Chapter Text
They were both Shinra’s best and worst kept secret.
They were the best kept secret because absolutely no one outside the company knew about them. If you were told, you were hired or you disappeared; those were the options. If you told someone outside the company, you disappeared. Shinra’s reputation was on the line, and they wouldn’t have it tarnished. The executives were fully aware of how this would look to the public and had no intention of letting it become common knowledge.
They were the worst kept secret because every single Shinra employee was aware of their existence. No one was told upon hiring, they just happened to find out, and usually quickly. They were a hotly discussed topic. Even if people never went to see them, or found them distasteful, they still knew they were there. It was hard to avoid in the Tower.
The Safeguards were there for an endless number of reasons. Having what amounted to essentially company sex workers was not necessarily orthodox, but had its benefits. They were stress relief, often. Grunts got a sick pleasure out of being able to sleep with the same people their bosses did. They prevented the troopers (for the most part) from getting involved in one another, which prevented unnecessary drama between the ranks. But overall, the average Shinra employee just didn’t go see the Safeguards. As normalized as a visit to their floor was, there was still a certain stigma around going to see them. Just because the employees didn’t pay them directly didn’t mean they weren’t aware the Safeguards were paid to sleep with them. It was just that the company footed the bill.
No, the real purpose for the Safeguards was for the SOLDIERs.
When the program had first began, there had been no restrictions on dating outside the program. It was more or less an inevitability. But then, partners started showing signs of enhancement. It turned out that, like a blood transfusion, mako could be exchanged through almost any bodily fluid. Anyone who didn’t use a condom was at risk of enhancing their partner.
While it was certainly possible to maintain a relationship without sleeping with your partner, it wasn’t something that appealed to a lot of people, and that included SOLDIERs. They started sleeping with each other, but there were certain risks that came with that. Favoritism for partners, for one: SOLDIERs prioritizing the safety of one fellow SOLDIER over another in the field. The drama that always went with relationships, especially break ups, causing jealousy and strife between the ranks. Shinra needed a solution, and they needed it quickly.
It had seemed like a harebrained idea at first. They needed some sort of safeguard, something to protect the civilians from the SOLDIERs and the SOLDIERs from themselves. When it had been proposed, with infinite sarcasm in an elegant drawl, from Rufus, he’d expected the idea to be scrapped immediately. But they were desperate, and were willing to do whatever it took to rein the problem in. It couldn’t hurt to try; in the worst case, the Turks would clean up the mess.
So the Safeguard Department began. They went to the brothels of the city extending their offers. At first they tried to hire the best there was, only to find that they couldn’t persuade them. They were making a killing without risking permanent bodily changes as it was; they had no reason to take the risk of joining up with Shinra. So they changed tact. They started looking for the desperate. The newcomers, those having trouble getting clients. Anyone that they could dangle the high pay in front of and successfully blind to the other consequences. Those in severe enough need that they would accept what amounted to becoming quasi-human at best to earn their keep. It worked. There were always people willing to do what it took for money, if you looked to those desperate for gil.
Cloud hadn’t been a sex worker for very long before becoming a Safeguard.
He’d moved to Midgar with stars in his eyes. He was going to make it big, somehow. He was going to find his place in the big bad city and earn enough to keep not only himself comfortable, but also his mother. He was going to make her see that she had nothing to worry about; and she had worried, about sending him off to the city.
He couldn’t have known what he was in for.
He’d moved to the city and had to get a place below plate, finding that the places that weren’t in the slums were so exorbitantly priced they couldn’t be more than a dream. He tried to get jobs, but things were so competitive, he was floundering. He’d been in Wall Market, begging, because that was what he had come to. He told himself it was only temporary, just until he could find work.
He hadn’t expected work to fall into his lap.
A man had come and crouched in front of him. When he’d asked for gil, the man got a shark’s grin.
“Oh, I’ll be able to get you gil, alright. Why don’t you come with me? I think I’ve got a job for you.”
Cloud had been so taken in by the offer of a job that he was blindsided when he found out what it was. When he was taken to the Honey Bee Inn, he couldn’t be more shocked. This wasn’t what he wanted. He was a virgin, for gods’ sakes.
But he stopped, and he thought about it.
His options were thin. He might get a job eventually, but who knew how long out that was. He could risk waiting and begging and maybe lose this offer, or he could swallow his pride and take it and make what he could from it.
