You wouldn't think it from looking at him, but Squall spends a lot of time on his clothes.

It's not that he's stuck up, far from it, I've met few people more modest. It's just that he honestly does spend a lot of time taking care of the way he looks. When I first met him, naturally, I kind of smirked, thought, 'God, he must spend a lot of time fluffing up that collar." Five minutes later, I still had one eye on him uncertainly; his quiet, cool manner, occasionally bordering on antisocial, seemed totally at odds with his well-groomed appearance.

This is just one of the many, many areas where Squall makes very little sense.

One time I out and asked him- you know; 'Hey, Squall,' I had said with a grin, 'How do you keep looking so good, huh? The rest of us hardly manage to keep our clothes the right color!' (It's true… with all this traveling and our repeated mishaps, we get to wash once a week. On good weeks.)

Squall kind of looked me up and down with that sort of incredulous look he gets whenever anyone asks him a question. Especially a stupid question. He didn't say anything, though.

'C'mon, Squall,' I pressed, 'I can't know if you don't tell me. And it sure would be nice to

know how I could keep looking that good.'

He kind of raised his eyebrows, but muttered, 'I do my laundry.'

I felt like doing a facefault. What a no-brainer. (Both the answer and Squall.) 'OK, thanks,' I conceded, and went off to fight an ugly lizard thing which had randomly appeared from nearby tall grasses and seemed attracted to the notion of eating us for supper.

That night was when Big Thing With Squall #3 happened. (I won't go into what 1 and 2 are. 4 involves his gunblade and Zell's pants, so I won't go into that either.)

Anyway, that night- when we had all crawled into our respective little tents and were snoozing away with visions of GF's dancing in our heads- I woke up because I heard a cracking noise.

I thought it was a monster. So sue me, I'm paranoid. I figured for sure some T-Rexaur had stumbled onto our camp and was about to wreak wild blue havoc. So, naturally morbid person that I am, I stuck my head out the doorflap to see what was going on (and whether I'd have to go out and help). Good thing I slept in my clothes.

However, there was no T-Rexaur, no wild throes of battle, and nobody was out there… except for Squall. And Squall looked mightily pissed off, glaring down at a broken bough at his feet and muttering a curse word. I supposed he must have stepped on the branch and cracked it, and that had made the noise, and he hadn't wanted to wake anyone up.

I quickly drew back into my tent when he scanned our camp to make sure he hadn't woken anybody, then peeked back out when I thought the coast was clear. Squall was walking away from the camp, not looking back, and not holding his gunblade. I wondered where he was going, so confident that he wouldn't have to fight.

Well, now my curiosity was piqued. I scrambled out of my tent and followed him.

Squall's pace was brisk; I had to move quickly to keep up with him, and in the dark of the night I almost lost him once or twice. Finally, just when I was sure I couldn't keep this spy-act up and I'd have to go back, we- he- stopped.

We were by a brook- a river, if it had been any wider at all. It already looked deep enough- at least six or seven feet- and the moonlight made it ominous, glinting like a gemstone and casting dancing shadows around Squall's eyes. The camp was far behind us, out of sight.

I was just about the jump out of my hiding place in the shadows and cry something absyminally stupid such as 'Ah HA!' when, suddenly, Squall took off his pants.

I almost cried out in surprise and, well, amusement. Squall had wandered all the way out here just to jerk off? Why didn't he just do it in the camp? From the noises you could sometimes hear from, say, Zell's tent, it wasn't something guys had a huge problem with.

I really didn't want to watch, though, so I made to turn back, when Squall took off his jacket, too.

Well, then I just couldn't contain my curiosity, and continued to watch.

Off came Squall's boots, his undershirt, his arm warmers, his socks. The only things that stayed on were his griever ring and his boxers.

Then, with a brisk and businesslike aura, he dumped all of his clothes into the lake, and he removed a bar of soap from his pocket and began to scrub the ruff of his coat, his long, elegant fingers combing through the matted fur until it gleamed almost white.

Now I understood; he was doing his laundry.

I cleared my throat and stepped out of the shadows.

Squall jumped, and I mean jumped, and to my disbelief, actually fell into the water. He kind of choked, grabbed the grass on the side and pulled himself back out again, and, realizing it was me, glared like a dragon in my direction, making a wild angry motion with his right arm.

