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Mind Games	By : danihouse Category: Final Fantasy VIII > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 942 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy or any of the characters represented in the story, and I make no profit from it.

Chapter List
- 1-Mind Games
- 2-2
- 3-3
- 4-4
- 5-5
- 6-6
- 7-7
- 8-8
- 9-9
- 10-10
- 11-11
- 12-12
- 13-13
- 14-14
- 15-15
- 16-16
- 17-17
- 18-18
- 19-19.1
- 20-19.2
- 21-20
- 22-21
- 23-22
- 11
- 12
- 13
sorry for the long delay! I've been having some login trouble. but here's three chapters all at once! isn't that fun!

~~
“Wakey, wakey, sunshine,” someone was humming in an obnoxious sing-song voice, and Seifer had a niggling hunch that it was Zell, just before a glaring shaft of sunlight fell directly on his face through the window that Zell had just flung open. Seifer sat up slowly, groaning as seemingly every muscle in his back protested the movement.
“I will bloody hurt whoever put this piece of shit sofa in a single room and decided to call it a suite,” he growled, leaning out of the direct sunlight and watching as Zell flitted cheerfully around the room, pulling all the curtains.
He turned, smiling deviously. “Had a good sleep?”
“I’ve slept better on a bed of rocks, thanks,” Seifer said, rubbing the back of his sore neck. Zell only smiled wider. “What time is it?”
“Nearly ten,” the other man answered happily.
“What the fuck are you waking me up at this hour for?”
“What, you were planning on sleeping all day?”
“No,” Seifer said, heaving an irritated sigh. “I was planning on sleeping until I felt like getting up. Thanks to you, I’ll never know when that really was.”
“Well I had a wonderful night, thanks for asking,” was Zell’s reply as he folded back the sheets on his bed, looking so smug that Seifer would have gotten up and slapped him in the face if he didn’t think it would make the enormous ache encompassing his entire body even worse. “Except for all that creaking,” he added, smirking. “I think you’ve got a squeaky spring. Kept me up.”
“I could fucking well kill you in your peaceful, cushy sleep,” Seifer snarled. Zell glanced over with a skeptical expression, and Seifer grinned. “Or... other things.”
“Oi, none of that,” Zell barked, his eyes narrowed threateningly. “You even try it and you’ll lose any bits you try to put near me.”
“Yes, I’ll keep that in mind when I suddenly decide I’d like to become a eunuch,” Seifer answered, and he tottered off the edge of the flimsy sofa mattress, stretching sore muscles, and spent a few moments enjoying watching Zell roll that statement through his brain before the martial artist grasped upon the meaning of it and grimaced.
“Eurgh... that’s so not even what I... but... uuuurgh,” he said with a shudder. Seifer smiled to himself, wandering toward the kitchenette; he hadn’t even been up three minutes and he’d already managed to put Zell on his guard. Today might just be a good day after all, despite the less-than-stellar night preceding.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked as he came back, watching as Zell smoothed out the covers of his very neatly-made bed and arranged the pillows in an orderly line at the headboard. “There are people that get paid to do that, you know. They’re called maids.”
“Just a habit,” Zell said defensively, giving Seifer a dirty look. “Are you always this pleasant in the morning, or am I getting special treatment?”
“Get used to it, princess,” the gunblader snarled back, sipping from a glass of water and flexing his shoulders as he shuffled back to the bed and sat heavily on the edge of the mattress. He tempered down the urge to grin as he caught Zell staring for a lingering moment out of the corner of his eye; clearly, his decision to sleep shirtless was a wise one. He had, in fact, caught Zell staring a number of times just since they’d arrived yesterday, but he wasn’t going to call him out on it all the time - that would just scare the other man away, when it was more along the lines of Seifer’s plan to get Zell to let his guard down more often, a task which was not going to be particularly easy considering their history. Not that Seifer was making it easier on himself, either, with the frequent sexual innuendoes and sudden, inexplicable bursts of jealousy.
At least, that’s what he was trying to convince himself was the cause of his strange mood swing last night, because he really couldn’t think of an alternative explanation for it, except perhaps that he was going slightly mad, and that wasn’t a pleasant notion. Why he should be jealous of Irvine was beyond him; he and Zell had been friends practically forever, so it wasn’t like their buddy-buddy behavior was anything new. In fact, Seifer had never really at all been one for jealousy, and certainly not to the point of being so openly distressed about it - and not only that, but the tense, restless feeling had lasted for a disturbingly long time, including through their brief conversation with General Caraway and his wife, which he hoped desperately that neither of them had noticed; his pride at being a very cool, composed operative on the job aside, he didn’t want Zell to notice anything weird was up, and thankfully the other man didn’t seem to have. Seifer had been on edge until they finally left the party some hours later, and he’d been too preoccupied trying to appear calmer than he felt to bother worrying much about why he was suddenly, unaccountably less in control of his emotions than he normally was.
