Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The air smells of roasted pecans and warm cinnamon apples. The temperature is cool, but the sun is bright. In short, it’s the perfect fall day.

Shit. Just my Hyne damn luck.

The disgustingly glorious weather means it will be a lot harder for me to blend in at Trabia Garden’s Fall Festival. When in a crowd I like to keep my hood pulled up, my face in shadow. I have good reasons for wanting to keep a low profile, especially here. No one else has their hood up today. A few are wearing hats, but that doesn’t help me.

Thankfully, the crowd seems much more interested in the sights and sounds of the festival than the tall brooding loner amongst them. Children are tugging at the hands of their parents, pulling them towards colorful wooden stalls, imploring them to bring their gil purses. Apple bobbing, hook a duck, face painting – every Trabian fall tradition is on display today.

Young adults are milling around the cider stand or congregating near a small stage. A band is tuning up there and a few of their strangled notes reach me. People are relaxed, shooting the shit with friends. Probably storing up most of their energy for the dance that evening.

I don’t know Trabia well, but from what I’m told, fall here is a blink and miss it affair. A week of temperate, half-pleasant weather sandwiched in-between its furnace of a summer and unforgivably cold and bleak winter. Locals apparently check the weather forecast anxiously this time of year, and once that week arrives – that brief window in which some tree leaves fall and crunch underfoot before being ripped away by winter storms – they gather. And they party.

Which is why I’m here. I’ve been travelling for a long time, and I need a break. To be around people. To let off some steam.

Raijin and Fujin are people, of course. But sometimes a man needs a change of faces. A change of pace. It’s been five years since we first started exploring the world. Five years since our pardons. Rai and Fu are used to my moods by now, my predilections. They know I need a few days to myself, now and again. To just be by myself. Or to be with a girl, depending on what I’m in the mood for.

Basically, I’m here to get laid.

Only this time, for the first time, Rai and Fu hadn’t been thrilled when I announced my intention to go solo for a couple of days. More specifically, it was my intention to check out Trabia Garden’s Fall Festival and dance that had gotten them all riled up. Almost… protective.

“Man, I don’t think this is such a good idea, ya know? Selphie Tilmitt organized the festival. Said so all over the flyers we saw. Meaning Squall and the others may be there, too,” Rai had said.

“IDIOT.” Fu had said, more succinctly.

They had been making a valid point, of course. I knew that. Although pardoned and a free man, they’d been there when Leonhart had spoken to me after the hearing. “I never want to see you again,” he’d said. And the feeling had been – still was - mutual. I never wanted to see him or any of the pathetic ragtag of followers he called friends ever again either: a crybaby, walking ADHD diagnosis, lanky sleazeball and neurotic drudge. Just because we’d grown up together didn’t mean shit. I’d chosen my own family.

Yes, Tilmitt will be there, but it’ll be easy as pie to keep out of sight of the scatterbrained moron, I’d argued. And sure, maybe her cowboy will be there too. But Kinneas isn’t capable of keeping more than a single thought in his head at a time when there are women with a pulse around. It won’t be difficult to avoid him, either. And Leonhart was a thousand miles away in Balamb, running Garden along with the remainder of his motley crew.

Besides which, the stakes were low. So what if they did spot him? The worst they were likely to do was tell him to leave. Big whoop.

Besides which, I really, desperately needed to get laid. And there likely wouldn’t be another opportunity for months. So, needs must.

“I’d feel a lot better about this if we were there to have your back, ya know?” Rai had said before the three of them had parted ways that morning.

“BEHAVE YOURSELF,” had been Fu’s parting shot. Knowingly.

Behave? Not if I can help it. Sorry, Fu.

I continue to amble around the stalls for a time, stopping only when I hear a voice I remember. It was shrill, and bossy, and pitched at a much louder volume than was necessary.

“The amps need to be over there, on the stage! They should have been up there an hour ago! The band needs plenty of time to set-up and warm-up!”

