Adult-FanFiction.org : Final Fantasy

Blonde Ambition	By : sephcounttheways Category: Final Fantasy VII > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 2097 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VII, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 19
- 20
- 21
WARNING BE TO ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE : This chapter is longer than it has any right to be. It also may or may not be haunted by pirate ghosts. You might wanna hit the bathroom and grab a Scooby snack before you dig in.

When Cloud Strife decided that it was time to make someone a mix CD, it became an all-day, soul-searching endeavor.

He realized it was technically his turn in the CD trading game. Even if it had gone mostly unspoken since they’d gotten together, written off as just a cute thing they’d done in order to get into each other’s pants, it was still their game and it was currently hanging in limbo. After all, hearing verbally how much Cloud was missing him was nothing new to Sephiroth’s big, adorable ears. In musical format, perhaps he could fan some flames of longing in his lover.

It would soon be a full two months since the day Cloud had kissed Sephiroth goodbye in his office.

Their first Valentine’s Day had passed. It was the very first time in his life that he actually had someone to love on such on occasion, and he was unable to actively do so. It was enough to make his heart want to leap out of his body in protest.

He kept his disappointment completely silent, and made a point to not even so much as mention the holiday to Sephiroth. It wasn’t fair, but it was less fair to his poor beloved, who would most likely spend the day plowing through the snow instead of plowing… more interesting things.

But even in the shuffle of Sephiroth’s busy schedule, and even if Cloud hadn’t uttered a word about it, the General did not forget. If there was one thing dating taught him, it was to never, ever, ever forget Valentine’s Day.

And how could he forget? Cloud was constantly on his mind.

Cloud found himself alone on the evening of the dreaded holiday, clicking around on Cam’s laptop while he was out getting laid like the rest of humanity. There had been a knock at his door, and he opened it to find himself face to face with the typical Valentine’s Day bullshit. Roses, a heart shaped box of candy, and a tiny, heartwarming stuffed polar bear. For a fierce second, Cloud thought he’d actually look up and find Sephiroth standing there.

It was only a delivery guy of course, but Cloud couldn’t find it in himself to feel disappointed. He had shrieked, delighted with the surprise and restrained himself from gripping the startled deliveryman into a grateful hug. “Is it a singing telegram!?”

The young man shrugged at Cloud. “There’s no telegram. And if there was, it wouldn’t be a singing one. I don’t think…?”

“Are you sure?” Cloud asked suspiciously, grinning as he signed for the delivery, then took his goodies.

“Um… there’s a note with the flowers, but…”

“Aww, sing it!” Cloud insisted. “Please?”

The guy looked around uncomfortably, then took the note from Cloud’s flowers and opened it. He cleared his throat a little, and snapped his fingers to find a rhythm. Cloud giggled in delight when he began to croon like a lounge singer. “Mimimiii…ahem… ‘Hey Baby, what’s up? I just thought you should know that today’s not Valentine’s Day. People might think that it is, but it’s not. Valentine’s Day is coming late this year for you and me, that’s all. So eat all your candy, skinny, I want more of that ass. Kisses from up North.’”

Cloud gave the guy a nice tip for actually carrying a decent tune. Then he obediently gorged himself on the candy and flowers, in true fashion of the lonely victims of the holiday.

Although, Cloud was far from desperate for romantic company. Every single homosexual in the city suddenly wanted nothing more than to take him to bed. He didn’t even pretend to think it was his own looks or charms that was attracting the sudden attention; everyone simply wanted to be a step closer to the world-renowned beauty of General Sephiroth.

The academy ’mo’s had taken several photographs of he and the General on New Year’s. He’d taped them all to the wall next to his bed; one of them chatting with laced fingers by the bar, one of Sephiroth bending down to steal a kiss while dancing, and one of both of them smiling obediently for the camera (Cloud was smiling a bit too widely, and one of Sephiroth’s hands were clearly not in the picture, but rather plunged down the back of his jeans).

Cloud had stared at them for a long time in class when Skylar first gave him the printouts that contained he and the General. Cloud had been so happy that night that he looked unrecognizable to himself. And Sephiroth was almost as beautiful on film as he was in person, but a picture barely compared with being next to his height, his heat, and his strong aura. Cloud thought inwardly that the happy, drunk blonde person in the photos, and the taller, long haired beauty looked an awful lot like two people who were madly in love with each other.

And naturally, the blatant evidence of Sephiroth’s sexual preferences set off a bomb of intrigue in the gay community.

It was humorous and rather shameless the sort of letters Cloud had begun to receive, many without return addresses in his mailbox, or passed on the sly during his classes. They were mostly hopeful proposals for threesomes with Sephiroth and himself, complete with enticing photos and sexual resumes.

They were generally vile, disgusting, shameless filth. Cloud naturally began reading the more graphic ones to Sephiroth over the phone.

“Jeeesus…” Sephiroth had winced after having been narrated a five page letter from a stranger involving cracked bleeding lips from gagging on the General’s huge monster cock, licking literal shit off of his iconic thigh high boots, and upside down fucking underneath statues of Wutai’s holy leaders. “Doesn’t anyone just wanna make love to me?”

“I do! I do!” Cloud giggled and crumpled the letter into the garbage and went about opening the next one. “But doesn’t it pique your interest just a bit, though? You have an entire city of wanton cum sluts at your disposal.”

“But you’re the only cum slut I want,” Sephiroth told him with a chuckle.

Even though it was said with a drop of cheeky sarcasm, and contained the words ‘cum’ and ‘slut’ Cloud had to blush a little across the world. It was funny how tender things Sephiroth would say could make Cloud’s cheeks pinken, but reading about the explicit carnal desires of strangers didn’t even stir his body in the slightest.

The nasty letters were a fun distraction from just how badly Cloud missed his lover, but the novelty quickly wore off. Cloud quit opening them and ignored everything and everyone who wanted to talk about his boyfriend. Cloud was seething with a kindergartner’s pride at having the coolest toy and with no intentions to share it. Sephiroth was his! His, his, his! If they wanted him so badly, they should have taken a shot at it before spotting him with a real lover and getting all jealous.

Time to make a CD, Cloud nodded to himself and discretely popped a bud in his ear during math class, put it on shuffle, and began to think about Sephiroth. He found that his Mp3 player was almost like an eight ball when it was on shuffle. Songs that fit what he was feeling always seemed to bubble up the surface.

The first song that screamed Sephiroth was The Birds and the Bees – Breathe Carolina. This song was a powerhouse of how he felt about his lover. The song swore to God that “I won’t stop until you’re shaking” while having a fun, sexy beat and an out of place screamer. It clearly belonged in the number one spot.

The next to make itself known was No You Girls – Franz Ferdinand. It seemed to be accusing Sephiroth of being a cocktease merely by existing, and also confessed that his sexiness caused extreme stupidity. Well the song said ‘girls’, but if you merely replaced that word with ‘sexy Generals’, it spelled out Cloud’s befuddled case of chronic sexual frustration perfectly. Besides, he was certain Sephiroth would like the song for the song itself. Cloud smiled and scrawled the song on the number two spot on his notebook paper.

Cloud wrote down the name of the next song, then crossed it out. He listened to it a little longer and wrote it down again. He was certain Sephiroth was going to hate every second of the song, but it spoke to Cloud. Happily Screwed – The Wombats. It talked of the hardships of relationships; the petty trials that made couples stronger, or tore them apart. The song seemed confident that whatever trials did have the nerve to present themselves would be overcame with gusto, and in the end the two of them would be happily screwed. In all contexts, of course.

Out of 5,000 songs, Days Go By – Dirty Vegas came up not once, not twice, but three times in thirty minutes. Cloud almost didn’t want to include it because it always sounded like a melancholy breakup song to him, but he finally gave in to God’s persistence and gave it a real listen, and realized that it only promised the listener to be thought about, no matter how many days went by. Also, the melancholy could easily be warped into a sexual longing, which was this particular mix CD’s subtle theme.

Cloud smiled brightly when Erection by The Faint came up. Yeah, sexual longing was the subtle them, alright. But if he had an anthem to sum up the past two months of his life, that certainly would have to be it. That, coupled with a sexy beat made it a no brainer. He also appreciated the singer’s giggly demeanor during the song’s breakdown.

And speaking of which, Cloud’s erection underneath his desk crossed its arms in stubbornness. It wasn’t going anywhere, even as Cloud discretely abused it with his math book. It finally relented just in time for the end of class, and Cloud headed to the drum room, and was greeting by the sounds of angry fighting.

There was nothing quite like a good, loud argument, especially when Cloud wasn’t a part of it. Unauthorized fighting on campus was grounds for a write up, but there was no word in the handbook about catapulting objects at one another. He made his way into the room, careful not to be stricken with a chair, drumstick or book. He couldn’t help being hit with a pen, wincing as it left a black, slightly painful streak across his cheek. It was a nice-ass pen though, and he quickly snatched it up.

“I’m going!” Stanley roared. “I’m the best drummer, I should be the first to go!”

“Who says you’re the best?” Brick argued, pitching more items from his backpack across the room. “My brother’s troop is leaving now, and I wanna go with him!”

Renold was throwing things from his neck of the woods, too. “I don’t wanna go, Stan! I turn 18 next month! I have too much to live for! Let Brick and Kevin go!”

Kevin was hiding behind a rack of huge, hanging chimes and a lovely accidental melody tinkled as he peeked from behind it. “I don’t wanna go! Let Reno and Brick go!”

Cloud felt left out, so he began tossing books into the fray. “Go where!?”

Stanley stood with extreme dignity. “There’s a red handkerchief on the door handle. That means someone’s being deployed for drummer duty. It should be me and Kevin! But Kevin doesn’t want to go, so now these two dickwads think they can take our place! And it’s never gonna happen!”

Brick walked up to Stan with every visible intention of decking him. “I’m going.”

“No,” Stanley said firmly, although he had to crane his neck back to look up at the taller boy. “Me and Reno are going.”

Cloud huffed. “Why don’t you two just go together? Leave these two chickenshits behind.”

Renold and Kevin both seemed delighted with that idea.

Brick shook his head. “We’re teamed up this way for a reason. We’ve already seen battle together, and it worked. We can’t change it up, now.”

“Well, what about me?” Cloud challenged. “Who am I supposed to go with?”

“You’re the alternate. Like John was…” Kevin explained, his voice wavering. “I can’t go. I’m gonna forget the tempos. I’m gonna choke and get somebody killed again… Stan, I don’t wanna go!”

Everyone in the room paused. Even Cloud become somewhat somber although he never knew John, and didn’t know the severity of the trauma.

Renold spoke first. “It wasn’t your fault, Kev…”

Kevin shook his head. “It wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t stop drumming. I choked, and John kept going and…”

Coach Hendrix came out of his office lazily, perpetually seeking his cup of caffeine. “Don’t argue anymore. You’re all going.”

Two fifths of the room broke out into joyously surprised grins. Two fifths grimaced in horror. Cloud gaped like a fish. “Even me?”

The coach sighed, looking more tired than ever. “Everyone’s going. I just got orders this morning. They want to end this conflict quickly, and they’re finally starting towards battle.”

Cloud put a hand over his mouth. The instructors never spoke so frankly about the situation, it was always sugar coated and informationless. Sephiroth never told Cloud anything either, only steered the conversation towards matters of the heart, or things happening in Cloud’s life. They were moving towards an actual battle up there. A real, actual fight. Not just military movement. Not just bullshit.

A fight to the death! And he was going to be there for it! Actually involved in it!

Cloud had to go to the bathroom.

“When do we go?” Stanley asked, almost giddy and wrapping his arm around Brick’s thick waist, who almost danced alongside him.

“Monday.”

The entire room gasped. It was Friday.

“And you aren’t going in your usual teams. Everyone goes separately. You’ll all meet up at once when you’re needed for duty.”

Cloud’s heart began to pound. He really had to go to the bathroom.

They went through their tempos with utmost seriousness that afternoon, and their last physical class of the day was cancelled in favor of extra practice time. The Coach kept Cloud behind for two hours of extra one on one time, and promised Cloud that if he kept a level head, he’d be perfectly fine.

“So you really think I’ll be ready?” Cloud asked quietly.

“Nobody’s ever really ready,” Coach Hendrix disclosed. “But I wouldn’t send you if I thought you’d fail. Too many lives would be at stake, not just yours.

Cloud knew that was a man’s manly way of telling another manly man to go get ‘em. But he wanted nothing more than for his drum teacher to hold him and tell him he was going to be alright.

Cloud went to his room and found Cam there, already asleep under his covers and snoring alongside Psycho. His poor friend sometimes worked himself to the bone. Cloud decided to tell him the news later.

Instead, he took his cell phone and went into a study room that was vacant, and closed and locked the door. That was against the dorm rules, but it was late and he didn’t expect that anyone would give him too much grief about it. He did the mental math and figured out that it was extremely early in the morning on Sephiroth’s end. There was a chance he’d already be awake, but it was still an obscene hour… Cloud felt guilty as he dialed.

But he’d already shat his brains out and he couldn’t stop his heart from racing, his hands from shaking. He needed to talk to someone who might understand.

It rang several times, and Cloud was about to give up when he finally heard Sephiroth grunt at the other end, “Yeah?”

“I’m coming up there!” Cloud blurted.

“Mm-hm…you… got drum duty,” Sephiroth confirmed, snorting in air as he shifted around on his cot. Cloud frowned, because he’d clearly woken Sephiroth up from absolute sleep.

But Cloud had a million things to ask. Was he going to be hurt? Was he going to die? Was he going to fail the drummerboys with his lack of experience? Was he going to see someone he knew die? But the most crucial was, “Can I travel with your squad? Please?”

“Ugh,” Sephiroth answered groggily, sounding more impatient than he actually was. “No, there’s no place for a drummer with us. But you’ll be taken care of, I promise.”

