Work Text:
Liquid Arrows
Make love to me
The way the rain makes love to the trees
Never ceasing;
Except to see how I come alive.
-unknown
The sky opened up with a sudden, jolting crack of thunder, just beyond the hills of the Mythril Mines. The atmosphere had begun to darken already, yet there were still miles and miles of open terrain and dirt roads to traverse. The nearest city, Junon, was still nearly fifty miles to the West.
“Don’t tell me we’re about to get stuck in the rain again!” Barret thundered from the front of the group.
Cloud resisted the urge to swear, staring ahead at the vast, open plain that stretched far beyond into the horizon. As dusk descended ever more quickly, a bright flash of white cut through the expanse in the far distance, peeling open the heavens, inviting the first new rainfalls to creep over the land.
They had just finished a particularly nasty battle with a group of aggressive Cappawires and Zemelets, and in addition to now being stuck in a new wave of wet weather, they were all sore and nursing their injuries, swallowing back potions and taking advantage of Aerith’s healing magic as they made their way along the roads. Most of their group was quiet, tired from their travels and overspent from fighting over the course of the last day since they’d left Kalm.
“We won’t make it to Junon tonight,” Cloud told the group, ignoring Barret’s complaints as the first few drops of rain began to fall in a light drizzle. “We’ll have to make camp again tonight.”
“We have plenty of provisions from Kalm,” Red XIII stated matter-of-factly. “I should think we should be able to survive the night in the wild.”
“Easy for you to say!” Barret roared, turning around to face the rest of them. “You’re a wild animal. I’m sure you’re used to it!”
Red stopped walking and sat down on his haunches. “I’ll beg your pardon,” he began, but Cloud simply shook his head, stepping forward as he felt his frustration multiply inside of him, panging his forehead with pain.
“Listen,” he interrupted before Red could continue or Barret could further shout his disagreements. “Let’s just focus on getting to safe ground to make camp for the night, away from the trails of monsters or fiends. All of us are tired, and most of us took a fair amount of beating today. This isn’t helping.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Barret grumbled with a toss of his good hand in the air above his head, turning and continuing on his way, stomping his feet with a bit more force than was necessary against the earth. Red emitted a low growl somewhere in the back of his throat, but he too rose to his feet, continuing on the path with his shoulders rising steeply as he padded along, his tail swishing behind him and lighting up the incoming darkness with its bright orange flame.
Having killed that ridiculous conversation, Cloud sighed and continued to hike, letting his eyes scan the horizon in the distance in search of a safe place to make camp for the night. He was looking for higher ground that was forested and enclosed, both to keep the monsters from finding them but also to keep them sheltered if the weather kept up its threats.
A little ways ahead, Aerith and Tifa walked side by side, having ignored the breakdown in conversation between the men, though he was certain he heard Aerith’s distinct giggle. Since shopping in Kalm, the two young women had stocked up on clothing and blankets to help them survive the weather as they navigated the terrain, and Cloud noticed that Tifa had pulled a hoodie over her arms, while Aerith had traded her short-sleeve jacket for a longer sleeved sweater. It occurred to him as he watched them that they both had better sense than any of the males in their group; although they had picked up jackets and warmer outerwear for both him and Barret, neither of them had bothered putting any of it on.
“It’s a shame that we couldn’t hold onto the chocobos,” Aerith commented, turning back slightly to him before she glanced over at Tifa, who was wordless, her hands held in front of her. “But the good news is, even though it might rain, the weather is growing much warmer than it was further East. We’re getting closer to the Equator, I think.”
Cloud nodded, but didn’t add any comment to that, still focusing his attention on searching for a stop to rest among the hills and forests they passed. He vaguely had an idea of the ground they were following, had obscure recollections of the Shinra city of Junon, knowing it to be across the ocean from hotter climes and for being a fairly temperate part of the world itself. He couldn’t recall why he was holding on to this knowledge or how it had come to be etched onto his memory, but it was there nonetheless, another remaining vestige that reminded him of the holes that were littered across the broken and disrupted highways of his mind.
Tossing that thought aside, he focused on watching Tifa as she padded a few feet ahead of him beside Aerith. The rain was still a light, gentle drizzle, not really offensive or troublesome, but he could see its first droplets beginning to line the silk of her long, dark hair in its trail across her back. He swallowed the lump that was forming in his throat, trying not to become distracted by the firm but soft curves of her body, so toned and well-defined from her neck and shoulders all the way in a fluid sequence down to her ankles. He looked away, trying to concentrate on his scan of their surroundings, but he had to admit it was difficult with her walking in front of him, his insides aching for him to go up to her and wrap an arm around her as they continued their journey.
He couldn’t allow himself to relent to his urges, at least not so openly in front of their friends when there were clearly more important things that he should be worrying about than the way that his feelings for Tifa were sizzling and popping low in the center of his belly. Even so, he couldn’t stop thinking about the burn of their shared passions the night before in Kalm, and had been unable to stop replaying every moment between them over and over again on an endless loop in his mind. It was unbearably distracting, leaving him staring at her and imagining the sight of her naked body wrapped up in the sheets next to him, all of her leather and cotton fatigues pulled away beneath his careful hands and tossed to oblivion.
Ever since that morning in Kalm, Cloud noticed that Tifa had been shy and flustered around him, that she had kept a respectful distance, clinging to Aerith, who didn’t seem inclined to let go of her anyway. He wondered if she was embarrassed by all of the attention from their friends when they’d come down to breakfast - it was clearly no secret that they had spent the night together - and it made him feel a hundred different emotions that ranged from terrified to concerned to smug to know that the entire situation was leaving her disquieted and perturbed.
He wasn’t sure what to make of it, and for the rest of the day, he hadn’t had time to address it, not when they were focused on catching chocobos and navigating a highly dangerous marsh, only to get through the Mythril Mines to confront members of the Turks and then spend the rest of the day fighting monsters as they made their way further West towards Junon. But now that night was falling again and they would have to stop their travels, he felt fairly certain that they would be able to take a few moments to talk about what was happening between them.
“Your suggestion to move to higher ground may be the wisest one,” Red XIII was saying, breaking Cloud out of his thoughts. He stopped and angled his snout toward a hill in the distance where there was an outcropping of dark rocks and a canopy of thick sycamores and dense oaks. Cloud followed his line of sight and stared up the hill, scanning the formation of its terrain as he considered their camp for the night.
He nodded thoughtfully, pulling his PHS from his pocket to check the time. It was already close to seven in the evening, which meant that the darkness would soon be falling even more rapidly as the sun melted below the line of the horizon. It would not be safe for them to stay on the open fields and roads for much longer with monsters that would soon be prowling far more boldly than they did in the daytime. Not to mention, none of them had eaten since breakfast early that morning in Kalm, almost twelve hours ago. Cloud was able to largely ignore the pangs brought on by hunger, but he knew from the levy of complaints he’d been hearing muttered since early that afternoon that most of their group would not last much longer.
“It looks as good a spot as any,” Cloud agreed, stopping and turning to focus his attention back to the group. Both Tifa and Aerith turned to face him, and Barret ceased his aggrieved stomping, rounding up beside Red.
“So now we gotta climb a hill?” he instantly groused.
“Oh, it doesn’t really look that bad, Barret!” Aerith interjected, skipping forward as she peered up the mountain, pointing one finger so that her bangles clattered against her wrist. “We can take that winding path straight up through the line of trees. I’m sure we can find someplace to shelter our tents from the incoming storm.”
“Let’s go, then,” Barret relented, never one to really argue with Aerith, Cloud realized with a small degree of fascination. “I’m starving. Tifa’s in charge of dinner tonight!”
Cloud glanced over at Tifa, but he noticed that she had one arm wrapped around her midriff, her hooded sweatshirt zipped up tight and closed around her body. She glanced at Barret and offered him a small smile, but otherwise, she said nothing in response.
Cloud didn’t think too much of her silence at the moment, instead nodded and took a step forward, leading their small party through the plain lands to the west in advance of the hill Red had located.
“Let’s go,” he told their group.
Thankfully, they didn’t encounter any further monsters as they traveled along the path and up the small mountain, the trees soon nearly providing complete cover from the evening sky and the rain that was now falling in a mist, barely thick enough to coat their bodies. By the time they reached the top of the cliff, the sky was fully dark, and Cloud could see the emergence of the moon behind the cloudy night, a bright disc that filtered its cool glow through the gaps in the trees among them.
Cloud remained in the lead and scanned the terrain, searching for a safe and comfortable place to make camp, the rest of the group following somewhat quietly behind him. They hiked deeper into the line of trees, Barret’s grumbling growing louder and climbing higher along Cloud’s nerves the farther they moved into the thicket. Eventually, though, he came upon a large rock formation that jutted high out of the ground, wet from the weather and surrounded by trees and thick bushes. He heard the rustle of water somewhere nearby, and in the darkness, Cloud could faintly make out the lip of a dark cave in front of him.
