This is an annotated version of my early Squall/Zell fic I Need You. The fic itself was written in 2002; the annotations, which are in bold, were written in 2024. If you'd prefer to read the original without my later notes, you can find it here. There's also a later rewrite, Wake Up, which you can find here.
I wrote I Need You when I was thirteen years old. It was a tiny one-shot, but it’s significant because it’s the first fic I’d ever completed; my only previous attempt at fanfiction was Rachel’s Pokémon Journey, a meandering Pokémon fic I never finished. I Need You was also my first effort at writing romance; it was a Squall/Zell fic, because I’d played Final Fantasy VIII and come away going ‘oh, I understand this shipping thing now!’
I Need You was terrible. My grasp of characterisation was questionable; my grasp of human behaviour was nonexistent. Let’s dive in and learn how thirteen-year-old me thought romance worked.
Zell hovered uncertainly at the entrance to the room, before taking some hesitant steps forward. Moonlight slanted through the window and hit the bed, bathing its occupant in its mysterious glow. A couple more steps, and Zell was standing next to him.
Squall slept in the bed, still dressed in his day clothes. Strands of his mid-brown hair lay over his slightly frowning face, his hands up near his head, holding an invisible gunblade.
Okay, I’ll give my younger self this: the image of Squall holding an invisible gunblade in his sleep is pretty cute. But Zell sneaking into Squall’s room to watch him sleep is really creepy! There’s no awareness at all in thirteen-year-old me’s writing that this is absolutely not a normal thing to do.
Zell gazed at this person, who had saved his life too many times to count, who had always been by with a Phoenix Down when Zell was defeated.
Could it be possible that he felt the same way?
I am almost certain I stole the line ‘Could it be possible that he felt the same way?’ from another fic. No idea which fic; I just have the strong sense that I read this line before it ended up here! Possibly another Squall/Zell fic, as that was the only pairing I was actively seeking out at this time.
This was an unfortunate writing habit I had as a kid; if I read a line that I really liked, I’d sometimes just drop it into my own work. ‘Could it be possible that he felt the same way?’ is a fairly innocuous example; it’s not an unusual line or sentiment (I think I just liked the rhythm of this particular phrasing), and I wouldn’t necessarily expect even the original author to identify it as stolen. But I know it’s stolen! I know! My conscience knows!!
“Squall?” The sleeping figure didn’t respond. “Squall, I...”
I find the line ‘The sleeping figure didn’t respond’ very funny.
Zell faltered, the words dying on his lips. He shook his head slowly, and began again.
”Squall, I just wanted to say...” He closed his eyes, gathered his resolve. “...I need you. I need you, Squall, I need you so much. I can’t live without you. Squall, I...” He was trembling uncontrollably now - he had never been good at controlling his emotions. “Squall, I... I love you.”
This is the point at which it becomes difficult for me to read this fic because I get so embarrassed. ‘Delivering heartfelt confessions to their sleeping crush’ very much feels like a kid’s understanding of what a person does when they’re in love.
{But he’ll never need me. He’s got Rinoa.}
The thought was too painful to bear. Tears welling up in his eyes, Zell brushed the strands of hair from Squall’s face and kissed his forehead lightly, feeling a surge of happiness on contact. He turned to leave.
I’m sort of fascinated by the fact that, in the midst of Zell’s anguish over his unrequited love, the act of kissing the sleeping guy he’s in love with (ZELL, YOUR ACTIONS REMAIN EXTREMELY CREEPY) results in a ‘surge of happiness’. I feel it would just make things worse! But I suppose people respond to things in different ways.
As he walked towards the door, a sudden wave of fatigue and exhaustion threatened to overwhelm him. He collapsed at the foot of the bed and lapsed into unconsciousness.
I’m never going to live this down. I can’t believe Zell just passes out for no reason. Normal behaviour! Creep into your crush’s bedroom! Watch him sleep! Tell him you love him! Kiss him on the forehead! SUDDENLY FALL UNCONSCIOUS ON HIS BEDROOM FLOOR. Every aspect of this fic is ludicrous!
To be fair, the characters of Final Fantasy VIII do occasionally fall unconscious in canon, but there’s a reason for that! It’s not just ‘oh, whoops, suddenly realised I’m exhausted, down I go.’ (And, let’s be honest, if that did happen to one of them, it would be Squall.)
