Chapter Text
The day starts off pleasantly enough. Vincent’s two days back from his latest mission, long enough for him to have finished debriefing but before his next assignment has been set. Sephiroth’s mother has been fully occupied with the restructuring necessitated by Heidegger’s expulsion, Wutai has been quiet, SOLDIER doesn’t have any current reports of suspicious mutants to look into, and Sephiroth has the morning off.
For a few minutes he thinks he’s actually woken ahead of Vincent, rolling over to find the other man still lying quietly beside him, but as he pulls the sheet over his shoulder, something brushes up between his thighs. He startles, then lays his palms against Vincent’s belly as Vincent’s tail rubs up against his perineum, awakening deep-running streaks of soreness in his thighs and lower back. He spent most of last night with a vibrating plug in him, cock strapped to his belly and wrists tied to ankles, kneeling with Vincent’s cock in his mouth while Vincent watched a seemingly endless HR webinar that Shinra, in its infinite wisdom, requires even its black-books contractors to take.
Vincent teases briefly at his hole, but then the tail slides higher. Sephiroth ducks his head under the bedsheet, pulling his hair out of the way as the tail loops around his throat, and then lets it draw him down to Vincent’s cock. His jaw doesn’t ache anymore but the shape and weight of that on his tongue makes him groan with the memory.
He strokes at Vincent’s thighs as he sucks the cock erect; Vincent pulls the sheet away from them, then reaches down and rests one hand on top of his head. The man’s fingers work into his hair, moving in slow, massaging circles, then withdraw to push at his brow. Sephiroth slides off Vincent’s cock, glancing up, and Vincent swings his leg over Sephiroth, turning onto his belly. His tail tugs Sephiroth forward again and Sephiroth groans again, nosing between the man’s buttocks and lapping till the slick is running out of Vincent’s hole and down his jaw.
Once Vincent’s come, he uncoils the tail and pulls Sephiroth out of bed and into the shower, where he presses Sephiroth face-first against the wall and fingers him roughly, biting at Sephiroth’s shoulders just within the portions the SOLDIER uniform will cover. He bruises deeply enough that the marks still haven’t healed by the time they finish breakfast, and Sephiroth has their prickling under his coat seams to remind him as he arrives at his office, where his good mood starts to dissipate.
Tseng’s already standing outside and looks as if he’d rather be anywhere else, even when he sees Vincent—who doesn’t have his own office and who often uses Sephiroth’s conference room if he needs to take a meeting—which doesn’t bode well. “General, if I could speak to you for a moment,” Tseng says, with only the barest nod at Vincent. “There was an incident with Commander Fair…”
From there the day degenerates into an absurd conga line of people reporting Zack for various mishaps, a good half of them having nothing to do with his actual duties. Sephiroth has a pounding headache before lunch, which he’s due to have with Rufus and Reeve, and finally calls the man in for an explanation. “Why are you even handling trash disposal at that location?” Sephiroth asks. “That’s not your unit. That’s not our department.”
“Well, so…I could tell you the full, gory, unfortunate story,” Zack starts, wincing. “Or—”
“And where is Angeal?” Sephiroth adds. “He usually keeps it from getting this ridiculous.”
Zack twitches sharply. Then sighs, sagging forward to rub his hands over his face. “Well, for the last three days, on my couch. And hey, Seph—before you get all righteously indignant over what incompetent knuckleheads we are, which you’re totally entitled to do—let me just say Angeal’s really messed up right now. I’ve never seen him this bad, and the only reason I didn’t bring it up before is because we all know Valentine got stuck in Mideel and it seemed better to wait till that got cleared up.”
“Because we run SOLDIER based on my personal life,” Sephiroth snaps, more than a little nettled. The man should know him better than that.
“No, because Angeal’s personal life is fucking with him, and yeah, I know, incredibly unprofessional but first we fix him, then we tell him that. And you know and I know how much he does around here, so he deserves that much before we write him off. Right?” Zack says, looking at Sephiroth with firm confidence that Sephiroth is going to agree with him and only needs a reminder. He waits a few seconds, then nods as Sephiroth sighs. “So yeah, okay, I was going to wait till we were sure we didn’t have to deploy to Mideel. Which, nobody’s saying you’re gonna use company resources to save your partner, I’m just pointing out that since Vincent gets the missions Tseng doesn’t feel comfortable asking his teams to do, if one blows up we’re all probably halfway to fucked anyway so going after him fits the SOLDIER objectives of being—”
Sephiroth appreciates Zack’s good qualities. He’d find himself less annoyed about being so if the man could be more concise. “Zack, what happened to Angeal?”
“Genesis did something that made him walk out and crash at my place,” Zack says. Then he waves his hand irritably at the side, even though Sephiroth hasn’t moved or said anything. “I don’t know, okay? Angeal won’t even be in the same room as him, and he’s been trying to corner him—he’s been trying so hard that I have pissed off half this company, the actually good at their jobs half, trying to keep them from having a fight in front of witnesses. And then Angeal goes home with me and just cleans the mold off my bathroom grout every night instead of sleeping. It’s fucked-up.”