“Wait here,” he told the rest of the group, unstrapping his sword from his back. “I’ll check for animals.”
There was a quiet chorus of mumbled assents behind him, and Cloud moved forward, his boots crawling across the stone pathway in front of the cave’s opening, pebbles crunching beneath his feet. He ducked slightly as he entered, squinting a little as his eyes adjusted to the darkness inside and began to glow, the mako in his vision lighting up the dark pathway in front of him.
The cave was well-sized like a small abode, and with the exception of a dead, scattered campfire in its center, it appeared to be completely deserted, abandoned by a traveler who had used it for shelter and uninhabited by any animals or beasts. The inner walls glowed with the faintest hint of a deep, pearlescent blue, betraying a precious mineral or perhaps even raw, unrefined materia buried deep into the rock. He looked around with the Buster Sword at the ready in front of him, stepping further into its rear corner, finding a tiny, babbling stream that pooled into an oasis and led to a cracked gap at the back wall of the cave, flowing the water outside to the earth below. Narrowing his eyes, Cloud walked up to the brook and lowered one gloved hand into the water, lifting it to find a stream of clean freshwater, sparkling and flowing and cool.
He took another look around, finding the accommodations sufficient for their stay that night. There were already the early makings of a fire, and there was enough room in the cave for their party to set up their tents and sleeping bags comfortably around it. And the stream provided them with a clean, nearby water source that was embedded directly into the slate-gray rock behind the campsite. Sheathing his sword behind him, Cloud took one final look around the cave and nodded inwardly before turning back and finding his friends waiting outside, Barret hovering right by the entrance.
“Well?” he demanded as soon as Cloud appeared.
Cloud ignored the bluster in his tone and faced the entire group. “It’s safe,” he informed them. “We can stay here for the night. Once we build a fire, it will be warm enough to sleep somewhat comfortably. There’s a small water source inside that we can use for cooking and anything else. There’s plenty of room and no creatures nesting inside.”
“This is perfect, Cloud!” Aerith bounded to the front of the group, fearlessly making her way toward the entrance of the cave. “Come on, Red. Let’s get the fire started.”
Red nodded and padded in behind her, Barret scratching his head before he too followed along. Tifa made to enter next, but Cloud turned, seeing her eyes downcast and now both arms wrapped around herself, and feeling a hot impulsivity rise up inside of him at the sight of her, took a step forward and folded his arms in front of his chest, blocking her path into the cave.
“Hey,” he stopped her, and Tifa was almost startled, stopping abruptly in front of him with a start when she realized he was in her way. She looked up finally, blinking a bit before her eyes widened with a question.
“Hmm?” she queried, her voice escaping from low in her throat with a gentle lilt.
Cloud found himself staring down into her face where she hovered just a few inches shorter than him. Something poked at him, and he felt his heartbeat start to rise, though he knew it wasn’t for the usual, desperate reasons that his heart usually started to clatter whenever he was close to her. It wasn’t buried deep in his electromagnetic attraction to her, or piled high with his deep and intrinsic desires to be close to her, to have them both as close to each other as they had finally come the night before. No, this time it was laced through with a feeling of worry, suddenly bothering him about how quiet she had been and how this was the first time that she was standing close to him since they’d woken up together that morning. It had his instincts and his heightened awareness detecting something deeply concerning about her countenance, and he was powerless to stop himself from doing something about it.
“Are you alright?” he asked her.
“I’m fine, Cloud.”
Compelled and suddenly distraught by the realization that hit him at that moment, he leaned in closer until her scent was wrapping around him.
“I smell blood.”
Tifa turned away, shaking her head slightly, wincing. She was now refusing to look up at him, training her eyes on the smooth stone at the opening of the cave. The rain had almost stopped, but Cloud could see the smooth wetness on her forehead, and it was taking every bit of self-control he possessed for him to not reach up and wipe it away.
“It’s nothing,” she finally responded, her voice way too small, almost inaudible. “I just need to change this bandaging from my fight with the Cappawire earlier. It got a good swipe in. I’ll drink another potion, and once I sit down, I’ll be okay. It’s just that all this endless walking hasn’t helped with the healing.”
“Let me see,” Cloud demanded instantly, taking another step closer to her until he could hear her gentle puffs of breath as she inhaled, and his heart grew even louder as he felt his concern for her build tenfold. He was suddenly no longer quite so worried about the developments of their romantic attachment but was now chiefly concerned with her physical well being.
“Cloud, it’s fine, I just - “
“Tifa,” he warned sternly, his tenor dropping several octaves, and without even intending it, he had dropped a hand to her forearm.
She finally looked back up at him then, and Cloud realized that the storm clouds in the sky had begun to drift apart and that the starlight and the shine of the moon were highlighting the silk strands of her ebony hair with pale, periwinkle shimmers. It blended into a dazzling chromatic hue alongside the dark ruby red of her eyes, all of it contrasted starkly against her pale skin, and Cloud found himself briefly distracted by the blend.
She shook her head, her cheeks brightening to match her eyes, and she looked down again so that he could see the dark flush of her lashes against her cheeks. She slowly opened her hoodie, and the first thing that Cloud could see was the thick bandaging taped to her abdomen, darkened and stained with blood.
“Tifa,” he groaned, moving in closer to her and lifting her arms away from her waist so that he could take a closer look. “Why didn’t you tell me before that you’d been hit this way?”
He thought back to their earlier exploits on the battlefield, how Tifa had avoided him following that last major battle, drifting off with Aerith so that they could tend to their wounds together. Cloud had watched her for a moment but then shrugged it off; he knew how close they were growing and he figured it best to offer them some privacy. He had not expected her to hide such a significant injury from him.
“It’s okay, Cloud,” Tifa told him, her voice still quiet and escaping with the wind. He felt her arm pull away with a slight resistance, but he held her firm, and she yielded. “It’s really not as bad as it looks. Another potion and I’ll be fine.”
Cloud didn’t like the way that she kept avoiding his eyes, the way that her voice was so small and timid, as if she were afraid to share anything with him, was maybe even afraid of him. After the way they’d both behaved the night before, it made him wonder why she was shirking away from him so, why she seemed to have crawled back into an even more deferential version of herself than she’d been when they first reunited in Midgar. It had his nerves getting worked up with heat again, and he found himself resolving to fix all of this.
“Come on,” he told her, his tone low and deep, not really a request but deploying the tenor he might as if issuing a command on the battlefield. Her eyes lifted to meet his, but he was pulling her inside of the cave.
Their friends had already begun to set up inside for the night. Aerith and Red had worked together to build a fire out of the deadened pile of wood that had been left in the center of the rock formation with the convenient aid of Red’s flaming tail, and Aerith was unpacking their provisions of food and setting out some of the blankets and cookware they’d picked up in Kalm. Barret was on the other side, fumbling with a tent, swearing softly to himself as he tried to open and unfurl it.
Cloud looked around for a place to tend to Tifa, but until they unpacked everything, there were not many places to sit aside from the cool, stone earth of the cave. But Tifa was moving past him anyway, heading to join Aerith.
“Hey,” his voice dropped low as he grabbed her arm again, stopping her, realizing as he looked down at her sleeve that his grabbing onto her like this was becoming a regular occurrence. “Let me look at that wound, Teef.”
“It will be fine,” she insisted. “I have to cook dinner, Cloud.”
“That can wait,” he nearly growled, stepping in front of her to block her path forward, feeling his anger begin to build. Why wouldn’t she just let him help her? Why was she being so fucking stubborn?
“No, it can’t,” she sidestepped him easily, her body a match for his in agility, and he frowned at her as she moved around him. “Listen, just let me get the meal started for everyone, and I’ll let you take a look at it after we eat. I’m famished.”
He started to protest, his lips turning down into a pout, but Aerith had risen to her feet and was capturing Tifa’s attention with a wave of her hand.
“Tifa, I started to unpack all of the rations, but I’m not much of a cook. Can you help me?”
“Sure,” Tifa replied, leveling a final, decisive look at him before walking over to the fire and leaving him standing there, dropping to her knees beside Aerith as she zipped her hoodie up. Cloud narrowed his eyes, feeling his blood begin to boil.
Dispatching his sword against the wall, he turned away from the scene and instead made his way toward Barret, trying to push Tifa and her obstinacy out of his mind, trying to ignore the way that her avoidance and refusal to let him help her felt a lot like rejection.
“There your spiky ass is,” Barret growled as soon as he was standing over him, dropping the tent he was fighting with until it fell into a heap. “Help me with these goddamn tents. You would think these things came with some sort of instructional manual. Just a useless heap of poles and fabric.”
Cloud ignored him, lowering to his knees and unfolding one of the tents, trying to keep the annoyance and frustration from riding across his nerves every time he looked up and across the cave, catching the dance of the flames in the gambol of burgundy in Tifa’s irises.
