A/N: I have no idea how I was able to write this so soon, but I did. So here it is. o.o I swear these are getting longer and longer...I'll probably just change the story description to include "scenes" or something as well as drabbles. Also, I know a lot of you are probably dying for a kiss scene, but it's not quite there yet. Soon though, I think. ;) Anyway, I hope you enjoy, and thank you to everyone who's reviewed or favorited or added to alerts or just read. Really. Thanks. :)
Disclaimer: Final Fantasy and its characters are property of Square Enix, not me.
Chapter 7: Piercing
Cloud
It drove me crazy when Zack tried to pierce my ear.
I knew he was up to something as soon as I saw him messing with some stuff on the kitchen counter that I couldn't see and asked if he could "borrow" me "for a minute". Nothing good could follow that. The more reasonable part of me was telling me to say no and get the hell out of there before I got myself into something stupid 'cause it was too late at night to get myself into something stupid. But the more reasonable part of me never wins when it comes to Zack. I ended up slowly making my way over to him and sitting in the chair that he pulled up from the kitchen table, but I really started regretting it when I saw the needle and the bottle of rubbing alcohol and the cotton swabs and the lighter sitting on the counter.
"What are you gonna do to me?" I asked him, mentally getting ready to bolt if it was something like experimental surgery or trial-and-error tattooing.
"Pierce your ear," he stated, the words muffled a little by the black marker he was holding in his mouth. I stayed sitting in the chair and watched him as he washed his hands at the kitchen sink. At least he was being hygienic about it.
"They're already pierced," I pointed out. He took the marker out of his mouth and dried his hands with a paper towel.
"I'm doing a second one. You know, like a double piercing."
"Why?"
He shrugged. "I just wanna see if it works."
"And what if it doesn't?"
He just grinned and rolled his eyes as he set the black marker down on the counter. I really didn't feel any better, but I figured this was just another Zack thing that I couldn't back out of. He pulled up another chair opposite me and sat down and starting pouring rubbing alcohol on a cotton swab. I watched him silently as he did it, kind of captivated by how sure he was about this whole process. I'd never seen him be so precise.
"I've done this before," he said, reading my mind. I looked at his face, his eyes fixed on the cotton swab in his lap, and my pulse picked up a little when I noticed how close we were. I studied his focused expression, the way his head tilted as he concentrated on getting just the right amount of alcohol on the swab.
"When?" I asked quietly. He set the bottle back on the counter.
"In Gongaga, when I was a kid." He stared at the cotton swab in his hands for a moment and then raised his eyes to mine, smiled.
"Wanna hear a story?"
I smiled back a yes. He scooted closer and gently gripped my chin to keep my head still as he started swabbing my earlobe, and I shivered both at the coldness of the rubbing alcohol and the warmth of his breath against my cheek. He spoke quietly even though we were alone. Or maybe because we were alone.
"I remember it was winter 'cause it was one of the coldest winters we'd ever had. You know how Gongaga's usually really warm? We've got palm trees and everything. That winter it was so cold that a lot of the plants died. Some of the trees even turned red and orange and gold like it was fall. I'd never seen that happen before."
I found my eyes closing as I listened to him, savoring the sound of his voice in the quietness of the room, the images he painted in my mind. The coldness of the cotton swab disappeared but his hand stayed gripping my chin as I heard the click of him uncapping the marker with his teeth. I could feel its felt tip make a single dot on my earlobe, right above the silver stud that was already there. I opened my eyes as he let go of my chin to cap the marker, and then he grasped it again to turn my head a little to the side.
"I was the only one out of all my friends who had a furnace in the basement," he went on, examining my ear to make sure the dot was in the right place. "So we used to hang out there to get away from the cold."
He let go of my chin again and I watched his hands as he grabbed the lighter and flipped it open and reached for the needle. He held it near the flame for a moment, I guess to sterilize it, and I marveled again at the preciseness of it all. He put the lighter back on the counter, poured rubbing alcohol on another cotton swab and cleaned the needle with that. My knee started bouncing up and down when I realized that he was about to do it but he noticed and just slid his foot forward so his leg was resting against mine and it stopped. He leaned forward, skimmed his hand over my knee before placing it on my cheek to keep my head from moving to the side when he pierced my ear. How could he touch such meaningless and innocent parts of me like my knee and my cheek and make it feel like he meant so much more and make me want so much more? I was shivering again.
"Calm down," he ordered softly. And just like that, I did. He kept talking to me as his other hand brought the needle up to my ear.
"We never really had anything to do. But then this one kid who had like five piercings in one ear said that he could show us how to do ours, and we figured well why not? So we took turns. We sat around with hot chocolates in the warm basement for hours just piercing each other's ears. I got lots of practice, anyway."
My eyes were closed again and he was already slipping the stud into my ear. I hadn't even known he'd pierced it.
His fingers weren't touching my ear anymore but his other hand was still on my cheek. I felt his fingers just barely slide along my jaw and I realized that he hadn't done or said anything for a little while. I opened my eyes and saw that he was studying me, his bright blue eyes roaming over my face like he was trying to take in all of my features all at once and just wasn't satisfied no matter how much he looked, and something inside me was aching for the millionth time because I couldn't even count how many times I'd caught myself looking at him like that. He saw that I'd opened my eyes and his hand left my cheek as he looked away. He grabbed a cotton swab and handed it to me so I could clean the blood off the new piercing.
"I cried like a baby," he said.
I looked at him in confusion as I swabbed my earlobe. "What?"
"When I got my ear pierced," he murmured, not looking at me. "I cried."
It hit me then, the significance of him telling me this small story. Zack had probably never told it to anyone before. He'd probably never told anyone about his childhood before. But he had chosen to share it with me. It was important to him and he wanted to share what was important to him with me and I suddenly felt horribly guilty. I should share a story with him, tell him about Nibelheim. But I couldn't. My childhood was so different from his and I was so scared of what he would think of me.
So I just told him "Thank you."
A slow smile spread across his face and he said "No problem" and I knew that he knew that I was thanking him for so much more than an ear piercing. It eventually wound up getting infected despite all that precision that went into it and I had get it treated and let it close up, but I think it was worth it.
It just drove me crazy when Zack tried to pierce my ear.