Damn it, Sephiroth thinks. Then he reaches for his tablet, a note to Genesis already forming in his head. And then he stops himself, and thinks about the last time that remotely sounded like this—subtracting Zack’s unique problem-solving methods—and comes to the reluctant realization that Genesis isn’t the key here. Which is a pity, because at the end of the day the man’s the poorest of them at sitting on a grudge. If it had been him, one good round in the simulator and telling Angeal to go to medical to pick him up usually did it.
“My mother?” Sephiroth mutters.
“I…think she still hasn’t noticed? But it’s getting dicey,” Zack admits.
“I see,” Sephiroth says. He picks his tablet up and considers his calendar, mentally reprioritizing it. “Stop running interference. Tell them both you’ve spoken to me, the next time you see them, and fold up your couch when you go home.”
Zack blinks. “So…I don’t want to say you’re not a strategic genius, because you are, but that seems optimistic.”
“It’s not going to be solved today, Zack. First we fix SOLDIER’s reputation so I don’t have a line of directors outside my door wanting to speak to me about you,” Sephiroth says, opening up his email and starting a note to Angeal. “Then we get Angeal out of your apartment. Then we fix whatever’s the matter with them.”
* * *
“I need to have Angeal stay with us for a…for probably a few days,” Sephiroth tells Vincent.
He’s not certain how much Vincent overheard—the conference room door had been shut, but Vincent has Turk access to all security systems and also knows what Sephiroth does to block those—but Vincent doesn’t seem surprised. The man merely nods as he turns his tablet face-down on the table and looks past Sephiroth. The projection screen on the wall has been pulled down and there’s an image of a nondescript storage building on it.
“Family,” Vincent says, nodding at that. Then he waves towards the tablet with one hand. “Work.”
Sephiroth can learn about the man’s work in as much detail as he wants, when he wants to. Most of the time he finds that he doesn’t want or need more than what Tseng and Vincent provide in their official reports; it’s far more helpful on many levels to let the Turks be responsible for their own objectives. Vincent’s family, on the other hand…he takes a second look at the image on the wall. “I thought your family was work these days, thanks to my mother’s intervention. At least, that’s her new favorite reminder for me.”
“Is it?” Vincent says, sounding both curious and sympathetic. Then he shakes his head when Sephiroth looks back at him. “This isn’t. It’s…something I inherited by default, unfortunately. I’ve been putting off divesting myself of it—that mattered less when I wasn’t consistently living in the same place.”
“Should you be looking it up on Shinra property, in that case?” Sephiroth asks.
Now Vincent’s amused. “Tseng knows about it,” he says as he taps at his phone. The screen goes black. “Generally speaking, and in terms of details, probably seventy percent of what I’m actually going to do. It’s nuisance-level and it’s not in a place I shouldn’t be going to.”
“But you do have to go,” Sephiroth says, now understanding where this is going. “When?”
“Tomorrow afternoon, overnight,” Vincent says after a moment. His amusement fades as his mouth twists, and his eyes briefly drop from Sephiroth to his tablet. Then he looks up again. “Timing’s entirely my fault. I forgot about it and then Yuffie messaged—Tseng doesn’t know about her and this.”
“I envy him,” Sephiroth mutters after a moment. So he’ll lose Vincent for roughly twenty-four hours, and then have him back for another thirty-six before the man had planned to head out again. It’s not terrible or uncommon; their work rarely lets the week go as planned. And probably for Sephiroth’s purposes it’ll streamline dealing with Angeal and Genesis…and yet he finds himself filled with aimless irritation for a moment.
“She’s not coming here again,” Vincent says, his humor briefly restored. He leans back in his seat, gazing at Sephiroth.
Waiting. There isn’t really anything useful to say, and the not-useful things Sephiroth wants to say are—not useful. Sephiroth nods and goes back into his office, and after refreshing his coffee, resumes tackling the actual disasters in his workload.
At the end of the workday, Vincent joins him and they walk back to their quarters together. Sephiroth’s been expecting Angeal ever since the stream of reports on Zack dried up in the early afternoon, but the man doesn’t appear till they’re at their door, a duffel bag at his feet and a sheepish hunch to his shoulders.
He greets Vincent politely. Vincent returns the greeting and they have an innocuous conversation about a dying office plant near Angeal’s favorite training room, because finding a replacement gardening maintenance company who won’t be infiltrated by rogue Wutaian elements is apparently dragging on. Then they talk about cooking, because Angeal has somewhat more than rudimentary skills in that area and is interested in what Vincent’s making for dinner. Once they’ve sat down to eat the results, the conversation shifts to work colleagues.
“Sorry about Zack,” Angeal mutters when Vincent’s briefly in the kitchen for something. He rubs at his face. “And—look, I’ll talk to him. I just need maybe another day?”
Sephiroth sighs. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Vincent’s leaving for an overnight after lunch.”
Angeal starts to glance over his shoulder, then stops himself and grimaces. “Fuck. Sorry. I—you know, I’m literally living what he was afraid of right now, and I don’t—”
“If he’s afraid of you eating dinner, then that’s his fault,” Sephiroth says sharply. “Enough, Angeal. We’re not dealing with it tonight, so leave it till tomorrow.”
