The SOLDIER didn't yank, but there was eagerness in his eyes as he slid it down - and she felt the soft slide of his fingers against her skin. Gentle, so gentle - the same kind of hard-earned control the demon had, but without claws. She leaned in to kiss him, kiss him properly, firmly inside her own skin.

She realized two things almost at once: that he was still hurting, a dull pulse of pain at the back of his head which wasn't bad but could hardly been good… and that she knew how to fix it, even without materia.

It came like a rush of wind and water - a gift from the Planet, almost more than she knew what to do with. But the SOLDIER did - he and his demon drank it down with a groan, bathing in the cool wash of it. She pulled away to see, and she caught sight of the dying haze of green around him, the effects of a Cure done and done well.

He had a goofy, dazed-looking smile on his face again, like she'd just hit him in the face with a really big hammer and a shot of Confuse. So maybe it was okay too if he didn't want to... to do anything...

You underestimate me.

And she couldn't tell if the demon was answering as himself or as the both of them together because all at once all she knew was heat - a raw surge of rolling desire that blossomed from her lips and radiated through her entire body.

Her breath left her in a gasp as their mouths crashed together a second time: her tongue scraping against his teeth, his snarl as he suckled her lip; her hand frantic, his eager as they tore her suit open and closed around her breasts.

She had to admit it was terribly naughty of her to keep on holding the gun at his head - it wasn't a toy and she shouldn't be treating it like one - but she had lived for too long on the knife edge balancing between an impulsive nature and a nurtured caution. She couldn't give in even now without keeping something, especially now when she… vulnerable.

Aeris had to admit the sweet, hopeful flick of his eyes up to hers as she stepped out of her boots and he helped her strip out of her leathers made great strides in helping to convince her. That fuzzy sense of knowing was back: it was a direct loop feed of sheer want that made her knees weak, but very little calculation, and very little fear.

She stepped out of the soft lace of her panties herself, and the look of his face - a wide happy grin of a smile with equal parts admiration and eagerness - was the only thing that kept the embarrassment at bay.

Then his hands were sliding up her legs and his face was almost worshipful as with infinite gentleness - he had to, it was those teeth - he kissed, and nibbled, and oh, licked…

She hardly recognized herself in this incoherent, shuddering, mewling mess of herself that he reduced her to with his tongue, but he wasn't complaining and oh she wasn't apologizing…

Then he drove his fingers up inside her and her knees buckled- the harsh, eager growl of his demon as loud as an engine in her ears.

Oh you delicious little thing...

She cried out when she felt hands close around her breasts again, claw tips scraping gently along her skin. There was nothing there when she looked down, nothing but her own hand holding the back of that spiky black head as if for dear life down between her legs, urging him closer, harder-

But she could feel the phantom fingers sliding against her skin, pinching her nipples between the knuckles, and then a tongue, circling, lapping… she could feel those hands squeezing, lips sucking…

And all the while, all that terrible iron strength of his - of theirs - reined and checked just for her. At one point it was just his hand braced at the small of her back that kept her from toppling into a quivering heap on the floor... and he held her up as easily as if she were a doll.

Aeris found that she was glad, very glad, that the door opened inwards because when she came, she crashed into it a bucking, shuddering, and very loud mess.

When she could open her eyes again she snuck a peek to check whether or not he was laughing at her - but his eyes were lazy and heavy-lidded and hungry as he sucked on his fingers and smiled at her.

"Damn babe, I cannot fucking blame the Turks for wanting you so bad."

Huh? He... wasn't...?

So much for snooping, little Cetra. There was a fiendishly wicked laugh in the demon's voice, although she felt the faint brush of his skin against her face and a quick brush of unnaturally soft lips, gone in seconds.

But... oh he was evil!

His laughter nearly overshadowed her confused conversation with the SOLDIER. The SOLDIER who was one of the kindest, most thoughtful men she'd ever known... and who had a name at last.

Her heart skipped a beat when unbidden, he took her hand in his and pressed a kiss into her skin.

