Has any battle between them ever been so important? So changing? Seifer groans again and his hands move down Squall's body. Grope his ass to pull him close for just a moment before he's leaning down just a little. Moving down and getting his hands around Squall's thighs. He grips them strongly and lifts Squall a bit.
"Bed," he explains, and his voice rolls out low and rough with his desire.
Just like having steel between them, they find a way to clash with rhythm. Each move and countermove matched with growing intensity until Squall is certain neither of them is truly controlling the pace with which they escalate this. When Seifer's hands slide down his body with proprietary urging, Squall catches him by the throat with his teeth, biting both encouragement and challenge into the skin as he moans.
His body follows the cues as his thighs are urged up. It's not natural but it's just close enough to the grappling they practiced in hand to hand combat that Squall is able to hoist himself up until his legs are secured around Seifer's waist.
Bed feels like the dirtiest promise and it floods Squall with a heightened awareness of where this is going. What they'll do. Heat courses through him, makes him blush, and drives him to take control of this new vantage as he cranes Seifer's head back by his hair so he can tip his face up to his own.
"Can you get us there?" It's not a question as much as it's a challenge as Squall brings their mouths together for another eager kiss. Because of course no journey of theirs has ever been a simple one.
Oh, it's very much a challenge. One that has Seifer almost snarling at Squall because how dare he question that. The blonde adjusts his grip and prepares to move them only... Fuck, when had Squall learned such good distraction tactics? A kiss like that, just on the edge of too dirty to think about, is enough to get past his initial guard.
So he retaliates in the only way he can think to do. Which is to shift them so part of Squall's weight rests on the counter. That frees up his hand just enough to pull back for a light slap to Squall's thigh.
None of his retaliatory affection is born from previous experience. There is only carnal instinct and the need to give as good as he gets that drives Squall to bite at Seifer's lips and pull at his hair. Everything about this feels years in the making; an unrealized epilogue to every one of their duels.
Even the unexpected smack against his thigh harkens to a time when the flat of their blades might be used for a taunt. Squall gasps open mouthed against Seifer's kiss-bitten lips and relishes the heady thrill of their on-going battle for dominance.
"This," a pointed nip to Seifer's jawline, "isn't," a scrape of teeth against his throat, "the bed," and then a firm latching of his mouth to Seifer's neck muffles his groan as Squall sucks a deliberate mark into his skin. He's made up entirely of urgent desire and hunger, the entirety of it something he presses against Seifer as he arches up from the counter to better make contact with the body trapping his own.
What epilogues they could have written, had they only had the courage to put fingers to flesh, to let lips write passionate odes on feverishly hot skin. But no, they were both too stubborn, or perhaps even too scared, to accept the risk. A risk that might have grounded them both and perhaps made things easier for the rest of the world. But no, that had never been their path. They were always doomed. Libreri Fatali. Children of fate, ever beholden to the paths they had tread before in cycle after cycle that was also a singular path through time.
A path that, somehow, had led them here. To this moment. To this battle that would leave different, lasting marks on them both, both flesh and soul.
"Yeah," Seifer growled as he regained his grip under Squall's legs, "and I also need a clear line of sight. I'm not tripping over a stray boot and dumping us both, Princess."
So yes, he's going to get them to the damn bed, but stop blocking his vision. Distract him, yes. By all means. He will take that challenge. But he's far more fragile physically than he seems, and he doesn't want to tumble. Not for either of them. With his luck they'd fall on something, Squall would be deeply wounded, and Seifer WOULD be handed over to some hostile nation to suffer for it.
The urge to be contrarian lives within Squall but it's tempered by the very real fact that the cabin is in a state of disrepair. Their luck, if they'd ever had any at all, is such that it would spell disaster to collapse in a heap and so Squall acquiesces. But not without a low rumble that sounds suspiciously like a laugh. It's hard not to be amused by the possibility, after all. To have come all this way, to have learned all that they'd been pining after and longing for was actually reciprocated, only to be met with catastrophic injury felt tragically on point for them.
"Then don't trip," Squall murmurs, unhelpful even as he urges Seifer forward with a squeeze of his thighs. His head has since ducked to kiss and bite along the length of Seifer's throat, giving him a better view of any obstacles they might meet. He nipped a little harder at the nickname but the subsequent graze of teeth have all been exploratory, mapping the angle of Seifer's jaw and the column of his neck.
The desire is no less palpable but it has slowed to something painfully close to affection. A reverent skating of his lips across the lifeline that thuds Seifer's pulse against his mouth. Squall could write a bloody ballad scored in their fervent need for each other, but this sonnet is something a little more tender. A brief glimpse into the narrow spaces of his frozen heart. The scars that spiderweb their way up and over Seifer's shoulder are given the same treatment, kissed and mapped but this time with the hot trail of his tongue. Squall will find every place She didn't mar him and make it his own.
