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“The fuck are they doing here?” Cloud asks, glaring across the bar at three familiar figures. He’s got Marlene on one hip, Denzel a shadow just behind him, close enough for the kid to grab Cloud’s hand if he wants. Time for bed, so Cloud’s taken them down to say goodnight to Tifa, who can’t leave the bar.
She makes an aggravated noise. “Language, Cloud!”
Marlene giggles into Cloud’s shoulder, because it’s a common enough refrain. Usually toward Barrett, who at least has the decency to offer up excuses, even though it’s a ridiculous enough thing—the bar is loud with rowdy folk, none of whom are worrying about their language. Cloud doesn’t bother playing at decency, still glaring at the TURKs.
“They’re drinking,” Tifa says, reaching out for Marlene. “Which is what everyone here does, since it’s a bar.”
The TURKs aren’t everyone, though.
Cloud thinks about going over there and...doing something. He’s not all sure what that something might be, but the thought of ShinRa is still enough to set his nerves on edge. His recent dealings with Rufus and the triplets haven’t made him any more keen to be on friendly terms. “If they start anything,” he says. “Tell me. I’ll deal with them.”
Tifa rolls her eyes over Marlene’s head. “Stop worrying. I can handle them. Besides, I honestly think they just, y’know. Want to unwind a bit.”
“Hn.”
Tifa finishes saying goodnight, and Cloud takes the kids back up the stairs, to the living quarters. He knows Tifa can handle herself, but Cloud wouldn’t mind the excuse to let loose a little. Being gentle, being soft—it takes effort, sometimes more than Cloud has to spare. Beating up a TURK would be a relief.
Cloud settles down in the office, looking over his upcoming delivery schedule. It’s hard to focus; he keeps waiting for chaos to erupt downstairs. For an excuse. Not that he needs one, he reminds himself, not after what the TURKs have done.
But Tifa doesn’t call him down.
--
She tells him the next day when he asks: Elena, Rude, and Reno kept mostly to themselves and drank for a couple hours. “They’re good tippers,” Tifa says, a wry quirk to her lips. “Rude was very polite. Elena was very drunk. Reno was too busy carrying her out to say anything to me at all.”
Cloud can’t help but feel disappointed. “That’s it?”
“That’s it,” says Tifa, and then she sighs and pushes at Cloud with both hands, a gentle ushering toward the door. “There’s always next time,” she tells him. “Now stop moping and looking for trouble, would you? You’re meant to go shopping today.”
Damn. Cloud forgot.
“I hate shopping,” he mutters.
Tifa snorts. “So do I, which is why we share the burden. Good luck! Don’t forget milk!”
--
Cloud forgets the milk.
--
Without any cataclysmic events happening, life falls into a routine. Rude comes by Seventh Heaven more often than any of the rest, but the TURKs become a familiar fixture. “In a different world, I think we could have been friends,” Tifa tells him once, after Elena came in alone during happy hour.
Cloud is restocking all the beer glasses. He grunts, and then thinks better of leaving it at that: “I doubt that.”
Tifa huffs. “Anything is possible, you know. Maybe if you let go of some of your anger…”
“What anger,” says Cloud, completely bland. “I am fucking zen. No anger here.”
“Ha,” comes an unexpected drawl. “Ain’t that cute.”
Cloud whips his head up, nostrils flaring wide. Reno is sprawled across the bartop, all sharp elbows and sneering eyes. He’s alone; he’s also speaking to Cloud for the first time since they all started coming in. His hair is a red mess of spikes and he’s just as much of a shit as Cloud remembers. “The fuck are you doing here?”
“What happened to being zen, hm?”
Tifa is looking up at the ceiling, as if praying for patience. Cloud’s got a glass in his hand that’s liable to break if he doesn’t loosen his grip in the next three seconds, but he thinks about breaking it over Reno’s head first before he lets it go, sets it into place.
“Your face ruined it,” Cloud tells him. “Now fuck off.”
“Be nice,” Tifa hisses.
Reno is laughing, smug and awful behind that sharp, sneering smirk. “Yeah, Strife. Be nice. Everyone’s welcome at Seventh Heaven, apparently, even us dogs of war. Hell, she lets you in.”
“Tifa,” Cloud murmurs. “I promise I’ll buy you a new bar.”
