A/N: Thank you, lovelies. Can I have a mini fangirl moment and say omg to sissyHIYAH. I've been in love with your Renfair Seifer/Quistis fic for a long time.


Quistis Trepe is not a fan of razors in any regard.

The bathroom is cluttered with toothbrushes in a cup - Zell's a bright red, Bookworm's purple, Irvine's green, Selphie's striped and Squall's a dark blue. Rinoa's is pink with tiny wings on it (what was with her and the wing motif, anyway?). Irvine and Squall both have razors sitting on the enamel, Zell is freakishly bald in his facial hair area and doesn't require one.

Selphie and Rinoa's razors are in the rusted, already-coated-with-soap-mildew tub. A puddle of sand from the beach sits in the bottom. Quistis brushes her teeth and glares at the girl razors.

She understands armpits. Yes - those need to be shaved quite often. Not for vanity purposes, but rather so the hair doesn't itch and distract her or make her smell and give away her position to sensitive fiends. Leg hair? She understands why girls shave it (smooth legs, sexual attraction, etc), but she's never liked to do it herself. It was always more of a peer pressure thing - Rinoa commenting that Quistis' legs were hairy, Selphie laughing. Quistis insisted it was because she'd been busy in the office, but the fact of the matter was she hated to cut her legs up. She wasn't good at shaving. The blood and the knicks and the bandaids and scabs. She got enough injuries fighting fiends and being a SeeD - getting more shaving was illogical.

But they are at the beach, so Quistis does her best to shave every so often.

What she really doesn't understand is shaving in more sensitive areas.

Rinoa and Selphie rave about it. They even talk about….'shapes', as though that place were a topiary garden to be sculpted and perfected. It gives Quistis hives to even think about taking a bladed object near that area. She upkeeps it, of course, when it gets too…wild, but the level Selphie and Rinoa are at is far above her.

Is it these moments Quistis realizes she knows more about Rinoa and Selphie's (and therefore Squall's and Irvine's) sex life than she needs to. But it's the most frequent topic of conversation besides clothes and all she does is listen, so it's not so bad.

In some ways, Quistis feels inferior to Selphie and Rinoa for not having sex. She feels inferior to most of her students and all of the adults in the world, since they have been kissed and she has not. But she's no longer concerned with love, so she hasn't felt inferior for a while. She's never going to be kissed, or have sex, or maybe she will but that will be a far off thing and she's alright with it, being 'that' girl, the career woman who, at forty, cleans the house every Saturday, eats precious little other than microwave meals, and rents banal romantic comedies because every other movie reminds her of how life is too serious. She'll most likely pick men from bars or the gym and sleep with them for the tension release, and they'll leave in the morning and she'll go to work and it will be fine. If she's lucky she'll find someone who's clean and kind and deigns to have sex with her on a weekly basis, that way she won't have to go bar diving.

This is, of course, assuming she likes sex at all.

She could hate it. She could be one of those ones with the blinding pain, or the fast partner, or be left hanging when she's close to the edge. It could just be boring. How would she even initiate the conversation? Would it just come naturally or would she have to make the first move? Wouldn't it all be embarrassing? She is quite sure she would burn up from shame. Which moves were the right ones? Which moves would make her look experienced to hide the fact she was not?

She sighs. This thinking about boys business is far too much work and energy.


Poopee has taken to streaking about the house in various states of distress if he hasn't seen Seifer for more than a half hour. Quistis wishes this could be said for her and her housemates as well. Alas, a kitten's love is both short and indiscriminate in that it doesn't care if the object of affection yells obscenities at it and threatens to skin it alive if it licks him one more time.

"Don't you fucking touch me with that paw. I ain't your scratching post!"

Poopee mewls, jumps on his chest, and presents Seifer his butt.

"Get your ass out of my face! Ugh, it stinks!"

Quistis rifles through her bag and pulls out her bathing suit - a dark purple one piece. She wonders if it's too plain. Seifer holds Poopee at arms length.

"Oi, Instructor, don't tell me. That's your swimsuit from swimming class back in seventh year, right?"

