All These Things (F8 [PG-13])
Title: All These Things
Fandom: Final Fantasy VIII
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Irvine/Selphie
Summary: Selphie has everything and Irvine finds he's left with all the little things. For Twilightsrain's Irvine fanwork-a-thon.
She puts on her shoes.
He is not happy.
She puts on his hat and gives a quite giggle.
He can not stand this.
She takes the hat off and leaves it on the dresser. She tiptoes out the door-an impossibility for her-and softly closes it behind her. She will not be back till eleven that night if he is lucky. It is five in the morning.
He hates how she does that. Hates how she’s gone before he wakes up and rarely comes back before he’s gone to sleep. He glimpses her everywhere all throughout the day, but it isn’t enough. It’s never enough.
He wants to touch her. He wants to talk to her beyond more than “Hey there honey”. He wants her to be here with him. He is waiting for things to materialize from the air. He is waiting for her. He does not think she will ever materialize from thin air for him.
And this is how he starts his day, every day, always. With pretending to sleep while he secretly watches her leave. With sitting up half an hour in bed waiting for her to come back. He never says a thing, not once, and he wishes he would.
Selphie is always so adamant about their relationship. Which is why he’s not sure how to tell her the things he wants to tell her. He’s not sure how to tell her that he feels like he’s dating a dead girl. Because she’s never there.
It is not until around half past seven that Irvine rolls out of the empty bed and gets ready for the day. Shower, shave, clothes, food; the morning is not glamorous, but slow and lethargic. It is not until ten past eight that he strolls leisurely out the door and fifteen past that he arrives at the guard station at the entrance to Balamb Garden he was technically supposed to be at on the dot of eight. No one cares.
Gate duty is boring, but it is something. There are plenty of missions these days, but after the second Sorceress War-as they call the murder of the Galbadian president and Time Compression-the world has decided to try an unsteady peace for the time. Most jobs call for bodyguards and monster killers. Not snipers. Not Irvine Kinneas, one of the heroes of the second sorceress war.
He spends most of the day away from the guard station. Only an idiot would enter a mercenary school without good reason. An idiot or a crazy person. He’s not worried about lunatics.
He runs errands for Quistis who is bogged down in paper work, is ambushed several times by female students who either try to delay him or give him things, fights his way through the training center to find Zell who is supposed to be teaching a class and forgot, throws a mouse out of the cafeteria kitchen; in short, he does everything, but stand at the guard station. He hates to admit it, but there really isn’t anything for him to do at Balamb Garden. Everything is wonderfully under control and there’s no lack of teachers in sniping or gun maintenance or even subterfuge which he excelled at in Galbadia Garden. Even if there were, he’s not sure he’d want to teach. The career has never exactly drawn him.
Selphie, he has found, has no lack of finding ways to keep her busy. From the Garden Festival Committee to forming a remodeling plan for the damaged parts of the Balamb Garden to babysitting some of the five year old classes, she is always doing something. In the past he’s tried to help her, but he’s always gotten underfoot. He broke half the stage design in the Quad when helping the Festival Committee, painted a room the wrong color when helping restore some old dorms, led the children in cowboys and Indians which ended in half the Indians having to see Dr. Kadowaki due to tape induced injuries; everything he tries does not come out right.
He has given up trying.
As he strolls through the corridors doing miscellaneous jobs he sees her everywhere though. In the classrooms, in the cafeteria, infirmary, elevator, library-he even sees her coming out of Squall’s office. She is everywhere. When he passes her he waves and says hi, maybe waits for a hug or a kiss that never comes. She calls “Hey Irvy!” which he hates, but she’s not really paying attention and just runs right on by to do something else without him. Even when he pointedly flirts with other girls in front of her just to get her attention, she does not notice and runs right on by, always to something, someone else.
He eats a dinner alone in her room consisting of some bad cereal with marshmallows and turning sour milk. There’s a fresh bottle of milk in the fridge, he grabbed the bad one, didn’t check the date, he could get another bowl of cereal, but he can’t be bothered to. While he eats he stares at the piece of paper detailing the reservations he made, at no small cost, the other night to a fancy restaurant. He told her about it two weeks ahead of time, frequently reminded her and asked her important things like what she was going to wear. She never showed up to go. He waited till an hour past the reservation time before going to find her. She was in a classroom, covered in glue and paint as she helped alternately make posters and design messages for the Garden bulletin board. “I’m sorry Irvine, next time, I’m kind of busy,” she’d giggled and that’d been the end of that.
He leaves his bowl in the sink and takes off his boots and coat, puts his hat on the dresser where it always goes. He climbs into bed without changing and he’s all alone until half past twelve when Selphie stumbles in, knocks things over in the dark, strips and puts on her pj’s and climbs in next to him, falling promptly asleep. It’s still like sleeping in a bed by himself.
He’s expecting it when she rises early the next day and leaves; it’s almost become some sort of routine to pretend to sleep while he watches her go. He stays in bed for two more hours, the empty bed that holds just him. When half past seven comes around he rolls out and gets ready for the day. As he brushes his teeth, looking at himself in the bathroom mirror, it all just seems to fall apart. Today will be another day of miscellaneous tasks that really mean nothing and endless boredom as he is reduced to an errand boy. He can’t take this anymore.