--
Seventh Heaven somehow remains standing, despite how much Cloud would like to bring the whole damn thing down onto Reno’s stupid head. He doesn’t even know why he’s so bothered. Last time he saw the TURK he’d been easy enough to ignore. But Cloud’s been waiting for something to happen, itching beneath his skin from the suffocating fall of peacetime, and Reno’s suddenly in his face like a red fucking flag, triggering all his worst instincts.
“I can ask Rude to stop letting him come along,” Tifa offers eventually, obviously worried. “Or I can kick Reno’s ass for you next time, give you a break. I don’t know what his deal is, that he likes winding you up so much.”
“Nah,” says Cloud. “No need.”
Tifa seems unconvinced, but Cloud doesn’t need her fighting this battle for him. He’s started to crave it, is the thing. Perks up whenever he sees sign of Rude visiting Tifa, or the Turks lurking at the end of the bar on busy nights. “Isn’t this asking for trouble?” Cloud eventually says, sliding onto the stool next to Reno. The TURK is still in a suit, the ShinRa dog let off its leash, but never thinking to slip his collar. Everyone in the bar knows who he works for, what they did.
“Maybe I’ll hire you as a bodyguard,” Reno says, a sour twist to his mouth. “Though I’d make a shit princess. Still, hopefully I won’t die like the last one.”
Cloud doesn’t punch his lights out simply because this is Tifa’s bar and he doesn’t want to make trouble for her. So he grabs Reno by the collar of his shirt and hauls him out the side door, around back where it’s just a narrow alley packed with empty supply crates waiting to be broken down.
Reno’s laughing, speech slurred and whiskey on his breath, eyes a flash of viciousness. “Whaaat? Was it something I said?”
“You are asking for trouble,” Cloud says, disgust thick in his voice. He hates Reno and his stupid mouth and even stupider memories, that he knows all the things Cloud failed to do; that he was a part of the atrocities commited, sins unforgiveable.
Reno’s grin is a sloppy one. “What’cha gonna do about it?”
Cloud’s going to make Reno bleed, maybe break his nose beneath Cloud’s fist. He’s going to make Reno regret every choice he’s ever made, and somehow that’s going to make Cloud’s own regrets and despair a little easier to shoulder. It has to, and his pulse is already tripping up to a higher speed in anticipation, because he needs this, this fucked up, violent outlet for all the things that still try and bury him.
It’s fucked up, but Cloud gets the feeling that Reno needs it the same as him.
--
They make it more fucked up.
Cloud doesn’t quite understand how it happens or why, but they start fucking. Not even as a once-off, a mistake. No, they do it again and again, like they’ve got a sickness they can’t cure, some craving they can’t satisfy. It’s been happening for months now. Reno sneers, or tilts his chin a sudden way, and suddenly Cloud has his hand in all that red hair and his mouth against Reno’s, sucking at that filthy tongue, full of vitriol.
“Relax, Strife,” Reno said that first time. “Fucking is fighting if you do it right.”
Cloud doesn’t know if the two of them do anything right.
“Is this...healthy?” Tifa asks, and Cloud can’t say anything at all. Doesn’t know how to talk to her about this, about any of it. How even if he’s better he’s still just him, the sum of all the shitty things that happened to him, the even shittier things he’s done.
He doesn’t know how to say: it makes me feel better.
So Cloud just shrugs, and next time he sees Reno they fuck up against a wall in an alley. Grime gets under Cloud’s nails as Reno takes him from behind, presses in tight like he can blot Cloud out of existence. Cloud falls apart around the shape of his cock deep inside, Reno’s teeth sharp on his skin, hand twisting tight in Cloud’s hair.
“Yeah,” Reno says, voice wrecked and wretched, puffed against Cloud’s skin. “Fuck yeah, cry for me some more, Strife. Let me see you fall apart.”
It means too much, he thinks, to finally be able to let go.
--
All they do is fight, says Tifa.
Cloud thinks about that sometimes when he’s out making deliveries, the endless stretch of sky overhead empty enough for all his thoughts and worries and fears. He’s been fighting for so long, he might not know how to stop, even though all he wants is to stop. To be still, to quiet down the pain and confusion and dread that lingers, no matter what he does.
Clashing with Reno is a familiar annoyance, a steady pulse of fury that burns away everything else. Reliable, understandable.
Thing is, it’s not always about fighting.
Cloud doesn’t know if that makes it better or worse. But they’ve been at it for long enough that half the time they don’t even bother setting up an excuse any longer—some shit thing Reno might say to give Cloud the opportunity to turn things physical. “It’s not a big deal,” Reno says over the PHS. “Booty calls are totally a thing and I want my mouth on your cock. You really got a problem with this?”
