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I don't care what you think as long as it’s about me
The sun was hot on the back of Seifer’s neck but at least the light breeze coming off the sea offered relief, feeling cool against his skin. He turned the page of his book and then raised his hand to wipe a bead of sweat from his temple. Maybe Fujin and Raijin had had the right idea in taking that trip to Timber; the heavy forests there seemed to temper the heat at this time of year, like the sun couldn’t penetrate.
Still, it was nice to have a few days of peace to himself. He might even finish this book.
A shadow fell across the page and Seifer narrowed his eyes. His senses were tingling with recognition but he had to be imagining things; there was no way –
“Hello, Seifer.”
Seifer leisurely raised his eyes from his book to instead take in the figure standing before him. Tall and lean and pale, just as Seifer remembered him, though he seemed to hold less tension in his shoulders, his posture a little looser. Still favored black and a ridiculous number of belts.
“I was at a good part,” Seifer told him.
Squall frowned, clearly not understanding.
Seifer tapped his finger on the book. “You interrupted.”
Now the faintest of blushes colored Squall’s pale cheeks. “It’s been years. You can’t give me a few minutes?”
The words lingered in the air for a while as Seifer studied Squall’s face, the irritation in his eyes, the scar that still marred his otherwise perfect skin. (Honestly, the scar was perfection in itself, Seifer thought. Squall had always been relentlessly, unbelievably pretty. The scar gave him character.) After what he deemed a suitable amount of time to leave Squall squirming, Seifer made a show of marking his page and closing his book, setting it onto the bench beside him. He left his ankle crossed over his knee but spread his arms out behind him across the back of the bench.
“All right,” he said. “Like you said, it’s been years. To what do I owe the pleasure of this… unexpected visit?”
Squall shifted his weight. The pause was telling.
“What,” Seifer said, pretending to gasp. “You mean you aren’t here to see me?”
When Squall ran a hand through his hair, Seifer caught a glimpse of a flush in the tips of his ears. “I… didn’t come to Balamb specifically to see you.”
“Man, I love honesty, don’t you?” Seifer half-wondered if admitting that had caused Squall to break something.
“But I might have stayed, hoping to find you.”
Seifer blinked. What the hell?
Squall nodded to the bench. “Can I sit?”
“I’m not stopping you.”
He didn’t move, though. From the way Squall was looking at him, Seifer knew that Squall knew it was partly a taunt, partly a challenge.
Squall sat on the bench, Seifer’s arm still draped across the back. They were close enough that a small shift would brush their thighs together.
Seifer found himself bobbing his knee up and down, fidgeting restlessly, his fingers twitching on the back of the bench. He had always found it difficult to be still, to be calm, but this felt different. Felt odd. He wanted to shift so he was touching Squall, wanted to let his arm drop forward until it wrapped around Squall’s shoulders.
He wanted to see what Squall would do but more than that, Seifer thought he wanted to see how it would feel.
Damn. He had thought he was over this. Torture a guy, try to kill him while he tries to kill you, let him fuck off for years doing whatever the hell and yet still not be over him? What did it take?
He bet Squall hadn’t thought about him for a second since the last time they saw each other.
“So are you gonna tell me why you interrupted my book?” Seifer asked as Squall remained quiet beside him.
“Maybe I just wanted to see how you were.”
Seifer snorted. “Yeah, okay. You just suddenly got up this morning and thought, hey, wonder if that old Seifer guy’s still around. Used to be my mortal enemy but I hope he’s doing good.”
“I think ‘mortal enemy’ is a little dramatic.”
“What would you call us then?”
Squall turned to look Seifer straight in the eyes. “I was kind of hoping we might be friends.”
Speechless, Seifer just gaped at him. Squall’s blue eyes had always been arresting and Seifer found it impossible to look away, now that their focus was pinned to him. The word ‘friends’, spoken in Squall’s voice, was repeating over and over in his mind.
Had they ever been friends? Like, really friends? At Garden, or even at the orphanage? In his younger days Seifer would never have admitted to wanting Squall to be his friend, but maybe he had gained some measure of maturity and could admit now that much of his behavior, his cries for attention, had been about wanting Squall to notice him, care about him, be his friend. Be more than that. The more Squall had ignored him, the more Seifer had pressed; if they couldn’t be friends, rivals was something. It forced Squall to pay attention to him, didn’t it?
You couldn’t ignore someone swinging a gunblade at your face.
