(what we lost in the fire)
"You're ridiculous," she tells him, with an eyeroll and a shove and that outlandish streak of blonde in her hair tossed over her shoulder.
(He tracks the path of it like he'll never see it again, and it's prophetic, that realization.)
"Nah, seriously, just listen to me, it'll totally work. Nothing says I have to live on campus, and Timber's, what? A few hours away by train. You could go back and forth- what the hell's the word? Commute."
"You make it sound like I'd be working some boring job!"
She fits so neatly beneath his arm, like he was built just to do this, to walk with her like this. (In too deep, Fuu says, surly and scowling and genuinely looking out for his best interests, because that's what friends are for. He takes her advice under consideration, and yet it seems to dissolve into dust the second Rinoa comes into his line of sight.)
Seifer laughs, a brief chuckle at the preposterous notion of Rinoa Heartilly ever doing something so boring and mundane as a job, even if she spends fifteen hours a week shelving books at Timber's tiny library in exchange for enough of a paycheck to keep the Owls in craft supplies for their dioramas. Their mission plans.
"See, now you say that, and all I'm seeing is you in one of those hot secretary outfits-" He doesn't even get the whole sentence out before she smacks his hand and makes an indignant scoff.
"Jerk."
"You love me."
"Yeah, yeah, keep telling yourself that, mister."
He stops her and kisses her and perhaps it's just a hair too indencent for the twilight hours of this little podunk town, but Seifer has never, ever cared about people's opinions of him, and he is not about to start now.
Her cheeks are soft and silk beneath callused palms, her arms come up around his back, fingers digging into his shirt out of pure reflex (desire, he wants to say, want and need and lust, but what can he say? He's seventeen, and his girlfriend is gorgeous.)
When he pulls back, her lips are parted and pink and flushed and her eyes are closed, as if she's dreaming.
"Okay," Rinoa concedes, blinking back into reality, "maybe a little. But that was totally cheating."
"I can do it again- make it a fair contest."
"Seifer."
His laughter is rich and genuine and they walk on Timber's cobblestone streets hand in hand like kids, into the fading twilight, into the approaching dark.
"Seriously, though. Come to Balamb. It's not as hopelessly shitty as I make it sound."
She shakes her head and smiles up at him. "You'd get distracted from all your official SeeD business having me around."
(He doesn't tell her he failed the test twice and the upcoming year will be the third time, the charm, as they say, and all he can do is hope.)
"Only a little," he wheedles, and she rolls her eyes, slugs him lightly in the arm with her free hand. "Can I take that as a maybe?"
"Maybe."