There was nothing more to say, and very little we hadn't already done to each other. Zoar left in his car and I in mine. Before long we would have to see each other again. As always, the afterglow is washed away by viscous acidity, my own regret, as battered and half-forgotten as it is, flooded my mind with its nonpareil familiarity, a stunning spectre of twisted wreckage that can only be trodden down so far. Why am I like this? Why can I just fuck men and then forget about them? I guess I'm grateful, and I have bigger shit to worry about most of the time. Like now, for example. If I had to single out one of the spectacular fuck-ups that form the milestones of my life as being a defining moment I'd have to say the day Lain left. I was a Turk then, so it can't have been about money. And she was a whore as well, which puts morality pretty far out of the equation. That's how we met, actually. One of her regulars woke up bi one morning. That prick had more money that sense. Quite like Reeve in fact. I guess sex had been all Zoar and I had expected of each other, and it would always be that way, nothing but the animalistic beauty of the act itself, unspoiled by conversation or intimacy.
I have never fallen in love with anyone and I hope I never do. I adored Lain, I worshipped her, and I guess that's different. More intense, which invariably means more short-lived. On the way back to my apartment I stuck some gas in the Spitfire, and wondered if people who own these 24-hour stores are even people at all. There's so many of them here, even more since the heart of the city collapsed, and all they do is sell. Do they eat, or sleep, or fuck? Doubtful. I always figured as a kid that when I had money I'd just be happy. The theory itself is flawless; earn money, buy weapons to get through life, buy dream car to get around it….the usual shit. And in the end, who really gives a rat's ass if the next person is happy? The only way we can define how we feel is by the effect it has on everyone else. In that vein, my houseguest ought to be pretty pissed at me by now for putting him on lockdown. Turning the key in its slot halfway down the door of apartment 209, I thought that if Zach questioned my methods, I would tell him that it was only because I don't trust him.
I was surprised to find the furniture all intact and not even the dust disturbed. Zach was standing by the fireplace, his arms crossed and mind fixed on the painting that hung there. He must have dug the black wife beater he was wearing out of the sack of special-issues the company deliver every week. The Shinra logo bag appears on the doorstep every Sunday morning, which means in itself that I am never awake to greet it, and I suppose I have merely forgotten to be unnerved at the delivery of identical clothes from nowhere. I was tired, confused and I stank of sex and midnight, but I still couldn't help noticing how incredible Zach looked. As if it would not complicate things, I ran a hand through my hair and coughed.
"It came with the apartment".
The painting was a copy, tastefully brutal but still provocative. There's someone else I ought to hunt down - whoever decorated the apartment. Some low-level Shinra devotees, but why would they hang a firing squad in the lounge?
"Oh. Fascinating, isn't it?", he asked, looking for all intents and purposes quite healthy, his eyes so bewitching under the weight of grief. If he wanted to talk more, then he would have to wait.
"Yeah. 'Would have gone for a clock myself, but hey. Listen, I've gotta take a shower. We'll talk about all everything later."
Zach made a noncommittal noise and returned to studying the grim scene before him. I paused, as if I could think of something worth saying or doing. Failing that, I left in silence.
As I washed away the last drops of lust and heady indulgence from only an hour past, I felt something familiar, amphibian and alive. Not quite disgust at myself, but close to it. Whenever a feeling such as this came upon me in the past I would call it foreign, but it has been with me since I split the walls of my growth tank and ran from Mount Nibel. Sometimes, from an angle I could never have seen, I can make out two children at the base of a shallow slope. One is wearing a blue dress. I think she is dead, but there above her crouches a blond boy, willing her to awaken. He paces and cries and calls her name, until more come and carry her away. She looks too strong to die with him watching, and it strikes me that she views her life as hers alone; and when it must end it will be by her own hand.
