Cold Metal, a final fantasy viii fanfic

Author's Note: 'Cold Metal' (named after that Ambeon song, like its predecessor) is a one-shot sequel to "Estranged." For those of you just checking into this first, I'd recommend reading the initial fic first to get a feel for where this one is coming from.

"Cold Metal"

Her raven hair is scattered on the pillow in smooth spirals and long waves.

The cold metal of the lighter feels strangely warm to my hand, and the fire it provides me for my cigarette is warmer still. I suck down the first breath, feel it's heavenly, choking essence wash down my throat, and swallow. I reach for the bed stand and retrieve the bottle of wine. It's still half-full. I decide to not bother with the glass and drink it straight from the bottleneck.

The night breeze flows through the curtains and brushes up against my back. I ignore it and take another drag.

I hear her shiver, and she draws her knees to her chest. I look at her.

Her raven hair is scattered on the pillow, right where I left it after releasing it from my fist.

"Irvy..." she moans, the moan of discomfort and longing, "...come back to bed."

Why did you have to go and call me that?

I turn to her, wine bottle still in hand. I take another sip. The cigarette burns away in between my fingers. From the open doors of the balcony, I can see the faint glow of the Garden, bright halos in the dark of the night.

She's fucking beautiful. Luscious hips, full breasts, majestic legs, beautiful feet, cherubic face. Shrill screams and sensual moans. Sensitive earlobes. She's been here every day of the last week, giving me opportunities to discover her, to discover what she's like.

To discover who she's not, who she will never be.

Light touch on my shoulder, moving down my arm. She pulls me closer. I place the bottle on the nightstand, and my cigarette to the ashtray right next to it. Her full lips invite me, and I'm ready, as always, but I just don't want to.

I hold her close. I can feel her heartbeat.

It wasn't anything I intended, that much I knew. I don't think she did either. She just turned up in my doorstep, wondering if we could just talk. Said she needed a friend. I obliged. Selphie was out with Quistis, Zell was nowhere to be found and Squall, I found out in the first fifteen minutes of our talk, just staring at a report and chugging down an entire bottle of Estharian gin by himself.

I would later learn that it was a girl, 16 years old, was bludgeoned to death by Timber Wolves in their latest anti-Caraway effort. She had family in Deling and Squall had to phone and tell them that their daughter was dead. It had torn him to pieces, and he was trying to process it all.

Of course, we got a glass or two or a bottle of wine going between us and it all came pouring out: so much doubt about Squall and her relationship with him, that I was amazed she was with him at all.

Of course, when she turned the subject to me, I found that I had more to say about my ongoing affair with Selphie than I first thought possible.

Her perfume, the scent of jasmine, night-bloom. Sharp, alcoholic and pronounced, like a white needle point in a sea of black.

The more we drank, the more comfortable we got. After the mid-point of the first bottle was reached, she was basically leaning against me, and I, able to create distance to reach for the wine, was all around her.

It wasn't until the middle of the second bottle and well into a conversation entirely about President Loire's debut as an actor, that something shifted. I don't know if it was the wine or something else, but everything suddenly went in a different direction altogether. The air got serious, the silence got bitter. She told me that nobody had listened to her, proper, in quite some time, that Squall, at best, was a mildly responsive wall.

I said, and I do remember well what I said, that Selphie was often too busy talking to listen.

I think that was the tipping point. It then became a competition of complimenting one another, with more than a hint of flirting underneath all of that.

She said that most girls in the Garden would want me.

I said that I hadn't seen them around. Besides, none of them would be as beautiful as her.

She drained her glass, smiled, and then grabbed me by the back of my head and kissed me. It took me about ten seconds to run out of resistance, a point marked by her tongue sliding into my mouth.

The rest is a bit of a blur. Clothes on the floor, right there on the couch, not even giving a shit who walked in or who could see, we fucked each other's brains out.

The way she moved her hips drove me crazy.

She moves her hips in a lazy circle, grinding against me. She wants more. She always does. I don't think I have more to give, but it was never about that before, and it's not about that now.

It felt, strangely, second-nature to settle into the routine after that. Wherever our schedules meshed, we'd meet. Usually in my room, or one of those hidden-away places the Garden was full of. If we had time, we had time to laze into it and pick it up, if we didn't it was a quickie here, a quickie there.