"Of course not."

"It definitely is. Look, there's that white stripe on the bottom and the Balamb logo. Hyne, Instructor, you really like to crush my hopes for something skimpy."

"Do you want to eat tonight?" She sniffs.

"It was just a joke. You can't threaten cripples like that!"

She watches him block Poopee from trying to crawl back on his chest with madly waving arms.

"You are far from crippled."

"Crippled inside, instructor. You know, crippled inside and all that deep shit."

She takes her glasses off and grabs her sunscreen. "Would the afflicted area be your brain, by any chance?"

Seifer lets out a chortle ending with a snarl. "I said get your ass out of my face, dunce nut!"

Poopee mewls proudly. Quistis starts out the door.

"Instructor, wait!"

She sighs and walks backward a few steps to look at him. "What is it?"

"Bathroom."

She changes in the bathroom before he mucks it up. She watches him walk down the hall ahead of her, a Sleep spell brewing in her veins just in case. He walks straighter, stronger. The wounds on his back peek through the sleep-ruffled, hiked-up shirt. They're all but healed. She waits outside the door.

"Get off on hearing guys pee, do you Instructor?"

She doesn't dignify him with a response. The shower turns on, and she bristles.

"Don't you dare, Seifer. I have a beach to be at with the others."

"Come in here and stop me then."

She won't. She won't and she knows it and he knows it. She fumes and clutches her beach bundle with white fingers. Minutes drag. Selphie tears out of the door in a tiny bikini, shirtless Irvine and Zell on her heels. Bookworm in her tankini nods courteously to Quistis in farewell. Frilly two-piece Rinoa pounds on the door.

"Don't take too long, Seifer, or we'll make you pay the water bill."

"Kiss my ass, princess!"

The insult rolls off her. Rinoa smiles at Quistis and dashes out the door. Shirtless Squall nods to her.

"Keep an eye on him."

"Y-Yes."

The house is quiet. The heat in her face subsides. Her swimsuit had looked so plain compared to the others'. When the water stops she has half a mind to wrench the door open and blast Seifer with the Sleep spell. Or Petrify. Whichever made him lifeless faster.

"Huh. Lemme guess," He pauses. "The plain white toothbrush is yours, right?"

The way he says plain tugs at something in her. "If you so much as touch my toothbrush -"

The sound of the sink, and him brushing. She can take the taunts, the insults, but this invasion of mouth privacy is unacceptable.

"You can say it." She snaps.

"Sway whut?" Mouth full of toothpaste.

"I'm boring."

"Whut dah hrell rr yew rahling abut?

"The swimsuit. The toothbrush. I'm boring."

A pause. He spits. "You're sensible, Instructor. Err, what's the word Fuu would say…"

Fujin had a word for her?

"UTILITARIAN." Seifer bellows. Quistis jumps. "That's the one."

The door opens. Steam billows out. He is shirtless - much different from blocky Zell, barely-defined Irvine, and lean Squall. She wishes she could say the thick cords of muscle entranced her. If she was a normal girl, maybe they would've. But it's the scars that have her staring.

There are hundreds. Pearly patches of skin. Fang marks. He had put himself through a shredder.

She wonders why.


He drapes his shirt across his arm and adjusts his pants. Feels like a person again, with the hot water waking his skin and the sparking mint in his mouth. He opens the door.

She looks fine. She looks like Quistis. Not the Quistis of Balamb Garden, but the Quistis of Centra Orphanage. Golden hair long, limbs milk white and strong, swimsuit fitting her like a second skin. She's never been Rinoa or Selphie skinny, not even in the orphanage - always taller and broader in the shoulders and hips. Normal girls had complexes about not being skinny girls. Quistis in general is a seething mass of complexes carefully hidden by a maternal façade. Irvine's words, not his. Like hell he'd come up with gay shit like that.

But he agrees with it.

Her blue eyes widen. "Your wound looks better."

He looks down. The skin is pink. Another scar. Like he cares. "Yeah? Princess did a good job healing it."

