The only way to get rid of an urge is to yield to it.

—Oscar Wilde

Chapter Five

When Irvine's final class finished the field exercise, he dismissed everyone from the class for a three day weekend; but only his class. They still had to attend all their normal classes.

Then, with the help of Xu, Squall and Zell, he went through the one hundred forty-nine results of the exam he'd instilled. They were sorted through according to their movement—the Advanced Sniping, the two general Sniping, and the four Marksmanship classes—and then graded through according to his own records.

Age and sex were accounted for. Xu and Zell consulted Irvine about trivialities; Squall consulted him on his chicken-scratch handwriting and shorthand, which made Irvine chuckle and blush a little.

Well after Xu and Zell had left—both had to sleep; they had early classes—Irvine and Squall sat up, commiserating the rampant failures across the board of his classes.

He bemoaned, "I knew that a lot of people just joined so they could stare at me, but this is insane."

"You can condense your classes though. Extend to a two-hour instead." Squall passed over the stack of papers that contained the score of the passing students. A good majority of them were boys, and most of them were from his Advanced Sniping and Sniping classes, but there was a wide variety. He leafed through them listlessly, than threw them onto the desk.

With a sigh, Irvine removed his hat and rubbed his face, leaning back in his chair with a wide stretch. Squall was watching him intently when he cared to look up; the redhead cocked a brow and asked, "The Princess is waiting for you, ya know. Why aren't you back yet?"

"Are you . . . alright?"

"Huh?" Irvine leaned forward in his chair. Squall stood from the couch, circling around the small table to stand in front of Irvine; the redhead didn't move, still facing toward where Squall had been sitting throughout the evening, but he arched his neck up.

"You're . . . off."

"Well, that's helpful. How am I off Squally?" The brunette huffed a little, crossing his arms sullenly over his chest as he tried to find the words.

"You've been edgy lately. Since you got back. Haven't been acting like your normal self, and it's a little disconcerting."

"I've been busy, and trying to ignore the girls in my class," Irvine muttered. He grabbed his hat and replaced it atop his head so he didn't have to look at Squall staring at him. With a scoff, he grumbled, "You should be proud of me. I haven't even flirted with a girl since I got back."

"I know. And it's creepy." Irvine looked up sharply. Squall sighed, rubbing his forehead right up near his hairline. He made a sharp gesture and said, "I just want to know what's going on. You're not yourself and it's starting to freak everybody out."

"This is bullshit," Irvine growled, shooting to his feet. He dwarfed Squall by a few inches, and glowered down at him a little. "I do what you tell me to—mind my ass and everything—I try to keep my job, and you guys want me to put it in jeopardy again? What is this, so sort of Inquisition? Either way I go, I'm fucked over!"

"It's just not like you," Squall contested. Irvine rolled his eyes, throwing up his arms in annoyance.

"So I'm turning over a new leaf. So sue me." He growled something menacing under his breath, and stalked off toward his bedroom.

Squall was following him, watching him from the doorway as he threw his hat across the room and began to undress. Irvine cast him an annoyed little look as he unbelted his chaps and brusquely asked, "Can I help you?"

"A couple of students told Quistis that they saw Seifer and you in the hallway before class this afternoon." Irvine swore violently under his breath. Squall cocked a brow. "Is there something going on between you two?"

"No!" Irvine snapped. He sat on the edge of the bed, taking the tie out of his hair and grabbing his hairbrush. "Look, even if there was something, it wouldn't be any of your business. But there's nothing going on. I like women." The last was perfectly unnecessary, but Irvine needed to hear it, more than just in his head.

Squall was watching him with a guarded expression. He grabbed the hairbrush from Irvine when his strokes became violent and stepped behind the redhead, who sullenly allowed the treatment.

After several minutes of silence, Squall said, "You were in bed with me." It wasn't an accusing statement, just a fact laced with some confusion and misunderstanding, perhaps being brought to light with these newest developments. "You were naked in bed with me."

"We were drunk. You don't remember, and I'd rather forget it."

"Was it . . . bad?" Irvine groaned; he didn't want to have this conversation. He looked over his shoulder at Squall.

"Is sex with Rinoa bad?"

"I don't know." That was ambiguous. Irvine stared at Squall for a minute, but his face disclosed nothing. The brush fell away from his hair and Irvine took it, deliberately touching Squall's hand. He turned, rising until he was eye-to-eye with the young Commander.

Squall let out a breathy sort of noise and said, "I should be getting back."

"Yeah."

Neither of them moved. Irvine, suddenly nervous, licked his lips, swallowed, and quietly murmured, "You wanna . . . ?"

And, just as it had with Seifer, those two simple, quiet words worked with Squall.

It was not a 'relationship' or a 'dalliance' or anything so sweet and tender and romantic as that. Irvine didn't want it that way—not yet—and Squall, with Rinoa hanging off his every word, wasn't about to admit to something like that. Together, they were not at all like how Irvine had been with Seifer—both when they had been young in Galbadia, before Seifer had met Rinoa; and after Time Compression, when they'd had their brief fling during the SeeD exam. There was no profession of love, barely even a semblance of it.