Cloud doesn’t, which is a problem in and of itself.
But they start fucking around without fighting, and somehow that leads to spending time together doing neither of those things. To getting food before they hole up in some hotel bed, or bitching about the state of the roads near Kalm when Reno’s at Seventh Heaven with Rude and Elena, getting drinks. To nights where Cloud isn’t left bleeding, either physically or metaphorically.
“This is weird,” Tifa tells him, eyes wide and dark.
“Don’t talk about it,” Cloud tells her, hands clenched up in helpless fists. “Please.”
“You like him?”
“Tifa,” Cloud groans, absolutely miserable, and then he gets the fuck out of Edge and drives mindlessly across the vast empty spaces, desperate for distance. He doesn’t find it, but Reno finds him. The chopper is a dead giveaway, and Cloud curses a blue streak, knowing the fucking TURK bugged his phone at some point to track his GPS. He thinks about running, but doesn’t.
“Hey,” is all Reno says.
Cloud looks at him, sees the slope of his shoulders and the way his hands dangle at his sides. It’s emptiness and exhaustion, the kind that can’t be beaten, only withstood. Cloud feels his gut turn over in resignation, a hollow sickness in his chest that echoes the sound of regret. Reno’s mood calls to him, gives him permission to lay down his sword, cease the fight.
Cloud says, “Come here.”
The sky is bright enough with stars that he hadn’t lit a fire, and it’s easy to see in shades of gray. Reno’s mouth twists, but nothing barbed comes out. He sighs, rolls his shoulders once, and then does as he’s been told. Sinks to the dark earth beside Cloud, sharp limbs folding carefully into the space Cloud makes for him.
“I haven’t slept in three days,” Reno groans, voice muffled into the side of Cloud’s neck.
He’s got Cloud beat by one, so Cloud says, “Then what are you waiting for? Relax.”
“Ha. Relax, he says. Like it’s that easy. Like I haven’t been fucking trying! But let me tell you what, cupcake, I just can’t—”
Cloud’s fingers are clumsy in Reno’s hair. It spills over his knuckles, the long strands cool to the touch. He’s never done this before, but it’s what his mother used to do to him when he was a boy. He remembers how it’d soothed him. “Better?” he asks.
Reno’s voice is a little too choked, body too still.
He says, “Yeah. Yeah, don’t stop.”
Cloud doesn’t stop. He holds Reno all night, staring out at the horizon until it lights up with the sun. There’s a mimicry of feeling happening inside of him, a weird dawn that reveals things Cloud hadn’t even thought might exist inside him, let alone for Reno. When Reno snorts awake, bleary-eyed and loose-limbed, Cloud spills him down onto the hard-packed dirt, puts him on his belly and covers every inch of skin he finds with his mouth, leaving a ring of teeth on Reno’s ass.
“I’ll be in Edge next week,” Reno whines, tilting up his hips, scrabbling to get his knees underneath him. “Tell me you‘ll be there too.”
“Don’t have plans,” Cloud says.
“Make some with me,” Reno demands. “Text me when you’re back in town.”
Cloud slips his thumb inside Reno, feels around the soft, clinging heat almost tenderly. Listens to the sounds Reno makes as he twists down onto the intrusion like Cloud can somehow bottle them up, hold them tight and use them as a dirty defense against whatever this thing between them is shaping into. He doesn’t know what to do with it anymore. It’s no longer simple.
He’s starting to realize it never really was.
“Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”
--
Cloud’s memories might have been muddled for a while there, but one thing he’d always gotten right was this: he’s not good with people.
Not good at reading their cues, or knowing what to say. Never been great at easy kindness or casual camaraderie. Tifa is patient with him; Aerith guided him along. Reno does nothing of the sort, which makes their relationship a challenge. Honestly, despite the slow panic that’s been seizing him at how much everything is changing, Cloud hadn’t even thought to call this thing between them a relationship before now, when he’s standing at the store trying to remember if Reno likes whole wheat pasta. His PHS is gripped in his hand, but Cloud hates the idea of calling to check.
He calls Tifa instead.
“The fuck am I doing?” he asks as soon as she picks up.
“I don’t know,” Tifa answers. “Walk me through it and maybe I can help.”
“Reno told me to pick up dinner.”
There’s a great heap of judgemental silence through the PHS. Cloud gets a tension headache immediately, brows furrowed and jaw clenching up. He thumbs at the furrow there, the helpless groove. “Forget it,” he grunts.