Cloud had been strong and firm against complaining about their mutually frustrating situation, but he couldn’t help but let a sad, deflated moan slip from between his lips, like the last tragic noise a toy makes before its batteries finally give out. He laid his head against his hand and couldn’t find any words to say that didn’t speak of profound disappointment, fear, or dread.

Traveling with Sephiroth meant more than kisses or even sex. Safety, reassurance, protection, support. That’s what Cloud was hoping for. The drummers weren’t allowed to fight under any circumstance. They were dependant on their group for all means of defense. Cloud didn’t trust anyone more than Sephiroth.

Sephiroth heard the little sound of angst and sighed, not knowing the full scope of Cloud’s motivations. “Baby, it’s not that I don’t wanna see you, you know I’m dyin’ to see you – that’s why I’m workin’ hard to make it happen. So… don’t cry. ‘Kay?”

Cloud resented that. “Ugh, I’m not going to cry. I don’t expect us to like… fuck like bunnies in your cot every night…” He beat gently on the side of his own head, trying to shake the vision out. “I just wanted to see if you had any room for me, that’s all. Because… I would feel safe with you.”

Sephiroth had to smile, but did an excellent job of keeping it out of his voice. “It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but I know for a fact that you’re much safer with another group. Please don’t guilt me.”

Cloud huffed. “Oh, c’mon! I’m not trying to guilt you…Is it that bad of me that I just wanted to ask?”

Sephiroth softened a bit, and his voice relaxed into sleepiness. “Not at all. I just wanna give you everything you want, and it sucks when I can’t. But I promise you you’re going to be fine, and it’s all gonna be over soon. And when we get home I’m gonna take such good care of you. Promise.”

Cloud pouted seductively. “Maybe you love me or something…”

“I know I do,” Sephiroth grinned, returning the playful little flirtation. “I can’t wait to kiss you, an’ touch you, an’ have you, an’ suck you, an’ bite you…” He tsked longingly and sighed a bit. “And it won’t be much longer, now.”

Cloud was certain that he could have filled a Big Gulp cup with how much he could have came over that statement. He grinned and rocked back in his seat, letting a coo slip out.

Sephiroth wasn’t certain what that little squeak meant in Cloud’s aural language, yet. “Are you happy or sad right now?”

“So happy!” Cloud gushed.

“My job is done,” Sephiroth’s voice creaked with a pleasantly bemused sort of exhaustion. “Can I get my 45 more minutes of sleep now?”

“Oh, I suppose,” Cloud sighed, and kissed his cell phone. He then said what had become their own little sign-off. “Will you dream about me?”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“I love you, love you, love you!” Cloud called before his end of the line went silent and disconnected.

At the Northern Crater, Sephiroth laid there with the phone to his ear long after he’d been hung up on. He was now more awake than asleep, and he had forty minutes left before it was time to be up. No use in even trying to cash in on that.

He sat up, scowling over at Angeal who was sleeping like a big, fat, innocent baby. He wanted to hurl something at him out of sheer wickedness, but instead quietly scooted to the edge of his cot.

He rested his elbows on his knees and looked at his bare feet, a deep, inner shiver settling into his core as the heat from his cot left him. His more wakeful mind assessed the conversation that had just taken place with greater clarity.

Sephiroth smiled a little before scratching his head. I love you. He didn’t understand what his own hang-up was. Cloud said it all the time, but now the return phrase had become this thing in Sephiroth’s mind. It was like Zack and his half assed drunken proposal. Cloud had told them that all women dream of the magical scenario that their boyfriends finally pop the question.

Sephiroth most fucking certainly was not about to propose some lawless, trite marriage to Cloud, but he knew that when he finally told him that he loved him, it was going to be just as big of a deal. He wished it didn’t have to be, but he let it go too long and far, and it had become something else, and he just didn’t know how to deal with it.

As soon as we can be face to face, Sephiroth decided. I’m just gonna fuckin’ say it already.

These thoughts disintegrated as Sephiroth scratched his scalp again and let his hand fall limply back down between his knees.

He was so tired.

And Angeal just looked so peaceful.

Sephiroth took one of his dirty, black, balled up socks. He shook it straight, then gently tossed it, and snickered silently as it settled right over Angeal’s face.

Angeal snorted, then shifted a little before his hand came up to touch the thing over his face curiously. When he realized what it was, he quickly tossed it to the floor and blinked in furious confusion. He found Sephiroth sitting on his cot, grinning at him in the dark like a glowing green demon.

“Oh, very mature,” Angeal huffed, before rolling over onto his side.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Since it had been announced that he was to be deployed, Cloud had received summons to just about every academic supervisor in the academy. They all wanted to pat him on the back, to wish him luck, and to bestow fabulous prizes!

One gave him a pair of drumsticks that were apparently thrown in to the crowd at a Beatles concert circa John Lennon. One gave him 500 freaking gil. One approved him a whole week of vacation time for when he was sent back home. One gave him a little hackeysack-sized pack that had a very small, simple fire materia in it, and would be a permanent little source of warmth for Cloud in the tundra – the bonus being that he was actually taught how to use it, quite a big deal for just a first year. Cloud felt like the God of Fire.

He gave them all the cute, wide eyed, small town foreign boy routine, took his loot, and split. Sunday afternoon was then designated as a day for him and Cam to hang out, to mail Sephiroth the mix CD and copies of all the cute snapshots from New Year’s, and most importantly, to waste Cloud’s money.

But there was one order of serious business. Cloud had been ordered by Coach Hendrix to get a haircut. Apparently, it was some sort of tradition for the SOLDIERs and army to get a haircut before being deployed – something about not looking scraggly for the newspapers upon their return. It made sense, Sephiroth had given no inkling for a desire to cut his hair before his departure, yet he had.

And oh, it had looked so good…

And besides, it had been several months since Cloud had been due for a cut. Well, since he’d shirked getting a cut. His plan for long haired sexiness was backfiring somewhat, because it was growing up. Straight up. He looked like an unkempt blonde mix between Zack and the closet-fag vampire from Twilight.

The best he could do was to seize the longer spikes and pull them back into a ponytail, but it just didn’t look as cool as it did on Cam, so he decided to use some of his money on a ridiculously priced hair dresser. He went into a mostly empty salon that was clearly meant for like-minded women and the discerning sort of male. There were two stylists on duty; a heavyset lady with fire engine red hair, and a seriously gay man sporting a Flock of Seagulls hairdon’t.

Cloud was relieved when the lady approached him and took him under her wing.

“What is it you want done?” she asked as she settled him into the chair. It surprised Cloud, because the first thing a barber usually had done was to stick his head under water, demanding to know why he’d shown up for a haircut with a head full of gel and hairspray. The lady could obviously tell a lack of product when she saw it.

“Please help me,” Cloud begged of her. “Whenever I get haircuts, it always turns out so… boxy. They always cut the back way too short, and leave me with one big stupid spike in the middle. I end up looking like a unicorn. For once I’d like for it to be sort of…” His hands went everywhere; he couldn’t explain what he wanted.

“I have a vision,” she said, rubbing Cloud’s temple in gentle circles.

His hands fell back into his lap and his eyes crossed a little bit and fluttered. “Wh-what…?”

Cam snickered from his perch on the next chair.

“I don’t speak my visions in words,” was all she said before going to work, snipping and razoring Cloud’s hair. After she fell into a groove, she asked, “Why would you want to cut this beautiful blonde hair?”

Cloud decided to get some practice breaking the news to his own mother. He still hadn’t called her to tell her what was happening. Frankly, he was terrified to. “Well, I’m a drum cadet at the Shin-Ra academy. And… I’m being sent up to the Northern Crater tomorrow afternoon.”

The lady paused in snipping his hair. “So is my son.”

Cloud’s eyes glanced up to her, and saw a look of blatant worry on her face. And her fire engine red hair. “…No fucking way.”

“Way,” she sighed. “You probably know Reno.”

Cloud hadn’t been exactly invited to call Renold by his shortened name, so he never had. “…Yeah, he’s in my drum class. I’m Cloud.”

“He’s talked about you,” she said absently, setting into work on the back of his head.

Cloud was somewhat surprised by that, but tried not to let it show. He knew mothers didn’t always understand why every boy in school wasn’t a best friend with every other boy. Frankly, Reno tended to get on his nerves with his manic and sometimes dangerous energy, and Cloud didn’t see any use in getting to know him, as he was in the Junior Turk program and graduating at the year’s end. For the sake of his hair, he decided to just smile into the mirror at her and let her think what she wanted.

She shook her head and began to tug on Cloud’s hair a little bit as she cut it. “He’s been sent out before. I can look forward to a few weeks of sleepless nights, that’s for sure,” She then looked over at Cam. “Don’t tell me you’re being sent up, too?”

“No, not me,” Cam denied respectfully.

“Well thank God for that,” she tsked at him.

Cloud’s eyebrows turned up. “You shouldn’t worry… we’re gonna all be taken care of. And we’ll come back before you know it.”

“That’s what they say,” she fretted, pulling a bit harder on Cloud’s hair. “But it don’t stop a mother from just about dying of fear in the meantime.”

Cloud frowned and could think of nothing to say. His mind was slowly settling into a difficult decision.

He wasn’t going to tell his mother.

She caught his sad expression in the mirror. “Don’t be scared; you’re right. It’s just the mother in me, I hate seeing such young boys sent to do work they should have a SOLDIER doing.”

When she was finished, it was much like how it looked longer, only… shorter. This was extremely exciting for Cloud, who was happy to not have that one stupid vertical, stumpy spike and the back of his head heavily buzzed into submission. She had razored and worked it into several soft, manageable spikes, and had gently buzzed the hair off of his neck into a natural gradient, instead of a lame straight line.

Cloud blushed when Reno’s mother wouldn’t allow him to pay her. “Not even a tip?”

“No way,” she said firmly. “It’s bad luck to charge a cutie pie for a haircut.”

Cloud didn’t know what to say, he stood there just about ready to cry. He didn’t care about getting a ridiculously good hair creation for free, it was the warm intent behind it. He’d wanted someone to just hold him since he found out he was being sent up. But there was no one.

Cloud suddenly missed his mom. He missed his mom terribly. She’d probably give him a smack on the head for the hell of it, but she was always hugging him, always putting an arm around him while they watched TV on the couch, always tugging his hair or kissing his cheeks.

Cloud was the sort of person who needed reassuring physical contact, even if he batted it away at times. So when Reno’s mom put one of her short, thick arms around his shoulders, he hooked his arm around her chubby waist for a light, casual, but much needed hug. “You watch Reno, okay? You make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid. I’m his mom so I’m not supposed to admit it, but I raised one dumb kid.”

Cloud smiled and nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Come back for another haircut in eight weeks. Don’t come in twelve weeks when you look like a Chia pet, again.”

Once they left the salon, Cloud couldn’t help but strut along, rubbing his fingers through the fun texture on the back of his head. He needed to air his mind out, and the slowly warming weather was doing a fabulous job of that.

“Where to now?” Cam asked, reaching out to feel the texture of Cloud’s hair for himself.

Blue eyes slitted with pleasure. He still had 500 gil. He could think of no better way to air his mind out than retail therapy – and something cute and expensive to come home to after drum duty. “I wanna go to the mall! The plate mall!”

“You’re such a goddamn chick,” Cam complained, but didn’t argue. It was Cloud’s day, after all.

So to the upscale mall they went, and Cloud fogged up the windows of all the major designer stores, not daring to go into most of them because of his lack of fabulosity. His current outfit had consisted of a two gil pair of girl’s jeans from Nibelheim, and a costless black pinstripe shirt with white buttons from Sephiroth’s closet, that hit him just above mid-thigh. He hadn’t exactly given it to him, but Cloud was playing dress up in his clothes and noticed that it smelled strongly of his lover, complete with deodorant marks on the inside armpits. Sephiroth had apparently hung it back up dirty, probably because it didn’t stink.

It made Cloud laugh, and he took it for nighttime sniffing purposes.

So he didn’t look awful, but he didn’t feel right stomping around a shop with priceless gowns, jewels, and handbags that were made from unicorn feathers and the tears of angels. But there was one store in particular that he couldn’t help tiptoe over the threshold of.

“Welcome to Gucci,” the girl behind the counter purred in some unknown accent.

Cloud blushed and nodded, mumbling a small greeting. Cam was unfazed, and began to make his way casually over to the men’s clothes. Cloud grabbed his hand and skulked his way back to the clearance rack, surely the only items he’d be able to afford, if any.

“Two hundred gil fer a fuckin’ tie?” Cam squawked immediately. “A fuckin’ ugly tie!?”

“Shoosh! Don’t mention the prices! They will kill you...” Cloud whispered, giving meaningful head nod towards the statue-esque woman behind the counter, who was not paying them a bit of attention.

Cam gave Cloud a dry look. “Go ahead an’ look, den. I won’t offend da fuckin’ queer gods or whatever tha fuck.”

Cloud hastily thumbed through the rack, until his heart just about stopped in his chest. “They’re amazing! And my size! And affordable!”

Cam looked over his shoulder. Affordable apparently meant 475 gil. It was criminal, but he wanted to get the hell out of the mall, so he unceremoniously ripped them off the rack and pushed Cloud towards the dressing room. “They’re so you. Try ‘em an’ buy ‘em an’ let’s get tha fuck outta here.”

Cloud strutted out of the Gucci store with a new pair of red skinny jeans with black leather racing strips down the sides. “Gucci!” he’d say, lifting up Sephiroth’s shirt and pointing at the large label adorning his ass. Cam rolled his eyes when Cloud stopped to needlessly tie his shoes, sticking his little rump up into the air for all the world to see.

They stopped for some lunch, and then hit the post office to send Sephiroth his little parcel. Later that evening while he was preparing to leave, and Cam was hulking out in the gym, he received a knock on his door. He answered it to discover a uniformed messenger from the Shin-Ra building.

