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Title: Lovers
Rating: Strong R or NC-17 *
yadotta kotosae kami wa yurusenaito omoi It's a strange thing when your best friend -- your only friend, really -- takes a lover. You go down for lunch one day, and while you're wait in line for your food -- you do wait in line, unlike the other officers who cut to the front, because not only is the food not so great, but because the men respect you more for it. One officer privilege you do exercise, though, is the right to reserve a table as solely yours, and tradition has it that the table facing the cafeteria door is yours. You usually eat lunch with Zack there. You sit and pick over your food and listen to him bitch about said food, the stupidity of other officers, the inanity of Shinra management, how bad his lay was last night, and by the end, he's usually got you smothering your laughter underneath the table. . . This time, he's brought this boy, a pretty blonde thing with big blue eyes and a soft mouth that never really seems to stop moving be it talking or laughing or nibbling on food that he's swiped from Zack's plate. When Zack introduces you, he doesn't look away from those shiny eyes, and when the boy brings his hand to his lips, you know that Zack wants to brush those pink fingers away and kiss that limber mouth. You kissed Zack only once. It was five, six months after you first met him, on a mission somewhere. It was the first time you spent any length of time with him, and afterwards, the two of you were sitting up on the observatory roof, drinking warm beer in the hot summer night. You were in shorts, no shirt, and he was sitting across from you, so, you could see the gleam around his lips where sudden impulse, light catching on the slick spots and outlining the fine, proud lines of his mouth against the moon. And probably becuase you hadn't had any for a week or two, you leaned over and kissed him. Trailed fingers across the back of his neck, run your hand through his hair, pushed your tongue into his mouth, and felt him moan against you. He'd kissed you back, then, long and slow and so good that you started easing his boxers down over his hips. Then he pulled away from you and went back to drinking his beer. He grinned at you and said, "Sorry, Seph. I've seen what happens to those boys you bring back, and I really don't want to end up that way." You'd blinked hard at him, wondering if your tastes were that obvious, wondering whether you should kill him and be done with it, when he'd smiled back at you so companionably that you couldn't say anything, much less do anything. So you went back to your beer, puzzled about sex and relationships for the first time in years, in fact. It was the first time anybody'd ever rejected you, and your lust for him got so bad that you couldn't look at him for days afterwards until you got into the City and found someone. Even then, it was awkward. You'd lain in bed, listening to him breathe in the bunk below, unable to sleep because you wanted to be inside him so badly, but eventually, it settled down into a pleasant buzz in your bones, a sensitivity to his movements that was altogether nice. He'd bailed you out a couple times, helped you dispose of certain items, and now, here he was, introducing his sweetheart to you. On the fine, infinitely graded scale of Zack behavior, he regarded sex as something that happened between consenting adults that was disposed of at night and never mingled with business. That he'd choose a boy from work, bring him to lunch, look at him that way, touch -- Well. "Seph, this is Cloud. Cloud, this is Sephiroth. Play nice with each other now." You touch Cloud's hand, never taking your eyes off his for a moment. * You don't really talk to Cloud until weeks later, on a cold, windy night when the rain batters the windows and you've retired to your room with a stack of paperwork and a cup of hot tea. Zack's out on some outer-rim patrol duty, doing rounds with the men, so you actually do get some reading done, and then, Cloud drops to ask where Zack is since he wants to return a book he's borrowed from Zack. Cloud has the book in one hand, and you recognize it's one you gave to Zack as a present. He's never read it, and when you gave it to him, you knew he would never read it, but you saw it in the market and couldn't resist it and had bought it for yourself. That was life before Zack. Later, at the birthday party he'd inexplicably invited you to, you realized that it was customary to give a gift, and you'd snatched the first thing off your shelf. It's a volume on the history of the planet, bound in calfskin leather with gold embossing and creamy yellow pages. Cloud's pale fingers stand out against the dark brown covering, particularly his fourth finger, encircled by a heavy, antique silver ring. From seeing it on Zack's hands, you know that it's worked with bands of engraving to show wolves chasing deer through the forest. It's a man's ring, made for someone with thick knuckles and strong fingers, so it weighs heavily on Cloud's rather fragile-looking hands. "D'you know where Zack is?" Cloud asks you. "I don't know," you answer. Being in SOLDIER has put some muscle on him, broadened his shoulders and straightened