-
Squall woke in the night feeling tired, but oddly happy. He had been having a beautiful dream, but he couldn’t remember what it was. As he stretched his arms out behind him, his hand brushed his cheek. It came away wet. That was odd. Had he been crying in his sleep?
Just spent a moment contorting myself, trying to work out what I was envisioning here. He’s in bed, and he stretches his arms out behind him, and his hand brushes his cheek? My best guess is that he’s lying on his back, and he stretches his arms back above his head.
It was still dark. Squall tried to get up to check on the time, but found his progress hampered by the fact that his foot seemed to be stuck. He sat up to check what the obstruction was.
Zell lay curled up at the foot of his bed, clasping Squall’s ankle tightly in both hands. Squall stared for a few seconds, then reached down to prise his foot out of Zell’s grasp. He swung himself off the bed and knelt next to the young blond boy. Zell couldn’t stay here on the floor, that was certain. On the other hand, Squall was loath to wake him up - he looked so peaceful asleep. Almost... well, he would have to be carried.
I started laughing aloud at this point. Imagine that you wake up to find your friend sleeping on your bedroom floor, holding your foot, and your only reaction is ‘Well, they can’t stay on the floor, that’s certain.’
Putting one foot on the bed to steady himself, Squall reached down and hoisted Zell up into his arms. He was difficult to keep hold of - he kept turning and jerking.
This time I really have no idea what I was envisioning. Putting a foot on the bed to steady himself? While picking someone up off the floor??? Squall, you’re going to fall flat on your face.
Suddenly, the sleeping boy flung his arms around Squall’s body. He stumbled and almost dropped him, adjusting his grip to keep his balance. He considered loosening Zell’s arms, but then found that being locked in his tight embrace was not at all unpleasant. Not bad at all, actually.
He carried the now still boy to the door of the bedroom, and then had second thoughts. He didn’t really want to take Zell back to his room. But why not? He pushed the first thing that occurred to him to the back of his mind, and decided that it must be because Zell’s room was too far away. But he knew it wasn’t true. The room was just three doors down the hallway, and he could easily have taken him there.
It’s interesting to see my very early efforts at writing an unreliable narrator! It demonstrates a problem I often displayed while writing in my teens: I tended to overexplain things, rather than trusting the reader to pick up what I was trying to convey. But writing an unreliable narrator is tricky, so I’ll give my teenage self a nod for attempting it at all.
“Well, it is only for one night...” Squall reasoned, as he carried Zell back to the bed. He managed to prise Zell’s arms away in order to put him in the bed, and climbed in next to him.
EVERY ASPECT OF THIS FIC IS LUDICROUS. When I was rewriting it as Wake Up, I tried to keep as many elements as I could, reworked to make them slightly more plausible. I managed to fit in most of the major points: Zell watching Squall sleep, Zell confessing his love to a sleeping Squall, Zell passing out on the floor, Squall putting Zell in his own bed. But I could not make Squall climb into the bed with him. I just couldn’t envision it. It might have been possible if I’d introduced a ‘huddling for warmth’ element, but that would have been tricky with the rest of the setup!
After a couple of minutes thinking he realised Zell was shivering and drew him closer, letting his own body temperature keep him warm.
Lying there with his arm round Zell’s body, feeling his breath on his neck, the details of Squall’s dream came rushing back to him.
”Zell,” he whispered, as he slipped into unconsciousness. “I think I love you, too.”
Alas, I didn’t manage to get Squall reciprocating Zell’s confession into the rewrite either. Squall is very bad at getting close to people, demonstrating emotion or understanding his own feelings; he’s a character who strongly resists being put in any sort of romantic situation! It’s sort of impressive that Final Fantasy VIII manages to be a romance, really.
And that's the end of my first ever attempt at Final Fantasy VIII fanfiction!
I poke fun at my younger self’s writing skills here, because, well, I was not a great writer. But I’m glad I didn’t let my inexperience keep me from writing, because the only way to gain that experience is to write. I owe a lot to that kid for all the effort she put in, and I hope she’ll forgive me for laughing a little at her now.