The hardest thing to get used to was that Esthar never really slept. At night it was a gleaming monument against the desert sky, artificial blue and white lights that lit the vast knotwork of overlapping streets, reflected off glass and metal towers and reached intangible fingers up to challenge the stars and dim them to a fainter glory. At no time after dark did the city ever cease; it quieted, a little, but the early evening hours brought people out in even greater droves to revel in the cool that swept in after dusk to chase the daytime heat away, and even in the late late hours the hiss of the lifts and trams only became further apart, never silent.
It had its good point, Zell had said once. If you were a night owl there was always something to do. There was no curfew. Squall couldn't argue it but ironically, he found he almost missed the Garden curfew of his cadet days. The one thing a curfew had done had ensured silent halls, dimmed lights and a deep quiet; something that he had learned, with the proper pass and a knowledge of which corridors to avoid, could be enjoyed. The hallways of Balamb Garden, bereft of the bustle of students that they saw during the day, had been a refuge of peace after classes.
There wasn't much peace to be found in Esthar, whether off duty or on. There were always people up and about. There were always lights on, always movement in the streets. It was never silent. Even up above the streets and lift lines the sound drifted up, the myriad lights of the city almost blinding in the darkness.
"Gil for your thoughts?" The voice was closer, more immediate; it blocked the hiss and swish of a lift tube in the distance and the deeper growl of a utility transport on the street. Squall gave way on the rail of the balcony as Laguna slid in beside him, taking the clear glass that was pushed into his hand with a raised eyebrow.
"Depends," he answered shortly. "Is this a bribe, or spiked?"
Laguna's smile quirked upwards, illuminated in shades of white and velvet gray against the backlight of his city. "Spiked," he responded promptly. "I know better than to bribe a Garden official."
Snorting, Squall took a sip of the clear liquid. Gin, cut by tonic and a twist of something harmlessly citrus, exploded across his tongue and burned a cool hot fire down his throat. He exhaled it, swirled the glass, and took another sip. "Just as long as we're clear that anything I say after this is off the record."
Laguna held up his own glass, then easily knocked back half of it. "I left the records behind hours ago," he said lightly. Leaning his elbows on the rail, he tilted his head, strands of hair that had escaped the tie at his nape falling across his cheek as he slanted a glance at the younger man beside him. "You had that look. The 'thinking too hard, distract me' one."
"I wasn't aware I had that one," Squall replied a touch sourly. Laguna just shook his head.
"Expression naming. It's a presidential prerogative," he explained. He shifted, his elbow tapping Squall's and then coming to rest, skin against skin with his own sleeves rolled up and the younger man's preferred jackets long since abandoned off hours in the Esthar heat. "As is bartering with foreign dignitaries, though I'm not sure I call that a 'prerogative' so much as a punishment. So, I repeat - gil for your thoughts?"
Squall turned his gaze back out over the city with a small shrug, eyes half lowered against the low glare of the lights. Laguna, watching him, reached out to brush his thumb against the side of the younger man's eye, prompting a flinch that forced him to draw his hand back. "Don't squint," he advised. "Premature wrinkles and you're going to start looking even more like me."
Squall made a sound low in his throat. "I don't look anything like you," he protested, but the tension around his eyes eased a bit. Squall took another sip of his drink, turning to watch the lights of one of the lift tubes streak across the city to the south. "Do you ever miss Galbadia?" he asked abruptly.
Laguna leaned on the railing, glass dangling from his fingertips precariously over a long drop to the gardens below. "There's parts of it I miss," he admitted. "Tangibles, mostly. There's days - especially when we're mired in report week - when I'd give it all up to be able to walk around the east side mall in Deling, pick up lunch at one of the little pasta shops, get a few beers and a slice of fudge to take home, kick back and relax... Some days I just miss the rain." He laughed softly. "I'm pretty sure memory has glossed over and glamorized the smell of rain on concrete." He glanced at the other man sidelong, thoughtful. "I miss the smell of the wind off the coast. Day trips to Dollet and walking on the beaches. 'Sand' and 'beach' aren't synonymous, no matter what Kiros says. We've got the sand here, but not the beaches."
"But it's still 'we'," Squall noted, not looking at him. "'We' and 'here'. You wouldn't leave."
"No," Laguna admitted quietly. "No, I probably wouldn't." He swept his hand out over the whole of the view, city lights and streets. "We've grown on each other, this old girl and I. I think I've gotten kind of used to it." Tipping his head to the side, he surveyed the other man consideringly. "What about you? What do you miss about Balamb?"
The younger man was silent for a long moment, watching the city lights. "It was quiet," he said at last, voice low. "You could hear the wind."
Laguna waited, watching, but Squall didn't say anything more. After one moment of silence stretched into another, he reached over and laid a light hand on the younger man's wrist. "Come on," he said, when Squall looked at him sharply.