“Cloud Strife?” he assumed.

Cloud nodded. “Yes.”

“Vice President Shin-Ra requests an audience with you immediately.”

Rufus wanted to see him? What the hell for?

Cloud followed the guy curiously to the parking lot. Rufus had sent a limo for him. A limo! For a two-block distance! He was slightly embarrassed, but got in anyways, and immediately noticed the tiny refrigerator. Before the driver even got the keys in the ignition, Cloud was already mixing himself a Vodka and Red Bull.

He downed it and thanked the driver with a wide smile as he exited. At the door, there was another underling of Rufus’ was waiting to escort him to his office, which required a few keycard strokes. He was patted down by a security guard, but thankfully much less invasively than at the medical labs. Finally, Cloud was let into Rufus’ high class, amazingly tasteful inner sanctum, and found his gay patron saint sitting behind his desk and reading People magazine.

Cloud’s eyes moved around the room, and couldn’t help but notice that the ceiling was mirrored. He wondered if Sephiroth had designed the place.

Rufus lazily said, “We’d like to be alone.”

The man servant that had led Cloud to the office fucking bowed and left, followed by a couple of Turks who were draped over the white leather couch in the sitting area and sipping martinis. They took their drinks with them and closed the door, leaving silence behind them.

Cloud tapped his fingers against his jeans, and took a few steps towards Rufus. “Hi, what’s up?”

“Same shit, different day,” Rufus sighed, and folded his magazine and slapped it on the table. “You’re being sent to the Northern Crater, I hear. Very brave boy.”

Cloud shrugged one shoulder with a smile.

Rufus narrowed his eyes and rested his cheek against his hand. “Well, since you’re going, there’s something I want to give you.”

Oh shit! Cloud laced his fingers behind his back nervously. What the hell was Rufus going to give him? A sack of cash? A car? An island off the coast and a lifetime supply of lube? Ten minutes to run around the mall and grab whatever he wanted, like Supermarket Sweep?

I’ll spend five minutes in Gucci, Cloud decided. Then the rest of the time in Dior. No, Diesel. Just get the purple vest and the white boots from Dior, then two minutes in Deisel, then the rest of the time in Marc Jacobs. Yeah!

Rufus opened his desk drawer and pulled out a small, pink envelope. “This is a letter for Genesis Rhapsodos. I can’t mail things like other people can. Everything is heavily monitored. And I can’t send it under a false name, because then Gen won’t open it. And you’re the most inconsequential person that I’ve ever associated with, so I feel I can trust your care.”

Cloud’s mouth became a line, and he sighed and reached out for it. “Sure, whatever.”

Rufus held it out, but didn’t release it immediately. “…I’d be very grateful.”

Cloud’s features softened and opened up, and he nodded. “I’ll give it to him. I promise.”

Rufus snatched it back, licked the envelope and sealed it with deliberate diligence. “No peeking at it.”

Cloud gave Rufus a small, cheeky smile. “I’m not interested in anything you two queens have to say to each other.”

“Little bitch! Go find Genesis. And try not to get yourself blown apart in the process,” Rufus tossed the letter to Cloud, then picked his magazine back up.

Cloud laughed a little and made his way out. He sniffed the envelope curiously, finding that Rufus must have spritzed it heavily with his cologne.

“By the way…” Rufus called just as his hand was on the door. “Did you and the General enjoy the opera, yet?”

Cloud froze with Genesis’s love letter against his nose. They hadn’t given the tickets to Zack and Aerith yet, but they certainly had no intentions of using them themselves. “Ummm… He actually left before we were able to go. When he gets back… we will…?”

Rufus nodded behind his magazine. “Be sure you do. It’s a total bore, but a great place to fuck. Toodles.”

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud was nervous about meeting his SOLDIER party. He wondered if they viewed the drummer boys as a burden, and decided that they most certainly did. They were trained war veterans, and escorting around a cadet must have been a terribly obnoxious task.

He only hoped that they wouldn’t be mean to him. If the men of his career path didn’t accept him, he would surely wither and die. More importantly, if they weren’t friendly people Cloud would have a very difficult time getting them to take him to the General, which was a major objective.

In blank white honesty, the only acceptable form of physical communication he’d be allowed to give Sephiroth would be a salute. But would Sephiroth let it end there? Could Sephiroth actually lay eyes on him again after two months, and let him pass by with only a salute?

Cloud fidgeted beside Kevin at the terminal. Reno, Stanley and Brick’s flights had already departed. The sounds of airships landing and taking off were making Cloud’s stomach ache with anxiety, and frankly, he was out of poop.

He turned to Kevin, the little antisocial shorty. “Do you think they’ll like us?”

“So what if they don’t?”

“Did you get along well with them last time you had duty?”

“They’ll hardly notice you, don’t worry.” Kevin looked slightly pale and extremely small. For Cloud to call another creature small, that was saying something. Then he remembered what exactly had happened to Kevin the last time he had duty.

Cloud could have kicked himself for his insensitivity. But instead he changed the subject. “So how long do you think it’ll be before we see each other out there?”

Kevin checked the wall clock then slowly lifted himself up and strapped on his bags. “I’m not sure,” He turned to leave and Cloud figured that was that, but then the guy turned back to him. “You’re good people, Strife. Best of luck.”

Cloud had no idea what that might have meant. He stood and strapped on his own bags, and headed to the opposite airship hall. He turned the corner, and saw a sight that made a large grin break out onto his face.

“Hey kiddo!” Zack said, approaching him and throwing an arm around his shoulder.

“You smoke now?” Cloud laughed, flicking the end of the cigarette between Zack’s lips.

“They remind me of Aer-head.”

Cloud laughed. “You think she’s chugging liquor since you’re gone?”

“She should if she isn’t,” Zack took one last puff off the cigarette before he stomped it with his combat boot. “Ready to go to the North Pole?”

Cloud gasped in delight. “You’re taking me?”

“Of course I am!” Zack laughed. “You think Seph would have it any other way?”

Cloud blushed and shook his head. “I guess not…”

Zack knocked on the top of his head incredulously. “Get on the ship and stow your crap. They’re gassing it up, and I’m gonna grab something real to eat. Want me to bring you back anything?”

Cloud rubbed his stomach. “Nah, I ate just now.”

Zack hiked an eyebrow. “What did you eat?”

“A chocobo salad.”

Zack looked at him with blatant disappointment. “You’re gonna be regretting that choice as your last meal, dude. Anyways, I gotta bust a move. Save me a seat!”

Cloud grinned, “Okay!”

Zack broke out at a run towards the mess hall. Cloud gulped as he exited out the automatic doors and saw the airship that had come to fetch him sitting there, it’s propellers turning slowly and several pit workers running to and fro, cleaning the windows, tightening bolts, filling the gas tank. Cloud only hoped some homicidal fuck didn’t unscrew some particular bolt that would make the ship rattle apart in mid-flight.

He decided to not think about that, and instead uneasily boarded. It was much smaller inside than it was outside, everything was metal, industrial, and uncomfortable. There were three rows of seats in aisles of three, and Cloud slid his bags off and stored them in a compartment behind them.

It was a difficult decision, but Cloud chose a window seat. He then popped a motion sickness pill and strapped himself in.

It didn’t take long for Zack to come lumbering onto the ship. He left a seat between him and Cloud and threw a full size bag of ruffled chips at him. “You’ll thank me later.”

Cloud smiled and set it on the floor by his feet. The door was then shut and locked, and then the entire metal airship began to rumble and vibrate. He’d never been on a plane, helicopter, or airship and he wasn’t exactly thrilled about the idea to begin with. But this horrifying shaking? He was about to jump out of the window, Northern Crater assignment or not.

Zack noticed Cloud bristle. “Hey, this is totally normal.”

“Does it do this the entire time?” Cloud moaned, holding onto his seat belt for dear life.

“No, it’ll smooth out soon. It’ll feel like being on a boat.”

“A boat!?” Cloud balked, covering his mouth.

“Oooh, ah… Look, just chill…um…” Zack seemed to be searching for something to give Cloud to calm him down. Then he simply offered his hand. Cloud didn’t hesitate to grab it and squeeze.

Cloud watched as the ground became farther away, buildings became small squares, and Midgar was left in the distance. Then it was all patchwork fields and dips and rises of mountains.

Cloud eventually let Zack’s hand go.

“You gonna hurl? Seph said you might hurl.”

“No,” Cloud decided after considering the option. “I took some medicine. I think I’ll be okay.”

“Good,” Zack said firmly, and laced his hands behind his head.

Cloud turned to him in the seat, away from the window when clouds began to puff past the ship. “How’s Seph?”

“He’s fine. You don’t talk to him?”

“Yeah, but it’s easy to say you’re fine on the phone. Is he okay? Like, really okay?”

“He’s fine.”

Cloud finally just asked. “Think we might run into him?”

Zack smiled, and closed his eyes. “Now that is a secret.”

Cloud gasped shrilly. “Really!? What kind of secret? The kind where he’s waiting for us at the landing site? Or the kind where he’s actually the pilot of this ship? Or the kind where the battle’s actually over and we’re truly headed to Costa del Sol where we’ll live on Margaritas? Or the kind that might take a little longer? Zack? Zack!”

Apparently, Cloud’s melodic, accented prattle had put the dark headed SOLDIER to sleep. “…Wha?”

Cloud whined, “When will I see Seph?”

“I told you already, it’s a secret.”

“We shouldn’t have any secrets between us, Zack.”

“Nice try,” Zack smiled and ruffled his hair. “I recommend you get some sleep. We’ve got an eight hour ride, but it’s gonna be early morning when we get there. Pretend it’s the middle of the night, right now.”

Cloud finally nodded in understanding and tried to sink into his uncomfortable and completely vertical backrest. He was nervous and excited and vaguely airsick, but the lure of extra sleep wasn’t too hard to indulge in.

He closed his eyes and as was natural for a young man his age, he immediately began to think about sex. He had managed to pop himself off three times in the shower right before the flight, but that was meaningless when confronted with thoughts and memories regarding his boyfriend. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Zack hadn’t picked him up. If it had been some unknown SOLDIER, Cloud would have remained professional in his thoughts, but there was a chance, now. A good chance… that someone amazing might be waiting for him when the ship landed…

Maybe…maybe… He smiled beneath closed eyes, laid his head against the window, tucked his knees up underneath his chin, and let his mind drift until his consciousness disconnected.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud was woken up by the noise of his own teeth chattering inside his mouth. He was paralyzed, and stuck in a state of sleepy confusion and horrible discomfort. Finally, he let out a booming verbal shiver.

Zack jolted awake beside him. “Cloud? What?”

“It’s so fucking cold!” Cloud hissed loudly, curling tighter in on himself on the seat. “Is something wrong with the plane?”

Zack rubbed his face. “No. This is generally what happens when you travel north.”

Cloud was shaking uncontrollably. “But this is like, the cold of insanity! This is how cold hell would be if hell were cold instead of hot!”

Zack tried to make sense of that, but gave up. “What are you complaining for? You’re supposed to be a big time mountain boy!” Cloud narrowed his eyes and seized Zack’s neck with one of his freezing hands. “Ew! Are you alive? Put some more clothes on or something!”

Cloud uncurled himself from his seat and passed Zack to his gear. He pulled out an armful of clothes and shivered his way into the ship’s tiny bathroom.

He dreaded it, but he had to strip himself naked. He couldn’t help but look morbidly down at his genitals to see how misshapen and miniscule they had become. The whole situation seemed to be frowning up at him.

So, he reached into the bag to retrieve something that was standard issue and the most unsexy, horrible item of clothing on the face of the Earth, and disgustingly reminiscent of his dreary childhood. With a grimace, Cloud pulled long johns up onto his body. The white, starchy thermal kind.

The kind he snuck out to the kitchen to steal cookies in. The kind he always got piss all over when he hadn’t yet learned how to aim his stream. The kind that his mother insisted he wear to school underneath his trousers in the winter, all the better for the bullies to wedgie him with.

Cloud had a long, torrid history with long johns, and when he reached an age where his mouth could rival his mother’s, he swore them off for good. She told him he could freeze his balls off if he wanted to, and he declared that he’d be happy to rather than wear the unbecoming garment.

But this was a kind of cold that made skin crack and noses bleed. And it wouldn’t be a quick blast of chill between travel from heated buildings. It was to be a constant state of cold. They were hideous, but necessary. If Sephiroth could pull off that leering stare when he was met face to face with an ass covered in ill fitting, gross thermal underwear, then Cloud figured their love was definitely everlasting.

Cloud tucked the long johns into thick socks, then pulled up his fatigues and added a thick, long sleeve black thermal shirt beneath his uniform top. He finished buttoning his clothes and retied his boots, then looked at himself in the mirror. He thought his school uniform looked strange without his tie, like he was going to be sent back to his room to put it on if he stepped out of the bathroom without it. He thought it was a little ridiculous that even in the harshest conditions, Shin-Ra always wanted the army in their strictest uniform. The SOLDIERs suffered their sleeveless shirts in the snow. Although, with their physiques, they could handle it.

For his uniform however, he was expected to look like a school kid, as drummerboys traditionally were always cadets. His school uniform would make him stand out, but Cloud had brought up the concern that maybe he shouldn’t be standing out in the middle of a battlefield.

The headmaster and Coach Hendrix had both promised Cloud in his briefing that drummerboys were not targets on a battlefield.

Their drums were.

So, it was a triple thick Kevlar vest over their uniform shirts. Coach Hendrix and the Headmaster had argued briefly in front of Cloud and the other drummerboys as to whether or not they should wear the vest 100 percent of the time, or just for battles. It was decided that slipping it on before battles would be appropriate, as long as they remembered to tuck their shirts in.

Fucking ridiculous.

