Six: Fireguard

I ran with the General several times like that. Even when the rest of the company had adjusted to his pace, I would push past the others, breaking formation, clawing my way through to pass the guide-on. After some time, he became jealous and refused to hand it off to me, so I ran alongside Sephiroth without it, freely. Breathing problems surfaced after that, but I hid it well and was convinced that if I ignored them, they would go away completely: for if I could run alongside Sephiroth, I could be in SOLDIER no problem. Even as SOLDIER trials became more difficult to pass, I reminded myself of this.

Everything changed at an overnight training exercise.

What we did at these was pretend like we're in the field. We marched to a point in the forest, maintaining noise discipline. Our weapons were loaded with blanks, and we played war games against platoons and other companies, if engaged by them. At night, we set up hooches with ponchos and pulled sentry duty in the dark. Flashlights or any other kind of light were prohibited, and I hated roaming back and forth, tripping over tree branches and feet sticking out of tents; barely missing makeshift latrines.

We pulled duty in pairs, and my partner one night told me to check in the opposite direction that he went, and I did. When the jagged rows of tents ended, I turned around and went back, but couldn't find my hooch. I roamed around for a bit more and got lost: in front of me was the end of the forest, and the road that we marched onto in order to get there. When I looked to my right, next to me were the NCO tents, which we were ordered not to go near, and when I turned around completely, someone stood there, scaring the hell out of me.

For a moment, I thought it might have been my partner on guard, trying to play a cruel joke, but the moon was out, and nobody's hair reflected the moon as well as Sephiroth's.

So before I could salute, he'd snatched my weapon from me with one hand, disarming me; with the other hand, he grabbed the collar of my shirt and pulled me to him.

If I had been kissed before that, the way Sephiroth's lips squeezed against mine and the way his tongue snaked in between my teeth had pushed any such memory out of my head. For the longest time, my fantasies of kissing had remained only with Tifa, but even those had to give way to this illicit contact.

When he let me go, I fell to the ground. I caught myself with my elbows, breathing heavily, but my legs were spread and I looked up at him, the moon revealing his grinning eyes more than before. In a flash he'd disappeared, and in what seemed to be the next minute—for it could have been twenty—an instructor flew out of his tent and yelled at me, in the middle of the night, to get up. I saw heads poke out of tents and heard snickering. I told him that I'd fallen and was feeling around for my weapon. He found it on the ground, just in front of me, picked it up and tossed it at me. Not expecting me to have caught it, he came around and slapped me on the back of the head, then when my partner had come running up, he slapped him, too, for not keeping a better eye on me.

When we returned to my tent, my partner jabbed the back of my knees with his weapon, and I fell on top of my hooch, collapsing it.

--

The next night, while pulling sentry, I was nervous as all hell and exhausted, having gotten no sleep from the night before. I hadn't figured out if the kiss was real or a dream, but I kept asking myself why I would dream about kissing the General.

Although I made a conscious effort to stay within visual range of my sentry partner, I looked up from taking a drink from my canteen and he wasn't anywhere in sight.

Something gave me the notion to step off in the direction of the cadre tents. I don't recall having heard anything strange coming from there, but I did anyway, knowing that my partner would come back from the latrines angry with me.

I couldn't see anything but the vague forms of boots sticking out from the tents, and when some of the tents zipped in the front, I knew I'd left the area where the trainees slept. I stopped walking when the tent farthest from the others unzipped, and peering into its darkness, I made out Sephiroth's form, his hair seeming to take up most of the space on the floor.

He sat in the back of the tent, one knee propped up and a hand draped over it, his sword jutting out towards me. The moonlight gleaned on it, running up its length until it disappeared into Sephiroth's hand. I wondered if I should have taken this as an invitation in until he raised one finger to his lips slowly.

I unslinged my rifle without looking behind me to make sure no one had seen me and crawled into the small space that accommodated the General. He made a motion for me to zip the tent back up, and I did, then turned to face him, sitting up straight, hands on my knees, respectfully, attempting to convince myself that I had no idea why I'd been summoned.

Up until then, I'd thought that the Shinra uniform had many layers to it: an undershirt with the scarf that only infantry and artillery wear; a turtle neck shirt that we wore even in the heat, shoulder guards, and web gear. But the way Sephiroth had undressed me so quickly, in the dark, even, I could have been in pajamas. The shoulder guards, which were particularly noisy, didn't make a sound as he unbuckled them and they landed behind me. As he unraveled my uniform, a weight in my mind that I hadn't previously known existed went in the piles along with my heavy clothes, and Sephiroth's tongue on my damp skin added a frigid, coolness to the sweat.

