A/n: Heh. I wrote this when I first started playing Final Fantasy VIII, and I cared for Seifer very, very little. Not even when paired with Squall, which was quite shocking to me. So I started this and left it halfway finished on my PC, and since then, Seifer (especially when paired with Squall) has definitely grown on me. However, I couldn't leave this unfinished. SOOoooo, I apologize, for it's not my usual style, and it's a bit disappointing in the awesomeness factor, but what the hey.. Somebody might like it.

That having been said, I leave you with this: FFVIII isn't mine, nor the song (That's by Three Days Grace, which you all should know by now... another obvious factor that shows this story's a tad old), and damn, I wish I could draw.

(Why do I bother?)

Squall flipped back the cover to his sketchbook. The poor packet of paper had really seen better days... It was bound to fall apart any day now. But he supposed that's what gave it its value—that and the pictures inside.

The first page greeted him with a large collection of doodles, most of which illustrated him killing Seifer in one way or another. Some of them made him smile; others made him question his own sanity. The next few pages were decorated with lions and dragons in random poses, some casual and others in the heat of battle. He didn't bother looking through the rest, and instead turned to a clean page.

His pencil twirled through his fingers obediently as he chewed his bottom lip and waited for his muses to inspire him. They directed his thoughts towards the new addition to his team: a strikingly attractive blonde with enough energy to run Balamb for a week. Zell. He'd seen him around once or twice and had heard quite a few rumors about the boy's...talents, but the teen wore his heart on his sleeve.

In neon lights.

(Stupid...)

His pencil tapped against the paper as his mind showed him his rival. Squall sneered and began drawing.

Every time we lie awake

He started at the hairline, where those three small curls of hair fell onto the teen's forehead. He thought they looked dumb, but then, he didn't exactly opt for Seifer's hairstyle preferences, either. It was so short and... and unflattering. Next came the shape of the face that never smiled, but always smirked, and his lips pulled back to bare his teeth at the recollection of it all.

After every hit we take...

After that, the slender neck, broad shoulders, and long arms began to take shape. He pondered the man's jacket briefly, and, deciding that it was too nice of a coat for such a bastard to wear, filled the torso in with muscle definition instead. He filled the scars in, too: a small crisscross on the left shoulder, just above the heart, and a long slash from left rib to navel. The thought of drawing the rest of him nude as well crossed his mind briefly, but so did the thought of Seifer finding such a drawing, and he hastily began to fill in the man's lower half. Clothed.

Every feeling that I get

He supposed, as he began to fill in dips and curves in the man's pants, that Seifer could be considered attractive. He was tall...ish, muscular, with nice lips and beautiful eyes, if you ever got close enough to look at them. It was just that... His face was so often twisted into a horrible display of mockery and anger... Squall shuddered. And yet, somehow, after every sparring match, Seifer still managed to stir arousal within him. Or maybe it was the fight. Either way, he almost always found himself on his back whether he won or lost.

But I haven't missed you yet...

He began to add more definition to the arms and throat of his figure, and realized that in the long run, he didn't particularly enjoy anything about Seifer. Sure, he was good for a quick bout of bumping uglies, and maybe a spar here and there, but really, what was the point? His pencil tip dragged over the paper in the shape of eyes, nose, and a mouth curved in a frown. The eyes were closed, and Squall wasn't sure if the man in the picture was sleeping, daydreaming, what... But it didn't really matter, either.

Every roommate kept awake

After finishing up with the face, he realized that Seifer didn't have any feet yet, and, impulsively, drew him wearing socks. It was probably because subconsciously, Squall knew that he wasn't very good at drawing toes, but whatever... It wasn't like many, if any at all, were going to see it. He cocked his head and looked at the finished picture. It was very obviously Seifer, done up in his own style of rough, sketchy lines. He was walking towards the viewer, arms loose at his sides. His head was tilted slightly, down and to the left, as if he were in pain from a mental burden. Squall almost snorted. Almost.

By every sigh and scream we make...

(Too plain...)

The background began to take form. It was simple: merely a bigger version of the swordsman's head. He drew it considerably lighter, but also went into a bit more detail with the facial features. Like the scar. His stupid scar. Squall took the pencil away from the paper before he pressed too hard as a result of his sour thoughts.

(I gave him that... I gave him that scar and it was too much for him to bear...)

Squall reached up and touched his own, nearly matching scar. The one he had received in return.

(Couldn't stand that I had marked you, could you?)

A few deep breaths, and he was back to his drawing.

All the feelings that I get

Seifer was actually on a mock mission, training to be a SeeD. Squall shook his head and traced the gentle arch of a nostril.

(Not that it'll do anything...Fujin and Raijin are probably doing all the work.)

Fujin and Raijin had, of course, gone with him, and Squall had to wonder just how many threesomes they had all been involved in together. His mouth went bitter at the thought of bedding Raijin—the man wasn't unattractive, but he lacked any grace whatsoever, and had the stamina of an old, fat dog. Fujin wasn't bad, not nearly so much as Raijin, but sex with her? A small, amused smile crossed his face.

("Ahh... Fujin!"

