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[personal profile] vacantexpression 2025-03-04 07:57 am (UTC)(link)
The way they've both been wrecked with wanting is such that Squall can sympathize with Seifer's fears. They've been his own more times than he can count. Until memory and reality warp in on themselves and eat away the things he used to take for granted. Like what Seifer looked like. How his chin would incline with a smile as if it were both taunt and invitation. The saunter in the way he walked. What his voice sounded like.

Squall knows intimately what it's like to have those things robbed from him. He's not one for words but he presses a kiss to Seifer's forehead. "I'm here." An affirmation. A reminder. Another kiss to Seifer's cheek. Squall tells himself it's not tenderness, but assurance. They feel the same as he says again, "I'm here."

The pieces of another vow threaten to haunt him and echo in his mind but they're forced back. With Seifer, it's easier to think clearly. To remember who himself, what he wants, and where he is. When he is.

"I'm here," he breathes raggedly against as if to assert it to himself with a kiss that's more forceful. Pressure and teeth and a need for them both to be covered in the truth of these words. Marked in a way only they could possibly pick out and recognize beneath a shirt collar or jacket.

"I'm here." He bites it into Seifer's shoulder like the lion he's always wanted to be. Squall understands what it is to be a pride now. What it means to have others making you stronger. He's never felt more powerful, more safe, than when at Seifer's side.

"I'm here, Seifer." He'll say it until they find other words to replace them because they're words he should have said a lifetime ago.
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[personal profile] vacantexpression 2025-03-07 09:12 am (UTC)(link)
The wanting doesn't stop at desire. It isn't limited to all the ways they can learn each other's bodies or how they fit together. There's this too: the need for security. For something sure and true and entirely theirs without the strings of obedience attached. For a home that's been denied to them for as long as they've been orphans.

Squall builds the walls of it with his arms, closing them around Seifer as he feels the man tuck into him. His fingers skate through too-long hair and cradle the back of his head. He presses a kiss to it, leaves his face buried in golden locks, and vows, "You'll never be alone again." It's the kind of promise he feels in his bones. The kind that he would commit atrocities for. He'd once made a promise of a similar nature under the lure of a sorceress' spell, even if he hadn't known he was bewitched at the time.

There's no magic to influence him now. There's only the shield of his body as he tries to keep Seifer protected from the weighty memory of isolation and pain. How does a man deal with the promise of having all of that taken away? Of having someone to finally lean on?

They'll learn together.
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[personal profile] vacantexpression 2025-03-07 08:33 pm (UTC)(link)
The stakes have never been greater. Forsaking one promise for another is not a thing done lightly but when Rinoa had been imbued with her powers, the magnetic pull to her had been intoxicating. A complete rewiring of his senses. His desires. She had bewitched him and Squall had kept himself from wondering if it was intentional. He's convinced himself it was simply a byproduct of a sorceress' survival instincts. Because if that was the case then she would let him go if he asked, wouldn't she?

As the dam breaks and all of Seifer's fears flood out between them, Squall curves his hands under Seifer's jaw and angles his face up so it can't be hidden. "You don't know that." A hideously ironic thing to say considering how well versed Seifer was with a sorceress' pull. He remembers the mania. The unrelenting fervor with which Seifer had fought at her side.

"She's not Her," he says with their foreheads pressed together, scars aligned like they're merely the seam at which their souls had been separated at birth. Even as he says it some inkling of doubt wrenches inside him. He combats it by adding, "Besides, Cid lived years away from Matron. I won't let this be all we get." These stolen days in someone else's cabin or behind the borders of some else's nation. Seifer has always been meant for something greater and Squall knows in his bones he's meant to help get him there.
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[personal profile] vacantexpression 2025-03-19 04:09 am (UTC)(link)
Squall knows Seifer's right even if he doesn't want to admit it out loud. Rinoa had parted the heavens to bring him back...There was no intention for her to let him go, not if she had a say in it. The only time Squall has known clarity has been the times when she's away, when there's enough distance and distractions to keep her from putting the impressive magnetism of her focus on their bond. But he's fresh and alert and here. Grounded in a way he hasn't been since being pulled out of Time Compression. The thought of being pulled under the riptide of her influence again makes him cling ever closer.