Squall seems a little surprised when he enters the third floor office. Irvine supposes that is something and is just glad he isn’t getting a “get the hell out of my office Kinneas” look.
“Do you have something for me?” Squall asks when he doesn’t do anything and the Commander seems slightly confused because it’s ten minutes before eight and when is Irvine ever anywhere before eight. The sniper laughs and touches his hat, tugging on the brim. “No, no, I wanted to talk to you about something,” he says and despite the laughter it all seems far too serious.
“What?” Squall says when Irvine looks around his office, seemingly unable to fathom how to begin. The sniper’s attention turns back to the Commander and he grins slightly in a way that seems more like old, mechanical motions than something intentional.
“Do you remember, back right after Time Compression, how Galbadia Garden wanted me to come back and I said no?” Irvine reminds him and he does remember because Galbadia Garden had been quite insistent and sent him requests about it for weeks.
“Yes,” he says as Irvine fools with his hat again. He feels he knows what’s coming, though he doesn’t say anything, simply sits and waits for the sniper to tell him.
And sure enough Irvine says, “I want to transfer to Galbadia Garden.” There’s silence after those words and Squall mentally sighs because he sort of saw this coming. He doesn’t want to loose Irvine, the man’s part of their team with Zell, Selphie, Quistis and Rinoa. He has to admit though that they don’t really need him at Balamb Garden.
“Alright,” Squall says and Irvine nods. “Thanks Squall,” the cowboy answers and waits for the Commander to pull transfer forms out of a filing cabinet. “About Selphie…” He adds while he’s waiting.
“I’ll talk to Selphie when I see her. If you’re going to go you’re going to have to leave tomorrow,” Squall says and that’s it. Tomorrow Balamb Garden will be one sniper short. This sniper isn’t sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. All he knows is something needs to change.
Dinner that night ends up being another sordid affair and he doesn’t even finish most of the sugary marshmallow cereal, but lets it run down the drain. He asked Selphie to come back early for once, so he could talk to her. He sits in a chair and watches the digital clock as the night gets later and later. When she comes in after midnight he is seething with anger.
“What are you still doing up?” she asks dropping several bags by the door and placing a stack of papers on a chair. “What happened to coming back early?” he answers, trying to keep the biting anger out of his voice.
She looks at him and she is cute and everything he loves and there’s paint and feathers on her dress. “I’m sorry Irvine, but I was really busy,” she says and he is not pacified by this.
“You’re always busy,” he finds himself saying and this isn’t what he wanted to do, wanted to say to her, but he’s finding he can’t keep it in anymore. “Why can’t you ever make time?!”
She stares at him for a moment as if he’s grown a second head. “Irvine, what’s the big deal? I make time and we see each other all day,” she reminds him, baffled by what’s upsetting him so much.
“I’d like to have you to myself for more than the six hours you’re passed out face down in a mattress!” He tells her vehemently and he can’t stop, can’t just tell her never mind and skip this whole thing he’s bringing out.
“We went out to the training center together just the other day!” She points out and he waves this aside. “That’s because Squall ordered both of us to go and we were babysitting a bunch of ten year olds the whole time!” He responds and he remembers it was far from something like a date.
“I’d like to take you out to romantic dinners and watch sunsets with you every once in a while, be a real couple,” he tells her, grabbing her hand, trying to communicate all the things he wants to her through her skin, but he knows he can’t.
“We are a real couple!” She shouts indignantly and he shakes his head slightly. “Saying we’re a couple isn’t the same as being a couple,” he tells her and she frowns at him.
“We’re a couple Irvine,” she insists and he wishes she could just see all these things about them. That he spends more time in her dorm rooms than she does, that many of the female students consider him to be up for grabs now, that all the hours of the day are filled with separation.
She looks at him and maybe sees the doubt in his face. “We’re a couple,” she tells him again and for a moment it almost feels like they are. He isn’t fooled by it, but she continues to stare at him with all the things she used to stare at him with; adoration, lust, love, he’s not sure where these things hide in her, but he seldom sees them anymore.
She suddenly kisses him roughly, wildly, and her hands start clawing up under his shirt. He pushes her away lightly. She stares at him as if he is mad and demands, “Are you, Irvine Kinneas, refusing sex?”
She pauses a bit before the last word and blushes cutely as she says it; this does not change the question in the slightest. He’s horrified to realize she’s right. She is practically throwing herself at him and he is turning her down. He is not even aroused. Not even the fact that he can look down onto her ample bosom is making him the slightest bit horny.
“I just-,” he starts, frustrated that everything is so upside down in this situation. “Sex isn’t going to resolve any of this!” He says finally and it’s out there, like he smacked her, like there’s some other girl’s bra on the floor. It’s just-there. He can not take it back and the fact that he is refusing sex as a resolution to this, the fact that he is not calling her honey and kissing and making up with her, says it like nothing else does.
They have a problem and it is not superfluous.
She sits down on the bed and he wants to join her, stroke her hand and call her sweet names, act like it is all one big joke. But he doesn’t. Because it isn’t. He can’t take this anymore. It is like being in love with a dead girl, only worse, because she isn’t dead.
He tugs a little on the brim of his hat, bringing it lower over his eyes. “Did you talk with Squall lately?” he asks and she shakes her head. He wishes she had talked to Squall, but he knows he would have had to tell her himself from his own mouth sooner or later. He pulls in a deep breath and takes the plunge. “I’m going back to Galbadia,” he tells her and she jerks.
