Prologue: I Carry Your Heart (I Carry It In My Heart)

As he drew me closer to him, it was almost like the past – something to be talked about in the past tense, and not in the present. He held me so close to him I could smell his cologne – it was woody, stable; nothing fancy. Very Squall.

And he brought my lips to his and kissed me.

It was different from the ones that he gave me when we were, well, an item. It was not demure, it was not romantic. It was not like a knight sweeping his princess off her feet. It was passionate, selfish, consuming, uncaring and more for his own pleasure than to give me pleasure. This would have been normal if it had been any other man but Squall. He was probably drunk and sure enough, I could taste the alcohol on his lips.

Or perhaps this is the taste of guilt.

And this guilt overwhelmed me. Here I was, taking advantage of this man who was so drunk he probably had no idea he was doing right now. His girlfriend was probably waiting for him somewhere, maybe in his apartment or something but here he was getting wasted and I was kissing this man. And I loved every single moment of it.

Somehow I managed, with a combination of tugging and pushing, to get him into a taxi and back to my apartments, stumble across the lobby (while catching the eye of the guard who didn't look very pleased) and take the lift up to my apartment.

When we reached my room (Somehow, I don't know how. Don't ask me) things started getting hot in there. I knew drunken sex was the last thing both of use needed, but I could not resist the ways he touched me. It was unlike Irvine's rough and somewhat animalistic motions, but rather gentle and controlled. It was like the stage directions an actor had, perfected by performing those directions over and over again, until the audience could not tell if he was really the character, or if he was merely an actor playing that part. It was what sex with Squall felt like. He was another woman's lover, and yet here he was playing the part of my lover and the audience (which happened to be me) believed him. Perhaps it was an unconscious act on his part - the many times that we've done it, so many that he could not forget how I wanted it to be, that it had become almost like a reflex to him. And a part of me wanted this playacting to continue.

I wanted everything to go back to the way it used to be.

I wanted someone to heal the scars.

I wanted someone to touch me, the way he did.

I wanted someone to love me.

So I let him continue.

And that was when my heart broke, and so his heart did too, because I carried his heart in mine.

A/N: So there you have it, the prologue.
This story is a little out of the blue, I admit. It's something different from anything I've ever tackled cause firstly it's in the Final Fantasy 8 world and I usually write for 7 and I've never explicitly discussed intercourse in any of my previous stories. I think the themes are also a little darker here than in my previous fics so it's a whole new ball game for me.

Read and review people. The rest of the chapters will be longer, I promise.

P.S I've fixed the typos that I had last night and I remind myself never to write another story at 11pm again, especially after a long day at school