#kh squall

They made Mickey's letter text to speech, so we didnt know who was actually playing him, and then had him be voiced by fucking Alfred.

It starts with little things: Squall poking Cloud in the side with one of his mini screwdrivers to make Cloud yelp. Cloud licking the last cookie on the plate while Aerith isn’t looking just to see Squall twitch.

You know, silly stuff! But then it devolves into tripping each other and aiming low level spells at one and other under Merlin’s dining table to see if the other will brake. It gets a little out of hand at times when one of them will just casually push the other on the edge of the crystal fissure, just to watch them shit themselves.

Yet it only ever gets a disgruntled “fuck you” face from either of them. Aerith keeps scolding them for being mean to eachother, and every time squall will say “what are you talking about? Cloud is literally the only one of you I can stand,”. It drives her insane. Partly because she can’t figure out why they keep winding each other up so violently, but also because she’s pretty sure they are dating in secret but she can’t PROVE IT!!

“Why do you bully Squall?”

“Who?”

“Squall! Leonhart? You’ve been tormenting him for weeks?! Is this the nibelhiem equivalent of pulling a girls pigtails?”

“Did you drink Merlin’s special tea again?”

“Don’t you gaslight me Cloud Strife! Are you flirting with him?!”

“Who?”

“SQUALL!!”

“Yeah?”

“IM NOT TALKING TO YOU IM TALKING TO CLOUD!”

“But you… whatever”

“Are you dating”

“Who’s dating?”

“You and squall!”

“Dating who?”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“Well be clearer with your questions!”

“Do you keep bullying squall because you like him?”

“Oh, sure if you want. HEY SQUALL!”

“Stop yelling asshole I’m right here!”

“Aerith thinks we’re flirting.”

“Are we?”

“YOU ARE!”

“Huh, cool”

“GOOD GODDESS I HATE YOU BOTH!”

They get endless hours of entertainment from winding her up with it. She will watch as Cloud uses his water bottle to squirt Squall in the face while their training and squint at them for literally any non-verbal hints of romance. She even drags Yuffie and Tifa into it, making them watch Squall like a hawk when he dumps a literal ton of paperwork on Clouds snoozing face, and walks away as the other flails.

Tifa was under the impression she knows Clouds love language, but even she’s confused with whatever this is.

Are they dating? Yes they are.

I feel like a fraud😭😅 I would die for strifehart honestly, but I am incredibly guilty of not posing about them as much as I would like. So….

Here have some of my Strifehart headcanons:

They don’t show affection very freely around other people but if they fall asleep together on the Couch everyone is always surprised to find out that Squall is the clingy one.

They are both guilty of dad-ing Sora. Squall will hand him money, his keyblade and some extra potions and snacks before he heads out the door; while Cloud will zip up his hoodie, check his gear and do the whole “if you need us you call, Kay?” Sora’s given up trying to point out that they are not his Dads.

They rib each-other endlessly, smirking the entire time. Things like, “gods Squall, why are you so useless?”, “dunno, must have caught it from you!” It always has people asking how they can be a couple.

The loving bullying doesn’t stop when their alone, it’s just more tactile. Poking, hip checking, raspberries, tickle fights, picking the other up and bodily moving them when their in the way, flicking the others nose, aggravated biting, hitting each other with magazines and newspapers when the other isn’t paying attention, play fights. They are like actual children but no one ever sees it cause they like it to just be for them.

They steal each others food all the time. Which is funny because they are both quite territorial about food by nature. This usually ends up in one of them grabbing the others hand and forcibly trying to wrestle the food out of it; or playing keep away with their plates.

They work with eachother silently and like they’ve done it all their lives. They always seem to know where the other is and move accordingly to being in each others space.

Cloud is the only ONLY other person aside from Sora who is aloud to be left alone with Tron. Squall would chew off his own leg before giving DiZ the passwords and while he likes Ienzo he’s still not really sure he trusts him.