“What?!” She demands and she obviously has no idea that he’s been thinking about this for a long time now. “Why?!” She wants to know, standing up like a wet cat, irritated and pressed beyond measure. “Because I’m busy, because I do things, is that why? Are you trying to get back at me? I’m not allowed to have a fulfilling life if you don’t, so you’re going to pick up and run crying back to Galbadia Garden?!” She shouts and as soon as she says it they both know she shouldn’t have. That’s all it takes though, all it takes.
“Not everything is about you!” He yells back and he has never yelled at a girl before. He never says harsh things to women. He treats them always with smooth words that caress gently, lingual embodiments of what his hands are capable of performing on their sweet skin. Now he is yelling though and worst of all he is yelling at the girl he loves.
“Then why?!” Selphie demands, her finger jabbing accusingly at him. “Why now?! If not to get back at me, why?!”
“There’s nothing for me to do here!” He answers and she snorts in disbelief. “You help everyone all the time!” She points out at the top of her lungs and he grinds his teeth in anger, a thing he’s seldom done before.
“I’m not an errand boy Selphie,” he hisses into the room that is quiet save for their voices, yet seems to crackle with electricity. “I’m not your pet, I’m not a janitor, I’m not a secretary. I am a trained mercenary, a SeeD. I can’t keep doing this-doing all the little things that no one else really wants to be bothered with. There’s nothing for me here,” he tells her and she’s silent as he says all these things, her hands clenching tighter and tighter as her face scrunches up and looks near ready to burst.
“So your friends don’t matter, is that it? I don’t matter? How is there nothing for you here?! If you don’t care about us, maybe we don’t care about you!” She screams and jabs her finger towards the door, advancing on him menacingly. “Why don’t you just leave?!”
He recognizes this as a dismissal and yanks the door open with unheard of ferocity; she slams it shut behind him before he even gets the chance. She feels like crying as she glares at the door, but she doesn’t. If he doesn’t need her, she doesn’t need him. She wonders for a bit if he’ll stand out in the hall and apologize; when he doesn’t after five minutes she gives an angry screech and throws her memento box at the door. She hopes she never sees his face again.
Two months later Selphie is sitting in her room, papers spread out across a table and left unattended as she watches the video from the celebration party after Time Compression was stopped. Some parts make her laugh and others make her smile. She watches Zell choke on hotdogs and nearly falls out of her chair with giggles. Then there’s her, and Quistis and Cid and Matron and just a bunch of people. And she’s wearing his hat and the video camera is looking at other girls and he was the one holding it then and that’s just so him. She doesn’t cry because it’s him. She frowns a little and hits the fast forward button.
There’s a knock on the door and she sighs, getting up to open it. It’s ten at night; she’s cut back on all the things she does lately, but sometimes people still show up late at night asking for her help. She’s deciding whether or not to tell them to get lost when she opens the door.
“Hi there pretty gal,” Irvine says and winks. She stares and can not stop staring. Irvine gives her his disarmingly charming smile and tips his hat in gentlemanly fashion. “What are you doing here?” She asks finally, once her tongue stops being tied in a thick knot, her surprise evident.
“Came to talk with Squall about a joint mission between Balamb and Galbadia,” he tells her and all she can say is “oh” because he did not say he is there for her. Anger slowly starts to seep into her at this, but she tries to keep it down, not be a catty bitch to him after two months of no contact except for a few letters he sent her in the beginning that she flushed down the toilet, unread.
“What’re you doing at my door then?” She asks, not quite successful in keeping the spite from her voice. His eyes fall down for a moment, staring at the floor. “I can’t visit my gal?” He inquires, trying to sound like before their fight; it doesn’t work.
“I’m not your ‘gal’,” she tells him and there’s just this silence that is tense and maybe a little sad. She doesn’t like this silence and how it makes her feel like the mean, unfair one, so she adds, “Two months is a long time Irvine.”
He nods softly. “I know,” he says quietly and she’s not sure if he is contrite or just uncomfortable with facing her. “How’s Galbadia Garden?” She questions to fill the silence that follows.
“Fine, fine,” he tells her in a way that sums up everything. Galbadia Garden is summed up in the one word of “fine”. “What have you been doing?” she asks and she’s still in the doorway, blocking him from coming in and he remains in the hallway.
He looks at her for a long time after that. Suddenly he laughs and pushes his stupid hat more firmly onto his head. “Everything,” he tells her, “Just everything.”
She doesn’t know what that means at all and she thinks he’s laughing at her. She glares at him, adding to the look the words, “I will slam this door in your face Irvine if you make fun of me.”
He holds up his hands, a pacifying gesture. “I’m not making fun of you, honest,” he says and her glare lessens, though she still doesn’t let him in. He touches his hat again and she remembers now that’s a thing he does when he’s uncomfortable and pretending not to be. How many other things has she forgotten about him, she wonders.
“They had me helping rebuild for a bit. Then they put me in charge of the Garden Guard-they have to have a guard see, cause people are all mad at them about what they did under Sorceress control. I ran a couple field tests, taught a class on wilderness survival. Took on a whole bunch of missions. For the most part though, I run communications between Galbadia Garden and, well, just everyone. Employers, politicians, mayors, countries, scientists-everyone.” He looks straight at her as he says all this and it’s like everything is coming back up, like there wasn’t a two month lapse between the last time they saw each other.
