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The sun bears down harder than usual over the sands of Figaro.
Not for the first time, Cloud is grateful for the materia he had equipped when the rift pulled him through. He knows better than to use them in any showy way, but he’s found subtle ways that they can give his days some ease.
A bit of his attention and a small, steady stream of mana are enough to maintain a thin layer of cool air over his skin when he rides into the desert, but even with this, he feels the sweat bead on his forehead, feels it drip down his back under his linen jacket.
The air shimmers in the distance, resolves slowly into the imposing stone towers of Figaro Castle. His chocobo lets out a cheerful wark and relaxes her gait to a trot. Cloud strokes a gloved hand over her smooth, pink-tinted feathers and coos praise for her hard work.
For all that’s strange about this world that he’s been forced to call home, he’s glad that chocobos, at least, are a constant.
It’s been almost two years since he woke in the mines of Narshe. An older man had found him, called him by someone else’s name—Lock?—but even when he realized that Cloud wasn’t the person he thought, he took him in. Clothed him, offered him food and a warm bed and a place to get his wits about him, even amidst the threat of spies and encroaching empire.
He told Cloud stories about the missing treasure hunter, about careful alliances forged in shadow, and about a young king of the sands who was playing a very delicate game of diplomacy. Unsure how or if he could return to his own world, Cloud decided that maybe being a treasure hunter and a resister wasn’t too different from the life he’d left behind, was a way to put his skills to good use.
The usual stablehand jogs out to meet Cloud and Rosa. Cloud passes her reins down and swings off the bird, coos more sweetness to her. “How have things been here, Silas?”
The young man makes a face that Cloud can’t entirely parse. He seems pale, worry etched in his features and sour in his scent. He finally says, “His majesty is…gone.”
Cloud tilts his head. “Okay, well when will he be back? We can stay for a bit.”
Silas shakes his head, and Cloud feels a chill that has nothing to do with the magic breathing over his skin.
“One day, he was just gone. But a young man appeared in his chambers, in his place, and he…” he darts his eyes around them, but there’s no one else in earshot. “He can use magic, Cloud.”
And in this world, that is deeply unusual.
That was part of what the old man in Narshe had told him—that the people of this world had long thought magic had vanished, until it returned as a weapon of imperialism. From then on, and since Cloud saw his first imperial troops piloting magitek armor, he kept his bracer well concealed for fear it would attract the wrong kind of attention.
Cloud thanks Silas for the information, fishes fresh greens from his satchel for Rosa and a tip for the boy, and walks the last stretch to the castle gates.
The guard eyes him as he approaches, gives a stern nod once she recognizes him.
“Micah?”
“In the library,” she offers. Her scent, too, is tinted with something like apprehension.
Which, reasonable. Figaro is an ally in name with the empire, but its young king, Edgar, works tirelessly with the Returners, a faction attempting to build power against imperial force. He is cunning and careful, a fucking incorrigible flirt, and overall, a ruler who loves is people. For him to suddenly be gone, and for a stranger with power reserved to legends to appear in his place…
Well, that would be destabilizing in the best case. And there are too many ways it could err into catastrophic for the cause.
When he reaches the library, Micah stands near the shelves, poring over a heavy tome. Her long silver hair is tied loosely at her nape, though a few strands fall into her wizened face. Her long robes brush the ground. She’s already pulled several other books, and they lay in disarray across the lamp-lit tables.
Cloud grabs one of the open books, skims over the page. It bears an illustration of Shiva—just as stunning and powerful as he remembers from his own world, though in this one she is thought long dead.
“I swear to the gods if you give me grief for reading fairy tales—”
He holds his hands up in surrender. “It makes sense. Silas told me that Edgar is...”
“Silas talks too damn much,” she snaps. She approaches him, her gait stiff even with the support of her cane, and drops the book in front of him. “This look like anything to you?”
It looks an awful lot like materia, but Cloud isn’t going to say that. He schools his face, but he knows something must be betrayed in his scent when Micah makes a tch sound at him. He knows it should be possible to suppress the way his scent carries emotion, but he’s still too new to his dynamic to be able to do it reliably.
She narrows her eyes at him, says, “Boy, if I find out that you knew something that could have saved this kingdom and hid it from me, I will kill you, revive you, and kill you again.” She emphasizes her words by tapping her cane firmly against the edge of the table.
The matron and royal advisor might be an omega, but she’s also terrifying.
“Silas said the newcomer can use magic,” he says.
She tilts her head. “I didn’t think I was talking to Silas.”
Cloud makes an exasperated sound and pushes up his sleeve enough to expose his bracer. He smooths a fingertip over his healing materia and focuses his attention on it. He moves his hand as though he is pulling a string, and then there is a green orb in his palm, humming with warm energy.
“I love secrets,” Micah says dryly. She manages to look simultaneously unimpressed with Cloud and fascinated with the materia in his hand.
He offers it to her and she reaches out tentatively, like it might burn her.
“How?” she asks simply.
“It’s condensed…energy? Life force?” He fumbles for words to describe the lifestream, knows that in this world, it sounds like he’s speaking of some new religion.
“And it gives you access to magic?”
He nods. “It takes some training, but yes.” He looks at the book she’s laid before him. “He had something like this?”
She hums an affirmative sound. “You think he might be from your world?”
Cloud is still, honestly, a bit stunned that she believed him. It was in the small hours of the morning when he finally confessed it, the need to be understood burning in his gut just as hot as the hard liquor. Edgar had already retired, which left Cloud with the older woman, most of a bottle of a strong, sweet spirit, and the stars above the tower.
She’d just snorted, said, “At least that explains why you go around scenting without a godsdamn care. I swear, you’ve got every omega on my staff salivating for a taste of whatever you’re packing, and I think even Edgar has considered it, dynamic be damned.”
Cloud had given her a blank stare, and after he’d answered her questions about his own world to her satisfaction, she finally explained what the fuck had been happening with his body since he had arrived in Narshe.
