Lamentations

*Unexpected smut in this chapter. ^_^ I didn’t even think this would come out, but it did. Enjoy!*

Lamentations
Chapter One
Cloud’s Secret

It was late. My eyes roamed the pages of a book of a forgotten subject but did not absorb the words as they glided by. Cid had thrown a wrench into my dynamic—twisted as it was—and it was all I could think about. Could I kill him? Oh yes, but would I? Would he dare risk it? I felt like I was playing chicken with the man. Pathetic.

I have to admit the knock startled me. It was a hesitant one. He had been standing outside my door for some time now, debating. I didn’t move. If it was who I thought it was then he would peek in and see I didn’t care for nor minded much his company. Anyone else (Cid perhaps?) would just walk away, uninterested in what a monster like myself would have to say.

Cloud found the door unlocked and stood awkwardly in the threshold. What he thought of me with the book in hand, calmly stretched out on my sheets doing my best to look uninterested but not annoyed was beyond my power to know. The door was achingly open, and it was one thing I suppose that could be called a pet peeve of mine: a lack of privacy.

“Get in or get out,” I told him quietly after a moment of silence. Cloud quickly shut the door behind him and kind of frowned.

“How did you know?”

“About…?”

“The mansion.”

Cloud had already poured out his soul before me. It seemed that he had taken up a sort of confidence in me, though I neither offered nor needed such confessions. I silently listened to him however, and only when he cornered me in conversation did I offer any consolation or advice. I never gave him what he wanted; a piece of my soul. Some connection other than the physical I suppose. No, he was weak on the inside, despite his youth and vigor, full of supple muscles and a surprising strength, submissive streak aside. That kind of bond held no interest for me. Lucrecia was dead proof that I had a lack of ability to protect those I love. Loyalty lead to obsession, and obsession causes one to break Turk rules.

He didn’t know that I too spent years in that hole, nurturing a cold passive scorn for the world. Foolish boy. I knew exactly where and how those missing five years of his life were spent. How he coped was much different, but then again the high exposure to Mako warped his mind, so a combination of suppressed memory and poison from both Jenova and the Planet turned him into something both strong and weak; broken and reforged.

“You honestly think that Hojo sullied his hands with just yours and Zach’s blood?” I finally asked. Selfish, foolish boy.

Cloud wanted to know more, I could see it, but he had learned that I do not yield when I do not wish it. Selfish, foolish and even arrogant at times… but not stupid. I often wondered if he would have cast himself blindly to Tifa If I had only not let my unfounded and long suppressed lust get the best of me in his moment of weakness. It had surprised me when he kept coming back—affirming his bisexuality. Affirming mine.

Don’t get me wrong, he was a very masculine personality. Why he was so humble with me was beyond me. Maybe it was because I was so cruel to him the first time. Was it because I was older? No, it might have been that I had more experience.

And suddenly with a question on Cloud’s sweet lips, Cid invaded my thoughts again. Had he found out anything about Cloud? Did he know we shared a similar scar, and would he use it against us?

Us? The thought of loyalty to anything but an idea sickened me these days. Lucrecia and Hojo showed me how stupid loyalty was. I didn’t like the idea of “loyalty” to Cloud of all people in the slightest. Not in the romantic sense anyway.

“—tomorrow?” Cloud was saying.

“Hm?” I asked, returning from the dark murk of my thoughts.

“Are you coming with me tomorrow? Out near Corel.”

“What’s in Corel?”

“Some really good Materia I hear,” he told me, leaning against the bedposts. “Frankly, I think we’re lacking in that department. We’re not ready for Sephiroth.”

Tell me Vincent… is my son alive?

“Is Cid coming?” I found myself asking. What was wrong with me?

“Yeah.” Duh, he was saying. We had a battling balance against the hostile monsters sprouting up around the globe. Why should we throw it off? Stupid question. “Why? He always comes.”

“Of course,” I agreed faintly. That was going to be awkward…

Sephiroth is dead.
“Are you alright?” Cloud asked, seeing my brow deepen.

I turned the question around. “Are you alright?” He came here for something, no doubt. Best let the attention stay on his problems.

“You care… or something?”

Tricky. Touchy. He struck a sour note with that one. No, I really didn’t, and he had picked up on it. His voice was soothing and hearing his pain gave me a cruel pride in my own self control that was set in steel. A selfish act on my part surely—letting him put himself down under the pretense of understanding to make myself feel even a little better. I suppose it made me a subconscious bully. Evil Vincent—manipulating and scheming under layer after layer of subterfuge. I was a horrible person—I wasn’t even deserving of the title person. Monster. Hateful monster. I was just too ashamed to announce it.