"My name's Zack. I'm in Cloud's pack."

Zack. And the demon's?

We are one and the same, little one. I have no need for autonomy, and flesh is only a prison if you let it become one.

That wry, drawing voice was thoughtful though - even without seeing, she could tell he was turning the thought over in his mind, so new the idea of finding someone who could see him as other.

...If you must name me, you could do worse than call me Zax.

The same but different all at once. She smiled brilliantly. It was like their little secret.

Still… there was something else niggling at her mind, a faint memory that made Cloud's pack so significant.

-Jenova-

-power-

-Sephiroth-

The voices were like a lightning bolt of inspiration though she had never heard the dead so full of a nameless fear. Sephiroth. Of course! How old had she been when Midgar had been rocked with the story of Shinra's great military genius breaking away so spectacularly from the fold?

They said there was still a great charred hole in the heart of the castle like the site of a meteorite where he had come into his power and the royals had foolishly tried to hold him back. With the fires of a demon queen, he had driven them back and then… disappeared.

It hadn't been so long ago when the city had been stunned by his reappearance - not, as it had been first thought, to storm the castle and take it as his own, but rather as the stately second of a mercenary with eyes older than heaven.

The royals had let the situation completely alone - they might have the army, but not a one was willing to fight this man that had been their master.

Perhaps… perhaps they would take her. There were unwritten rules when it came to the various mercenary branches that based out of Midgar - and it was here in which Aeris's staunch adherence to self-secrecy had come as a disadvantage. She had no ties to any of the other companies - fair game, as a free agent, for Turk attention - and no one wanted to take chances on a non-entity if it meant standing up to the Turks.

She probably wouldn't make a very good mercenary but…

As lightly as she knew how, she brought it up to him: "Maybe I just want to hire you."

It would not be nearly as effective but… it could work. If she could afford them, it would mean… it could mean she wouldn't have to keep running.

They'll want you. Zax's voice was no longer coy, it was as serious as she'd ever heard it - and for the first time, infinitely gentle. You have the power to bring even Sephiroth down at heel if you wished it, and your power is like a kiss. They will want you. Particularly if the alternative is handing you to Shinra.

But if she couldn't demonstrate-

In a roomful of the top mercs in the city, you glow like a pearl in the palm. Foolish girl, do you think that all eyes are so blind?

It was another weight lifted from her shoulders, and while she felt Zax knew how to lie better than Zack did… she believed him. There were such strong ties to home and pack wrapped up in his words, and the possibility that she could be a part of that…

No fear, she told herself, a smile finding its way back to her lips. Wasn't that the best lesson to learn? Don't be afraid to want.

When she leaned in to kiss Zack again, she did it with her eyes open.

He pulled her into his lap with the easy grace of a dancer, and it felt so good to be able to hold him close, to wrap her arms around him, touch him, kiss him as if they were… as if they were a…

-Well. It was enough to worry about second-guessing her own feelings without venturing forth into sorting out his.

Especially since affection came so naturally to him - that silly smile that made her heart do flip-flops when she nuzzled him his nose, the warmth of his hands cradling her back, the murmur of his voice in her hair as he rubbed his cheek against it like a large, lazy cat.

Only the prickle of his eagerness siphoning into her consciousness and the tented hardness in his pants pressed up against her inner thighs told her yes, he still wanted her, and yes, he was still being so very, very good.

As she lay kisses down the clean lines of his jaw, it was a wicked little spark of inspiration that made her glance up at those deceptively drowsy-looking materia blues, open her mouth wide, and bite down firmly into the meat of his neck.

It was like she'd slapped him with a Bolt spell because his entire body jerked underneath her, freezing to a standstill for a split-second.

-Then a fine shuddering began in every single tightly-coiled muscle in his body. His hands clamped down on her hips, hard, his knuckles whitening under the strain of holding himself back. As she watched, fascinated, his eyes went nearly coal-black; the enormous dark blots of his dilated pupils burned with a thin ring of icy blue fire.