Because inexplicably, about once a season, his arousal is heightened in every sense of the word. He is quicker to anger, more reckless in battle. He won’t even bother to wash the monster blood from his clothes and skin before he wanders to the nearest tavern, finds the first stranger who smells like a fucking feast, and takes them home.
(Nevermind the changes to his godsdamned anatomy. The way he panicked the first time he popped a knot, and the way the poor omega stuck to him had to talk him through it, let him know it was natural, what in all the hells?)
Micah had called it his rut, and Cloud had taken a long swig straight from the bottle, unwilling to be even remotely sober for the rest of that conversation.
His materia returned to the safety of his bracer, Cloud fidgets while he walks with Micah toward Edgar’s chambers.
“The kingdom will not survive a power vacuum. Gestahl’s armies would destroy us in the span of a breath, if they knew.”
“You’re not actually going to give this newcomer power?”
“He’s young,” she offers. “Barely a man. But word of his magic has spread, and there are enough people who are gullible and chatty that there’s nonsense going around about him being chosen.” She blows an exasperated breath. “We’ll make a figurehead of him. Edgar trusts you, and you might share an understanding with this young man if he is from your world. So I want your help.”
She stops outside the door to the royal chambers, motions for him to go ahead. “Speak with him, find me after.”
Cloud lets himself in to the familiar chambers. He is immediately overwhelmed by scent; it is bright and loud and he nearly loses his balance.
It’s not just the strength of it, but the familiarity: it is Nibelheim in the summer. It is blueberry juice that stains his lips and the wet, sharp smell of pine needles and the cool sting of mountain air in his lungs.
It takes him by such surprise that he slams the door behind him, leans heavily against it as he regains his bearings. So it takes him longer than it might have otherwise to understand who he sees standing beside Edgar’s desk. He’s taller than Cloud, in spite of being years younger, slighter. His silver hair is pulled back into a short ponytail, and green eyes with slit pupils watch him with a mix of curiosity and caution.
Cloud’s mind is green static and his hand goes to the years old scar where he was run through. A growl shakes unbidden out of his chest, and the young man’s eyes go wide, but he doesn’t back down or retreat.
Because Sephiroth runs from nothing.
It is some cruel trick of the light, it is the last shred of Cloud’s sanity, it is a dream—any of these explanations would be a comfort. But no, Cloud’s heart doesn’t hammer in his throat like this in his dreams. The lifestream has played a joke of cosmic proportions on Cloud: to spirit him away from his own world after the advent, only to bring his mortal foe along for the ride.
The fingers of Cloud’s sword hand twitch, and his attention goes to the materia in his bracer without a conscious thought. He thinks of Aerith falling on the dais, thinks of Zack’s blood cooling on his face. A rage forms hot in his chest, screams that if Sephiroth had been ended when he was younger, like this, then these people he loved would still exist.
Sephiroth takes a slow, infuriatingly sure step toward him, tilts his head in curiosity. “You’re a SOLDIER,” he states. “Your eyes.”
Cloud’s mind races. He turns Micah’s warning into a mantra: Figaro won’t survive a vacant throne. He reminds himself that they need this monster. Killing him is out of the question.
For now, at least.
“I am,” is all the response he can muster.
Sephiroth nods curtly. “Can you give me a sitrep, SOLDIER?”
A laugh bubbles up out of Cloud before he can stop it. Sephiroth furrows his brow, frowns, and a crazed part of Cloud finds that even funnier, but he catches himself, coughs, and moves closer to Sephiroth. His marrow sings reunion in spite of his rage, tries to smooth over his anger.
“You’ve already spoken with the matron,” he tries.
The young man nods. “She feigned ignorance of Midgar or Shinra or even Wutai. She spoke of nations I have never heard of. Is this some enemy tactic, to disorient?”
Cloud smirks despite himself. “Have you seen any mako?”
“No, but…there are still nations that do not make use of it in their machines.”
“Mm. And how did they react to your magic?”
He is quiet.
“And have they taken your weapons?”
That fine line between the young man’s eyebrows deepens. “Then what is your explanation?”
He spreads his hands. “Welcome to the World of Balance.”
At the matron’s request, Cloud settles in for an extended stay at the castle—to her mind, to help acclimate the young SOLDIER to his new lot, and to Cloud’s, to keep him from becoming a threat.
Some days after their first encounter, Cloud finds him in Edgar’s chambers, poring over a book of the region’s history and letters from the front. The young man tenses when Cloud drops a heavy book on the table in front of him.
“What is this?”
“Birds and the bees,” he offers.
Sephiroth’s exterior has remained cool, but the more time Cloud spends in the castle, the easier it becomes to pick up the threads of apprehension mixed into his scent. Now something like embarrassment comes through, even as his face remains impassive.
“I’m familiar with reproduction.”
Cloud just manages to stop his lips from twitching into a smile. “Some things are different here. You might find some new information.”
Sephiroth spreads one long-fingered hand over the cover of the book, then looks up to meet Cloud’s eyes. “You haven’t left the castle in days. Why do you smell like that?” he asks.
Cloud wants to appreciate the bluntness, almost wants to like the kid for it.
“What do I smell like?”
He turns away, but not before his cheeks shade pink, and isn’t that interesting.
“Like the forest. I thought initially you carried the smell from outside, but it hasn’t faded.”
Cloud comes around the table to stand beside Sephiroth. He massages two fingers gently into the gland near the pulse point on his own wrist to prime it, then holds it out closer to the younger man.
“If my experience is anything to go by, your body is going to change—is already changing. Your scent isn’t exactly quiet, you know.”
Sephiroth brings his own wrist to his face and sniffs once, then again. “I don’t smell anything.”
“You won’t.”
“I don’t smell the others nearly as much.”
Cloud nods. “Some of them use tonics or salves to suppress, but most of them are just practiced at keeping it to themselves. They’ve had a lifetime to figure out how to be polite company, and you and I are at a disadvantage.”
His nose wrinkles. “I don’t understand. If this is just something that bodies do in this world, why hide it?”
“Nope.” Cloud snorts a short laugh, taps the book. “For this, I’m gonna have to insist on self-study.”