Quistis was the first to notice that something had happened. She had always been sharp like that, though Irvine later wondered how she could tell the difference between a normal, friendly commandeering of Squall's office and the liaison they'd been engaging in slowly when she had entered. There were no outward signs to speak for the latter, though perhaps having Irvine actually facing Squall instead of taking up his normal station was noticeable enough.

When she caught Irvine alone on the quad later in the evening, she had said, "Rinoa will be upset if she finds out."

"We aren't doing anything," Irvine assured, flicking ashes off his cigarette—they all hated it when he smoked, but it helped dull the stress and he never did it around any of the students if he could help it; he barely ever did it on grounds—and staring off toward the ocean.

"She doesn't like you. If she finds out, or thinks she's found out—."

"Then Squall will set her straight." He crushed his cigarette butt under the heel of his boot, then stooped and picked it up from the concrete. Softly, he smiled at Quistis and kissed her brow gently. She pushed him away with a slight smile and said he smelled like smoke. After that, she never brought it up again.

Selphie was the next to notice. She saw Irvine and Squall eating lunch together, and Irvine, she later reported, had been smiling so widely; so had Squall, if the indifferent little lift in his lips could be called a smile.

She came to his apartments to talk to him, and he had been terribly shy when she came in and sat on his desk chair, snatching up his discarded hat and planting it firmly on her head.

"I should buy you your own," he said, smiling cheekily. She smiled a little and told him it wouldn't be the same, but that Squall would look good in the hat; she said that with this knowing look in her eyes that had Irvine immediately saying, "We aren't doing anything."

"You both look happy, though, with your Not-Doing-Anything-ness." Her smile got a little bigger but a little sadder. "I want you to be happy again, Irvy, really I do. But I'm sorry that I couldn't make you happy."

"Oh, Sefie," Irvine murmured. He sat at her feet and chucked her chin, wiping away the tears that were beginning to fall from her big brown eyes. "You do make me happy, babe. And I know that what I did was horrible. I wish I knew how to fix it—."

"Just don't hurt him like that, Irvy," Selphie demanded. She wagged a finger at him, laughing lightly. "Otherwise, I'll have to come after you with Doomtrain and Cactuar and Eden."

After that, she never brought it up again, though Irvine often caught her with a contemplative look on her face during staff meetings, her eyes darting between him and Squall.

Zell figured it out after his fiancée Hillary pointed it out to him—he then contended that, looking back, it was rather obvious that something was going on. They had all been out together after a particularly grueling reevaluation of the situation between Centra and Timber, and Hillary had been talking with Zell, who had been watching Squall and Irvine closely.

Later, when Zell came around with his same little point—to which Irvine again contested, "We're not doing anything."—and they had finished, Irvine thought, the discussion, the stout blonde jabbed a finger into the middle of Irvine's chest and growled, "If you hurt him like you hurt Sefie, I will break your damn neck and damn the consequences. I'm not even joking."

And Irvine believe him. After that, Zell never brought it up again.

Irvine called Seifer, and the tall blonde, upon seeing him, asked, "How many times have you fucked the Ice Queen?"

"Am I really that obvious?"

Seifer jeered, "You've got frost bite, Cowboy. How's my favorite blue-eyed closet-homo?"

Except there wasn't much of a closet anymore, except Irvine's own continued reiteration that he liked women. When he said that, Squall would always give him a pointed little look and mutter a terse, "Whatever," which was only slightly mocking of Irvine's denial.

He spoke with Seifer for a while, until his call-button chimed annoying on the very edge of his hearing. With a roll of his eyes, he dismissed himself and opened the door.

Squall stood outside, looking stormy and a little mussed, and asked if he could come in for a while. Irvine, gape-jawed, took a step back, then hurried back to his vid-comm and glared at Seifer for a minute.

"I take it the Ice Queen's there?"

"Shuddup. I'll call you back."

"I want details, Cowboy!" Irvine clicked the vid-comm off, just as Squall stepped into his bedroom, one brow lifted.

Irvine tried to look nonchalant, leaning against the wall and smiling beatifically. Squall stepped toward him purposefully as Irvine asked, "What can I do you for, Mr Commander?" For a moment, Squall just stood there, utterly disarming, before his hands slowly drifted up to Irvine's shoulders.

Irvine flinched when Squall embraced him tightly, and started just a little when he felt the first raking shudder in the smaller man's body. He didn't like it when people cried—liked it less when men cried, and even further less when it was one of his friends—because it made him remember all the time he spent crying or watching the others cry in the orphanage.

He didn't like it because, unlike anger or resentment or even attachment—which he could charm and talk his way out of—he couldn't do anythings about tears. So when Squall began to cry against his shoulder, he just kind of stood stalk-still and waited until he was done.

And when he was done, he pulled back, laughing at himself and apologizing. Irvine quietly, unsurely, said, "It's okay. You wanna sit down?" Squall nodded, and walked over to Irvine's bed; he curled up against the headboard, and Irvine sprawled out beside him, still unsure what he needed to do in this situation.