They communicate through raised eyebrows alone. And always know what the others thinking.

Cloud has had to physically retrain Squall from beating the shit out of Siefer the first time they went to Twilight town and found out this GROWN ASS ADULT had been bullying kids. (I know canonically Seifer is supposed to be a little older than Hayner pence and Olette but I vibe more with the darkness took Gaia and the planet headcanon than the “everyones from radiant gardens” canon.)

Squall is naturally left handed but was forced to write right handed in in SeeD and so Cloud keeps taking the pen out of his right hand and butting it in Squall’s actual dominant hand.

Cloud carries all his stress in his shoulders and hands (you know exactly where this one’s going.) and Squall is usually the one massaging out the tension and …. Kin- pfft🤣 I’m sorry I cant!

Cloud knows every one of Squalls buttons and how to push them. He can be irritating when it suits him and sometimes he gets bored enough to provoke his partner. Squall usually ignores him which is a mistake because it makes Cloud push harder until he ends up in a headlock.

Ha! Squall would have such a headache.

Okay so it would start with Squall deciding “okay I need to get some things in for breakfast tomorrow. Zack’s back from traveling, Clouds decided he lives here now. I need food.”

So he makes a list, hops into the car and is about five minutes down the road when his phone rings and a little sweatshirt covered racoon hand (Cloud) reaches from the back and answers it for him. The car swerved and Squall Jumps out of his skin but Cloud just says “turn back, Zack wants to come too.” From his position strewn out on the back seat.

So after turning around, getting Zack, and then being subjected to drum and bass music all the way to the store, Squall already needs to down industrial strength painkillers before they’ve even gotten to the hard bit. The hard bit of course being keeping track of Zack who immediately shoots off to the drinks aisle for a 12 pack of red bull.

Dealing with Cloud is easier than Zack. Cloud invariably just likes to grab things they don’t need and put them in the cart… the racoon comparison is more accurate then you know. But he’s quiet and he stays plastered to Squalls side with his hood up because “bright lights”.

Zack meanwhile is bouncing around making enough noise to carry across 4 aisles.

“HEY SQUALL THEY HAVE RADIANT DAY THEMED POPTARTS! EW! WHO WANTS LAVENDER FLAVOURED POPTARTS?! WE’RE TRYING THEM IT WILL BE FUNNY!”

Cloud is loading another three packs of hundred acre wood smoked cheese into the cart. Squall takes them back out and gets punched in the arm as they go back in.

“HEY CLOUDY THEY HAVE THOSE CHEESY PIZZA BITE YOU LIKE. DO YOU WANT THEM!?”

Cloud walks to the end of the aisle, spots Zack and nods “five boxes”

“One box” squall says

“Five”

“Two”

Cloud rolls his eyes. “Fine, two.”

This was supposed to be a breakfast shop not a weekly shop….

“HEY SQUALL CAN WE GET-“

“STOP YELLING FAIR.”

“Ooo mister grumpy pants. Okay, can we get hash browns and make those breakfast sandwiches?”

Squall sighs and snatched the hash browns from Zack and throws them in the cart…. Then takes the five extra cartons of milk, three packs of cheese triangles, six jars of pickles and the two large cans of condensed milk (cloud eats it with a spoon) out of the cart and makes cloud put them back.

By the time he’s at the check out Zack has knocked over two displays and smashed a bottle of wine. The shopping is over 6000 munny because Cloud put the condensed milk and two of the six packs of pickles back in the cart.

Did he get breakfast food? Bu the skin of his teeth yes. He also ends up getting them both car snacks and telling them both to shut up on the way home.

Cloud takes the bags with only his stuff in it and leaves Squall and Zack with the rest. Zack bounces around in the parking lot and nearly gets run over twice.

When they finally get home and get everything away, Cloud leans on Squalls arm and says “we need to get you some ear plugs. You looked like you were going to kill Zack.”

Squall grits his teeth a little.