One evening, Cloud finds him in Edgar’s workshop, examining one of the young king’s many homebuilt weapons. Sephiroth senses him immediately upon his arrival, raises his head to meet Cloud’s eyes. His fingertips are dark with grease, and there’s a black smudge on his cheek where he must have carelessly rubbed his hand.
The urge to clean him is almost as strong as the urge to end him.
Cloud resists both of these impulses, gets close enough to see that he’s taken apart one of Edgar’s prototypes for the bioblaster.
“What is it meant to do?”
“It poisons its targets.”
“How does it work, without materia?”
Cloud snorts, and Sephiroth makes a face at him. “We sure were spoiled, huh.” The young man’s face softens when he realizes he’s not the sole butt of the joke.
“Here. This chamber.” He taps a glass canister that sits atop the weapon. “You’ve seen those nasty manta ray looking things out in the sands, yeah? This crazy bastard collects their spines, extracts the poison, and loads it here.” He trails his fingers down from the canister, over the barrel. “This thicker part houses a series of fine sieves. The suspension gets pushed through and becomes a fine mist, with enough force behind it to project well away from the user.”
Sephiroth’s face remains mostly impassive, though his scent somehow blanches. “That’s insane.”
Cloud laughs at that, harder than he’s laughed in a while. “That’s Edgar Figaro.”
“It’s also kind of ingenious.”
“Mm. If you ever get to tell him that to his face, his head might not fit through the castle gates.”
Sephiroth looks around the room, at the other tools hung on the wall. “I’m trying to understand the man they want me to replace.”
Cloud shakes his head. “You’re not gonna replace him.” Something like irritation swells up from the younger man, and Cloud holds up his hands. “It’s not personal. You’re not him, and you never will be. But the people need you, need someone in this position to keep from panicking.” He sighs. “If we get to the point where you actually have to engage Imperial officials, we’re already in deep shit.”
“What is the point of my strength if I’m just to act as a figurehead?”
His eyebrows arch. “What, you wanna take on the Imperial army by yourself?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time.”
Okay, so maybe some parts of his myth are based in truth.
But there’s still the impulsiveness of a teenager in him. “What do you know about the enemy?”
He’s quiet.
“Look, you had Shinra to gather intelligence for you, yeah? If you want to make a difference here, you need that kind of support network. There’s a whole web of resisters, waiting for the right time to strike. You might be able to get them to move sooner, but if you try to strike on your own, you’ll just doom innocent lives.”
Something dark flickers behind the green eyes. He pulls a different tool down to the work table and pushes it toward Cloud.
“What about this one? How does it work?”
The young Sephiroth is oddly sweet, almost gentle, removed from his context.
Cloud remembers the war in Wutai—remembers being fascinated with the news as a child, especially enthralled by the silver-haired hero who was so young, so untouchable. Remembers a time when he wanted nothing more than to be like Sephiroth.
This young man is that person he wanted to be.
(This young man becomes a monster he has to kill, over and over and over again.)
After a few weeks of gaining his bearings, Sephiroth insists on taking to chocoback to see more of this new land. His advisor insists that he cannot go alone, so Cloud is grooming Rosa in preparation for another trek when he arrives.
Sephiroth’s scent announces him before anything else. The young man is already becoming skilled at modulating it somewhat, but even the slightest hint of it pulls at Cloud’s awareness, even more powerfully than the cells in his body aching for reunion.
“Which should I take?”
“Kain was Edgar’s, but he’s a temperamental little shit. Aren’t cha, bud?” Cloud reaches over to hand Kain a bundle of greens, and the bird makes a sound like an indignant huff. “You can take Cecil. He’s got a crush on Rosa, so he’ll be on his best behavior.”
Cloud indicates the bird’s stall with his chin, and one of the stablehands rushes over to get the bird saddled and ready. The young woman blushes and stammers when she accidentaly brushes hands with Sephiroth, and Cloud feels a sympathetic flutter in his own chest that belongs to a different time.
Their ride through the desert is quiet, companionable. Cecil refuses to stray more than a few feet from Rosa, so even the lightest wind buffets Cloud with Sephiroth’s scent, fresh fruit and sticky sap.
“Did you know me?” the young man asks suddenly. And boy, if that question isn’t loaded. When Cloud looks at him, Sephiroth looks almost bashful. “I can’t place it, but you feel familiar.”
He understands that this Sephiroth doesn’t, couldn’t know him consciously—for him, Cloud is just an echo of a world he has been torn out of. But as Cloud’s jaw aches with the effort of not reaching out to touch him, he wonders if this is the pull of reunion, if Sephiroth’s body would know him in any world, time paradox or no.
“I knew of you,” he offers, a lie of omission. “Everyone in Shinra did.”
Sephiroth’s scent betrays his dissatisfaction with that answer, but he lets it lie.
A single word hums soft, staticky, in Cloud’s mind.
home
They push the birds hard to get out of the desert before nightfall, when the temperatures plummet. The sun is just dipping below the horizon when they reach the woods at the desert’s northern edge.
Cloud manages the birds while Sephiroth goes to gather wood for a fire. He pulls grain and greens from their packs, finds fresh water in a nearby stream. He’s brushing sand and debris from the scales of their claws when Sephiroth returns.
He stacks the wood, cups his hands near the base, and with an almost effortless push of energy, the fire roars to life. In the early dusk, the reds and yellows bounce off of Sephiroth’s face in a way that is sickeningly familiar.
The young man glances up at him, brows furrowed. “What is it?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Your smell changed.”
Cloud feels himself bristle. He had been so confident that he was getting better at keeping his feelings from spilling over.
Maybe he just hadn’t been feeling quite this much, before Sephiroth.
But he doesn’t respond, and again Sephiroth doesn’t push. Cloud thinks, bitterly, that it feels perfectly in character for a persistence predator. They settle into a quiet that hovers somewhere between nervous and uncomfortable, broken only by the cracking of the logs in the fire and the occasional soft kweh from one of the birds.
They’ve eaten the hand pies packed by the castle’s kitchen staff, and Cloud is trying to be discreet about licking sauce and crumbs off his fingers when the young man speaks up again.