The other man opens his mouth, then shuts it and gives Sephiroth a tight nod. There isn’t very much conversation after that, aside from the odd question from Angeal about where he can find something; Sephiroth didn’t think Vincent had rearranged anything of significance so apparently it’s simply been that long since he had Angeal in his quarters.
He came here mostly just to sleep before Vincent moved in, Sephiroth thinks as he rolls onto his bed. Everything of importance happened in the office or in the field—he took all his meals at the canteen, if one of the other Firsts wasn’t trying to get him to come out with them.
“My trip has nothing to do with him, or you,” Vincent says from the side of the bed. He waits till Sephiroth turns and looks at him before sliding under the blankets, shedding his sleeping robe as he does. “But I doubt that addresses what has him staring into the dark out there.”
“Is he?” Sephiroth says, and then puts his head back with another sigh. Angeal’s generally the least prone to dark moods of them, but when his mind is set for it, he can outdo them all. “This isn’t your problem. It shouldn’t affect you, and you have to prepare…”
“Then we don’t need to talk about it,” Vincent says evenly.
He puts his head down, facing Sephiroth. He’s closed the bedroom door behind him but there’s still a sliver of light appearing around the edges; if Angeal’s turned off the living room lights, the one in the hall must still be on. Sephiroth bites back a third sigh and starts to push himself over the other man, only for Vincent to slide one hand up his chest. He looks down and Vincent’s watching him with interest but not demand, not yet.
Sephiroth glances at the door again, then back at Vincent. It seems…inappropriate, where this might be going, with Angeal out in the living room brooding over his fractured relationship. The man is a close friend—so is Genesis, even if Sephiroth frequently wonders at the sanity of it—and Sephiroth wants to see him at peace. But also, Sephiroth genuinely isn’t looking forward to what they’ll have to do to get there.
Tomorrow is going to be painful however Sephiroth looks at it—whatever he does tonight. So it’s inappropriate, and selfish of him, but when Vincent’s hand moves in a soft half-circle over his right pectoral, he lets out a slow, appreciative exhale. “I don’t have the morning off,” he reminds Vincent.
“I know. You’re not going to have any marks,” Vincent says, the red of his eyes shrinking as his pupils dilate. He plucks at Sephiroth’s nipple, urging Sephiroth back down, and when Sephiroth’s lying beside him, he threads his hand into Sephiroth’s hair. “You’re going to have to be quiet, too.”
Sephiroth sucks his breath without thinking, and then feels warm arousal start to flush through him; Vincent clearly notes that. “If I am, am I coming wet or dry?”
The light gleams over Vincent’s teeth as he smiles, and then he shifts his head back into the shadows. “We’ll see how quiet you are. The lube’s on your side, get it and open yourself up.”
A moan wants to wrench itself out of Sephiroth’s throat already. He swallows it but it catches in his throat, burning, as he pushes himself to the other side of the bed. He has to turn to get out the lubricant and he feels Vincent pushing up behind and then curling over him to reach for something else. When he tries to look, Vincent pushes his head down; he strangles another moan and slides his hand between his legs.
Vincent takes out two—three things before shutting the drawer. One’s a black leather collar, which he straps snugly about Sephiroth’s throat while he’s still sitting up by the headboard. Sephiroth’s panting against his thigh, on two fingers, when he takes Sephiroth’s jaw in hand and pushes it back, holding it as his tail glides underneath and then wraps about Sephiroth above the collar. The tip ends up pushing at Sephiroth’s mouth and he promptly parts his lips.
He licks at the tip and Vincent lets out a rare low groan, but then goes silent as more of his tail crowds into Sephiroth’s mouth, coiling up against the insides of his cheeks and trapping his tongue flat under it so he can only suck. Gagging him, he realizes, and drives a third finger into himself, nursing the tail to keep back the urge to cry out.
“Stop at three,” Vincent says as he pushes off the headboard. He slides down till his knee is rubbing over Sephiroth’s side; his hand moves farther, petting along Sephiroth’s belly till it finds Sephiroth’s cock and draws it up between two firm buttocks.
Sephiroth sucks harder at Vincent’s tail, then gasps around it when he feels Vincent start to sink onto his cock. The man hitches himself down inch-by-inch, locking his legs around Sephiroth’s waist, the rocking motion fucking Sephiroth back on his own fingers. When he’s fully seated, he reaches between them and clips clamps to Sephiroth’s nipples; Sephiroth wheezes through his nose, careful not to bite down on the rounds of muscle in his mouth.
Vincent seems to appreciate that, pressing his mouth to the underside of Sephiroth’s jaw. But then something pulls at the clamps—there’s a chain between them, and Vincent stretches that taut before fastening it to the front of Sephiroth’s collar, ensuring that any movement will bite into his rapidly-swelling nipples. Sephiroth hisses in the back of his throat, then resumes his sucking as Vincent strokes his hands down Sephiroth’s arm, following it to the fingers buried between Sephiroth’s buttocks.
He pulls them out, then cuffs Sephiroth’s wrists behind him. Padded-leather, comfortable enough except for how the man’s twining himself around Sephiroth, deliberately jostling over the nipple clamps and clenching around Sephiroth’s cock, reinforcing how little say Sephiroth has in this. “Keep quiet,” Vincent whispers along his jaw.