I let my hair loose and shook away the scene, the wet tendrils clawing at my waist reminding me of the man who told me I would become an adept in the arts of death. His eyes haunt me still, Mako gemstones alight with all he knew, with how far ahead of the world he always was. Those iridescent, impenetrable eyes....I couldn't tell how old he was then, or when he died, moreover I thought him to be entirely beyond the confines of aging, above the hourglass of bone and mortar, something alien and true. Not unlike the Knights, the Ancients and all who have gone before. With only a suggestion from his unnatural, spectacular emerald eyes he could make anyone he chose fall for him heavily, hopelessly. I suppose I interested him if only because he could not enchant me as easily as all the others. As a much younger version of myself I decided beneath the stars that no man would claim my heart, and now it is so long ago I'm not sure if my reticence irritated or amused Sephiroth.
Whatever effect it had, he strode into my room one night, having no need of stealth, and sat at the edge of my bed, so sickeningly real and material when in contact with solid things. It was a combination of arrogance and quizzical naivety as to my resistance that played within his smile. He was still everything they said he was, but as I know now, he was just a man when his hand stroked my shoulder blades, when he remarked how alike our eyes were, and when he drew my face near enough to his own for me to feel his breath against my skin. Yes, he breathed, the hero of so many unrequited legends, his heart beat rapidly, rhythmically, he ate and drank and smoked like all of us. What made him so unique, I think, was the amount of Mako that intoxicated his every impulse and expression, and whatever natural impurity allowed him to survive that volume of infusion.
The water stopped falling and I stepped out into the world again, dressing for a long evening of searching for answers in dead languages, questions and contrivance. Sephiroth seemed to be behind me; I could feel soft exhaled steam on my neck, and words that cannot be spoken aloud for fear of butchering all that they could come to mean. It comes and I admit to it, the sight of him stooping gently and taking my face in one gloved hand, casting down a spent cigarette and not clearing his throat for me, letting his lips stay on mine. When we kissed fully it was so strangely beautiful that I can't rely on what I remember of it, only on what blotted masterpieces I saw behind my eyes. Fire, ice, blood and warm deliverance, infuriatingly far away, shrouded in skin and stitches. I breathed out his smoke and saw an unknown future curl into the dying light; stripped bare of credibility and fettered to the silence that keeps it....caught....
"You're back?"
Zach asked me this as though it were ordinary and forgettable, his eyes darting in sync with the towel in my hand as I made some vague attempt to dry my hair and decipher his question as if the time I was given for both tasks was nearly run dry.
"What?"
Well, so much for an informed response.
"You were....in the past, I think".
I have never fallen in love with anyone and I hope I never do. I adored Lain, I worshipped her, and I guess that's different. More intense, which invariably means more short-lived. On the way back to my apartment I stuck some gas in the Spitfire, and wondered if people who own these 24-hour stores are even people at all. There's so many of them here, even more since the heart of the city collapsed, and all they do is sell. Do they eat, or sleep, or fuck? Doubtful. I always figured as a kid that when I had money I'd just be happy. The theory itself is flawless; earn money, buy weapons to get through life, buy dream car to get around it….the usual shit. And in the end, who really gives a rat's ass if the next person is happy? The only way we can define how we feel is by the effect it has on everyone else. In that vein, my houseguest ought to be pretty pissed at me by now for putting him on lockdown. Turning the key in its slot halfway down the door of apartment 209, I thought that if Zach questioned my methods, I would tell him that it was only because I don't trust him.
I was surprised to find the furniture all intact and not even the dust disturbed. Zach was standing by the fireplace, his arms crossed and mind fixed on the painting that hung there. He must have dug the black wife beater he was wearing out of the sack of special-issues the company deliver every week. The Shinra logo bag appears on the doorstep every Sunday morning, which means in itself that I am never awake to greet it, and I suppose I have merely forgotten to be unnerved at the delivery of identical clothes from nowhere. I was tired, confused and I stank of sex and midnight, but I still couldn't help noticing how incredible Zach looked. As if it would not complicate things, I ran a hand through my hair and coughed.