“I read the book,” Sephiroth says softly.
Cloud is really, really not ready to play sex educator for his nemesis.
“It said that people usually present as teenagers. What does that mean for me?”
Cloud prods at the fire to give himself anything else to look at. “How old are you?”
“I don’t really know. My squadmates just turned 20, and I think they’re a little older than I am.”
“If you were of this world, you’d have presented already. Heats and ruts tend to be roughly seasonal. So if you’re here long enough, you’ll learn your designation very abruptly. Though, you’d find out sooner if you uh…” He chews on the inside of his cheek, not quite willing to finish the thought.
So Sephiroth does it for him, “If I attempt intercourse with someone.”
Ifrit’s sweaty titties, he really does not want to have this conversation. He covers his eyes with one hand. “Mmyep, that.”
“Is that how you—”
Cloud feels his face go warm. “Nope, we’re not doing storytime.”
Sephiroth’s scent takes on a sour edge with his frustration, even if his face and posture are schooled by a lifetime of discipline. “Cloud…”
His name falling from that mouth makes his arms, the back of his neck erupt in gooseflesh.
Those inhuman eyes flick up to his own. “People here can tell another's dynamic by scent, yes? I understand that you were on your own, had to figure things out without help, but…can you tell me? Can you tell what my designation is?”
And of course he can. The young SOLDIER’s scent, his presence, the very air around him sings alpha.
And that puzzles Cloud. Sephiroth’s scent doesn't displease him or put him on edge the way that many alphas do, especially the assholes who let their scent permeate every space they enter. Even though Cloud knows Sephiroth’s lack of control is temporary, is a lack of practice, he would have expected it to grate against his own alpha unpleasantly, like nails on a chalkboard or biting into something frozen.
Instead, Sephiroth's scent actively pulls him in, more strongly than any omega he's sought in the middle of his rut. The cells? The alien link between them?
Tell me, Cloud.
Cloud jolts with the suddenness of the intrusion; Sephiroth’s eyes study him, curious. His tongue darts out to lick his lips.
He needs to get this under control, before the boy understand just how deep a hold he has.
Cloud thinks about the dynamics—knows that the book he gave Sephiroth was just an introduction, that it didn’t delve into the rarer features that Cloud has learned of in his own readings.
Like how, sometimes, an alpha can be turned into an omega.
“Do you trust me?” Cloud asks, sure that he knows the answer after their weeks together.
Sephiroth nods.
“Then come here.”
The young man stands, walks toward him as if pulled on a string, and something inside of Cloud vibrates, hums with pleasure. He thinks he might understand what the elder Sephiroth, with impossible power over him, might have felt when he tugged on Cloud’s body.
When Sephiroth is close enough, Cloud grabs him by the wrist, pulls him down to sit in front of him. He presses his chest to the younger man’s back, cages him on either side with his legs. He would wonder if he imagined Sephiroth’s sigh of relief, but the shift in his scent is unmistakable, and Cloud feels it too through the many points of contact.
peace
“You’re an alpha,” he breathes into Sephiroth’s ear, and his voice sounds like gravel, utterly wrecked.
“And you are too,” he responds. Cloud isn’t sure if it’s a question or an assertion.
He closes his eyes, rubs his cheek against the gland on Sephiroth’s neck and scents him with his own. He doesn’t perceive his own scent, exactly, but he can feel, this close, how well Sephiroth’s compliments it, plays off of it.
“I shouldn’t feel this…pulled to you, then,” Sephiroth says. The way his words tremble is so subtle that Cloud wouldn’t have noticed it, if that voice hadn’t haunted him so intimately for so many years.
And it is here that the lie occurs to Cloud—the way to bend the truth to keep his personal nightmare in check. He offers it with an ease that he might have felt shame about, had it been to anyone else.
“It isn’t just about mating,” he says. Sephiroth squirms at that word, which makes Cloud’s lips twitch into the slightest smirk.
(that a sideways comment about sex could discomfit a man who goes on to become a god of death)
“Sometimes people form packs. For protection. Or as a show of loyalty.”
Sephiroth leans his weight more heavily against Cloud, as though he is going drowsy under the influence of his scent. “You would protect me?”
“If you would be loyal to me,” he murmurs, pressing his lips feather-soft to the skin over the boy’s scent spot. Sephiroth sighs a sound near enough to a moan that Cloud’s cock twitches against his better judgement.
It doesn’t matter what he has to do, how he has to debase himself—so long as he can tame this weapon shaped like a young man in his arms.
And Sephiroth—this sweeter version, who seems to yearn for softness, who wants to pamper chocobos and tinker with a rakish king’s machines—his weapon, who Cloud can use in service of others—he tilts his head to give Cloud better access to his neck, and the static between them hums
peace
home
please
So there is nothing left for Cloud but to press his open mouth over Seph’s gland, to pierce that soft flesh, pale as snow on the mountains of his homeland.
Sephiroth’s blood fills his mouth, and it is power and it is bliss and it is everything he could ever want to be.
Somewhere, someone moans, and Cloud doesn’t realize it’s him until Sephiroth echoes, responds to it with his own sound. Cloud digs his fingertips harder into the lean muscle of the boy’s stomach, his chest, rocks while embracing him.
He’s felt the urge to bite, before, in the throes of his rut, but he didn’t understand the impulse, managed to hang on to just enough of his humanity to tamp it down.
He understands it now.
It isn’t a mating bite. It won’t take—their dynamics aren’t right for it (yet). But it hits his body like a drug, all the same. He feels as though he’s salivating for the first meal after a long fast, but it comes with an unfamiliar taste—bitter on his tongue, somehow intrinsically him, like tasting his own spend on a lover’s mouth.
When Seph writhes in his arms, moans low and long, Cloud somehow knows that it is his venom. He sucks at the gland, drowns in summertime and bursts of sweetness and green, worries at the wound with his teeth.
“Hah—Cloud, something feels—”
And as if driven by instinct, Cloud’s hand dips down from the young man’s stomach to slip under his pants.