It was sometime later when Cloud and Barret had managed to put up all of the tents and laid out the sleeping bags, while Tifa and Aerith had prepared a simple meal of freeze-dried beef and gravy with biscuits from their rations. When the food was ready, they sat around the fire on the blankets that Aerith had laid out, quietly eating their meal, Aerith chatting with Tifa in low, airy tones while Barret was miraculously mostly silent as they ate. Red finished his meal quickly and then curled up in one corner by the flames, cleaning his fur with his back turned to the others.
Cloud found that he didn’t have much appetite. He was too preoccupied with his feelings and his concerns for Tifa, and every time she looked up from where she knelt beside Aerith, her arms still wrapped around herself as she held her hoodie closed around her, her eyes meeting his across the dimness of the cave, he felt his insides light up and flare like the buds of lightning bugs. After a few bites, he put his bowl to the side and got to his feet.
He turned away from the group and paced by the cave’s entrance, trying to dispel the heat and the tension that was careening through him at Tifa’s behavior. Part of him wondered if he was overreacting, if he was making too big a deal of this. Tifa was a big girl; she’d been taking care of herself long before he’d found her again in Midgar a few weeks ago, and if she maintained that her injury wasn’t that bad, who was he to question her? Maybe he should just trust her to make her own decisions.
Still, frowning uncontrollably as he stood at the cavern’s opening, his dark blue eyes glowing as they scanned the cool earth and the line of trees just beyond in the darkness, he found himself thinking again about their intense lovemaking the night before in Kalm and how he had kissed her beneath the wispy leaves of a weeping willow the night prior to that. Ever since he had first laid eyes on her and followed her around Sector7, moving alongside her grace and finesse in battle, there had been a deep, dark possession taking root somewhere inside of his bones, linking him to her in ways that were beginning to feel inextricable and intractable.
The feelings left him hot and uncomfortable, his mind distracted, and now that she was no longer behaving placably with him, he felt desperate and hopeless, as if he were failing her and himself and everything else the longer the minutes ticked by, and it was taking everything inside of his already limited power not to snap or swear.
“Cloud?”
Her voice was calm and quiet behind him suddenly, carrying the gentle lilt that he found so enamoring, that unwound the threads of his heart whenever she called his name with that quiet brightness and low-lying husk. He unfolded his arms, feeling his pulse begin to race and a new heat soar through his body as he turned away from the view beyond their grotto to face her.
She was looking up at him, her arms folded around herself the way they had been the night they kissed in the rain, when the glow of Midgar’s mako lamps had highlighted her skin with a faint green glow. Now, she stood in front of him shadowed by darkness, only the bright yellow and red flames of their quietly raging fire and the cave’s pale glow behind them creating sunbursts of color in the undertones of her skin.
He let his eyes fall over her, unable to contain himself now that she stood so close, feeling his earlier confused and borderline anxious thoughts dissipate as he detected the scents of vanilla and jasmine in her hair, the blend of cherry-blossoms and the spike of iron in her blood on her skin. He tried to suppress the raging desire that rose like hellish specters in the center of his chest, ready to consume him with fire, and he swallowed, unconsciously licking his lips as he chose his next words carefully.
“Yeah, Tifa?”
“The others have all gone to bed already,” she whispered, thumbing over her shoulder. Cloud looked beyond the line of her hair to see the cluster of tents in the back of the cave, Aerith and Barret both disappeared inside of theirs while Red continued to snooze by the fire. He rubbed the back of his neck, turning his attention back to Tifa, his eyes meeting hers.
She continued to stare at him, and he noticed she was digging the toe of one boot behind the heel of the other, a cute and shy gesture that created a sudden explosion of warmth inside of his chest. “Do you want to look at this scrape now? It’s starting to sting a little.”
Fucking Minerva . She was going to be the death of him, with her coyly whispered words and the way she ducked her head away when he stared down at her, the sweet bashfulness behind her question melting his insides, even as the overthinking part of his brain was spiking with annoyance and wondering if she was playing games with him.
Impulsively, he reached one hand forward and gripped her forearm, wrapping his palm around it, digging his fingertips into it. He could feel the soft warmth of her skin beneath, realizing she had already shed her armor and her compression sleeves beneath before pulling her sweater back on. He gave her a gentle squeeze, pulling her closer to him, and Tifa bit her bottom lip, still looking away as the subtle heat of both of their bodies collided.
“So now you want me to help you?” he couldn’t stop himself from petulantly choking out, but his voice had grown low and soft again the way that it always fell when he was alone with her, and he realized that his earlier annoyance and despair was dissipating.
She shook her head lightly, her dark hair spilling into her face as she did so. “I’m sorry, Cloud,” she whispered, tossing a brief glance behind her shoulder. “I just… I didn’t want the others to see. I wanted to wait until we had a moment alone.”
She kept her eyes downcast as if she were afraid again to look back up at him, but he was suddenly flooded with new sensations, ones that left him feeling shameful and now angry at himself for acting so childish and getting so worked up. His mind drifted through the depths of the foolish and broken thoughts he had been having for the last few weeks, and he wondered why he was always so emotionally distraught and why he was so impetuous, why his nerves and his feelings were always hovering on a knife’s edge, especially when it came to Tifa, his best friend and a woman he was growing to care more and more for every moment until the feelings of desire that raced inside of him were fully aflame.
Not to mention , he thought lamely as she continued to stare at her boots, you told her you loved her last night.
“Shit,” he muttered, feeling like more of a complete idiot the longer the seconds ticked by, now badly wanting to make all of this right, somehow, to see her smile and to make the warring aches in his skull subside. “I’m sorry, Teef. I was just worried. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
Gently, he pulled at the zipper of her hoodie with his free hand, lowering it slowly until it fell open around her waist. Tifa let out a quiet, muted sound, something like a whimper of assent, and the soft, high-pitched note of it had his insides boiling up again, his pants suddenly too tight in front. He tried to ignore it, instead focusing on her injury, tilting his head to one side as he leaned forward to get a better look at the bandaged, bloodied patch below the hem of her tank top.
“Let’s go sit by the fire,” he finally said after a moment, not sure why his heart was in such tatters in his chest, beating into his sternum and feeling painfully tight. Tifa nodded, and he kept his grip on her arm, leading her over to the flames.
Tifa settled on the blankets Aerith had laid out, the cave now quiet aside from Barret’s rumbly snoring from inside of his tent and Red’s calm, humming purrs as he slept in one corner, curled in a ball with his back to the fire.
Cloud reached for one of the rucksacks and dug through it, pulling out the small first aid kit they’d brought for their travels, along with his canteen. His heart was a sonic boom in his chest as he made his way to the tiny stream in the back of the cave, stepping gingerly and quietly between the tents before taking a moment to drop to his knees to fill it with fresh, clean spring water. Vaguely, he was aware of Tifa’s huffed sigh as she settled onto the blanket behind him, and it made the center of his belly flutter with butterflies as he rose to his feet and made his way back over to her.
He sat down beside her with his knees wide, taking a moment to look over at her, their eyes meeting and Tifa blushing in the darkness, and he found himself moving instinctually again, pulling her by her arms and shifting so that she was sitting cross-legged in front of him. The flames danced over her body and highlighted her skin with a gentle glow, and Cloud’s enhanced vision in the darkness only made him even more acutely aware of the goosebumps on her pale skin as she leaned back in front of him.
“Does it really hurt?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper, working carefully not to wake any of the others. Even though he was simply caring for her injury and there was nothing uniquely intimate or inappropriate about what they were doing, Tifa had expressed the desire for privacy, and he was determined to maintain that.
“Just a little bit,” she replied after a moment. “It really wasn’t that bad, Cloud. The Cappawire got a nice swipe at me with its talon, but it isn’t a deep cut. I think that it just got worse when we had to hike across all of those hills.”
He looked up to meet her eyes, tentatively reaching out for her before he stopped and looked down at his gloved hands. He nodded at her, then turned away for a moment and began to work at the clasps on his bracers and gauntlet.
“Hold on a second,” he murmured to Tifa as he began to remove all of the heavy iron armor, setting the pieces down carefully before he pulled his leather gloves away, finger by finger. When they were gone, he took a moment to also rid himself of his pauldron, giving his shoulder reprieve. Tifa sat beside him and waited, her eyes focused on his hands the entire time and setting him on fire as he realized she was watching and following him through this mundane task.
He unwrapped the bandaging on his wrist next, slowly and carefully, then pushed everything off to the side and out of the way. He flexed his fingers and rolled his wrists, happy to let his skin breathe, and when he looked up at Tifa, he realized she was biting her lip again.
“You okay?” he asked her quietly.
She nodded, and Cloud leaned forward, willing his hands to cease their trembling as he reached for the bandage on her midsection. She placed her hands on the blanket, steadying herself, and he caught on to the fact that she was now closing her eyes as she waited.
