Archive of Our Own ^beta

(8 Months after Squall and Fei’s arrival…)

Squall smiled up at the serving girl, Marie, thanking her for bringing the tray full of drinks. 

“Same deal as before?” Marie asked.

“Yes, if you’d please,” Squall chuckled. “I wouldn’t want to ruin his fun.”

“No worries! Let me know when you want another round or if I need to witness Fei’s next dart game for the leaderboard,” Marie laughed before leaving for the bar.

Squall picked up a beer and watched with amusement as Fei made his way back to their table in the back corner while avoiding being spotted by Tifa and her Avalanche friends. In a full bar with the Avalanche members occupied, it wasn’t hard. Jessie, Biggs and Wedge were currently occupied with the dart board, meaning that Fei wasn’t currently able to play his usual game, and Barret was chatting at the bar with Tifa. 

“Back so soon?” Squall smirked, winking at his new husband as Fei slid back into his seat in the corner so that he could look out and see all that was going on in the room.

Fei merely shot him a small glare before helping himself to a beer, throwing his head back and downing it in one long pull. 

Squall sat back and enjoyed the view as he watched Fei drink, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed.

“See something you like?” Fei asked, setting the empty bottle down.

“Perhaps,” Squall teased, winking as he drained the rest of his bottle, enjoying the fact Fei watched him in equal measure.

Just as he was finishing his drink he felt Fei’s boot clad foot rub up along his calf. Used to the blond’s shenanigans at this point, Squall merely quirked up an eyebrow in response as he drank the last trickle before setting his bottle down. Fei smirked back, grabbing another bottle. Squall did the same and together they sipped at their second drink. Fei’s gaze left Squall to roam around the bar’s interior. Since he was in the wall-facing seat, Squall simply sat back and enjoyed his drink and continued the game of footsie under the table that Fei had started. He smirked when he managed to hit the slightly ticklish spot Fei had behind his knee, making the blond jerk and shoot a baleful look his way.

“Something wrong?” Squall asked, putting on his most innocent face as Fei snapped his legs together to trap Squall’s foot between them.

“You’re a menace,” Fei scoffed, his eyes suddenly darting to something over Squall’s shoulder. “...Be right back.”

Fei downed the rest of his current drink, scooted his empty bottles closer to Squall and slipped easily out of his seat. When he suddenly leapt up into the bar’s rafters, Squall didn’t bother to look up and see what he was up to. He wasn’t surprised when Tifa slid into his husband’s vacated chair a moment later.

“Alone again, Squall?” Tifa said in a teasing tone before she saw the three empty beers on the table, the mostly empty one in Squall’s hand and the two untouched bottles off to the side. “Holy Gaia, Squall! You’re going to give yourself liver failure. You haven’t even been here half an hour and you’re already on beer number four?!”

Squall merely shrugged, though he did set his current bottle down.

“I’m celebrating,” he told her.

“Celebrating what?” Tifa asked.

“My work partner, Fei, and I got married recently,” Squall elaborated. “We got back from our quasi honeymoon in Costa del Sol just a few days ago.”

“And you’re here celebrating alone without him?!” Tifa asked, shocked.

“Of course not,” Squall chuckled. “Fei got a call a couple minutes ago so he had to step out. You can ask Marie. He was here when she served us.”

“Uh huh,” Tifa said, clearly not believing him. “I’ll believe that when I meet him. It’s not like this isn’t the first time I’ve caught you drinking like a fish, Leonhart.”

Squall held in a sigh and resisted the urge to glare up at the man hiding up above them. If this was how Fei wanted to play this out, then so be it.

“It’s DuHart now, actually,” he told her. “Figured most people know us by the name of our business and since it’s just a combined version of our surnames, it’s what we’ve decided to use from now on.”

Not that either of them had bothered to make that legally official. Paperwork to submit a name change was a pain. He only brought it up now because they were technically married and hopefully she’d accept it.

“Where’s your ring?” Tifa demanded. “If you’re married you exchanged rings, right?”

“Neither of us are ones for wearing much jewelry,” Squall said dryly, “and we’re always wearing gloves so we forewent wedding bands. I don’t have pierced ears so earrings were out and Fei doesn’t like wearing necklaces because of all the high necked shirts and jackets he prefers to wear. Instead, we exchanged knives. It was an old tradition in his hometown that we decided to honor instead.”