The demon's cry had gone from a high yowl of surprise into a deep bass growl in a register she hadn't even known he possessed while Zack's hoarse shout was entirely human… but his eyes, oh when he looked down at her with that wild eagerness, it was all other.

"Demon?" she asked him with a smile, so that he knew… and to reassure him most of all that that was okay. She swayed closer as her hips rocked against his, grinding herself against that hard, twitching piece of him. That it was more than okay.

"Demon," he agreed, breathless and eager, his voice rough with the tension of holding himself back.

"How much demon?"

"Enough." And his voice had dropped into that same thrumming bass growl of Zax's.

That clinched it. It wasn't just a demon housed inside a human, they really were a sharply-mixed blend of both… just not all the way through.

"I like it. I like you."

Both of you, she thought with an internal smile, and she knew Zax heard.

Then because she'd waited long enough - and he'd waited longer - she fisted her hands in his horribly creased shirt and ripped it open.

A button or two pinged into her but she didn't care - she was much more absorbed with the sight of his chest... which was so chiseled it belonged in a magazine spread or a museum, not between her legs.

A ragged scar ran down the side of his belly in triplicate, like some great animal had tried to claw out his kidney, though it was already pink and fading. On his hip there was a tattoo in black lines of a snarling Fenris wolf.

-And that was all she got because with a snarl of impatience, he did the rest of her work for her, grabbing his shirt himself and tearing it off. It sheared to pieces in his hands, and hung in shreds off his arms.

Undaunted, one hand came up behind her head, the other at her back and he scooped her up and lay her flat against the floor in one swift, swooping motion. At the same time, he did something with his hips and his legs that had him twisting his body over her like a snake.

Aeris couldn't help but be glad that there was still his jacket and her leathers between her and the floor because it was still... well, they were where they were and it didn't bear too much thinking about.

-And then that seemed like such a… a minor thing, really, because he was hovering over her, kissing her, grinding into her with a bright, hot grin that told that he… quite liked her too. She felt her heart skip another beat.

When he knelt back to undo his belt, she caught him by the back of his neck because she had to make one thing clear here: "I just want you to know… the buttons I could have fixed."

Her smile was playful and downright wicked, but it didn't change the truth - she was impatient but she wasn't rude!

Zack couldn't read minds - or… at least, she didn't think he could - but when he laughed, it felt like he understood the joke and her priorities too.

"Some casualties," he assured her, flicking the very tip of his belt against her lip with a smile - a smile that stretched into a wide, toothy grin when she playfully growled at him and closed her teeth on it, "are a pleasure."

When he wheeled back and snapped it away with a silly flourish, the buckle clunked hard against the dispenser next to the sink… and a little square packet fell out right near her hand. It was a clarifying moment. Not that she… needed it, exactly but…

At least one force in this universe is thinking clearly, murmured a rather dry tone. And oh that was… not Zax at all, it was her mother.

...

Aeris learned right then and there that there was no situation on the Planet that made it less embarrassing when your mother shows up while you're naked and with a boy.

MAMA!

Her mother's voice was rueful, disapproving, yet fond in equal parts… a soul and a mind that was dead and had come to terms, but still kept herself anchored so close to the living. Just… just take care of yourself. Please, daughter of mine.

Aeris's heart hurt to know her mother's pain, sensing that Ifalna didn't feel right saying more - no matter how much she might want to.

-What a busy place your head must be. Zax's voice was thoughtful and assessing... and both mother and daughter were astounded to note that he could hear.

There had been no one, no one in so long.

Ifalna's surprise was tempered with faint suspicion - unlike her daughter, there was no human in her veins, and while the Cetra had never directly opposed the demons, they had never been very closely aligned either. The old pacts hold while one remains. You take care with my daughter, Fenrisson.

Zax's laugh was loud, and for a moment Aeris was filled with a bone-deep concern that this was the closest she would ever get to introducing a new boyfriend to her mother… and that boyfriend was going to spit in her face.