He tried not to consider too deeply the implications of that, instead focusing on his task at hand. Gently, he dropped his hands to her flesh, his fingertips brushing innocently over the taut skin of her belly, feeling her firm muscles below tense and constrict as their skin met. He lifted his eyes again, finding hers still shut as she rocked forward slightly and then trembled.
Cloud expelled a breath, curling his fingers under the tape that held the gauze to her skin, pushing away how her steady but now heavy breathing and the tremors of her body beneath his touch were reawakening those deep feelings of longing inside of him. Instead, he worked to gently pull the bloodied bandaging away, careful not to tear too roughly at her skin, soon revealing a deep red gash that was curved in an upward swirl from the base of her tummy leading toward her navel.
He felt the nervous, distressed beat of protectiveness drum inside of him at the sight of it, puffy and still bloody against her perfect, smooth skin, and he suppressed how it upset something carnal inside of him. Instead, he wrapped both hands around her waist, his thumbs resting on her belly under the laceration, and he glanced up at her.
“Did you ask Aerith to heal you before you wrapped this?” he asked, his voice light and gentle, but so shorn with concern that it came out a little bit rebuking. He wasn’t trying to inflect that hard edge on his tone, but he found he couldn’t avoid it, that it was there and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop that it was brought on by how much he cared for and always worried about this girl.
Tifa opened her eyes again, finally meeting his with their deep red gems. She stared at him for a moment before she answered, and Cloud felt like they both might be arrested by the power of their gazes on one another.
“No,” she finally responded, too quietly, as if she knew he wouldn’t like her answer.
He shook his head, and the impulsivity was back in him, causing him to squeeze her tummy beneath his thumbs. She dropped her lips apart, and Cloud found himself leaning closer to her, working desperately to control himself and avoid the wild urges that were already surging through his blood.
“This is bad enough that it needs magic,” he told her, softening his tone as he leaned over and reached for his bracer again. He slid the green healing materia out of its slot and handed it to Tifa. “Hold this.”
She obeyed, taking it from his hand and cradling it in her palm, while Cloud reached for the first aid kit and his canteen, opening both and finding a small cloth. Carefully, he wet the rag with water, then leaned forward, crowding even closer to Tifa until he was catching her sweet scents again.
“Just hold still,” he told her softly. “This might burn a little.”
She nodded, and holding her waist again with one hand, Cloud slowly and methodically pressed the damp cloth to the rim of her wound to clean the excess blood away, dabbing at it with a gentle precision. He heard her inhale and hitch her breath at the sensation, and he looked up to see her wincing slightly in pain, causing a new, terrible feeling of distraught distraction to bubble over his nerves and send his brain reeling into its complicated and painful dwelling again.
He tried to wipe those feelings away, focusing on the skin in front of him and the way that Tifa’s body reacted to him in response. She closed her eyes as he continued to clean the blood away, eventually leaving the gash now pale and embedded in a fine red cut into her skin. He exhaled a breath, dropping the rag away to the side and then reaching for the orb of materia she was still holding.
“Here,” he whispered, taking it from her hand. “Just relax, okay?”
She nodded, eyes still closed, and Cloud shut his own and concentrated on the spell. He felt the warm wave emanate from his hand, and when he opened his eyes again, he could see green energy wrap around her midsection, feeling the healing magic waft across his fingers as he held her steady. She emitted a quiet sigh and leaned forward as it descended over her, and he found himself leaning into her until their foreheads touched and he was keeping her grounded as the materia knitted her skin back together.
When it had done its work, he looked down to see her injury was a pale scar that would likely disappear fully in a few days. He backed away from her a little, replacing the materia in his armor. He turned back to look at her, his heart in an upbeat tempo again as he realized that his hand was still around her waist but that now his palm had come to wrap around her and squeeze her fully in a grip that was too sensual and too soothing.
He couldn’t stop himself, and when Tifa opened her eyes and thanked him quietly, he felt himself melting, his emotions engaged in a vicious crash as they tore across his heart and invaded his cracked and hiccuped mind.
“Tifa?” he quietly inquired, possessed by his feelings. “Can we talk?”
She looked up at him, still sitting silently on the blanket in front of him, and he saw her eyes widen slightly as the sonorous tenor of his voice conveyed his meaning. A moment passed, and her eyes darted around the cave before they returned to him and looked up into his own.
“Okay,” she whispered.
“We can go outside,” he told her, recognizing her hesitation. “It’s not raining, and it’s a mild night.”
She nodded, and Cloud pushed up to his feet, dropping a hand to help her rise to her own. She adjusted her skirt and offered him a smile, and without even thinking about it, he took her hand and led her out of the cave.
They stepped out into the quiet darkness, the only sound the occasional drift of the wind among the chirp of crickets and cicadas in the distance. The rain had fully stopped and the clouds had separated so much that the canvas above them, filtered through the canopy of trees that hovered above the cave, sparkled with the empyrean spotlights of the stars and moon. The colors landed with a glow on Tifa’s skin, highlighting her with shades of opal and lilac, and Cloud felt the cyclone of emotions inside of him ricochet into the same swift passion he had been struggling with for the last two days, and, if he were honest, the last two weeks.
“What did you want to talk about?” she asked him coyly, and the sound of her voice ruined him, his desire becoming unbearable. He pulled her close to him, then backed away toward the side wall of the cave, several feet away from the entrance. A tall maple hovered over them, draping them in its shelter as Cloud crowded Tifa against the cool stone of the rock behind them, one arm coming behind her waist to hold her close to him.
“Last night, Tifa,” he finally responded, now only inches from her face, their bodies so close together that he could feel the warmth of hers echo up towards him. He was suddenly consumed with the need to be closer to her and to keep her warm and safe, and he inched even closer, wondering if he misheard the tiny whimper that escaped from the back of her throat when he drew so near that his breath met her throat. “We never talked about what happened between us last night.”
She exhaled, and now it was his turn to feel her breath, dancing in a line over his chin and down the front of his body. He brought both arms around her, now holding her tight to his body.
“I know,” she finally answered, curling into his embrace. “But it’s been a busy day. And this morning was… kind of embarrassing.”
Cloud sighed, holding her tighter and dropping his face low by her shoulder, finding himself growing intoxicated by her scent, sweet and tinged by the subtle hint of sweat in her skin from the day’s travels, her words floating over him like a new rainfall. His palm that was flat against her upper back fell lower, and he curled his fingers into her hair, feeling himself become lost in her.
He thought about that morning, how Barret had been chiefly disgusted with him and how Aerith had giggled practically with mania, pulling Tifa away. The subject hadn’t come up ever since, but he was almost sure that Aerith hadn’t left Tifa alone about it, and Barret’s words were, well - suffice to say - the damage was done. Cloud had tried to put all of it aside, and had mostly forgotten about it by the time they reached the Chocobo Farm and he realized how much work they were going to have to put in to cross those marshes.
Now, though, he stood there with the clear realization that those moments had been uncomfortable for her, and he certainly hadn’t helped matters by ignoring it and focusing with such sole precision and determination on their mission for the day.
“I’m sorry, Teef,” he found himself whispering.
He realized now that she had dragged her arms up and around him and was holding on to him tight at his waist, that she had lowered her cheek to his chest. “Don’t be sorry, Cloud,” she responded into his sweater. “It’s not your fault.”
“We were really loud,” he admitted.
“ I was really loud,” Tifa corrected, offering him a squeeze, and he couldn’t stop himself from grinning a little, smug and proud of himself and glad she couldn’t see the stupid look on his face.
A long, quiet moment passed, Cloud’s heart racing with all of the throttle of an airship’s engine. Again, he remembered their whispered sentiments the night before after they were both satiated and spent, serious words of commitment and affection that they shared when still in the hazy afterglow of their intimacies. He swallowed, his mind swiping with questions and the pound and beat of his broken thoughts, and he realized that he needed to be as clear as possible with Tifa, to get his feelings off of the dangerous precipices and crags where they hung in his mind and out onto the delicate stationery of her heart.
“Tifa,” he started, and she responded with another breathless sigh, setting his own heart alight as if it were wrapped in touch-paper. “I know I said some things last night. And I don’t know how to say this the right way, but…” He paused, and the dull ache was beating the sides of his brain again, his temples hit with bolts, and he tried to suffer through it and ignore the way it pained him. “I just… I do really care about you, and I want you to be happy.”
“I care about you too, Cloud,” she responded without hesitation. She pulled away, looking up at him now, forcing him to turn to meet her eyes. He felt his throat begin to dry out, staring down at her beauty, at her soft but cracked lips, full and pouty but damaged from the exposure of the day, at her brilliant wine-colored eyes that picked up the moonlight with a glimmer. His mouth fell open, compelled to speak the words again that he had whispered to her under the sheets in that inn in Kalm, but his voice was stuck, the words caught between a dead synapse that couldn’t transmit between his brain and his lips.
“I…”
“Just kiss me, Cloud,” she interrupted him.
