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There are a lot of people who wonder what Commander Leonhart is doing when he takes back the traitor, Seifer Almasy, into the very heart of Balamb Garden, and allows him to be among the student population once again. Hyne, Seifer’s one of them at the start, knowing that Squall’s not exactly known to be forgiving for slights against him and his friends, to say nothing of the entire region. But he’s allowed back, allowed to stalk the halls like a caged tiger, like something beaten and trapped, able to do nothing but snarl harmlessly behind glass and metal fences. Declawed; that’s what Dincht calls him, and the fact that all Seifer can do is clench his fists until his nails dig into his palms, and growl under his breath, proves his point. He’s nothing that he used to be, except for angry and hurt and fucked up, and wasn’t that what the whole thing was about anyway? Pathetic, really. Start a whole war because you can’t stick anger management and the boy you like won’t look at you with anything except pity, mild disinterest, and the vague sense that you’re so far beneath him that you’re barely worth his notice.
With a couple of years of perspective, court-mandated therapy, and a prescription for antidepressants, Seifer could probably admit that it would have all been a lot easier if he’d just asked Squall if he wanted to get his dick sucked, and put his fist through a wall if he’d been turned down. Through gritted teeth, admittedly, and not within the hearing of anyone who’d actually been there, but still. After a couple of beers, anyway. Very, very quietly. Maybe.
The problem with raising teenage soldiers was that you didn’t actually want to teach them how to be people, in case they decided maybe war wasn’t such a good idea. So if one or two of them tripped over an emotional landmine at some point during adolescence, they hadn’t a fucking clue how to disarm it without taking the entire field out with them. And then, when the bloody bodies of their comrades and enemies alike hung in tatters around them, you picked them up and, if they were lucky, shot them. If they were unlucky, you dragged an emotionally stunted underage killer through a court-martial you’d never taught them to understand or fight, and blamed the whole thing on them, for surviving something that should have killed them.
Not that he was bitter, or anything.
Being Ultimecia’s pet had been something else, something he hadn’t been ready for. Oh, he’d started as a knight, maybe even a Knight with the capital letter and everything, but that hadn’t lasted long before he’d become her pet, and not even the sort of dog you saw poking out of handbags in the fancy areas of Esthar that had more in common with a rat than a wolf. They might be horrible little poorly bred things who would end up thrown out as soon as the fad changed, but Seifer hadn’t even been one of those; no, he’d been the sort of animal that when rescuers find it, it’s so matted and tired and skeletal that they don’t even know if it’s still alive until it moves slightly. The kind that’s grateful afterwards, and he’d never thought of himself as a grateful person, but being given the chance to come back to Garden, somewhere he knew was safe? If he hadn’t already wanted to go belly up for Squall, that would have cemented the idea in his head.
Maybe that was why it didn’t happen; his desperation stank as badly as those rescued beasts. He needed time to rehabilitate, needed to learn how to fit back into some sort of society. Needed to stop flinching at Rinoa, too. That had been a hard barrier to cross, Rinoa at Squall’s side, and Seifer desperate to get close, but too afraid of the untouchable figure at his side to dare. There was something about a Sorceress, the way they shone, that he’d be able to tell from a mile away now. He’d always had a sense for it, of course, but it used to make his mouth water and call to him like the scent of fresh-baked bread. Now, it made him feel sick.
When Squall wanted to spar - a peace offering, a way they could adjust to their new normal without speaking - Seifer could always smell her on him, and it made him want to pin the Commander down and rub against him, replace that scent with his own, drive those traces of that wrong-sickness-bad away from him, until Squall smelled like him. As if that hadn’t been how the whole fucking mess had started in the first place. As if he hadn’t learnt his lesson from the first time, and just itched to go back into a battle where he was outmatched and overwrought. He wasn’t stupid, he was sure of that, it was just that Squall drove him crazy and always had.
So it was a surprise when it was Squall who broke first, who took a loss, and with a dulled practice gunblade - no chances taken anymore - to his throat, surged up against it and kissed Seifer like he was the only thing on the planet that made any sense any more.
It was even more of a surprise that it was Seifer who dropped the wooden practice blade and ran into the dark.