I had no idea this would be so… interesting. His voice was no different from that careless drawl of his, but there was an undertone of thoughtfulness that belied the sharp intelligence. The Watchers in the earth yet sleep, Gaiasdatter. Let them lie. By tooth and claw, she is no prey of mine.

Ifalna's presence pulled away, satisfied - though perhaps not wholly. Witnessed.

Aeris was left reeling… one boy and his demon, and her mother had invoked the terms an old uneasy peace treaty - the violation of which had the potential to tear the Planet apart.

Not a particularly tolerant race all things told now, hmmnn? Deadpan, his voice was loud, present, in her ear - said to her and her alone. Such is ~love~

How did he do that? She shivered at his voice, sex and a sly sense of humor mixed in the dark.

Zack's easy laugh brought her back to herself, a little embarrassed and a little amused. He leaned over her to scoop up the condom off the floor, and his eyes on hers held an awareness she hadn't expected - a cheerful acceptance that she wasn't as firmly tethered to the earth as he was, and that was okay too so long as here was where she still wanted to be.

And she did... oh, so much so. He'd unzipped his pants, and they hung open and low off his narrow hips, held on by a suggestion. She could already see the curved thickness of him, pressed tight against the waistband.

He rocked into her hand with bright eyes when she reached up to cup him, to run her fingers under the lip of the elastic and tug it down, freeing him at last. Zack hummed a pleased sound when she took him in her hand, the materia fire already starting to kindle again in his eyes. He was such a study of contrasts - his skin was whisper soft beneath her fingers, but the flesh underneath was hard and she could feel his pulse like a promise.

She squeezed him in her hand, as much for practicality as it was to give him pleasure. His breath came out from between his teeth, and the look of his face made her smile as she squeezed him, searching for... well, anything. Magic and demon blood mixed oddly sometimes in humans and she was eager, but she wasn't stupid.

He had a look in his eyes when she glanced back up at him, something you didn't see so often when a man has a woman naked underneath him - a wordless is it okay? that spoke about more than just sex.

"Demon," she reminded him sweetly.

His smile was wide, sharp teeth glittering but not nearly as dangerous-looking in his mouth. His hands were deft as he helped her slip the condom on. And his eyes... oh, there was a look in there that she could drown in if she let herself.

"No extras," he promised. And she was glad he got it too.

His hand cupped the back of head as he leaned down to kiss her again, his other hand guiding himself in slowly-slowly!

Her fingernails dug into the hard muscles of his shoulders as slow, shallow thrusts edged deeper, deeper. His earlier ministrations had left her keyed - still wanting, still wet, but tight... and he might not have spines or pointy bits hiding in that so-human body, but he also wasn't small.

He groaned against her lips, and his tongue found hers... It was the strangest sensation - to feel it wrap around hers in a loose loop, tighten and then tug in a warm, wet caress, over and over, in time with his hips. Strange… and good. Aeris found herself gasping underneath him, the pads of her fingers splayed and scrabbling at his shoulders still - but now pushing, flexing, and urgent.

We've never done this before, Zax's voice murmured in her mind. His voice was tight with pleasure, but there was a strange depth to it that made it a confession.

Sex? She didn't believe it for a second. Not with the way he did- and those fingers-

Aeris cried out when Zack went down to his elbows above her, filling his hands with her breasts, squeezing and rolling and flicking her nipples between his fingertips without a single change of his rhythm.

Tongues. Humans can be so nervous, you know…

This close she could see the blue-white fire licking at the edges of his pupils threatening to swallow them, hotter than materia's natural glow. The enormity of what Zax was telling her sizzled through her like a shock - Zack with his molten eyes and his naga's tongue… how many people had he hidden them from?

Aeris knew a few things about playing human when you weren't, not entirely. There were good days and there were bad days, but it was always just pretend.

It's their loss, she told Zax firmly, squeezing down on him as if in punctuation, wrapping her legs around Zack's waist. Maybe he couldn't let go completely without breaking her, but at least he wouldn't have to hide.