“What’ve we got on for today?” he asked Zell next, wrestling the pull-out back into the sofa with some effort, and haphazardly tossing the cushions back onto it. Zell, sitting on the edge of his bed and shimmying his feet into his trainers, looked up, frowning slightly.
“Nothing. Luncheon tomorrow, though,” he said, as though Seifer should have known that.
“Then where are you going?”
Zell gave him a very flat, closed look. “Out,” was all he said, snatching up a black jacket from the floor near his bed and heading for the door. He exited without another word, leaving Seifer alone to muse over the instructor’s quick departure - cheery though he might have been, he was clearly not eager to spend any more time alone with Seifer than he had to to get their job done, although Seifer had suspected that would be the case. Still, it was a little galling.
He went over to Zell’s bed and flopped down on the prim, neatly-made covers - heavenly compared to the shapeless, soggy mattress he’d spent most of the night trying to sleep on. It didn’t compare to his bed back at Garden, sure, but for a cheap hotel it was still pretty flash. One way or another, Seifer was going to have that bed - and whether or not Zell decided to join him in it remained to be seen. He gave a quiet sigh, closing his eyes to the warm sunlight falling through the window onto the bed.
Zell, it seemed, was determined to keep as far away from Seifer as he could, which might have been a good plan if it wasn’t so terribly obvious that’s what he was doing. Leaving early in the morning, presumably to stay out all day unless they were to be otherwise engaged - well, the chicken never was long on brains, Seifer thought to himself. He’d barely spoken two words to Seifer for the duration of the party last night, clearly still angry about the lovely bite mark Seifer had left on his neck (though personally he thought it became Zell rather well; he’d like to see the other man a bit more decorated, but that was thinking a little too much ahead for now,) although he’d conversed extensively with others, including Dallia Caraway, with whom he evidently got along famously, which for some reason annoyed Seifer. The two of them had taken no time at all to become best friends, chatting happily away while Seifer stood awkwardly to the side like some mute third wheel, his disposition not at all helped by the strange, uneasy feeling that plagued him throughout the night.
That was the other thing that was bothering him - Seifer was usually pretty good at reading people, but he couldn’t seem to get a bead on Dallia; something about her, they way she’d looked at him, like she knew him, troubled him. Though he’d felt it too, a familiarity, almost as though they had known each other once and he’d lost the memory - not that it would surprise him if something like that had happened; he’d lost more than a few memories in recent years. It was only a brief couple of seconds that her gaze had held on to him, but it clung to his thoughts, niggling, all the same.
He had to admit that she wasn’t at all what he had expected, although it was true that she had, as Caraway had put it, a way about her - she’d certainly managed to charm Zell quickly enough, even if Zell wasn’t exactly a paragon of astuteness. She was petite, fair-skinned and dark-haired - Trabian, Seifer had been given to believe, though she’d spent much of her life in Esthar, until marrying some months earlier. But she was definitely not the princess he and Zell had been led to believe from Squall’s - and, honestly, the General’s as well - description of her. Though she was approximately ten years Caraway’s junior, she was not young; and uncommonly pretty, but not stunning. But there was something about her - something very charming, despite the strange, troubled feeling Seifer’d had. Something that a weaker mind than his own - Zell’s, for example - could easily fall prey to and become captivated by. But Seifer couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was, which was perhaps what had made him so uneasy.
He had, however, seemed to be the only one with such a feeling; after their very brief introduction, he’d watched her make her way all around the room, effortlessly enchanting everyone she engaged with. He’d definitely have to keep an eye on Dallia Caraway, and not just in the way he was being paid to do.
Now, keeping an eye on Zell... that was an entirely different dilemma, and Seifer wasn’t sure just how he was going to proceed on that front. He was going to have Zell before this trip was over, he’d decided, one way or another. The problem was, he didn’t really have a plan - Seifer was never much good at sticking to plans; sure, they sounded good at first, but they got boring so quickly - he was mostly trusting to luck and relying on the fact that Zell was already predisposed toward wanting him to help his cause. However, the martial artist did seem to be under the impression that Seifer was only finding the whole situation as a joke; that is, he didn’t appear to have realized that Seifer was, well, not entirely disinclined toward an attraction (was, in fact, rather strongly inclined toward one,) a problem which would have to be dealt with, because Zell was almost certainly not going to let his guard down if he thought Seifer was only going to deride him for it.