“Couldn’t you have done those things here?” She asks, though she knows he couldn’t, that Galbadia Garden and Balamb Garden are two completely different situations with different needs and different amounts of people to meet those needs.
“Selphie,” he simply says and touches her cheek sweetly. She wants to let herself have that touch, but she can’t. Because he left her.
He seems to sense this and drops his hand almost immediately. He rubs the back of his neck and she’s never seen him do that before, he must have picked it up in Galbadia Garden. He looks at her and it’s like he’s been looking at her for every day of his life. “I thought about you,” he says and her grip tightens slightly on the door. “All the time,” he adds, in case she’s wonderings.
“I sent you letters, but I couldn’t…call you… There were all these things I wanted to tell you. Well, I wrote you some of it anyways,” he continues and he’s sort of babbling, which is not Irvine at all.
“Irvine,” she says and he stops talking. “I flushed those letters down the toilet,” she tells him and there’s more silence. And then he laughs, laughs till tears come to the corners of his eyes and doesn’t stop laughing. The tears spill over and she thinks he may be crying for real and that upsets her because she didn’t mean to make him cry by telling him that.
“I’m sorry, but I was really, really mad,” she tells him, leaving the doorway to pat him on the back comfortingly. “That is so you,” he says between laughs and she just continues to try and comfort him.
“So you,” he says again and suddenly he turns, pressing his lips to hers in a way that is even sweeter than she remembers, like eating cotton candy that’s actually clouds and rainbows. He pulls away slightly and stares at her for a moment. “Shit, how I’ve missed you,” he says and wraps his gloved hands around her face, kissing her like clouds and sun and sky again.
His eyes close and one hand slides down her neck and her shoulders, down her back to her hip where he pulls her to him, just holds her there while he kisses her so sweetly. For a moment her mind is carried away by this and it has been over two months since she has been kissed by anyone. The only person who has hugged her during these months has been Rinoa who has given her pathetic “comfort hugs” and Quistis who gave her one such hug once and then seemed to find herself degraded by such an indulgence.
Her senses do return though, just as her eyes are beginning to flutter, and she pushes Irvine away. “Sex isn’t going to fix anything,” she tells him, hurt by the irony of the whole situation and it was the other way around last time.
“I don’t care about sex,” he says, which makes her think maybe he’s been doing drugs or something without her. “I’ve been thinking about you for weeks and days and hours and I’d dream about you all the time. I felt so obsessed and here you are now and you’re telling me I can’t touch you?” He mumbles against her jaw, sending a chill down her spine.
He doesn’t even ask her if she thought just once about him. This love isn’t a conditional thing to him; he doesn’t have to be loved in return for it to work. She manages not to cling to him as he rains adoration down upon her skin. He doesn’t ask, not once, if she thought about him at all, thought that she missed him, thought so much even as that she hated him and wished he got hit by a truck.
“I made time,” she says suddenly, impulsively, and he halts, for just a moment. “So if I ravish you no one’s going to interrupt?” He asks and she punches him in the shoulder, making him wince.
“What are you going to do?” She wants to know as he reaches her collar bone and he stops, pulls away, and her heart sinks when it was rising so high before. “You’re going back to Galbadia Garden,” she accuses; he does not deny it.
Instead he looks her in the face, deeply, seriously. “They need me Selphie, can you blame me?” He says and no, she can not. She has thought about him so much, too. She can not fault him for wanting something important of his own to do. She can’t despise him for wanting something meaningful to fill his days with.
“Irvine Kinneas, you come here, call me out in the middle of the night, make out with me in the hallway, lead me on, and then tell me you aren’t staying?!” She can still be mad at him, even if she does understand.
He won’t have any of that though. He puts a finger over her lips and she glares at him. “I love you,” he tells her and it’s been so long since she’s heard those words. Too long. More than two months, far more. It has been a very long time since he has told her that he loves her.
And then he kisses her again and she throws her arms around his neck. She doesn’t want him to go, but she understands and she’s not going to stop him. He’s here now and he loves her and he’s not giving her the chance to tell him, but she loves him right back. She presses him up against the wall and her hands take off his hat and put it on her head. It has been two long, hellish months since she wore this hat.
Eventually they move into her room and even if they didn’t plan on it before, they sleep together and when he thrusts into her it is like nothing she has ever felt before. She bites her lip until it bleeds trying not to scream his name. He can’t keep his mouth off her skin and he seems determined to have the taste of her forever on his lips as he runs his tongue everywhere, and she means everywhere.
No one leaves the room until one in the afternoon the next day and that is only because Zell finally finds them around ten and pounds on the door, which is sort of embarrassing, having him pounding on her door and yelling loudly, for everyone to hear, that the Commander and the Festival Committee is damn tired about waiting for them and they need to hurry up and get up. After some reassurances shouted through the door he leaves. And then they having another bout of rousing sex and it’s like he’s drinking her up and eating away two months time and they were never separated because they are joined at the hip and at the lips. It is not until three hours later at one in the afternoon that they finally leave the room and go their separate ways.
And she thinks, as long as they visit each other and write and call and all those sorts of things, maybe this will be okay.