The rest of Cloud’s gear contained one extra uniform, one blanket, one sleeping bag, and one cadet-issue pop tent. This all weighed approximately twenty pounds. The other eighty pounds in his gear were his drum, extra sticks, his backpack speaker, a solar charger, extra battery packs, and electrical wiring. There had been a big to do concerning the fact that Cloud weighed only 20 pounds more than the load he was expected to carry.

“Let’s all wait a minute while you try out your gear, Cloud,” Coach Hendrix had suggested. “Just to make sure you can lift it all without hurting yourself.”

How embarrassing!

“I happen to be very ant-like,” Cloud had informed them all, and demonstrated by strapping on and trotting around with all one hundred pounds of gear secure.

“Are you gonna be able to carry that for days at a time?” Renold had inquired, arms crossed in doubt.

Cloud gauged the weight swaying from one foot to the other. “I don’t see why not.”

Renold was still not convinced. “If you don’t think you can, you might as well – ”

“Look, Kevin can carry it, right? If Kevin can carry it, I can carry it!”

Renold of course refused to shut his mouth. “I’m not tryin’ to be a dick, I just don’t wanna have to drag your ass through the snow when you break it – ”

Cloud made a large, irritated noise. “Just put a sock in it already, Renold!”

Reno blinked at him, and his face turned as red as his hair. “Don’t call me that, asshole!”

“You’re driving me crazy!”

“Your accent is drivin’ me crazy! How’s anyone supposed to understand a word you say?”

“Understand this!” Cloud roared, and sent up both of his middle fingers.

“I’ma break those fuckin’ fingers off!” Reno cawed, and he dove onto Cloud, gear and all.

Laden with items, the teenagers dragged each other across the floor. Reno got Cloud into a sloppy headlock. He punched Reno in the stomach, and received an elbow onto the top of his head. He then got a hold of the redhead’s skinny neck and squeezed, all intentions of wringing the life out of him.

The Headmaster, Coach Hendrix, Stanley, Kevin, and Brick all watched placidly.

Panting heavily, they both wound down until they just laid there. Reno slowly unhooked his arm from around Cloud’s neck, and he sat up, rubbing his throat and coughing a little. Cloud carefully sat up and stood, going back to line up with the other drummers.

“How’s the weight feel now, Cloud?” The Headmaster asked.

Cloud had wheezed. “No problem...”

He looked at himself in the mirror. Tie-less, freezing, and generally tiny in all aspects.

Well, except one…

Tripod. It was enough to bring a sunny smile out onto his face.

The only other piece of his drummerboy uniform left to put on was his beret. He’d been putting off figuring out how to have the thing on his head with the nature of his hair, which tended to slowly but surely push hats up off of his head. He tucked a few of the stronger spikes beneath it, and adjusted his hair around it. The tighter edge of the beret held it in place against the force of his hair. It’d be a chore to put on daily, and he’d have to do periodic checks, but he did think it looked somewhat militant and cute.

As for his schoolwork, he was expected to keep up with it, which he felt was false advertising since the other drummerboys said they’d be excused. But apparently with the situation the way it was currently, they said Cloud was about to have a lot of time on his hands. And with his spotless academic record, the Headmaster was certain it’d be no problem for a cadet as bright and studious as Cloud Strife.

Cloud’s soul had frowned. Straight A’s had gotten him fucked in the good way, and were now getting him fucked in the bad way. It was new territory for him to actually have academic expectations of him. Usually teachers gave him a pat on the back for turning in complete assignments, right or wrong answers.

So, they made photocopies of his books for the next five weeks worth of chapters, and several papers and assignments to be completed during his downtime. It was going to be his plan to bring only pens with him so they could freeze up and thus excuse him from work, but the Headmaster himself have him a pencil with the academy logo stamped all over it like it was some sort of parting gift. Thanks for nothing, chief.

Cloud emerged from the bathroom to find Zack already fast asleep again.

“We’re landing in fifteen minutes,” the sleepy-sounding pilot called from the front when he heard Cloud rustling around.

“Can I watch?” Cloud asked, standing near the tiny room full of gadgets like a vampire waiting to be invited in.

The pilot took a bag off the empty co-pilot’s seat invitationaly, so Cloud carefully sat down and looked in awe out the window. There was nothing but stark white. The sky was white, the clouds were white, and the ground was white. In fact, he couldn’t tell where the sky ended and the ground began.

The color white terrified Cloud suddenly. It was like traveling into nothingness, and somehow that was far more disturbing than traveling into darkness. Darkness suggested things hidden by lack of light. Nothing in broad daylight was… absolutely nothing.

Finally, at the edge of the colorless oblivion, a slightly higher range of white mountains barely stood out from the monotony of the rest of the environment. The plane began to descend quickly, and straight down. Cloud inwardly panicked. The calm pilot went by a screen that showed their ship as a blip, and the ground level as a flat line. They slowed as the blip came near the flat line, and just as it hit the line and turned green, they settled easily onto the ground.

Cloud let out a woosh of relief, and touched the pilot’s shoulder in a silent but somewhat necessary thank you, and quickly loaded up his things onto his body. Zack was moving around slowly and grumpily, but Cloud pranced in circles until the pilot opened the door.

He thought the initial blast of cold air would destroy him. It didn’t matter though! There was a possibility that a human heater was waiting for him, and a little cold wind wasn’t going to stop him from finding out.

He skipped out onto the snow and peered around at what there was to see. Outside, there was a little society of dwellings that appeared to be more substantial than a tent, but less permanent than a cabin. Cloud smiled, remembering Sephiroth’s less than thrilled reaction to them, and then searched the entire area with his eyes for black leather or silver hair.

The SOLDIERs at the camp weren’t fazed by their arrival. Some continued to play cards. One poked his head out of one of the igloo-cabins, and then yawned and went back inside.

Sephiroth was nowhere to be seen. Cloud slumped slightly, but then thought that maybe he was butt naked and waiting inside one of those little tent-thingies. He turned back to the ship to catch Zack stumbling out of it, crossing his arms a little bit against the cold.

“Zack… is he here?” Cloud asked him earnestly.

“What does the word ‘surprise’ mean to you?” Zack yawned, then waved back to the ship before it rumbled and then departed.

Cloud waved also, and then whined to Zack. “I don’t wanna be surprised, I wanna know now!”

He rolled his eyes. “Okay, but I’m spoiling everything… I dunno.”

Cloud gasped in pure horror. “What? Why did you say there was a surprise!?”

“It’s not like I lied. Next time we run into Seph, it’ll be a surprise for me, too.”

Cloud seethed. “Why didn’t you just say that!?”

“If I told you Seph was nowhere around, I’d have a sad midget to sit next to for eight hours on a plane. Nobody wants to sit next to a sad midget.” Zack couldn’t help himself; he laughed right in Cloud’s bewildered, angry little face.

“You’re so mean! I hate you!” Cloud declared, and trotted angrily off into the camp of SOLDIERs.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The next two weeks were nothing but sitting in the snow and waiting.

The first night was terrible and sleepless. He bundled up in his little tent, with his little sleeping bag, with his little scratchy blanket and sobbed from the sheer cold. Tearlessly of course, since it was too cold to even produce tears. The mini heating bag was useless against negative double digit temperatures, so he ended up just putting it in his pants.

The second night, he was donated an extra blanket from two other SOLDIERs, who apparently were a couple. Cloud thanked them graciously, but inwardly scowled. Must have been nice to have been able to generate some extra body heat together.

The SOLDIERs were kind to Cloud, especially upon discovering that he was the one the General was dating, and often spoke so fondly of. Cloud had Zack to talk to, and forgave him for his childish cruelty almost within the first hour of landing, because Zack was Zack. Max, Sephiroth’s Halloween impersonator was in their squad as well. It had taken a great deal of blushed, frantic denials from Cloud to convince him they hadn’t left for some hasty sex the evening of the Halloween party.

“We did not!” Cloud had screeched over the campfire.

“You totally did!” Max insisted. “Why deny it?”

“Because it’s not true! It was our first date, we’re not sluts!”

“Then where did you hurry off to?” Max asked, wiggling his eyebrows.

“We saw a movie!” Cloud stated truthfully, then crossed his arms. “Then he took me home like a gentleman!”

Zack grinned and turned his marshmallow on the fire. “I believe Cloud. Seph showed up for work that morning with the worst case of blue balls I’ve ever seen.”

Cloud gasped in delight. “Really!?”

To pass the time, the SOLDIERs played boyish games in the snow that they called training. Cloud knew dodge ball when he saw it, though. He was never allowed to actively participate, because the SOLDIERs didn’t want to hurt him, and frankly, he didn’t want to be pummeled by them either. So he sat on the sidelines, cheering and keeping score while doing on his schoolwork, and acting as a sort of referee.

But really, it was completely entertaining just to watch them; the things they could do were amazing. Cloud felt like he was watching human animals, uncaged and free. They surely couldn’t play so roughly in Midgar, but here they were allowed to show off and run wild, giddy to exhibit their skills to a set of young, awed eyes. They were like fleas, and he never got used to how high they could jump into the air, especially with a running start. He saw cuts heal together before his eyes, he saw them melt snow into water with a thought, into boiling water if they thought a little harder about it.

They did allow Cloud to join them on their morning run. He also began a yoga regime with a young, slender, ashy haired SOLDIER named Davie, who told him that stretching would assure that his muscles didn’t seize up due to the cold. Cloud thought that it was a clever excuse to have a yoga buddy, since the other SOLDIERs seemed to want nothing to do with it. In exchange for an hour a day of yoga, Cloud begged Davie to help him target his abs, which he was happy to do.

Other than that, Cloud volunteered himself for kitchen patrol out of sheer boredom. It was his job to heat up and serve the rations, which the SOLDIERs were all sick of. Cloud discovered that if the morning breakfast bars were all compiled into one pot, heated and stirred with some powdered milk and water, it made a fairly tasty, hot oatmeal concoction. It was a risky experiment, since their food was carefully rationed, but the SOLDIERs were so grateful to actually have a different food on the menu that they didn’t care that a day’s breakfast might have been ruined and ultimately thrown out.

For lunch, Cloud would cut up and arrange their small ration of vegetable substitute, which was a sort of juicy, squishy substance that reminded Cloud of gelatinous V-8. He would arrange it prettily in each SOLDIER’s canteen bowl, and heat up some alphabet soup.

For dinner it was their camp stew, but usually the SOLDIERs would bring back some monstrous animal to eat, which Cloud refused to touch until it looked more like a hamburger and less like a dinosaur. There was an older SOLDIER named Guy, who was likely an excellent father and enjoyed barbequing and creating delicacies out of dead creatures. Often he would drop extra meat into Cloud’s bowl, saying something like, “Try that son, that’s the face!”

This was all they had to do.

As non-important as his days seemed, Cloud found he rarely had much free time to sit and dwell on his longing for Sephiroth, except alone at night in his sleeping bag. And even then, the thoughts were rarely sexual in nature.

It was so dark at the Northern Crater at night. It was a thick, lightless dark that was like a negative slide of the blindingly bright a pure white days.

The dark didn’t normally scare Cloud much, but it did at the Northern Crater. The threats in that darkness weren’t imaginary. Anything from a monster, to a terrorist could tear Cloud from this existence forever. So, he thought of Sephiroth in the pitch black, only to give him courage enough to close his eyes and relax enough for sleep.

Sephiroth was a man who’d slept in this darkness without fear. He thought about how to eliminate his threats, not hide from them. Even though his training was well underway, Cloud still held mostly flight instincts. This darkness made him want to cringe and seek refuge underneath his blankets, not puff out and kick ass.

He was supposed to be a man, but didn’t have enough confidence to leave his tent to take a leak instead of holding it until morning. For these reasons, Cloud found that he wasn’t very much interested in any sort of sexual fantasizing or masturbation. His own insecurity turned him off.

Plus, he was wearing long johns.

On yet another bright, white day, Cloud and the others returned from their morning run to find their camp half packed and buzzing with activity.

“What’s happening?” Cloud panted down at Zack, who was stirring a pot of Cloud’s oatmeal recipe.

“We are moving out!” Zack called, and was answered by a round of happy cheers. “We’re gonna head West and meet up with twelve other squads, and await further instruction.”

Before Cloud could even asked, Zack grinned and gave him a bowl of oatmeal. “It’ll be a surprise.”

Cloud quickly ate his breakfast, then packed up his tent and gathered his gear. Since he had a relatively small amount to carry in comparison to the others, he also packed up the little kitchen and fireside area, and covered the evidence of their stay with snow.

They spent that entire day marching, unpacked for the night, then spent the next day marching as well. It was uneventful at best, and Cloud thought that perhaps if he died and was sent to hell, this surely would have been it for him. No beginning, no end, no talking, just marching, marching, marching…

He couldn’t even gaze at their cute SOLDIER asses, since they were so laden with gear and weapons. It was a disgusting situation, and by the middle of the third day, Cloud felt like a zombie.

When a clusterfuck of demons came out of nowhere, Cloud marched right up onto Zack’s heels before he realized they were stopped. He peeked around Zack to find that demons were just as monstrous and horrifying as Cloud imagined they might be. Thick, poisonous gasses seemed to seep out of their pores, venom dripped from their razor sharp teeth, and claws flashed menacingly. They outnumbered the SOLDIERs three to one.

The men all reacted immediately and without any sort of hesitation or fear, but Cloud gasped and stepped back with terrified, wide eyes.

“Zack?!” Cloud called, his arms lifting a little, almost as if he expected someone to stop fighting pick him up like a child.

Zack was busy, but called easily over his shoulder. “It’s alright, Cloud. Go hang out behind those trees, ‘kay?”

If Zack had known that Cloud was completely and utterly unschooled in creature combat, he might have mentioned that he should have walked away calmly. However, Cloud departed like his ass had caught fire. Unfortunately, running away from a clusterfuck of demons was definitely not the thing to do.

