Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Lightning. ❯ Chapter, The Forty-First: In Which there are Mesmerize. ( Chapter 41 )

Eoko: Eoko here for your weekly update. I’m flying solo this week as Kitty is off in Melbourne or something to the like for her very first anime convention! She is of course is Reno! Yaaay! She’d still make a better mini-Irvine, but anyway, this is the chapter. Hope you all enjoy!

Chapter, The Forty-First: In Which there are Mesmerize.

Zell woke to the fuzzy awareness that things were not all exactly as they should be. The warm body next to his was too solid. There was no long leg across his hips, instead two were tangled with his own. They weren't completely naked. There were no waves of hair curling over his shoulder, his chest, his neck, any other place they might get. (Irvine kept complaining that Zell was going to have to stop taking it out of its tail whenever they slept together - in any sense of the words - but as yet, he hadn't fought the point.) Finally, synapses fired and the fighter remembered.

Ah. Mission. Seifer. Sigh. No Irvine to make good-morning love to.

Zell's lips curved in a tiny grin and he burrowed deeper under the blankets in guilty pleasure, thinking of it. Never in his life had he wanted someone so much so often. Even some of the best lays he'd experienced hadn't measured up. He supposed it must have something to do with the fact that he loved the sharpshooter so much. That, and the fact that Irvine was just so Hynedamned fucking perfect.

Zell closed his eyes again and sighed, picturing the way Irvine would arch and writhe and whimper. He was no longer unconsciously sensual, because he'd come to a damn fine awareness of his body and knew exactly how to move to leave them both breathless and needy.

He had to stop thinking along that line, or he was going to be left with a very painful problem.

He stuck his nose out of the blankets, then quickly tugged it back again when it nearly froze into a solid ice-knob. By wriggling around a little - Seifer growled at him in his sleep, but didn't wake - he could look with one eye in the direction of the little heater without having to put anything outside of the blankets.

Fuck.

Some idiot - Seifer! Ha! For once Seifer had done something stupid! - had set the heater to switch off when it got warm enough, to conserve fuel, but had also not set it to turn back on when the tent cooled off. Zell groused to himself for a few moments, then realised if he didn't turn the heater on, then they would literally freeze to death when it came time to crawl out of the blankets.

He huffed, steeled himself, and reached out of the snuggly warmth to flick the heater switch. It coughed, shuddered, and burbled into life, humming happily to itself with no care that Zell and Seifer's clothing was probably freezing at the moment. Oh well, that wouldchange in no time next to the warmth of the now-going heater. The fighter whipped his hand back and shuddered, breathing on the frozen appendage in an effort to warm it up again.

Then a thought occurred to him and he smirked.

Carefully, so as not to wake his companion, he wriggled around so that he was facing Seifer then, with his warm hand, ever so gently lifted the collar at theof the gunbladist's thermal suit. The smirk grew and Zell thrust thecold hand down the back of Seifer's suit, pressing it flat against the top of his spine. The result was quite gratifying.

The gunbladist arched forward in an effort to get away from the hand and his eyes went wide, a very un-Seifer-ish yelp coming from him. Zell held on, pressing the hand harder against Seifer's skin, and it took the taller blond several moments to work out what the hell was going on. He swore in a whoosh of air, then grabbed Zell's arm and yanked the hand out.

"Fuck, Chicken Wuss, what the fuck did you fucking do that for?!"

Wow. Three "fuck"s in one sentance. Not bad, even for Seifer. Zell smirked.

"Your fault," he told the gunbladist, who stared at him like he'd grown a second head.

"What?!"

"You set the heater wrong. It didn't turn itself back on, so I had to do it. Hence, cold hand. Hence, you deserved it."

"I'll fucking hence you!" Seifer snarled and, before Zell knew what he planned, his hands had gone to the fighter's sides and he was tickling.

Zell thrashed, kicking and yowling.

"No! Seifer! Nooo! Mercy! Mercy!"

Seifer smirked, feeling disinclined to stop, until a cold breeze snuck in where Zell had kicked the blankets askew. He shivered, and moved instead to wrap his arms around the fighter's waist, pulling him close.

"Seifer! You're schizophrenic, I swear!" Zell muttered, but he tucked his hands between them and wriggled happily against Seifer.

"To cold," Seifer said.

"Are you always reduced to monosyllables when it comes to being warm...?" Zell wondered exasperatedly and Seifer smirked.

"Zell warm."

"You sound like a caveman..."

If I were a cave man, I'd have hit you over the head with a bloody great stick and dragged you back to my cave by your hair by now, idiot...

"What time is it?" The gunbladist wondered after a few long moments of their reveling in each other's warmth.

"Erm..." Zell squirmed around to look at his watch. "9:34."

"Too early. Let's sleep some more."

"Seifer..." Zell rolled his eyes. "We've got a mission to do, remember? I promised Irvine I'd only be away a couple of days."

Well, that was enough to throw a bucket of cold snow over happy caveman daydreams...

Seifer rolled his eyes.

"We used to pick on people who said things like that," he muttered, sitting up.

Zell shivered and tried to retreat under the covers again, but Seifer wouldn't let him. He pushed them all the way down and threw the fighter's clothes at him. It wasn't too cold in here anymore anyway... At least compared to what he was pretty sure it would be like out there. Fucking Trabia...

"Things change," Zell said breezily, tugging on various bits of clothing.

No fucking duh, Zell... Actually... on second thought…

"No fucking duh, Zell..."

The fighter looked at him, blinking owlishly, then sighed, running a hand through his hair.

"I wish you'd tell me what's wrong. You've been... so... blah lately and you won't let me help... Why won't you let me help?"

