For Becca. Happy Birthday dear, hope it's a good one.
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The sorceress had been defeated, or rather, would be defeated by their past selves in the future –time travel is weird-, each country was left to reorganize the gaps in their leadership, and SeeD was expected to flourish in the wake of the wars and the aftermath of the Lunar Cry. The world pretty much went on as it did before the third sorceress war. Except that now most of the higher ups were aware that something big loomed in the future and there was nothing they could do to stop it because it had already been stopped.
Despite this, every single country was holding a festival to celebrate the sorceress's defeat and every single country wanted the brave heroes who defeated her to be present. Rinoa and Selphie had been sent to Galbadia, Quistis and Zell were visiting Dollet, leaving Esthar to Squall and Irvine.
The theory was that the one responsible party would be watching over the one most likely to cause an incident, but in practice it was… Well, Squall didn't know how the others were doing, but he spent more of the party trying to dodge the President and his… well he wasn't quite sure what the formal term was for Kiros and Ward, but he was dodging them anyway. They were strangely attached to him for reasons that would probably be explained if he would sit still and stop running away every time they stepped into his line of sight, but since whenever Laguna came within two feet of him, he invaded his personal space and therefore Squall made his excuses and ran. He hadn't seen Irvine since they arrived, but he trusted that the sniper knew how to behave.
As soon as the thought ran through his mind, he was instantly disappointed as he turned a corner and Irvine was suddenly there, by the dessert table. Standing on his head for reasons Squall didn't want to contemplate, because of course the instant one of his comrades left his line of sight they were embarrassing him. He was wobbling, but doing a decent job of keeping himself upright even though he hadn't removed his ever present cowboy hat.
As soon as Squall stepped forward to ask what he thought he was doing, Irvine's entire body shuddered and he pitched backwards onto the dessert table, sweets, cakes and cookies flying everywhere, one landing right on Squall's face. For a moment, he stood there stunned, not even bothering to wipe the frosting off his face as Irvine groaned, then burst out into laughter.
Squall glared at him, wiping the frosting from his eyes and flicking it towards the ground. Somehow, Irvine's hat had remained on and that just made it even more ridiculous. Distantly, he registered that someone was screeching and complaining about the damage done, and that he was probably going to spend the rest of the night making apologies, but for now, he focused on the sniper sprawled before him, glancing up at him from over the brim of his hat.
"Hey Squall." Irvine greeted like he wasn't flat on his back on a table, covered in frosting, bits of cake and some jello-gloop that looked like blood from a distance, slurring his words in a distinctive telling manner. Squall's eyes narrowed dangerously as he stalked over to stand in front of his idiot friend.
"Are you drunk?" He asked, glaring down at him as people suddenly started moving around them, as if his words had broken through the stop spell placed on them when Irvine fell onto the dessert table. Frosting started to fly because these were the people who willingly placed Laguna Loire in charge of them, and food hitting people in the face was obviously the start of a food fight not an incident. Squall mentally cut the amount of apologies he'd have to make down to one and continued glaring down at Irvine.
"Nope." Irvine chirped, grinning up at Squall like he had hung the moon. He made no move to get off of the table or stand up and wipe the smeared desserts off of him. Squall sighed, resting one hand on his hip as he glared at a point a couple feet from Irvine's head, one hand rising to rub the bridge of his nose, tracing the scar Seifer gave him.
"You are a terrible liar." Squall sighed, shoulders slumping in defeat as he leaned down and extending a hand to help Irvine up. "Let's get you cleaned up."