A seagull was loudly squawking farther down in the harbor. The noise made Squall’s gaze flick past Seifer’s face, focus broken. When Seifer blinked, he found that Squall was now facing ahead again, those eyes staring out towards the sea.
“You have a funny idea of friendship,” Seifer finally said.
“Yeah.” This was followed by a soft exhale of breath, almost a sigh. “I’m trying.”
“Do you suddenly drop in on your other friends after years of avoidance, too?” Sure, the avoidance hadn’t been exactly one-sided, but that wasn’t the point.
“My other friends hadn’t tried to kill me.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that one.”
“It’s… not easy to take the first step.”
Okay, sure. Seifer could see that. “Yeah.”
“You could have come to see me, too, you know.”
Seifer looked at Squall askance. “Don’t you live in a Garden that flies? You don’t exactly have a permanent address.”
Squall rolled his eyes and it was such a sixteen-year-old Squall mannerism that Seifer almost laughed. “You could have found me if you wanted to.”
“Who says I wanted to? You’re the one who said you wanted to see me, who said we’re friends.”
Squall dipped his head down, gaze directed towards his knees, and then he stood up. “You’re right. This was stupid, it was a mistake. Goodbye, Seifer.”
A sense of dread washed over Seifer, feeling like a stone in his belly. This was it, he suddenly knew. If Squall walked away now, that was it.
And Seifer also knew that he cared. It mattered to him that he might never see Squall again.
Oh, who was he fooling? It had always mattered.
“Wait,” Seifer said, standing, reaching to grab Squall’s elbow.
Miraculously, Squall did stop, turning his head to look at Seifer’s hand on his arm. His eyes flicked back up to Seifer’s face. “Yeah?”
“I’m trying not to be such a dick anymore but I don’t always get it right.”
“Yeah,” Squall said with a faint tilt to his lips. “I know how that is.”
“You want to have a beer at my place?”
Squall nodded. “Okay.”
Seifer remembered to grab his book from the bench and then he gestured Squall to turn. It was still a little too warm for Seifer’s tastes, the sun shining hot on his face and his bared arms, and the breeze dissipated the farther they walked from the harbor. Still, it wasn’t an unpleasant walk, quiet as it was, and Seifer could have almost said that their silence was companionable.
The thought alone was nearly enough to make him laugh because when had he and Squall ever been companionable? Not since they could each hold a gunblade, surely.
When they reached his door, Seifer dug his key from his pocket to unlock it and let Squall enter first. He tried not to feel like he was being judged as Squall curiously looked around; Seifer was glad he hadn’t left any dirty socks or unwashed dishes lying around.
Squall followed him to the dining room and sat while Seifer located a couple of cold bottles of beer. He snapped the tops and handed one to Squall, taking a long swallow from his own before he sat in the chair opposite. He leaned back, sprawling his legs out in front of him beneath the table. Squall shifted when Seifer’s stretched legs kicked against him.
No surprise that Squall made no move to start conversation. Seifer said the first thing that popped into his head. “I guess you and Rinoa must have a bunch of scowling babies by now. Is the sorceress thing genetic? Do they set their cribs on fire with their minds?”
“It didn’t work out. We’re just friends.”
That was unexpected. “Didn’t you break a whole bunch of laws for her?”
“Yeah, and I don’t regret that. I love her and always will, but we… weren’t suited to each other. We’re better as friends.”
Weren’t suited to each other? The fuck?
Squall was watching him, weirdly intense. “She wasn’t what I wanted.”
“She talk too much for you? Too hard to be moody when she’s around?”
He didn’t take the bait. “You didn’t make it work with her either.”
“Well, yeah, because I never really wanted to. She was fun but I think she was more interested in getting an intro to Headmaster Cid.”
“That’s not how Rinoa told it.”
“How the hell would I know what Rinoa said about it? It was just a fling. I didn’t want anything else.”
“Why not?”
“She wasn’t – ” Seifer snapped his mouth closed, biting his tongue. What the fuck; he couldn’t believe he had almost said… “Do you really wanna sit here and talk about Rinoa?”
“You brought her up.”
“Okay, whatever,” Seifer said since he couldn’t actually deny it. “Why now?” he asked to change the subject, to deflect focus back to Squall. “Why after all these years was today the day you decided to find out if I had drowned myself in the sea?”
“I never thought you would do that.” Squall’s lips twitched. “At least not without inviting me first.”
Seifer stared at him. “Was that a joke? Also fuck you, I could off myself without you, thanks.”
