Zack was her first. He had two faces. One bled a giddy sunlight through the deep violet of his eyes-baby, I'm going to go slow, I promise. One was lined, full of blood and tenor-baby, I can't wait any longer- his touch layered with excruciating texture.
They had been seeing each other for a while, every kiss on her body connected to an older one, he had on some nights taken her from behind with his fingers and mouth, while his gps hummed in his pocket. But they had never gone so far, and the anticipation of the resolution made her body tender, ticklish. It was good. She didn't come, but hadn't expected to. The next time they made love, she had the courage to look into his eyes, and just as he was coming she imagined his seed dispersing toward her fingertips and toes.
Then a couple months later, he wasn't around as much. He'd send truncated texts about bearded ifrits, about how much he missed her sundresses. There was a week where it seemed like the hours stacked themselves into blades. Maybe it was just because he was the first. Maybe she loved him. Though they weren't wholly familiar, she was still embarrassed to sweat when she rode him, still didn't intend on telling her mother. And he was committed to his job, and he had been, before they met.
Sephiroth fucked her. That wasn't to say that he didn't take his time, or that he couldn't be gentle, but there was less air in between his touches, something more precise. He knew what he wanted in the most profound sense, and even her own reactions seemed at times in accordance with some greater premeditation. He was such spontaneous choreography, it seemed that even the ends of his hair did not splay anywhere against his will.
Sometimes she felt he weighed as much as a car, and sometimes he felt weightless, and she would close her eyes and only feel his tongue, feel him breathe-I think, we both know what you want--it didn't even matter how close he was. He was a man of incredible discipline. He had a sense of humor too, and sometimes a laugh would roll through him, on the occasions she had a retort ready, and then she would need to kiss him, to feel the proof of it against her lips.
But mostly he was taciturn, mostly he seemed to be looking at himself when he looked into her eyes, and so she couldn't take it personally when he took her from behind violently, his left hand around her neck. She liked the breathlessness of it, the way the church would warp in darkness. That seemed to be his favorite position of all, and he could go forever, until it hurt. Sometimes he would hold off so long, he would begin to tremble. He would lean over and say-There's nothing I couldn't make you do, isn't that right? Isn't that right? Say it. It was almost awkward to be in the midst of his apparent self punishment.
He wasn't a romantic man, but sometimes he offered her solemn bouts of conversation. She learned the name of this sword, and what ice looked like sickling from a human hand. They had a shared secret beyond Zack. He knew he would things to her she could never ask of anyone else.
"Do you think he knows?" she asked once, feeling like at least it should be spoken aloud. It crossed her mind that Zack could be dying somewhere.
"I couldn't know what he knows." he said, and she wondered what he thought of it. She knew he and Zack worked closely on occasion, that Zack admired him, wanted to be better friends with him, but was at the same time completely terrified of him. She could understand it, looking into his eyes, why they called him demon. But her fear of him somehow made it more exciting.
But she felt guilty all the time. And then Zack came back from a long mission, and he was suddenly different, a darker version of himself. She touched the new scar on his face, and felt a sad murmur arc through the chatter usually about the planet. He started saying that he loved her, and when she said it back, it was the truth, but it was annotated by her love of another man, who perhaps she had started to love more.
How could she tell him? She and Sephiroth had a shorthand, an entire shared language born of a lifetime spent on the outside looking in, and so when when she realized that she was late, it was Sephiroth who she called, Sephiroth who showed up at the church at one am, pulled her into his arms, and said without preamble, that he would offer what he could.
He told her calmly about SOLDIER enhancements, genetic garble she mostly didn't understand, terrifying prospects of abnormality he laid out in blunt terms. She got the feeling he said none of these things with the intention of scaring her, but so she would be prepared. She hadn't even told him about her side of the equation.
And so when she decided what she wanted to do, he gave her the money without her having to ask, and sent a car to pick her up after the procedure.
Early on, he'd told her he was sterile, and so they both assumed it was Zack's, but the moment it was happening, the moment machine turned on, she knew that they were both wrong. Somehow they had managed to create something. And so the next time she saw him, all she could do was cry. She wanted to tell him, she would've had green eyes.
But at the same time Zack had grown sullen, Sephiroth had become distant, so she kept everything to herself. But even though her womb was empty, something of him remained. She awoke nights, feeling as if she was being burned alive. She saw a bright flare in the sky and a boy, ferociously blonde, crawling through a lake of blood. She saw that same boy again as a man. She felt his timid hands undo her dress, let down her hair. She gazed into his blue, confused eyes. And then she was waking up, in love with a man who was another man, in love with a man who was a weapon, a shadow sweeping down through bleached trees. She was waking up to a voicemail from Zack saying that he would be home soon, and not to worry, but that his cell service would be a little shoddy in the mountains.