What a cocky asshole. 'Then don't trip'. Seifer would laugh if he wasn't busy taking very focused, very measured breaths to keep his head on straight. To keep himself moving constantly, carefully forward to the room he had been making use of since he got to this place.
It takes so much of himself to ignore what Squall was doing. No small part of him wanted to slam Squall against the nearest wall, or down on a table, and get back to their new form of battle. But no, the bed was needed. The darkness and shelter of the room. The space where Squall could not see him so clearly, know him so deeply. Where maybe he can pretend this is just another dream. Or that it wasn't.
Step by careful step he carries Squall into the bedroom with the bed he had replaced the mattress of with leaves and sleeping bags. It worked for him, and it would have to work now as well.
"If you let go, I can put you down," he suggests, his voice still rough with his controlled desire.
Verbal sparring had never been Squall's strong suit but their messages to each other had often held edges of jest that he would have never been confident enough to engage in before this. Now, with the air crackling with all of the unspoken potential of their youth, the teasing barbs were effortless. This was effortless. In fact, the only restraint was in the way he slowed his explorations just long enough for Seifer to navigate the dusty halls of the cabin.
The darkness of the room is impossible not to drown in. It turns the body beneath his own into shadows that need to be remapped. His hands skate over broad shoulders, feeling out the ribbons of scars beneath his palms, just to reaffirm that it's Seifer. That they're someplace real and not in a loop of someone else's design.
He understands this is the next step. That letting go is the logical thing to do. But Squall's legs tighten their hold on waist they're wound around, clinging just as fiercely as the hands that angle Seifer's face back up to his own. "No. I'm never letting you go again." He says it against the twilight features that can be barely picked out in the blackness of the room. Too similar to the blackness that he's seen open up around Seifer's features. A void that has been known to eat away any trace of familiarity.
Squall chases the words with his mouth, reaffirming them with a fierce kiss. As if the joining of their lips means he'll never lose sight of Seifer again. "I hate that I can't see you," he gusts out hurriedly, the words edged once more in impatient desire.
There are words, and there are words. 'Never letting you go again' were definitely the latter. The sort of words that carried more weight with them, that weren't thrown around lightly. Many people might not know the difference when it came to Squall. Seifer does.
It comes with the tone. With the look on his face. With the touch. Squall didn't touch needlessly after all.
"Fuck," he whispers when the words are out there, the second set, after the kiss that stole all the strength from him. He felt like dandelion fluff flung out before the force of the other man's winds. "I... If I can't see you, I can't open my eyes and find you aren't there anymore. It's... better."
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.
The words come. A promise that he wasn't dreaming, that he finds hard to believe. And it comes again. Repeated over and over. Words whispered in a way that makes him feel desperate. That might in another situation work him up. Instead...
Instead the words cut deep into a heart that had been turned to stone. Break through the shields and fears and pain. It makes him ache. Not with longing, but with a different sort of pain. Because no one had said that to him and meant it to mean something different from what Fujin and Raijin had. And it was true. Squall was there. He'd been there nearly every day (save for the war) for the whole of Seifer's life.
He should be using his hands and his mouth to ravage Squall like he always wanted to. Instead he moves to bury his face in Squall's shoulder, so he can bit his lip to try and not let the tears stinging in his eyes to fall.
Someone cared. Someone wanted him for him. Someone who had every reason to hate him, wanted him safe. Would be here for him.
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?
Nevermind. The battle against the tears is lost at that promise. AS much because it was offered as because of the knowledge he had of how futile it is.
"You're a Sorceress's Knight. You'll go when she calls. I'll be alone."
And Squall would be as unreachable, as untouchable as ever. Taken away when there was finally hope. What a blow that would deal to him. What a way to destroy Seifer.
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.
"You don't know that," Seifer whispers, his voice frantic and pained. "You don't know that at all. And Cid is... He was different. Their bond was something they both chose to spread. But I remember Rinoa. She's the worst sort of romantic. She won't let you go."
Squall's will would be slowly eroded by hers. And if Seifer was a threat...
Could he even be certain she would allow Squall to keep him alive?
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."
"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."
Knights had another purpose, to be an anchor, to keep control. Look how well that was going for them.
"And you really think that will work?" Seifer asks, shaking his head. "Didn't know you had grown into the hopeful one, Squall. When did that happen? I'm sorry I missed it."
He was sorry he couldn't help Squall grow like that.
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.