This was followed by the sound of another remembered voice. This one was pitched much lower. And calmer.

“Relax, Sefie. There’s more than three hours to go until the dance. Plenty of time to get everything done.”

Tilmitt and cowboy are now just a few feet away from me. I hang back, and make sure my hood is still up. I know this is a bad idea. I should turn around right now and walk away. An encounter with these two dullards would be irritating and had the potential to blow up into an entire thing.  But I just can’t help myself. I’m curious. Curious about what has changed over the last few years. Curious about what hasn’t.

“Don’t tell me to relax, Irvy.”

She’s wearing a neon pink high-vis waistcoat with the words Festival Director emblazoned obnoxiously on the back. He holds his hands up as if she’s pulled a pistol on him.

“Okay. Whatever you say, Sefie. I’ll help you relax. With my magic hands. Let’s find someplace quiet. They can do without you for ten minutes, babe. How about the haybales over there?”

She snorts indignantly and nudges the cowboy away with her hip, clearly irritated. Or pretending to be irritated. Hyne help me she has an ugly clipboard to match the waistcoat and consults it now, muttering under her breath.

This is my cue to leave. I walk on by, giving them both a wide berth. Clearly, absolutely nothing of interest has changed with those two. And just as I’d promised Rai and Fu, it proved easy to slip on by them.

By now my stomach is gurgling like an Ochu, and so I stop by the hot dog stand and place my order. Extra onions and mustard. When it arrives, I wash it down with a mediocre, lukewarm cider but it’s the best tasting meal I’ve had in months. A taste sensation, when you’ve been living mostly on granola bars, beef jerky, and other non-perishables for a long time.

I sit on top of a bale of hay and people watch. The crowd now seems to be centered on a large stall that is collecting tickets and doling out paper wrapped parcels in return. A sign pinned to the front of the stall says something about the dance, and so I follow their lead.

I continue to people watch as I wait in line. Feeling bolder now, I pull down my hood. No one looks my way. No one cares. I don’t see anyone else I know.

I’m both relieved and disappointed.

“Next!”

When I step up to the stall I am greeted by a bored looking guy about my age with long hair and blue eyes. If he recognizes me, he doesn’t bother to say so. His expression remains disinterested. A girl standing to his left is wrapping a dress into a paper parcel and I think it’s probably the ugliest dress I’ve ever seen: a sickening morbol green and with dozens of what look like tentacles attached to it.

I’ll be avoiding whoever is wearing that monstrosity like the plague. Tentacles have never been, and will never be, my thing.

“Give me a ticket to the dance,” I say to Mr Bored. He takes the crumpled 5 gil bill I hand over and exchanges it for a slip of orange paper with the words Fall Festival Dance - Admit 1.

“Where’s your costume ticket?” he asks as I begin to turn away, his attention already drifting back to his phone.

“My what?”

He sighs theatrically and lowers his phone, as if this physically pains him. “Your. Costume. Ticket. To exchange for your costume.”

I feel the urge to kill rise within me. Thinking of Fu, and the strides we’ve made in recent years to rein in my temper, I suppress the urge.

“Oh. I don’t have one. Costumes aren’t really my thing.”

This gets the guy’s attention. He looks up, eyes narrowed. “No costume, no entry,” he says, pointing to the flyer stapled up behind him. My stomach drops as I read.

All Hallows Masquerade Ball, the font across the top reads, with the date and time underneath, above a picture of a dancing couple. No Costume, No Entry! NO EXCEPTIONS!!

What demented loser would insist on such a thing? And in all caps?

“I guess I need to rent a costume too, then,” I say resignedly, reaching for my wallet again.

Mr Bored’s eyebrows raise. “Why certainly, sir. What would you like to go as?”

Good question. I think over the question for a beat. What would be tolerable?

“A knight?” I venture.

He looks up long enough from the hockey match on his phone to sneer: “Ha! I see you’re lacking in sarcasm detection as well as intelligence.”