The tail slides out of his mouth and then loops down his side and back. He senses where it’s going and cants his hips back, then pushes forward in spite of the pain in his nipples, kissing his groan into Vincent’s mouth as the spit-soaked tail tip presses into him. It’s more than enough of a replacement for his fingers as Vincent begins to languidly ride him.
He can muffle himself in Vincent’s lips, but after the first few minutes, Vincent stretches himself out of reach and Sephiroth ends up mouthing at Vincent’s throat and shoulder to keep his noises sufficiently soft. Vincent’s fingers slide into his hair again, pushing at the back of his head as Vincent increases the pace; Sephiroth rakes his teeth against Vincent’s shoulder, gasping. Then, when Vincent’s response is to press harder at his head, he bites down.
“Wet,” Vincent rasps over him. “Wet, come wet. Come.”
Sephiroth tastes Vincent’s blood in his mouth as he climaxes. By the time they’ve untangled from each other, the spot’s healed, but he laps it clean, and then does the same to where Vincent’s come has smeared up the man’s belly. Unbelievably, they’ve more or less kept it off the sheets, so after that he tucks his head into Vincent’s neck and falls asleep to Vincent massaging his unclamped nipples.
There are no marks in the morning, as promised, but Angeal still ends up giving Sephiroth a close look as the two of them sit at the kitchen table for breakfast; Vincent’s already left, since an afternoon departure time means he needs most of the morning to clear his work obligations. “You always have it this way, these days?” Angeal asks.
Sephiroth finds himself staring back at the other man, who looks a little wary but not as if he’s going to take back the question. “You’re referring to his cooking?”
“Well, that, yeah. I can see why you’re not terrifying the canteen workers for not opening earlier and closing later anymore,” Angeal says, putting his spoon back into his congee. He adds some more fried shallots and chili paste and stirs it in before taking a healthy bite. “Actually, why the hell do you even eat there anymore? This is much better.”
“He’s not my personal cook, Angeal. He has his own duties,” Sephiroth says dryly. “If I only ate what he cooks, he’d never be able to leave.”
“So you’re gonna keep eating canteen food with us commoners so you don’t fall out of practice, you mean,” Angeal says with a smile. He eats some more congee, making approving noises, and then lowers his spoon. He stares into his bowl for a moment. “But also…he really suits you, doesn’t he?”
“You still think he’s strange,” Sephiroth says, hearing the hesitation in the man’s voice.
“Yeah, I’m not…really going to get over that, but it doesn’t mean I can’t see how this is working for you, and be happy for you,” Angeal says. He looks up at Sephiroth, then smiles again, tense and wry, as he pushes back in his seat. “I don’t think he gives a damn whether I get over it either, which I can respect. Look, Seph, I’m sorry it’s been a shitshow. It was my problem with Gen and it’s not supposed to be everyone else’s.”
“‘Was’?” Sephiroth says, frowning. “What do you mean, was?”
Angeal’s mouth twists again. “You sure you want to talk about this?” he says. “I mean—I appreciate it. But you don’t have to, and—and it’s going to drag in Vincent, which is why I’ve been avoiding you. It shouldn’t, and I’m sorry, but it just—it’s like that.”
Throwing his bowl of congee would be a waste of both Vincent’s cooking and Angeal’s goodwill, Sephiroth thinks. Even if he walks it over to wherever Genesis is first. “Genesis is not in love with Vincent. Genesis is in love with being an overly dramatic—”
“He’s really damn interested in what Vincent’s doing to make you so much calmer these days,” Angeal mutters. He rubs his hand over his face. “He’s always thinking about it out loud, wondering how the man finally got you come around on—and I fucking told him, it wasn’t what we were doing, it was that we just didn’t work. If we did, we’d still be fucking, and we’re not, and if you’re getting what you want and need from him, then why the hell I—shit. Sorry. This is what I mean.”
They sit there for a few minutes. Angeal keeps looking as if he’s going to say more, so Sephiroth restrains himself, but the man never actually does. He grimaces and pushes his fingers in beside his nose, dragging the skin from his eyes so it highlights how bloodshot they are; last night’s change of setting doesn’t seem to have helped Angeal catch up on his sleep.
“Why?” Sephiroth finally asks. Then he lifts his hand as Angeal starts to answer. “Why does he want to bring me back into it? He doesn’t want me. He’s in love with you.”
“I don’t know about that these days,” Angeal mutters. And then shrugs helplessly when Sephiroth looks sharply at him. “He doesn’t want you. You’re right. But he’s so fucking stuck on whether I still want you, and I’m—I don’t actually think it matters to him what my opinion is on that. He just wants to think that.”
“He wants to think that you want me, so if he works out why I’m attracted to Vincent, that will help you win me over?” Sephiroth parses out.
“Well, it’s Gen, were you expecting logic?” Angeal says, voice rich with weary, familiar frustration. Then he shakes himself and starts to push back from the table. “I’ll deal with him. I just—I needed some space so I wouldn’t just blow up at him again, but—”
“Do you still want me?” Sephiroth asks.