Fandom: Final Fantasy VIII
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Irvine/Selphie
Summary: Selphie has everything and Irvine finds he's left with all the little things. For Twilightsrain's Irvine fanwork-a-thon.
She puts on her shoes.
He is not happy.
She puts on his hat and gives a quite giggle.
He can not stand this.
She takes the hat off and leaves it on the dresser. She tiptoes out the door-an impossibility for her-and softly closes it behind her. She will not be back till eleven that night if he is lucky. It is five in the morning.
He hates how she does that. Hates how she’s gone before he wakes up and rarely comes back before he’s gone to sleep. He glimpses her everywhere all throughout the day, but it isn’t enough. It’s never enough.
He wants to touch her. He wants to talk to her beyond more than “Hey there honey”. He wants her to be here with him. He is waiting for things to materialize from the air. He is waiting for her. He does not think she will ever materialize from thin air for him.
And this is how he starts his day, every day, always. With pretending to sleep while he secretly watches her leave. With sitting up half an hour in bed waiting for her to come back. He never says a thing, not once, and he wishes he would.
Selphie is always so adamant about their relationship. Which is why he’s not sure how to tell her the things he wants to tell her. He’s not sure how to tell her that he feels like he’s dating a dead girl. Because she’s never there.
It is not until around half past seven that Irvine rolls out of the empty bed and gets ready for the day. Shower, shave, clothes, food; the morning is not glamorous, but slow and lethargic. It is not until ten past eight that he strolls leisurely out the door and fifteen past that he arrives at the guard station at the entrance to Balamb Garden he was technically supposed to be at on the dot of eight. No one cares.
Gate duty is boring, but it is something. There are plenty of missions these days, but after the second Sorceress War-as they call the murder of the Galbadian president and Time Compression-the world has decided to try an unsteady peace for the time. Most jobs call for bodyguards and monster killers. Not snipers. Not Irvine Kinneas, one of the heroes of the second sorceress war.
He spends most of the day away from the guard station. Only an idiot would enter a mercenary school without good reason. An idiot or a crazy person. He’s not worried about lunatics.
He runs errands for Quistis who is bogged down in paper work, is ambushed several times by female students who either try to delay him or give him things, fights his way through the training center to find Zell who is supposed to be teaching a class and forgot, throws a mouse out of the cafeteria kitchen; in short, he does everything, but stand at the guard station. He hates to admit it, but there really isn’t anything for him to do at Balamb Garden. Everything is wonderfully under control and there’s no lack of teachers in sniping or gun maintenance or even subterfuge which he excelled at in Galbadia Garden. Even if there were, he’s not sure he’d want to teach. The career has never exactly drawn him.
Selphie, he has found, has no lack of finding ways to keep her busy. From the Garden Festival Committee to forming a remodeling plan for the damaged parts of the Balamb Garden to babysitting some of the five year old classes, she is always doing something. In the past he’s tried to help her, but he’s always gotten underfoot. He broke half the stage design in the Quad when helping the Festival Committee, painted a room the wrong color when helping restore some old dorms, led the children in cowboys and Indians which ended in half the Indians having to see Dr. Kadowaki due to tape induced injuries; everything he tries does not come out right.
He has given up trying.
As he strolls through the corridors doing miscellaneous jobs he sees her everywhere though. In the classrooms, in the cafeteria, infirmary, elevator, library-he even sees her coming out of Squall’s office. She is everywhere. When he passes her he waves and says hi, maybe waits for a hug or a kiss that never comes. She calls “Hey Irvy!” which he hates, but she’s not really paying attention and just runs right on by to do something else without him. Even when he pointedly flirts with other girls in front of her just to get her attention, she does not notice and runs right on by, always to something, someone else.
He eats a dinner alone in her room consisting of some bad cereal with marshmallows and turning sour milk. There’s a fresh bottle of milk in the fridge, he grabbed the bad one, didn’t check the date, he could get another bowl of cereal, but he can’t be bothered to. While he eats he stares at the piece of paper detailing the reservations he made, at no small cost, the other night to a fancy restaurant. He told her about it two weeks ahead of time, frequently reminded her and asked her important things like what she was going to wear. She never showed up to go. He waited till an hour past the reservation time before going to find her. She was in a classroom, covered in glue and paint as she helped alternately make posters and design messages for the Garden bulletin board. “I’m sorry Irvine, next time, I’m kind of busy,” she’d giggled and that’d been the end of that.
He leaves his bowl in the sink and takes off his boots and coat, puts his hat on the dresser where it always goes. He climbs into bed without changing and he’s all alone until half past twelve when Selphie stumbles in, knocks things over in the dark, strips and puts on her pj’s and climbs in next to him, falling promptly asleep. It’s still like sleeping in a bed by himself.
He’s expecting it when she rises early the next day and leaves; it’s almost become some sort of routine to pretend to sleep while he watches her go. He stays in bed for two more hours, the empty bed that holds just him. When half past seven comes around he rolls out and gets ready for the day. As he brushes his teeth, looking at himself in the bathroom mirror, it all just seems to fall apart. Today will be another day of miscellaneous tasks that really mean nothing and endless boredom as he is reduced to an errand boy. He can’t take this anymore.