Back in bed. She clips the manacles on again. Golden hair curtain brushes his face, the skin of his stomach. He bites back a groan. Groaning would freak her out. Freak him out. Make it awkward between them. She's the last person he wants to be awkward with. Poopee settles on the end of the bed. She looks like she wants to say something.

"Spit it out, Instructor."

"Three years of no contact. We presumed you were dead."

"S'how I wanted it to be."

She glares. Without the glasses her eyes are brighter, more colorful. He can see the lashes.

"Go have fun, or whatever. Tell 'em they're faggots for me, will you?"

It's obvious to him, the way she shifts in her swimsuit and holds the towel around her. She's uncomfortable in so little clothing. She's uncomfortable about her body. In the warrior sense her physical confidence is infallible. In the woman sense, she's defunct.

He almost laughs. It's stupid. Quistis Trepe - golden marble girl, fox-eyed and sharp as the whip she specialized in. Everything a girl should want to be stands there, looking angry and unsure of the fact she's pretty. Very pretty. Like one of those fucking princesses in a play. Looking like she's scared to go down to the beach in that swimswuit - as a woman. To face her friends. To face the fact she's different from them. To face Ice-Dick.

"Pubes doesn't like you, Instructor. Never will. So don't worry so much."

Her glare fades. "I do not like him."

"You do. But it's going away. Time, and all that bullshit, right?"

"Three years," She insists.

"You didn't miss me."

"No."

"Good." He grins. "Get out of here. I'm gonna try to whack off."

She rolls her eyes. "You never fail to be delicate."

"Why would I wanna be delicate when you already do it so well, Instructor?"

Her blue eyes rake over his chest, and he feels a swell of pride in his lungs as her eyes hitch on his lines and definitions. It takes him a second to realize she's studying the scars.

"You followed your dream, Seifer," She murmurs. "That's more than most people can say."

She leaves. He stares at the ceiling.

Hynedamn her. Hynedamn her insight and piercing blue eyes and long legs and her words that echo in his head and make him want to be seven again, five again, to be held again, to be locked away somewhere warm where nothing can get to him again.

Maybe.

Maybe it'll get better.

Time, and all that bullshit.


Quistis sits under the umbrella and watches the sea sparkle. Selphie makes a snowman of sand, drawing the words 'ugly' and 'seifer' in it. Zell makes a sand chicken right next to it and writes 'chicken wuss'. Even Squall's mouth quirks up with amusement. Rinoa can't stop laughing, strap of her swimsuit falling, and Irvine chortles until he chokes on his beer.

Quistis pushes Rinoa's strap up her shoulder and smiles. She tries not to think about work, but it never fails to creep into her mind. Which patch of sea was the Sapphire Dragon hiding in? Where, for that matter, were the other two on her list - the Ruby Condor and Onyx Tortoise? She had to find them, too. She'd stock some Fire element resistance, tonight, and rearrange Diablos' effect on her weapon to include poisoning -

Irvine calls her name, and she turns her head to be greeted with an offering of spiked lemonade.

"Just for a bit, Quisty." The sniper smiles. "Just think about having fun for a bit."

She sips her lemonade - sour, sweet, bitter. The snowman's large head and slightly roman nose bear a striking resemblance. Zell kicks the snowman in the stomach, and he and Selphie step back and agree the footprint makes it better.

Irvine starts crafting a house for the snowman out of driftwood. He quietly chips away with his knife. Selphie plants the shavings in the snowman's head, like hair. Only when the snowman is finished and in his home do the others begin to think about swimming - Rinoa splashing Squall, him flicking his hair as if annoyed (he isn't, he really isn't), Irvine throwing Selphie in the water. Bookworm stays with Quistis, both of them similar in the regard their pale skin would burn in an instant in that sun.

The snowman watches the water.

Quistis thinks it touching, that 'Seifer' is here with them. Even with him trapped in a bed and hated by the rest of the world and by himself, the orphanage gang still remembers. Still cares.

Still forgives.

Time, and all that bullshit.