“No, no,” Tifa says, voice a little choked, frantic in her reply. “I...I’m sorry, I just. We don’t usually talk about this? You told me not to say anything! I was surprised!”
Cloud squints at the shelf in front of him, the blur of pasta packages not making this situation any less painful. “You’re laughing,” he sighs, some of the tension draining away. He’s used to being laughed at, at least. It’s better than Tifa condemning him outright.
She makes a choked noise, voice squeezing through her throat: “I’m not!”
“Bullshit.”
“Fine, I am,” she huffs. “But it’s Reno, all right. You have to let me laugh so I don’t cry about this. I still have to pinch myself any time I see you guys flirting at the bar.”
“We don’t—”
“Don’t make me give examples, Cloud. We won’t survive it.”
Cloud clams up fast.
“I guess I get it. Kind of,” Tifa continues, which isn’t at all what Cloud was hoping she’d do. He glances down the aisle as if for escape, but somehow he can’t bring himself to end the call. Maybe he wants to be condemned after all. Not like he doesn’t know already: this thing between him and Reno is fucked up.
Too much history, too much hate.
Way too much desperation.
Tifa says, “But all you seem to do is fight. Can you really be happy like that?”
Cloud grunts.
“Cloud, I mean it. You asked me what you’re doing and I’m trying to figure it out. Answer the question: are you happy like this?”
There are three different kinds of penne pasta in front of Cloud’s face. He grabs one at random and walks too fast down the aisle, snagging the first can of sauce he sees on the way. It’s a shit dinner, but Reno hadn’t specified. Cloud might be a delivery boy these days, but that doesn’t mean Reno can send him out to fetch without consequence.
“It’s not just fighting,” he says. And then: “Gotta go. Later, Tifa.”
“Wait, Cloud—!”
Cloud hangs up as he gets in line.
He feels stupid standing there in the grocery store, a box of pasta under one arm. He texts Reno: why the fuck didn’t you order in
It isn’t until Cloud’s slinging a leg over Fenrir that he gets a response. He shoves the grocery bag into the bike’s storage, usually reserved for cross country deliveries; it seems strange and foreign to have their uncooked dinner tucked in there. Cloud’s skin feels too tight. He checks his PHS.
funnier to make you do it
What a fucking dick.
--
“Did you seriously burn the water?”
Cloud doesn’t answer. He’s too busy glaring at the pot on the stove and the half inch of water bubbling pathetically at the bottom. It’s steaming something awful and his stomach is all cramped up, with hunger and stress and uncertainty. Reno’s sprawled in a chair at the rickety table he has set up next to his shitty little kitchen, arm hooked over the top. Cloud won’t look at him, because he knows Reno’s expression is going to make his blood boil, as fast and hot as the water in this stupid fucking pot.
“What the fuck, Strife,” says Reno. “What the actual fuck. You can’t do anything right?”
“Shut up.”
He turns the burner off with an agitated flick and lifts the pot by the handle, dumping the scalded water down the sink. The metal is still steaming.
“How the hell do you survive alone on the road,” Reno bitches.
Sometimes, it feels like Cloud has to carve up pieces of himself to speak. But Reno always bullies, and he always manages to dig the words out, whether Cloud wants to say them or not. “Fuck off,” Cloud grates out. “Takeout is a thing. A thing you should have done.”
“Tch. Where’s the romance in that?”
Cloud bends the pot handle in his suddenly too-tight grip.
“Whoa, fuck! I only have one of those!”
“I’ll buy you a new set,” Cloud says, and throws the damned thing into the trash. Again, too much force. The trash spills out over Reno’s kitchen floor. The TURK is getting red in the face, lazy incredulity turning to actual pissiness. His eyes flash sharp and feral, lip curling, and Cloud has about thirty seconds to act before this turns into something bad.
He strides over to Reno, reaches down. Lifts him up with a fist in his shirt. Soft cotton, a simple short-sleeved thing that is nothing at all like him in his suit. Casual. Fucking intimate, to be so undressed like this.
Cloud feels like he can’t breathe.
He says, “I came here for a fuck, you know.”
Reno’s lip finishes its curl. “Well, it is about the only thing you’re good for, you piece of shit.”
--
Cloud’s face down on the kitchen counter ten minutes later, pants around his ankles and Reno shoved so far up his ass he can’t see anymore, lust-blind by how damned good it feels. No lube, just spit, and Cloud’s body can take it in a way that turns each too-raw drag into something exquisite. Reno’s hand is clamped down on the back of his neck, holding him in place. As if Cloud isn’t stronger than him, as if he can actually keep him there.
