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“Aerith?”
His voice cuts through her daydream, pulling her back into the present. She blinks and looks around, surprised to find herself in line for something amidst the roiling tornado of lights and sounds of the Saucer. The neon lights of a nearby ad are cast on his face, bright blue and green and red, mixing together to reflect in his already colorful eyes, mesmerizing her.
“Sorry,” she murmurs, looking away, down at their shoes. His are pointing at hers. “This is just a lot. How do people think with all this noise?”
He takes a step closer to her. His thin shadow falls over her face, offering the smallest respite from the lights that dance and flicker around them. She looks up at him and smiles, and is pleased to see him smile back just a little. And even as she looks at him, the haze of memory or something like it hangs between them like glass, easy to see through but still there.
His voice, always low, is now almost impossible to hear. “Do you want to leave?”
“No,” she says quickly. “No, we shouldn’t. I want you to have fun.”
“I can have fun sleeping.”
“Oh, stop. We can find a place to sit for a minute but after that, I want to play some games. Okay?”
His hair is in his face. Without thinking, she pushes a lock of spiky yellow off his forehead, her fingers lingering over his skin. He’s cool to the touch despite the madness that surrounds them, as if separated from the lights and color and people and noise. Her own cheeks are flushed, she can feel the heat of them, and her hand on his face only makes the heat worse.
He lets himself be touched. In his shadow, everything seems so much more manageable. She takes her hand back. He sways a little after it, then quickly straightens back up.
“Alright, come on,” he says. “Take my hand, so we don’t get separated.”
His hand is gloved but still warm. She trails behind him, watching dancing lights fall over his shoulders, his back, craving his shadow to shield her from the chaos if only for a moment.
.
He takes her to the hotel. In the lobby, the light takes on a darker tone, with significantly less flickering. She sighs as her eyes adjust to the new light. There’s still music but it drifts under the sounds of people talking, allowing her mind to come up with thoughts she can actually hear. She sighs in relief. Beside her, and still holding her hand, Cloud nods to himself.
“Thanks,” she says. “This is better. I was just a little overwhelmed.”
“I thought you were a city girl,” he says.
She nudges his side with their clasped hands. “Come on, you’ve seen my house. I don’t remember neon lights or loud music, do you?”
His fingers tighten their hold over hers. “No, I just remember the flowers.”
The flowers. Aerith casts her mind back to the memory of him standing in her garden, the yellow flowers contrasting with the black of his clothes, but always fitting with the color of his eyes. Without meaning to, she squeezes his hand as nostalgia floods her.
It has been easy, lately, to get lost in a haze of half remembered moments. When she thinks too closely on anything, she hits an invisible wall. But drifting in a daydream, without focusing on individual details, she finds she can remember more this way. If she focuses on the feelings rather than the physical pieces of him standing in her garden. The warmth that flooded her as their fingers brushed accidentally when they both reached for the same flower. She remembers hoping their hands would touch again. And now here she is, close enough to see the freckles on his arms, her hand in his, a daydream becoming reality.
“You’re still out of it,” he says. His voice pulls her back to the present. “Need more quiet?”
She puts her other hand on his chest, hoping that the beating of his heart will jar her to attention. “Maybe,” she says.
“Okay.” He looks up and around. She sees his jaw clench and unclench. And under her palm, she can feel it, his beating heart, the thud thud thud of it in his chest, real and really here despite everything. “Follow me.”
.
Their room is where Aerith finally finds enough quiet that she can fully focus on him, and on herself. The lights are low, the air is still, the sounds of people moving and talking are far away. If she closes her eyes, she can pretend they’re back at her house, amidst the flowers that have always grown so easily around her in spite of the steel sky.
He lets go of her hand and props his sword against the wall. Without it, he looks smaller, less intimidating. Familiar. She sits on the edge of the bed nearest to the door and tries to relax.
“Better?” he asks.
“I’ll be fine,” she says, patting the space on the bed next to her.
He sits, stiffly. He isn’t good at relaxing. Even sitting on the plush mattress, his shoulders still have that square set to them. “You’ve been…” he trails, rubbing the back of his neck.
She takes over. That’s one thing she’s sure of, through the fever dream of her past, the memories she can barely recall if she tries too hard. She’s the leader. And he’s her follower, always close behind.
“It’s been hard for me to focus,” she tells him. “Nothing to worry about. I’m sure I just need some rest.”
He puts more space between them. “Lay back, then.”
She doesn’t fight it. Laying back, she tries to keep her eyes on the details of the ceiling, ornately decorated, shapes carved into the plaster, a big chandelier hanging over the middle of the room. She’s always continuously surprised at how beautiful things can be. If she closes her eyes, she can easily put herself back in the lab, the white walls and white coats and long needles. The room she’s in now may as well be another planet.
“Stop thinking.” His voice cuts through her memory. She looks up at him. He’s facing forward, but she can feel his eyes on her all the same, his attention focused on her like a beacon.
The glass sheet she imagines between them is fogging up. “I can’t,” she says. Her voice shakes just a little.
He takes her hand again. Slowly, he lays back too, until they’re side by side, their legs hanging off the edge of the bed. She shifts closer to him until her right side is touching his left. He takes a deep, shuddering breath. The air suddenly feels thin, like a threadbare cloth. She thinks she could tear through it if she speaks too loudly, so she whispers, “I get lost sometimes. In memories. I feel like the Whispers take something from me every time we see them. Maybe what they’re taking is the present, because I can’t stop thinking about the past.”
He turns on his side, facing her. She turns too. The bed creaks beneath them.
“That happens to me too sometimes,” he whispers back. His breath hits her face as he speaks. “When I think I’m getting lost, I look at you.”
She finds herself moving closer to him. The bed creaks again. In the hush quiet of the room, any movement sounds too loud. Their breath mixing together between them is too loud. Her heart pounding in her chest is too loud.
“Does that work?” she asks.
“Yeah. Usually. Look at me.”
She looks closely, at his familiar eyes, at the soft nose and pointed chin, the yellow hair that always sticks up on one side. When she first saw him, or saw him for the hundredth or thousandth time, on that street, she thought he looked as stiff as the sword on his back. Now he looks more pliant, like clay, something moldable, something ever changing. She leans toward him until his breath is hot against her mouth.
“I’m looking,” she says. The words slip into his mouth. He touches her face, his gloved hand trailing over her chin, inching her closer to him. In the faded, hazy edges of her consciousness, she can feel the pull of the past. But the present, with his hands on her and his eyes fixed on hers, is more compelling, this time. Reaching through the sheet of glass between them.
His lips brush hers, so softly she thinks she might be imagining it. Her eyes flutter shut. His mouth against hers is so familiar. Kissing him is like coming home. His arms encircle her, pulling her closer, so close that she thinks they might meld together into a single being.
When he pulls away, she keeps her eyes closed. His breath touches her face gently. His hair brushes her forehead, light as a feather. She holds onto the details of this moment, the present, reality, knowing her mind will bring her to this place again and again, afraid of how each visit to this memory will change in the future, how she will remember, what she will forget.
“Look at me,” he whispers against her lips.
She opens her eyes.