his posture, but he's still got that same naiive innocence, that tentative awkwardness and painful gangliness that's always associated with sixteen. He's standing up straight now, and stuck together at the hip, but when you talk to Zack, you know that Cloud's watching you with an intensity that makes Zack shoot you this rueful half-grin. You'd have to be stupid not to figure things out, to not know just where you stand in Cloud's worldview, so in that way, he's just like the hundreds of other boys who've joined SOLDIER and the dozens who've ended up in your room in the middle of the night with some excuse in hand. But he's the first one that Zack's liked this much. Though, in all honesty, if you've got any idea of how Cloud operates, the boy probably has no idea just why he's standing in your room right now. Probably some sudden impulse, but nevertheless, he's there, wearing the standard recruit t-shirt with the sleeves raggedly cut off and black shorts. He won't look at you except for sudden flashes of brazenness when he'll stare at you for a full quarter of a second before yanking his gaze away, and then his cheeks will color. It's almost imperceptible in this half-light, but nevertheless, there is that faint flush. Then he realizes that you're watching him, and he'll forcefully fight down the blush. You'll look away, and he'll go back to fidgeting for a bit, not daring to leave, not daring to do anything except steal another look at you. That makes him blush again and. . . After a few more repetitions of this, you decide that this innocence is actually kind of appealing. Most other boys, they'd be on their knees in front of you know. You put your book down and stand up out of your chair and walk towards him. At this point in the cycle, he's not looking at you and is rather intently studying the boards underneath his feet, but a creak of the floor alerts him, and his head snaps upward. He literally freezes. He stops breathing, a fine line of sweat springs up on his forehead, and when you get even closer, you can see that his pupils are dilated so much that you can barely see the blue around the rims. When you put your book down, you touch his arm, just the lightest of brushes, and he starts breathing in quick, fast pants. You trace the curves that muscle has put on his frame, and you follow his collarbones to the hollow of his throat. You can feel his throat trembling underneath your mouth, and you bite, gently, nipping, so as not to leave any marks for Zack to find. Cloud has sweet, almost honey-like smell, and you leave a small trail of damp kisses from his collarbones up to his jaw. When Cloud sighs and rubs gently against you, you do smile at Cloud, as much out of amusement as to see the blush that starts somewhere around his collarbones and moves upwards in slow, steady front. He turns his face away from you, but you catch his mouth in a kiss that makes his eyelids drift half-closed in pleasure.. He's pretty good at the kissing, and you wonder, with a sudden flicker of heat, whether Zack's been giving him lessons. You're pretty sure that Zack's never given him this, you decide, with a smile on your lips as you settle on your knees in front of him and ease his shorts down past his hips. And as he comes in your mouth, those taut muscles straining against your mouth, * The first time you have him, it's in the storage room. He's told you that Zack was the first male lover he ever had, and you're fairly sure that Zack's never done this to him. The thought makes you smile as you move inside him. . . He's so smooth and tight, and he moves back against you, so slowly, so carefully, that it. And the noises he makes when you push in deeper, and you can hear yourself murmuring to him, keeping him calm with a voice raspy with arousal and hearing him answer with words that're spiked with pain. You're fairly sure that he's crying, ou can still see the white tendons stretched underneath the tan skin of his right hand that's gripping the edge of the packing carton. He's stuffed the other hand in his mouth. Still, the occaisional sob does get out, and the way his back arcs and contracts with each time, eyes squeezed tight against the pain. . . This is where you usually either walk away from them or make sure they never walk again, but as you lean down to put Cloud's clothes next to him, for when he comes out of this fit, you find yourself trailing fingers along those milky-smooth collarbones, up the trembling throat and to his cheeks, streaked and damp with tears. His eyelashes, thick and full and inexplicably dark, are stuck to his cheek. When you touch him, even this lightly, he whimpers -- but he does leans upwards into your fingers even as another tear wells up, and he says something like, "Don't go." You look down at him. You've put bruises up and down his sides, and there are some bruises that are clearly handprints, but most of them are from the fact that you've asked his trainers to push him extra hard and to put him against the more advanced students when it comes time for sparring practice. When you went to spar with him, you ended up breaking his leg in two places and had to carry him to the Infirmary in your arms. Word is getting around that being Sephiroth's favorite is