FF8 Fic - Wanderlust

[musemadness]

Wanderlust
By Darksquall and Race Ulfson

Disclaimer: The characters contained herein belong to SquareEnix and we aren't making any money from this.
Warnings: Eventual Yaoi, teenage boys being teenage boys. This is our epic, guys.
Rating: PG for now. We’ll get it to a mature rating eventuall

Summary: Seventeen, lost and alone, Squall Leonhart is on the run from his father and Esthar - he never expected to run straight into the arms of Seifer Almasy. This chance meeting gives them a chance to bury the hatchet (Seifer/Squall eventual).

Chapter Five

“Maintenance is as much art as it is science.”
Author Unknown


March 20th

I woke first. Seifer was still curled up on his side, snoring faintly.

Mornings in the desert were as glorious as the evenings. The sun rose in a sky painted orange, red and gold, the first touch of light sending all sorts of creatures skittering back to their lairs to avoid the heat of the day. I could hardly say I blamed them - if I could have done it too I would. The daylight bought heat - and without Shiva I hated the heat. I'd hated it even when she'd been with me but at least she'd protected me from the worst of it.

Regardless of how much I disliked it out here in the desert, I had to admire it. There was something peaceful about it all, knowing we were the only people for miles. Not only that but, as the orange faded to the first blues and pastel coloured clouds, it was beautiful. I hadn't had time to appreciate that during the war.

I busied myself first making coffee to wake up properly - even if it was already starting to get too warm I still needed my coffee to breathe, let alone think most days.

After that, I found our very basic tool kit out of one of the travel bags, along with the seals I'd managed to pick up to fix his bike before Seifer had nagged me into getting my own helmet for the ride, which in turn was before we’d had the argument about me having to sell my earring to get the damn helmet which had been his idea in the first place.

I had to stop letting Seifer talk to anyone who knew about bikes, cars, or engines in general. There was some sort of aura of gullible about him that we couldn’t fix with a remedy. Unfortunately. The oil filter wasn't the best design, it needed a few thicker seals and someone to keep an eye on it, not fixing by replacing the rest of the bike. As long as I could keep on top of it, there'd be no problems. Good thing I'd stayed with him, I don't know what he'd do without me.

So I was sipping coffee and making sure our ride wasn't about to leave us stranded in the middle of nowhere when I heard Seifer's voice behind me. “Tell me that isn't the coffee you're using.”

I must have been distracted if I hadn't even heard him approach. “Coffee is too precious to use on the bike,” I shrugged. The bike was pretty easy to take apart, I didn't need to do much to get the filter isolated and change the seals, so I was almost done anyway, but Seifer had a habit of being a distraction.

“I like your logic. What in Hyne's holy cracker are you doing, then?”

Seifer always had the best turns of phrase. I was almost too used to them, I'd heard them so many times over the years but occasionally one could make me muffle a snicker. I think my favourite was 'Hyne on a pogo stick'. “You can't argue,” I told him. Best that I cover my bases before we even started. “You haven't had coffee yet.”

“Asking a question is not arguing,” Seifer crouched down to check out what I was doing, still bleary eyed and struggling enough to maintain balance that he had to rest a hand on the sand, too. He really hadn't been awake very long if he was still that unsteady, so I felt better about not hearing him. “It is opening a dialogue, the opposite to arguing. Arguing would sound more like 'What in Hyne's holy cracker are you doing, Asshole?' “

Okay - maybe he was a little more with it than I'd estimated.

I wiped down the excess oil and set the seal in place. “What does it look like I'm doing?”

“Honestly? It looks like you are wiping the dregs of the coffee pot from that last road stop all over with a jar opener.”

“I,” I gestured at myself with a spanner, “am fixing your bike.” I resisted the urge to tap him on the head however gently with the tool I was holding. No, Seifer was still without coffee. I couldn't start fights until he had a cup, according to the rules. As though the rules were so vital.

“Why didn't you tell me you could do that?” He made his little exasperated with Squall sound. Seifer made that sound a lot, I'd noticed. Even if he didn't know what he was doing and if I didn't care. Most of the time I gave him a pretty good reason to.

“You didn't ask,” I said as I started to reattach things to the bike so we could get moving. The sun was already starting to make me itch for a cooler, safer space to discuss things, if that was what Seifer was in the mood for today, and we weren't going anywhere with the bike in pieces.