He decided he’d make do.
He got a frankly ridiculous sum of gil for his first time. But that was the largest amount he ever saw. The Honey Bee just didn’t pay well. They gave him lodgings, but took a cut of his pay in exchange, leaving him with a scant handful no matter how hard he worked, no matter how many clients he took. He wasn’t getting anywhere. He didn’t have anything to send home to his mother like he promised, and that was unacceptable.
So when the man from Shinra showed up and made him a better offer, he took it.
He had been warned over and over again about the risks. He was almost certain to become enhanced, they said. They couldn’t promise he wouldn’t be injured by his SOLDIER clients, if they forgot their strength and were rough with him before he was enhanced. They would still be johns; he couldn’t expect better treatment from the SOLDIERs or the Shinra executives, no matter their reputation or status.
He didn’t care. He saw the amount they were offering and that was it. He’d give his right arm for that much gil. There was nothing to think about.
Shinra, like the Honey Bee, took a cut in exchange for room and board. The difference was, his pay was mindblowing. He got paid whether or not he saw anyone. He was essentially on a salary, now. He had dry days, where no one came, and he still got paid. He didn’t care about being sworn to secrecy. He didn’t care that the executives looked at him like he was filth, or that the SOLDIERs did forget their strength. There were potions provided when it happened, which was more than he could say for when he got rough johns at the Honey Bee. It had almost seemed like too much the first time he got a bone broken on accident, but the SOLDIER had Cured him immediately, and it was like it never happened; the man even apologized, and did so profusely.
It wasn’t great. It wasn’t what he dreamed of when he left home. But it was a dream compared to what he had been doing.
He was living in relative luxury. He had his own room. He had a whole wardrobe (given, most of it was provocative, but he’d take what he could get). He ate well. He had time to himself. He didn’t even have to work every day. He wasn’t breaking his back to barely scrape by. He was working occasionally to be provided for, and well at that.
He was finally, finally able to send money home to his mother.
And, honestly, he didn’t mind the SOLDIERs. The executives were, for the most part, assholes. The grunts were a mixed bag, and he couldn’t pin a label on them as a group. But the SOLDIERs, for the most part, treated him well. They were grateful for the Safeguards; either they had been there long enough to remember what it was like before them, or had heard stories. The Safeguards were giving up a fair amount to provide them a service they needed sorely, and the group mentality was that the least they could do in exchange was treat them right.
The SOLDIERs were an odd bunch. Sometimes they brought him presents. Some just wanted to sit and chat, to vent about their workweek with someone they knew would keep their secrets. When he had his first birthday in the Tower, and his regulars found out, they’d thrown him a party and all brought him gifts, without anyone ever making a pass at him. He had a hard time remembering they were johns sometimes, and not counting some of them as friends.
Zack Fair, in particular, was hard to keep out of the friend category. He knew perfectly well that the man saw multiple Safeguards, and that he was friendly with all of them. But he was the one who threw that birthday party for Cloud. He came to talk as often as he came to sleep with him. He was one of the ones concerned with Cloud’s pleasure, and not just his own. He’d even gone as far as to ask if they were allowed to exchange PHS numbers, only to be infinitely disappointed Cloud didn’t have one in the first place. He’d offered to buy him one to remedy the problem, but Cloud had told him not to, as it was too expensive a gift. When he woke up the next morning with a brand new model sitting next to him on the pillow, he hadn’t even had it in him to be mad. Zack’s number was already inputted into it.
So? Yes. Cloud was having a very hard time remembering that Zack was not actually his friend. He was friendly, but Cloud suspected he was that way with everyone. He was probably the type that didn’t know how to just fuck and leave. He found he didn’t mind. He had a scant few amount of friends.
The few he did have were fellow Safeguards. There was a beautiful older man named Vincent who refused to tell anyone how old he was or how he had gotten here; he also refused adamantly to sleep with Sephiroth, but was the only one Professor Hojo would visit. Yuffie, similarly, refused to say how she got there, only that she was from Wutai. The common theory was that she had been taken by some SOLDIER or trooper as a prize of war, but no one dared ask her, in case they were correct.