"PLEASURE.")

An eyebrow took its place above its eye. He thought about Zell again, and how he had also found himself excited when fighting next to the blonde. The guy was pure power, and it showed in his fighting moves, and yet... He somehow managed to be as intimidating as a wounded kitten. His pencil danced about, creating the peach fuzz that Seifer tried to pull off as a hairstyle. It came as a mild surprise to the SeeD leader that even after his musings on Zell, or perhaps because of them, his smile had not yet left his face.

But I still don't miss you yet...

Once again, he held his sketch in front of him skeptically. There were flaws—there would always be flaws, he reminded himself—but in general, he supposed it was one of his better ones. Funny, since it was drawn as the product of such an awful mood... But whatever. He cocked his head at his drawing, and then threw the entire book across the room in disgust. Papers, some blank and some filled to the edges, scattered chaotically.

Only when I start to think about it

Squall curled up defensively, hugging his knees to his chest and burying his nose in between them. He hated the way Seifer made him feel: used, broken, and out of control of himself. Not being one for cuddling much, unless he was really in the mood, he didn't mind the lack of affection after their post-sparring activities, since it really wasn't there to begin with, but it was just the whole idea of it. He felt like a rape victim.

I

And he knew for a fact that Seifer didn't really like him, either... It was obvious. Their personalities mixed like—he chuckled, briefly—as Zell would put it, like pretty girls and cheap beer. They were both alpha males, both strong and silent, and they had the competitive spirit oozing out of every pore... It was a bad match.

Hate

Which lead him to wonder how they'd gotten together in the first place. He couldn't even remember who had made the first move, or even if it had been made period. All his memory supplied him with was humiliation at losing a match, and then he was half naked and on his back. Granted, the man was good, but was it really worth it? He knew he was one of the more attractive guys on base... Hell, he sure had Rinoa falling all over herself for him, and just as soon could he have another pretty girl. Or guy, he mentally shrugged. It didn't matter to him.

Everything about you...

Removing his face from between his knees, he glared distastefully at the sketches that now littered his previously meticulous room. His arm reached down of its own accord and picked up the sheet closest to him, and he was forced to roll his eyes.

(Why the hell did I draw this?)

It was Zell... There were a lot of his sketches that involved Zell, but in this particular one, (he rolled his eyes again), Zell was hugging a hotdog to his chest and glaring to someone off the edge of the page. The hotdog had a face on it, and was expressing a suffocating feeling. He crumpled the paper into a compact ball and tossed it to the garbage can, missing by a good four inches.

(And that would be why I'm a gunblade specialist...)

Why

He wondered if Seifer was any good at basketball. Christ knew the teen boasted that he was good at everything else... Squall rubbed the bridge of his nose and fell over, briefly annoyed that his head wasn't on his pillow. His bed smelled like both blonds.

Do I

An image flashed through his mind of the three of them together, sending a spark of arousal through his body. Who would be in the middle?

(Probably me.) He blushed.

It irked him that although he hated Seifer's guts, he kept going back to him. One of his pet peeves, in fact, was people who complained constantly and did nothing to fix the problem. Clicking his tongue, he rolled onto his back and glared at the laughing image of Seifer that his mind proudly presented him with.

Love you No matter how hard he tried, however, he couldn't ignore the scattered pictures on his floor. Mechanically, he left his bed and sorted them into order, stuffing them back into the cardboard flaps that normally shielded them from harm. As he was placing his newest sketch back into the book, he paused to appraise it once more. His eyes picked out more flaws, and, instead of fixing them as he would normally do, he simply tore the picture into quarters and dumped them into the wastebasket, following with the crumpled Zell sketch. I

Normally, he didn't can his drawings no matter how awful he considered them, simply because he thought of art as an expression of oneself, and it would be as if he were throwing small pieces of himself away. However, it seemed fitting for the two sketches; one, an immature drawing, and therefore he was destroying a childish part of himself that was no longer necessary. The other, a rival gone wrong, and simply an auxiliary piece that never belonged in the first place. Or maybe it did. Who would he be if Seifer hadn't been there?

Hate

(I'd be a self-centered, cocky, disobedient bastard with an even bigger stick shoved up my virgin ass. That's who I'd be.)

It was hard to think of how life would be without the blond. He probably wouldn't be nearly as strong as he was, with no one to better himself with. Hell, he'd probably be the Seifer of Balamb, were the blond absent from his childhood. He halted his thoughts there, horrified at the vision.

Everything about you

Not wanting to admit to himself that although he was a total asshole, Seifer had made Squall better in more ways than one, the stoic teen flopped back down onto his bed and sighed deeply. He had work in four hours, and all he could think of was the next time he'd be meeting his rival for their routine "workout". He hated Seifer for making him want the teen; for making him lose control, but most of all, he hated himself for falling for the blond so easily.

(He knows it, too, the cockhole. And he loves it. He loves the power he has over me.)

Why do I love you?

Blowing his hair out of his eyes, he swallowed the distress that balled in his throat and sighed. Sooty lashes shaded the stormy orbs, and Squall simply laid and anticipated.