I begin to count to ten in my head, slowly. It’s the best available method Fu and I have found so far to keep me calm, seeing as there’s no chance of a sound bath any time soon. One. Two. Three.

“Every available costume has been booked up for weeks, dumbass. And the nearest town is hours away. You’re shit out of luck.”

Four. Five.

It’s not working. I still want to punch him in the throat.

“No, wait. Hang on a sec…”

The girl behind me is huffing and puffing like a chocobo, clearly unhappy with how long I’m taking.

Six. Seven.

“It’s your lucky day,” Mr Bored says, putting the phone down once more. “Some guy called in a few minutes ago to cancel their costume reservation. Can’t make it to the dance because of car trouble or something. You want it?”

Eight.

“Depends on what it is,” I say guardedly. “If it’s a moogle costume you can forget it.”

He pulls a parcel from underneath the counter. It’s different to every other one I’ve seen so far. The paper it’s wrapped in is black and shiny. The guy glances at the handwritten tag.

“Prince of Darkness.”

Hell, I’ve been called worse. Although not recently.

“Fine, I’ll take it,” I say.

“Great. That’ll be 2,000 gil.”

Nine…

I look from the parcel, to him, and back to the parcel. Back to him. “This is some bullshit.”

“Seller’s market,” the guy retorts. “Take it or leave it.”

The girl to his left is wrapping a costume into a new parcel now. It’s a beautiful, silky dress in an unusual burnt orange color. There’s not much of it. It helps me make my decision.

I slowly count out 20 100 gil notes and let them fall to the counter. “Shut up and take my gil.”

With a grin he passes over the shiny black parcel. “Pleasure doin’ business with you. Oh, and you’ll be glad to know your mask is included inside.”

“Mask?” I ask uneasily.

He talks to me like I’m stupid again. “Do I really gotta provide you with the definition of masquerade, pal?”

The parcel containing the scandalous orange dress is now wrapped and carries a tag, too: The Pumpkin Queen.

I sigh. The Pumpkin Queen better have the best body I’ve ever seen.

Chapter Text

It’s true what they say. It’s lonely at the top.

Now I was the newly installed Head Instructor at a newly rebuilt Trabia Garden, professionally I’d never been happier. My days were full and busy. I presided over a wonderful team of instructors and served an enthusiastic, dedicated student body.

But on a personal level, things were very different. I missed Balamb, and everyone and everything I’d left behind there. It was a joy to continue to work alongside Xu, Nida, Selphie and Zell here in Trabia (as well as Zell’s girlfriend Tessa, who had just been appointed Head of Library Services), but it would take time to grow accustomed to my new home and develop other friendships.

And romantically, my life was non-existent. There aren’t many dating candidates when you’re the boss at a remote military school, seeing as it would be extremely inappropriate to date one of my instructors.

So yeah, I’m lonely. And maybe growing just a tad desperate for a meaningful connection, and twitchy for a little affection. I know what they call me. The Ice Queen. But still, I have needs. I have desires. Which is why I’d agreed to let Selphie matchmake yet again and set me up on a blind date at this evening’s masquerade ball, despite the fact I desperately needed to catch up on sleep.

“Remind me how I’ll spot my date again?” I asked distractedly, taking the parceled costume from Selphie as she entered my dorm room. “And why does it look like you were just pulled through a haybale backwards?”

Selphie blew out her cheeks, annoyed. “I hope you’re taking this seriously, Quisty. Stop changing the subject!”

“Serious as a heart attack,” I murmured, helping brush some of the strands of hay from her hair with my fingers.

“You’re going to love him,” Selphie squealed, pushing me away. “So, he’s tall. Bookish, a real academic type. Very sensitive and sweet. He’s travelled a long way today to meet you and I just know you two are going to get on great.”