“Because I didn't know you could do that. What am I supposed to do, ask about everything in Hyne's bustling world? How about I start alphabetically? Say Leonhart, can you do acupuncture? Beading? Calligraphy?”

I scratched an itch on my chin with the mostly clean end of the spanner I'd been using, attempting to appear thoughtful. “I can do acupuncture, but my needle is really big and blue. Oh, and it requires pulse ammunition.”

“It's supposed to cure pain, not cause great whopping wounds, dumbass.”

“Explains why I failed that class then, doesn't it?” I shrugged. Seifer, to my surprise, laughed. He also, not to my surprise, snagged my barely touched second cup of coffee and drank it. Oh good, we could argue now so I could stop my piss poor attempt to tiptoe around him. “Anyway, it was your fault I ended up working in the garage. We fought too much when I was on KP with you so they sent me to the other end of garden. Remember?”

Come to think of it, we'd still managed to fight when I was in the garage. We were just that good.

“Hey, it could have been worse. You could have been a nurse's aid, or shovelling grat poop. So buck up.”

“As it is, I am fixing your bike. Hopefully this will help with the oil leak. I'll keep checking it so we don't have another event like the other morning,” I wiped off the spanner I'd been using and then my hands with a rag I'd dug out earlier.

“Just because you can be useful doesn't mean you won't be riding bitch today,” he said, haughtily. I think he was a little pissed that I could do things like this and he couldn't. He hated when I could do anything better than he could.

“Of course it does.”

He gave me a hard look. “I think not.”

“I took your keys so I could test it,” I said. Maybe I was a little smug. Sometimes I deserved to be a little smug, so sue me.

“Hyne, you are an asshole,” he shook his head and stood up, gathering our bags and dumping them on the back of the bike now that it was done.

“I must have caught it from you.”

“Don't say I never gave you anything then.”

“Whatever.”

I gave him a hand with the clearing up, packing away the rest of our things. I still wasn't sure why Seifer got to me like he did, or why he wanted to tease me, argue with me and all the other things that had nearly got us killed or expelled a few times when we'd been at garden. Discounting my less than rival like feelings and thoughts about him half the time, I guess it could have just been that we knew each other better than most. Whatever. It didn't matter all that much.

“Okay,” he said when we had everything settled back on the bike and our tracks covered as best we could - we didn't have the luxury of leaving too much evidence, even if it was hard to follow a trail out here in the desert. “Let's see if this miracle of yours will get us to the next town.”

I, being in one of my most logical and fair moods, settled on the bike and looked at him. “Come on then, Bitch.”

He growled something that was probably unrepeatable and less than pleasant, and swatted my ass before he settled behind me.

“That's even bitchier.”

“I have not yet begun to bitch, Slim.”

“Whatever,” I shrugged and started the engine.

Everything sounded fine. Too fine, I was almost worried until the needle on the oil pressure gauge warbled up to a decent position, and held itself there. I paced the bike back to the road gently, appreciating that the surface was not the best for a speedy start, but as soon as I hit tarmac, I gunned the engine.

Seifer tightened his arms around me, holding on almost enough to crush the breath from my lungs. I took that as permission and opened her up, more than likely leaving a little bit of rubber evidence on the road in my wake.

“Hyneonacrackeryouidjit!” Seifer yelled behind me. It must have been loud for me to hear it over the engine and the wind noise.

“Now that is bitching,” I called back to him.

I could just hear him laugh over the noise.

I kept up a fair pace as long as I could but, to my disappointment, whatever had tired me out and made me feel less than my usual self over the previous weeks was ever at hand, and I didn't want to risk something dumb happening while I was in control of the bike. Seifer would never be bitch again if that was the case. I slowed down when it was starting to get too much for me. To my shame, I was even starting to tremble, I'd held the position too long for my own good.

We'd been out for a few hours when Seifer nudged me. “Hey, pull over! I'm getting a weird vibe.”

I slowed reluctantly, and pulled over at the side of the road when I saw somewhere suitable. Shade out here was at a premium and it was a good idea to stop when we saw it, rather than risk waiting a little longer and end up riding further and further when we were already tired. As soon as I stopped, Seifer slid off the bike and stretched.

“Also,” he said, bending at an odd angle to stretch his back, “my ass is numb.”