Angeal shuts his mouth and stares at Sephiroth. Then he slowly sits back down, his brows drawing together over his nose.
“Some days I wonder if we have any idea how fucked-up we are,” Angeal says, almost conversationally.
“Ang—”
“Yeah, no, I know why you’re asking that. You’re not propositioning me, you’re just sorting all the facts out so you can solve this, because that’s what you do. That’s why you’re the head of SOLDIER,” Angeal mutters. He slumps back, his head tilting so that he briefly stares at the ceiling. Then he drops his chin with a sigh. “You’re beautiful, Sephiroth. I’d fuck you again. I don’t want to be with you. And you don’t want that again either. I just…maybe I wonder if it was me. It was early on and we still were trying to figure out what we were doing—trying. We didn’t know yet.”
“That’s what he’s picking up on,” Sephiroth says after a long moment. “Your wondering that. He doesn’t actually want it, he’s only going with what he thinks matters to you.”
Angeal tilts his head back again, then looks at Sephiroth for a while.
“You think?” he says skeptically. “I think he just wants to be the tragic one with the broken heart, and I’m fucking tired of getting stuck in that play. Fine, I fucked up too, letting him know I’m still think—”
“It didn’t work because I was bored, Angeal,” Sephiroth says sharply. He watches as the other man blinks and straightens up and then looks more closely at him. “You’re right. I know now what it’s like when I’m completely engaged, and you have to be for that to work. I was bored when we tried it. I…am not trying to insult you…”
“Oh,” Angeal says. His mouth twitches, and then he laughs but cuts that off.
It’s rough enough that Sephiroth starts to tell him—but before he can, Angeal shakes his head. He looks into the distance for a moment, rueful and tired in equal measures, and then lets out the rest of the laugh.
“No, it’s fine. I just…I was afraid I did something wrong, because we were so fucking young, and it’s not like anyone was really looking out for us and this healing we’ve got isn’t supposed to be an excuse to…but I’ll take bored, believe me,” he says, with a deep breath at the end as if he’s surfacing from underwater.
Then he subsides into a short silence. It’s far more comfortable than the preceding ones and Sephiroth’s considering leaving matters there, but Angeal stirs as he starts to pick up his bowl.
“I could tell him that, but I’m still not sure he’s going to buy it,” Angeal says, sounding morose again. “Same if you said that to him. He’s just stuck on this—obsessed with Vincent. I mean, I’m used to him obsessing over you at this point, but we grew up that way. Now he’s adding in Vincent and I just—I’m tired of it. I can’t anymore.”
He looks at Sephiroth and Sephiroth completely believes him. And yet…he knows both of them, and he can’t see them apart. Perhaps that’s his own biases getting in the way, but he’s not certain of that either.
More time. They need more time to work through this. “You can stay here tonight, but you both need to at least try to make it less obvious in the office,” Sephiroth says. “I sent him an email along those lines.”
Angeal blinks hard. “What’d he say?”
Even in this mood, Angeal can’t hide the interest in his eyes, and that’s part of why they need more time. Angeal clearly isn’t thinking about what he actually wants, only what he’d like to get away from, and Sephiroth needs time to think about how to bring the man back around. “He just sent me a read receipt, and then filed all of his overdue reports.”
“Fucking Gen,” Angeal mutters, shaking his head. “Well…look, I won’t make it harder for you than it already is. Just give me my orders and I’ll show up, General.”
Which is about as good as Sephiroth can leave it, at that point. He does see Genesis later that day, as part of scheduled meetings, and the man is tense but uncharacteristically lowkey about it. Angeal and Genesis have one meeting together and Genesis spends the entire time staring at Angeal, who ignores him; neither of them drop any leading comments and while the others in the meeting are uneasy, they seem happy enough to pretend they don’t notice it.
That night he and Angeal don’t eat dinner together; they pull what leftovers they want out of the fridge and Sephiroth eats in the kitchen, working on his tablet, while Angeal does the same in the living room. Sephiroth stays up late clearing out his inbox, then moves restlessly around in bed till he finally dozes off.
He’s much more comfortable upon waking, with a familiar body sitting up in bed next to him. “Angeal seems to think he owes me an apology,” Vincent says, reading something on his tablet. “He stopped me on my way in.”
Sephiroth grimaces and starts to push himself up on his arms. “I told him to w—”
Vincent glances at him, then at the bandage half-visible under the man’s sleeping robe that Sephiroth is staring at. Then Vincent reaches under the robe and pulls at the bandage, unraveling it from his shoulder. The first few rounds are dry and unstained, but then dark bluish-black spots turn the cloth brittle-looking. “Antiseptic,” he says. “It’s healed. It was my wing, and if it’s injured when it merges back into me, it’s…a different healing cycle.”
“I thought you said this was a nuisance matter,” Sephiroth says.
“It was.” Vincent isn’t exactly uncomfortable, his gaze steady enough as he looks at Sephiroth, but he is giving off a faint air of…wistfulness. As if he’d wished he’d thought more about this point before coming home. “I was very irritated with myself for forgetting to account for a few things.”
If Shinra could have mitigated that, Sephiroth’s tempted to start. But he doesn’t, because that way lies more internal horse-trading and Vincent might have forgotten a few details but he never forgets the cost something like that carries. Nor does Sephiroth.