He maps out Sephiroth’s intimate geometries with his fingertips. Finds the head of his swollen cock, slick at the tip with pre. He squeezes his fist around it gently and the boy in his arms knocks his head back and keens. The sudden movement slices more of his skin against Cloud’s fangs, and he can’t help but buck his own hardness into the small of Seph’s back.
“I don’t—how—” Sephiroth makes no sense. At least until Cloud’s fingertips slide down to the base of his cock to grope for his sac and find instead—
Cloud finally releases Seph’s neck from his mouth to pant and swear, “Fuck,” against fever hot skin. He uses his fingers to spread Seph’s pussy open, and he trails one callused fingertip, slow and reverent, over the heated flesh. “Oh, you poor thing.”
“Feels strange,” he whimpers, rubbing his face against Cloud’s gland for comfort. “I don’t know what’s happening, I don’t—”
“Shh, baby,” Cloud coos, a deep sense of protectiveness settling in his bones. “It’s okay, it’s normal.” He presses a sweet kiss to Sephiroth’s cheek, leaves behind a smear of the boy’s own blood, bright, so bright against his skin.
Seph shakes his head. “This isn’t normal, it isn’t natural, what is happening to me—”
“You’re beautiful. You’re perfect,” Cloud murmurs, and realizes that he means it, even in the moments his hatred burns the hottest.
Seph's body is all long and lean, finely muscled, more like a dancer than a warrior. But it’s the strength, the pure potential, the danger that thrums through him that makes the venom leak from Cloud’s fangs, floods his mouth with rich heat.
A part of Cloud wants to return to the half-ruined gland in Seph’s neck, to sink his fangs into the meat of him and tear. But the bit of his rational mind that has managed to hold on knows better than to leave blatant physical evidence of what he’s doing, needs to be sure that the mako in Seph’s blood can hide it.
So instead he drags his tongue over the torn flesh, laps at Seph's blood like it's a forbidden ambrosia, lets his venom drip into the open wound like an offering. And when Seph's cries turn high and desperate and sweet, a possessive growl vibrates up out of Cloud’s chest.
Take care of yourself he projects across that static, so that he doesn’t have to stop licking, kissing, worshiping where the young man pulses blood and sweetness.
And Sephiroth obeys him without question.
They return from their trek to Narshe some days later. The chocobos are passed off to the stablehands and Cloud and Sephiroth head to their chambers. Micah’s brows raise when they get close enough to scent, but she says nothing.
They part; Sephiroth to Edgar’s rooms, Cloud to his borrowed one. He bathes, washes the dirt and the sand from himself. Washes fresh summer fruit from his neck, from his fingertips, and feels something like regret.
When he sleeps that night, he dreams of feeding Sephiroth berries on the red-lit steps inside the Nibelheim reactor.
Banon and the Returners have summoned Sephiroth, and it’s not a request.
The faction has grown anxious in Edgar’s absence. The matron and the castle staff have handled the imperial troops as well as they can—Edgar must travel often for his diplomatic work, after all. But even in this less technologically-advanced world, rumors have a way of spreading well beyond borders, and it feels like the Empire sees the opportunity to strike.
The Returners want to disabuse them of the idea.
Micah encourages Sephiroth to take a retinue, but he refuses any company but Cloud. Cloud feels something like pride about it—even though he knows full well the tie he’s seeded with his bite.
(He didn’t anticipate the way the bond would reciprocate, would take hold of him, just as strongly—but he convinces himself it is worth it, anything is worth it to keep Sephiroth from his destructive madness.)
They are deep in the cave to South Figaro when a cluster of monsters ambushes them, and Cloud puts himself between Seph’s back and a diamond-hard claw. His non-dominant arm goes numb and limp, but before it can strike him again, he feels the spike of Seph’s rage over their connection, and the monster is reduced to a half shell and a spray of blood.
The young SOLDIER moves impossibly fast, and Cloud feels a mad grin spread over his face. He remembers the eldritch horrors with Sephiroth’s face, the ghosts of him he fought in the northern crater, the showdown in Edge; his pulse thunders in his skull.
Fuck, but there’s a part of him that has missed Sephiroth.
Sephiroth flicks the blood from his blade after he dispatches the last of the monsters and moves quickly to Cloud’s side. He fists either side of Cloud’s jacket around the wound and tears it open.
Cloud huffs a rough-edged laugh. “I liked that jacket.”
“You should have been quicker on your feet, then.” With an ease like breathing, he pours mana into his bracer and a warmth stitches Cloud’s arm back together, reattaches nerves in a way that makes him hiss through his teeth.
Seph scents him—a gentle push of his presence in Cloud’s direction. Cloud fists a hand into the collar of the younger man’s tunic and grits out, more forcefully than he intended, “Don’t.”
“Why not?” His expression is unreadable. “Does it not soothe you?”
Cloud’s eyes wander from Seph’s down to his neck, where he would bear a wicked, jagged scar if not for the mako. He remembers the taste of the boy’s blood mixed with his scent, and his venom pools under his tongue. He rakes his eyes back up to Seph’s face, to soft, parted lips.
“It doesn’t,” he lies, and he spits the venom from his mouth before he’s tempted to do something with it.
Seph pours his displeasure and his disbelief into their connection and into his scent, so that the sweetness turns tart and bitter and the smell of pine edges toward decay. Seph is a quick learner, knows better, so Cloud laughs at what it is—a tantrum.
“Come on.”
Sephiroth is quiet for the rest of their trek to South Figaro.
It is uneventful; Seph makes quick work of the few monsters they run across in the grasslands. When they reach the town, they learn belatedly that there is a festival in the coming week, so the inn is booked solid with travelers and merchants.
There’s just one room for the two of them, with just one bed.
And if that’s not just Cloud’s luck.
He sheds his ruined jacket and the bit of armor he wears and makes for the bath. He can feel Sephiroth watch him, feels the boy’s desire to tend to him like it’s a tangible thing, and he ignores it.
When he’s washed the blood and dirt and sweat from his body and his clothes, he returns, a towel slung low around his hips, to find Sephiroth has shed his armor. He waits in just his light tunic and pants, his gaze heavy, expectant.