It was the third time that she had issued that order to him in the last three days, and he was more than happy to oblige, the weight of his sentiments that were trapped somewhere under piles of sediment in his heart lifted as he moved to show her how he felt rather than tell her. Leaning forward to close the brief distance between their faces, he dropped his lips to hers without thinking about it, suddenly eager and so, so overjoyed to finally unleash some of the furious yearning for her that had been building to a fever pitch inside of him all evening.
Tifa’s body was immediately yielding and responsive to his, and he felt her soften and become pliant in his hold, her hands sliding up his back, her fingers digging into his shoulder blades as she pressed her hips up towards his. The sensation of her clinging closer to him, signaling her eagerness and her desire was enough to send the bloodlust inside of him loose, and Cloud felt his mouth become hungry and devouring, scouring her lips and her tongue, soon moving along her jaw as he sought out the taste of her skin.
Tifa let out a tiny moan beneath him, elongating her body and pressing it into his, and Cloud squeezed her harder in reciprocation before sliding his hands away from her back to bring them up to either side of her face. He cupped the undersides of her jaw, his thumbs brushing across her cheeks, his longer fingers threading and tangling into her hair behind her ears, finding it still cool from the earlier rain. He deepened their kiss, feeling his veins light up and tingle when Tifa dragged her hands away from his shoulders and brought them over his shoulders in a loop to the back of his neck, toying with his hair.
The longer that their lips were melded together, the more that Tifa grew bold, and soon, she was pushing back against him, her mouth becoming demanding, tongue shoving his around his mouth and running smoothly over his teeth before she pulled back and bit his bottom lip violently. The sudden sensation sent a spark through his entire body that reached his groin, and it was such an intense blend of pain and pleasure that Cloud groaned roughly and felt even more of his control slip away, finding himself pulling at her strands of hair as he continued to hold her face.
Following that tiny nip, Cloud pulled slightly away, looking down to find her lips bright red and swollen from his, feeling the throb in his own from her assaults. Her eyes were half-lidded, but he could catch the line of crimson glistening between them as he tipped her head back so that she could look up at him, and he realized that her chest was rising and falling rapidly, pressing her breasts and their full softness in repeated bursts against the firmness of his chest.
The sight of her becoming so wanton and expressive began to unwind him, and he found himself lowering his hands just enough to find the base of her throat, holding her gently, her pulse erupting against his thumbs. He was thrilled by that rapid beat, and he found himself wanting to grow more intimately acquainted with how he made her body react, lowering his right hand to fall above her left breast and press against the slam of her heart.
Sensing what he was doing, Tifa dragged a hand away from his hair and dropped it to cover his hand, pressing his palm against her skin so that he could feel that internal crash even closer. Feeling its speed and realizing how heightened and worked up she was, Cloud became desperate to understand more of what raced through her, and he ducked his head again by her shoulder, concentrating and listening.
As much as he could feel the beat of her heart against his palm, he could now hear its throbbing rhythm, could hear the blood running through her veins in a mad rush, spinning back and forth through her ventricles in an endless cycle. This sudden newfound use of his enhancements had him drowning in her, and he tried not to tremble at the way his emotions surged inside of him, hearing her body react the way that it did. He was still holding onto her throat with one hand, and the result was a complete assault of the tempos of her essence, reminding him of how much he truly did love her deep inside and why he always wanted to protect her, why he needed her by his side and why he would never let anything ever, ever happen to her.
While he became further entrenched in her, losing himself and floating away from any semblance of time or space, Tifa caught on and lowered her hand from where it lay atop his, sliding down to circle his wrist. He closed his eyes, now concentrating on the feel of the soft pads of her fingers pressed into his own pulse, feeling his heart rate accelerate as she grazed over the ripple of his vein.
“Cloud…” she whispered beside his ear, her voice suddenly full of a new understanding, aware of the deep connection between them both. The rhythm of her body still strumming in his ears, Cloud looked up to meet her eyes, finding that they widened slightly, deep, cherry red pools that were flooding with affection.
“Tifa,” he canted back to her, his voice low and raspy, his throat feeling dry, his feelings like tumbleweed raked along his windpipe as he tried to speak. “What do you want, Teef?”
“You,” she answered without hesitation, squeezing his wrist where she held it.
Cloud nodded, completely smitten by her diffident longing, and he pressed another kiss to her mouth, capturing her bottom lip between both of his and offering her a loving suck. As he did so, he brought up both hands to gently shrug her hoodie off of her arms, letting it fall away to her feet below on the cool stone earth. Her arms now exposed, Cloud ran his hands up them both from her wrists to her shoulders, his eyes glowing as he admired her, his palms next tracing the outline of her breasts down to the dent of her waist.
Once there, he squeezed her flesh, earning a hitch of her breath before he began to raise his hands again, this time smoothly traveling upwards along her abdomen until he was pushing her tank top up over her breasts, his thumbs brushing lightly but purposefully over her nipples. Tifa arched her back, thrusting her hips towards his, and Cloud felt his erection spike with pain when the front of her body brushed against it.
Moving with a little more determination now, he hooked his thumbs under the hem of her sports bra and lifted the stretchy material, rolling it up along with her shirt and letting her breasts fall free, heavy and full. Instantly, he was facing her pretty, pale pink nipples, stiff and flush with arousal, the moonlight bringing out the cream in her flesh.
He bent down and first pressed a trail of kisses to the center of her scar, before he dropped his lips to one peak, gently drawing her nipple into his mouth, her blood still a downward rush in his ears as he looked up at her to catch her watching him, her mouth open as the first sting of pleasure hit her nerves. Wanting to see that look unfold and expand, he began to swirl his tongue over her ridgy flesh, sucking it gently until it began to twist and harden further, Tifa dropping a hand into his hair as she moaned, her other hand falling flat against the rock behind her to steady herself. He continued to stare at her as he nibbled and tongued her flesh, his pants becoming unbearably restricting as her face contorted in warm, steadily escalating pleasure.
He focused on one breast for a while, working her until her hips were twirling like a belly dancer’s beneath him, before he switched sides and poured the same attention onto the other. Her fingers curled in his hair, and Cloud slowed the movements of his tongue as her nails scraped his scalp, his enhanced hearing still concentrating on the thundering of her most vital organ as it pumped blood throughout her system.
She was mewling and sighing his name, soft, airy sounds of contentment that were laced through with a desperate plea for more when Cloud finally relented and tore away from her now sore breasts. He looked up at her for a moment, bringing both hands to her waist, holding her tight and feeling the way that she squirmed in anticipation beneath him.
It was sending something fiery through him, making him remember again how much she wanted him, how much they both wanted each other. No longer did he have to worry that his feelings were one-sided or top-heavy, and he thought again about the previous night, how he had made her come over and over again with bright screams of his name, and his confidence surged, his determination and passion suddenly becoming ruthless and bloodthirsty.
Without a word, Cloud lowered himself with a trail of kisses along the center of Tifa’s abdomen, stopping only to swirl his tongue around the circle of her belly button before he continued until he was crouching in front of her. He realized that she had begun to tremble, and he found himself looking up at her with a smirk, finding her with one fist now balled up by her mouth as she watched him, suspended in shivery anticipation. The sight of her bare hands, completely divested of its leather and steel armor and gloves, tore at something savage inside of him, wanting their soft strength all over him again.
He pushed that thought from his mind, running his hands down her waist and over her hips, feeling the soft, flexible leather of her skirt beneath his fingertips. Moving with a cautious slowness to build her up in the most agonizing way he could design, he took his time sliding his hands under her skirt, his fingers gliding over the hems of her stockings to greet the firm, goosebumped flesh of her thighs. As his hands rose across them in search of her waiting center, his thumbs riding the soft line of her inner thighs, her hips began to turn and thrust, and Cloud looked up to see that Tifa had wrapped her palms around her breasts and was squeezing them, trying to soothe the ache that his slow torture was inspiring in her body.
He knew that he would never experience anything as intensely compelling or powerful as Tifa slowly being reduced to liquid from the caress of his own hands and mouth on her body, a body that she had perfected and built for destruction but was at the same time so pretty and enchanting. The sight of her beginning to squirm, to latch onto her own body in desperation as she swiped her tongue across her bottom lip, her mouth parted as if ready to beg, was enough to drive him to a different sort of madness than the kind he had been fighting for the last stretch of weeks.
Encouraged by the scorch of flames in her irises as she looked down at him, Cloud continued to slide his hands upward over her skin, one sliding behind her to grip her bottom, the other lifting between her thighs until his fingertips swept over the fabric of her underwear.
He found it damp and warm, the same way it had been when he’d pulled her sweatpants away last night, and it sent a flare through his brain that fizzled and cracked as he realized how she was reacting to him. He could still hear Tifa’s heartbeat, and he noticed it stutter and palpitate as he began to drag his fingers in a back and forth motion over the sodden material, stroking the entire length of her hidden slit, all the way from her entrance to her clit, already hard and eager for him.