Squall seems a little surprised when he enters the third floor office. Irvine supposes that is something and is just glad he isn’t getting a “get the hell out of my office Kinneas” look.
“Do you have something for me?” Squall asks when he doesn’t do anything and the Commander seems slightly confused because it’s ten minutes before eight and when is Irvine ever anywhere before eight. The sniper laughs and touches his hat, tugging on the brim. “No, no, I wanted to talk to you about something,” he says and despite the laughter it all seems far too serious.
“What?” Squall says when Irvine looks around his office, seemingly unable to fathom how to begin. The sniper’s attention turns back to the Commander and he grins slightly in a way that seems more like old, mechanical motions than something intentional.
“Do you remember, back right after Time Compression, how Galbadia Garden wanted me to come back and I said no?” Irvine reminds him and he does remember because Galbadia Garden had been quite insistent and sent him requests about it for weeks.
“Yes,” he says as Irvine fools with his hat again. He feels he knows what’s coming, though he doesn’t say anything, simply sits and waits for the sniper to tell him.
And sure enough Irvine says, “I want to transfer to Galbadia Garden.” There’s silence after those words and Squall mentally sighs because he sort of saw this coming. He doesn’t want to loose Irvine, the man’s part of their team with Zell, Selphie, Quistis and Rinoa. He has to admit though that they don’t really need him at Balamb Garden.
“Alright,” Squall says and Irvine nods. “Thanks Squall,” the cowboy answers and waits for the Commander to pull transfer forms out of a filing cabinet. “About Selphie…” He adds while he’s waiting.
“I’ll talk to Selphie when I see her. If you’re going to go you’re going to have to leave tomorrow,” Squall says and that’s it. Tomorrow Balamb Garden will be one sniper short. This sniper isn’t sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. All he knows is something needs to change.
Dinner that night ends up being another sordid affair and he doesn’t even finish most of the sugary marshmallow cereal, but lets it run down the drain. He asked Selphie to come back early for once, so he could talk to her. He sits in a chair and watches the digital clock as the night gets later and later. When she comes in after midnight he is seething with anger.
“What are you still doing up?” she asks dropping several bags by the door and placing a stack of papers on a chair. “What happened to coming back early?” he answers, trying to keep the biting anger out of his voice.
She looks at him and she is cute and everything he loves and there’s paint and feathers on her dress. “I’m sorry Irvine, but I was really busy,” she says and he is not pacified by this.
“You’re always busy,” he finds himself saying and this isn’t what he wanted to do, wanted to say to her, but he’s finding he can’t keep it in anymore. “Why can’t you ever make time?!”
She stares at him for a moment as if he’s grown a second head. “Irvine, what’s the big deal? I make time and we see each other all day,” she reminds him, baffled by what’s upsetting him so much.
“I’d like to have you to myself for more than the six hours you’re passed out face down in a mattress!” He tells her vehemently and he can’t stop, can’t just tell her never mind and skip this whole thing he’s bringing out.
“We went out to the training center together just the other day!” She points out and he waves this aside. “That’s because Squall ordered both of us to go and we were babysitting a bunch of ten year olds the whole time!” He responds and he remembers it was far from something like a date.
“I’d like to take you out to romantic dinners and watch sunsets with you every once in a while, be a real couple,” he tells her, grabbing her hand, trying to communicate all the things he wants to her through her skin, but he knows he can’t.
“We are a real couple!” She shouts indignantly and he shakes his head slightly. “Saying we’re a couple isn’t the same as being a couple,” he tells her and she frowns at him.
“We’re a couple Irvine,” she insists and he wishes she could just see all these things about them. That he spends more time in her dorm rooms than she does, that many of the female students consider him to be up for grabs now, that all the hours of the day are filled with separation.
She looks at him and maybe sees the doubt in his face. “We’re a couple,” she tells him again and for a moment it almost feels like they are. He isn’t fooled by it, but she continues to stare at him with all the things she used to stare at him with; adoration, lust, love, he’s not sure where these things hide in her, but he seldom sees them anymore.
She suddenly kisses him roughly, wildly, and her hands start clawing up under his shirt. He pushes her away lightly. She stares at him as if he is mad and demands, “Are you, Irvine Kinneas, refusing sex?”
She pauses a bit before the last word and blushes cutely as she says it; this does not change the question in the slightest. He’s horrified to realize she’s right. She is practically throwing herself at him and he is turning her down. He is not even aroused. Not even the fact that he can look down onto her ample bosom is making him the slightest bit horny.
“I just-,” he starts, frustrated that everything is so upside down in this situation. “Sex isn’t going to resolve any of this!” He says finally and it’s out there, like he smacked her, like there’s some other girl’s bra on the floor. It’s just-there. He can not take it back and the fact that he is refusing sex as a resolution to this, the fact that he is not calling her honey and kissing and making up with her, says it like nothing else does.
They have a problem and it is not superfluous.
She sits down on the bed and he wants to join her, stroke her hand and call her sweet names, act like it is all one big joke. But he doesn’t. Because it isn’t. He can’t take this anymore. It is like being in love with a dead girl, only worse, because she isn’t dead.
He tugs a little on the brim of his hat, bringing it lower over his eyes. “Did you talk with Squall lately?” he asks and she shakes her head. He wishes she had talked to Squall, but he knows he would have had to tell her himself from his own mouth sooner or later. He pulls in a deep breath and takes the plunge. “I’m going back to Galbadia,” he tells her and she jerks.