He does sit up and look for himself, which Vincent was expecting, hence the bandage removal. All he sees is smooth, pale skin with the lightest of scars outlining what could have been a shrapnel wound, jagged and uneven. The muscle under it feels firm enough, and when he rotates the shoulder, the joint moves smoothly.
“Does he owe me an apology?” Vincent asks, and when Sephiroth blinks, he raises a brow. “You told him to wait.”
“I…didn’t mean that, I meant generally about the situation,” Sephiroth mutters. He’s still testing Vincent’s shoulder; he doesn’t need to keep doing that and he’s annoyed with himself when he realizes that. “He thinks you’re getting pulled into his fight with Rhapsodos.”
“Not due to his efforts, I take it,” Vincent says dryly.
Sephiroth starts to agree, then pauses. He could leave it here, he thinks; he knows Vincent well enough now to guess the man won’t push. But that doesn’t mean the man isn’t interested, and if he is—and if Sephiroth is reluctant to tell him, that feels as if Sephiroth is buying into all of this nonsense. He doesn’t like the situation, but that shouldn’t mean it bothers him, or that it affects how he behaves with others. He doesn’t think Vincent will be offended either.
“Genesis is so obsessed with our relationship that he’s driven Angeal away,” Sephiroth finds himself saying. He pauses, but Vincent looks exactly the same, attentive without displaying eagerness or disgust. “He wants to know what it is you do that has me so enthralled.”
The side of Vincent’s mouth quirks up. He rolls the used bandage into a tight ball, tucking the ends in with his thumb, and then flicks it across the bed and into a wastebin near the wall. “Does Angeal want tips?”
From anyone else it’d be a snide comment. From Vincent…Sephiroth cocks his head. “Angeal knows what he’s doing—how do you—”
“Rhapsodos occasionally shows marks. Flaunts them, to be accurate,” Vincent says, the same way he comments on satellite recon photos. “Are you worried they can’t work together anymore?”
“Yes,” Sephiroth says after a long moment. “But also I know them well enough to say this isn’t what either of them truly want. I’ve known them longer than anyone else at Shinra besides my mother—even Rufus wasn’t allowed to see us until we were all already Firsts. They’ve always gravitated towards each other—they’ve always had problems with each other. You’re only a smokescreen for all of that.”
“Does Angeal want to talk to me?” Vincent says.
Not quite the same question, Sephiroth realizes, and cuts off his initial reply. “Do you want to?” he asks.
“I rarely decide what to do based on what I want—it’s whether it’ll push things in the direction I wish, or it won’t,” Vincent says. “Do you think it will? Because I’ll help you.”
“Not Angeal,” Sephiroth interprets, and doesn’t take offense when Vincent inclines his head. The two men are civil to each other but they’re not natural confidants, nor does Sephiroth put much weight on that. They both keep their word once given and that matters more.
“He didn’t ask me for that,” Vincent adds after a moment. “In all fairness to him.”
Sephiroth nods and keeps studying the man. Sometimes, as much as he appreciates Vincent’s perpetual calm, he wishes he understood it better. He’s not particularly prone to heightened emotions himself, but looking at Vincent can feel like looking at a natural phenomenon, rather than a person. He might not think like normal people, but he’s been trained to analyze how they think. Which is why he can’t simply be relieved at how Vincent’s taking it. He’s not used to not understanding someone.
“Angeal’s always been kinder,” Sephiroth finds himself saying, unprompted. “Somehow it hasn’t been burnt out of him, despite what we’ve been through. That takes force of will. And even if he drives me to madness, Genesis has never pretended to see me for what I wasn’t. This is what I don’t understand—why can’t he see Angeal like that? Why does he make the man into things he knows Angeal will hate?”
“He’s not in love with you,” Vincent says.
Sephiroth snorts. “Is that what love does to people? I’ve been told so—I find that irrational. I have to agree with Mother there.”
“It depends on the person, from what I’ve seen,” Vincent says, still unruffled. “This isn’t answering my question. Sephiroth, if you want me to help him, I’ll help him. My job consists of drawing people out to where I need them to be, and this is no different.”
Something about how he says that makes Sephiroth look more closely at him, but Vincent is still the same. “All I have to do is ask,” Sephiroth says, sounding skeptical, even though he knows Vincent wouldn’t make a false offer.
“I believe in your judgment. If you tell me it matters, it doesn’t make sense to ignore it,” Vincent says.
That makes sense. It’s entirely rational, and somehow Sephiroth thinks he’d hesitate less if the man was less rational and more emotional. But he also makes decisions based on what will achieve the goal, not on his feelings. “Then yes, I’d be interested if you can get him to talk to you,” he finally says. “If it helps me understand this.”
“I’ll let you know,” Vincent says, and then he tugs his robe back over his shoulder. He pauses, hand still on the collar, and raises his brows at Sephiroth as Sephiroth catches the hem. “Not insisting I eat first?”