But after a great deal of thinking on it, Seifer found himself thinking that, despite the increasing number of roadblocks that kept cropping up in his path to seducing Zell, playing it by ear was still going to be his best bet. It was what he was best at, after all. And he had nearly a full month yet to work his magic. He grinned at the very thought of it, settling back into the warm, comfy mattress. He just had to keep that end goal in mind.

It was already after dark when Zell finally returned, and his expression was stormy as soon as he walked through the door. “What are you doing in my bed, Almasy?” he growled, shutting the door behind him and kicking off his shoes.
Seifer grinned, taking a swig from the beer in his hand. “Very comfy, isn’t it? I can see why you wouldn’t want to give it up,” he remarked, flipping channels with the remote he held in his other hand. Zell glowered. Seifer added curiously, “where have you been all day?”
“It’s none of your damn business where I’ve been,” Zell replied, flinging his jacket onto an armchair and stomping across the room toward Seifer. He stood next to the bed with his arms folded severely across his chest, looking grim. “Have you been sitting in here watching telly all day?”
“Of course not,” Seifer said, assuming an offended expression. “I had to go out to pick up the beer.”
“That’s nice,” Zell sneered. “Can you get out of my bed now?”
“You could get into it.”
“Not likely!” He tugged on the edge of the sheets, as if that would somehow make Seifer evacuate the bed. “Are you drunk?”
“Certainly not,” Seifer answered, draining his beer and setting the empty bottle on the floor next to the bed. It wasn’t exactly a lie - he was only a bit tipsy, and he definitely wasn’t planning on getting drunk; just remembering the last time that had happened put him off it for a long, long time. Although... remembering the last time that Zell had been drunk, perhaps that wasn’t an idea he should discard so quickly. He grabbed two more beers from the six-pack beside the bed and offered one out to Zell. “If you’re not going to join me, go somewhere else. The match is coming back on.”
“I don’t think so,” Zell said stiffly, and he snatched the bottle from Seifer and set it down on the bedside table before continuing angrily, “now come on, get up before I get you up myself.”
It took him a few seconds to realize what he’d said, and Seifer grinned widely as he went rapidly pink. “I meant... you know what I meant!” he snapped. “It came out all wrong.”
“I have to disagree with you, I think it came out very well,” Seifer replied, cracking open his beer and cranking the volume on the TV. He saw Zell’s eyes flit toward the screen for a second, and his half-angry, half-embarrassed expression softened.
“I didn’t know there was a fight on tonight,” he said after a hesitant moment. “Who’s on?”
“It’s Leiden at Figaro,” Seifer answered. Zell’s eyes were fixed to the TV now with only an occasional glance directed Seifer’s way, and he was biting the corner of his lip, looking wary. Seifer shifted over to one side of the bed to make room for the other man, who despite clearly mistrusting Seifer’s motives looked as though he was very much willing to risk whatever consequences might come of breaking the five-foot-rule that he had self-imposed in order to watch the match. Seifer found he was a little surprised at it himself, and he remarked, “you actually follow this? It’s not, like, an insult to your art or something?”
“No, it is,” Zell said, and after a last quick moment of contemplation seemed to come to a decision, and he sat on the edge of the bed, grinning slightly. “I mean, I don’t watch it all the time. But I like that Figaro kid. He’s got potential.” He turned to Seifer with a sheepish smile, shrugging casually. “I like to keep track of who’s got talent. Most of these guys are just brutes.”
“Hmm,” was all Seifer said. Zell retrieved the beer from the side table and opened it with a deft twist of his wrist, leaning forward as he focused on the TV. Truth to tell, Seifer wasn’t all that interested in boxing, but there wasn’t much on else - and in any case, he was at least glad his hunch that Zell would be interested in such things had panned out. Seifer didn’t know much about the finer details of martial arts, but it was clear even to him that the goons on TV weren’t exactly shining examples of pugilistic skill; and he had therefore worried that Zell probably wouldn’t care much for it, but it was refreshing to be proven wrong once in a while.
It wasn’t long before Zell was on his second beer and totally into the match; he sat forward, perched at the end of the bed, alternately cheering and cursing at the TV screen, shouting advice which the fighters, of course, would never hear. Whether or not the advice was justified, Seifer had no way of knowing, as he was watching Zell’s antics more than he was watching the match, and marveling at the fact that he was finding it cute - something about that just seemed like it should be wrong. After twenty-odd years of Zell being, at the very least, a perpetual nuisance to Seifer, the less-than-annoyed feelings Seifer was lately having toward him ought to have been more, well, unnatural, but they were perfectly the opposite.
