FF7 - Anywhere But Gone - CloudxTifa
Jun. 13th, 2011 07:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dracoqueen22a/n: New fic, guys! I don't have a FF7 beta because I don't write in that fandom anymore, so this is self-edited. All mistakes are mine and mine alone. I also never write CloudxTifa so I can't be sure that their dynamic is up to snuff. This takes place after FF7 and Advent Children and doesn't reference Before Crisis because I haven't played that game.
Enjoy!
Title: Anywhere But Gone
Pairing: CloudxTifa
Rating: T
Warning: mentions of het sex, spoilers, foul language, fluff, romance
Description: Tifa never asks for a promise; Cloud never gives one.
Dedication: For ginjaninja, who was the 44444th hit on my fanfiction website
Her toes are cold. That's the first thing that Tifa realizes and what jars her out of a deep, restful sleep. Her eyes peel open slowly even as she shivers and draws her legs up, trying to find a bastion of warmth for her freezing toes.
The second blanket has slipped off her bed in the middle of the night, puddling on the wood floor and it's no wonder that her feet are cold. Last night, Tifa hadn't protested the loss of the blanket – she'd had another body to warm her bed.
She rolls over and stares at the empty left side of the mattress. She waits for the surprise, the cascading feelings of hurt and betrayal and despair. She waits for the tears to prick her eyes.
Her only shock is that none of this occurs. She's surprisingly numb to find the bed empty, the blankets thrown back, the mattress cold when she slides her palm across the sheet. Maybe that's due to the temperature of the air, how quickly it steals body heat, but Tifa knows better. The mattress is cold because no one has laid there in a recent hour. Probably longer.
The place where Cloud should be is unsurprisingly empty. It hurts, but it no longer tears her apart. Tifa wonders if she should rejoice in this, or fear that it means what he's assumed all along – that her feelings for him would fade. Well, anything would wither away if left to rot, if stunted due to lack of encouragement.
Tifa sighs and rolls back onto her other side, staring at her wall with its mosaic of pictures, her family and friends, their smiling faces and images of days long gone. Days before Sephiroth's madness, days in Nibelheim, days after Meteor and after Sephiroth's second return and subsequent defeat.
Cloud probably left before the sun even broke the horizon, Tifa realizes. That's his usual pattern. He always runs when he gets too close. Like he's going to break the world if he lets himself feel something more than that blasted guilt. If there's one thing Cloud has in spades, it's that he blames himself for too much. It's not the insanity that's a problem; Tifa's pretty sure she's not sane either, who is these days?
It's the damned guilt complex.
It doesn't hurt. Tifa tells herself this over and over. It's a rut they are stuck in. A rut of Cloud coming back--
Always the fear, whispering the fear, what if this time he doesn't? He never said he would. It's just implied. He'll come back, Tifa knows he will! She hopes he does. That he comes back alive and whole, if a little missing in his head. But never a promise, never anything to rely on, to cling to, just a fear...
--dirty and broken a bit more, tired and needing a place to rest. He stays for a week, a month, more sometimes. He gets comfortable, relaxed. He teases Denzel and he smiles. He kisses Tifa one night, and she's too weak to tell him no when she knows she ought to. She's her own worst enemy sometimes.
And then, the next day, horrified by his own weakness, the desire to be happy, Cloud disappears before the sun rises and Tifa wakes to cold sheets and a crushing sense of disappointment. Yuffie keeps telling her that she can't fix Cloud with her wonderful wiles of womanhood. Maybe the kleptomaniac ninja actually knows what she's talking about for once.
Knocking on the door rouses Tifa from her sleepy contemplations.
“Breakfast!” she hears Denzel pipe up from the other side, never one to open the door without permission. Which is a good thing because the room probably still stinks of sex and Tifa herself isn't appropriately dressed.
She sighs. “Be there in a minute,” Tifa calls out.
“Okay!”
She listens as he moves away from the door, footsteps carrying him down the hall, and vaguely remembers a promise of pancakes. No wonder he knocked on the door.
Tifa rouses from the bed, foregoes making it in favor of stripping the sheets and doing some laundry, and digs through her closet for something appropriate to wear. It's too cold for her battle-time ensemble, so a pair of jeans and a sweater work just fine.