“Blah… That a technical term…?”

Zell screwed up his face.

“Leave me alone. It’s cold and it’s the morning and I’m cold and hungry.”

“You said it was cold twice.”

“No I didn’t. I said it’s cold and I’m cold. Those are two different things.”

Zell continued to natter on about that, completely forgetting his question to Seifer, for which the gunbladist was glad.

They were ready to move out soon, having again bolted down their food so it was over quickly, and they worked so well together that everything was back on the snowmobiles in no time. They were soon speeding across the sun-bright whiteness of the snowfields.

“Sighting was just around here last Garden heard,” Zell said when they’d been going for about two hours. “Let’s pull up and have a look around, yeah?”

Seifer didn’t bother to answer, just slowed his ride and pulled to a stop in a fountain of powdered snow. Zell came up beside him and hopped off, looking around.

“It’s impossible to tell,” he said after only a few minutes. “Recent snow’s covered any sort of track. I guess we’ll just have to wander around and hope for the best.”

“Or we could investigate the ripped-to-shreds Mesmerize…” Seifer remarked dryly, pointing.

“Where?” Zell squinted.

“Right there!” Seifer muttered, then had a thought and crouched to be at Zell’s eye-level. “Oh. You’re too short to see. Must be just over a hill.”

Zell glared at him, then stomped over to the Mesmerize, Seifer snickering on his heels. It was enough to make even the two battle-hardened blonds cringe, innards spread across the snow and legs bent at unnatural angles. Seifer gave it a poke with his gunblade.

“Shit…” Zell hissed. “Seifer, only the heart and brain are gone…”

“What the fuck have they sent us after…?” Seifer wondered lowly.

They both suddenly looked warily around them, moving instinctively closer together, and Seifer’s fingers flexed on Hyperion’s grip. Zell had already fisted his hands.

The blood dripped off for a couple of meters before it petered out, giving them a general direction to go in. They were back on their vehicles and speeding off in only a few minutes.

By the time the sun started to set, they’d found another to Mesmerize and a Snow-Lion, all gored and all lacking hearts and brains. Zell called a stop when they came across another lee and Seifer went about setting up the tent while the fighter radioed back.

“Zell Dincht to Garden, over.”

-“Go ahead, Zell… and we don’t need the retro radio talk either…”-

Zell grinned.

“Hi, Squall.”

-“Hi. Report.”-

“I miss you, too.”

-“Will you just get on with it?!”-

“Okay, okay. Geez. We didn’t find any tracks or anything, but we did find three mutilated Mesmerize and one Snow-Lion. Whateverthefuck this is had only eaten… or… taken or whatever… their hearts and brains. Really messy. Almost put me off my food.”

-“Is that even possible…?”-

“Did you just make a joke, Squall?!”

-“No. Is that it?”-

“Yeah, I think so. Thought we’d have it dead by now, but we haven’t even sighted the thing. It’ll probably be a couple more days. Nothing else to report that I can think of. We’ll give you a call again… Monday evening if we haven’t got it, okay? We’ll call earlier if we catch it and need transport.”

-“We’ll expect a call Monday then. Take care, Zell. Don’t do anything stupid.”-

“I’ll make sure he doesn’t!” Seifer called out and Squall snorted.

“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up. Alright, Squall, we’re out. Tell Irvine I love him.”

-“Whatever.”-

Seifer growled softly, covered by the crackle of static from Squall’s end, and ducked inside the tent. Stupid Irvine. He wasn’t even here and he was managing to make Seifer’s life hell…

- - - - - - -

Stupid Seifer. He wasn’t even here and he was managing to make Irvine’s life hell. The sharpshooter wasn’t stupid. He knew the gunbladist had orchestrated this mission somehow, and now he was bored out of his brain.

He had some vague idea that it was kind of pathetic and needy that he didn’t know what to do with himself now that Zell wasn’t around, but he had become so used to spending a lot of his free time with the fighter, that nothing he’d done all day seemed to cut it. He was currently sitting on Zell’s bed writing down random thoughts in his journal.

The phone rang.

He hesitated – it was Zell’s phone, after all. But then again, anyone who would ring Zell ought to know that he was on a mission right now. Irvine picked up the phone.

“Zell Dincht’s phone.”

-“Irvine! There you are!”-

“Selphie…?”

-“The one and only! I thought you might be there. What are you doing there when he’s away?”-

“I… I don’t know.” Irvine blushed. “I just… I miss him.”

-“Well, sitting there stewing isn’t going to make it go away! Let’s go out!”-

“What, so I can watch you, like, make out with Anasha the whole time? I said I miss Zell!”

-“Just you and me! We’ll go see a movie, have some dinner…”-

Irvine sighed. What he really wanted was to curl up with a good book in Zell’s lap while the fighter watched the wrestling on television. He liked the wrestling up to a point, but watching muscle-bound men throw each other around was only interesting to him for about twenty minutes. Zell generally got bored of it after an hour or so as well, then his hands would roam.

“Selph… I don’t really-”

-“Pick me up at five!”-

“But, Selphie-”

Click.

“Dammit…” He grumbled to himself, but he supposed the girl was right, and it would be good to get his mind off it.

He used to think people who moaned after their lovers when they’d only been gone a day were pathetic, but now he understood. Oh well. He supposed he better get used it, since they weren’t always going to be on the same missions together.

Still, since it was the first time, he thought he was allowed to have a little pout and a bit of a mope about.

He closed his journal, engaging the lock, and headed for his own room to get ready for this stupid outing of Selphie’s.

Why was she his friend again…?