like signing up for broken bones. It's a convenient way to quiet talk about just how much time you spend with him. He's pushed himself up into a kneeling position, and since he does appear to be all right, you turn around to go. And then, you flick one last glance at him, and in return, he actually shrugs, one of those little gestures that's supposed to signify indifference when, inside, he's actually shaking so hard that he's afraid he's going to fly apart. . . For some reason, that little bit of bravado touches you. You run a hand across his forehead, and he leans into your palm like a child, all innocence, and you actually feel his tremors quiet underneath your touch. You crouch down next to him. He smiles at you, a pained gesture, tosses his head, and starts to turn away, and you run an examaning hand down has back. There wasn't as much bleeding as you'd thought there would be, really, except for where he's bitten through his lip. He seems fine, albeit terrified and overwhelmed, but trying desperately to make up for it. When you're done examining him, you let your fingers linger around his lips, and then he kisses your fingers and presses his cheek to your collarbones. You tuck your arms around him and let him lean close to you. After a while, he stops shaking and simply leans against you, not sleeping, but eyes closed in exhaustion. You can, however, still hear the hammering of his heart. It's in complete disconcert with his slow, steady breathing, but you gently press your lips against his forehead and breathe in the tangled scents of sweat, come and tears laced with a little blood. He normally has this marvellous sweet, like soap and clean laundry, and if you concentrate, you can still pick up little bits of it, even though it's mostly lost in the other smells. * It's strange really, the fragments and moments that constitute your relationship with Cloud. You don't see him all that has that same bizarre intensity. Sometimes, when Zack is out on patrol, Cloud will come into your room, and afterwards, when you hold him, you wonder what it must be like to sleep all night in someone else's arms. Not that Cloud spends all night in your arms, and he doesn't even spend that much time in Zack's, though you did notice when they put in and recieved a weekend leave to go to one of the hot springs. You saw them off And now, two days after they come back, Zack shows up in your office and demands to know what the hell is going on, just why the hell you're beating the living crap out of Cloud on a regular basis. The ironic thing is that he knows, full well, just how things stand, that things don't exactly end with just judo throws and sword practice. He has to, though, because the walls in your office are very thin, and there are a pair of secretaries sitting outside. You can see, in his eyes, that he's already asked Cloud to stop and found it to be a monumental waste of breath. Now, he's come to you, one hand resting on the table, the other lingering on his sword. You think, just in the back of your mind, that you could break his neck before he even drew the thing; it would be absurdly easy just to reach up and snap it. You think you could almost do it with one hand around the back of his neck. But, nevertheless, your heart is wedged up around your Adam's apple, so if he slits your throat right now, it would fall out and hit the table. It's a nice change, really, from feeling like you don't have a heart at all, and Zack's practically shaking with rage. "I don't think you know how bad you're hurting Cloud, Sephiroth," he says. "You broke two of his bones the other day on the practice matt, and I'm sure I haven't seen the worst of things yet. He won't tell me exactly what you do to him, but at night, he'll start shaking and trembling. . . "And you know what, he loves you all the more for it. Sephiroth, you've got this way about you that makes what you do to other people all right. It's why I won't let you. . . why I can't get close to you, and it's why you're going to kill Cloud someday. You're hurting him plenty now; I'm just waiting for you to cross the line." You look -- just look -- at him for a moment, and then, you lean back in your chair. " If you're so afraid I'm going to kill him," you say to him, loosely folding your hands in front of you, "then stay. Watch us sometime." Zack backs away, his mouth half-open and struggling for words. Eventually, he turns and runs, nearly stumbling in his haste to get out of your office, but you're almost giddy with a sudden emotion that squeezes your heart and makes you smile for the first time in a long, long time. It's so sweet that But, later, when you're on your knees with Cloud deep in your mouth, his hips moving slowly in time to Zack, who's inside of him from behind. . . Later, you pause for a moment with something like sadness, you realize that something's definitely ended. You barely understood it, yet there's something closing about your heart. . . It feels, it feels a little like regret. A wistfulness, maybe, an ache and emptiness for the passage of something you didn't understand and appreciate. You savor the emotion for a bit, then let it go. * end * Heh. Cloud's a lucky and *brazen* little slut, isn't he? Comments to anasile@aol.com |