Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Lightning. ❯ Chapter, the Thirty-First: In Which Zell and Seifer Shower. ( Chapter 31 )

Kitty: -totally forgets Author's Notes in favour of daydreaming of Seifer and Zell showering-'

Eoko: -looks around- I think that's what everyone is doing..

Kitty: I wonder why...

Eoko: It's hawt?

Kitty: That was a rhetorical question, Ko-Ko-chan. Of course that's why. Dripping Blonde Bishounen Boys! WOO!

Eoko: Blond.

Kitty: It looks better with the e. And we don't have the girl/boy rule here for that word.

Eoko: Right, cause I haven't been changing most of them as I've been reading through them...

Kitty: No matter. Our next collaboration, I'll upload. HA HA HA HA HA HA :end Sephiroth Laugh TM: ...I am so hypo right now... Make me stop. Let them read.

Eoko: -_- The girl who won't let me get away with a single 'me and person' but would rather use the feminine cause it's pretty.....

Kitty: Why do you think all my created names that start with the C/K sound use the K, not the C? Because it's prettier, that's why.

Eoko: You're on crack. Everyone, make her use the proper words, and read the fic.

Kitty: Somehow, I don't think they care if Zell and Seifer are blond, blonde or even blomd, as long as they're naked.

Eoko: BLOND! Like my AIM name! Shut up!

Kitty: -shuts up, but pokes tongue out at Eoko when her attention is on uploading the chapter-

Chapter, the Thirty-First: In Which Zell and Seifer Shower.

“Alright, boy. Hang tight. Just wait… wait… Shh…” Irvine’s voice kept up a gentle litany of soothing sounds, not even words half the time, and his fingers ruffled Lightning’s feathers, though he kept his hands locked tight around the reins.

“Ready?”

Irvine hissed as the chocobo danced beneath him, eager, strong.

“Fuck, yes! Have been for the last five minutes!”

Selphie held a stop-watch up and gave Anasha a nod. The younger SeeD nodded back, shut her eyes, tightened her grip, and Exeter split the air.

Lightning shot off as though he were the bullet, and Irvine was right with him, crouched low over his back and moving easily with him. They wove through a line of barrels, dust and sawdust flying, and Irvine yehawed at the top of his voice. The lightest touch or squeeze of his knees directed his bird, and he felt like an extension of the cowboy, or the cowboy of him, he wasn’t sure which. Their combining was seamless.

Irvine wheeled him around with a skitter of claws and an excited wark! They shot back down the line faster still, feathers and auburn hair flying.

“He’s so pretty…” Anasha sighed, hugging Exeter.

“Hey!” Selphie cried, pretending hurt.

“I didn’t say he was prettier than you,” she promised, winking at the brunette, who snorted and hit the stopwatch as Lightning and Irvine crossed their makeshift finish line.

The sharpshooter reined Lightning’s headlong run to a trot and turned him to come back over to the girls. The chocobo was pleased with himself, hopping and skipping every few steps and Irvine let him go, his spirits as high as the Lightning’s were.

“Well?” he demanded of Selphie.

“Minute thirty-two,” she told him and he grinned.

“Gettin’ better, boy,” he told the chocobo, patting the yellow-feathered neck.

“So…” Selphie said, a dangerous nonchalance coming to her tone. “Why isn’t Zell down here watching you, huuuh?”

Irvine rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t hide the slight blush that crept a little way up his neck and across his high cheekbones.

“Really, Selphie, don’t you, like, have your own gossip to be gettin’ on with?” His eyes flicked to Anasha.

“Yeah, but I know all that already!” she said brightly. “So? So? So?”

“So what…?”

“Don’t play coy with me, cowboy! Sooo… where’s Zell?”

“Seifer’s.”

Selphie blinked, nonplussed.

“Seifer’s?”

“Yeah. Yesterday when we, like, went out to the movies, he went to Seifer’s place to celebrate Seifer becomin’ a SeeD. I think they were watchin’ Pirates… not sure.” He shrugged.

