Title: Puzzle Pieces
Rating: K+
Characters: Seifer, Squall
Summary: Seifer realizes how well they go together.
Notes: For the themes 'ice,' 'change,' and 'light and dark' at the Fated Children LJ community.
Squall is stiff professionalism, all ice and frowns and thick, frosty masks, tied together with biting words and a cool apathy that makes him so detached from everything Seifer sometimes wonders if he's really even there at all. He's polished and perfect, the Garden's Commander, the best student, a hero, and he's gorgeous and has a father and a lover and everything he could ever want, and Seifer thinks he's way too perfect for his own good. He's good at what he does, he's loved by most (but they don't love him nearly as much as he does, and Seifer grins about that, because it's a special privilege to earn the Ice Prince's love), and he's got a whole school of people who would be more than willing to throw themselves into the heat of battle, just like that, if their Commander ever willed it (not that he wants to any more – the war was enough).
Seifer is loose and carefree and a little worrisome, if you let him be, and he's fiery and impulsive and has never been very good at listening to people or detaching himself from his emotions, because he tends to let them drive him, most of the time, and he's a hopeless romantic and a gentleman at heart, but the only one who knows that is Squall, and he doesn't like sharing that side of him very often. He's really not that perfect, and he's not a hero, and he's not welcomed all of the time, but he has a place to stay, and he has friends who care, and he has a lover who has threatened to turn the world upside-down and back again if someone were to try anything to get back at him for everything he's done, so he doesn't really care that he's not as perfect. He's always thought perfection wouldn't fit him, anyway – he likes being rough around the edges and a little gruff and a little brash, because it fits him pretty damned well.
Overall, he thinks Squall and him balance each other out pretty nicely. Squall's polished and perfect for him, and he's brash and loud and gets his point across for Squall, because cold professionalism doesn't always work when it needs to, and Squall is there to put out the fires Seifer sometimes starts, and to clean up his messes, because he's never been very good at picking up after himself, even when he was a child. He thinks he and Squall look good together, too, not just attitude wise, because Squall's all midnight-dark clothing and chocolate-brown hair and pale skin and storm-cloud-blue eyes, and he's light-gray trench coats and sunlight-blonde hair and tanned skin and broken-sea-glass-eyes, and it works damned well, when they stand next to each other, when they hold each other and he gets to kiss Squall all over, until he's no where near as professional and stiff as he normally is.
He thinks the two of them fit together like pieces of some puzzle. They click together just right, they fall into their arguments and their fights and rivalry just as easily as they fall into their whispers and their worries and love, and it's perfect for him, because he never knows what's going to happen next, and that's good, because life would be pretty damn boring if he could predict everything that was going to happen. He thinks they've done pretty damn well moving on and growing up and changing over time, and he thinks he's grown up just a little bit more since then, and thinks Squall's changed just a little bit, too, because he smiles more now, a little more, and he's a little bit nicer now, and not as cold and cruel as he used to be.
They've done pretty damned well, in Seifer's honest opinion, and he loves every minute of the change and the companionship and the arguments, because it's how they've always been, and how they're always going to be. He thinks things are just right the way they are now, because he's with everyone he could care to be with, and he doesn't even mind half of them any more, really, because they've all slipped into this comfortable stage of companionship, no grudges, no regrets.
He's glad – he's not sure how long he would have been able to last on his own, anyway.