Cloud hangs his wet clothing, fetches his bracer and uses the barest output from the fire materia in it to dry the garments. He calls over his shoulder, “Go, bathe,” but there is no answer, no sound in response.
Until there is a hand on his bare shoulder. “Let me see it.”
“It’s fine.”
“Cloud. Please.”
That simple ask pulls on something in him that he wants to resent, but he knows it’s his own doing.
So he goes to sit on the bed and faces the younger man, tilts his head up to watch his eyes with something like defiance.
Sephiroth’s pupils are big. The boy watches his own fingertips as they trace first over his the curve of his bicep, around to the back, where there is no mar, no indication of any wound. He hesitates for just a moment on his shoulder, then he slides, so so light that it feels like a dream, up to the side of Cloud’s neck. He presses two fingers firmly into the gland, then he slips them into his own mouth, his eyes finally going to Cloud’s again.
The young man’s pupils go so large that they are round, and Cloud feels something like dizziness, feels his understanding of himself tilt. Then he’s hit with a wave of Seph’s scent, and he bares his teeth.
“I told you it doesn’t—”
Seph’s expression manages to go stubborn, even while his eyes are heavy-lidded and scent-drunk. “It soothes me. May I have this?”
A growl rumbles Cloud’s chest, his alpha breaking through to assert a boundary, but sweet, stubborn Seph just smiles at him. Cloud sinks his hand into the boy’s hair, pulls him down and presses their mouths together.
Mine
Even though Cloud can’t perceive his own scent, he can taste himself on Sephiroth’s mouth, and that sends heat to his groin impossibly fast. The boy smells like woods and sunbathing, like dirt and monster blood and the finest food Cloud’s ever had.
When he stops the kiss, when he presses his lips instead to the side of Seph’s mouth, to the line of his jaw, Seph tilts his head as much as he can to offer his neck to Cloud
please, yours, please
and there is no part of him that wants to deny himself. This is everything he could want to be.
Venom and blood and spit and rent flesh mix under his tongue, and Sephiroth’s fine fingers map his bare chest, his stomach. He finds the old, raised scar under his heart and his touch lingers, warm.
“Cloud…?”
But he is entirely uninterested in sharing that story in this moment. Cloud reaches a hand down between them, fumbles at the fastenings of Seph’s pants. And his little weapon cries so, so prettily when his hand wraps around that hard cock.
(Is it smaller than what he felt in the woods? It’s no less erect—it strains, pulses with every heartbeat—but he’s sure of it, the way that his hand is able to swallow it entirely now.)
Sephiroth grips his biceps, rocks in his fist, and Cloud’s hand gets a bit wetter each time it hits his cunt at the base. Seph whines, “Please, want to touch you.”
Cloud pulls his teeth through the boy’s neck roughly and shoves him to his knees, one hand still wound tight in silver hair. “Fucking touch me then.”
“How—?”
“Figure it out,” he snarls, even as he licks blood from his lips.
Sephiroth makes quick work of getting the towel off of him and then he’s exposed, harder than he’s been in his entire fucking life, with the man he’s chased across life and death kneeling at his feet.
It’s everything he’s ever wanted to be.
The sound he makes as soon as those lips wrap around him is loud, unabashed, broken at the edges. He has both of his hands in Seph’s hair, the once tidy ponytail now a mess. He digs his fingernails into the boy’s scalp, into the soft skin at the nape of his neck, and it only encourages him.
The movements of his mouth are messy and amateur, but between the heat and the enthusiasm and the twisted joy of cementing their mutual thrall, Cloud finds himself close to his climax far too quickly. He bucks his hips and Sephiroth gags around him, and that is the last thing that breaks him.
“Seph!” he shouts, and his voice sounds fucking wrecked. “Off, now!”
And is it Cloud’s imagination, or does he fucking smile when he grabs Cloud’s wrists, pins them to the bed before he sinks his mouth as snug to the base of his cock as he can?
His knot begins to expand in Sephiroth’s mouth, and the young man holds him firmly in place even as Cloud tries to pull away. His lips and his cheeks stretch obscenely around the fullness, and he makes soft, pleased sounds, even as tears spill down his cheeks.
yours
thank you
There is nothing for Cloud to do but keep his hips as still as he can while he catches his breath. He runs his fingers through Sephiroth’s hair with all of the tenderness he didn’t know he still had in him, coos sweet praises under his breath.
“Who knew you were such a good boy, Seph?”
The boy’s hot tears fall to mix with his drool in Cloud’s lap. He shuts his eyes, those silver lashes beautiful over his stretched, red cheeks, rests his head against one of Cloud’s thighs. He hums around the knot in his mouth, sucks dutifully, instinctually, to take his cum. They stay like this, quiet but for their labored breathing, and Cloud is everything he ever wanted to be.
The hike through the Mt. Kolts pass is easier than Cloud had anticipated. The air is cool enough to counter the warmth generated by their exertion, and it almost reminds him of springtime in Nibelheim. He notices Seph sweating more than usual on the harder parts of the climb, but the young man refuses any attempt from Cloud to dote on him.
Cloud gives him his space until, in the last switchback before they reach ground again, Seph takes an especially hard hit while fighting a monster. As soon as it’s taken care of, Cloud crowds over him, grabs him to inspect the wound in spite of his protests.
His skin is burning, and Seph whines at Cloud’s touch, croaks out, “I don’t feel well.”
Cloud does everything he can to keep the strange blend of pleasure and excitement and worry out of his scent, out of the connection between them. He casts a quick cure and kneels in front of him.
“Get on my back.” Seph looks affronted, and Cloud sounds a soft growl. “Now, Seph.”
They are so close to the Returners’ hideout, and Cloud would much rather Seph ride out his first heat there, in relative safety, than in the middle of the wilds.
The last stretch of their trek is a blur. Seph dips in and out of fevered coherence. When they reach the cliffside cave, Cloud is relieved that the guard on duty recognizes him, and he barks, “He’s near his heat, I need the room for him.”