We fucked. There's nothing else to it. We didn't hang out, hold hands or went out to the Quad, we just fucked. Anything after that was just a medley of encounters, in several, almost pre-set places, all blurring into one drawn-out session.

And every time we did, I think I liked it, and every time I caught myself liking it, I felt sicker and sicker.

After the second week, I started avoiding Squall whenever possible. I couldn't look him in the eye anymore. I just couldn't, I was afraid I'm fucking your valentine would be written all over my face.

With one hand circling between her legs, I gently bite on one of her nipples, and she shivers to it. I look up, and she arches her back, raven strands whipping around.

I think of Selphie.

I always thought of Selphie. It was taking all I had to keep her happy and Rinoa satisfied. I spent half my time making sure Selphie wouldn't taste or smell her on me. I spent the other half of my time trying to keep up a steady performance with Selphie, which, given that she had a high sex drive, was quite a chore.

After I while, I stopped trying to keep up. I just couldn't do it anymore.

Selphie didn't understand it, but chalked it up to too many responsibilities tiring me out. She wasn't wrong, and she wasn't exactly right.

Much as I had tried to avoid it, comparisons were springing up in my mind. I couldn't help but notice things I never had or would before, and every time I did, I started to like my situation, what I had done, and Selphie, less and less.

I'm liking this less and less, but she calls, I oblige. She tastes bitter and sore, and she's clutching at my hair, trying to press my head deeper in.

She can't do that, but she can have my tongue.

And then one day, everything ended just as suddenly as it had started.

I didn't know then that she would just end it like that. It wasn't that one day she stopped coming, and stopped meeting me in all those secret places she had taught me. It was that one day, she told me that she couldn't do this anymore.

I understood well enough, because when she said that, all I could think about was how I couldn't do it anymore either.

We fucked one last time, for the first time in her room. It was like the first time, only worse, filled with things we'd rather not face. We fucked, and that was that. Just as it had started.

That was when I decided to go. Get out of Balamb Garden, away from her, away from Squall, away from Selphie. Away from all of them. I phoned it in, and Galbadia Garden, after aiding the Sorceress in the war, was more than glad to be endorsed by a veteran.

I left. I washed my hands of the whole thing.

I push her on her stomach, grab her hips and enter. She moans, grabs the bed sheets. I build a rhythm quickly, starting slow, almost too lazy to fuck, and I count the strokes.

She likes it. They all do.

I give her all I have left.

And none of it means a damn thing, none of it, it's all just blood and swear and cum and juice, it's all bodies and excretions, it's all exhibitions and nudity, it's all exchange. We lost everything, we lost every damn thing, we gave everything we had and now we can't even live in the world we made, I can't live in the world we made, I want to run, run away from it all and not have to face it every damn day, every damn morning when I look into the mirror. There, I see a stranger, I see a traitor, I see a coward who couldn't cut it, who could never cut it, a coward who uses a gun because he can't stomach being in the thick of it.

I look into the mirror and there he is, looking back at me like he has the right, looking back at the bullshit big shot I made of myself.

I am nothing. I'm a big bright nothing to no-one.

Selphie...

I grab her by her hair, raven locks sticking out from between my fingers, and drive into her. I grab her by the shoulders and I slam into her, hard, fast, ugly, because I fucking hate her, I fucking hate her and the parade of hers that I let into my bed. I hate her for making me feel this way, I hate her for taking everything, I hate her, I fucking despise her very existence.

She screams in ecstasy and all I want to do is slit her fucking throat, so I grab her by the throat instead and pull her back. She digs it. I hate it.

I hate this.

I fall asleep where I lay. I hope she follows me down.

I dream of that café in Deling that we sat once, tired of walking around and finding nothing to do but shop for clothes, which, after a few stores, got old pretty quickly. We're sitting there, talking about Ellone. Rinoa comes and joins us, and I grow tense. She knows, she's been there, and she looks like she's gonna tell.

Then Selphie tells me that she knows it too, and that she understands. She will always be there for me.

She always was...

I wake up to the sound of keys jangling. I look, and there she is, buttoning up her uniform's jacket. She puts her keychain into her pocket.

She opens the door to leave, and I notice, again. Chestnut hair, shoulder-length. I look to my side. I see that she's left the wig that she wore every time, the person she wore every time, on the pillow.

Raven strands on the pillow in smooth spirals and long waves.