"But the new leader would have had an ass worth following," Seifer pointed out, trying to get a teasing edge into things. But it's too real right now... He needs to try and make this lighter.
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."
Too much heart to be a soldier. Seifer just looks shocked to see those words directed at him. It was a point Fujin had made to him once. That he dreamt of being a knight because the point was to do the right thing. And it hurt to know that the one he most wanted to see see him actually saw it.
And still hadn't been able to save Seifer.
"You probably wouldn't have managed as much as you did if I was in your ear."
"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.
No it wasn't. It was never going to be. Was that ever in question? It's literally a mercenary organization. They were always going to be in it for the money these days. Nothing about that had surprised Seifer. Hell, he'd understood what they were. That didn't mean he had to like all of that.
Though now... damn but Squall could draw his attention away from the ache in his heart.
"You never knew how distracting I could be. How distracting I wanted to be," Seifer admits. "Fujin and I used to fight about it. How I was an idiot."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2025-02-05 08:00 pm (UTC)"Bed," he explains, and his voice rolls out low and rough with his desire.
no subject
on 2025-02-07 08:31 am (UTC)His body follows the cues as his thighs are urged up. It's not natural but it's just close enough to the grappling they practiced in hand to hand combat that Squall is able to hoist himself up until his legs are secured around Seifer's waist.
Bed feels like the dirtiest promise and it floods Squall with a heightened awareness of where this is going. What they'll do. Heat courses through him, makes him blush, and drives him to take control of this new vantage as he cranes Seifer's head back by his hair so he can tip his face up to his own.
"Can you get us there?" It's not a question as much as it's a challenge as Squall brings their mouths together for another eager kiss. Because of course no journey of theirs has ever been a simple one.
no subject
on 2025-02-12 09:56 pm (UTC)So he retaliates in the only way he can think to do. Which is to shift them so part of Squall's weight rests on the counter. That frees up his hand just enough to pull back for a light slap to Squall's thigh.
An unspoken way of saying 'behave'.
no subject
on 2025-02-13 07:52 am (UTC)Even the unexpected smack against his thigh harkens to a time when the flat of their blades might be used for a taunt. Squall gasps open mouthed against Seifer's kiss-bitten lips and relishes the heady thrill of their on-going battle for dominance.
"This," a pointed nip to Seifer's jawline, "isn't," a scrape of teeth against his throat, "the bed," and then a firm latching of his mouth to Seifer's neck muffles his groan as Squall sucks a deliberate mark into his skin. He's made up entirely of urgent desire and hunger, the entirety of it something he presses against Seifer as he arches up from the counter to better make contact with the body trapping his own.
no subject
on 2025-02-15 02:34 am (UTC)A path that, somehow, had led them here. To this moment. To this battle that would leave different, lasting marks on them both, both flesh and soul.
"Yeah," Seifer growled as he regained his grip under Squall's legs, "and I also need a clear line of sight. I'm not tripping over a stray boot and dumping us both, Princess."
So yes, he's going to get them to the damn bed, but stop blocking his vision. Distract him, yes. By all means. He will take that challenge. But he's far more fragile physically than he seems, and he doesn't want to tumble. Not for either of them. With his luck they'd fall on something, Squall would be deeply wounded, and Seifer WOULD be handed over to some hostile nation to suffer for it.
no subject
on 2025-02-16 05:52 pm (UTC)"Then don't trip," Squall murmurs, unhelpful even as he urges Seifer forward with a squeeze of his thighs. His head has since ducked to kiss and bite along the length of Seifer's throat, giving him a better view of any obstacles they might meet. He nipped a little harder at the nickname but the subsequent graze of teeth have all been exploratory, mapping the angle of Seifer's jaw and the column of his neck.
The desire is no less palpable but it has slowed to something painfully close to affection. A reverent skating of his lips across the lifeline that thuds Seifer's pulse against his mouth. Squall could write a bloody ballad scored in their fervent need for each other, but this sonnet is something a little more tender. A brief glimpse into the narrow spaces of his frozen heart. The scars that spiderweb their way up and over Seifer's shoulder are given the same treatment, kissed and mapped but this time with the hot trail of his tongue. Squall will find every place She didn't mar him and make it his own.
no subject
on 2025-02-20 01:03 am (UTC)It takes so much of himself to ignore what Squall was doing. No small part of him wanted to slam Squall against the nearest wall, or down on a table, and get back to their new form of battle. But no, the bed was needed. The darkness and shelter of the room. The space where Squall could not see him so clearly, know him so deeply. Where maybe he can pretend this is just another dream. Or that it wasn't.
Step by careful step he carries Squall into the bedroom with the bed he had replaced the mattress of with leaves and sleeping bags. It worked for him, and it would have to work now as well.
