31_days | [Feb 1][Crisis Core] Following her lead

Title: Following her lead
Day/ Theme: Feb 1 / Open up and let me crawl inside.
Series: FFVII: Crisis Core
Characters: Zack, Aeris
Rating: G

Maybe it was the inhumanly efficient metabolism thing or just the heat of his tears spreading to his nape and back, but she felt warm like the laundry-softened blanket his mother had dumped on his head long ago, despite supposedly being cross at him for playing too far into the creek and falling through thin ice and into the shallow, pebbly water. He had managed to keep the enthusiasm in his voice when he came and dove straight into her plans to sell flowers, but she must have sensed rain in the eternally clear skies of his eyes. She didn’t ask questions but followed his lead, calmly tending to her flowers while sharing her thoughts on seeing the real thing overhead.

“If we're on the upper city, the sky must be really close, right? I'm a bit scared but the flowers would be happy, right?”

When he finally broke down then, she followed his lead there, too.

It was nice to be a child for a few moments and cry over the war wounds (though this one was much deeper than a gash to the knee, more crushing than a loss against the town bully), but see he couldn’t be a child for long, not with all that he’s seen of the world. The soft kisses she pressed against his temple progressed slowly down his cheek as he twisted, burrowed himself in her arms (not unlike how the nickname his teacher gave him would have, and the thought made him weep harder). When her lips met the corner of his, he sought fuller contact, more than what a child or puppy needed, and again she followed his lead.

The hesitation was merely from lack of experience, he discovered. She took over when he faltered, jelly-fingered, jelly-brained, and at some point later he found her draped over him and applying counter-pressure to his grief with long, benumbing kisses. He looked at her, really looked at her, in half-terror in that half-darkness. Her eyes were the green of hope, and he was sure it wasn’t the crushing grief part that made him feel like his lungs had stopped working when he saw just a bit of her tongue run across her lower lip.

“The rain doesn’t taste salty like this even in the plates, does it?” she murmured, pressing his wooden body back against the church’s wooden floor with a gentle nudge of her chin. “That means you’re normal where it matters, right, Zack?”

He might have agreed aloud or only in his mind, but he took her lead when she told him it was okay and that he should cry for as long as he needed. Her tiniest touch was infinitely more heartfelt than a debriefing session in headquarters, and Angeal Hewley deserved more honesty than what was allowed by the trite script of trained professionals. Pride, after all, was made of sturdier material, and there was no shame in falling to pieces under the care of the woman he loved.

02012011
23:57

Another back up piece. I wonder if “the woman he loved” bit is too strong at this juncture.