Entry tags:

fanfic: final fantasy viii

This was the hardest thing I've ever done, but if I even say, "I'll never do this again!" I probably will.

I'm not sure if I'm completely happy (going to give it a few hours before submitting them) and I broke all sorts of rules (I Fail at Sentences) but I made it, I finished, and there's something in there about growing as a writer/person by doing something difficult like this. Thanks to railway and cupcakemonster for doing betaish stuff for me.

Merging (1,900 words)
Seifer/Zell, PG/worksafe
Pieces of a relationship. Collection of 50 sentences. Also on AO3.

#01 — Motion
He always marvels that Seifer can dodge every blow (physical and verbal) he wings in his direction like he's faster than light and lighter than air.

#02 — Cool
Zell is anything but calm and collected, but sometimes when Seifer pisses him off with some smartass remark, he feels strangely at peace with the world around himself as if the anger is his solace.

#03 — Young

It takes Zell weeks without GF to remember sandy days and little kids playing in water and meadow but the memories that come back most vividly are of Seifer pushing him and down and then helping him up so he could push him down yet again.

#04 — Last
He was the last one to forgive him and yet at the same time the first; he forgave the actions but it took him years to forgive for the sentiments behind it.

#05 — Wrong
The look on Zell's face is torn between murderous and hurt: the fact that he's the one that puts those looks there daily makes him have regrets for the first time.

#06 — Gentle
Neither of them can be defined with anything less than severity, but when they dance around each other, the blows are as soft to them as they are painful to onlookers.

#07 — One
The first thing Seifer did as the head of the Disciplinary Committee was to stake out the entrance to the cafeteria; when Zell ran by, the joy he felt giving his first detention slip to the bouncy kid was addicting.

#08 — Thousand

It's not until afterward Zell regrets the chances he had and was too stupid to see.

#09 — King
Seifer tried to teach Zell chess and he was appalled at how terrible he was; Zell wore every feeling and plan and intention on his face and Seifer had never had more fun with the game than with a man who couldn't even remember how to move his king.

#10 — Learn
Seifer had taught him things he never expected to learn—dignity and superiority—but Zell knew he'd never quite be able to catch them in the precision Seifer managed everyday.

#11 — Blur
He spent his free hour after classes watching him in the training center, fists flying, face spread with a smile he could barely see because of his speed, and Seifer thought that if he could move that fast with his blade, he would be invincible.

#12 — Wait
He sat at a table behind some bushes until Seifer returned from his first trip to the Fire Cavern and wasn't surprised that Seifer had a bounce in his step and a smirk on his face; what did surprise him was that Seifer looked right at him as he walked by and gave him a real smile.


#13 — Change
Seifer had pressed the correct change for the snack machine in his hand, saying, watch out or you'll lose that girly figure but instead of getting angry, Zell shared his snack with him, in the quiet of the dormitory hallway.

#14 — Command
It's the lump in his throat that won't go away when he sees Seifer again, the man that demands attention even from the lowest he's ever been and cannot be broken.


#15 — Hold
When she died, Zell cried for the first time in years and neither of them ever talked about the tears on Seifer's shirt or the bruises on Zell's shoulders shaped like fingertips.

#16 — Need
Zell thinks he needs this, needs this like fucking breathing; as his fist connects Seifer goes sprawling back on the ground, grinning up at him even when he's bleeding.

#17 — Vision

He sees how it could've been if the war had never happened, but when he's pushed into the mattress he thinks that any other ending wouldn't be as good as this.

#18 — Attention
Zell knows that sometimes he purposefully pushes Seifer, tests his boundaries; he's spent more than one evening in detention for it and he'll never admit it was worth it.

#19 — Soul
He has thoughts sometimes that make him question who he really is inside and then Seifer will make fun of him for mooning; he figures it's more fun to put his hands on Seifer than to analyze the person he's already become.


#20 — Picture
The photo is slid under his door while he's getting dressed and when he picks it up, the handwriting on the back (I knew it, you sly dog!) makes him wince but the image of him and Zell makes him grin.

#21 — Fool
Seifer kept pushing him and challenging him and daring him to leave, even if he could never say, please stay, so he has to relearn how to compartmentalize again when Zell finally takes his advice.


#22 — Mad
It surprises Zell when he discovers the real way to tell when Seifer is truly angry is when he refuses to touch him at all, even to hit back with harsh words or fists.

#23 — Child
He was very much a child of Garden, the darkness Garden had fostered inside of him the basis of who he was; the only time he forgot this was in the warmth of Zell's house, his mother, and his bed.