“Yesterday?” Selphie piped, blinking owlishly up at Irvine.

“Yeah… he said he might end up stayin’ the night.” Irvine shrugged, then yelped when Lightning tossed his head and danced three steps sideways. “Hey! Behave like a gentleman,” he said.

“But… he… they…”

“Selph, c’mon. I wanna go again.” He turned Lightning and took him back towards the starting line.

“You can fire the stupid gun this time!” Anasha said, then she looked quizzically at Selphie when she realised the brunette was smacking herself repeatedly in the forehead with the stopwatch. “What are you doing…?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Selphie said miserably, then swapped stopwatch for gun.

- - -

Seifer shifted a little, burying his nose deeper in the warm scent and soft tickle that was Zell Rubedo Dincht’s hair. He smiled, spreading his hand out over the hard stomach beneath it and pulling the little fighter closer to him. Zell grumbled and burrowed deeper, murmuring wordless complaints at being disturbed.

He was still sleeping.

Seifer opened his eyes and looked down at the top of Zell’s head. Ever so carefully, he propped himself up on his elbow to study Zell’s sleeping face and the rise-and-fall of his broad chest. The gunbladist couldn’t resist dipping a finger into the fighter’s navel, making him squirm in a manner that was seriously detrimental to Seifer’s restraint.

He ducked his head, mouth perilously close to the tanned curve of Zell’s shoulder.

Then Zell woke up.

“Seif…?”

The gunbladist thought exceedingly fast, weighing up his options. Then he grinned and bit the fighter.

“Ow… Ow! Seifer!”

Zell slapped at his head, and Seifer grunted when, after a couple of flailing attempts, hand hit head with an audible sound. He let go and backed off, smirking.

“What the hell?!” Zell demanded.

“Just wanted to piss Irvine off one last time before I hold out the olive branch,” the gunbladist replied, the smirk still firmly.

“For fuck’s sake!” Zell craned his neck, trying to see, and muttered several choice curses. “What am I supposed to say about this?! He isn’t stupid!”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Seifer muttered as he rolled out of the bed, dragging most of the covers with him.

“What was that?” Zell snapped suspiciously, trying to drag the covers back and snuggle under them again. Seifer smirked and pulled them the rest of the way off, watching Zell’s smooth skin come up all over goosepimples. “Seifer!”

“What?” he wondered innocently, proud of himself for managing to avoid repeating his comment.

“Blankets,” Zell said with a pout, pushing golden bangs out of sapphire eyes only to have them fall back again.

Seifer only smirked more and wrapped himself up in the comforter, leaving the rest of the covers to puddle on the floor before he waltzed out of the room.

“Arse!” Zell called after him, diving on the blankets and tugging one around his shoulders.

An indistinct reply floated back to him, followed by the well-recognised sound of Seifer flicking through TV channels. The gunbladist insisted Zell had a short attention span, but the fighter thought Seifer took the cake for that when it came to channel-surfing. How could someone even get an idea of what was on with only two seconds to check?!

Zell slouched through to the bathroom, closing the door behind him. Not that he cared whether Seifer saw him naked while he showered or not, but other bathroom activities just weren’t attractive, no matter how gorgeous one was. In no time at all, he was in the shower, singing away to himself.

- - -

The idea of Zell in the shower was, of course, quite delectable, but Seifer’s excited daydreaming was finally given pause when the fighter broke into strains of Rhinestone Cowboy. He showed his teeth and hopped off the couch to go make coffee. A smoke or three found their way between his lips, one after the other, while he went about the activity.

It was Zell’s fault anyway, he reasoned, head wreathed with eddies of blue-grey smoke. If the fighter weren’t so damn spunky and so damn taken and in love, then Seifer wouldn’t be driven to smoke so heavily. Yeah. It was all Zell’s fault. Zell’s and that cowboy.

“Oh my Hyne, Seifer! I’ve got a bruise the size of a chocobo’s egg, I swear! I’m gonna kill you!” Zell’s voice echoed around the bathroom, water turned off.