“Did you?” Sephiroth says, as he flicks at the robe’s folds, making it skip off part of Vincent’s chest. Then he lets his fingers drift across Vincent’s skin as Vincent’s gaze refocuses, turning entirely subjective as it lingers on Sephiroth’s mouth. This much about the man, he has worked out. “Do I need to start asking every time you come back injured?”
Vincent snorts, then lets his hand drop off his shoulder as Sephiroth leans over him, moving it to curl loosely over Sephiroth’s bicep instead. He doesn’t bother to reply, and Sephiroth doesn’t bother to check the door before he presses their mouths together.
* * *
It sounds pretty insane when Angeal first hears it, but the longer he sits with the idea, the more it grows on him. Which also worries him, and so he almost goes straight to Sephiroth to ask what the hell Valentine is thinking. Except he’s fucked with the man’s life enough lately, and anyway, Valentine didn’t suggest it. Angeal did, and the man just said he could see how that’d work, with that eerie flat calm of his, and that’s when it stopped being a shitty joke Angeal was making to cut the tension and started being an actual idea.
“I can’t,” Zack says when Angeal asks if he can just switch back to Zack’s couch for a night. “I—sorry, seriously, but Cloud and Tifa are—”
He’d told Angeal they were coming weeks ago. “Shit, I forgot. Sorry.”
“It’s fine, I know you’ve got stuff on your mind. Look, I don’t have a couch free now but—you want to talk about it?” Zack offers. “Whatever it is?”
Absolutely not. The kid’s coming along well, but one thing about surviving what Angeal’s survived with an intact sense of morality, Angeal’s never doing certain things that happened to him to anyone else. “Thanks, but you’re not getting this one, Fair.”
“I…can’t say I’m unhappy about that, from what I do know. But—but look, Ang, I think you need to talk to somebody. I don’t know if Seph’s too busy or mad at you for me or…but there’s got to be somebody you can talk to,” Zack presses. “You can’t just keep this in, it’s not healthy.”
Which he’s right about. Needing to talk to someone, not Sephiroth being unavailable. But Angeal is not going to Sephiroth, he’s not going back to Valentine, and the only other person who’d even begin to understand his mind right now without getting traumatized from it is…
“This is not why I thought you’d finally stopped avoiding me,” Genesis says flatly.
“Yeah, well, you think a lot of wrong things about me lately,” Angeal snaps, and then he bites his lip. He hates being like this; he doesn’t want to be this kind of person, lurking behind his friends and depending on them for favors, acting like an asshole. And yet he can’t seem to shake himself out of it. “Anyway, it fucking answers your question, doesn’t it? You wanted to know what the hell he does, he can fucking show you and then you can figure out whether it was just a fantasy or what you’re really after.”
Genesis draws in a sharp breath, but strangely, doesn’t follow it with sharp words. He’s been oddly reserved this time—sure, he’s stalked Angeal all over Shinra, but he hasn’t destroyed a single room or sent anyone to medical while trying to get Angeal’s attention. And now, of all things, he looks like he really wishes he hadn’t started all of this, when he never regrets a damn thing.
Angeal likes that about him—liked that. They start out from such a compromised position, with the experimental therapies and Shinra’s machinations and all the people they’ve lost along the way, that not giving a fuck makes a kind of sense Angeal has always wished he could emulate. But right now, with that look on Genesis’ face, it just touches him off.
“Or are you going to tell me you just made that up? Weeks and weeks of it, of me telling you to stop,” Angeal bites out.
“Please,” Genesis says, and then stops. He looks like he doesn’t know how to use that word, for a moment, and then he settles his shoulders behind it. “Angeal, please—if you are going to talk to me, just let me say—one thing first. One thing.”
“You’ve said that before,” Angeal mutters.
“I know,” Genesis says quietly, and then he waits. He actually waits.
Angeal wants to leave anyway, but he…jerks his chin for the man to go on. “I didn’t make it up,” Genesis says, stiff and unflinching, without his usual flourishes. “I did want to know. But if that really is an offer—it’s not that I want to see them. I—I left out that I wanted you to be there. I don’t want it without you. The entire reason I want it is for you.”
“Well, why? I don’t want him, damn it—neither of us want to restart anything, so why you’re always—”
“Because I didn’t think you’d even listen otherwise. You like him better, you always—” Genesis exhales harshly “—I wanted you to know what I wanted, and I did that poorly. I admit that. But you should know that’s why. It’s not because I want you with him.”
“Just, what do you want, exactly? Me fucking him to show you how much I don’t want you? What the hell is that, Gen?” Angeal says helplessly.
“No, I—I want you to want me. That’s always what it’s been, always. And if you have him when he actually wants you, but you still come back…” Genesis’ voice twists in on itself, rich with loathing “...but I’m a fool. You don’t need to tell me, Angeal, I know.”
But Angeal doesn’t want to tell him that. Which is the problem a lot of the time, Angeal thinks, looking at the other man. He doesn’t want to, so Genesis never admits it to himself, so they both keep making the same mistakes. Sometimes he thinks Sephiroth stepped back from the two of them because the man just couldn’t stand watching such idiocy.
He knows that’s not true—if Sephiroth thought they were that stupid, he wouldn’t fight alongside them—but he thinks that, and can’t immediately push it out of his head. “What exactly do I have to do to make you believe me?” he finally says. “Because I’ve tried. I’ve tried, and now I’m tired of trying.”
