Inconsequential Matters
FF8 (Sq/S, Sq/Z)
By rtuko
rtuko@email.com
complete 10/10/03
Squall was asleep, and that was just fine with Zell. The triangular face was creased in what looked like pain, the tanned skin contrasting dark against the sterile white gauze covering his eyes and forehead. A gloved hand was thrown carelessly against the pillow, the other underneath his cheek.
From where Zell was standing in the doorway, he could see the mess of Squall's hair where dried blood had glued the strands together. Doc Kadowaki had wiped off Squall's face, but apparently hadn't bothered with the rest of it.
The room reeked of Potion. Zell supposed the wound was too superficial and the medicine too expensive to use a Hi-Potion. A pity--Hi-Potions didn't smell nearly as bad.
Squall moaned and turned over onto his other side. Zell could hear the stiffened hair crunching and crackling.
The room was hot and humid. The air conditioning had probably gone out again.
Squall spoke suddenly, and Zell jumped. "Who are you?"
Zell sputtered and stepped backward, feeling sick.
Of course Squall wouldn't know who he was--after all, Zell was only in his class and hadn't spoken more than two words to him in the years they had attended Garden. "I---I-- I'm--" He noticed something. Great, Zell, why don't you make sure first that he's awake before you make a fool of yourself?
"Come back!" Squall said, a note of frustration entering his voice. "Who are you?"
He'll have a conversation with a total stranger and he won't even look at you. Score one for the loser, a voice that sounded like Seifer said in his head.
What was he doing here? Zell sighed. He looked at the little vase of wilting daffodils in his hand and felt abjectly stupid. What had he been thinking? That Squall would look up with a smile on his face and gush out his appreciation for Zell's thoughtfulness?
Yes, that's exactly what you thought, Seifer's voice said.
"I must've been smokin' something," Zell muttered, turning to leave. Oh ho, you come all this way and spend your money and you aren't even gonna leave your pathetic flowers, chicken?
"Shut up," Zell growled.
"Talking to yourself again, stupidnik?"
Zell jumped and nearly dropped his flowers. Seifer smirked, though it clearly hurt him to do so. A large square gauze bandage matching Squall's was swathed across his forehead and fastened there with surgical tape. "You sure you passed that mental health test, or didja cheat?"
"Shut up, Seifer," Zell glowered. Yelling would wake Squall, and he didn't want that. He didn't want Squall to know that he'd been here at all.
"Oh, I'm pierced with that witty comeback, chicken." Seifer was blocking the doorway.
"Move, Seifer." He tried to ease through the gap between Seifer and the doorjamb, but Seifer simply shifted and pushed the smaller blonde backward with a fingertip.
"What're you doing here, huh?"
Zell stopped, and tried to hide the flowers behind his back without being too obvious about it. "None of your business." He looked up and glared at the taller cadet.
Seifer looked at him. His glance swept from Zell's reddened face to the yellow flowers peeking out from behind his back to the way Zell was shifting uneasily from foot to foot. The opaque eyes narrowed. "So that's how it is," he murmured.
Zell jerked. "He's my friend, you...you... pervert!" His ears felt like they were on fire--a detail, he knew, Seifer wouldn't miss.
Seifer leaned an arm against the wall just outside the doorway and flicked a finger at a daffodil. "Funny, last I heard, Squall didn't have any friends," he said, his face unamused. "And even if he did, I highly doubt that you would be one of them." He smiled then, and took one of the yellow flowers before Zell could protest. "Or do you disagree?"
"And how the fuck would you know?" Zell snapped, his fingers tensing on the glass vase, wishing this conversation was happening somewhere other than five feet from Squall, or not at all.
Seifer snapped the blossom off its stalk. "Let's see. He loves Zell," pulling one petal off and dropping it onto the floor. "Or--He loves Zell not." Another petal gone. He grabbed Zell's wrist with one hand and pinned it to the wall as the smaller blonde grabbed for the flower. "Tsk, tsk, Zell, didn't the instructors ever tell you that you're too impatient? And you need to learn how to share."