#24 — Now

His hands are everywhere, and he's dragging out through bloody lips now, Seifer, NOW and he thinks as the first aid lessons he was given pour into his head that he's never been more terrified.

#25 — Shadow
When they stand on the beach together, still dripping, Zell watches their shadows stretch down the sand and merge at the edges and wonders why it took him so long to figure it out.

#26 — Goodbye

Seifer's door is shut against him for the first time in years.

#27 — Hide
They never talk about: the late nights, fist fights over pillows, the fact that his room is full of Zell's things and how they feel when they wake up next to each other.

#28 — Fortune
By the time he is nineteen he is rich and happy and angry and hey, that was MINE; he has a lot of money, too.


#29 — Safe
After he does the unthinkable he hides, but he knows no matter where he goes Seifer will find him and his prospects never looked worse.

#30 — Ghost
Zell recalls his absence at normal times: in the cafeteria, in the training center and in the infirmary where they had placed each other so much but also recalls his absence at odd times, like the middle of the night, when he wakes up sweating and crying out from nightmares.

#31 — Book

When he said, I didn't know you could read, chicken-wuss, Zell hadn't meant for his tackle to take out three cadets and a bookshelf—but it had been worth it.

#32 — Eye
He sports the black eye for a little over a week and the humiliation is tempered by the fact that Zell acts like he did nothing wrong.

#33 — Never

Give me a break, chicken-wuss, you'll never do it, he had said, and he learned early that Zell would do almost anything he dared him to do just so he wouldn't have to be the one to back down.

#34 — Sing
The knowledge that Seifer hums in the shower is warmer than the late morning sunlight heating his back and more intimate than his clothes sprawled across the floor with others that belong to the man in the shower.

#35 — Sudden
It's the feeling that grips him in the middle of an exam, staring at the back of his head and the way his neck curves into his shoulder and he thinks: well, fuck.

#36 — Stop
He knows how to push all of Zell's buttons and in doing so he never can help from smiling whether genuine or sarcastic; what gives him pause isn't that he does it, but that he knows every single one.

#37 — Time
He doesn't think about time in the same way anymore (after the absence it becomes harder) so he measures the days in hard and soft touches, insults, and quiet whispers in the dark.


#38 — Wash
So he is surprised when Seifer does find him, still wet (ohmygod this towel is NOT big enough) from his shower, and presses him against the cool tile of the showers and does the unthinkable right back.

#39 — Torn
Zell had never compared his friends to one another, but one too many shushed conversations and closed off faces makes him wonder which matters more: the man that is honest or friends that are not.

#40 — History

The first time they see each other after time compression Zell feels awkward for two seconds before Seifer insults the floppy hat Selphie had jammed on his head and Zell thinks, but doesn't say: he's going to be okay.

#41 — Power
He says without words what he's been dying to say for too long, gives everything he is to a man that could destroy him: this is what I want and this is what you?ve given me and please, please, plea—.


#42 — Bother
When everyone else has sent him away for being annoying, he can always count on Seifer to meet him head on, to never tire out, to never run out of quips and hard knocks.

#43 — God
He doesn't define the world in terms of deities, but rather by himself; so he's surprised when his first experience with faith comes from the sort that Zell has in him.

#44 — Wall

Seifer has walls that not even Zell wants to break down—he's too scared to admit aloud that he never wants to get through forcibly—he wants to be allowed inside.

#45 — Naked
When he locked Seifer outside his room naked and heard a bunch of girls squeal, he knew he'd won that particular bet.

#46 — Drive
When Xu spends an hour lecturing them about proper use of Garden equipment after they had wrecked a Garden car, Zell's mind is more focused on the memory of Seifer laughing with him instead of at him, and it's a hot feeling in his chest he never wants to lose.


#47 — Harm
I can't believe you broke your nose on a door, chicken-wuss, he had said, and Zell had glared, shouted and caused his face to hurt all over again but he didn't miss that Seifer hung around until Dr. Kadowaki made everyone else leave, where he thought he couldn't be seen.

#48 — Precious
When he's assigned an essay over things he cherishes the most and why, it takes him a week to decide to list his ma, his training sessions and hotdogs; at the end when he adds Seifer's name he stares at the paper and realizes what his instructor meant when he said the project was about revelations.

#49 — Hunger

Zell never comments on the fact that when they have lunch together, Seifer brings two servings without hesitation, because he knows Zell will steal his second after his two servings; Zell knows he's fine with that.

#50 — Believe
He clenches his fists and thinks that fuckin' bastard and for the first time he turns and walks away; Seifer says, no, chicke—Zell and Zell stops because the catch in Seifer's voice isn't a bluff.