She takes a shower, letting the warm water cascade over her, finally heating up her chilled toes. She pointedly does not think about Cloud or the empty side of her bed. She does not wonder when Cloud's going to drag himself back – if he even does – or what state he'll be in when he does return.
She pointedly does not worry, does not linger in heartache, and bathes quickly. She dries her hair, plaits it down the back just to get it out of the way, and stuffs her feet into thick socks. She examines herself in the mirror, wiping away the fogging with her towel, and breathes a sigh of relief that there are no visible marks left on her throat. The last thing she wants are a child's curious questions.
Tifa heads downstairs, fighting off yawns that speak of little sleep, and turns toward the kitchen. Still in a daze, she catches the smell of cooking food and the light bursts of chatter, but doesn't really register it. Her first step into the dining room, however, makes her pause in stunned surprise, blinking dumbly at the scene that greets her eyes.
Breakfast indeed. The table has been laden down by plates of eggs, bacon, and pancakes, along with a carafe of milk and another of orange juice. Denzel and Marlene are already seated at the table, their own plates piled high with food as they chatter between themselves. They notice her arrival and chirp a brief greeting before returning to their discussion of something that happened on a mutually favorite cartoon.
Her confusion palpable, Tifa wants to ask who the hell cooked all this for them. Maybe Elmyra stopped by as she often does. Or perhaps Yuffie swung by for a visit. She's a surprisingly decent cook and a whiz with a frying pan.
But no, the door to the kitchen swings open and Cloud strides in, carefully balancing a plate of steaming sausages that he sets on the table, and another empty plate, which he adds to a setting on the table by an empty chair. One meant for Tifa perhaps.
“Good morning,” he says, and he smiles at her, a genuine smile. One that reaches his eyes and makes them a bright blue, rather than the dull uneasiness of guilt and regret.
“You're still here,” Tifa replies dumbly. It's on the tip of her tongue and her mouth stopped connecting with her brain because she can't think of anything else to say.
He's still here.
Cloud blinks at her and the children stop eating. “Why wouldn't I be?”
All three of them are staring now.
“I...” Tifa's at a loss for words, trapped by the truth she doesn't want the children to know and her own desire to shove Cloud against a wall and demand he tell her what games he's playing now. That it's not right for him to trick her like this, play with her emotions, change the rules of the rut...
Cloud slides into a chair and gestures for her to take the last empty seat at the table. “Later,” he says, eyes flicking to Denzel and Marlene.
Later. There will actually be a later.
Tifa inclines her head and sits down. “Sure,” she replies, and reaches for the plate of pancakes, serving herself from the bounty of food that's spread over the table like there's something to be celebrated.
Cloud smiles at her, another one of those honest smiles, and turns his attention to his plate. Denzel and Marlene look between them, but for once, the two children don't bombard the adults with questions. They return to their bountiful breakfast, leaving Tifa to enjoy hers, her mind swimming with curiosities of her own.
She watches Cloud surreptitiously, watches how he jokes with Denzel and speaks warmly with Marlene, and it seems like everything is all right. It strikes her that for the four of them to sit here, eating breakfast together with peace, it feels like they've actually become a family. A real one. And not the facsimile of one that Tifa has been desperately trying to create in an effort to turn madness into order.
The thought makes Tifa smile, and she turns her attention to her breakfast, surprised herself at Cloud's skill in the kitchen. He's never demonstrated it before, but by the fluffiness of the pancakes, she's going to demand he take his turn more often.
That is, if he stays.
With the energy of children, Marlene and Denzel are the first to scurry from the table, pulling on coats and boots and gloves to play outside in the fresh snowfall. Tifa can see them from the window, Denzel falling back to make an angel in the snow, and Marlene carefully patting handfuls of the white powder into a frozen statue.
They'll be safe out there for now, here on the edge of town where ruthless hunting has pushed the monsters back, away from the city limits. They'll be safe while Cloud and Tifa talk, because that's definitely going to happen. The rhythm has been changed, the rules of the game, and Tifa refuses to teeter on this precipice for long.
She rises from the table, reaching for her plates and the ones the children left behind. “I'll do the dishes,” she says with a quick smile. “Seems only fair.”
“I'll help,” Cloud says, adding a pointed look her direction as he scoops more of the dishes off the table.
The four of them have managed to scrape every plate clean. They'll be nothing leftover, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Just means less cleaning up.
