That gives Zei pause, and then inevitably he says, "It just occurred to me that I have no idea how old you are or how we'd tell—anyway whatever distracted what I mean to say is I would very much like to rectify that." And to punctuate that statement he slips three fingers between the waist of Edmund's trousers and his left hipbone, then slides his hand along Edmund's hip towards his crotch between them.

This is an interesting feeling that he is getting from Zei touching him there. Positive? Negative? It probably isn't negative, right, that'd be stupid. He makes a noise. It's a pleasant noise. He - makes another noise.

He's beginning to feel like he's doing something wrong. Unfortunately, his brain doesn't feel fully connected to his body. He hopes Zei can make up for it. He doesn't want this to be a problem.

"Stop. Now."

Zei nearly jumps out of his skin, which is a form of stopping. The way he also pulls away to sit up is a more definitive form of stopping.

"—what happened? What's wrong?"

"I have no fucking idea, but his brain is melting! If that's what sex is supposed to be like, I forbid it."

Edmund opens his mouth. It takes him a while to talk.

"mfine. I - mmmmmmm. I."

"Agh, it's even worse when he talks - can you heal him or something???"

Zei's eyes widen and a flush creeps up his neck and face. "I—I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—" To what? He has any sexual experience but brain melting was not really in his list of expected outcomes here! He looks at Edmund then at the sword and he nods. He doesn't strictly need the staff, it just takes an extra second or two of casting, and the healing spell goes off, the same glow shining from Edmund's chest as the previous time.

"aaaa. I. I'm, I'm, I'm o. O. Okay?"

He falls back on the pallet and whimpers a bit. "Things. Things - a lot - I -"

"...he wants you to hug him," Oni-Goroshi reports.

...really? Okay he was thinking of grabbing his canteen and offering Edmund some water but hugs are also available.

He's still not sure what went—wrong—there but he'll scoot over and. Offer a hug?

Edmund kind of spasms loosely into clinging to him.

A few minutes later, he says "Um. I'm... you don't have to keep hugging if you don't want, I think I'm alright."

"He is lying," Oni-Goroshi snaps. "Continue hugging him."

"Yes, ma'am," he says, not unhugging at all. He adjusts their position to be more comfortable, pulling Edmund's face against the crook of his neck and petting his hair and back. "And for the record I do want. I'm—sorry—for whatever I did, but I do want."

"Wasn't... wasn't you. It's..."

He burrows slightly farther into Zei's shoulder. "I think I'm. Broken about sex?"

"...I don't—I don't love thinking about people as broken," is what he comes up with. "Do you want to talk about it? Or just hug or—whatever you want is fine, there's no wrong answer here."

Hug, appears to be the answer.

"My... first time... wasn't. Good. Parents... wanted me to know what I was doing? And. We had - a service slave - they told her to. Um."

"And she told me - she didn't mind - and if they knew she didn't do it, she didn't know what'd happen."

"So."

...Zei's having to work double time here to process the inferences. Slavery hasn't been a thing pretty much anywhere on Spira since at least before the Machina War a thousand years ago, he's only heard about it from books and, well, some sex stuff some people are into.

But that implies things for sure. A service slave who was—forced to have sex with him—and he was forced to have sex with her because if he didn't his parents would have punished her somehow?

...

..........

..............what the fuck. What the actual fuck. Okay maybe Zei knows how someone could get to wanting to set someone on fire pretty terminally.

He grits his teeth because expressing the anger that's just roared its head in his chest would be actively counterproductive, here, and just breathes for a few seconds. Then he says, "I will never—ever—just tell me if you ever want me to, to go away or—or actually I'll just never do anything you don't actively want me to—Yevon what the fuck I'm so sorry."

Burrow burrow burrow.

"So. I... don't... I want to kiss you? But when you touched me there. It was. Scary. And - I couldn't talk? Because - it was scary."

And if I were capable of doing anything I might have set you on fire so I had to not be capable of doing anything, he doesn't add.

"Okay, it's okay, you can be scared," he says, petpetpetting the boy. "I won't touch you anywhere without you wanting me to, I won't do anything you don't want me to."

Snuggle? Snuggle.

"Well," he says eventually, "that's my tragic backstory. If that's what you wanted out of this encounter, you're a lucky man."

Zei buries his own face in Edmund's shoulder to laugh into his skin. "Well, if we are fighting giant monsters together, I figure we might as well get that out of the way, huh?"

"Would it have come up in the course of fighting the giant monster? The trigger seemed fairly specific."

"I would absolutely have flirted with you in the course of fighting the giant monster," Zei says vehemently. "See how I did, actually, flirt with you on the day we met."

"Granted, but I was referring more to the part where you touched my cock."