"It came with the apartment".
The painting was a copy, tastefully brutal but still provocative. There's someone else I ought to hunt down - whoever decorated the apartment. Some low-level Shinra devotees, but why would they hang a firing squad in the lounge?
"Oh. Fascinating, isn't it?", he asked, looking for all intents and purposes quite healthy, his eyes so bewitching under the weight of grief. If he wanted to talk more, then he would have to wait.
"Yeah. 'Would have gone for a clock myself, but hey. Listen, I've gotta take a shower. We'll talk about all everything later."
Zach made a noncommittal noise and returned to studying the grim scene before him. I paused, as if I could think of something worth saying or doing. Failing that, I left in silence.
As I washed away the last drops of lust and heady indulgence from only an hour past, I felt something familiar, amphibian and alive. Not quite disgust at myself, but close to it. Whenever a feeling such as this came upon me in the past I would call it foreign, but it has been with me since I split the walls of my growth tank and ran from Mount Nibel. Sometimes, from an angle I could never have seen, I can make out two children at the base of a shallow slope. One is wearing a blue dress. I think she is dead, but there above her crouches a blond boy, willing her to awaken. He paces and cries and calls her name, until more come and carry her away. She looks too strong to die with him watching, and it strikes me that she views her life as hers alone; and when it must end it will be by her own hand.
I let my hair loose and shook away the scene, the wet tendrils clawing at my waist reminding me of the man who told me I would become an adept in the arts of death. His eyes haunt me still, Mako gemstones alight with all he knew, with how far ahead of the world he always was. Those iridescent, impenetrable eyes....I couldn't tell how old he was then, or when he died, moreover I thought him to be entirely beyond the confines of aging, above the hourglass of bone and mortar, something alien and true. Not unlike the Knights, the Ancients and all who have gone before. With only a suggestion from his unnatural, spectacular emerald eyes he could make anyone he chose fall for him heavily, hopelessly. I suppose I interested him if only because he could not enchant me as easily as all the others. As a much younger version of myself I decided beneath the stars that no man would claim my heart, and now it is so long ago I'm not sure if my reticence irritated or amused Sephiroth.
Whatever effect it had, he strode into my room one night, having no need of stealth, and sat at the edge of my bed, so sickeningly real and material when in contact with solid things. It was a combination of arrogance and quizzical naivety as to my resistance that played within his smile. He was still everything they said he was, but as I know now, he was just a man when his hand stroked my shoulder blades, when he remarked how alike our eyes were, and when he drew my face near enough to his own for me to feel his breath against my skin. Yes, he breathed, the hero of so many unrequited legends, his heart beat rapidly, rhythmically, he ate and drank and smoked like all of us. What made him so unique, I think, was the amount of Mako that intoxicated his every impulse and expression, and whatever natural impurity allowed him to survive that volume of infusion.
The water stopped falling and I stepped out into the world again, dressing for a long evening of searching for answers in dead languages, questions and contrivance. Sephiroth seemed to be behind me; I could feel soft exhaled steam on my neck, and words that cannot be spoken aloud for fear of butchering all that they could come to mean. It comes and I admit to it, the sight of him stooping gently and taking my face in one gloved hand, casting down a spent cigarette and not clearing his throat for me, letting his lips stay on mine. When we kissed fully it was so strangely beautiful that I can't rely on what I remember of it, only on what blotted masterpieces I saw behind my eyes. Fire, ice, blood and warm deliverance, infuriatingly far away, shrouded in skin and stitches. I breathed out his smoke and saw an unknown future curl into the dying light; stripped bare of credibility and fettered to the silence that keeps it....caught....
"You're back?"
Zach asked me this as though it were ordinary and forgettable, his eyes darting in sync with the towel in my hand as I made some vague attempt to dry my hair and decipher his question as if the time I was given for both tasks was nearly run dry.
"What?"
Well, so much for an informed response.
"You were....in the past, I think".