"If you let go, I can put you down," he suggests, his voice still rough with his controlled desire.
no subject
on 2025-02-20 06:26 am (UTC)The darkness of the room is impossible not to drown in. It turns the body beneath his own into shadows that need to be remapped. His hands skate over broad shoulders, feeling out the ribbons of scars beneath his palms, just to reaffirm that it's Seifer. That they're someplace real and not in a loop of someone else's design.
He understands this is the next step. That letting go is the logical thing to do. But Squall's legs tighten their hold on waist they're wound around, clinging just as fiercely as the hands that angle Seifer's face back up to his own. "No. I'm never letting you go again." He says it against the twilight features that can be barely picked out in the blackness of the room. Too similar to the blackness that he's seen open up around Seifer's features. A void that has been known to eat away any trace of familiarity.
Squall chases the words with his mouth, reaffirming them with a fierce kiss. As if the joining of their lips means he'll never lose sight of Seifer again. "I hate that I can't see you," he gusts out hurriedly, the words edged once more in impatient desire.
no subject
on 2025-02-22 02:03 am (UTC)It comes with the tone. With the look on his face. With the touch. Squall didn't touch needlessly after all.
"Fuck," he whispers when the words are out there, the second set, after the kiss that stole all the strength from him. He felt like dandelion fluff flung out before the force of the other man's winds. "I... If I can't see you, I can't open my eyes and find you aren't there anymore. It's... better."
no subject
on 2025-03-04 07:57 am (UTC)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.
no subject
on 2025-03-05 05:14 pm (UTC)Instead the words cut deep into a heart that had been turned to stone. Break through the shields and fears and pain. It makes him ache. Not with longing, but with a different sort of pain. Because no one had said that to him and meant it to mean something different from what Fujin and Raijin had. And it was true. Squall was there. He'd been there nearly every day (save for the war) for the whole of Seifer's life.
He should be using his hands and his mouth to ravage Squall like he always wanted to. Instead he moves to bury his face in Squall's shoulder, so he can bit his lip to try and not let the tears stinging in his eyes to fall.
Someone cared. Someone wanted him for him. Someone who had every reason to hate him, wanted him safe. Would be here for him.
How does a man deal with that?
no subject
on 2025-03-07 09:12 am (UTC)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.
no subject
on 2025-03-07 06:31 pm (UTC)"You're a Sorceress's Knight. You'll go when she calls. I'll be alone."
And Squall would be as unreachable, as untouchable as ever. Taken away when there was finally hope. What a blow that would deal to him. What a way to destroy Seifer.
No one had ever tried it with hope before.
no subject
on 2025-03-07 08:33 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
on 2025-03-10 04:24 pm (UTC)Squall's will would be slowly eroded by hers. And if Seifer was a threat...
Could he even be certain she would allow Squall to keep him alive?
no subject
on 2025-03-19 04:09 am (UTC)"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."
no subject
on 2025-03-19 05:32 pm (UTC)"You know that's not possible. Only sorceresses have knights."
It's just too much logic getting in the way of his heart. But he's been trying to think with his head more than his heart since... Well, everything.
no subject
on 2025-03-19 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2025-03-19 11:59 pm (UTC)"And you really think that will work?" Seifer asks, shaking his head. "Didn't know you had grown into the hopeful one, Squall. When did that happen? I'm sorry I missed it."
He was sorry he couldn't help Squall grow like that.
no subject
on 2025-03-20 03:40 am (UTC)"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.
no subject
on 2025-03-20 03:46 pm (UTC)He's clearly failing.
"You really think I wouldn't listen to you?"
no subject
on 2025-03-21 05:30 am (UTC)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."
no subject
on 2025-03-21 01:24 pm (UTC)And still hadn't been able to save Seifer.
"You probably wouldn't have managed as much as you did if I was in your ear."
no subject
on 2025-04-14 03:06 am (UTC)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.
no subject
on 2025-04-14 02:23 pm (UTC)Though now... damn but Squall could draw his attention away from the ache in his heart.
"You never knew how distracting I could be. How distracting I wanted to be," Seifer admits. "Fujin and I used to fight about it. How I was an idiot."
Actually, he was pretty sure he owed her gil now.
(no subject)
Posted by(no subject)
Posted by(no subject)
Posted by(no subject)
Posted by(no subject)
Posted by(no subject)
Posted by(no subject)
Posted by(no subject)
Posted by(no subject)
Posted by(no subject)
Posted by(no subject)
Posted by(no subject)
Posted by(no subject)
Posted by(no subject)
Posted by(no subject)
Posted by(no subject)
Posted by