"Rinoa called. Zell or somebody, they called her. Asked about me and if i she /i knew what was going on . . . with, uh . . ."

"With us?" Irvine supplied. Squall shrugged a little. He was picking at his nails. He wasn't wearing his leathers or his jacket, just a pair of decent looking, baggy slacks and his stupid white T-shirt. He looked washed out and much younger than his twenty-four years.

"So she called. And she flew off the handle—'What are you doing?' 'What about us?' 'Irvine's a slut; you'll get hurt' and all this . . . this . . ." Squall shook his head and wiped hopelessly at the tears that were beginning to come again.

"Hey, it's okay," Irvine consoled unsurely. It wasn't okay. He remembered his own breakup with Selphie, about how she had screamed at him and everything had felt like the world was falling away. Unsurely, he touched Squall's arm.

"I don't know what I'm doing," Squall said quietly. He looked at Irvine helplessly. The child Irvine saw in his eyes was the same child that had stood in the rain at the orphanage and had asked for Sis Ellone to come home. "I love her."

"I know." Slowly, Irvine sat up. Awkwardly, he slid up to Squall's side and wrapped him in a gentle embrace, pulling him as close as he dared and petting his hair gently. He shushed him when Squall began to cry again. "It's okay, Squally. It'll be okay."

"I don't want anybody to leave again," Squall choked against Irvine's chest. Irvine shushed him, rubbing his scalp comfortingly.

"Hey, hey. I'm not goin' anywhere, right? C'mon, Squally. It's okay. There'll be . . . there'll be other girls. There'll be other 'Rinoa'-types. You know that." It almost hurt to say that, and Irvine didn't want to admit why that might be. He just kept his touches light and friendly, and let Squall cry.

Squall demanded wetly, "Why does everybody leave me?"

"I'm still here, Squally," Irvine assured. He chucked his chin, and smiled gently as he quietly repeated, "I'm still here."

It was surprisingly easy to put love into his kiss. But Irvine worried that, in such a state as this, Squall would only get hurt.

"I don't think you should smoke anymore."

Irvine looked over at Squall from where he sat at the chair in front of his vid-comm, puffing smoke out the open window. Squall wasn't looking at him, flipping instead through one of Irvine's various nefarious magazines. He tilted the page up, staring at it curiously. With a chuckle, Irvine expelled one last puffs, then smothered the cigarette. He tossed the ashes into the waste bin beside the vid-comm desk, then leaned over to Squall, kissing his forehead gently.

"I'm gonna go brush my teeth."

"Take a shower too," Squall grumbled. "You smell like smoke."

It was an interesting sort of arrangement they had. A week after that fateful night, there had been no pretenses. Squall had no reason to be secretive, and wasn't ashamed of Irvine or anything. Irvine tried to be the same, though he had gotten too used to ridicule and hatred aimed at him for his effeminate ways. The worked out some ground rules—Don't tell anybody that doesn't need to know; No public displays of affection, beyond Irvine's normal friendliness toward all his companions; They could stay over, but not for longer than a night, or it would look funny.

A part of Irvine wished they could just move into Squall's apartments. They were fairly large, in comparison, and it would just be easier. Everybody who needed to know knew already—except Laguna, but Squall was being obstreperous about that and Irvine was beginning to think that it would just be better to take matters into his own hands—and it wasn't as if anybody could really do anything if they did have a problem with it: they were the Commander and Marksmanship Instructor.

But Irvine didn't say anything. He really wasn't one to talk anyway, about Squall's strange little trepidations, when he couldn't even bring himself to focus inward and relay the overwhelming verdict of this entire venture: You, Irvine Kinneas, are a homosexual.

Under the spray of the shower, vaguely listening to the music he'd turned on the radio, he didn't even notice the sound of the bathroom door opening.

He jumped when Squall's cold hands slid across his stomach, and stood very still in surprise as Squall rested gently against his back. The brunette inhaled deeply, then reported gently, "You smell better now."

"Thanks, I think," Irvine said, reaching for the soap. Squall was this insistent, cold press against his back; it was distracting. He peered over his shoulder, cocked his brow and asked, "Don't you have to run a Garden?"

He hummed sleepily, then said, "Not until eight in the morning."

"Well I have to get ready for my first classes. And they start at seven. So if you could—fuck! Squall! Warm your hands up before you do shit like that!"

Squall grunted behind him, left his hands tucked between Irvine's thighs, and planted a kiss between the redhead shoulder blades. For such a distant and supposedly indifferent man, Squall had become surprisingly affectionate. Irvine . . . minded, surprisingly. He didn't want affection, he told himself; women wanted affection. Women in relationships. And he wasn't one. It was difficult for Irvine to get over his internal roadblocks when Squall did things like climb in the shower and tuck his hands between Irvine's legs.

"I have to go," he said, just barely over the sound of the water. Squall untangled himself, and Irvine slipped quickly out of the shower.

He dressed, and left before he had to confront the brunette again. It as hard, dealing with whatever it was they had.