“Get - get him, you-” Zell muttered, gesticulating wildly at the screen with tightly-clenched fists, as though he were about to start throwing punches himself. “His left side is completely open, you big ox! Get him!”
Seifer snickered, but luckily it went unheard by Zell, who was rummaging in the grocery bags at the foot of the bed for more beer. It was amazing - almost unbelievable - how quickly the other man had forgotten his anger, his aversion to being anywhere near Seifer, and the fact that Seifer was even there, when presented with a fight and beer. He’d have to remember that one; he’d found precious few openings so far in the constant and solid wall Zell was determined to keep up at all times - at least, ones that didn’t end with him getting socked in the face... or worse.
Now, how to build on this small victory? Getting Zell drunk and having his way with him was always a choice option, but after a moment’s contemplation, Seifer decided he’d rather save that plan for a later time; aside from the fact that he would certainly only have one shot at such a thing - considering what had happened the last time Zell was drunk around Seifer, he was surprised that the other man was risking drinking at all, to be honest - it just wouldn’t be as much of a triumph as getting Zell to come to him, which he was pretty sure he could pull off if he handled this the right way. To get Zell to admit to wanting him - now that was a victory. A bit chancy, maybe; Zell probably wouldn’t call Seifer’s bluff, but he wasn’t sure exactly how strong the martial artist’s self-control could be; there was the likelihood that Zell could outlast him in a game of willpower, and that wasn’t a pleasant prospect. Seifer would be walking a fine line between playing indifference and seduction. Then again, he was good at bluffing.
But for tonight? He sipped his beer, thinking on it for a while. He supposed he could let Zell off easy for once - might help to get Zell to trust him a bit, if anything. He watched a bit more of the match (or rather, watched Zell, who was now kicking and punching on his own as he murmured testily at Figaro, who was getting spectacularly beaten, between drinks of beer, watching the match,) and at length he quietly got up and went to his couch, and had long since been feigning sleep by the time Zell noticed that he’d gone. He looked positively befuddled at this, and Seifer was hard put not to grin at the dumbfounded expression on Zell’s face as he turned off the TV and cleared the beer bottles off the bed. It was worth going easy on him just for that expression - he clearly couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that Seifer would simply go to bed peacefully after getting so close to him. Zell’s reactions when he was angry were adorable, amusing, but too easy; surprising Zell by not making him angry was a bit more of a challenge, and one Seifer felt he could rise to magnificently. Who knew the chicken would be so fun to play with?

He woke up in a fairly better mood than they day before, despite the miserable night’s sleep he’d gotten courtesy of that godforsaken couch (and only day two of twenty-eight; maybe he would start taking up the floor,) and in mutual silence he and Zell got up and dressed for the banquet. Zell was chipper and energetic as always, but Seifer didn’t find he was particularly looking forward to the luncheon - in the itinerary it was detailed as a formal party with representative guests from each Garden attending, which meant a few hours of mingling with a lot of people Seifer didn’t like, but there was no getting around that. The upside was, everyone who was going to be there already knew he was likely to be anti-social, so he wouldn’t have to play nice with any of them - a small mercy. There wasn’t much else in the event to look forward too.
Indeed, when they arrived just after noon, it appeared as though someone had consulted a list of People Seifer Most Disliked Spending Time With when sending out the invitations. Cid and Edea Kramer were among the first of the other guests that Seifer recognized, and two of those which he most wanted to avoid if he could; he and Cid hadn’t been on good terms since Seifer’s trial, where Cid had been one of many testifying against him, and Seifer’s relationship with Edea was, to put it very lightly, strained. Of course there were extenuating circumstances, not least being possessed by a demented megalomaniac sorceress from the future, but it was still hard to be friendly with someone who’d seduced, brainwashed, and debased him, and finally threw him aside when he ceased to be useful. No matter how little she’d been in control of her actions at the time, as long as Edea’s face continued to be the one he saw in his nightmares, he couldn’t see any sort of intimacy happening.
She and Cid were presumably there to represent Balamb Garden as owner and proprietor and headmaster, respectively - Seifer recollected instances in the past of Cid filling in for Squall at state events when the brunette didn’t feel like or wasn’t able to attend himself. He supposed he and Zell were the SeeD representatives, then; that seemed to be the trend, anyway, as he looked around at the other guests - there were two SeeDs and two administrative reps from each Garden. Selphie and an equally ditzy- and annoying-looking redheaded girl were there from Trabia, accompanied by a middle-aged woman and a very old man, neither of whom Seifer recognized or cared much about. Irvine, as well, had shown up to represent Galbadia - not surprising, Seifer thought grouchily to himself, he always manages to show up when I least want to see him - and was being followed around by two pretty, vapid-looking girls in SeeD dress, all three of them vacuously unaware of the stern, disapproving stares the third lady of their group, who was giving off some very Quistis-like vibes, was sending their way.