Seifer smirked.

“Sorry,” he called back in a sing-song tone that plainly told he wasn’t. Then his smirk grew and he added cheerily; “Just don’t let Irvy take your clothes off ‘til it’s gone…”

“Fuck off, Seifer…” Zell muttered, wandering out of the bathroom still damp and with only a towel slung around his hips. The tattoos meandering across the surface of his back flexed and shifted as he disappeared back into Seifer’s bedroom.

“Which actually leads me to a question…” Seifer purred, coming to the door mostly so he could watch Zell dry without looking too suspicious.

“What…?” Zell wondered warily, unfastening the towel and bending to dry off his legs. Seifer congratulated himself on a) keeping silent and b) not just jumping him right there.

“Have you slept with him yet?” At least he wasn’t crude about it. More self-congratulating. He was doing very well, really.

“Seifer…” Zell said wearily, warningly.

“What? It’s a simple question,” Seifer said innocently, disappointed when Zell pulled on his boxers, then went to the draw of his stuff to grab a pair of jeans. The bruise was really quite attractive, the gunbladist thought… but that was probably because he’d been the one to put it there.

“It’s none of your business.”

“Everything’s my business,” Seifer asserted arrogantly, and Zell rolled his eyes as he brushed past him, going back to the bathroom. Seifer followed, still wrapped in the comforter.

“Since when did my boyfriends become your business?” the fighter wondered, unscrewing a heavy-duty tub of gel and setting to work on his bangs.

“Since you got one,” Seifer replied.

Zell paused. Hm. He was right. Since the Neo-Sorceress war, Irvine was Zell’s first boyfriend. He shrugged and continued with his hair.

“That still doesn’t make it your business.”

“He that bad, huh…?” Seifer murmured tauntingly, gratified when Zell bristled.

“He isn’t bad!”

“So you have slept with him?”

“No!”

Seifer grinned and Zell growled when he realised the gunbladist had manipulated him into giving up the information he wanted to know.

“Why not?”

Zell rolled his eyes again.

“Have a shower, would you? I’m hungry and there’s nothing left in your fridge.”

“That’s because you ate it all.”

“Doesn’t make it any less true. Shower already.”

Seifer huffed, but he dropped the comforter, followed shortly by his boxers and stepped into the shower. Once he was in, he repeated his question through the hiss of the spray.

“Why not?”

“Seifer, we are not two giggly girls discussing the latest hunk we’ve picked up, and I’m not having this conversation with you.”

“I’m your best friend, who else are you going to have it with?”

“No one! It isn’t an issue.”

“Come on. You’re guys and you’ve been together – what – like, nearly two months? And you haven’t fucked?” Crap. That was the crude word he wasn’t going to use.

“Don’t be so fucking crude about it, Seifer!” Zell muttered as though he’d read the gunbladist’s mind. Then he sighed and Seifer saw his blurred shape through the shower glass turn and hop up to perch on the sink counter. “It’s gotta be perfect, Seif. I can’t just… you know… spread his legs. I’ve never…” He struggled and Seifer had the sickening feeling he was going to get a love-speech. “I’ve never felt like this before, you know? I’ve never… wanted someone like I want him… and… and I don’t just mean physically. I want everything about him. I adore spending time with him, just doing nothing. I love to talk to him, to make him laugh… I just… Hyne, I love him. It’s simple as that. I love him, and when we… well… it’s gotta be right, perfect, special, especially for his sake…”

Seifer gagged and managed to make it sound like he’d breathed in some water.

“You okay, Seif?” Zell wondered, hopping off the counter.

“Yeah.” Cough, hack. “I’m fine.” But I’d be better if a random T-Rexaur swallowed Irvine whole. Oh, that’s a fun thought. Seifer pictured it for a little while as Zell went out of the bathroom. He came back in a couple of moments.

“Got clothes, Seif.”

“Are you hungry or something…?” Seifer wondered teasingly.

“Damn right. Hurry up!”

