The E string is broken, again, and Seifer rummages through his case, torn up velvet and crumpled sheet music, train ticket stubs, a gil and a half in loose change, before he finds the packet, opens it, strips the old string and replaces it with the new.

Irvine obliges him, plays a note on his own guitar- new, it looks like, shiny, clean, polished, everything Seifer's battered pawn shop instrument isn't. Seifer matches it, tunes it, tries again. Better.

A swig of beer, a discordant set of chords. He's not trying, not caring, but something's not tuned quite right in his guitar.

One day, he'll scrounge up the gil to buy a better one.

"That sounds like shit."

"Shut up," Seifer retorts, places his fingers up a little higher, plays again. "You're not any better."

"Yeah, I am." Irvine's laugh is low, like something from a cowboy movie, and Seifer wonders how much of it is put on, how much is really him. Every other Galbadian he's met has a pretentious, snotty accent and the personality of drying paint. "There's this shit that y' can do, called practice. You've heard of that, right?"

"Piss off."

Seifer's laugh is- it's warm, somehow, surprisingly so, every time it leaves his mouth. He feels better for doing it, feels maybe just the tiniest bit lighter for one second.

"You play something, then. Let's see what all that 'practice' got you."

Irvine gives him the finger, good-naturedly, and lays his hands on the instrument like it matters to him. A few bars, and the song is recognized, a few more, and Seifer joins in, the words coming scattershot to his lips.

He remembers most of them, more as he sings, digging up old memories, old lyrics.

Irvine's playing is easy, graceless, he doesn't have to think about it, and Seifer wonders what that's like, to be so goddamned good at something like that that you don't even care how you accomplish it, you just do it.

Hyperion is a phantom weight in his hands.

"Not bad," Irvine says eventually, when the last notes die from beneath his fingers. There's a hiss and a fizzing noise as he pops the tab on another beer, tosses one of the last cans across to Seifer.

He snags it out of the air, runs the cold metal across calloused palms, pulls the tab and drinks.

"Yeah, you, too."

Hours, hours, spent here in the night air, hanging out on the dock with the moon high in the sky, guitars and beer and the rushing sound of the sea.

Irvine's the only one who's offered something like forgiveness, even if it's not in as many words. Maybe it's not forgiveness, though. Maybe Seifer just doesn't give a shit- it's nice, he'll admit, having someone actually talk to him like he's an actual human being.

Having someone who talks to him about anything other than ghosts and witches and magic.

They're drunk, hours later.

They're drunk, when Irvine dumps the bag of empty cans and bottles into the nearest trash can, when Seifer slings his case high up on his shoulder. They're drunk when Seifer says it, the way that every late night like this seems to end.

"I'm sorry, man."

And Irvine shrugs and shoves that stupid hat back on his head, and says, "Forget about it."

If only.

He's drunk, when he stumbles home, over Balamb's cobblestones and up two flights of stairs to a walkup apartment where the bulb's dead in the overhead light again.

He's drunk, when he staggers through the familiar narrow quarters, when he sheds his clothes and falls face-first into bed, and it's the only way he can sleep without dreaming, drunk, drunk, the moon low and bright in the shade-less window of his bedroom.

He's sober three days later, when Irvine's number lights up his phone, and it's a text asking who's buying the beer tonight.