The four other party guests Seifer had to think for a few minutes before he could place, until it occurred to him that they were from Edea’s White SeeD ship. He’d only ever heard of it; and they weren’t an official Garden, so he wouldn’t have expected to see anyone from the ship here. He didn’t know much about the White SeeDs in any case; nor did anyone, really, except for that they were something like Edea’s pet project over the past few years; they were unconnected with any of the established Gardens, but the students underwent the same training to become SeeDs and even had their own version of a field exam to attain rank. The group’s purpose since the end of the war wasn’t known, and Seifer had figured, as most people had, that it had dispersed, but clearly Edea was still nursing her little private mercenary orphanage. Thinking more on it, Seifer wasn’t that surprised; she had withdrawn considerably from the public view for some time after the war, as likely to give Garden some relief from a connection with the sorceress as to distance herself from the institution which had tried, quite hard, to exterminate her. She’d have needed some kind of project, and her special pet SeeDs would have provided the perfect outlet for it.
She was standing with them, some ways apart from the rest of the group, their pale uniforms standing out sharply against everyone else’s black. Zell had gone immediately upon entering to hang out with Irvine, and the two of them and Selphie were all chatting amicably in a tightly-packed cluster, which annoyed Seifer - not that he particularly wanted to be included in their group (he’d cut his tongue out before voluntarily entering into conversation with Irvine and Selphie,) but seeing the three of them all chummy irritated him nonetheless. No one else seemed interested in talking to him, so he stood off in the corner by himself for a while, watching the proceedings. Dallia Caraway, naturally, was nowhere to be seen.
She really does think we’re playthings, he thought testily to himself. How else did she get off calling all the heads of the Gardens here for some silly party, and not even showing up herself? Though he found he wasn’t really looking forward to meeting with her again - he felt anxious at the thought of it. It was odd, and unsettling - why was he so... well, afraid wasn’t the word; it was more like apprehensive, and the fact that there was no discernible reason for him to be so just made him fret more.
He tried to put it out of mind by thinking on another subject, though that didn’t do him much good as he ended up with his eyes on Zell again, scowling as he and Irvine kept putting their heads together and whispering conspiratorially, causing Selphie to shriek as she demanded to be let in on the secret. This was absolutely ridiculous - jealousy was not a frequent trait of his, wasn’t even an infrequent one; then why was the sight of Zell and Irvine together so absolutely infuriating?
He was rent quite sharply from his thoughts by Edea’s approach, and he tried pull a straight face, hoping he wasn’t showing too much of what he was thinking in his expression; if there was anyone he really didn’t need knowing about what he was feeling toward Zell at that particular moment, it was her. She stood by him, and for a minute didn’t say anything, looking as though she didn’t know quite how to begin. In fact, she looked just as uneasy as Seifer felt himself, but whether that was specifically because of whatever she wanted to say to him, or just from being here, surrounded by so many people who had reason to hate her, he didn’t know. She played nervously with the ends of her hair, which fell over her shoulder in a long plait. “It’s nice to see you again, Seifer,” she said at length, her voice quiet and not imbued with that playful cheeriness that Seifer sometimes remembered in short flashes of his childhood. “I didn’t expect I’d see you here.”
He nodded, but didn’t speak. She went on, after an awkward moment, “They didn’t tell us who the SeeD representatives from Balamb would be, you see. Though I’m a bit surprised to see you and Zell as a pair. I wouldn’t have expected either of you.”
He suspected she hadn’t come over just for the purpose of making smalltalk, but it didn’t seem she was going to give it up just yet, so he replied, “who would you have expected, then?”
She paused for a second to think, and then said, “Hmm... Quistis and Xu, perhaps? I’m not sure what this,” she lifted a hand to indicate the whole room, “is all about, so I guess I can’t really say. Have you any idea what it’s about?”
He shook his head, and she gave a small sigh. “Are you two able to get along now, then?” she asked after a prolonged silence, indicating Zell and him, and smiling hesitantly. “You always were the worst pair when you were young. I could never leave you two alone together.”
“We get on alright, I guess,” he answered with a shrug, which was somewhat true - there were times that they got on, though Seifer spent most of his time actively trying to prevent it from happening. But Edea didn’t need to know that, and he didn’t especially want to talk about it, least of all with her. Nor did he want to hear fond stories about how precious and darling he was when he was little, and thankfully, she didn’t pursue that topic of conversation.