"You're such a bastard!" Zell hissed, still keeping his voice low, jerking his arm away.
"Yes, probably," Seifer replied, his expression not changing. He quirked an eyebrow, a gesture undermined by the large bandage covering his forehead. "You gonna keep your paws to yourself, or should I scream rape?"
Zell said nothing, only flinching as Seifer continued to rip petals off. "Ah--hey, lookit this, he loves Zell again." Drop. "But no, not anymore!" Drop. Seifer paused, one petal left. "Well.... what do you know..." He picked the fifth petal and lifted it to Zell's down-turned face. "Want it?" he murmured, serious now. "The culmination of your dreams...the great, lion-hearted Squall on your arm..."
Zell knocked his hand aside. "You forgot one," he said, in a harsh voice not his own, and snatched the remains from Seifer's hand. He pulled off the cup-shaped part of the blossom, crumpled it, and let it fall to the floor.
"Ah," Seifer murmured. "We're being realistic here." He was no longer blocking the doorway, but neither noticed. "Though that technically doesn't count as a petal, I think."
"What," Zell asked slowly, the question just occurring to him, "are you doing here, Seifer?"
Seifer looked at him again for a long moment, another searching look that shifted over his shoulder to the young man lying unconscious on the bed. The expression that Zell couldn't identify wiped away like a chalkboard and a bitter smile tugged at Seifer's mouth.
"To talk of many things," he said, low enough that Zell could barely hear him, "Of shoes--and ships--and sealing wax--of cabbages--and kings..."
Zell studied him. 'So that's how it is', indeed. "I didn't know you liked poetry," he said instead, keeping his tone neutral. Didn't think you were smart enough to know what poetry was, either, he nearly added, before he remembered Instructor Trepe's choice advice about keeping his trap shut and his ass unbruised, and snapped his mouth closed.
"You don't know a lot of things," Seifer snarled at him. Then he smiled, a smile Zell had never ever seen on another person before and hoped never to see in the future. It was bitter, bright with cruelty and anger, and only tempered by a profound sadness in his eyes that Zell was sure Seifer didn't know was there. "For instance," Seifer whispered, leaning in so close that Zell bumped his head on the wall behind him trying to lean away, "you can pine away all you like, but Squall doesn't want men." He stood upright again and regarded Zell with that unnerving smile. "Because, you see," he continued, rubbing his bandage angrily so that red blossomed on the white gauze, "I found that out up close and personal."
"Or," Zell breathed, unable to tear his eyes away from Seifer, "Perhaps he doesn't want you."
"I wonder how he inspires that kind of love," Seifer said quietly, almost to himself, as he examined the blood on his fingers. "He certainly doesn't try." To Zell's relief, when he looked up again he had lost that frightening expression and seemed to be back to his nonchalant self. "Whatever, just giving ya a warning. Be stupid and don't take it, I don't care." He turned to go, tossing a packet onto Squall's bed. It made a soft, metallic clinking.
"Er--" Zell said to his departing back. "You should go see Doc K again. For the cut. You probably ripped the stitches. Uh, you know. Cuz it might scar."
Seifer tossed a harsh chuckle over his shoulder and strode on without looking back. "Oh, I hope so. I really do."
Zell was alone again in the stuffy room, clutching his vase of nearly dead flowers. He put it slowly in the sink, then turned and regarded the packet. Squall was still asleep.
He touched it, then picked it up, nervously glancing about to make sure Squall wouldn't suddenly wake up, or Seifer wouldn't suddenly come back.
What could Seifer possibly be giving Squall?
The package opened easily, and the contents slithered in a silvery rush into his hand. A necklace, a heavy silver chain with a stylized lion. Squall's necklace.
Why would--?
Squall made a soft sound, and Zell nearly dropped in his haste to put it back. He nervously placed the package exactly where it had been in case Seifer came back to check, and backed out of the room, nearly running into Instructor Trepe, who was on her way in. She gave him a surprised look as he hurried away without a word.
There was way too much to consider.