'Um,' I began, not really sure what to say in this situation, and trying really hard not to look at his baggy silk boxers. 'Are you doing your laundry?'

He did his Squall stare for a second, made the smallest possible nodding motion, and began to blush. And I don't mean a little bit, I don't mean a slight tinge of pink; he was beet red, from the roots of his tousled hair to his neck circled with its silver chain. He still glared, but he looked kind of funny, and I couldn't help but giggle a little bit, furtively.

'So this is your secret,' I said with a mock accusatory tone, shaking my finger at him scoldingly.

Squall looked at me with no expression and without saying anything, rubbed his temple, then knelt by the edge of the river again, rinsing out his pants. 'I didn't think you'd want to, so.' He said, as though it was a complete sentence.

I blinked. 'Hmm?'

He looked embarrassed and sullen- quite often did when somebody pressured him to speak. 'I didn't think you'd want to see me… you know… without clothes on, OK?! I figured you'd all find your own ways. Whatever… suits you.'

He finished his jacket and pants and started on his socks. They were gray wool and smelled strongly; not badly, just of Squall, sweat and metal and cinnamon all mixed together. Astringent.

'This suits me a lot more than seven day's worth of mud does!' I exclaimed petulantly and, before I realized what I was doing, unhooked my own top clasps and slid out of my garments to kneel half-nude beside my friend.

He made a surprised, almost frightened noise in his throat and I mischievously dumped all my clothes in together, careful not to let any escape my grasp and make a trip down the river; it would be a fine state of affairs if I spent the next day in just my bra and underwear because my clothes had undertaken a journey of their own. To my relief, however, the current wasn't strong, and the black serene water of the river enveloped the fabrics, hiding even their colors and shapes. I awkwardly found a zipper with my hands and began to scrub around it with my fingers.

Squall watched me for a second, shook his head, pulled his socks out of the water to rest beside the his jacket on the bank. "You've made a very grave mistake," he told me somberly.

"Oh?" I said, pulling my cleaned clothes back onto the bank. "And what's that?"

He grasped me by the unsuspecting wrist and, in one fluid motion, pulled me straight into the river. The freezing black water enveloped me; I popped to the surface indignantly, sputtering for air. Squall smirked at me. "Not expecting me to take revenge."

"For what?" I sputtered. "You got YOURSELF into this river. I didn't pull you."

Squall didn't say anything, just smirked.

I don't know what came over me, then. Probably a mild state of hypothermia combined with sleep deprivation. "I'll take that irritating smirk right off your face," I told him, and grabbed him and kissed him hard. He seemed surprised, although not unwilling; in a second, he was kissing me back. Knowing Squall, it was probably a survival strategy rather than a genuine display of affection; you know, conserving body heat in that cold cold river. Strictly business. SEEDy business.

After that? Well, we were naked teenagers in a river. Use your imagination. Although I will say that, at a certain point, the action moved onto the riverbank, rather than taking place in an actual river. Neither of us were stupid enough to try to catch a good night's sleep underwater.

Although it really wasn't like we were sleeping….

At any rate, the morning sun came up and caressed my face, and I greeted it with the time-honored words of teenage girls waking up in a field where they aren't supposed to wake up, in arms they aren't supposed to wake up in: "Oh, shit." Then I glanced at my side, to where our clothes should be, and I said it again, because what was I supposed to say? "Oh, SHIT."

"What?" Squall was sitting up sleepily. "What?"

"Our clothes," I told him, "Have eloped."

"Our cloth- WHAT?!" He jumped up, cursing, and peered at the spot on the river's edge – must too close to the water, in retrospect – where we'd left our clothes. Nothing. He squinted downriver.

"You're not going to make them appear by looking for them really, really hard," I told him patiently. He didn't say anything. "Look," I soothed him, "If we come upon those clothes again, I give you official permission to kill them. No-holds-barred. Ultimate revenge."

"I'm going back to camp," Squall said morosely, and set off in his gunblade and his boxers. Fine, I thought, and stretched out on the bank, sunning myself with a slight smile. Go back to the camp. Let him explain this one away. For once, Squall was stuck airing his laundry in public!