A smaller demon left the pack and went buzzing after him through the air. Cloud shrieked gutturally and dove into the snow before it could knock him off his feet. He sat up and looked at the little thing, which blinked all of its eighty eyes at him, one by one. The effect made him nauseous and slightly sleepy, before he shook his head to snap out of the trance before it took a stronger hold of him.

He struggled to his feet and screamed when the demon snapped its’ jaws at him. He didn’t have any weapons at all. He had his tent and sleeping bag, his drum, his drumsticks, his speaker, his little heat sack and an army knife. He went through his inventory in his mind, trying to think of anything that might make a good offence, when the demon attacked. It scratched at Cloud, who was quick enough to hop back away from it.

Having no other options, Cloud took his tent off of his back, and swung it by the straps. The demon was clocked heavily upside its bulbous head, and fell down into the snow. While it was still stunned, Cloud began to kick the hell out of it, stomping on its head until it split open and the creature stopped breathing. He was panting, before realizing he had a very proud-looking audience.

“Look!” Davie said adoringly. “Cloud got the baby!”

Cloud breathed hard through his nose. “Baby!? This is a baby!?”

He looked back at the corpse, and with a certain degree of disappointment, the thing had shriveled slightly upon its’ death, much like a swatted insect. It looked rather unimpressive.

Zack patted Cloud solidly on the back. “Did it getcha?”

“No!” Cloud denied, puffing out.

The SOLDIERs were not fooled, but allowed that to slip. You’d have to have been on the other side of the Earth not to have heard Cloud screaming when the thing approached him. Besides, they didn’t have the heart to inform Cloud that baby demons didn’t have their venom yet… let alone actual claws.

Zack smiled. “Well, did you get anything?”

“What do you mean?”

“Check the body. You might have something, there.”

Cloud approached the demon carefully, not touching it and not seeing anything of worth. “Um?”

Zack and the rest of the SOLDIERs laughed warmly as though they were watching an infant take his first clumsy steps. “You have to cut it open.”

“I don’t wanna cut it open!” Cloud gawked.

Zack didn’t try to hide his mirth. “There’s probably something cool inside it! Cut it open and check it out, it’s not that hard!”

“It’s like a piñata,” Max supplied.

“Why would there be something inside it?” Cloud asked suspiciously, as though the thing might erupt with springs or something upon opening it like a joke can of peanut brittle.

“You gotta get through the clothes to get to the meat, right? When they eat people, they swallow everything.”

Cloud paled. “It could have eaten me?”

Zack pinched his nose in bemusement. “No Cloud, not this one. The adults usually let the smaller ones eat first, so the babies usually carry the best shit.”

Cloud thought it actually might have been really sweet to find a cell phone or extra Mp3 player batteries. He got rather excited about the idea, and pulled out his knife and carefully rolled the body onto it’s back, and made a dainty cut down the center of its’ stomach. It wasn’t very wet inside the demon, more like dusty and ragged. He cut it open a little more when he saw something that glowed slightly inside of it.

He took the tube out, and easily recognized the serial number printed on the label. “…It’s a max potion.”

The SOLDIERs ooh’d and aah’d. Zack nodded. “See? You gotta check them, you might find something really cool!” Cloud had absolutely no use for such an item, and he immediately tried to give it to Zack. “No way! That’s your first find, it’s bad luck to give it away.”

Cloud looked at the tiny tube, knowing damn well this type of thing was designed for someone like Zack’s, or hell – Sephiroth’s use. But he decided that it wasn’t a bad thing to have around just in case. He put it in his bag for safekeeping, and followed the rest of the SOLDIERs as they moved out.

He stopped and looked at the demon as it laid cut open and dead in the snow. He’d never, ever killed anything in his life bigger than a spider. And even then, he usually held the flashlight while his mother beat them to death with her heels.

He looked at the little thing in its death, and realized he’d fought it without a second thought. There was no humane sort of respect, he’d felt that it was either him or it. In hindsight, it probably wasn’t that dramatic. And if he’d known it was only a baby… would he have tried to let it go?

Cloud supposed that most people didn’t enjoy killing things, or people. He also supposed that he preferred not to, but knew he’d have to, probably many times in his life. Not just demons or spiders, but people. Maybe in cold blood. He had a license to kill, as a member of the Shin-Ra army. Just a cadet, but a member nonetheless.

He wanted to call Sephiroth and talk to him about it. He wanted to know if he was the sort of man who enjoyed the kill, or if he was a humanitarian type. Silly question, because he already knew the answer. But he wanted to ask it anyways, just to see what he would say. He wanted to know about Sephiroth’s first kill. He wanted to know about the goodies he’d found.

He turned on his phone, snapped a picture of the little dead demon, sent it to Sephiroth, and then turned it off again. His phone was already halfway drained of its batteries, his own fault for gazing at beautiful, naked pictures of Sephiroth one night before sleep and forgetting to turn it back off, again. It hadn’t even been worth it, he’d fallen asleep halfway through fapping. He was trying to be more careful, to conserve. Same with his Mp3 player which was already as good as dead, but wasn’t dead yet. Just having a little bit of juice left in it was somehow comforting, although it was killing him to march these past few days in silence.

Speaking of which, the SOLDIERs were all now smaller in the distance. One of them stopped and hollered to him, and Cloud collected his things and sprinted to catch up with them.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The next day, from a distance, Cloud could see people peppering the snow. He skipped a little, pointing with excitement. “Are those the other squads?”

Chuck, or Chuckles as they liked to call him, was a tall, brawny SOLDIER who rarely spoke, but he nodded down at Cloud. “That they are.”

Cloud grinned, thanking Jesus, Mary and Joseph that their endless march was finally over. Even if there was more to do, which he was sure there was, this part was over. Everything was a step closer to battle, a step closer to victory, and a step closer to getting the hell out of the snow.

Their squad of seven SOLDIERs and one cadet joined twelve other squads, and became a troop. Zack was their leader, and went about to speak with the other higher-ranking officers. Some of Cloud’s original squad found friends and began to chat with them, and he squinted his eyes for either Sephiroth or another drummer.

He grimaced when he finally found the only person within a million mile radius that was his own rank. He was lying in the snow looking like a crime scene with his red hair splayed out around him.

Cloud rolled his eyes and approached. “Hey Reno.”

“Yo,” Reno answered, but didn’t move to get up. “How long’ve you been walkin’?”

Cloud had to think about that, as time had begun to blend seamlessly. “Four days. This is day five, actually.”

“Ouch,” Reno said. “Three here, and I feel like I could just about die.”

“Me too… gear wasn’t too heavy, though,” Cloud said with a snort. Their scuffle seemed like a million years ago.

Reno’s mental cogs seemed to slowly turn until he caught on. “Oh wow. Sorry about that.”

Zack approached Cloud with both thumbs valiantly held up. “We’re staying here for the night!”

Cloud wasn’t sure why Zack was so happy about this. “Yay?”

“And meeting up with twelve more troops tomorrow!” Zack added, seeming as though Cloud should be catching onto something.

“Neat?” Cloud shrugged.

Zack looked bewildered at Cloud. “Well, aren’t you gonna ask me about your surprise?”

Cloud blinked, and slowly smiled. “Zack… when am I gonna see Seph…?”

“Tomorrow!” Zack announced. “Surprise!”

Cloud couldn’t stop himself from hopping into the air, then wincing and rubbing at his sore legs. He went about choosing a spot nearby Zack to pitch his tent, before his body gave out entirely. Besides, he was gonna need his leg muscles tomorrow! Hubba hubba!

Reno took the liberty of leaning all over Cloud’s work. “Heeey… question…”

Cloud looked up inquisitively as he secured his pack against one of his tent posts.

“It’s silly for us to both have to pitch tents, am I right? How’s about you pitch this tent tonight, we share, and I’ll pitch tomorrow?”

“Oh dream on, Reno,” Cloud muttered, and went back to work.

Reno balked. “Listen, don’t get the wrong idea! I’m not tryin’ anything funny! Afterall, I have a very tall, very tough boyfriend who’d beat your blonde little ass for such an assumption!”

Cloud grinned. “I have a very tall, very tough boyfriend, too. He’d beat your redheaded ass for trying to pitch anything around me, smartass.”

Reno grunted, and plopped down onto his butt in the snow. “Please, Cloud? I can’t even lift my arm, I’m so tired. See?” He made to lift his arm, and it wobbled helplessly at his side. “How could I rape you?”

Cloud chuckled. There was room in his tent for two. He was a small occupant, after all. Also, he was so sick of assembling and breaking down the fucking tent he wanted to puke. “…Okay. But you’re breaking down in the morning and setting up tomorrow night.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die!” Reno promised, sticking his pinky out to Cloud.

Cloud curled his own around it and nodded. He finished setting up for the night, and the two went to the mass area for dinner. With over a hundred SOLDIERs, army and personnel, it was now more of a challenge to get some grub. But Guy and a few others had taken it upon themselves to be the troops’ cavemen, and dragged some delicious-looking monsters back to chow down upon.

Guy even found Cloud and Reno in the fray of hungry gentlemen. “Here, boys. For the red one, you’re getting this. Now eat all of that, son, that’s the lower intestine, very nutritious and great for the sperm count. And for Cloud,” ‘Plop’ went the meat into Cloud’s soup, “I know you like the face!”

There was still a little light outside after they were done eating, but there was nothing Cloud wanted to do beyond sleep. He made his way to his tent… well, their tent. Reno followed, barely keeping his head up as he walked beside him.

They both had enough room to crawl in, worm into their sleeping bags, and roll over.

It was very odd sleeping next to someone else and not getting held by them. As if Reno was thinking something similar, he cleared his throat. “So. Zack was saying something about you meeting up with General Sephiroth tomorrow?”

Cloud smiled in the near dark at the reminder. “Yeah. We’re, well... You probably already know, right?”

“Oh yeah,” Reno nodded. “One of my friends fucks Drew, Drew’s friends with Skylar, prolly fucks him, too. Told Drew all about it. He told me all about it. You know how it all goes.”

Cloud laughed, embarrassed that his personal life was slutty academy grapevine gossip. He used to tap into the grapevine himself, but he was lately uninterested in the lives of others. He had too much going on in his own. “I haven’t seen him in like… god. Almost three months, now.”

Reno whistled through his teeth. “Damn. I haven’t seen mine in three weeks and I’m dying.”

“What’s his name?” Cloud smiled, rolling over to look at Reno.

“Rude. Rudie,” Reno cooed affectionately, and rolled over to face Cloud. For two people so tired they could barely see straight, they managed to speak for a long while about their respective others, and found they had a lot in common by just being in a relationship.

Reno’s challenge was that Rude was a brand new Turk, always training, always busy, and always away. Cloud had the exact same difficulties with Sephiroth, lately on an even larger scale. Reno had begun dating Rude roughly around the same time Cloud met Sephiroth. Both Reno and Cloud longed to be finished with school to be closer to their sweethearts.

Also, Reno apparently enjoyed punk music as much as Cloud did, and asked Cloud if his labret piercing had hurt. Cloud asked Reno if he had any tattoos, and Reno told him of his plans for under-the-eye scarification upon his eighteenth birthday.

They both grew up with only their mothers and no father around. Both boys confessed to each other that they were total mama’s boys. Cloud told Reno all about getting his hair done by his mother, and Reno had been slightly humiliated. Reno informed Cloud that he was dead meat when his mother found out that she was kept in the dark about his deployment.

They went to sleep with their heads full of pleasant thoughts about their boyfriends, music, and body mutilation and woke up the next morning as friends. Even though it was a part of the bargain that Reno was to put away the tent on his own, Cloud helped him out anyways, and soon it was another day of marching.

This was unlike the other days, however. This day Zack said he was going to finally get to see Sephiroth. When a large group appeared in the distance, far larger and far more concentrated than the troop they were in, Cloud began to trot happily.

They merged into the group and dispersed, becoming one with the other uniformed members of the Shin-Ra army. Cloud didn’t see any other drummerboys, or Sephiroth, but he did see someone that he had business with.

Cloud touched Reno’s arm. “Hey, wait for me just a minute!”

Before Reno could bitch about it, Cloud was already trotting away and digging into his pack. Genesis was sitting next to a flickering campfire, reading. Cloud approached him carefully. “Gen? Sir?”

Genesis looked like he might have ignored him, but his nose twitched a little, and he looked over his book to the pink letter being held out to him. Cloud smiled. “From Rufus, sir. He gave it to me before I left, for you.”

Genesis slowly reached out and took it, and turned it over. It remained perfectly sealed, every millimeter of the sticky edge down tight. “Ugh. He knows I hate opening sealed letters. Do you know what they make that envelope glue out of?”

“Rufus licked it,” Cloud prodded.

Genesis moaned in disgust. “Tell me he didn’t... ugh.”

Cloud grinned, and could think of nothing more to say, except… “Genesis? Do you know where Sephiroth is?”

“He’s prancing around here somewhere,” he muttered, distastefully ripping open the letter with a great amount of grace.

Cloud waited for a moment longer before realizing he wasn’t going to get a much clearer answer than that, and left him. He strolled back over to Reno and they continued following their SOLDIERs in the near distance, when a figure in black crossed Cloud’s peripheral vision. He didn’t want to hope too hard, but his mouth parted a little when he looked to the side.

He stopped immediately. Sephiroth was beautiful when he was standing in the snow.

He was perhaps twenty feet away, but it seemed like more, like an impassable distance. He was walking alongside a few other men and talking, his lips moving to create beautiful, enticing shapes over his sharp teeth.

Cloud had been afraid of them at first, but he knew they were gentle… unless he didn’t want them to be. He knew what those teeth felt like against his skin, raking along the most tender parts of him.

Cloud actually stepped forward a step or two, but his senses kicked in. This wasn’t the place to approach Sephiroth, not like that. He’d have to wait to be approached, if at all.