"Then be my knight," he whispers with a voice that's rough from the vulnerability it takes to ask. "If anyone can get through to me, Seifer, it'll be you. And if you can't..."

He doesn't want to think about it. Doesn't want to go back to the half life of being puppeted by Rinoa's charm. "It was always going to be you." He's not sure if that makes it easier for Seifer to hear. That he's giving him permission to do what he couldn't when Ultimecia had had her hooks in him, but how can Squall go back to a world that doesn't allow him to live in it with Seifer now that they've finally found their way back to each other? "But there's still time. Still options. I won't give up if you don't."
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[personal profile] vacantexpression 2025-03-19 06:01 pm (UTC)(link)
"That they compel," Squall counters. "That's not what I want. We can make this choice ourselves. Choose who we protect. Who we'll stand with at the end of the world. That's what it means to be a knight. It shouldn't have to be rooted in magic. It shouldn't only belong to them."
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[personal profile] vacantexpression 2025-03-20 03:40 am (UTC)(link)
He'd led Garden on the tenuous threads of hope. If he could rally cadets, surely he has it in him to reignite the fire that had been snuffed out of Seifer. Squall searches for it in the darkening room, hunting for the intensity that had once burned bright behind Seifer's gaze.

"Don't be," Squall murmurs, fondness in his tone. A break from the axis of misery they had been teetering on. "You would have hated the orders that came with the change." It had been necessary, just like this was necessary. "Probably wouldn't have listened to them either." The smile is small, they always are, and knowing.
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[personal profile] vacantexpression 2025-03-21 05:30 am (UTC)(link)
The soft huff of air might as well be an outright laugh from Squall for how rare it is. The amusement lingers, helping to lessen some of the ache in his chest that comes from not being able to promise Seifer the security he'd wanted to give him. There's a fondness however that lingers as Squall remembers the way Seifer had been there...applauding him for his ascension into SeeD...That singular gesture something that had eaten at him. He'd wanted to find Seifer that night of the ball...Instead...

He swallows down the memory of Rinoa's face hollowed out from his memory. How Seifer's had been eaten away as well. The way his feelings for them both had been warped and mutated by magic. He doesn't feel its buzz under his skin or fogging his mind. It's just the crystalline gaze of Seifer watching him and Squall watching him in turn.

"I think you would have argued with me in private, but refrained from undermining me in a room," Squall says quietly. He's thought of all the ways they could have worked together...the fantasies of sharing rank and missions and how they would be the envy of all SeeDs. They were dreams that belonged to a younger self. "I think I would default to the mission and you would default to what was right and I would inevitably come around every time. I think you've always had too much heart to be a soldier. I leaned on the memory of that more times than I can count while trying to lead."
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[personal profile] vacantexpression 2025-04-14 03:06 am (UTC)(link)
"SeeD isn't altrustic," Squall explains, countering Seifer's point with the knowledge. "You would have helped me see that sooner." It was different now. Or at least Squall was trying to steer it in that direction, prying it from the greedy roots that had taken hold under NORG's watch. Not everything they'd accomplished was something to be celebrated...

Seifer would have been able to sniff out the corruption, but it was entirely possible that in doing so it would have put a target on their backs if they'd tried to do anything about it. There's so much about their lives that could have been different if Squall hadn't planted the seed in Matron that would seal their fate. The responsibility of it is a doleful weight he tries not to think about.

"It would have taken time to sink in though. Having you in my ear would likely prove...distracting." He meets Seifer halfway in the attempt for levity. Acknowledging the tension that had always lived between them and how no rank was likely to get in the way of it.
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[personal profile] vacantexpression 2025-04-14 03:50 pm (UTC)(link)
In another world, in one where fate and time hadn't been stacked against them, maybe they could have changed the system together. Maybe Seifer could have prevented Squall from doing "more" in favor of doing "good" in the same way he could convince him to do just about anything.