He can, is the thing.
Cloud’s limp and pathetic, harsh cries punched from his lungs with each snap of Reno’s hips. He’s shaking all over and it feels like his heart has cracked open, turned into a windstorm that keeps howling at him.
Reno says, “Fucking boil the water for eight minutes! That’s it! Boil it on, fuck—on medium-high height, you stupid shit! Can’t even. Can’t. Aw fuck, you feel good.”
Cloud’s fingers dig like claws, scratching helplessly.
“Fucking terrible,” Reno is panting. “Can’t believe I like you so much.”
“Shit.”
Reno snorts, hand clenching tighter around the nape of Cloud’s neck. “Yeah, I know you like it. You think I’m stupid? You’re so fucking obvious. Fucking domesticate you like a damned cat, Strife. Gonna put a collar round your neck so everyone knows your mine, hm? That what you want? Fucking romantic enough for you?”
Cloud shudders hard all over, squeezing around Reno’s dick. There’s not even a hand on him and he feels like he’s about to pop off, get jizz all over the cabinets.
“You’re so fucking weird,” Reno says.
But he sounds so damningly fond when he says it that Cloud doesn’t stand a chance. He gets jizz all over the cabinets.
“Fuck yeah. Gonna clean all that up when I’m done,” Reno says, the fucking idiot. “And then I’m going to cook the shit out of a romantic dinner for you. Fucking make you like it. How’s that sound?”
It sounds like too much.
Cloud shudders again, burying his face into his bicep as Reno picks up the pace, fucking into him hard.
--
Reno doesn’t cook dinner after.
He bitches and bullies Cloud into trying again, bent handle and all. The pasta tastes like shit and the can of sauce he picked up was actually tomato halves, so they just add butter and garlic salt instead. Their kisses afterward taste weird, slick and almost sour.
“You gonna stay the night?” Reno asks.
Cloud ducks his head down beneath Reno’s chin, just breathing. “To sleep?”
“You’re fucking stupid,” Reno tells him, tugging on his hair. “Yeah, to fucking sleep. I’m still running on near empty and I bet you are too. Maybe in the morning you can fuck my face in the shower.”
“You like sucking dick way too much.”
“I like sucking your dick way too much,” Reno snarks back, like that’s any kind of sensible response.
Cloud stays the night.
--
They sleep, but before that they fuck again. Reno rolls over onto his back in his bed, dark sheets turning his pale skin luminescent in the dim light. “You gonna be nice to me?” he asks, voice hushed, like he could barely make himself give voice to the thought.
Cloud frowns down at his loose limbs, all the trust they signify with Cloud looming over him. He fits his hand around the long column of Reno’s neck, laying it there like the collar he’d threatened him with earlier; like some kind of brand.
“Don’t know if I know how,” he admits.
Reno smirks at him, blue eyes narrowed into slits. “Yeah, I figured. Try it anyway. Who knows? We might like it.”
Gently, Cloud squeezes.
Reno’s lashes flutter, eyes falling closed as he arches into it.
Over the years, Cloud’s hands have learned how to carry the burden of strength. How to temper it down to something resembling safety, harmlessness. He carries the children to bed, holds their hands when they cross the street. He restocks Tifa’s bar and doesn’t shatter glass. He fills out delivery receipts and shakes hands and buys the groceries now and then.
He’s built an identity for himself that has nothing to do with JENOVA, or ShinRa, or the end of the world.
But it’s flimsy. It’s liable to break beneath the strain of holding in everything that Cloud still is, what he can’t let go of. Reno is all the darkness he’s been holding on to. He’s the fear, the worry, the regret. He’s the anguish that Cloud holds in the center of himself, the part of him that’s too afraid to let go of anger, that only knows how to long for a fight, for a challenge, to feel the world reel beneath the force of his blows so that he doesn’t have a chance to instead feel himself crumple.
The part of himself that is nonetheless desperate to surrender.
Somehow, Reno’s been giving him that release in one form or another for months now. But this moment here isn’t about survival. It’s about what comes after.
“You want me?” he asks. “Like this?”
Reno doesn’t open his eyes. Cloud can feel him swallow against his palm, the fit of his fingers still too tight. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “Think I want you all the ways, Strife. That a problem for you?”
“Oh,” Cloud says, feeling helpless. “Fuck off.”