My stomach dropped a little in disappointment. Tall sounded good. But bookish, sensitive, sweet? Not exactly my type. But Selphie keeps on insisting that I just haven’t met the right bookish, sensitive and sweet guy yet.

I didn’t have the heart to tell Selphie – just the thought of it was making my cheeks burn – but tonight I wasn’t looking for a guy with serious, or long-term, potential. My life was too busy for the complication or added weight of a relationship right now. What I needed was a stress release. No strings attached. Releasing my own stress wasn’t quite doing enough anymore. So no, I didn’t want sweet tonight. I wanted sour. Sharp and strong and maybe a dash unsavoury.

Selphie frowned slightly. “I was worried he wasn’t going to make it. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to panic you, but he sent me a message earlier today to say he was having car problems. But I just checked with the costume stand and his parcel was collected an hour ago. So we’re go for liftoff!”

“Ok. Great.” I circle back to my original question. “What will he be dressed as? So I know it’s him.”

“The Prince of Darkness.”

A shiver went down my spine. Huh. What would that costume even look like? I was having trouble picturing it. And it didn’t sound so sweet after all.

Perhaps there was hope.

Selphie noted my shiver and broke out into a huge grin. “THIS IS GOING TO BE SO EXCITING!” she said at the top of her lungs. Which is what she always said when sending me out on a blind date.

I opened the parcel gingerly. Selphie had selected my costume for me, and I’d been so busy lately with paperwork and fighting administrative fires that I had forgotten to ask what I was going as. Rookie mistake. The handwritten tag read, ‘The Pumpkin Queen’.

I did not like the sound of this.

When I pulled out the silky garment I liked it even less. The dress was a burnt orange color, and evidently there had been some sort of mistake because it looked like half of it was missing. I searched the corners of the parcel, my heart sinking more with each passing second. It was becoming less and less likely that the other half existed, let alone was in there.

I turned to query this with Selphie but discovered she’d already left, no doubt muttering furiously over the clipboard of doom.

There was nothing else for it.

I slipped into the dress. The feeling of having so much air on my skin was unfamiliar to me. I’m much more of a multilayer, wrap up warm type of girl. The plunging sweetheart neckline and slit that ran up and up to the very top of my left thigh was way outside of my comfort zone.

But I had to admit, the color was growing on me. I straightened in front of my full length mirror and pulled my shoulders back, improving my posture just as I’d ordered countless first year cadets to do. It worked. I instantly looked better in the dress. Statuesque, even.

I knew I didn’t have it in me – the personality or the experience – to be forward tonight. This was a dress that could, however, do the talking for me.

I self-consciously set the costume-jeweled tiara on top of my loose, curled hair.

The black, ornate mask was the final accessory. I slid it down over my eyes, my nose. It ended there, leaving just my mouth revealed. Great, now I couldn’t see a thing. I reached for my glasses and put them back on over the mask and instantly burst into laughter.

The glasses looked absolutely ridiculous. They had to go.

I squinted back at myself, the blurs resolving back into something that looked almost like me. I didn’t have any contacts lens, as I didn’t like wearing them. And so I’d just have to make do without corrected vision.

At first, I haunted the edge of the dance floor for fifteen, twenty minutes, feeling incredibly self-conscious. After which, the alcohol I was knocking back started to work its magic and I began to relax. Even with my impaired vision, I could tell I was attracting some admiring glances. The beauty of wearing the mask was that I cared little about what anyone else thought. I enjoyed being in my own little bubble for a while. Admired the strings of star-shaped lights that emitted a luminous, soft glow.

Straightening my tiara, I took hold of my courage, downed a final glass of prosecco, and stepped onto the dance floor.

The band started up a new song just as my stiletto heel hit the parquet, and it felt like the music was just for me.

Serenade for Strings in E Major, if I'm not mistaken. Years spent convincing cynical cadets that knowing the waltz just might save their life one day has cultivated an appreciation for classical music by necessity. 