He stood as tall as he could, staring intently. Here! Look over here! Notice me, dear!

But Sephiroth’s didn’t. Cloud’s heart broke into a hundred, hungry pieces before he remembered that he was wearing the stupid beret, thus stifling his most recognizable trait. He quickly removed the beret and shook his head a little, hoping for once in his life it would bounce up into the yellow jagged planes that had earned him a childhood of ridicule.

They must have, because Sephiroth’s head snapped in his direction.

From so close and so far, he cut Cloud’s heart with a wide, happy smile that hinted at the angelic sunshine he must have wielded as a small boy. Cloud couldn’t help but let his face split into a joyous grin in response. He couldn’t be the one to close that vast distance between them, but everything in his posture and energy invited his beloved to approach.

And Sephiroth might have, if it weren’t for his attention taken again by one of the people he was with… but his eyes crept back over to Cloud, as if he was trying to tell him something.

Cloud blinked. Sephiroth’s eyes flicked back to his companions, and he shook his head slightly.

He wanted to come over. But he couldn’t.

Reno was exhausted and utterly oblivious, and became impatient. “C’mon.”

Cloud was torn. He would have waited there all day for Sephiroth to spare a moment for him, but that wasn’t what he was there for. And if he lost his group just to wait for a kiss, he couldn’t imagine Sephiroth being too terribly proud of him.

So instead of looking upset about it, Cloud saluted.

Sephiroth looked at him for a moment longer, before finally turning away and following his posse.

He slid his beret back onto his head and followed Reno through the camp until they left Sephiroth behind, lost in the crowd.

With Reno’s back to him, he sobbed once before he indulged in a silent, dry cry.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud woke up with a large, gloved hand covering his mouth, and a knee positioned between his legs.

Rape! he thought, instantly coming to full alertness.

This was the moment he’d been waiting for all his life – especially the past several months at the academy. Some hotheaded closet-case beef nut was planning on using his openly gay…and okay, slightly feminine, lily-white ass to release some sort of pent up homosexual rage.

Or worse. This was a sniffling, sexually insane serial killer-type who’d been stalking Cloud since his arrival at camp, waiting for a ripe time to pick him off like a sickly lamb in a flock of sheep. He was going to rape his ear canal while filleting his skin with a hot hunting knife, then he’d wear his face until someone realized he wasn’t Cloud. The event unfortunately wouldn’t kill him, and he’d be forced to live life faceless and ear-fucked, while Sephiroth remained his semi-affectionate pen pal while relocating permanently to Junon to make things less awkward between the two of them.

Or worse! This heavy prick was a completely straight man who was going to call him his wife’s name while gently making love to him. He’d go limp without even blowing his load when the delusion lifted and he released Cloud didn’t possess a vagina. Then he’d sob and ask to be held, and then show pictures of his children.

Whatever the case may be, Cloud Strife’s orifices were not open for business.

Cloud bit his attacker’s hand through his glove and brought a knee up between his legs, making satisfying contact with the thick rod of junk he carried around in his pants.

The attacker squeaked a little under his breath, and wrapped around Cloud in a sudden, shockingly forceful lock. Cloud swallowed hard, wondering if maybe this particular ear fucker was going to actually get the better of him.

Not a chance! He wriggled furiously in self defense.

“Baby, shh…” A hot breath came out against his ear.

The oxygen in Cloud’s body disappeared, and he parted his lips beneath the hand over his face. He couldn’t see anything in the extreme Northern Crater darkness, but the man above him opened his eyes, and the sharp green glow of two cat eyes slit the darkness.

Cloud whispered fiercely and joyously behind his hand, “Smph!”

Sephiroth whispered back so quietly it sounded more like a thought. “Be quiet.”

Cloud wiggled until his arms were free of his sleeping bag, and threw them around Sephiroth. The sheer heat he was confronted with was like a blast of humid summer wind. It was rolling off of his lover’s skin so hard that Cloud expected steam to be coming off the man.

He felt so good in the hellish cold, he absolutely vanquished it. It was like Sephiroth’s body was made for nothing else but Cloud’s comfort and pleasure. Then Cloud remembered his foolish assault and clutched onto his coat, whispering, “I’m so sorry for hitting you!”

“S’okay, I’m fine… don’t ever knee my nuts again, though…”

Cloud giggled guiltily and leaned up, “God, Seph. Kiss me.”

“Wait. Close your eyes for a second,” He said.

Cloud obeyed.

“Okay, you can open ‘em.”

Cloud obeyed again, and fluttered his eyes against an unexpected, but soft lighting, like the sun had risen just for the two of them. He blinked, and then his eyes found Sephiroth. He was on his elbows above him, gazing down as is he was stuck on a pause.

Cloud was frozen also. Partially in disbelief, but also due to an extreme case of virgin-like nerves.

Sephiroth was the first to move. He shifted to lie more heavily on Cloud, and brought those beautiful lips closer to his.

Cloud slid his hands onto Sephiroth’s shoulders as he neared, and shuddered slightly as warm arms wrapped firmly around his waist, pulling him up through his sleeping bag.

Their lips met, moist and warm, but slightly chapped from the cold. Touching his tongue to Sephiroth’s felt startlingly like licking a charged battery, his entire body tingled and he became instantly desperate and heated.

Sephiroth tilted his head, and slid his tongue further past Cloud’s lips, dominating their kiss easily. Cloud’s fingers burrowed into his hair and rubbed at his scalp. Feeling Sephiroth’s hard, long body drape over him sent a hot spark of urgency shot through Cloud, and he pressed his face closer to Sephiroth’s. He nudged his tongue against Sephiroth’s with force, pushing it down to the bottom of his mouth. He licked his sharp, pointed teeth, and began to kick to be free of the sleeping bag.

“I don’t wanna rush,” Sephiroth said, breaking their kiss to rub his nose against Cloud’s cheek, and to unzip Cloud’s bag. “But we don’t have a ton of time. I’m sorry, b –”

“I love you,” Cloud whispered, cutting his senseless apology short. “I’m just glad you’re here.”

Sephiroth smiled, and Cloud’s world as moved. It was such a beautiful, perfect thing that Cloud couldn’t help but destroy it with his own mouth.

Sephiroth made a sexy, drawn out affirmative noise in his throat, and his fingers unzipped Cloud out of his sleeping bag and spread over his body underneath. Cloud’s eyes fluttered, and he tore his mouth away from Sephiroth’s to bite his black cadet gloves and rip them away from his hands.

He let his bare hands sink into Sephiroth’s hair, and bit at the crack in Sephiroth’s bottom lip, stroking his tongue along the tiny, delicious little imperfection. Sephiroth moaned a little in his mouth, and Cloud’s fingers moved to the buttons on his uniform shirt to be rid of it.

“Hey, careful. You only have two of those,” Sephiroth said gently, taking Cloud’s overeager hands, and bringing them to his lips. “Calm down a little bit.”

“I can’t!” Cloud whimpered, gasping for air.

Sephiroth chuckled and shushed, the soft tone racking dozens of shivers through Cloud’s body. Cloud did, then put his face against Sephiroth’s neck and breathed. After a few long moments, Sephiroth put Cloud’s hands on his shoulders, where they curled into his hair.

Sephiroth continued to unbutton Cloud’s shirt carefully, but also not teasing his body any further than he already was. Once it was off, he gave Cloud what he wanted, running wide, flat palms over his skin. He kissed the nearest, small nipple, and pulled it into his mouth.

“Oh God…” Cloud moaned, and a whine began low in his throat.

“Sensitive?” Sephiroth smiled, flicking his hot tongue over it.

“It’s this fucking stupid cold,” Cloud whined, kicking his feet a little. “I’ve had high beams for weeks.”

“Told you…I’m gonna take care of you…” Sephiroth said, giving both hyper sensitized little buds a warm treatment with his mouth and tongue.

Cloud’s breath caught in his throat over and over, and he began to grind uncontrollably against Sephiroth’s hips. The General smiled and worked downwards, kissing the goose bumped skin of Cloud’s stomach and sides, sucking softly on his hipbones as he easily undid Cloud’s fatigues.

Cloud was only too eager to help himself be rid of the constricting uniform fatigues, and kicked his feet to help get them off of his body. Finally naked, he sat up and fumbled with Sephiroth’s closures on his pants. He pawed at the leather until he was out of his way, and finally regained enough nimbleness in his fingers to quickly undo Sephiroth’s belts and straps with care. He took a moment to claw his short nails down Sephiroth’s sides, grinning at the answering hiss and arch from his beloved.

Cloud made a hungry sound and pounced as the pants came sliding off, rolling Sephiroth’s hard, warm body onto his back. He licked his way down Sephiroth’s delicious stomach and began a little feast on the inside of his slender thighs. Cloud then took one of the tightened balls into his mouth, and sucked gently, rolling his tongue over the smooth, heavy sack. Sephiroth shifted up on his elbows, watching as Cloud eagerly worked his mouth up the underside of his cock.

“I missed this,” Cloud whispered over the head before tonguing the slit. He was talking about much more than just Sephiroth’s anatomy.

Sephiroth smiled in a slightly shy sort of appreciation. Cloud didn’t suck, only moved his lips along the shaft with his fluttering blue eyes, teasing the head with the wet warmth of his mouth periodically. After a few moments, his lips then came kissing back up Sephiroth’s abdomen.

He settled himself over Sephiroth’s lap, hugging his neck while kissing his lover’s face. Cloud took one of Sephiroth’s hands, which were stroking affectionate at his hips, and gently moved it back over his ass in a slightly coy, silent suggestion. Sephiroth let his fingertips dip between the crack, but there was an issue to be addressed, and that had to do with lubrication, which did not come easy in any facet in the Northern Crater.

Then from seemingly nowhere, Sephiroth produced a tube of Pleasureglide. “I thought we might need this sometime up here.”

Cloud giggled and laid his cheek against Sephiroth’s shoulder and did his best to relax as two of his lover’s slick fingers pushed inside. Cloud gasped as the fingers slid in and out, a bit further each time until they both dove in to the knuckle.

“I’m ready,” Cloud insisted after the soft pads of Sephiroth’s fingers began to steadily flick back and forth over his prostate. The sensations flooding his lower body were causing his thighs to waver, and anxiety heated his limbs. He didn’t want to wait anymore.

Sephiroth pushed his fingers in a few more times, kissing Cloud into distraction while making sure he was as ready as he claimed to be. He then took his cock and touched it to the hot little opening, and pulled on Cloud’s waist in invitation.

It felt both wonderful and awful to sink all the way down onto Sephiroth after being without him for so long. But the pain was easily eclipsed by the warmth and satisfaction of coming home to his lover’s body. Cloud groaned in bittersweet agony and wrapped both arms tightly around Sephiroth’s neck.

“M’sorry…” Sephiroth said sincerely, apologizing for the pain their physical love sometimes caused Cloud.

“It won’t be so bad after a second,” he whispered through his teeth.

Sephiroth rubbed his cheek alongside Cloud’s, his voice soft but Cloud could feel his body’s thrumming tension and restrained desire to move, push, fuck.

“Take your time.” Sephiroth pushed Cloud’s hair out of his face, tucking the longer locks behind his ears. “I’ve been gone a while, but I’m here now. Pretty soon there’ll be times when you’re gone, away for work and shit. But we’ll always belong to each other. We have our whole lives, y’know.”

Cloud took a moment to catch his breath and nodded, turning his face to kiss Sephiroth’s fingertips, then his lips. He hissed as Sephiroth cupped his ass and lifted him up slowly, the friction this caused both delicious and painful.

He then took a little bit more control, and breathed steadily as he used his thighs to rock gently against Sephiroth. Cloud suddenly twisted in his arms, his lips falling apart to cry out against his shoulder. He moaned deeply and ground his hips in that circular little motion again.

“That’s right…” Sephiroth purred in his hair. “Just use it, baby.”

Cloud hiccupped with pleasure at these words, and tried to pull the flap of his sleeping bag back when Reno snatched it off of him.

“Get up,” Reno called.

“I can’t…” Cloud uttered, wrapping his arms around himself against the sudden cold.

Oh, he was also so hot. The air was thick between them, Sephiroth’s sweat dripped down his neck in salty droplets, like rain rolling down glass. Their bodies slid smoothly across each other, that big cock easily sliding in and out of his body and every single time nudging that wonderful place inside him. Cloud kissed his corded throat sensually, licking a line of tasty sweat up to his even tastier lips.

Sephiroth held Cloud still and forcefully popped his hips up between Cloud’s spread thighs. “Come on, baby, shoot it all over me… I like it when you get it on my nipples...”

Cloud liked that, too! He smiled and nuzzled into his scratchy little blanket happily.

Reno was out of patience. He grabbed a handful of Cloud’s hair and yanked on it. He earned a rough howl from Cloud that ended in more of a needy purr.

“Open your goddamn eyes! You already missed breakfast!” Reno demanded with a blush.

Cloud finally did open his eyes, and any remnants of the dream he was hanging onto were torn away from him. He furrowed his brow and rolled over onto his stomach. “Fuck! I was having an amaaazing dream!” Cloud whimpered, shaking a little as he was still only a stone’s throw away from coming right in his pants. “…Sephiroth came in here... we were making so many babies.”

Reno’s mouth lifted into a smile, and he didn’t have a drop of pity when he threw fresh bleach on Cloud’s desire. “Yup. You were dreaming, alright.”

Cloud felt the desperate, pulsing ache in his pants begin to die with the cold and the disgusting truth in Reno’s words. Just a dream. Always just a goddamn dream.

How much longer was he going to have to wait!?

“Hello? We’re still moving out, get your shit together and let’s go.”

Cloud rubbed his eyes with a deep frown and wriggled out of his sleeping bag. He spent the next hour working with Reno to disassemble their tent and divvy up the load, Reno carrying more of the heavier items, and Cloud carrying the more awkwardly shaped ones. They followed the herd of men as they migrated ever closer to battle.