A sharp chuckle and a tight hiss. I always thought so.

Then… then she lost herself, as the light in his eyes called up a power of her own. He sped up again, driving in harder now, the force of him almost enough to hurt but still too good to stop. The fine hairs under her bangs stuck in damp strands against her forehead as she whipped it from side to side, and though she tried hard to maintain eye contact, it was impossible, she couldn't- couldn't-

-I love you-

Her eyes sprang open because that… that hadn't been Zax. Or at least… that hadn't been Zax alone. Zack's entire face shone with words he didn't say, and meaning coalesced from a buzz of feelings, emotions, and swift-passing flashes of memory that heated her face and brought a smile to her lips.

She scraped her fingernails along the muscles of his back so that he hissed in pleasure, urging him to speed as her other hand locked behind his head and pulled him back down for another frantic kiss.

I love you.

There was something growing in her - a brightness that was white and shining and spun like the cosmos as she lost herself in sensation. She had known something like this before… a faint glimpse of a world not quite at her fingertips, a faint haze over the earth she walked…

But it had never… she had never known this kind of control before, even as she lost it. She could direct it. She knew where it led and how to go there, like following footprints in the sand.

They were driving towards that light, Zack and she, and she didn't want it to stop. Even as her world spiraled down to that heady mounting heat at the pit of her belly, she pushed them through into that… that place.

It was that place inside where she would go to die - but it held no fear over her, since death held no fear over her.

He whispered something to her, but she couldn't hear it - her ears filled with the sudden crescendo of sound, and her own sharp cries. She felt him though, the fingers that slipped between the two of them fluttering like a heartbeat, then the fireworks that scorched behind her eyelids as she came, screaming his name.

That was enough, the last piece of the puzzle which exploded that hot light in her center until it was all around them - an afternoon sun that showed no signs of setting, the baking smell of warm grass and a brisk breeze that tossed Zack's hair out of his face as he looked up in wonder.

Aeris opened her mouth to explain but the words caught in her throat as her entire body shuddered, a forecast of more to come. Zack's attention came fully back to her, the amazement in his eyes undimmed, but a fierce joy lighting his features as he held her face between his hands. Achingly gentle, they framed the curve of her face as they shuddered with the effort not to bear down and crush the bones underneath.

She looked up at him through her lashes, hands scrabbling at his skin again, desperate for purchase as his eyes pinned her with that look - part helplessness, part deep, drowning need, and that sharp smile that overlaid everything that he did. He was going to-

-We, Zax corrected, his voice down to a guttural snarl, and she knew this time he wasn't talking about just him and Zack.

It was true. The heat was building again - so soon after the last, it was almost like pain - her muscles shuddered beyond her control, her tongue was dry as sandpaper, and she knew her skin was damp and streaked with dust and pollen.

Zack still looked at her as though she were beautiful. His eyes slid skyward at the very last moment, his hands ripped away from her face and fisted in the dirt around her, and Aeris watched him until she couldn't. Her body seized up again, and her spine arched sharply and she tipped over that edge with a cry muffled against her fist.

His head hung low over her as he went down to his elbows, and she could see the pulse pounding in his neck. He murmured her name gently, his lips brushing her cheek almost shyly now that they were… that it was over.

And at the very back of his throat, she could hear the soft thrumming vibration of his contentment.

Demon, she thought with an internal grin, and it was strange how fondly that thought arose. She craned her neck, fighting the glowing lethargy and closed her teeth gently at his throat again, ending how they'd begun.

Zax made a quiet rrrrrr sound in her mind, and she could almost see him lying sprawled out like sated demon octopus, a dark splotch in that room of many windows. Above, Zack collapsed bonelessly down into the grass beside her, not much better off.

For a moment she lay there, staring up into the vast infinity of her sky. How long until she came here, for keeps? It was the first time - here, now, with Zack's firm warmth curled up at her side, that she felt the first sense of real reluctance, of resistance, to staying. It didn't feel… right… to be here alone.