I resisted the urge to either tell him that he was all ass or that I could help him rub it better. Instead, I turned off the engine and dug out one of our bottles of water to take a long drink. I'd not even noticed how much I needed it until the first sip of water hit the back of my dry throat and I felt ridiculously better. Seifer came back from a very brief walk around the little shady patch we'd found to take the bottle from me when I'd finish, and drink the rest of it.

I missed green, oddly. Everything out in the desert was just shades of red, grey and brown, the odd cactaur didn't really count as they were so few and far between in this place that I think we'd barely seen a handful. When we made it to the small towns, they were often just as bad as the rest of the long winding roads, although rarely we struck lucky and there would be more plants and somehow the air would feel fresher.

“How's the oil gauge, are we good?” Seifer asked.

I knew he trusted me, somewhere. He just didn't trust the bike. “Yeah,” I said. It had barely wavered in the time we'd been on the road and, when I leant over to check his usual leak, there was no evidence of any thing untoward at all. “No leaks yet, either.”

“You the man then,” he grinned at me and waved in the direction we'd been heading. “See that butte there? That's our destination.”

I looked the way he was pointing. It wasn't like there was anywhere else to really go, the black tarmac road crawled like a snake over the rolling hills directly to the butte and around the base of it before it disappeared out of sight again. “Right.”

“You want to rest?”

“I'm fine,” I grumbled, settling in a more comfortable position. “I was just worried about pushing it too hard for too long when I've only just repaired it.”

“Yeah, there was a funny vibe towards the end there. Might be from the tires since you must have left an inch of rubber back at our camp.”

“You got to me.” As though there were times when he didn't get to me. No one could read me like him, no one could push my buttons like him. Sometimes I thought I had to be insane to be travelling with him after all the things we'd been through, then I remembered that I'd never pretended to be sane. So fuck it. Just give in and go with the flow.

“You can't run away, you know. I'm right behind you.”

“I thought you might fall off.”

“That's gratitude!” he punched me on the shoulder and huffed at me. “Asshole.”

We spent so much of our time together arguing or bitching at each other that we barely knew how to be civil. Not a day went by that we wouldn't find something to argue over, even if it was so brief it only lasted a matter of minutes, or if it was so intense that we reached for our gunblades. To be honest, I was surprised we hadn't managed to damage ourselves more thoroughly. Must try harder. “You asked for it.”

“Just for that, I'm driving,” he said, putting his hands on his hips and giving me the 'I'm getting ready to argue with you whether you like it or not' look. I was hot, aching and debating whether I could get my blade out without getting off the bike.

“I still have the keys,” I reminded him.

“So hand them over.”

“No way.”

“What, you like the feel of bugs in your teeth?”

“No. I really like knowing that you're stuck riding bitch, though.”

“Hyne, you are such a brat. Hand over the damn keys.”

I'd fixed the damn thing, I'd worked on it while he snored and I'd been the one to save him thousands of gil he would have otherwise foolishly spent on a new bike - if he had it - when a few five gil seals would prevent the problem. Why the hell shouldn't I be the one to drive? I slid off the bike too and took the keys with me.

“What, are we going to duel for them? Just give me the hyne bedammned keys, Squall. Hyne, you are worse than a feisty drunk.”

Fine, if that's what he wanted. I tossed the keys to him and started to walk the way we were heading. I shoved my hands in my pockets and ignored Seifer as best as I could given that Seifer really hated to be ignored.

“What is this?” he called after me when he worked out that I wasn't about to come back.

“Time for me to think without wanting to kill you.”

“Look, I don't have until you are old and grey. For one thing, we blonds sunburn easily,” he lied. Seifer didn't sunburn - I did. Seifer just got more golden and more handsome and Seifer did everything better than me. Except win wars. Okay - I really had him beaten there. Seifer bought the bike up beside me, just walking it without switching the engine on. “Get on. This is nuts.”

I ignored him.

“Hyne on a cracker, I forgot what a stubborn little prick you could be.”

“And I forgot what a persistent bastard you were, GF's screw with all our memories.”

“I'm not in the wrong here,” Seifer flailed a hand trying to indicate something that I didn't understand and didn't particularly want to understand. “It's my bike, Hyne! And you can't walk all the way to Sweet Water.”