“I’m sorry,” she said next, giving a sad little smile and looking the other way. “There was something I wanted to say to you, but you’re clearly uncomfortable. I thought that maybe - but never mind,” she ended abruptly, shaking her head slowly.
“Look,” Seifer began, but was lost after that. She held up a hand to stop him.
“No. Another time will be better,” she said firmly, looking up at him, but Seifer found he still couldn’t meet her eyes. Five years, and he still couldn’t fucking do it. “It really is nice to see you. You seem to be happy, and I’m glad to see it.”
“Is that so?” he muttered lowly, though not loud enough for her to hear as she walked away. Was he happy? The unease caused by her comment bothered him less than the fact that he couldn’t immediately answer himself as to whether the comment was accurate or not. A few months ago the answer would have been a flat “no”, no question, but lately... Well, hadn’t even Fuu commented on his uncharacteristic cheerfulness not too long ago? And he had been rather eagerly anticipating this trip with Zell (albeit for scheming reasons,) and even now thinking on all the different ways he was going to have fun with Zell over the next few weeks brought a smirk to his face. So, okay, he wasn’t exactly in love with life, but Seifer figured he was probably more content with it than he’d been in a long time - and that really was saying something, considering some of what he’d been through in the past five years.
“If you don’t mind me saying, you don’t look particularly happy at the moment,” said a low, honeyed voice just behind him, and he jerked around, more startled than was probably necessary. Dallia gave a chirpy laugh at his reaction, holding a slight, delicate hand in front of her mouth demurely. How in the hell did she get behind him? Tittering, she added, “oh, please don’t be angry. I didn’t intend to frighten you.”
Seifer didn’t reply, unsure of how to - to accuse her of eavesdropping on his conversation with Edea would be both childish and too rude; pardoning her for it felt like a surrender. She smiled up at him with wide eyes and went on in a distinctly teasing tone, “I’m sorry, it’s just that I can never pass up the opportunity of sneaking up on people. It’s terrific fun. But really, I do apologize.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Seifer managed after a moment, feeling stiff next to her. She didn’t leave, however, but moved around to stand next to him, looking out at the room and her party guests, who hadn’t yet noted her arrival.
“You don’t seem to be having much fun,” she remarked with a strange, mysterious sort of smile that Seifer didn’t suppose he was meant to understand.
“I’m here to work, not to have fun,” he answered after another moment’s hesitation, which eked a frown out of Dallia, though her eyes were still smiling as she replied.
“Your partner-” she paused for a barely-detectable instant, her gaze flitting toward Zell, who was now having a highly animated conversation with Selphie and the other Trabian SeeD, “-is rather enjoying himself, isn’t he?”
“He always is,” Seifer said, trying to keep the sarcasm in his voice to a bare minimum - to no avail, evidently, as her smirk returned.
“Oh, I see,” she declared, as though she had just hit upon a revolutionary thought. “Then you’re only here to keep his devil-may-care free spirit in check, and therefore you can’t possibly let yourself have any amount of fun, is that right?”
Seifer didn’t answer that, mostly because he wasn’t sure how to without sounding surly. Though it was difficult to converse civilly with Dallia at all, as he had a distinct feeling that she was making fun of him in some way he couldn’t quite understand - as though she were laughing at some private joke that he should have known, but didn’t. She waited for a moment or two before accepting that he wasn’t going to reply, and then she went on in a different vein, “we didn’t get a chance to talk much the other night, did we?”
As Seifer recalled, they hadn’t talked at all, but he didn’t say that; he merely gave a noncommittal shake of the head, and Dallia responded with a wry chuckle. “You don’t like me much at all, do you?” she asked, sounding nothing but amused as she tossed out that loaded question. Seifer tried not to sigh as he pondered his answer, although he wasn’t entirely surprised that she’d picked up on it; something about her came off as very shrewd to him, and it wasn’t exactly as if he was doing much to be friendly to her. He was, in fact, doing his best merely to stick to professionalism, though when Dallia was around even that felt like a stretch. Having had the chance now to talk to the woman didn’t ease his inexplicable dislike of her; it had rather amplified it, despite there being, as far as he could tell himself, no basis for the feeling.
“A job is a job,” he finally said, trying to appear disaffected. “My personal feelings aren’t relevant.”