Squall reached down into his boot and unsheathed the small hunting knife Fei had gifted him. It was supposedly made from a special ore mined from the Nibel mountains and had a running Fenrir wolf etched into the blade. It was both ceremonial and practical, but Squall had agreed that an exchange of blades were more appropriate for them than a pair of rings.

When Tifa saw the blade, her face was one of shock before it became tinged with sadness.

“Tifa?” he asked, not expecting that reaction.

“...People in my hometown used to make knives and daggers like this one,” Tifa said softly. “It was one of our few exports. It was an old tradition of sorts to either commission or pass down a dagger to sons in the village when they became of age. When those boys were old enough to marry, they often gifted their daggers to the girl they wished to become engaged to. Rings were still typically exchanged on the day of the wedding, but the brides would normally hold on to those daggers to pass on to a future son…”

Squall hummed, looking his dagger over. It was brand new with hardly a scuff on it, meaning that Fei had his commissioned shortly before their wedding.

“Fei came from a small country town with a similar tradition,” Squall told her. “Where I grew up, we didn’t have any traditions of that sort and since neither of us were too fond of the idea of rings that we’d never wear or be seen wearing, we thought the daggers were a good idea.”

“No, it really is. It suits you,” Tifa was quick to reassure. “It’s just… I’d forgotten that some people still follow this tradition.”

Squall gave her an understanding smile, reaching across the table to squeeze her hand reassuringly.

“So,” she said, sucking in a deep breath before plastering on a bright smile. “What sort of knife did you give him in exchange?”

“I made him one,” Squall admitted. “I fashioned one in a similar shape as my gunblade only as a dagger. I’m not an artisan though, so I commissioned an engraver up in Sector 2 to engrave my Griever lion,” he tapped his pendant, “onto the blade. It ended up looking more delicate looking than I’d intended since it’s a slimmer blade than the one he gifted me.”

“Oh?” she said, cocking her head to the side. “But it was a wedding gift. Why would that be a problem?”

“It wasn’t,” Squall sighed. “But he kept cracking jokes about how it matched me. Something about me being delicate but deadly.”

Tifa grinned and cooed at the sentiment even though he scowled at her for doing so.

“Well, I don’t know about delicate,” Tifa chuckled, “but I have heard that you are indeed deadly.”

“Hey! What’s Squall doing here?! I thought you were out of town!” Jessie’s voice suddenly interrupted and soon Squall found himself surrounded by Jessie, Biggs and Wedge.

While Tifa explained to them how Squall was celebrating his recent marriage (Jessie and Biggs didn’t believe him and Wedge was bummed that they hadn’t been invited to the ceremony), Squall opened his PHS and saw a single picture of the dart board, meaning that Fei had taken the opportunity to reclaim his spot at the top of the monthly leaderboard. Squall repeated his story and showed his wedding dagger off to the others to buy Fei time. 

He always found it amusing to hear Jessie, Biggs and Wedge complain that FDH had claimed the top spot again. Their conspiracy theories about who the guy was were starting to border on the edge of absurd. Especially since they’d added rules. One was that a Seventh Heaven staff member of the bar had to witness and document the score to make it official. Another was that a person could only have one score entered on the leaderboard to make it fair. If you played a game and got a better high score than previously, your old score was removed and your new one was documented on the leaderboard. That had become a thing when Squall and Fei had come on a night Tifa had off and Avalanche was having a meeting and filled up the leaderboard with just Fei’s scores. A couple of Tifa’s servers, like Marie, were in on their little game and thought it was funny that Fei was hiding from Tifa and her friends. Neither of them had any idea what the servers thought Fei’s reasons for doing so were, but they were willing to go along with the game and that was good enough for them.

When Squall finally got a message with a picture of Fei’s score signed off by Marie at the top of the new month’s leaderboard (knocking Jessie off the top spot this time), he excused himself.

“Sorry, guys, but I gotta go,” he said, slipping his PHS away. “Fei just messaged me to let me know that we’ve got an urgent job request from one of the Trio in Wall Market. I’ll just take these last two beers to go, and if I can get a bottle of your best bourbon, Tifa, I’ll be on my way.”

The four protested, but Tifa did get him a bottle of her top shelf bourbon and with that and his two beers in hand, Squall left Seventh Heaven. He didn’t have to walk far before Fei was suddenly at his side and swiping one of the beers from him with a cocky smirk.

“Have a nice chat?” Fei asked.

Squall merely smirked back and shook his head indulgently.

“You’re lucky you’re good in bed, DuLoc.”