She hissed as soon as he brushed over it, and Cloud couldn’t stop the wildness that raced in a wave over his skin, making him feel giddy as if he had been drugged. Spurred on by her reactions, the way that she rolled her hips toward his face and coated him in the hazy blend of her sugary scents and her arousal, he crouched under her skirt and kissed the insides of her thighs, rising higher and higher with the gentle press of his lips. Her hand had fallen into his hair again while the other dropped to grip his shoulder, her fingers twisting up his sweater.
He smiled against her sweet, soft skin, continuing his teasing for a few moments longer by adding licks of his tongue and careful, precise bites with his teeth, attacking her fleshiest parts as he rose higher and higher toward her center, his fingers still dancing against that hot, wet strip of fabric while his opposite hand gave the thick curve of her rear a rough squeeze.
He was vaguely aware of the way she moaned his name in a plea above him, but he was becoming intoxicated, and suddenly he was desperate to taste her again. Fumbling slightly in the darkness, his hands snaked further upward beneath her skirt to find the waistband of her panties, boy-cut cotton that hugged her lower curves tightly. He smirked and bit into her thigh again, this time roughly enough to earn a yelp from her throat, before he dragged them down over her hips and her bottom, beyond her thighs and to her ankles, where he carefully helped pull her booted feet out of them.
Mindlessly, Cloud shoved them into one pocket of his fatigues before his hands returned to her, this time latching onto her calves and beginning a slow, upward crawl along the perfectly toned freeways of her legs. Her skin was warm beneath the thick lycra of her leg warmers, and as he reached the hems of her thigh-highs, he found his mind suddenly at war between wanting to preserve them in place where they sat when he fucked her and tearing them off of her in shreds like a savage. He wondered idly if she had any idea how sexy these things were, how they set a wildfire loose in his belly, or if she were wearing them on purpose to light him up.
He abandoned those thoughts when his hands reached the buttercream of her thighs again, and without preamble, he carefully lifted her left leg and let her thigh rest on his shoulder, angling his body so that he could prop her up with her leg dangling over his back, opening her up wide. She mumbled something unintelligible as he did this, now with both hands on his shoulders, gripping him tightly. He leaned forward, awash in her foggy heat, her skirt a curtain around him as he parted her seam with his fingers and lifted his lips to her skin.
She purred, and Cloud almost drowned, she was so wet for him upon impact. She was dripping when his tongue lapped between her folds, coating his tongue and his lips in thick, honeyed swirls that were bright and hot and made him come alive. He licked between them again, and although it was too dark to see her beauty here, he imagined the way her lower lips swelled for him the last time he’d drank at her well like this, the way that it made her sore, eager clit hard and pink and desperate for his touch to send her over the edge. With that memory sketched forever on his mind, he licked and sucked, puckering her slit and dipping his tongue inside of her, dragging out more of her leaking wetness while all the while she began to whine and beg above him.
He tortured her for a few moments longer before he finally relented and dragged his tongue up and up until he found the hot, pulsing little button he had been looking so forward to punishing again. His hands holding her by her hips firmly, Cloud began to lick at that stiff nub, his dick growing impossibly harder when Tifa reacted by keening loudly and thrusting her hips towards his face, begging for more. He smiled against her skin and continued to massage her clit, angling the flat of his tongue against it in long, upward strokes that had her rising on her toes and pulling at his sweater, probably stretching it out again beyond all hope. He didn’t care, though, she could ruin all of his clothes and every part of him any way that she liked and he would be forever grateful for the incursion.
When her hips were winding in an uncontrollable sort of fashion, her sounds broken and desperate, he knew that she was riding high, and he wrapped his mouth around her clit and began to suck. He pulled at it gingerly but firmly, slipping his tongue between his lips as he went, making sure to stroke and tap the tip of it while his mouth soothed its sides. Tifa went wild above him, whining his name in a higher pitch than he’d ever heard her, no longer pulling at his sweater but now digging deep into his shoulders and leaving him with shooting pain.
She broke a moment later, her whimpers turning into tell-tale sobs as she tried to push him off and back further away against the cave’s outer wall. But Cloud refused to release her until he was sure she had been completely carried away by the wind, until he knew that she had plateaued and was nearing the other edge of the sunrise. When he heard her gasp his name and then shove roughly at his shoulder, he finally pulled his mouth off her, but didn’t back away before he dropped a final, soul-shivering kiss to her clit.
He ducked out from beneath her skirt, wiping his mouth as he got to his feet in front of her again, realizing as soon as he stood that Tifa was boneless and trembling, her hands sliding to his waist as he rose, using his body to hold her steady. Recognizing her defenseless and forlorn state, he crowded closer to her, dropping his lips to hers in a long kiss that drank up all of her gasps and tiny cries as she came back down.
Feeling suddenly sanguinary and in need of alleviating his own aches, Cloud pulled away from her slightly so that their eyes could meet, finding hers wet and bright, her pupils as wide as silver gil pieces as she looked up at him. He held her waist with one hand, then brought the other to her cheek, flicking away a spill of ebony hair so he could focus on the sloped perfection of her face.
“Can I fuck you, Tifa?” he asked her in a low whisper, unable to control the blunt nature of his words, unsure of where they originated from, a distant and trapped part of his mind faintly aware that he had pretty much lost all control.
“Please,” was her instant answer, her voice barely registering, and she licked her lips, setting his soul on fire.
Now burning with his own electric need, Cloud wasted no time making quick work of the front of his pants, opening them and pulling his cock out, instantly calming the throb that was leaving him feeling dizzy as he wrapped his fist around it. Tifa dropped her eyes to his length, those beautiful, glassy scarlet discs widening, and Cloud moved closer to her, dipping his face into the crook of her neck and shoulder and inhaling deeply, becoming dizzy again, this time by her scent.
He nuzzled her throat, listening for the sound of her pulse again, for the rage of blood in her body as her desire grew and stacked against his own. He felt his own heartbeat collapse, tightening his chest as he realized how they matched one another, how they dragged each other back and forth between a furious tangle of companionship and passion and adoration and, yes, maybe even love, as they had both so messily admitted the night before.
He inhaled deeply, feeling himself become lost somewhere between his desire and his wistful emotions, and he shook his head clear, pulling away from her neck so that he could slide his hands under her thighs, bunching her skirt up at her waist and feeling the smoothness of her thigh-high stocking glide past his palms until he felt her skin. With the grace of a dancer lifting his partner, he hoisted her up and hooked his arms under her knees, her legs dangling over his forearms and his palms gripping her the tops of her thighs as he slid himself inside of her with one quick thrust.
“Oh,” Tifa cried out as soon as his hard tip fell all the way to the back of her passage, her arms instantly looping around his neck and holding on to him tight. Cloud’s brain became a battlefield at the instant, hot, tight wetness that wrapped fully around him, rockets and bombs being set off in the mist of his headspace. He winced; even though he had been inside of her like this just twenty-four hours ago, it still hit him like a brick wall, still the most incredible feeling and one he would never grow tired of.
Realizing he had her back pinned against the harsh, cold stone, he backed up a few steps to relieve her of that stress, now relying on only his upper body strength to support her. She was light, though, just as she had been when he’d held her when they’d jumped from that train, and holding her thighs firmly, Cloud began to drive his hips up into her, setting a steady rhythm and carrying her body against his with ease.
The angles of their bodies in this position let him climb deep and high inside of her, and Tifa tightened her hold around his neck, pressing her face against his shoulder as she began to mewl huskily with every stroke.
Cloud realized with a delayed sense of wonder that every time he found a new way to dive inside of Tifa, depending on how he did it, he hit a different spot or a different angle within her, and every way produced a different, visceral, purely sensual reaction from her. His mind was in a tangle as he listened to her throaty moans and desperate whines, as he felt her fingernails scrape violently at the back of his neck, sliding into his turtleneck in search of more skin to demolish.
He couldn’t figure out which way he liked best, but he knew that this way was somewhere close to the top of his list.
He was ready to heighten the speed of his thrusts into her when he heard a crack that was followed by a sudden flash, and abruptly, the sky opened up above them, and Cloud felt raindrops begin a downward scatter through the shelter of the trees, sliding between the branches and hitting his forehead as he looked up. Tifa was trapped in a stasis of ecstasy, chasing the zenith as she clung to him, her hips wriggling needily in his grip, and she ignored the sudden precipitation. Cloud tried to gather his wits, holding her even more tightly, wanting to protect her, but quickly, the rain turned torrential, a downpour that weighed down the leaves around them.
“Tifa,” he said gently next to her ear, trying to set her back down to her feet. “We should go inside.”
But Tifa was locking her legs around him, refusing to let him put her down, shaking her head like a woman possessed. “No,” she insisted firmly, lifting her head from his shoulder to look into his eyes. “Don’t you fucking stop.”
