[All the lies and excuses he'd told himself about the way she'd touched his hair evaporate in an instant when she leans into him and kisses his forehead instead, and then draws back and blinks at him with those big green eyes like she knows she did something warranting a flinch and she's already waiting to see how it will look on him.
What's strange, he finds silently, is that his reaction is a mixture of aching nostalgia and a ragged burn that he decides to define as annoyance. Gentleness always feels like a trap waiting to spring, a soft assault against his better instincts. No one has ever been gentle with him a day in his life and he doesn't want them to be. A single fractional nod from his father always felt so much better than the stifling confines of his mother's arms.
(The late Mrs. Shinra, he thinks darkly. Company assets, he thinks coldly.)
The hands on her waist shift just slightly, and only after she draws back; with just two fingers, he pushes up the hem of her tuxedo t-shirt far enough to slip them under and runs the tips back and forth in shallow lines against her side. Touching, and yet never out of proportion to what she's already done to him herself. Watching her, like she's watching him.
(He and I are nothing alike, he thinks fiercely.)]
Don't I? I took it.
[There's worlds of significance wrapped up in that quiet remark. Chief among them is this: you can't take something that's already yours to begin with. What about dis-asseting me, she'd insisted, and that's a curious enough prospect that he's willing to play it out and see what comes of it. What if all the trappings of possession, the history, the circumstances, the fucking wedding rings — what if none of it meant anything, what if it all burned to the ground and they grew it back up as a park in its place. What then, if he wasn't holding her by law or by right but because she let him?
She can't count high enough to number all of Shinra's sins, so she married someone who could do it for her. And she doesn't know how to win by taking something nobody gave her.
Lucky she married an expert — one patient enough to bide his time until she susses it out on her own.]
If you see something you want, why aren't you taking it?
🔪 💋 🔪 💋 🔪 💋
What's strange, he finds silently, is that his reaction is a mixture of aching nostalgia and a ragged burn that he decides to define as annoyance. Gentleness always feels like a trap waiting to spring, a soft assault against his better instincts. No one has ever been gentle with him a day in his life and he doesn't want them to be. A single fractional nod from his father always felt so much better than the stifling confines of his mother's arms.
(The late Mrs. Shinra, he thinks darkly. Company assets, he thinks coldly.)
The hands on her waist shift just slightly, and only after she draws back; with just two fingers, he pushes up the hem of her tuxedo t-shirt far enough to slip them under and runs the tips back and forth in shallow lines against her side. Touching, and yet never out of proportion to what she's already done to him herself. Watching her, like she's watching him.
(He and I are nothing alike, he thinks fiercely.)]
Don't I? I took it.
[There's worlds of significance wrapped up in that quiet remark. Chief among them is this: you can't take something that's already yours to begin with. What about dis-asseting me, she'd insisted, and that's a curious enough prospect that he's willing to play it out and see what comes of it. What if all the trappings of possession, the history, the circumstances, the fucking wedding rings — what if none of it meant anything, what if it all burned to the ground and they grew it back up as a park in its place. What then, if he wasn't holding her by law or by right but because she let him?
She can't count high enough to number all of Shinra's sins, so she married someone who could do it for her. And she doesn't know how to win by taking something nobody gave her.
Lucky she married an expert — one patient enough to bide his time until she susses it out on her own.]
If you see something you want, why aren't you taking it?