She laughed loudly, attracting the attention of several people nearby, and then she turned to face him, smiling cheerfully. “That’s a very good answer. A very diplomatic answer,” she amended, acknowledging his skills in tact with a small sort of curtsey. “But,” she added next with a knowing grin, “not a straight answer. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll get it out of you later,” she promised with a wink, touching his arm, and Seifer was overcome suddenly by a strong wave of repulsion and he had to fight the urge to yank his arm away for the long couple of seconds her hand remained there. Then, without a further word, she turned and sashayed away, her pink pleated skirt swishing around her knees as she approached Cid Kramer and two of the White SeeD members nearby, without a moment’s pause entering into spirited conversation with them. She was cheerful and vibrant and just the slightest bit teasing - and infuriating, Seifer couldn’t help thinking to himself, feeling marginally calmer now that Dallia’s presence had been removed from his immediate vicinity. There was definitely something not quite right with her - and though he spent the next ten minutes in silent contemplation trying to figure it out, he just couldn’t place what.
She fluttered about the room, moving with assertive fluidity from one group of people to the next and chatting easily with everyone - charming everyone, just as she had so effortlessly at the ball. Seifer hadn’t been far wrong when he wondered if he was the only one who wasn’t charmed by her; but he couldn’t help feeling that she was exactly the type of person he would get along with immensely well, if it weren’t for... well, that’s what he couldn’t quite put his finger on; just what it was about her that repelled him. He’d figure it out eventually, but for now it niggled at the back of his mind like an itch, frustrating him. More likely than not it was something as stupid as her reminding him of a bad ex-girlfriend or something like that (he hoped she wasn’t an ex-girlfriend herself; but he sincerely doubted he’d have forgotten someone like Dallia, even if he had forgotten quite a few things in recent years,) which lined up with the odd vibe of familiarity he was getting off her. What didn’t line up was the way she looked at him - as though the two of them were supposed to be in on some kind of secret together, only he couldn’t remember it.
Well, whatever it was, it wasn’t worth getting worked up over while she was around and causing trouble for himself. She’d already - though admittedly it wouldn’t have taken much work - deduced that Seifer didn’t like her, not that he thought she’d hold it against him or anything; her attitude gave every indication that she found the situation amusing. What Seifer wanted to avoid was encouraging her to pry, and possibly end up asking questions that he couldn’t even answer for himself, and if he couldn’t keep his emotions better under control when she was around, she was going to eventually seriously wonder why. A thought occurred to him, and he grinned at the irony of it; around Zell, he could do nothing but put up a front, while whenever Dallia was nearby he couldn’t keep one up if his life depended on it. If Seifer hadn’t been so pissed off at himself for not being able to keep his cool better, it might have been almost funny.
He looked up to see Zell and Selphie, clutching the martial artist’s arm and dragging him behind her, making a beeline for Seifer’s corner; Seifer quickly looked around for an escape route, and was able to duck through a side door nearby before the pair reached him, hoping desperately that they wouldn’t follow - he wouldn’t put it past the girl if she was really determined to catch him. He’d managed to see remarkably little of her since the end of the war and her return to Trabia, which was about as good as Seifer figured it could get. He emerged in a narrow staff hallway that led down to the kitchens, the small space rank with humidity and the cloying smell of stale dishwater - and it was still less stifling than the party he’d just exited. No one would miss him if he stepped outside for five minutes to get some air - Hyne knew if he had to go back in there and force smalltalk with any of Zell’s harebrained friends, he was going to hurt someone.
He slipped quietly down the hallway and past the kitchens, and out the back door.

“Where the hell’ve you been?” Zell asked in a sharp whisper when Seifer returned to the banquet hall, just as everyone was sitting down at the long table in the center of the room. He took his place next to Zell, thankfully at the opposite end of the table from where Dallia Caraway was sitting, telling what appeared to be an animated story to Irvine and the square-jawed instructor who was beside him. “You can’t just take off like that in the middle of a party!”
Zell looked more than a little peeved, though Seifer suspected that it was less because he’d shunned etiquette and snuck outside for a cigarette than because Zell had been the one left behind to endure Selphie’s wrath regarding such a brazen insult as his running away from her. She was shooting little murderous glares his way from across the table and a few chairs down. Rolling his eyes, Seifer replied, “don’t worry about it. It’s none of your business.”
“It is when we’re on the job, you-” Zell began in a hiss, breaking off and adopting a sedate expression as Cid Kramer took the empty seat on Seifer’s other side, his wife next to him and not sparing a glance Seifer’s way.
“I seen you talking to Matron earlier,” Zell said next quietly, the remark half a question, but Seifer wasn’t going to deign to address it.
“So what?”
“Surprised me, is all,” the other man replied, shrugging a bit. “I didn’t think you two were on speaking terms.”