Cloud’s brain lost at least half a million cells at the sound of her swear and the rough, guttural undertone of her voice, her eyes clouded with pleasure even as they pierced him with a thousand razor-sharp daggers. He swallowed carefully, watching the rain coat her body as it fell harder and harder around them, sticking her hair to her face and her arms like oil, soaking through her bunched-up tops that still sat above her heaving, flushed breasts. It fell in rivulets down the sides of her face, over her nose and down into her lips, the heavens bathing her in ambrosia from the gods right before his very eyes.
He could no longer think, could only feel, and the only feeling he had was Tifa Tifa Tifa, and he was doing everything in his power to take care of her, to please her in any way that she wanted. He nodded, then gripped her thighs tighter and hoisted her up a little higher, this time rotating a slow grind inside of her, hitting her deep and hitting her hard, but hitting her with a slack laziness that had her earlier mewls turn into low, pleading howls, and he blinked, understanding that he was stroking a nerve center deep inside of her that was unwinding her like a child’s toy.
The rain was unrelenting, soaking them through as he held her and drove into her, flattening his hair and sliding between his fingers, making his hold on her thighs slippery. He tightened his grip, in the process slamming her harder onto his dick, and she keened, tossing her head back.
Cloud could only stare at the pale roadway of her throat in the moonlight, sheened over with rainwater. Her hair was soaked and heavy now, weighing her down even further and testing his biceps with strain as he held her to him. But despite this, he found himself marveling at the sight in front of him, an enchantress of water hanging from his hips, liquid arrows from the sky piercing her skin as he began to move harder and faster inside of her, piercing her heart and her softest parts with his hardest one.
He must have become consumed by the raging bloodlust that was forever dormant beneath his skin, pulling his muscles taut with friction and tension every time he looked at her or thought about her or caught a faint brush of her skin, because it wasn’t long before she too was losing control, opening her mouth until the rain hit her tongue and her teeth, his name falling from her lips the way it did when she cried out for him in battle. Fascinated and driven by pure, prurient need, Cloud watched her fragment in front of him the entire time, her cries escalating as she clenched and spasmed around him, and moments after he was sure she had found the other side, he joined her, soaking her insides with his warmth the way her outsides were soaked by the rain.
She finally ceased screaming, but instead was weeping, lifting her head again to nuzzle into his shoulder again as she cried. Cloud had no idea where her tears ended and where the rain began, but he also had temporarily lost most of his own coherence, finding himself trying to tear through a fog of confusion after his release had ripped through him like a hurricane.
As the afterglow began to fade, Cloud realized the way that the rain was pelting them, stinging his flesh. Carefully, he slid out of Tifa and lowered her to her feet, and instantly she fell against him; clearly, her legs were made of gelatin. He steadied her, still trying to gather his own wits, and he adjusted his pants before he helped her fix her clothing. The entirety of everything they wore was drenched right through, posing a huge challenge for the rest of the night.
“We need to go inside,” Cloud finally told Tifa once he’d managed to recapture his voice.
She nodded calmly, leaning against him, still seemingly oblivious to the effects of the rain. He wrapped an arm around her, picking up her forgotten sweater from the ground before guiding her quickly back to the cave.
When they were inside, they stopped for a moment, and Cloud looked around, still breathless and dizzy but somewhat in charge of his senses. Everyone was as they had left them, Aerith still asleep in her tent and Barret snoring in his, Red facing away from them with his back to the fire as he snoozed deeply with his paws outstretched in front of him. They were none the wiser to his and Tifa’s activities outside, and for that, he was relieved. There was, though, still the serious matter of their wet clothing. No way could they sleep like this.
He spotted the fire still glowing in the center of the cave, tossing bright reflections against the blue stalagmites and formations in the walls. Hesitating for only a moment, Cloud looked at Tifa to make sure that she was finally sure again on her feet, before he reached for the hem of his sweater and pulled it over his head.
“Come on,” he whispered quietly to her, careful not to wake the others up. “We can dry our clothes by the fire overnight.”
She looked at him doubtfully, but was then distracted, her eyes dropping and sweeping over his bare chest and drinking in the contours of his body, and Cloud blushed, wondering if the innocent practicality of his idea wasn’t going to get them into trouble.
“Or we could -“
But Tifa was crossing her arms in front of her waist and pulling her top and her bra up over her head, squeezing them free of excess water before she wordlessly held them out with one hand for him to take. Stunned, he accepted them, then watched as she kicked out of her boots and shimmied her skirt past her hips, stepping out of it and also handing it to him once she was fully naked in front of him aside from her tights.
He remembered that her underwear was in his pocket, suddenly feeling it burn holes there, and his face lit up with a brand new scorch all over again.
Once she was stripped, she stopped for a moment to wring her hair out by the lip of the cave, heavy spills of water dropping from her thick locks. His throat was suddenly sore, sandpaper lining the back of it, realizing he had never seen a sexier sight in his entire goddamn fucking life.
Knowing that all of their friends were sleeping feet away sent a hot thrill through Cloud when she smiled at him, turning away and jogging quickly toward one of the remaining tents around the fire. His brain had shut down, all of its programming scrambled as he realized what had just taken place in front of his very own eyes. Unable to control himself, he followed behind her without another thought, stopping only by the fire to lay out her clothing and then disrobe himself of the rest of his, leaving only his boxers on, setting it all out against the flames to dry for the night.
Wordless and moving as quickly as possible, Cloud followed Tifa into the tent she had disappeared into. It was meant for one person, as all of their tents were, and so it was a tight fit for them to both lie inside. Still, he had every intention of being as close as possible to her for the rest of the night, and so he didn’t give a shit about the limited space.
He found Tifa curled up on top of her sleeping bag, a pile of blankets around her, still wearing her nylons. Her hair was damp around her and her skin still shimmered with a layer of rain that was absorbing into the rich tapestry of her skin. Cloud tried not to salivate openly as he surveyed her, wondering what the fuck he had ever done in his entire life to deserve to be able to look at and touch and even make love to a divinity like Tifa.
“Come here,” she whispered playfully as soon as he was inside with her. Even in the darkness, the flames and the blue glow beyond their only light, Cloud could see how her eyes were still misted over with the high of their intimate frolic moments ago in the rain, and it was clear she wanted more.
Maybe he had spoiled her the night before in Kalm.
“Aren’t you going to dry… those, too?” he said, pushing away that thought, instead pointing at her thigh-highs.
“Sure,” she whispered, then laid back beside him and stretched out with one arm behind her head so that her breasts jiggled provocatively over her chest, enticing him in ways that were wicked. “Take them off for me?”
Cloud swallowed, watching as she kicked one leg in his direction, sweeping it over his knees. Pushing down the sudden urge to crawl between her thighs and fuck her mindless, he nodded, gently lifting his hands to the hem of her thigh high, fingers brushing against her skin as he slowly rolled the stretchy fabric down her thighs and past her knees, beyond her calves and down to her ankles.
Tifa expelled a breathy sigh as he worked, and Cloud couldn’t ignore the fact that there was something unremittingly sexy about stripping her of this one particular item of clothing that drove him crazy for reasons he still did not understand. Perhaps it was watching the smooth, pale contours of her toned flesh unveiled under his own hand, certainly not helped by the way that Tifa stretched and purred above him.
His cock was straining again by the time that he divested her of her second stocking, and after tossing them out of the tent to fall somewhere near the fire, he zipped it closed and slid out of his boxers. They were still mostly dry, thanks to the thickness of his fatigues, and so he tossed them to one corner of the tent before crawling right beside Tifa, laying next to her on the sleeping bag and dragging a blanket over them to warm their skin.
He had every intention to cuddle and hold her, to maybe whisper something sweet in her ear before they fell asleep for the night. But Tifa was well aware of his erection and was instantly attacking him, one long leg crossing over his hips so that their centers were aligned, both hands at the sides of his face as she pulled his face towards her and kissed him hot on the lips.
Cloud tried not to fall completely apart at the soft press of her mouth against his again, at the tingle of the skin to skin contact of her breasts suddenly on his bare chest, at the blazing heat between her thighs that was suddenly dripping all over his cock. He simply let her kiss him, his tongue responding to the arabesques and twirls of hers, relenting and savoring the closeness of her body, wrapping his arms around her to hold her tight.
She had begun to grind against him when he felt something prickling the back of his mind. Still holding her with one arm around her back, he brought the other up to one of her wrists, gently pulling her hand away from his face as he broke their kiss.
“Tifa.”
“Hm?” she opened her eyes, looking up at him, and through the glow of mako, he could see the crimson shine of hers staring up at him in the darkness.
Cloud stared for too many moments, trying to summon his nerves. As badly as the desire was rising inside of him again, he was still mired in his steep emotions, feelings he felt he still hadn’t properly conveyed or covered. He had resolved earlier that night that he was going to clear the air once and for all between him and Tifa, but it bit at his heels that he still hadn’t done an adequate job.