“You are both a pain in the ass in stores. You owe me 3000 munny by the way.” Cloud digs into his pocket and hands over the cash.

“He’s only here for a week, be nice. You miss him when he’s not here.”

Squall huffs and kisses clouds head.

Squall has had anxiety pretty much his entire existence. When he’d first been told that it wasn’t Normal to analyse every detail of his interactions with people his exact response was “must be nice” because he genuinely doesn’t know what that feels like.

His anxiety could possibly be called crippling, but only because it renders him non-verbal sometimes. Most people think he’s just being difficult but the people who love him have come to realise that it’s a strange consequence of his fight or flight reflex that renders him mute.

Meeting Cloud for the first time had kind of been a relief. The man wasn’t Anxious like he was but his reactions guilt and exhaustion were a mirror of Squalls subconscious need to control the syllables caught on his tongue. Cloud understood that sometimes speaking felt like a monumental task and Squall could have cried when the Amman had understood him.

Dealing with Anxiety while in a relationship was interesting. Rinoa had known he was anxious but he’d never told her about the fear of her leaving, or the panic that gripped him when she was annoyed about something and hadn’t told squall it wasn’t about him. It was never her fault that Squall got in his own head, and she always tried to help, but Squall felt trapped in a spiral.

Cloud seemed to have a better handle on Squalls panic. He seemed to predict it so well that when Sora bounced in one afternoon, looked him up and down and then said “do you need anything?” Squall knew Cloud had been teaching people how to recognise his stress.

Cloud holds his hand when he starts to bite his nails. He untangles his fingers from his hair and places a hand on his knee when it bounces. The tiny murmur of “breath lion” followed by a demonstrated breath has saved him so many times

Squall still can’t communicate that he worries Cloud is mad at him but Cloud always seems to be one step ahead of him. “Squall look at me. I am not mad at you. Something happened with a delivery that irritated me, but it’s nothing you have done.” Cloud just knows and it settles a lot in Squall.

Another part of Squalls Anxiety is not knowing where people are or if they are okay. Cloud has had to make serious changes to the way he operates while dating Squall because coming home to the mess he did the first time want an option. During two weeks of worrying Squall had shut down. Now he gets a phone call every night and a text at every delivery stop. It should annoy Cloud, but for some reason for Squall it feels like the bare minimum.

He also worries where Sora is ✨always✨. There is not a single moment of the day where a little voice in the back of Squalls head doesn’t whisper “he’s dead somewhere” and Squall will end up panting over the kitchen sink as he tries to calm down.

It’s not so bad when Sora is with Donald and Goofy. Squall can just flick on the Gummy ship tracker on his computer and see where they are. It’s even better then Sora has the Gummy phone. But when Sora disappears it’s not just Riku and Kairi who are freaking out. Squall doesn’t sleep most nights because of it.

Sora’s disappearance is possibly the worst his anxiety has been since he was 17 and isolated. He doesn’t talk a lot of the time, he barely eats. Cloud spends a lot of time soothing his more harmful habits, while Aerith, yuffie and Tifa all try to make the House as stress free as possible.

He takes up knitting on Aerith’s insistence, and Tifa’s got him learning Zangan meditation techniques to take the edge off. Cid is being very Cid about it and sitting in Squalls office when no one else can. Merlin makes sleeping drafts to knock him out, and even Riku is sitting with him to try and help him process some things.

Squall feels the guilt of that one acutely and tries to avoid the teenager at all costs, but Riku is patient when he tells Squall that helping him helps Riku process some of his own worries too.

In the middle of the night when the anxiety induced night terrors bother him so bad he can’t breath, Cloud will sit up with him and help him through the worst of the trembling; laying him back down and talking him though getting his speech back.

And it’s really cute because when Yuffie calls him out for being worried about the puppies he doesn’t even correct her. He’s all like “grr, it’s Leon! Don’t call me squall.”

Squall: *Takes the Tablet and flips it around. hands it back* words.