Even though he is known, the guard hesitates. “Banon has said—”
“Do I look like I give a single fuck?” The words trail off into a growl that dares them to take his omega away. “If Banon needs to see for himself he can fucking watch, just bring the godsdamned supplies to the room.”
Behind the guard Cloud sees a blond bear of a man. “Do as he asks, for gods’ sake.”
Cloud inclines his head to Sabin in thanks and hurries past.
Once they’re in the room, while one of the other resisters fills the tub in the corner with water, Cloud works Seph out of his sweat-soaked clothes. The boy’s face is flushed, his eyes dark and dazed.
“You said heat?” His voice sounds impossibly weak, and Cloud finds it both terrible and wonderful. “But you told me I was an alpha?”
“I know, baby,” he coos. The plate armor is scattered in pieces over the floor, and Cloud works his tunic up and off. His scent pours off of him in loud waves, makes Cloud salivate. “I’ll take good care of you.”
mine mine mine vibrates the cord between them, unbidden, unstoppable.
As soon as they are alone in the room, Cloud finishes stripping Seph, pulls him into his arms to bring him over to the water. A soft word and his magic cools it, so that when he lays Seph into the tub, it is a gift to his fevered skin. But as he goes to pull away, Seph’s fists ball into his shirt and keep him close.
“Cloud, did you…do something?”
He pauses and considers, but ultimately gives a short nod, unable to lie to him. And somehow, in spite of what he deserves, Seph smiles and purrs for him.
thank you
“You’re mad” he breathes, even as he rushes to kiss him, over and over. Even in the cold bath, his skin is so hot, and Cloud is good and drunk off the smell of him, off the need to dote on him.
take care of me, daddy
Cloud groans and curses into Seph’s mouth, and the boy wraps his arms around his neck, pulls him down. Seph breaks the kiss and moves to mouth over the scent glands on Cloud’s neck.
please please
“Shh, I’ve got you, baby.” Cloud slips a hand down between Seph’s legs. Now, as his heat comes to a head, as the changes in his body settle, his cock is not gone but it is smaller, maybe as thick as Cloud’s thumb and half the length. Cloud strokes it carefully between his thumb and forefinger and Seph’s entire body goes rigid as if struck, and he keens, high and pitiful.
“Hurts,” he manages to whine, as Cloud’s fingers slip down between his folds, find thick, hot slick waiting for him.
“I know. Daddy will make it better. Come here, Seph.”
He’s unsteady when he stands, all long limbs and no balance like a baby deer, and the laugh that comes out of Cloud is a sound of joy, of love. Sephiroth falls into Cloud’s lap and it is a rush of cold water and hot skin, desperate kisses and grinding hips. Cloud dips his hand down and finds that Seph is oozing slick from both of his holes, and he loses a bit of his mind.
Cloud licks and sucks over the glands in Seph’s neck that he’s abused so thoroughly before, but no matter how much Seph whines or tries to press his skin to the points of Cloud’s fangs, he keeps him just out of reach. He instead lowers his head to one of Seph’s nipples, nips and sucks at the flesh until hot, wet slick pools in his lap.
“Please.”
be patient, baby.
Seph whines, holds himself with fingertips digging into Cloud’s shoulders. Cloud leaves a trail of bites down between his small breasts, over his ribs, revels in the heat of his blood.
“Inside, please, please, daddy!”
And something about hearing it from his mouth, hearing it ring in his ears instead of in his mind, makes him feel like a starving man, makes his boy’s suffering look like the only food that could ever satisfy him.
He lies on his back there on the floor, covered in water from the bath and Seph’s slick. “Up,” he says, pulling Seph’s hips toward his face.
The boy looks over his shoulder to where Cloud’s cock tents his pants and makes a pitiful sound.
You’ll take what I give, or you’ll suffer, Seph. Choose, now.
“Yes, daddy,” he says, tears running down his cheeks, and he settles his thighs on either side of Cloud’s head.
The first taste of his omega’s slick on his tongue is bliss.
Seph rocks his hips so shyly, so sweetly, bent over so that his fingertips can scrabble against the earthen floor for purchase. Cloud takes his time—sucks Seph’s small, hard cock into his mouth, runs his tongue between the folds of him, dips and flicks into his sweet hole. His mouth and his chin are covered in honey, in sweet sap, in his drug of choice, and each gasp and moan and cry that falls from his boy’s mouth tells him how completely they belong to each other.
He grips Seph’s ass in his hands and tilts his hips so that he can tongue at Seph’s asshole, and Seph cries and struggles against his hold as his voice in Cloud’s mind pleads
dirty!
and Cloud breathes back
perfect
Because the desperation, the way that Seph tries in vain to get away from Cloud’s mouth, only makes him sweeter.
Cloud rocks him, kisses tender flesh and teases with his tongue until Seph’s occasional pleas of inside are lost to him, are reduced to sobs and shakes.
cum for me, baby, just like this, be a good boy for daddy
A scream tears out of Seph when he spills into Cloud’s mouth, onto his face.
Cloud goes back to his cunt, pulls the flesh of his labia into his mouth, uncaring of his fangs—drinks down the thick, sweet metal of his omega’s blood just as eagerly as he swallows his slick.
“Cloud please,” Seph whispers, his voice shot. “Please, please, need you inside.”
He laughs a bright, delighted sound, pushes Seph down his body enough so that he can see his lover’s face. “I bet you do, baby. Now,” he uses his hands on Seph’s ass to spread him open. “Which hole do you want me to breed?”
His eyes snap open, half-mad as he looks at Cloud with pupils almost large enough to eclipse the green. “Please.”
“My choice then, baby?” He teases, reaching down to work his cock out of his pants. He thrusts up once, twice, against the muscle of Seph’s ass.
Seph’s voice cracks, desperate. “No, please.”
“Oh, sweet boy,” he coos, a grin spreading over his face. “I don’t think you’ve said no to me yet. I think I like it.”
He ruts his cock up against Seph’s cunt, teases over his cock and his hole and coats himself liberally with his slick. Then he lifts Seph by his waist, presses the head of his cock up against his asshole. Sephiroth whines and tries to squirm away.