The next time they passed each other in a corridor, all Seifer could do was avert his eyes, feeling truly beaten for the first fucking time, and wasn’t that a joke? Not as mean as the one Squall had played on him, true - and it had to have been Rinoa putting him up to that. Squall wasn’t the most emotionally deft person on the planet, which was an understatement and a half, but he wouldn’t be that cruel, Seifer had to believe that, because the alternative was….
Well, the alternative was leaving, wasn’t it?
Walking away from the only home he’d ever had, and Seifer couldn’t believe he’d even thought that soppy shit. He nearly tripped over his own feet just from how badly he wanted to take himself off to a dark corner and beat himself up for being such a fucking chicken-wuss. Because he hadn’t meant fucking Garden, had he? He meant Squall. He always meant Squall.
It didn’t matter what he tried to pretend the whole war had been about, or who he was, or what he’d wanted, there was only one answer, and it wasn’t something he could have, not ever. It wasn’t ever something he could have had. Not something he could earn, or borrow, or steal - not something he could deserve.
Not someone like him.
It took over a month for Squall to offer to spar again, and another two for Seifer to actually accept, though neither mentioned the kiss. Squall won each round, and Seifer wondered if he could tell the blond wasn’t putting as much effort into it as he would usually, that he was trying to remind Squall that he was still leashed and kept and property and good.
“Stop letting me win,” Squall spat, the next time his blade skimmed Seifer’s throat, which answered that. “If I wanted someone to play subordinate, I’ve got the whole Garden for that.”
“Yes sir,” Seifer murmured, his voice the low, respectful tone that not a single instructor had ever got out of him.
“Don’t do that,” Squall said, almost before he’d finished speaking. “If you’re going to talk to me like that then this is - then I can’t do this anymore.”
Do what, Seifer almost said, but instead he just got to his feet and readied himself again, waiting for the second of stillness before they would meet in another clash of blades.
“I’m so tired of watching you stop existing right in front of me, every fucking day,” Squall said, and the way his voice broke on the words made Seifer’s knees want to buckle, made him want to drop to the floor and crawl on his belly and beg to make things better if only it would make Squall stop sounding like that. “Like the moment I let myself see you, you started disappearing.”
Seifer was shaking his head before Squall finished his sentence.
“You don’t mean that,” he said, and was ashamed to realise he was pleading. “You don’t mean that, that’s not - this isn’t happening. You don’t mean you want this, want me - “
He shut up. Squall hadn’t said that, and he was making a fool of himself by saying it out loud, but then those damnable leather pants were pressed against him, all those fucking belts were being gripped in his hands, and Squall was crowding him back against a wall, not giving a damn that he was tripping over the stupid practice blade or the hem of his own coat, because he was being kissed like… well. Like Squall did everything he was certain about.
With absolute deliberate determination and a single-minded focus that Seifer had dreamed of having turned on him in these sorts of circumstances. It was almost exactly as overwhelming as he’d imagined.
And still he pushed Squall back and away from him - and Squall let him.
If someone asked Seifer when he fell in love with Squall Leonhart, he’d tell them… never, nothing, that he’s not in love with him. With that court-mandated therapy, some beers, and a little soul-searching, he might say he’s always been in love with him, since the very beginning. With another decade or so, he might even admit that he’s grown up loving Squall to such an extent that he doesn’t really know where he starts and Squall ends, sometimes.
To Squall, later that night, he admits that he didn’t know - not really - until that moment. When he pushed Squall away from him, and Squall just… stepped back. Like it was nothing. Like it didn’t matter, like it was the smallest fucking thing to just give him that space to say pause and make sure they were both on the same page.
To talk about Rinoa - they’d broken up months ago because she could see Squall was smitten with Seifer, apparently - and Ultimecia, and exactly what it had meant to be her Knight, and then her pet, and how fucking broken he’d been when Squall let him come back. Just how damaged he was, just how much everything had been his fault.
Squall blamed himself, for not figuring out that Seifer’s whole thing had been half gay panic, half hormones, and half just desperately wanting to be noticed. Which Seifer points out is too many halves, and Squall admits maybe some of that extra half is his, being so focused on being a good SeeD that he wasn’t able to look to the side and appreciate what Seifer could have been for him. To him. And then he asked before he touched Seifer again.
And that was it.
Sometimes love really was just that easy.