I'd never indicated that I did want to walk all the way to Sweet Water. All I wanted was a few minutes alone to get over my anger and to ignore him. A few minutes of Seifer not existing in my field of vision, but of course, Seifer hated the very idea of not being the centre of my attention all the time when I was around. That was why he poked and prodded and teased me until I lost my temper and jumped him or started yelling back. I'd give my life to protect him, sure, but sometimes I really just wanted to smack him with something hard and quite possibly pointy. “I'm not walking all the way.”

“How far are you walking, then?”

“As far as I want to,” I replied, shrugging and trying to ignore him. It really didn't work.

Seifer exploded into a flurry of curses that would have made a sailor blush, and somewhere in the middle was my favourite ‘Holy hopping half assed Hyne on a pogo stick'. I was just wondering how Hyne, being split in two, would manage to maintain any sort of balance on a pogo stick but then Seifer found some semblance of coherence again. “Hyne dammit! Okay. Fine! I'll walk too. Stubborn little ass. Little ass? You are the biggest ass in the world!”

If it had been any other time, I might have laughed. However, him reacting like that meant that I'd won. It was so rare that I wanted to celebrate, I wanted to mark the occasion on a calendar. But I had to keep it all inside because otherwise Seifer would know I'd won and that would start the whole thing off again.

Seifer stopped suddenly. I slowed, but kept walking.

“Why the fuck are we doing this again?”

“Because we like arguing,” I said.

“I'm multi talented. I can argue and drive. Get on the damn bike.”

If I hadn't felt so shaky, if I hadn't already been tired before we'd stopped, I would have kept walking. However, I'd won, and that meant that I could take a rest from the arguing especially. Seifer just wouldn't know that. I stopped and waited for him to bring the bike to me.

“At last!” he exclaimed and held it still for me to climb on behind him and wrap my arms around him. He didn't have as much of a love for speed as I did but I had to hold on anyway - I was already starting to feel a little dizzy. I wanted that cool and dark place I'd longed for before we'd set off. “Good sense prevails. I'll even let you take over in a bit, but I needed to sit in another position a while or my ass was going to ossify.”

“You're entirely assified already.”

“Good thing I can't reach you,” he said over his shoulder as he started the bike.

“Just drive, Ass,” I got as comfortable as I could manage with being on the bike, tucking my legs in and resting my head against his back as best I could. It was easier to keep ducked down behind him, and as warm as he was, and as hot as the day had become, I didn’t mind holding on to him. The engine burbled beneath us, sounding a lot happier than it had the first night - though it could have been my imagination.

“I am done being reasonable with you, brat,” he shot back. I could almost hear him rolling his eyes and I resisted telling him that I knew he’d rolled his eyes and pointing out that he was starting to turn into me.

“When were you reasonable? I think I blinked and missed it.”

“Tough, it's your loss,” Seifer gestured, pacing the bike a few more steps before he slowly pulled onto the road. Maybe he was testing to see if my fix was still working, it’d just be perfect for him to find it wasn’t and have a reason to feel like the bigger man again.

“Damn. I can't imagine you reasonable. Must have been quite a sight.”

“Yeah, I shot sunshine out of my ass, angels sang and rocks danced with joy at the very beauty of it all. And you missed it, loser.”

I sighed. Loudly. Hopefully loudly enough for him to hear through the helmet. “All two seconds of it. Oh well.”

“How long do you think rocks can dance?”

“Just shut up and drive.”

He growled, the husky little sound that he did in battle sometimes. I hated to think of the things that noise could do to me. I wonder what Seifer would have done if he'd known what that sound could make me do to myself. Especially alone in the showers after training. “Hyne, you change your mind just like a woman.”

“And you nag like one. We make a good pair.”

“Sure, a couple of old maiden aunties riding down the road to life. I'll get a hat with fuck ugly flowers, you get a handbag the size of a twin bed.”

I tightened my arms around his waist. I suspect it was only through sheer force of will that I managed not to get too much of a thrill from just holding onto him while we were on his damn bike, but I still managed to feel like a complete idiot. “Only if I get to beat you with it.”

“I'm not the one who wouldn't hand over the keys,” he reminded me. Hyne we wasn't going to drop that for weeks, was he?

“No, but I bet I could kill you pretty quickly.”

“Yeah, you're driving my blood pressure through the roof right now.”