messy ponytail of chocolate brown hair was real and I just needed to accept that.
We both took a little time to warm up before we took our places ready for the duel.
Then, we fought.
To put it simply, even with the junctioned magic, he outclassed me.
I hadn’t actually faced a person since the war. I’d faced plenty of monsters when I’d had the time but no humans and Squall had gotten so much better than I’d ever dreamed possible. The way he moved with his blade was like music. Like a dream. It was all I could do to block a strike then prepare for the next, stealing my own opportunities for a counter attack here and there when I could.
Squall pared down his attacks, toying with me like a cat. He knew how much that would piss me off and yet he still did it - offering me more openings and more chances than I deserved. I could feel the old anger boiling up inside me, the fire yearning to be called and used and I pushed through it. I let it push me on, finding new openings, new ways to try and feint him, to reach him. Hyperion’s steel whined against the adamantine blue blade of his weapon time and time again.
I could tell when we were both starting to tire. His movements slowed inch by inch, but I was too exhausted to take advantage. He was too far beyond what I could reach… at least for now. That would change. I knew what I was missing now, what I had to do.
In one final effort, I tried to pour every bit of energy I had into just one more attack, just one more flurry of desperate attacks… I swear it was like he knew it was coming. Squall met every swing of my blade with an almost practiced ease and finally one of those parries sent Hyperion skittering out of my grasp and across the dirt before his blade turned back to me again, her blue arc of light barely a hair’s breadth from my skin. I could smell the ozone from the pulse ammo. Those eyes of his, like ice and storms and everything I remembered from the war, rested on me for a moment.
A tiny smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. He wasn’t quite as breathless as I was, but there was sweat on his brow and the faintest waver in the way he held his blade. “Do you yield, Seifer?” he asked softly.
I lifted my hands in surrender. Slowly, of course. Like it wasn’t already hurting to lift my arms up. “I yield.”
He lowered the blade slowly before sheathing it. “You know, if we both collapse at the same time, we both still get to maintain manliness or whatever.”
I cracked up, sinking slowly to my knees. I ached all over, my muscles sore with effort, and I could feel the sweat on my skin. Damn, I didn’t remember the last time I’d had a work out like that. Not even with Squall.
He sank down too, sticking close to me and just breathing.
The first thing I managed to grind out was “we need to do that again.”
His turn to laugh. This bright, beautiful sound that would have taken my breath away if I wasn’t already struggling. “Seifer,” he said, giving me one of his slyly sweet smiles and leaning back on his hands. “That was fun.”
“It’ll be even more fun when I’ve had a little more practice,” I tried to sound nonchalant, but I knew it’d take a hell of a lot more than a little practice. I’d slipped without a challenge. Well, maybe I’d just… balanced it out, whereas Squall had had a hell of a lot more time to practice and learn and improve than I had since he’d stuck to SeeD for so long. But now, now I had a goal. And hopefully someone to help me reach it. “How long since you left SeeD again?”
“Eight years, give or take,” he gave a little shrug and ran his hand through his hair that had come loose from it’s tie, pushing it back from his face. It was one of his older tells, one I was far more intimately familiar with. He didn’t like talking about it. “I’m better off for it, but sometimes… I miss it.”
“Which part makes you miss it?” I asked, making myself comfortable. Well, as comfortable as I could on the hard, dusty ground. That admittedly was asking a lot since I was already aching all over. I was totally going to regret this in the morning. “Not the god awful cafeteria food, at least.”
He laughed again, softly, shaking his head. “No, not the cafeteria food, though I promise I did make that at least a little better while I was in command. Usually it’s just… I don’t know. Maybe loneliness?” he rubbed a hand over his face and sighed. “Not like I wasn’t ever lonely at garden. It was just… a different kind of lonely.”
I don’t think he’d ever admitted that to me before. Maybe not the kind of thing you admit when you’re in a place like Garden. Especially not to someone who - let’s be honest - bullied the ever loving fuck out of you. Everyone else too, but especially was laser focused on you. Admitting weakness somewhere like that would only make you an even bigger victim. “It’s less lonely when you’re surrounded by people who are suffering the same thing you are.”
He looked at me, surprised. “Yeah, I guess so. I hadn’t thought of it like that.”
“It’s just.., different, outside garden. That’s the only way I can describe it myself. Never really been able to shake it,” I tried to smile but it felt more like a grimace. “Though they didn’t really prepare us for any of this.”
“I don’t think anyone is totally prepared for life, but yeah. We just have to keep going, right?”
“Yeah,” I tipped my head to examine him more closely. “So when did you become such an optimist, squirt?”
He rolled his eyes and punched me lightly in one of my aching shoulders. Probably hurt more than he meant it to after our duel, but I sucked it up. “Not an optimist,” he said, firmly. “More of a realist. Somewhere between then and now, I guess.”
“It’s still kinda weird. Getting a response,” I tried to sound like I was joking.
“Oh I always responded, just… not always out loud,” he flashed me another smile and rolled to his feet stiffly. As soon as he was steady on his feet he offered me a hand up. I’m ashamed to admit I hesitated to take it at first. Just enough to make him frown and ask “Is something wrong?”
“N...no, I’m fine, just…” I took the offered hand and he helped me drag myself upright again. “Just ignore it, I’m a dumbass.”
“Seifer?” he said, his voice softening. For the first time I actually saw worry in his eyes. I couldn’t breathe when I recognised the look. Squall so close and just so real and still somehow giving a shit about me. He was supposed to be ice and aloof and not give a fuck about some assbackwards knight who’d fucked up so royally that he’d nearly destroyed the world. He wasn’t supposed to be concerned about little old me.
“Just me being paranoid, that’s all.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There’s…” I huffed and ran my hand through my own hair, like his little tell. This weird anxiety crawling through my veins deciding to mimic him even though it was afraid of him. “It’s like there’s a weird little voice in my head that says stupid shit to me. Like I don’t deserve to touch you. That kind of bullshit.”
Squall frowned, clearly not liking my response. He didn’t respond for maybe a minute, clearly thinking through the potential and meanings and all that shit… and then he took both of my hands in his and pulled them around him as he stepped closer to me. Until I was holding him. “Time compression?” he asked, his voice still gentle and quiet. “Her?”
“Maybe. Could just be me still thinking I don’t deserve…, well… this,” I said, keeping my hands on the sun warmed leather of his jacket, well above his belts. As tempted as other parts of me were to move them lower, I didn’t think I’d earned that yet. Even if he seemed happy to have my hands on him.
Squall’s hand cupped my cheek lightly. His skin was still cool from Shiva’s ice, the same ice I could see in his eyes. “Tell the little voice I told it to fuck off, okay?”
I don’t think I’d ever heard Squall curse. It made me chuckle. “...okay. I guess I can do that, as long as you keep reminding me.
“I promise, I’ll tell you that as often as you want me to.”