This is a tiny ficlet I wrote for the Final Fantasy Kiss Battle 2024 on Dreamwidth. Dreamwidth user wallwalker requested a non-romantic kiss between Seifer and Edea, with the prompt 'What am I going to do with you?'
“You let the SeeD defeat you,” the Sorceress says.
Seifer is kneeling before her, but at those words he forgets humility, snaps his head up with a snarl. “I didn’t let anyone do anything. I put everything into fighting for you.”
“Then you were simply not strong enough,” the Sorceress says, calmly, “which is worse.” She gestures for him to straighten up with a toss of her head, and he obeys before he consciously registers the command: still on his knees, but no longer bowed. “What am I going to do with you?”
She reaches out and touches her fingers to his throat.
She could kill him, Seifer finds himself thinking. There’s a romance to that; it feels like a fitting end for a knight. He’s given his life to her, and now she’s chosen to take it. He’ll say her name with his last breath; he can picture the scene now, he can see the illustrations in the books that will be written about the Sorceress Edea.
A small, urgent voice breaks through his fantasies, in the back of his head: she could kill him. He could die.
She strokes her fingers up from his throat to his jaw. It no longer feels like a threat, suddenly; it feels like... something else. The thought is thrilling and terrifying all at once.
She stoops to kiss him on the temple. It’s gentle and chaste; it feels fond, familiar, and somehow it’s more frightening than anything he was anticipating.
“This host will be more obedient if I am lenient, it seems,” the Sorceress murmurs into his ear. “But do not fail me again.”