There was Tifa, who he was infinitely disappointed to see. She had still been in Nibelheim when he left, but she was already a Safeguard when he got hired. They had cried when they saw each other and clung to one another for weeks, talking in Old Nibel until it drove everyone else away. The only person who approached them was Vincent, who admitted to knowing the language. And, though they were an odd set, where Vincent went, Yuffie followed. They formed their odd group and stuck by one another.
Cloud had to remind himself firmly that those were his friends, not Zack. No matter how many times the man gave him that wide smile or sent him stupid cat gifs over his PHS. There was a difference between them, and it would go poorly for them both if Cloud forgot it.
Still, when they were curled up together in bed, laughing and holding one another, it was hard to remember.
It was harder to remember that he couldn’t ask for more. That there was a firm line set between them. That this was a business transaction, and nothing more. Sure, Zack wasn’t handing him gil when he was done, but Shinra was, on his behalf. The time they spent together was on the company dime. They never would have met if it wasn’t for the Safeguard Department. Their whole relationship revolved around Cloud being paid to do anything Zack asked for. Just because Zack was asking to be friendly instead of asking him to bend over all the time didn’t make that any different. It was just hard, infinitely hard, for him to keep that in mind during the occasional moments they shared that could be called nothing but tender.
What he hadn’t expected was that Zack legitimately considered him a friend. He saw multiple Safeguards, but only Cloud had his PHS number. Cloud was the only one he talked up to his friends.
“I’m serious! He’s something special. He’s being wasted there,” Zack said, flopped back on Angeal’s couch.
Genesis tossed a pillow at him, which Zack caught lazily out of the air before sending him a pout.
“You’re getting attached to what you shouldn’t. He’s there to provide relief, not friendship,” Genesis said in a huff.
“You’re only saying that because you haven’t gone, Gen. He’s a little diamond. You’d like him, if you went to see him. I think you all would,” he said, pointedly looking from Genesis to Angeal to Sephiroth. Angeal was the only one who didn’t outright scoff. “Seph, you in particular.”
“Why me?” he asked, a look of outright disdain on his face.
“Because you need to blow off steam in general, to start with. And you have the same sense of humor. And I think you might actually have a good time with him, in a way you don’t with the other SOLDIERs.”
“The only issue I have with them is their constant need to defer.”
“He won’t.”
Sephiroth raised his eyebrow.
Zack propped himself up on his elbows, saying, “I’m serious. He’s a little spitfire; he doesn’t take shit from anyone, and I don’t think he’ll take your shit either. You could give it to him all you want, and he’d probably still let you sleep with him since that’s his job, but he’ll give as good as he gets. He’s one of the few people I think could keep up with you.”
“I doubt that,” Genesis said, snorting a laugh.
Zack scowled at him.
“You’ve never met him, what do you know?”
“I know that everyone who isn’t currently in this room is either terrified of him or in awe of him.”
Zack frowned and said, “You know what, let’s find out.”
Zack pulled out his PHS and flipped to the texting app.
Zack: cloud how do you feel about sephiroth
Cloud: uh
Cloud: I don’t really feel any way about sephiroth?
Cloud: never met him
Zack repeated the conversation aloud and looked around expectantly. Sephiroth rolled his eyes and Genesis shook his head.
“That doesn’t mean anything Zack,” Genesis insisted.
So Zack tried again.
Zack: what if I got him to come meet you
Cloud: uhhhhh sure? makes no difference to me
Cloud: but if his “sword” is as big as his actual sword I want a warning
Cloud: need to know exactly what kind of abuse my ass is about to take
Zack coughed a laugh.
“Hey, how big is your ‘sword,’ Seph?”
“Eight feet long. Do you not know that by now?”
Angeal sighed and said, “I think that was a euphemism, Sephiroth.”
Sephiroth frowned, saying, “What is the point of such a question?”
“I’m asking because his only concern with meeting you was whether or not his ass was gonna hurt later.”
Genesis and Sephiroth both raised their eyebrows.
Zack sat all the way up, crossing his legs.
“See? I’m serious. He’s not gonna be afraid of any of you. The worst he’ll do is treat you like any other customer, because until you prove otherwise, that’s kinda all you are. Make friends with him and he’ll treat you like an actual friend, not some demon or idol.” Zack spread his hands and then dropped them. “Look, all I’m saying is that if you give him a chance, something good might come of it.”
None of them looked quite convinced.
But it was an interesting idea.