So, of course, Seifer purposefully took his time, until by the time he had slicked back his hair so it was perfect, and he was super-gorgeous as always, Zell was hopping from foot to foot and shadow-boxing with impatience by the door.

“If you’re hungry, how can you have so much damn energy?” Seifer grunted irritably as they left his room together.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, sweetheart,” Zell purred, then zipped off ahead, leaving Seifer to stew and hate the world in general, but especially the specific part of it that was one Irvine Kinneas.

Suffice it to say, he wasn’t happy when they came into the cafeteria to find said cowboy just being left alone by Anasha and Selphie, who looked like they were headed somewhere to do things no gay man in his right mind wanted to think about. That meant Zell would sit with him. Which meant Seifer would have to sit with him… and appologise for his behaviour on the field exam.

Dammit!

Sure enough, once Zell had his breakfast of Choco-pops, he went over and plunked down beside Irvine, who grinned shyly at him. Seifer grumbled to himself, then went to get his own breakfast. When he wandered over, it was to hear the stupid cowboy in the middle of some stupid conversation about stupid chocobos. Or, more specifically, one chocobo. Fucking chocobo. If it weren’t for that thing, Zell never would have got Irvine…

“…faster every damn time, I tell you! He’s a fuckin’ miracle. Ain’t never been a chocobo so fast!”

The indulgent, gentle, adoring smile on Zell’s face made Seifer feel far less inclined to eat, and he set his tray down a little harder than necessary. He relished the hesitant look Irvine cast at him, and the way the sharpshooter’s words trailed off.

“I can sit somewhere else, if you want,” Seifer said, charm calculated so that Irvine would look like a complete arse if he said yes.

“No, don’t be stupid,” Irvine said, and Seifer had to give him grudging kudos for how relaxed he sounded.

“Why, thahnk ya, dahrlin’,” he drawled, flashing perfect teeth.

Zell rolled his eyes, but a grin tugged at his lips.

“Seif,” the fighter said, sounding mildly exasperated.

Irvine picked up the thread of his stupid chocobo story, and Seifer suffered through it in silence. He was mildly amazed that Zell seemed to understand all the stuff about chocobos that he had no idea about. Hmm… so the three books on chocobos in his room weren’t just for show. He even asked intelligent questions, so that the two of them got deeper and deeper into a language that might as well have been foreign, for all that Seifer understood. After five or ten minutes of this, he cleared his throat, and they looked suddenly at him as though they’d forgotten he was there.

No, not as though. They had forgotten he was there! Fucking cowboy.

“Er… sorry Seifer…” Zell said sheepishly, reading the look on his face. “Guess we got a bit carried away.”

Seifer waved a hand.

“Don’t mind me.” After all, I’m only your best friend… Wow… that was bitter.

“No, really, that were rude. It’s just… you, like, know about Lightnin’, yeah? Yeah. Well, I’m just happy to have him back,” Irvine said, eyes sliding to Zell.

“I bet. Makes me all warm and fuzzy,” Seifer murmured, well aware of how snide he sounded.

Irvine blushed. Ha.

“Seifer, didn’t you have something to say to Irvine,” Zell muttered, kicking him none-too-gently under the table.

Seifer rubbed at his abused shin with the opposite leg’s calf, glaring at Zell, but at the look on the fighter’s face, he sighed. He turned his emerald eyes to Irvine and caught the sky-coloured gaze with his own.

“Look, I’m sorry for what happened on the Field Exam. Didn’t really mean to get to you like that… I just forget how I affect people…”

His trademark smirk twitched the corners of his mouth and he knew Irvine knew he was talking about the moments just before they’d attacked the queen.

Irvine swallowed, unable to tear his eyes away from Seifer’s liquid gaze. Those eyes really were the truest, brightest green the sharpshooter had ever seen. Too bad he was a bastard…

Irvine finally pulled his eyes away and shrugged slightly.

“Don’t matter. We both passed.”

Seifer smirked. Damn, he was just too good, if he did say so himself. And he really did.