Couples move around me. I am the sun, and they are merely orbiting. Never getting any closer. My energy, my gravity, repels them. Each dance partner is engrossed in the other. No one looks my way. No one cares.

I am both disappointed and relieved.

I relax further. The floor feels uneven, and I’m having some small difficulty walking in a straight line. There’s clearly something wrong with the structural integrity of the quad. I’ll get someone to look into that, first thing on Monday.

I feel a breath on the back of my neck, down the back of my dress. A hand brushes against the small of my back. I turn, only the slightest bit unsteady. And look up. And up, into a pair of amused green eyes framed by a black mask identical to my own.

"You're the best looking pumpkin here, Your Majesty," he says.

He was wearing closely fitted black trousers tucked into black ankle boots. A midnight blue shirt with a deep V-neck showed off a heavily muscled chest. My toes positively curl at the same moment I catch sight of his collar bone dimples. No one in the history of tailoring has ever worn a shirt like this before. A blue cape was tossed over one massive shoulder and perched on top of the tousled blonde curls of this Adonis was his own silver crown.

The Prince of Darkness, clearly. Who else? My mouth suddenly felt very dry. Where in the name of all that was Holy had Selphie been hiding him all this time?

The Prince is looking at me intently, as if he recognizes me, which is impossible. His gaze settles on the swell of my breasts for a few moments before his gaze locks with mine once more. His hand hovers tantalizingly over my bare shoulder.

Without so much as an introduction or how do you do, the Prince’s hand is now resting on the small of my back.

"May I?" He asks belatedly, followed by: “Dance with me?” He doesn’t wait for an answer.

He smells like a fresh shower and that rush of adrenaline I'd get on the rare occasions I broke curfew as a teenager.

Pressed against him, we swayed in time to the music. His hand began to feel warmer on my lower back as he led me around the dance floor, confidently. I was willingly, gloriously, happily swept along, entirely lost in the moment. Lost in him. The feel of his hard, muscled body tight against mine.

I begin to lose track of time. My head rests heavily against his chest. His smell, his touch, was doing things to my body I hadn’t felt in much too long. The Prince was more long limbed, much more muscular than my usual type. His jaw was square. Not at all like the angular pretty boys I was usually drawn to, as Xu had termed them.

But still, the moonlight looked good on him.

The rousing notes of Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64 / Act 1: Dance Of The Knights assaults the dance floor. I'm becoming breathless in my effort to keep up with him. Tirelessness as well as strength exudes him. And throughout, those calculating eyes remain on me.

I become conscious of the fact that his hand is drifting lower. Exploring my body, through the thin silk of my dress. I don’t stop him.

This is crazy. I am crazy, to be going along with this. We’ve hardly exchanged a word.

One of my curls is now wrapped around one of his fingers. He plays with it, grinning wickedly, before tucking it behind my ear.

Selphie has already vetted the guy, I reassure myself. I may not know him, but she does. And she wouldn’t have set me up with someone dangerous.

And I so desperately needed this.

He plants a kiss on my cheek, close enough to my parted lips to appear careless.

Reaching up, I press my mouth against his, hungrily. His tongue is in my mouth almost immediately. Possessively. I lose myself in the kiss. My hands move of their own accord, I swear, sliding down his chest, resting on his lower abs through the thin material of his costume. I pour all of my loneliness and frustration and want into him and he absorbs it all, somewhere behind the black mask.

His hands drop to my waist and stop there, anchoring me in place.

I pull away and look around. It must have passed midnight. The crowd has thinned a lot, and no one seems to be paying us any attention. The mood has shifted, too. People are peeling off the dance floor and heading towards the dorms, or the surrounding woods, for privacy.

What a wonderful idea.

Before the thought has fully formed in my brain, the Prince is tugging my hand, bidding me to follow him. I follow him, deep, into the woods.