Stanley sometimes sent messages to Cloud, short and somehow haughty even through a text only format. The other drummers were all safe and well, and apparently nobody had seen battle yet. From what he hinted, there might only be just one.

Cloud didn’t know if he felt more excited or nervous, but rather some sickening combination of the two. He didn’t doubt his own drumming, or the ability of the SOLDIERs to keep him safe. But it scared him to know that there was always the fluke factor, always a chance of bodily harm or even death.

It was possible. It was very possible.

Zack had told him in so many words that he’d have to be a dead-ass Popsicle in the snow first for him to allow anything to happen to him. The Lieutenant saying something like that would have been comforting enough, but the fact that it was Zack saying it also made Cloud brave. From the first minute of meeting Zack, there had been an almost familial connection between the two of them, which had become something more during his stay with him at the Crater. He trusted Zack to guard him, and not only as a favor to Sephiroth.

Reno became giddy halfway through the day, one of his unexpected outbursts of sudden, manic energy. “My girl likes to party all the time, party all the time, party all the tii~iime!”

Cloud turned to him, waiting for the rest of the song to come tumbling out of his shivering lips, but it didn’t. Reno’s icy eyes turned to his.

“Can you hear it? In the snow.”

“Hear what?” Cloud smiled.

“I’ve been hearin’ a beat in the snow.”

Cloud tried, but only heard crunching. But then, ever so slowly, he could hear a steady something rumbling underneath all the senseless noise. There were only two feet on each man, and they came down on a one or a two. It really could have been any song with a strong, quick beat, and Cloud decided that it might as well have been Sir Mix-a-Lot.

“Okay, let’s do this,” Cloud grinned.

Reno clapped his hands, seeming to be waiting for the right time, then shouted, “I like big butts and I cannot lie!”

Cloud was beet red, but shuffled along and sang strongly. “You other brothers can’t deny!”

“When a girl walks in with an itty, bitty waist – !”

“ – and a round thing in your face – !”

Cloud was suddenly face down with a hot weight on his back. He was about to protest being drowned in the snow for simply indulging in a little bit of innocent house rap, when the ground shook.

When the shock ebbed, Cloud looked up and saw a huge patch of snow melted and charred nearby. His eyes flicked over his shoulder and he saw that it was Max on his back, his friendly features set and concentrated.

The rest of the SOLDIERs were paused similarly, all looking to the East. Cloud looked himself, and in the great white nothing of the Northern Crater, he could make out an unimpressive mountain.

Then it began to come together for him. They’d just been shot at for no goddamn reason.

No fair… some extremely young part of Cloud’s brain decided.

Max gripped the straps of Cloud’s pack and hauled him up to his feet like he weighed less than nothing, and put himself in front of him. Cloud’s eyes searched for Reno, and found him similarly shielded behind Chuckles.

There were several more moments of intense stillness, but Cloud could sense that the men were anxious, waiting.

Shoot back! Cloud thought, peeking around Max curiously, before being pushed back into place.

Zack then did something that Cloud would later spend time trying to work out in his mind. Magic was still just so alien to him that his brain had difficulty accepting what he saw.

What he did, was create a shield.

To Cloud, Zack blew bubbles on a colossal scale. They surrounded their group, then faded. But every so often, the sun would catch and sparkle slightly. Cloud assumed they hadn’t done this before because that slight sparkle only increased their visibility. Also, he could see there was a constant effort on Zack’s part to keep it up.

When the shield was in place, Max moved away from Cloud. He looked down and saw his slightly bewildered expression, and patted the side of his neck. The guys continued on, but the drummer boys weren’t in the mood to rap anymore.

They cleared a somewhat steep hill in the snow, and there was a mass gathering of personnel. Cloud was slightly jarred to suddenly find thousands of men, and wondered where they’d all come from so suddenly. If he squinted, he could see even more troops walking in from all directions.

He looked towards where they were all coming to, and realized they were standing directly next to the Crater. The Northern fucking Crater was right there. Cloud’s eyes widened, and he itched to get a better look at such a landmark.

Zack was on the phone with all the casualness of chatting with Aerith, until Cloud heard him loosely use the title Colonel, and he was speaking about their brush with a small hostile group on the way to the convergence. He tried to listen in, hoping to pick up any information that might have been useful to him, or juicy.

Zack caught him eavesdropping and flicked the top of his head.

Cloud frowned and decided to use some of his cell phone’s precious little battery to check for texts. He turned it on, and found one from his beloved that was sent the night prior.

Baby baby baby it killed me to not touch you…not upset I hope… cuz ur LOOKING SO DAMN GOOD!!! Cuter and hotter than ever I swear to god!! Dream about me, cuz I’m sure as FUCK gonna be dreaming about you!!!

Cloud shook his head in amusement. Sephiroth’s actual speaking voice was usually so even and almost monotonous, yet his texts were always so raving and emphatic. Cloud giggled to himself, unable to stop from blushing as he typed back with his thumbs, Not upset at all. You looked sooo sexy, too! Last night I dreamt you fucked me mmm so good ~ think maybe we met up in dreamland...? See you soon.

When Cloud sent that, he took a moment to check the time, and was about to turn the phone off, when a new message came blipping in from Sephiroth almost immediately.

stay by zack thisll be over soon

Cloud reread the message again, and his heart began to throb in his chest. What did that mean exactly…?

There was a movement in the crowd of SOLDIERs, a low rumble of voices that began to steadily increase in volume, and Reno jerked on the straps of his speaker. “Holy shit, it’s time! Now! Get your stuff on! We’ve got one minute!”

Cloud was frozen still for several seconds, and then dropped everything he was carrying to the ground, and slipped his Kevlar vest on. He then connected his wires from the drum to the speaker, and strapped the drum around his neck. He gave the tight skin of the drum an experimental tap and it shivered under the stick, and was made incredibly loud by the relatively small, but powerful speaker.

Reno passed Cloud one of his walkie talkies, and Cloud hooked it into his pocket.

The movement in the vast crowd halted, and for a moment, everyone was still and quiet. Cloud felt something tickle the side of his face, and was surprised to realize that it was sweat.

The ground shook, and Wutainese warriors in their demonized red and black uniforms appeared, dashing up at the SOLDIERs from the mouth of the Crater. Zack put his hands on Cloud and Reno’s shoulders. “We’re watching you, don’t worry. Stay here with your backs to each other!”

And then, Zack was gone. Wasn’t he going to stay and hold their hands?

Reno turned around and pressed his back into Cloud’s. He was shaking.

Their walkie talkies both rumbled with a voice neither recognized, “Long roll.”

Long roll was a continuous drum roll. Cloud remembered that. Cloud could do that. Sure.

So, he did. Although the SOLDIERS, soldiers, and army were already heading off, they quickened eagerly when the beat began to pour out of their speakers.

It was almost as though the SOLDIERs needed ass-kicking music. If that’s what they needed, Cloud would surely give it to them. The thing about long roll, was that typically they required a solid minute of rolling to get the fucking message across, and then, it was generally about making noise until another roll was announced.

“Cloud, look,” Reno called, bringing Cloud up from some senseless place within.

“Oh,” Cloud said dumbly. There was an enemy warrior coming directly at them, screaming in rage, brandishing a huge sword. Cloud kept rolling, and closed his eyes.

When he opened them, the warrior was more or less on the ground perhaps 15 feet in front of them. More or less, parts of him were missing. He looked over at Reno, who was busy being enthralled with everything that was happening around them.

“Do you know Anal Orgasm?” Cloud called out over his shoulder.

“Oh, hell yeah!” Reno nodded, his smile widening as another enemy warrior was diced before them. Cloud caught it this time, and felt a surreal smile form on his face.

It was unreal. It was fucking unreal. Cloud’s thoughts couldn’t get more complex than that. He kept thinking it over and over.

Unreal. This is un fucking real.

“Do you know it by heart? Do you know track 9?” Cloud asked, adding an extra lanky beat into the roll to ease up on his wrists. The last thing he wanted to do was to get sore.

“Track 9…” Reno thought about it, then smiled. “Track nine! Yeah, it’s called Ass In Nine!”

“Let’s do that,” Cloud said, as their minute of nonstop rolling was long over.

Reno nodded, and they both stopped, clicked a brief countdown with their sticks, then picked up together. Reno wasn’t as perfect as Cloud was at the rhythm, and he wasn’t perfect either without a cymbal, but it was quick and happy and punk, which was just what the battle needed. Better yet, it was an easy beat, and it was something they could both keep up with for a long time.

Mm-bump, mm-bump, mm-bump. After several minutes, it almost seemed like the battle was a music video, like they were all fighting and dying purposely to their beat. Cloud quickened it. Reno followed. So did the warriors and the Shin-Ra army.

This is what a heart feels like. Cloud thought to himself, and it seemed all that much more true when the dying seemed to bleed that much faster with the quickened rhythm.

“Dead Kennedys!” Reno called. “Know them?”

“Of course I do!” Cloud spat over his shoulder, as if Reno was insulting him by asking such an obvious question.

“Life Sentence!” Reno suggested, and clicked his sticks once for Cloud to recalibrate his brain to a new beat, and then let it all out. Cloud smiled, and although it might have just been the two or three nerves in his brain that weren’t absolutely fried… he was having a fuck of a lot of fun.

So far he’d seen five men who were coming at him with every intent to kill him, and every single one of them were sliced through by a different SOLDIER. It wasn’t that just Zack was watching them, or just his original seven SOLDIER squad buddies were watching after them. Everyone was. All of them.

Almost like the way Cloud made sure not too much water got onto his Mp3 player in the rain. They didn’t need the music. But it sure did help the morale.

The air became smoky and thick, and it became more difficult for Cloud to see more than a few feet in front of him. He squinted, although it wasn’t necessary for him to see anything at all, he wanted to see, almost needed to see. But the army was using their guns more and more as time went on, and soon Cloud couldn’t see anything at all.

Out of nowhere, Reno stopped drumming, and punched Cloud in the back hard enough to knock the wind out of him. He hit the ground, and the first thoughts that ran through his mind had to do with treachery and double crossing. But then he spotted a bullet lying on the ground near his hand that looked more like a small cannonball. It was covered in blood.

Cloud turned around, and saw Reno’s red hair pooled on the ground, and the exact same shade of red blossoming and staining his white uniform shirt.

Reno wasn’t wearing his Kevlar vest.

It had come out the other side of Reno. The impact from a bullet that size would have been enough to cause injuries with the vest, and Cloud could feel a deep bruise blooming on his back. He was suddenly seething with an unexpected, and almost uncontrollable rage.

“You dumbass, stupid fuck, why don’t you have your vest on!?” Cloud screamed, wanting nothing more than to strike his fatally injured friend.

Reno tried to answer, but blood bubbled from between his lips instead. Cloud didn’t want to look at the wound, but he couldn’t help it. It was like Reno was holding a bowl of blood on his stomach.

“Don’t stop!” Reno pleaded with him when he could finally suck in enough air to form words, both hands covering the gaping hole in his stomach. He began to inhale and exhale, and Cloud could see what was inside of Reno pushing at his hands.

Cloud threw up a little and spat it aside as he searched through his gear that was lying on the ground nearby, and he brought out the little vial of max potion. He grabbed Reno’s face and pushed his cheeks together until his lips separated over his teeth.

“Please open your mouth!” Cloud moaned.

Reno couldn’t seem to stop clenching his teeth, and his body began to seize violently on the snow. He was dying.

“Open your fucking mouth!” Cloud repeated, using his fingers to attempt to pry Reno’s teeth apart. Reno gasped momentarily, allowing Cloud a split second to push his fingers in. The teeth clamped down again almost immediately, but Cloud didn’t feel the pain, he only poured the open vial into Reno’s mouth. It pooled beneath his tongue, which didn’t move.

Reno’s lips were the same color as the snow.

He had to get another haircut from Reno’s mother in five weeks.

Cloud then remembered something he’d learned from his mother when she tried to force him to swallow disgusting medicine as a small child. He suddenly remembered it perfectly, every detail. He was sitting on her lap, squirming to get away. She had her hand over his mouth so he couldn’t spit the medicine back out. “Swallow, Clow! You won’t taste it anymore if you just fucking swallow it!”

Cloud remembered how it felt to be little. He didn’t want to do it because he simply didn’t want to do it, so he wouldn’t do it, no matter what. Then, he felt her fingers running quickly down his throat, and it went down almost at once, completely without his permission. The taste was mostly gone, and his mother took her hand off of his mouth and just smiled down at him. She’d been barely 19 at the time, but to him, she was so ancient and wise. He’d wiped his watering eyes, looking up at her with sudden clarity of his lot in life. His momma knew what was best.

Cloud’s fingers ran down Reno’s throat over and over to stimulate his swallow reflex, to get the liquid into his stomach, and right to the site of the injury. Reno’s throat contracted and he gasped a little, enough for Cloud to get his bruised and bloodied fingers out from between his teeth.

He eagerly looked at Reno’s wound again. It hadn’t changed at all.

For a terrible moment he thought maybe it wasn’t max potion, maybe it was expired or mislabeled. Or perhaps he had to do something extra to make it work, something to do with materia. Or maybe it just wasn’t enough to help him. Cloud waited tensely, waited for some sort of miracle to happen, but it never did. The blood was still there.

“Don’t worry, Cloud. It doesn’t hurt anymore…” Reno finally murmured, and his eyes drifted closed. His breathing evened out, and stopped.

Cloud gagged inside his chest, staring at Reno’s face in complete shock.

Then Reno’s eyes opened again. “Tell my ma I love her.”

Cloud nodded, sniffing a little as Reno’s icy blue eyes fluttered closed once more…forever. His lower lip trembled, and he put an arm underneath Reno’s head to hold him. “I’m so sorry, Reno.”