She turned to face him, pillowing her head on her arm which brought her nose right up against his and his eyes so incredibly close.

With the laziest smile she'd ever seen (though it was as wide as if he were the proverbial cat who'd eaten a cageful of canaries) Zack did the same. Aeris had worried that maybe this would be the moment where things would get weird and real life would really start to creep in with a vengeance.

Once again, she underestimated him - he reached out to her first, curling his fingers behind her neck and stroking her skin with his fingers. His eyes were friendly - she wasn't sure whether she could handle anything too googly or dismissive just yet - but unreadable as his demon's.

"Where are we?" he asked, out of all the questions he possibly could, and it was that faint touch of hesitance that told her maybe this was as close to shy as Zack ever got. That brought a flutter back in her chest... and she wasn't so sure she'd have minded googly eyes after all.

Still... it had been her secret for so long...

Bad habits were made for breaking. Haven't you been alone with it for long enough?

Was that Zax's brush of thought? Or... herself?

-Either way, it was right, wasn't it? How could the truth hurt her now?

Aeris knew she likely looked as uncomfortable as she felt, but it was so hard to hide - especially when she wasn't hiding anything else. "It's my Promised Land," she said at last.

...It was strange how light she felt just saying the words out loud. Zack never even blinked, even when she tried - badly - to explain. From a glance it was clear that he didn't understand, not really… but he recognized the significance and the magnitude of what it had to mean.

He was a merc. If he didn't know now, he'd find out by sundown.

She reached out to touch him, to run her fingers over the hard muscles of his chest while it was still now, while she was still Aeris to him and not the Ancient. His scar was gone, she realized, the skin tan and whole like it had never been. Aside from his apparent inability to stand (yet), Zack looked better than when he'd started.

...She was a sweaty, exhausted mess and he hadn't even broken a sweat. That just wasn't fair.

As if in response, a brisk breeze sprang up, tugging playfully at her hair, making her shiver… and laughing at her for her worries.

"This mean we'll have a long hike back?"

He had a funny expression on his face, like he was already trying to to plot highway robbery dressed in a cape made of daisies… and that the thought of doing it was actually kind of awesome.

Children. The sigh she heard was heartfelt, deadpan… and utterly false. You hardly need me now… you can read his mind well enough already.

It's your mind too, she reminded him with a smile, shaking her head at both of them and shuffling her body forward so she could bury her face against his chest.

Zack wrapped his arms around her automatically, a cuddling machine, and she… wanted to hold onto that for just a little while longer.

"I can give you as long as you want, doll," he replied, and she could hear the smile, the offer, without ever looking up. How many times had she circled the city and simply never crossed paths with this remarkable, wonderful man?

"Take me to your pack?" she asked in a tiny voice, muffled against the warmth of his skin, still so afraid to really hope. "I could use… I would like bodyguards like you."

If she couldn't hire them, maybe they could hire her. It seemed so easy to trust that everything would be all right when she was wrapped in his arms like she were something precious.

"Of course."

Oathsworn, murmured Zax. Aeris felt the sensation of someone else curled behind her, the thin ghostly whip of a tail tangling around their legs, those sharp claws mindfully gentle as an arm slipped around her waist to curl at her belly.

They'd be back soon. Back to that bar, that bathroom... and, if she knew anything about policemen, a heavily-armed force right outside the door.

She wasn't going to run, she decided right then and there, intuition winning out at least this once more. She wasn't going to slip out and take to the rooftops, she'd stand with Zack, like… like pack, and see it through for… for as long as…

For keeps, Zax supplied for her, voice velvety but firm.

For keeps.

Aeris smiled. She could get used to that.

xxxx

Done! Done done done. This started out the tiniest, cutest little bunny, and ballooned into this magical sex adventure. And then... Zax poked his head up and informed me archly that he did, in fact, exist, and would like a name please - also that he had a part to play in this little drama. I'm still really quite glad he did. There's one more bit where Aeris gets to meet the rest of the pack and then... back to the Zackfic! *cracks knuckles* OT4 for days!