He stops once he is sure we are alone and pulls me to him once again. Lifts me, bodily, from the mossy ground, and pushes me back against a tree. His warm mouth finds the side of my neck and begins to scatter small, teasing kisses along its length. I feel both cold and scalding hot at the same time.

At which point I became completely undone, throwing back my head and wrapping my legs around him. This is insane. Rationally, I know that. We’re yet to have a conversation. I hadn’t even seen his face!

But he felt so desperately, agonizingly good, and hadn’t I just been telling myself how desperately I needed this?

But still, this is dangerous, irresponsible, reckless, not to mention a terrible example for an instructor to be setting…

But it was also exciting, and thrilling, and I wanted more. I wanted all I could get. I wanted all of him.

Am I going to regret this?

There’s only one way to find out. I feel my few tattered, remaining reservations drift away. I am his.

He lowers me to the floor, carefully. Crouches over me and continues to scatter those wonderful kisses with his mouth. His thumb grazes against my erect nipple through the cold silk of my dress and I let out a sudden hiss of approval. He chuckles softly and moves his thumb back. He is tracing lazy circles over the hardened nub, and before long his other thumb has found my other nipple and is following suit. Eliciting many more little hisses and a long, drawn-out sigh.

I find his mouth with mine again, and murmur in giddy appreciation into it. He begins pulling up my dress. The Prince is a fast mover, and I’m glad. I’m not sure how much longer I can last before resorting to begging to get what I want.

His fingers push under the fabric of my underwear, trail upwards, and I press myself against his outstretched palm. He pushes back firmly, and his thumb finds my clit. Those green eyes look at me questioningly from behind the mask. I show him how I like to be touched. He catches on very quickly. The rhythm, the pressure, the circular motions – are all perfect.

He’s the perfect student.

His hand pulls away and I whimper. He opens his mouth as if to speak. I raise a finger and place it gently against his lips. This isn’t the time for talking. It’s the time for action.

Surprising myself with my forwardness, I reach for the buckle of his belt, and unfasten it with impatient fingers. I slide my hands inside and stroke, gently. He is big, and hard, and both tenses and growls at my touch.

It’s clear neither of us wants to wait any longer. He’s soon above me and pressing against my entrance.

“May I?” He asks, only this time he does wait for a response.

My heart thundered. “Ask me again,” I say. “But slowly.”

Caught by surprise, he grins and shrugs as if to say works for me.

“May I?” He asks, for the third and final time that evening, deliciously, slowly.

“Yes,” I rasp.

There’s a slight burning sensation followed by a feeling of intense fullness as he sinks into me. I wrap my legs around him once more, and rock against him. Together we find an easy, slow rhythm, but it’s clear that neither of us is going to last long.

It’s also clear that this suits us both just fine.

Time slows, and I feel him pulse inside me as my own world begins to splinter. With a handful of satisfied gasps (him) and equally satisfied little moans (me), we jerk to a stop.

Afterwards, he helps me back into my dress and drapes his cloak around me to keep off the worst of the chill. He even offers to walk me back to my dorm, which I politely decline.

“The thing is, I’m not looking for…”

“I’m only here for one night…”

We say in unison, then both laugh in relief.

“I’m almost sorry,” he finishes, and he does sound regretful.

“Well, if you happen to be passing through during Selphie’s Spring Fling…” I retort. I’m beginning to feel a tad uneasy – it wouldn’t be like Selphie to try and set me up with someone just here for one night only. And the more time I spend with the Prince, the more familiar he seems.

He couldn’t be a staff member after all, could he? Or perhaps someone from back in Balamb?

“Since we’re on the same page… and never going to see each other again in any case… I guess there’s no harm in taking off the masks to say goodbye,” he says, almost too casual. I wonder whether he’s having the same uneasy thoughts about familiarity that I am.

“I guess not,” I agree. “On three?”

By unspoken assent we take hold of each other’s masks.

“One.”

I tense.

“Two.”

He moves before I do, and my mask begins to pull away.

“Three.”