“Answer me,” I ordered. If Cloud had a weakness in this room, it was most certainly my commands. I’m not sure if it was a turn on for him, or just his submissive streak shining through, but he absolutely obeyed my every whim once past the threshold if given in a firm and domineering tone. Idiot. I’m just as weak as you and yet you bend over backwards for me! You’re too good for me, though why I can’t say…

“Why do they even listen to me?” Cloud was saying, distressed in his own quiet little fury. “They know it all—you most of all. I’m… not a SOLDIER. I never was. I mean, are they just used to listening to me or something…?”

Was he talking to me when he opened up or was he talking to himself? My presence surely couldn’t have made that much of a difference. Oh well. Cloud, be weak—let me drink in your foolishness that you hide to give me strength. Hideous, evil, monstrous Vincent, here to give you solace in my silence. You sorry boy…

My heart wasn’t in it this evening. Cloud’s confessions predictably led to an almost vampiric embrace, one touch led to another kiss and my body was swathed once again in a fire that had to be sated. I didn’t want to face him, but I didn’t feel like ordering him on his hands and knees. I was tired of playing. I couldn’t even look at him when I fucked him, but I let him pull my hair and be violent under my caresses—he needed it to quell his confusion. I needed it to quiet my demons, so dangerously close to breaking that steel control I was so proud of in the daylight hours. Bodily ecstasy plowed them back, rocking into Cloud and bathing with the sick little delight each thrust sent me into.

He bit me hard in the shoulder and I came—for one blissful moment nothing existed but a shock of sudden pleasure to every inch of my body, from my toes to my fingertips. Then I came back to the real world, full of hurt, fatigue, tingling limbs and uncomfortable sheets.

Cloud needed to come.

I had half a mind to send him away without a second thought to his needs, but I grabbed his iron erection and pumped a fast and vocal release from him. I never let him stay before and despite the disappointed look he gave me I had no intentions of starting. Cold and cruel, like I always was, maybe in a weak attempt to shake him off. But the more abuse he came back for the more I was sucked into his pain, acting like a long needed anesthetic for my soul.

A quick cleanup followed by me handing Cloud his boots. At least he had learned to take them off at the door. It might have been rude, but it was nicer than saying, “Get the hell out.”

In truth, it was Chaos I was worried about. The Specimen 9 (so titled for me?) videos from Hojo’s despicable lair of pure undiluted hell had him stirring very close to the surface, very dangerously so. Stress weakened my control and though Cloud was a temporary escape, he ultimately made it worse. Chaos would easily rip him to shreds and paint his blood on the Highwind hulls. Blood… I could smell it in him pulsating through each capillary. I could smell it on my shoulder where he had bitten me.

How could you let him, Lucrecia?! How?!!

Don’t you dare tell me you understand anything, Vincent! This was MY choice!

WAS IT?!

I all but pushed him out the door. Any longer in his presence and my precarious control at the moment would snap under the thrashing beast under my mutilated body. Hojo… I was so immensely glad that I had and took the opportunity to rip him to pieces with his own handiwork, but it still tormented me and I couldn’t afford to start killing the only group dumb enough to be out to save the Planet. No, no, no, get out of my head you abomination!! Not here… not now…

“Vincent…” Cloud said suddenly.

I stopped the door mid-swing and looked him in the eye for the first time all night. He seemed a little miffed. “Apologies, Cloud. I am a sick man.”

“Should this stop?”

Part of me wanted to say yes, and the other no. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I found the truth leaking out.

“I fear for you, Cloud.”

I’m not sure if I offended him or not—not too sure I cared. The minute the door was locked my stomach twisted and I wretched the vile substance that signaled Chaos’ arrival. Anyone who had seen me knocked upside the head knew about Chaos though. Only Cid had an inkling of why he had come to be.

It was Cid that gnawed at my concrete control and wisp of a presence. He had only scratched the surface of me and it was more than enough to blackmail me. The bastard tormented me without even saying a word. It was his face I feared in my hell that night with Chaos on the prowl in Nibel.

End Chapter One
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weren’t expecting it? I wasn’t either, though I did mention Cloud in Beneath the Red… R/R plz! ^_^