Author's notes:. Adult themes like woah. Yeah I know. Lots of swearing.

love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skillfully curled)
all worlds
---- ee cummings

yes is a world

1: magpie

What happened first was that I took his gun. He should have known it was coming. There was this inside joke that she'll do it, instead of me. She had the thing for shining stuff, and it didn't just end with materia. In fact, I think I stumbled upon her hoarding the shiny wrappers off pieces of gum that we threw carelessly over our shoulders, or pausing to study her reflection in a certain shining spoon. Cloud thought she was like a magpie, attracted to anything that could cast a glimmer. Cid just thought she was dumb.

I took his gun, the smallest of the lot, the one he could carry (and sometimes did) in the inside of his boot. I have to agree with her; there are times when the sun shines a certain slant of light over his face and my mouth drops. He is gorgeous in the same way a mirror reflecting the sunrise is; too bright and too painful to look at directly.

You know what's really messed up? That he's so gorgeous and she can't stop staring and everyone's whispering that they're going to hook up. Not just any kind of hooking up, but pure fucking-until-your-brain-hurts. That type.

The type of lust and love and everything else that makes her squeal and hop and jump around and then, only then, do I remember she's still a kid. She better hurry and grow up, she better learn when to talk to him or when to just let him sit and simmer in the shadows.

What's fucked up is that he's so gorgeous and inside, he's dying.

2: memory.

Yeah, we slept together.

It didn't happen like everyone thought it did.

First it was just him touching my shoulder and then his voice whispering my name and then there was this kiss. If it was a movie, the cheesy love theme would be blaring on loud. But because this was life (and a hard one at that), all I heard was the win that whipped around us and how he shivered when we drew apart.

I couldn't help but reach out and tug at one of his blond spikes.

He growled and laughed and chased me round and round and when he caught me, I knew.

We consummated, kissed, made love, declared ourselves infinite, rolled around like pigs in the hay, fucked, fucked until I cried, fucked until he did, got nasty, embraced, climaxed together.

What we didn't do was hold each other and said forever.

I don't believe in that shit.

No one does, not anymore anyway.

3: why?

Memories are snakes that wait in the grass to strike and sink fangs at the soft part of your ankle. The part that makes you fall over and scream.

His gun, a snake.

Time to shoot, for memories' sake.

4: midgar

What pains me, wrenches my guts and splits it into tiny pieces that travel up and down my body, is getting off the Highwind and walking into the city by myself. You can't travel on an airship for more than a few months, let alone a year, with the same people and not grow attached.

It pains me even more that during dinner the other day, Red was talking about having kids, if he ever finds another of his tribe. It took all the willpower I had not to ask him for one of his babies (or puppies as Barret drunkenly called them). I would love to have a red ball of fur with a flaming tail chasing mice all over my house. I think like that, remember how Red's the only one who can beat Vincent in chess and I get this nasty feeling in my stomach.

I'm an awful person inside, aren't I?

But if the off-chance that Red does say yes, then I'm naming it Jesse, whether or not it's a boy or girl.

It's funny really, how once Shin-Ra collapsed, the whole city folded in upon itself. It's a sick feeling to look up at the sky and see the tower broken.

You can destroy the military, expose the government and set yourself up for a head-on collision with death and still, prostitutes hug the walls of Sector 7, their lips as bright as the once neon Shin-Ra sign.

There was still this thing I had to do, and it's weighing down on me, looking like the heavy fake fur this one prostitute's wearing across her shoulder. I want to tell her, honey, it's too warm to wear a scarf like that.

I open my mouth and then close it, realizing that's all she has left.

5: really briefly

Shit.

They're just kids.

I'm thinking back to how she eats ice-cream cones, two at a time, because Vincent always orders but never eats them. She wears a leg brace, telling me once how she used to wear a cast, that a solider (but not that type of SOLiDER) tried to hurt (rape) her in the woods during the war (I'm not sure which war) and she got away, but not before he carved her badly with a knife.

How she still runs is a mystery to me.

My finger curls around the trigger.

I want to go back home. I want to be on the Highwind.

I want home.

6: fat, fat, fat

A bullet through his head.

Just once, and the smoke clears and I see him slumped over, as if he had too much to drink. I see his fat flesh hanging like a smile over his pants, twin pouches of fat that make up his chest, looking like eyes.

If the fat man's gone, will the kids disappear too?

7: myself

What I love best about him is the way he smells. After I wash the grime from my hands, picking the blood from underneath my fingernails, and taking off my shoes, I crawl into bed with him and proceed to smell his smell.

It's a road etched deep in his skin. I love Cloud because he smells like his namesake.

Sector 7 without its pimp will be like a snake with its head cut off. No more biting, no more taking the tender pieces of little kids and eating them whole. We're so caught up in the big things, a big rock that's coming to our Planet and the danger of a glowing river that flows not just throughout the land, but in us too.

We're so caught up in the big things that we're forgeting the small stuff, like where Jesse used to work (Sector 7), Vincent and Cid drinking beers in the kitchen, Red sleeping with both of his paws over his eyes, and how Cloud looks right now, when there's just a shaft of light across his face and his heavy arm is across my chest and my breathing is so drawn because I'm smelling him, smelling and tasting love and most of all, knowing that it exists.

The small things, I mean.