“We’re not,” Seifer responded shortly, hoping that would be enough to put Zell off the subject; but it seemed only to encourage him further on the subject, and for once Seifer found himself grateful for Dallia’s impeccable timing as she stood at her end of the table, clinking her fork against a glass to draw everyone’s attention, just as Zell was about to speak. Everyone turned toward her, and she gave a sunny smile and made another strange sort of half-curtsey - maybe it’s a Trabian thing, Seifer thought wonderingly to himself - before addressing the room.
“Thank you all for coming!” she began with a trilling laugh, beaming at them all. “I’m really very glad everyone could make it. Especially those of you notoriously anti-social-” Seifer tried to pretend he didn’t notice she was looking straight at him as she said it, “-but anyway. There’s something I’d seriously like to talk about...”
“Look, you weren’t to know she’d be here,” Zell said in a low tone, leaning sideways toward Seifer to be as quiet as possible - a feat for the martial artist, who typically worked to be the loudest person at any given gathering. “But you can’t go disappearing when we’re working, here. Dallia noticed you gone, you know.”
“That so?” Seifer murmured, thinking fast to try and find a way to end the conversation - now was not the time or place to be having a heart-to-heart with Zell (not that he would prefer to do such a thing at any place or at any time.) “You lecturing me, now?”
“Lecture where lecture’s due,” Zell snapped back cheekily. “I don’t wanna take sides or anything, but you gotta get over this unsociable shit. At least while we’re out here.”
“Gee, I’m sorry I haven’t enough empty space in my brain to be friends with everyone, like you,” Seifer snarled, a bit too loudly - the stern-faced White SeeD across the table shot a reprimanding glare his way, which Seifer pointedly ignored.
Zell was giving him a decidedly frosty stare now, and Seifer couldn’t help but think that seriousness became him really rather well - or maybe it was just because it was such an uncommon expression on him that it seemed so. He must have learned that stare from Quistis; he had just that right narrowing of the eyes, that disdainful downward glance, the slightest furrowing of the eyebrows. Far from being intimidated, however, Seifer found it unexpectedly appealing, though when he asked himself the reason, he couldn’t quite name it.
“It ain’t about being friends with everyone,” Zell said in a soft but deadly voice. “It’s about doing your damn job properly.”
Seifer was too taken aback by the comment to say anything for a few moments, but before he had collected his thoughts enough to form a reply that didn’t involve slapping Zell upside his head - where did he get off? - there was a commotion at the other end of the table that caught both of their attentions; Trabia Garden’s headmaster, a few seats down from Seifer, had got to his feet, and was staring Dallia Caraway down with disgruntled intent, though to her credit she looked entirely unfazed.
Zell was instantly alert; Seifer could see the line of tension running through his stature as he sat forward on his chair, ready to jump up at any moment should it be necessary. Seifer thought back a minute, and tried to remember what Dallia had been talking about, but it beat him. “Absolutely not,” the old man said, anger evident. “We will not allow such a thing!”
“Please, do sit down, Mr. Filmore,” Dallia suggested sweetly, laying her hand gently on his arm; but he remained standing, and after a moment more, she went on, addressing the rest of the table, “I didn’t mean to upset anybody; it was only a proposal. I’d like to have the opinions of all the heads of Gardens on the matter.”
“Galbadia already has a Garden,” Filmore said gruffly. “What do you need to build another one for?”
Dallia continued to smile, not appearing a bit off-put by the old man’s vehement protestation, and in fact looking rather serene and cheery, despite the fact that not one of the guests seemed to be at all pleased with her statement. The Trabian Headmaster was furious, and Seifer looked surreptitiously round at the others to gauge their reactions; Irvine and his austere companion both looked grave, and he appeared to be thinking quickly, sitting forward in his seat; the White SeeDs all looked outraged, and were deferring to Edea, who, Seifer noted with a glance, looked rather ill.
“There would be no reason to install another Garden in Galbadia,” Dallia said calmly, her tone light and casual, though Seifer somehow felt that there was something menacing in the way she said it. “The Garden we have is perfectly adequate.”
“Excuse me,” Irvine interjected, only the slightest hint of amusement in his voice, though his expression was serious. “I take offense to that.”
“Beg pardon,” Dallia amended with a saccharine smile. “Galbadia Garden is, of course, more than adequate; to build another Garden here would be a tremendous waste of resources, time, and money. I, however, am not planning to remain in Galbadia for long; next month I will return to Esthar. It is there, Mr. Filmore,” she cooed, her smile not for an instant faltering, her dark eyes sharp and twinkling with cunning, “ladies and gentlemen, that I intend to build my Garden.”
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Mind Games