“Here or not at all, pet. What do you want?”
He chokes around a sob, breathes so soft that Cloud barely hears him, “Inside.”
And he is pretty sure that he has never felt so satisfied as he does at Seph’s resignation. But the feeling of Seph’s fevered, slick flesh squeezing around his cock as Cloud slides him down, inch by slow inch, comes awfully close.
He knows that this won’t satisfy Seph, not the way that fucking into his cunt would—and that is both the pleasure and a torment for Cloud. His instincts scream that this omega, his omega needs him desperately, needs to be fucked and knotted and mated and bred. But there is a deep vein of sadism that runs through him just for Sephiroth, even if this younger version of him is innocent the elder’s sins.
Is he ensuring Seph’s continued innocence, or robbing him of it?
Seph tosses his head back and lets out the most contented sigh, and Cloud decides it doesn’t matter, as long as he can keep coaxing sounds like that from him.
He moves slowly, so slowly—he’s not a monster, after all—and when Seph tries to drive them together faster, desperate for any fullness from his alpha, Cloud holds him still with a bruising grip.
“Patience, baby,” he growls.
Seph bites back a sob, looks at him with something like betrayal, and his hand goes to his cunt—works his heavy clit, then slides three fingers into himself and rocks on his hand, on Cloud’s cock.
Cloud curses, pulls Seph’s hand away forcefully and lands one, two, three quick, hard slaps over his clit. His body clenches painfully tight around Cloud’s cock, slick covers his hand, and Cloud bares his teeth in a snarl.
“What I give you,” he repeats with a growl. “Nothing more. You understand?”
And in spite of the way his body trembles with his need, the way his hand twitches to go back between his legs, the discipline that Shinra forced into him manages to push through, and he nods.
He chokes out around his tears, “Yes, daddy. Thank you, daddy.”
“Good boy.” He lifts Seph along his cock until only the tip of him is inside, presses back in slow, tortuously slow, and Seph spills into his mind
thankyouthankyouthankyoumorepleasethankyou
And Cloud moves him just barely faster. Lifts him, holds him barely on him, slides back in slow. “So good for me,” he says, and Seph nods, his face slack with his high. “But you’re so tight here, baby. I can’t give you my knot here, can I? I’d ruin you.”
Seph’s fingertips dig into Cloud’s shirt, and he nods. “Whatever my daddy wants to give me,” he says softly.
And Cloud thinks that has earned his pet a reward.
He eases Seph entirely off of his cock, and when he stays empty for a moment, Cloud sees more tears threatening. “Please, please, I’ll be good.”
“You’ve been so good for me already,” Cloud says. “Let me serve you properly.”
Seph’s eyes radiate adoration, gratitude. Cloud stands with the boy in his arms and carries him to one of the beds, while Seph presses kisses to Cloud’s face, licks lovingly over the gland on his neck. He sets Seph down so gently, pulls away only long enough to push his own clothes off in a rush. Then he climbs onto the bed and kisses Seph down into the mattress; delights in the way his little weapon wraps arms and legs around him.
He taps his cock once, twice, hard against Seph’s, and the young man opens eagerly under him
pleasethankyoupleasethankyoudaddy
and Cloud buries himself in Seph’s cunt with one smooth, consuming thrust.
The connection between them goes silent, and Cloud holds himself still inside of his boy. The only sound for several moments is their wrecked breaths and their thundering pulses.
Seph comes back into his body in a rush, his muscles tense, and he nods frantically, gets out in a rush, “Yes, yes pl—” and devolves into a jagged yell as Cloud begins to fuck into him the way he’s wanted to for fucking years.
His hips snap with a force that would break an ordinary human, but Seph—Seph bounces eagerly on him, throws his head back in his pleasure, rakes his nails down Cloud’s back hard enough to bleed him.
Don’t be wasteful, baby, he chides gently. So Seph brings a bloodied hand to his mouth, sucks each of his fingers clean while Cloud thrusts harder.
“Knot,” Seph whispers, asks, begs, his lips tinted perfect red with Cloud’s blood, and Cloud almost loses himself then and there.
“Yes, baby, daddy’s gonna knot you.” Cloud nips at Seph’s chest, then reaches for the backs of his thighs, folds him into a mating press so that each thrust somehow goes deeper, like he could crawl inside of Seph. “Ask me again, sweet thing. Wanna hear you beg for it.”
Tears stream down his cheeks and Cloud can’t resist dragging his tongue through them, would swear that they taste like berries and salted cream. Seph huffs a wet laugh, struggles so sweetly to whisper, “Please. Knot. Cum. Inside.”
His hips snap one, two, three more times, and then his knot swells in a rush. He hisses as they lock together, and Seph kicks his head back to scream through his orgasm. Cloud laughs, delirious, lets Seph’s legs fall to the bed on either side of himself, and lowers himself down so that he can lave his tongue over the raw, swollen gland.
Like a trained beast, Seph tilts his head to bare his neck for Cloud, and it fills him with a twisted pride.
“It would be permanent now, Seph,” he warns.
His perfect boy just nods.
Cloud grips his chin hard in one hand and twists his head to the other side, licks and sucks hard at his other gland. “Need to hear you say it, baby.”
His breath hitches. “Please make me yours.”
Seph’s flesh opens under Cloud's fangs like there never should have been a barrier between them, like they belong inside of each other. His blood spills hot over Cloud’s face, so like the slick when he was buried in Seph’s cunt, and they both moan as Seph rocks over Cloud’s knot.
Cloud pulls away from his neck only long enough to kiss him, to lick Seph’s blood into his mouth like he is sharing the finest elixir, and then he is tearing into the other gland. He is eager for his knot to go down only so that he can sink his fangs, his venom, into every scent spot on the boy’s body, to lay an unambiguous claim.
He won’t settle for less.
mine. ruin you. no one else.
Peace, joy, bliss resonate across their connection, and Cloud isn’t sure which of them it’s coming from.
It doesn’t matter.
It is everything they’d ever want to be.