“What?!” She demands and she obviously has no idea that he’s been thinking about this for a long time now. “Why?!” She wants to know, standing up like a wet cat, irritated and pressed beyond measure. “Because I’m busy, because I do things, is that why? Are you trying to get back at me? I’m not allowed to have a fulfilling life if you don’t, so you’re going to pick up and run crying back to Galbadia Garden?!” She shouts and as soon as she says it they both know she shouldn’t have. That’s all it takes though, all it takes.
“Not everything is about you!” He yells back and he has never yelled at a girl before. He never says harsh things to women. He treats them always with smooth words that caress gently, lingual embodiments of what his hands are capable of performing on their sweet skin. Now he is yelling though and worst of all he is yelling at the girl he loves.
“Then why?!” Selphie demands, her finger jabbing accusingly at him. “Why now?! If not to get back at me, why?!”
“There’s nothing for me to do here!” He answers and she snorts in disbelief. “You help everyone all the time!” She points out at the top of her lungs and he grinds his teeth in anger, a thing he’s seldom done before.
“I’m not an errand boy Selphie,” he hisses into the room that is quiet save for their voices, yet seems to crackle with electricity. “I’m not your pet, I’m not a janitor, I’m not a secretary. I am a trained mercenary, a SeeD. I can’t keep doing this-doing all the little things that no one else really wants to be bothered with. There’s nothing for me here,” he tells her and she’s silent as he says all these things, her hands clenching tighter and tighter as her face scrunches up and looks near ready to burst.
“So your friends don’t matter, is that it? I don’t matter? How is there nothing for you here?! If you don’t care about us, maybe we don’t care about you!” She screams and jabs her finger towards the door, advancing on him menacingly. “Why don’t you just leave?!”
He recognizes this as a dismissal and yanks the door open with unheard of ferocity; she slams it shut behind him before he even gets the chance. She feels like crying as she glares at the door, but she doesn’t. If he doesn’t need her, she doesn’t need him. She wonders for a bit if he’ll stand out in the hall and apologize; when he doesn’t after five minutes she gives an angry screech and throws her memento box at the door. She hopes she never sees his face again.
Two months later Selphie is sitting in her room, papers spread out across a table and left unattended as she watches the video from the celebration party after Time Compression was stopped. Some parts make her laugh and others make her smile. She watches Zell choke on hotdogs and nearly falls out of her chair with giggles. Then there’s her, and Quistis and Cid and Matron and just a bunch of people. And she’s wearing his hat and the video camera is looking at other girls and he was the one holding it then and that’s just so him. She doesn’t cry because it’s him. She frowns a little and hits the fast forward button.
There’s a knock on the door and she sighs, getting up to open it. It’s ten at night; she’s cut back on all the things she does lately, but sometimes people still show up late at night asking for her help. She’s deciding whether or not to tell them to get lost when she opens the door.
“Hi there pretty gal,” Irvine says and winks. She stares and can not stop staring. Irvine gives her his disarmingly charming smile and tips his hat in gentlemanly fashion. “What are you doing here?” She asks finally, once her tongue stops being tied in a thick knot, her surprise evident.
“Came to talk with Squall about a joint mission between Balamb and Galbadia,” he tells her and all she can say is “oh” because he did not say he is there for her. Anger slowly starts to seep into her at this, but she tries to keep it down, not be a catty bitch to him after two months of no contact except for a few letters he sent her in the beginning that she flushed down the toilet, unread.
“What’re you doing at my door then?” She asks, not quite successful in keeping the spite from her voice. His eyes fall down for a moment, staring at the floor. “I can’t visit my gal?” He inquires, trying to sound like before their fight; it doesn’t work.
“I’m not your ‘gal’,” she tells him and there’s just this silence that is tense and maybe a little sad. She doesn’t like this silence and how it makes her feel like the mean, unfair one, so she adds, “Two months is a long time Irvine.”
He nods softly. “I know,” he says quietly and she’s not sure if he is contrite or just uncomfortable with facing her. “How’s Galbadia Garden?” She questions to fill the silence that follows.
“Fine, fine,” he tells her in a way that sums up everything. Galbadia Garden is summed up in the one word of “fine”. “What have you been doing?” she asks and she’s still in the doorway, blocking him from coming in and he remains in the hallway.
He looks at her for a long time after that. Suddenly he laughs and pushes his stupid hat more firmly onto his head. “Everything,” he tells her, “Just everything.”
She doesn’t know what that means at all and she thinks he’s laughing at her. She glares at him, adding to the look the words, “I will slam this door in your face Irvine if you make fun of me.”
He holds up his hands, a pacifying gesture. “I’m not making fun of you, honest,” he says and her glare lessens, though she still doesn’t let him in. He touches his hat again and she remembers now that’s a thing he does when he’s uncomfortable and pretending not to be. How many other things has she forgotten about him, she wonders.
“They had me helping rebuild for a bit. Then they put me in charge of the Garden Guard-they have to have a guard see, cause people are all mad at them about what they did under Sorceress control. I ran a couple field tests, taught a class on wilderness survival. Took on a whole bunch of missions. For the most part though, I run communications between Galbadia Garden and, well, just everyone. Employers, politicians, mayors, countries, scientists-everyone.” He looks straight at her as he says all this and it’s like everything is coming back up, like there wasn’t a two month lapse between the last time they saw each other.