“S’okay.”

Cloud sobbed again. “Do you… see the life stream?”

“No...” Reno breathed.

Cloud gazed down at him. “How about now?”

“No,” Reno shook his head a little. “…Shit, it takes a long time to die.”

Cloud blinked and looked at Reno’s wound, touching his stomach tenderly with his gloved fingertips. The blood hadn’t gone anywhere, but the wound had closed perfectly. He smacked the redhead upside the head enough to rock it side to side. “You’re perfectly fine, you fucking idiot!”

Cloud felt his radio buzz against his hip. It was Zack’s voice. “Cloud Strife, I can’t hear your drums, answer immediately.”

Reno stopped clutching his now imaginary deathblow, his eyes blinking in disbelief. Cloud wiped at it the closed wound again to prove that nothing was wrong.

Reno immediately sat up, shrugging off Cloud’s embrace. He helped Reno up, anyways. He might have been healed, but he was covered in his own blood. He couldn’t have been feeling all that great.

“Put your vest on for fuck’s sake!” Cloud barked, and Reno began to strip off his now ruined shirt and fumble around in his gear for the Kevlar.

“I’ve never needed it before…” Reno mumbled sheepishly as he quickly put it on.

Cloud’s radio buzzed again before they both heard Zack call through, almost hysterical. “Cloud! Are you guys alright?! Reno’s radio is out! Do you need help? Are you conscious? Do you have a flare?”

He sounded awfully close by, and Cloud had just raised his walkie talkie to his lips to respond when he felt the Zack’s arms lock around his neck. “Cloud! Are you guys okay?”

Cloud smiled, clutching momentarily onto Zack before pushing him away and moving towards his drums. “We’re both fine.”

“You almost gave me a heart attack!” Zack scolded, before disappearing into the smoke.

“I almost died!” Reno bragged after him, clicking his sticks over his drum, which was still in perfect, if bloody shape.

Cloud grinned and clicked along. When they began to drum anew, he was almost certain he heard the surrounding SOLDIERs cheer.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

They stood back to back again, this time both fully padded with Kevlar. Cloud was nicked with a bullet on his leg, and one forearm was splashed with a bit of tiny shrapnel.

Reno was shot once more, but it bounced off the Kevlar as it should have. He was also cut with a SOLDIER’s sword across his thigh, and the man stopped to heavily apologize before bouncing back into battle.

When it was all over, it was as sudden as when it had started. There was a call on the radio for a slow roll. They obeyed; a medium tempo drum roll, a warning that it was over soon. This was the most desperate, dangerous time in the battle for whoever was losing. And Cloud knew with ever fiber that it was the Wutainese who were bested. Finally, there was a call on his radio for a halt.

They stopped. It was done. There was silence. The smoke immediately began to clear.

Whoever could walk picked themselves up and returned to their groups. The red and black warriors seemed to all disappear at once. Reno and Cloud stayed put until Davie and Max collected them, and they followed them through the mess that had been made in the snow.

All that were left were the bodies.

Cloud didn’t look at them. There weren’t many SOLDIERs or other Shin-Ra personnel, but there were some. And the ones that were pulled down into their deaths were done so with more than just bullets or swords. They seemed to have been blasted apart with heavier artillery.

His mind conjured up a thought so real he bit his lip against crying out. What would he do if he were to see silver hair splashed with blood, his beloved’s body crashed to the ground like a broken toy? Impossible.

Cloud looked down at his boots as they walked out of the territory, but could hear Reno gasp under his breath every so often. “Jesus Christ,” he kept saying. “…Jesus Christ.”

They walked for a few hours in silence, back from where they’d come from. The SOLDIERs were all exhausted and weary, but marched quickly to get to a safe place to rest. Cloud took inventory of who was with them. Davie was fine. Chuckles was fine. Max seemed to have had an injury to his arm, but was fine now. The couple who’d given Cloud their spare blanket were both alright, marching near each other. Zack was glowing with a stern, focused sort of handsomeness. Cloud went over and over, trying to think of who was missing.

Someone was missing. Then it hit him. ‘Here son, have some face!’

Guy was gone. Guy, the barbequer. Guy, the excellent father.

Cloud sobbed in his throat. Was he perhaps a bit too old? Did someone get the better of him out of nowhere? Maybe if Reno had been wearing his vest, and Cloud still had the max potion, maybe maybe maybe he could have saved him.

Be proud. You saved one person today. A voice that Cloud didn’t mentally recognize reasoned within his swirling thoughts. It was Guy’s time. He died in battle. Be proud for him, and for yourself.

It was his mother’s voice. He wasn’t sure if that’s what she would say if she were here, but it was convincing enough. He regretted his decision of not telling her about the entire situation. He wanted her to be proud of him when he came back safely, not angry for not being told.

And what if he had been injured or even killed? What if he had? Were a few weeks of not worrying worth that traumatic shock?

They stopped at a medical tent. A nurse looked over Reno’s closed wounds, slapping the top of his head for not having the damned vest on. She also gave him a stitch or two in the leg and sent him on his way, with no pain-ceasing cure due to his stupidity. Cloud’s time with the nurse took a little longer, as she and a doctor had to dig the bits of shrapnel out of his forearm, dousing him in alcohol every so often to prevent infection.

The doctor cracked a joke about Nibelheim natives bleeding alcohol, but Cloud was frankly in no mood to chuckle house. The alcohol hurt like a goddamn motherfucker. After they were certain to get all of the pieces of metal and bullet debris out of his skin, they gave him a cure, which also healed up the painful spot on his back from the stupid elephant bullet, and his sore, abused fingers from Reno’s teeth. Done and done.

He and Reno built their little tent silently, as did the rest of the SOLDIERs. There was no dinner that night, everyone seemed to just want to sleep. Ones that did have an appetite took a protein bar into their dwelling, and that was that.

Cloud zipped himself halfway up into his sleeping bag and laid next to Reno, exhausted but unable to relax. His nerves were absolutely shot.

In the dark, he heard Reno face him, and his strange laughter tinkled out. It infected Cloud almost immediately, and they giggled together for a good long while until some SOLDIERs nearby shushed them.

Cloud put a hand over his mouth. “What are we laughing about?”

“It’s too cold to cry,” Reno guessed, and that only made them giggle and snort anew.

It died down and they were left looking at each other in the dark. They couldn’t see each other, but they looked anyways.

“I miss Rude,” Reno said suddenly. “Bad.”

“I really miss Sephiroth,” Cloud agreed. “I wish he was here.”

Reno slid his hand over Cloud’s hip.

It took him a moment too long to register what the weight was, and what it meant. When he finally did realize, he felt his body burn with embarrassed rage. Not really rage directed at Reno. Rage against himself, because with the warm, over the sleeping bag contact… Cloud felt his body react instantly.

He lifted his hand out of his sleeping bag and put it over Reno’s to move it away… but he couldn’t. He was stuck inside a pause, torn between a need to be touched and repulsion for who was doing the touching.

While Cloud warred with himself, Reno took his hesitation as an invitation. He dug his fingers into Cloud’s sleeping bag and pulled him closer. The length of their bodies touched, separated by thick sleeping bags, but still warm and solid. Comforting. There.

Alive. Cloud’s breath quickened.

Reno’s hand moved. It rubbed down Cloud’s thigh, then back up to his shoulder, and up into his hair. “Oh,” Reno said, sounding almost as surprised as Cloud felt towards this entire situation. “Your hair …it’s soft.”

Cloud’s body hardened further, almost jumping due to the sudden, throbbing pressure. Cloud was horrified to let this happen, but almost equally horrified to make Reno stop. Especially as his long fingers twisted into his hair, stroked his scalp, almost teasing.

In the dark, it was almost too easy to just imagine…

“Reno,” Cloud whispered, almost to remind himself of who he was with. It didn’t leave his lips as a warning tone. He’d just called the redhead’s name like a lover. Uttered it. Practically moaned it.

Reno took it for what it was worth, and shifted in the dark, coming more out of his sleeping bag. He slid his other arm underneath Cloud, and pushed on his chest.

Cloud laid down. Reno had come completely out of his sleeping bag, and Cloud felt him toss one of his legs over him, the fingers of one hand working at the zipper to his sleeping bag.

Cloud’s body bucked when Reno’s leg rubbed seductively along the length of his erection.

“Reno,” Cloud repeated, finding his voice, although it was still extremely unconvincing.

“C’mon,” Reno urged, covering Cloud completely, grinding his body against his.

Cloud brought both hands out of his sleeping bag to push him off. He meant to push. He wanted to push. His brains screamed for his hands to push.

But he felt, instead. He felt Reno’s hard chest through his clothes, his warmth. Cloud took his hands off of Reno and shook his head, his voice coming out deep, guttural and surprising, and a tone only Sephiroth had heard before. “Don’t…Rude? Seph…” The verbal mentioning of his lover’s name gave Cloud a bit more conviction, He put his hands on Reno’s shoulders and pushed, although gently. “We can’t.”

Reno bucked his hips against Cloud’s hard enough to cause both of them to gasp slightly. “They’re not here right now.”

“…I love him,” Cloud whispered, begged. “I can’t.”

“But you want to,” Reno said, referring to Cloud’s obvious arousal between them, and Cloud could feel his weight press down in all the wrong places. He could feel his cock begin to drool in his pants.

Cloud laughed a little against Reno’s neck. “It wants to, sure. I won’t, though.”

“You don’t have to fuck me,” Reno hissed. “We don’t even have to kiss. Just… lemme…” Reno began a steady, rhythmic rocking against Cloud’s hips.

Cloud’s eyes clenched closed, and he felt his own damnable body thrust up between Reno’s legs. Between Reno’s legs? Cloud mentally opened his eyes. Reno was straddling him. Reno was grinding his ass down on him. Reno was just a big nelly bottom, like he was.

They were both in love with another person. They were both pretending, trying to get what they needed from someone who wasn’t able to give it. This solidness and warmth was so nice, but it wasn’t Sephiroth. He felt his head clear a little bit, and pushed on Reno’s shoulders again.

“Reno… I’m not Rude.”

Reno stopped above him, almost panting. “If you don’t tell, I won’t either…”

“I won’t do this, Reno,’ Cloud repeated, finally pushing the disillusioned redhead off of his lap. “I have a better idea… let’s have a chat.”

“…Chat?” Reno asked, shifting quickly around beside him. Cloud heard the zip of Reno’s sleeping bag, and in turn, more fully zipped up his own.

They were separated now. Not touching. Cloud felt his body tighten in disappointment, but his head cleared with relief. He could live with the disappointment of his hormones. He wouldn’t be able to live with the altnernative.

“Let’s just… talk,” Cloud said carefully.

Reno swallowed, seeming more like himself and less like a horny incubus. “…Okay. What about?”

Cloud sat cross-legged. “Tell me about Rude. Does he have a big cock?”

Reno gasped in shock in the dark, but then slowly answered, “…Yeah. He does.”

“Do you love him?”

“…Yeah,” Reno answered, shifting a little in the dark. “Is Sephiroth hot without his clothes on?”

“Mm-hm…” Cloud answered, reaching down into his pants. “He’s perfect, absolutely beautiful… and big… and he’s always kissing me… and fucking me with his tongue…”

“Rude loves to fuck me,” Reno quietly mused, maybe more to himself. “He never wants to stay in one spot, or one position. He’s always changin’ it… always like, trying to find a way to get it deeper…”

“Seph makes the sexiest, cutest little faces when he’s getting sucked,” Cloud giggled, despite the fact that he was only a few more twists away from a hard orgasm. “He’s always licking his lips… and biting them…”

“Rude does that too,” Reno agreed. “He likes to splatter my face… likes to see it all over me.”

Cloud was there. He opened his mouth but words didn’t come out, he groaned very quietly and crumpled in on himself, one fist tightly gripping his sleeping bag as he whispered. “Seph is … Seph, mm… Seph!”

And for the first time at the Northern Crater, Cloud gave himself a much needed release. The firework was bright, but brief. He caught it all with his spare hand, and wrung himself dry with the other.

He might have been humiliated by how quickly it happened, but there wasn’t much not to be humiliated about in the entirety of the situation. Besides, by the time his ears stopped ringing, Reno was already wiping his own hands on a dirty sock. He passed it over to Cloud, who grimaced, but accepted it. They unzipped the tent and threw the filthy sock out onto the snow.

Then they both zipped themselves up into their respective bags and rolled over without saying a word. Cloud had a good feeling whatever had just happened was going to remain forever unspoken.

That was fine with him. At least he hadn’t cheated.

Had he?

CHAPTER IMAGE http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Blonde-Ambition-Ch-20-White-119375983

Also, a very sincere thank you to all the helpful, horny, bemused, and/or squeeing reviewers http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Blonde-Ambition-200-Reviews-119375760

And a side note : For those of you who aren’t all up in my Deviant Art grill, I’ve begun posting up the doujinshi for Chapter 12. You can find the first page riight herre, and then follow along at your own leisure. http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/BA-TheDressingRoom-01-114631336

A/N

1 – Kittens has nothing at all to do with Blonde Ambition. I was semi-chewed out by a couple of dissatisfied customers, who thought Kittens was the sequel to Blonde Ambition I was talking about in last chapter’s author notes. Not so. Besides, this part of BA isn’t over until the fat lady sings, and Angeal ain’t singing just yet. Mrahahah!

2 – In the author’s notes of Chapter 13, I made a list of celebs that I would chose to bring to life the different characters in a live action BA movie. Haha, that’s about 15 levels removed from reality, but it’s fun to think about. Well, since then I’ve introduced a few other peeps. Hence:

Reno – Rob Devita

Genesis – Gackt, duh

Rufus – Mathias Lauridsen

Angeal – Hugh Jackman

Julie – Mia Maestro

Elena – Portia Di Rossi
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Blonde Ambition