“It’s not your turn for that, Angeal. I can admit that too,” Genesis says, still very quiet. He’s looking very intently at Angeal, his hands in flexing fists at his hips. “It’s mine. When you left—I’ve been trying to ask you ever since. What do you want from me, Angeal? And don’t make this about your pride, because it’s already—whatever you want, it’s yours. I just haven’t known how to give it to you.”
“Still insulting me, even when you’re begging,” Angeal says after a moment. Genesis winces, and the defeated air the man has is what ultimately convinces him. Nothing ever beats the man, not Heidegger, not Shinra, not even Sephiroth’s effortless superiority. “I…want you to act like you’re mine for once. Act like I’m the only damn one in the room for you. I’m not a fucking selfish asshole, Gen, but you make me…you do that. Only you, and so for once, however good Valentine is at laying Sephiroth out, I want to know you believe I’ll come back to you. I want you to at least pretend like you do. Can you do that?”
Genesis’ head is already up but the way the man tenses, Angeal sees a phantom head-snap in him. If he just looked like that all the time, and Angeal could believe that…
“Yes,” Genesis says. “Yes. If you let me—if I can, I’ll prove it to you. It won’t just be an act.”
Angeal wants to believe it. He does, but he’s still feeling like a field of charred earth. “Fine. One more time. Now stop fucking chasing me around so we don’t have the entire company in on it.”
Genesis nods tightly. He pauses, then takes a step towards the door. Then another, turning with this one. He lets himself out and as soon as the door shuts behind him, Angeal blows his breath out and drops into the nearest seat. He stares at the wall for a while.
He’s going to have to go talk to Vincent again, he thinks. The man did just say he could see how that’d work, not that he’d agreed to it. And then Sephiroth, and even as Angeal’s cringing over it, he knows he’s going to. He can’t help himself that way. “Fuck.”
* * *
“Your annual off-site,” Vincent says. “It’s the only time the three of you are scheduled to be on vacation at the same time, and we should include padding for any issues that come up.”
“Where you’re going to fuck me in front of them, and Angeal is going to assist, so Genesis can overcome his insecurities,” Sephiroth summarizes, putting down his cup of coffee. Thankfully, he hadn’t started drinking it when Vincent had begun to update him on the talks with Angeal. “I’m starting to see why he went through you to ask me.”
Vincent doesn’t have any such qualms about his tea, and absently sips at it as he looks at Sephiroth. “He didn’t. He’s going to ask you himself, but he wanted to talk to me separately. I thought you might want advance notice.”
Sephiroth suppresses the urge to snort. He’s not amused at Angeal; he doesn’t even think he’s that amused at the general situation, but sometimes Vincent’s deadpan can’t be responded to in any other way. “Do you think it’d work?”
“I would have told him so if I did, and he wouldn’t have pushed it any further,” Vincent says. He lowers his cup to the table. “What he laid out makes sense in context of their issues, which is the context that matters.”
“Well, and us?” Sephiroth can’t help asking. He’s not insecure, but there is enough about Vincent he still doesn’t know that the words slip out.
“I think I can make you like it,” Vincent says without even blinking. His tone is as cool and smooth as the flat of Masamune’s blade, as he goes on. “You like Angeal better, but Genesis rubs you raw like few others do. I think you’d like seeing him put in his place, and you’d like it even better if Angeal was using you to do it. He was very clear about that, it’s not about trying to have you. It’s about using you as a tool to make his point to Genesis, and you’re going to be sitting on my cock the entire time, because I’m not giving you over to him in any case. You’ll be there because I’m allowing it.”
All the air in the room suddenly turns still and thick, as if it’s been replaced by cotton wadding that holds Sephiroth perfectly in place. When he finally shakes himself, he feels a bead of sweat rolling down his throat, even though the air conditioning is functioning. “If I’d known we were discussing it this way, I would have done this in my office instead of calling you over here.”
Vincent smiles as he picks up his tea again. “I can do that, but I haven’t committed yet. Before I do, I want to know: do you want it?”
“You are—” Sephiroth stops himself. He has another meeting in here in ten minutes; they’re in this damn room in an entirely different building from his office because otherwise he’d have to wait till the end of the day to speak to Vincent. “You talked him into this?”
“No, I only let him talk himself into it,” Vincent says between sips. “And then, apparently, talk Genesis into it. You said it yourself, they gravitate towards each other. They were always going to have to find the solution themselves, even if we help with it.”
“I want to,” Sephiroth says after a long moment of consideration. “I want them to work this out. And I want you to do this—and for you to have me afterward.”
Vincent gets up from his seat and leans forward. He’s still over a yard away, but it feels as if he’s breathing right in Sephiroth’s face, with how hot Sephiroth’s skin is flushing under the man’s gaze. “I wouldn’t agree to this if I didn’t think that would be the case,” he says. “I don’t need to prove what I already know, so I don’t mind helping you with them. I think Angeal’s going to raise this at dinner. Do you want me there?”
“Yes,” Sephiroth says. Then swallows roughly, and as Vincent nods and steps out, he tries to remember what this next damn meeting is about.