“If you say so.”
“My life doesn’t revolve around you.” Not anymore, an annoying voice in his head chimed in. “I’ve been just fine here while you were off doing fuck knows what.”
“I can see you’ve changed.”
Of all the patronizing – Seifer opened his mouth but before he could decide exactly what he was going to start yelling, Squall held up his hand.
“I changed too,” he said. “And I think that’s a good thing. My friends helped.”
His friends, sure. As if anyone could have better friends than Fujin and Raijin, who accepted Seifer as he was, who stood by him until they could no longer pretend that he wasn’t wrong, until they had to admit that he wasn’t himself. It had taken time for him to understand that what he had perceived as their betrayal was the greatest act of love they had ever shown him.
They’ve been together ever since and they always will be.
“My friends also think you owe me something,” Squall continued. “An apology is the least of it.”
“If you came here just because you want me to tell you I’m sorry – ”
“That’s not why I came. I told you why. But I wanted to say…” Squall’s chin dipped down, his hair falling over his forehead. “If we were doing apologies, there are things that I’m sorry for.”
“Oh, right,” Seifer said, not entirely sure why Squall’s words made him so furious. “Here we go, self-righteous Squall always ready to martyr himself, always so much better than me. Trepe’s favorite, Cid’s favorite, everyone’s favorite even when all you did was glower in silence at your desk. Fuck your apology! And here’s mine. I wanted to hurt you. I tortured you because I wanted to. I wanted to hurt you and I wanted to be the one in control. I was who Matron chose, me, not you. It had always been you, every time, but then she chose me. I wanted to prove to you and Trepe and everyone that I was the best. I was the sorceress’ knight.”
The words kept spilling out from Seifer’s lips and he couldn’t stop them. “But then it… it went wrong, it wasn’t what I wanted, and I… If you were dead, then what was the point? What was the point of anything if you couldn’t see?”
No, this was wrong, damn it, what was he even saying? He laughed a little, the sound of it bitter. “I guess you’re right after all. It was fucking always about you.”
It was humiliating, Seifer thought, to have so much in common with Quistis Trepe.
Squall was leaning forward, like those extra two inches closer would magically reveal all. “But why? Seifer, why?”
Because I’m obsessed with you, a terrible voice in Seifer’s head said. “Hell if I know.”
Squall furrowed his brow and he wasn’t going to let it go; why couldn’t he just let it go?
“I still remember it mostly in fragments,” he said. “Being at the orphanage. I remember that I mostly cared about Ellone, but I also think… I think we were kind of friends. I don’t know what happened when we got to Garden but you always seemed to hate me.”
Seifer listened to this with dawning horror but in the end, that horror was mostly directed at himself because he knew he couldn’t stop himself now. “You are such an idiot,” he said.
Probably not as much of an idiot as Seifer was, though, because the next thing he did was stand so he could walk around the table and yank Squall into a kiss.
Squall was limp against him but when his lips parted on a breath, suddenly he was kissing Seifer back, firm pressure, his hands snaking up onto Seifer’s shoulders. A thrill was shivering up Seifer’s spine that Squall hadn’t simply shoved him off and tossed him into the nearest wall, was actually kissing him back. He inhaled, murmuring, “I never actually hated you, you idiot,” into the space between their lips.
“You,” Squall gasped, “you have a funny way of showing it.”
“Yeah,” Seifer agreed, tipping his forehead against Squall’s. “It’s hard to pull on your pigtails when you don’t even seem to care that I’m pulling on them.”
Squall chuckled softly. “Was that what all that was?”
“Kind of, I guess. Not at first, maybe. I don’t know. I just… wanted you to notice.”
“That’s really stupid.”
“Maybe.” Seifer brushed his thumb over Squall’s scar. “But I did get you to notice.”
Squall raised an eyebrow. “At which point when we were trying to beat the crap out of each other in the war did you think, yes, my plan worked perfectly?”
Seifer leaned back, his hip against the table. “I guess I’m still figuring that out.”
There was a warmth to Squall’s cool blue eyes that Seifer wasn’t sure he had ever seen before, definitely not directed at him. “Well, if we’re friends, maybe I can help you figure it out.”
I’m still a dick a lot of the time, Seifer thought. I still think we should beat the shit out of each other sometimes. I’ll never give you more of an apology than I already have.
Somehow he knew that Squall already knew all of that. “I think maybe I’d like that.”