I was on the ground beneath him when I noticed that I was breathing in very heavy, even intervals, almost as if I were running or having an asthma attack, and I instantly thought of how I chased him during company runs. I told myself that I should stop so as not to make noise, but I couldn't: and Sephiroth didn't tell me to, anyway. He lifted my hips up with one hand and loosened some buckles with the other, pulling my pants halfway down my thighs; from there my cock sprang from the waistband and he took it in his ungloved hand with just as much anxiety.

In this situation, it was hard not to make any kind of noise at all: I squirmed beneath him, the occasional whine and saliva spilling from the corner of my mouth. I eventually clamped my teeth over my tongue to keep myself from making any kind of open-mouthed noise, but it didn't stop the whining.

When I was close, I wondered if he would fuck me. I was afraid that I would make too much noise, but the look on Sephiroth's face told me that I didn't need to worry, so when he scooped me up and turned me around in his lap, I didn't protest or hesitate. It was hard to maneuver since my pants were still half on, but he did everything for me. One of his gloved hands had me firmly by the upper arm while the other ungloved hand guided his cock in me. When we touched, I jumped back a bit, scared, much in the same way we were when we had first ran with him: we had no idea how fast he would set the pace; well, I had no idea how big his cock was and whether it would split me in half or not.

As he pushed into me, I gasped and my head jolted backwards; I saw stars for a moment. Just as my mouth shot open with the intent of screaming, the ungloved hand came up and clamped down on my mouth. This way, he pushed me down until he was all but about three-fourths in and my hands clawed for something, anything: they found his wrists and my nails dug into his skin, for I had forgotten that he was the General. He raised me up again and pulled me back down; I exhaled, and like this we achieved a steady rhythm. After several minutes, he was able to remove his hand from my mouth, and like when running or doing any other kind of physical activity, I maintained a beat with my breathing—two in and two out. It worked and soon I clenched my teeth together to keep me from moaning, but my hands were still attached to Sephiroth's wrists.

Eventually, I heard Sephiroth grunt too, and it occurred to me that Sephiroth didn't give a damn about what anyone saw or heard, for it was really him who I didn't want getting caught: nobody liked me anyway, I thought, so who cared what they thought? When he increased the pace, he brought the hand that had been around my mouth to the back of my head and pushed me into the dirt, one cheek pressed against a piece of my web gear. My hips were still raised and when I tried to adjust them, Sephiroth kept them firmly in place. I wanted to turn around and catch a glimpse of him inside of me, but his hand kept my face down, and I was left to imagine, listening to the rhythm of his breathing become irregular, as it did when he sprinted for the last stretch of our run.

If I screamed as I came, I don't remember. Surely, he didn't. He finished inside of me, and when he withdrew I felt strange and suddenly uncomfortable. Effortlessly, he pulled me up by the waistband of my pants and kissed me on the mouth, quickly, before directing me to dress.

My things were as we had left it, and although a sudden panic arouse in my of not wanting to be found out, Sephiroth sat calmly in the back of the tent and zipped his pants back up. He lit a cigarette as he watched me dress, and I stopped dressing to glimpse at him, for I had no idea that Sephiroth smoked.

And then, I said this to him.

"I didn't know you smoked, sir," for the first time, with an unwavering voice.

"It's a tradition," he said, not whispering. He took another drag. "Only in the field, soldier."

I grabbed my rifle and left, zipping the tent back up. As usual, I had no idea how much time had passed; my sentry shift may have very well been over. But my partner came running up to me as I headed back to my tent and knocked me on my helmet. I turned around and asked him what he wanted.

"Where the fuck were you?" he demanded in an angry whisper. Exhausted, I turned back around and removed my headgear, throwing it into my tent.

"None of your damn business," I muttered, and he grabbed my shoulder to shove me back. But this time, I fell back out of the way of my tent, and tried to stand up straight. My encounter with Sephiroth had left me hurting, but I projected the right amount of confidence, I suppose, since the other kid was startled for a moment.

We looked at each other for a second before I shoved him back and crawled into the tent, without even thinking to wake up my relief.