“Couldn’t you have done those things here?” She asks, though she knows he couldn’t, that Galbadia Garden and Balamb Garden are two completely different situations with different needs and different amounts of people to meet those needs.
“Selphie,” he simply says and touches her cheek sweetly. She wants to let herself have that touch, but she can’t. Because he left her.
He seems to sense this and drops his hand almost immediately. He rubs the back of his neck and she’s never seen him do that before, he must have picked it up in Galbadia Garden. He looks at her and it’s like he’s been looking at her for every day of his life. “I thought about you,” he says and her grip tightens slightly on the door. “All the time,” he adds, in case she’s wonderings.
“I sent you letters, but I couldn’t…call you… There were all these things I wanted to tell you. Well, I wrote you some of it anyways,” he continues and he’s sort of babbling, which is not Irvine at all.
“Irvine,” she says and he stops talking. “I flushed those letters down the toilet,” she tells him and there’s more silence. And then he laughs, laughs till tears come to the corners of his eyes and doesn’t stop laughing. The tears spill over and she thinks he may be crying for real and that upsets her because she didn’t mean to make him cry by telling him that.
“I’m sorry, but I was really, really mad,” she tells him, leaving the doorway to pat him on the back comfortingly. “That is so you,” he says between laughs and she just continues to try and comfort him.
“So you,” he says again and suddenly he turns, pressing his lips to hers in a way that is even sweeter than she remembers, like eating cotton candy that’s actually clouds and rainbows. He pulls away slightly and stares at her for a moment. “Shit, how I’ve missed you,” he says and wraps his gloved hands around her face, kissing her like clouds and sun and sky again.
His eyes close and one hand slides down her neck and her shoulders, down her back to her hip where he pulls her to him, just holds her there while he kisses her so sweetly. For a moment her mind is carried away by this and it has been over two months since she has been kissed by anyone. The only person who has hugged her during these months has been Rinoa who has given her pathetic “comfort hugs” and Quistis who gave her one such hug once and then seemed to find herself degraded by such an indulgence.
Her senses do return though, just as her eyes are beginning to flutter, and she pushes Irvine away. “Sex isn’t going to fix anything,” she tells him, hurt by the irony of the whole situation and it was the other way around last time.
“I don’t care about sex,” he says, which makes her think maybe he’s been doing drugs or something without her. “I’ve been thinking about you for weeks and days and hours and I’d dream about you all the time. I felt so obsessed and here you are now and you’re telling me I can’t touch you?” He mumbles against her jaw, sending a chill down her spine.
He doesn’t even ask her if she thought just once about him. This love isn’t a conditional thing to him; he doesn’t have to be loved in return for it to work. She manages not to cling to him as he rains adoration down upon her skin. He doesn’t ask, not once, if she thought about him at all, thought that she missed him, thought so much even as that she hated him and wished he got hit by a truck.
“I made time,” she says suddenly, impulsively, and he halts, for just a moment. “So if I ravish you no one’s going to interrupt?” He asks and she punches him in the shoulder, making him wince.
“What are you going to do?” She wants to know as he reaches her collar bone and he stops, pulls away, and her heart sinks when it was rising so high before. “You’re going back to Galbadia Garden,” she accuses; he does not deny it.
Instead he looks her in the face, deeply, seriously. “They need me Selphie, can you blame me?” He says and no, she can not. She has thought about him so much, too. She can not fault him for wanting something important of his own to do. She can’t despise him for wanting something meaningful to fill his days with.
“Irvine Kinneas, you come here, call me out in the middle of the night, make out with me in the hallway, lead me on, and then tell me you aren’t staying?!” She can still be mad at him, even if she does understand.
He won’t have any of that though. He puts a finger over her lips and she glares at him. “I love you,” he tells her and it’s been so long since she’s heard those words. Too long. More than two months, far more. It has been a very long time since he has told her that he loves her.
And then he kisses her again and she throws her arms around his neck. She doesn’t want him to go, but she understands and she’s not going to stop him. He’s here now and he loves her and he’s not giving her the chance to tell him, but she loves him right back. She presses him up against the wall and her hands take off his hat and put it on her head. It has been two long, hellish months since she wore this hat.
Eventually they move into her room and even if they didn’t plan on it before, they sleep together and when he thrusts into her it is like nothing she has ever felt before. She bites her lip until it bleeds trying not to scream his name. He can’t keep his mouth off her skin and he seems determined to have the taste of her forever on his lips as he runs his tongue everywhere, and she means everywhere.
No one leaves the room until one in the afternoon the next day and that is only because Zell finally finds them around ten and pounds on the door, which is sort of embarrassing, having him pounding on her door and yelling loudly, for everyone to hear, that the Commander and the Festival Committee is damn tired about waiting for them and they need to hurry up and get up. After some reassurances shouted through the door he leaves. And then they having another bout of rousing sex and it’s like he’s drinking her up and eating away two months time and they were never separated because they are joined at the hip and at the lips. It is not until three hours later at one in the afternoon that they finally leave the room and go their separate ways.
And she thinks, as long as they visit each other and write and call and all those sorts of things, maybe this will be okay.