FicWad

He was nineteen the first time we talked about sex. I brought it up, ever the teenager-and just starting to get that edge sharp edge to my hormones and everything-and we talked about it quietly, and he blushed a lot through the entire thing. It was dumb, but I liked it, just talking about it. I had it figured that he wouldn't try anything until I was ready, so I was perfectly willing to bring it up with him, so he knew that I was interested, in that way that any teenage boy is, but that we weren't there yet.

Having come to Galbadia when I was twelve, and joining the military, I'd figured out pretty early why the age of consent was twenty when the age of military enrollment was fifteen-training took a little while, and it was a detrement to have your cadets distracted; train them, have them fuck a girl, then send them to war. It was a good, swift, Galbadian approach.

So, Laguna's twentith birthday rolled around. We got our appointments and our ranks, and I was prepared for him to take every opportunity to take me to bed. But he didn't-he wanted to, obviously; his hands were always itching for me, I knew, and when we did get those scant moments away from prying eyes, he was all over me. But we never really got beyond rough, cursory gropes and some serious kissing.

He was a good man.

He was twenty-one, the night I snuck into his barrack room-his 'apartment', he called it, like this was a big thing; a bachelors' flat or something-in my civilian clothes. I was seventeen. We had only just gotten back from a mission out near Dollet, where my arm had gotten bruised from his toting around Ward's harpoon; where he had nearly gotten himself killed in some stupid fight with some stupid monster.

I was scared of losing him. I was scared of him not knowing that I loved him. I was scared that if I did lose him, I'd forget him. Just like everybody forgot Melea.

He was awake before the door closed, and I turned to him to find him lowering his machine gun slowly, peering at me in the dark of the shadows that clung to the walls, away from his windows, like yellowing spiderwebs caught on the edges of window sills. His hair was mussed and tangled, his sheets wrapped around his legs; he wasn't wearing anything, and my hands rose very slowly, so he could watch my every move, to the buttons of my shirt.

When I sat on the bed, shirt gone and moonlight clinging to me as I pulled off my belt, he found his voice. "Wha're you doing?"

I kissed him, afraid that I couldn't say anything. In Centra, I was five years gone from being an adult; in Galbadia, I had three more years. And Laguna didn't know that. I thought of telling him, as I lifted his hands to my chest and then removed my pants. But the words wouldn't come-fright or love or his tongue keeping them at bay.

After that, he didn't need to ask. He had this look in his eyes though, like he wasn't sure. I smiled reassuringly, feeling the thrill of it all rushing through me as I lifted his sheets from his body and slid between them and him.

The moonlight slid across the room, until it was against the door and wall and we were the ones swatched in dark shadows, blind and deaf and dumb except for the pull of skin and the sound of breath between our mouths. It hurt-I'd been told, from one of my sisters when I was younger, that it hurt for women their first time, and though I did not comiserate, I could understand-but I kissed Laguna when he asked in concern and breathed against his lips when he moved. It was pleasant, in an obscure sort of way.

I didn't stay, after we had finished. I left him with a parting kiss, hungry and loving, and hurriedly dressed, my courage already slipping away to the fear that something would happen and the soft atmosphere of Laguna's 'apartments' in the night would turn into a hellish prison of scornful words and hard hands.

The thought of his smile against my throat sustained me through the night-though it was an odd and almost unwelcome sustaining, like I was being pulled together and apart at the same time by cobwebs at every angle to me-and when we found that moment, as we always did, the next morning between breakfast with the rest of the Enlisted and a meeting for General Caraway, he gently touched my cheek and asked if everything was alright. He made it sound like I had this big secret: like I was dying or just sampling him out or something. He sounded frightened.

I kissed him, there in the conference room where no one would be for some time, and laughed at awkward, rough groping to my ass and crotch.

My lips were bruised but General Caraway and the other Enlisted men and Officers didn't notice. Laguna sprawled in his seat and watched me instead of our commanding officer, and I felt a little warm and loved under that soft gunmetal gaze. His eyes washed away the cobwebs, leaving behind the clear and resolute, which was his hand in mine and his smile, and the fact that he loved me.

And that I loved him, despite or because of all things. That knowledge-known and ignored for a long enough time-was a cozy place to be. But dangerous, with that edge of fear and trepidation that came with being in a position like ours.

I didn't listen to our meeting. After it was over, we all streamed away-no mission for our squad, but plenty for others-and Laguna took me away from the hustle and bustle of barrack and military life. We went into Deling City by the train, and wandered aimlessly for some time, until it was evening and we had to decide whether to risk the grounds again or stay in City for the evening.

Laguna leaned very close, in the elevator of the Deling City Hotel after we'd deigned to the latter option, and asked as the floors dinged away, "You wanna . . . ?"

It seemed stupid that a twenty-one year old couldn't ask for sex. But I smiled and kissed him, because it as alright if he couldn't ask for it. It helped bolster my courage, helped drive away the fears.

And that was a wonderful place to be, without the cobweb of fears.