Squall opened his mouth to protest, then shut it again, the trace of a frown lingering on his brow. A sigh, heaved through his chest, spoke eloquently about 'silly Galbadian soldiers' without saying a word, but in the end he pushed away from the balcony railing and let Laguna lead him inside.
Laguna didn't stop in the suite; went right through it, to the door, and out into the hall. "Where the hell are you going?" Squall demanded irritably.
"You'll see," Laguna insisted. "Come on - your curiosity will never be satisfied unless you do, you know that."
"That's assuming my curiosity holds a candle to your insanity," Squall growled, but he let Laguna take his wrist and pull him down the hall. through a few turns, until they came to one of the service doors spotted through the long corridors. Laguna let go of Squall's wrist only long enough to dig his wallet out of a back pocket, slip out a bank card, and make short, practiced work of prying open the circuit panel next to the door. Squall didn't even attempt to hide his groan. "The President of Esthar is hacking my security system."
"I've been doing it for years," Laguna admitted. His fingers were quickly and easily swapping wires among the circuits and after a moment the door slid easily open with a muted hiss. "And technically," he added, slipping the panel back into place, "this isn't your security system. It's still on the old grid. I asked Irvine to leave it that way - and then swore him to secrecy, so don't go jumping all over him tomorrow," he said sternly, waving a cautioning finger at the younger man. "President trumps Commander, remember?"
"Not about your security, it doesn't," Squall hissed, but Laguna shushed him and, grabbing his wrist again, pulled him through the door into the service corridor. The narrow, drab hallway lead out into a crossway; Laguna pulled them left, to the plain metal doors of an elevator.
"If you rewire that..." Squall ground out, voice dangerously low, but Laguna waved him away.
"Don't have to." Sighing, he tapped the call button, leaving his grip loose on Squall's wrist. "Come on... just a little further? Trust me?"
Squall looked away and didn't say anything, but he left his wrist in Laguna's grasp and stepped into the elevator when the doors chimed open.
The controls inside weren't labeled; Laguna punched one and then leaned back against the console, hiding it from view. "Not much longer," he promised. "You'll like it. I hope you will, I mean."
A heavy sigh answered him. "Whatever."
They were moving up; and Squall had rode enough lifts in Esthar to realize that, enclosed, he had no real idea of how fast or what kind of distance was being covered - interior lifts weren't as fast as the lift tubes through the city, but they could be fast enough. After another moment of silence the dim motion slowed to a stop, the lift chimed softly, and the doors opened.
They were on the roof. The presidential palace had a respectable grounds and gardens surrounding it; there were no other buildings looming immediately on any side, the roof open to the sky and air. There were gardens there as well, dry little things of succulent plants bred to withstand the desert heat, that twined around and between the quiet darkness of evening retired solar panels.
"Figured you might not have been up here," Laguna said lightly, pulling Squall away from the elevator and into the open. "Now, just give me this," he added, retrieving the half empty glass from Squall's grasp, "and stand right there. There! What do you hear?"
His expression was expectant and after a moment, with a sigh, Squall cocked his head and listened. The glow of the city was all around them, muted by the long stretch of almost darkness that was the roof. He listened for the sounds of the city, the lifts and the trams and the transports, the hiss of the lines and the low growl of the streets that never ceased, never stilled, was never quiet.
It was so soft that at first he almost didn't hear it, his ears too used to listening for the other noises. But they were muted on the rooftop, like the glow of the city lights, distant and muffled, and on the roof, high above the streets, there the soft, quiet whisper of...
"...the wind," Squall said, voice low. "I can hear the wind."
He couldn't see Laguna's smile any more, the expression lost in the dimness, but he could hear it in the other man's voice and feel it in the hands that caught his, giving him back his glass and lingering over the warmth of finger against finger. "It's coming off the Nortes mountains," he said softly. "All that way, over the salt flats; it's nothing like the wind off the Balamb glaciers, I'm sure, but sometimes, when I can't sleep, I'll come up here and listen to it. It's as quiet as the city knows how to be."
Squall closed his eyes, tipping his head back. The wind whispered softly, dry and cool, smelling of salt and sand and nothing like home, but it was wind, something that rarely touched the lower streets of the great sprawl of Esthar city. Laguna's hands moved; Squall jerked slightly as glass tinged against glass, the other man tapping the edges of their cups together. "To home," Laguna suggested quietly, raising his glass.
Squall hesitated, then raised his own in answer. "To wherever you are," he answered, and drained the last of the gin in a long, burning swallow. Laguna took the glass from him, setting them on the gravel of the rooftop path, and wrapped his arms around the younger man from behind, his cheek resting easily against Squall's hair.
"To wherever you choose to be," he whispered, and Squall didn't protest, his own hands coming to rest lightly on the other man's wrist.