He thought over and over again about their reunion in Midgar and his foggy memories of their childhood, of their promise and of shadowy visions of her as a child, moments that were etched in sadness and loss. There were still so many questions, so many pieces to rearrange, so many sections to color in and fill. But as the days stretched on, whether they were joined in battle or in simple conversation or deep, deep in the passions of their lovemaking, there was one thing that Cloud was now certain of.
He was truly, madly in love with Tifa.
“I know I said this last night,” he began, “We both did. But… before we go any further… I just want to make sure that you know that I meant what I said.”
“You love me?” Tifa asked, her whisper so low that he almost wasn’t sure if he’d heard her.
But he did, had heard it echo and slam into his chest, seizing his heart as if she had conquered him and laid claim to all of his love. And in response, he pulled her in close, holding her tight, still feeling all of her body bordering the entirety of his.
“Yes, Tifa. I do love you. I mean it.”
“I love you too, Cloud,” she whispered back. “It wasn’t just the sex talking last night, y’know. You mean everything to me.”
He chuckled into her shoulder, but Tifa was playfully grinding against him again, rubbing her clit against his shaft until she was breathing heavily with every effort to keep silent and he was growing delirious from the feeling of her wet slit on him and her breasts pressed soft between them. He shifted slightly, laying on his back, pulling Tifa so that she straddled him. He settled against the sleeping bag, ignoring the way the cool earth below radiated through the thin material into his back. Instead, he focused his attention on Tifa above him in the darkness, ensconced completely in shadows.
“Show me how much you love me, Tifa,” he couldn’t stop himself from whispering, reaching up one hand to drop a finger to her lips, reminding her that they needed to stay quiet.
And she did, rotating her hips over his a few times before she reached behind her and grabbed his cock, angling him so that she could slide it inside of her. She was soaking wet and it was a smooth glide, and he winced at the sensation, finding himself sinking back into that ethereal plane on the other side of the moon again.
She dropped her hands to his chest and leaned forward, widening her thighs so that her clit was pressed against his body, and she began to ride him, grinding and rotating up and down with a slow abandon, biting her bottom lip to keep from shouting. Cloud held onto her hips, watching her face as he gripped his control as best he could, his brain beginning to melt, and every time Tifa emitted a whimper, he shushed her.
“Tell me when you’re close,” he half moaned, half-whispered up at her when he saw her face begin to contort and her mouth drop open. She moved a little faster at his words, and Cloud pushed her hips down, her brow furrowing and her eyes pinching closed in response.
“Oh, oh,” she breathed, her voice barely audible but still trapped in a needy whine. “I’m so, so, close, Cloud…”
At that, Cloud felt the plasma break away from the mako in his blood as his adrenaline surged, and he finally took over, flipping her deftly in their tiny space in the tent. Out of control again, he clasped a hand to her mouth and pushed one leg over his shoulder with the other, staring right into her eyes as he began to fuck her hard and swift, keeping the pressure on her swollen clit with his pelvis as he drove them both to absolution.
It wasn’t long before she came with a barely suppressed whine, Cloud squeezing her mouth to keep all of her noise in as best he could. But he couldn’t give a fuck about that now, and instead pumped into her until he finally lost it himself, feeling himself fall apart inside of her in a hot, steady stream. He twitched and swallowed his own moans, hearing her name fall out of his mouth in desperate gasps, and Tifa was so hysterical from her orgasm that she started to giggle.
Cloud found himself laughing too, maybe a little too loudly as he rolled off of her and then settled in close for a cuddle. His brain soon began to clear, though, and he quieted, turning to her and brushing his thumb over her cheek as she settled against him.
“Should we tell the others we’re together?” he asked, his impulsivity setting in again.
Tifa was yawning sleepily, but then she smiled at him in the darkness, and she gave her head a little nod, leaning forward into him. “Of course, Cloud. Then maybe they’ll mind their business.”
She leaned up and kissed his nose, and Cloud almost lost it, she was so goddamn adorable.
“Let’s get some sleep, Teef.”
“Goddamnit!”
Cloud shook his head out, craning his head upward at the brusque shout. He was still tangled under the blankets with Tifa in her tent, her body still curled close to his, both of them still completely naked. He blinked, knowing that he had mentally prepared himself to wake well before dawn, before any of the others would be up so that he could retrieve their dried clothing and dress before anyone figured out what had happened.
He detected another swear in the distance, his enhanced hearing picking up the sound. He sat up quickly, reaching for his boxers and sliding them on in a hurry as he heard the stomp of footsteps beyond the cave.
“This is some bullshit!”
Cloud realized that it was Barret’s voice, and glancing at Tifa, still bare under the covers, he began to panic.
He was trying to devise a solution when a new challenge presented itself.
“Cloud?”
Aerith . Aerith was up and calling him from the other side of the tent, tapping on its zippered flap. Groaning, Cloud felt his skull begin to pound, and he leaned forward, debating whether he should answer her or just pretend he was still sleeping.
“Yeah?” he finally responded, unable to keep the irritation from his voice.
“Something’s wrong with Barret!” Aerith called back. “He’s been cursing and running around for the last ten minutes. He just ran off again, and Red went to follow him. Can you help?”
Awkward . Cloud thought about his precious fatigues, sitting just a few feet away by the campfire. Stupid stupid stupid stupid.
“Cloud?” Aerith repeated when he said nothing.
He glanced back at Tifa. Aerith wasn’t known for her patience, but she was a good friend to Tifa, and he was fairly certain she would have at least some discretion about this. Besides, he really had no other options.
“Cloud!” she demanded again, her voice now growing shrill.
He sighed, then leaned forward and slowly, terrifyingly, unzipped just a little bit of the tent’s flap, enough that Aerith could just see his face.
“There you are!”
“Uh, Aerith?”
“Yeah, Cloud?”
“…”
“What is it?” she cried. “Barret needs our help. And where is Tifa?”
He swallowed sheepishly, feeling Tifa stir slightly behind him, kicking and stretching one leg out.
He cleared his throat skillfully. “Me and Tifa’s clothes are over there by the fire. Can you hand them to me?”
Without missing a beat, Aerith began to giggle, covering her mouth with her hands and falling back on her knees.
“We got stuck in the rain!” Cloud insisted, his voice uncharacteristically shrill as his cheeks flared, bright and rosy.
“Okay, sure, Cloud,” Aerith conceded, her voice goading and thick with sarcasm. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”
She got up, and Cloud watched her as she circled the campsite and picked up all of their clothing, his temples now filled with the drumbeats of irritation.
A few hours later, Cloud was living with even more painful annoyance for a brand new reason.
After finally getting dressed and leaving the cave to investigate after Barret, Cloud had soon found him half a mile away, he and Red both in the center of a thicket of trees, engaged in battle with what appeared at first glance to be a female, teenaged bandit. He quickly realized though, judging from her moves and agility and the violent shuriken that she tossed at them, that she was actually a female, teenaged ninja, of all things.
“I got up to take a leak,” Barret explained sometime later, “And on my way back, this brat attacked me and tried to rob me!”
After a rough and sweaty battle and a fair amount of swearing and debate, Yuffie Kisaragi, a sixteen-year-old ninja from the nation of Wutai, had shared her own personal grievances with Shinra and asked to join their party in aid of their vendetta against the conglomerate. It had sounded like a reasonable idea at the time, especially with Aerith’s insistence, but now, Cloud was regretting it.
Yuffie talked more than she did anything else, and most of that time was spent complaining, a poor sidekick to Barret, who grumbled at intervals with the consistency of a big hand rotating around a clock. The combination of Yuffie’s high pitched whines and Barret’s gruff cusses were enough to make Cloud want to quit this entire endeavor, if only it weren’t for the dull, violet-hued aches in the back of his head that were pushing him forward in pursuit of Sephiroth.
It was midmorning when they finally got moving, and Cloud was frowning severely, rethinking every strategy for this gaiaforsaken trip when Tifa suddenly sidled up beside him, threading her arm through his. He was surprised; it was an openly affectionate gesture, especially with their entire group walking alongside them as they traveled to Junon.
“You okay?” she asked him, tossing his frequently shared words to her right back at him, and he felt himself smiling, wanting to kiss her cheek but instead just squeezing his bicep against hers.
“Yeah,” he responded, his frustration easily slipping away, and her eyes lit up in the sun, sparkling like rubies at him. “All good. You?”
“Perfect,” she replied cheerfully.
He nodded and held onto her, looking back at the road ahead as they kept walking, eyes peeled for the docks and the cannon that signaled Junon.
But his reinforced hearing did not miss the conversation that unfolded somewhere behind him, and it only deepened his smile.
“What’s with those two?” Yuffie demanded, her voice bright and inquisitive.
“Oh,” Aerith emitted with another familiar giggle. “They’re boyfriend and girlfriend.”
FIN