Reno laughs, though it comes out choked and stuttering, muscles of his neck flexing and bulging against Cloud’s grip. He doesn’t try to get away. So Cloud leans in and kisses him, a soft slide of lips. Tastes like toothpaste now, and Cloud licks at the seam of him, asking to be let in. Reno opens, and then he keeps on opening. That electric energy in him that’s always so close to the surface, deadly and dangerous, turned to rolling hips and grasping hands, to sharp breaths and hungry gasps.
He doesn’t know when he stops holding Reno by the throat. Only that by the time he’s pushing inside, Reno has both arms wrapped around Cloud’s back, digging into the meat of him. Cloud’s own arms are braced on either side of his head, sweat at his temples, forehead pressed against the pillow. There’s hair in his mouth and Reno’s ass is tight and hot around his cock and feeling like the best thing that’s ever happened to him.
“Oh, fuck,” Reno breathes, ragged and trembling beneath him. His knees come up, pressing against the side of Cloud’s ribs.
Cloud asks, “How do you want it?”
“Slow,” Reno answers. “For once in our lives, let’s fucking go slow.”
--
During one of his deliveries, Cloud finds flowers out in the middle distance. Pink and red, a spill of floral decadence. He sits astride Fenrir and boggles at it for long minutes, stomach swooping, not at all certain what to do or feel about it. Eventually, he tucks it away in the back of his mind, thinking maybe he’ll bring Denzel out there, or Tifa.
He brings Reno instead.
Reno says, “Nasty. Looks like someone eviscerated the ground, don’t it? A big blob of spilled intestines,” which is disgusting and not at all what it’d made Cloud think of.
Cloud sighs. “You don’t deserve nice things.”
“Well, yeah,” Reno snorts. “S’why I take them instead.”
The way Reno looks sideways at him when he says it makes Cloud flush warm beneath all his leather, a softening of feeling that he keeps hidden behind folded arms and the carefully blank expression on his face. As if Reno’s implying Cloud is a nice thing.
He still doesn’t know what to do with that sentiment, it seems, so he panics a little when he asks, “Did you kidnap me?”
“Uh, what? The fuck are you on about now?”
“I’m just checking,” Cloud says, watching Reno’s sharp face as he brings the helicopter down a safe distance from the flowers. At this point, he’s in too deep and this has been coming for a long time, no matter his instinctive drive to fight tooth and nail against softness. He might as well see it through to the end. “I know how to deal with kidnappers. I don’t know how to deal with you when you’re, y’know…”
“Okay, first of all, you’re making this really weird. For fuck’s sake, Strife, learn how to take a veiled compliment!”
“Hm.”
Reno makes a strangled noise. “You’re the one who called me up and asked to hitch a ride out here, buddy. If anyone was kidnapped it was me. Lucky I don’t call Rude up and tell on you. Also, secondly!”
The blades wind down. He’s still staring at Reno when the man finishes with the controls and looks back at him. Cloud flinches at getting caught, but doesn’t look away.
Reno says, “You don’t know what to do with me, huh?”
Cloud feels too warm and too soft, not fitting snugly into his skin at all. He feels like a prickling ache, a rash that won’t stop itching. He feels like he’s out of his depth, has been for a long time, and has only just realized he can’t save himself from drowning.
“Not when you get romantic,” Cloud says. “So shut up. Go back to before, when I was the one trying to be romantic.”
“You what now?”
Cloud rolls his eyes and is deeply, truly grateful when his tone of voice comes out dry and sarcastic: “I brought you to look at flowers and you said it looks like death.”
“Yeah, well,” Reno shrugs, completely unapologetic. There’s a quirk to his mouth that’s all dark humor. “Maybe I don’t know what to do with you either, ever think of that?”
Cloud stares.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Reno huffs. “Was that too romantic again?”
“Yes.”
“Come on,” Reno says, shoving at Cloud. “Get out, go. Let’s go sit in the guts you great big baby of a savior. Fucking pathetic, don’t make me hold your hand!”
Cloud goes.
--
Reno doesn’t sit in the flowers.
He sprawls out amongst them, crushing several beneath his lanky body. There’s nothing around for miles and it’s just Cloud and Reno and these flowers stubbornly blooming out from the cracked, angry earth. Reno closes his eyes, arms folded behind his head, and relaxes in slow increments.
“Guts smell nice,” he murmurs, and only Cloud’s enhancements allow him to hear it.
Cloud smiles, looking out at a field of red and pink.
--