It surprises him to hear about Fujin. Enough that he doesn't stop himself from asking, "How were you an idiot?" He had his own answers to that, of course. The way Seifer actively chafed under bad leadership, how he never listened to an order if he didn't agree with it. But the implication was that he'd been an idiot with Squall.

His hands angle Seifer's face, unable to take them away from any part of him now that he's allowed to touch, until Squall can feather his lips against the shell of Seifer's ear, murmuring low into it, "Besides keeping all those distractions to yourself." Because Squall had learned he could be a distraction too.
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[personal profile] vacantexpression 2025-04-15 03:33 am (UTC)(link)
There's an edge of mortification in knowing he'd been the subject of such talks, but it's drowned out by the fact that they'd been had to begin with. That some part of Seifer hadn't been able to keep his attraction to himself or had worn it so openly that Fuijn had clocked it. If he'd been able to elicit these noises from Seifer during their sparring, then perhaps Squall would have been braver in his attempts to seek them out. Now, his fingers sift through too-long blonde hair to get a good grip on the ends, pulling them as his breath catches with the thought of Seifer wet and eager.

"She was right," he rasps while trying to steady the violent pulse of desire that thrums through him. "You were an idiot." They both were, but it's easier to tease and Squall isn't interested in talking as much as he just wants to make up for lost time, kissing Seifer with a force that might have been bruising.

"Gonna make it up to me?" he pants between biting kisses and the tease of his tongue over Seifer's lips, coercing him the best way he knows how: with a challenge.
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[personal profile] vacantexpression 2025-04-16 12:09 am (UTC)(link)
If they'd done this as cadets, maybe things would have been different. Maybe Squall would have been brave enough to petition on Seifer's behalf after the SeeD exam. Maybe they both would have gone to Timber. Maybe they could have stopped Edea at the onset of Ultimecia's possession of her...Maybe the threat of her wouldn't still nag like a splinter under his nail.

Whatever they might have done, it wouldn't have been this. He'd have been too guarded, too cagey, too scared. He's none of these things as he goes for Seifer's throat, biting along his jawline and down his neck in retalliation for the way Seifer pulls back. Distance has been Squall's enemy all these years in his search for the other man and he'll be damned if he lets it get in the way again.

"Then put your hands to work," Squall grunts without sympathy, already utilizing his own to do just that. Releasing Seifer's hair is a sacrifice but one his hips strain to appreciate as he drops his hands between their bodies to begin undoing the button of his pants, paving the way for Seifer like he's doing him a favor purely because Squall knows it'll incense him.
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[personal profile] vacantexpression 2025-04-16 05:16 pm (UTC)(link)
Neither of them have ever been good at standing down when challenged and so Squall isn't surprised when Seifer finds a new way to warp their familair tension into something underscored by heat and desire. For a moment, he just keeps their gazes locked, his own narrowing to see if Seifer is actually going to put him in the spotlight.

When he doesn't rise to assist with the undoing of his pants, Squall uses a hand to push him away so he can properly get his feet planted. "Doing the work because you're suddenly incapable is not showing off," he scowls but it does nothing to cut the efficiency of his movements, how he makes quick work of his belt and the buttons and zipper that follow.

There's no acquesicing here. He doesn't make an effort to get himself entirely out of his pants. All he cares about, all his straining cock cares about, is opening them enough to push the waistband of his underwear down so that he can get a hand around himself. The feel of it, the weight of Seifer's gaze as he grips the base, makes his breath come in sharp and it takes every ounce of defiance in him to keep his eyes level on Seifer's face as he makes that first upward stroke, the entirety of his erection angled toward the man who inspired it, even as Squall's cheeks go hot from exposing himself like this.

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