“You dry; I'll wash?” Tifa suggests.
Cloud nods, and they work in an odd sort of silence. Not awkward and uneasy, just there and tingling with anticipation. With all the questions Tifa wants to answer and whatever it is that's dancing on the tip of Cloud's tongue.
She catches him watching her from the corner of his eyes, that bright blue gaze skipping over her face in profile, before he focuses back on his drying, carefully swiping the towel over each plate. Tifa watches him, too, watches the subtle flex of muscles in his bare arms – the cold never touches Cloud half as much as it touches them – and the small furrow of concentration on his forehead.
Tifa wants to know what's going on. But she doesn't want to start the conversation. She fears that if she starts asking, she won't stop, and Cloud will never be able to get a word in edgewise.
She wants to know if last night is any different from the other nights. She wants to know why Cloud stayed this time. If he's still going to leave when she's not looking, after she's been lulled into dropping her guard, into believing this time around. If he's just waiting for one more chance to break her heart, make her truly understand that her fantasies are just that, fantasies, and she's holding out for a warped, impossible dream.
Beside her, Cloud wipes down a drinking glass, returns it to the cupboard, and then sighs. “I'm tired,” he says.
Tifa blinks. The statement seems rather incongruous to the current situation. “... What?”
He exhales slowly, shifts his body to look at her with a visible wince. “No, that's not what I meant,” Cloud replies with a slow shake of his head. “I want to stay. Here. With you.”
Her heart skips a beat entirely without her permission, and Tifa clobbers down that ridiculous hope with a fierce hit of Meteodrive. Her hands are still buried in soapy warm water, but Tifa has already stopped scrubbing.
“I've never asked you to leave,” she says quietly.
“Yes, but...” Cloud's face contorts with frustration and sadness and determination. “I never tried not to either.”
In typical Cloud fashion, the words make sense, but only after Tifa picks them apart and reorders them.
She pulls her hands out of the water, dries them on a kitchen towel, and slings said towel over her shoulder. She turns to look at him, bracing one elbow on the counter. “And now?”
His hands are warm and a little damp when they cup her face, fingers teasing at her cheeks, his face so close. His eyes are bright – blue Mako bright – and when he pulls her into a kiss, she doesn't fight him. She doesn't think to hesitate or pull away. She just parts her lips and lets him in, lets him sweep his tongue over hers with his usual fraction of hesitation and then building confidence.
It's nothing like last night. Hurried gropes in the dark, breathless and moaning, so dark the only glow comes from Cloud's eyes and even that is faint. It's nothing like clothes flung in all directions, each kiss more a bite, a press of mouth to flesh and nothing more.
It's something more, if that even makes sense. This kiss is slow and cautious, exploratory. Like sitting down and getting to know someone new.
It's different in all the best kinds of ways, for all that it is mostly chaste, and when Cloud pulls back, Tifa almost follows him, just to taste the lips of a stranger again.
She inhales slowly, runs her tongue over her lips, and still doesn't let herself get weak in the knees. “That wasn't exactly a verbal answer,” Tifa says, but she softens her statement with a light smile.
“I've never been good with words,” Cloud admits, and his hands slide from her cheek down to her shoulder, where one thumb idly strokes her collarbone. “I want to stay this time, Tifa. If you'll have me.”
Her breath hitches. “You say that now,” she replies quietly. “But when you take off in a month, what am I supposed to do?”
“I can't promise that I won't leave,” he says, completely focused on the motion of his thumb over his skin, his eyes bright and beautiful. “But I will always come back. I can promise that much.”
For some reason, the words are more relieving than a vow to never leave. Because this actually sounds possible, plausible, like something Cloud could pull off. Rather than a promise not to leave, it's a promise to return.
Tifa can trust in that, put her faith in it. She knows why Cloud wants to leave. Hell, sometimes Tifa would like to steal Fenrir and ride off into the sunset herself. Just for a few precious hours of silence and alone time, where her thoughts can wander and she doesn't have to think of the past as the wind whips through her hair and slaps against her face.
Yes, she can understand Cloud's desire for that sort of freedom.
Her hand rises, sets on his waist, pulls him closer. “I can live with that,” Tifa says, and their bodies fit neatly together. Cloud's so damn short for a man, but she likes it that way. Likes that she can nestle against him and not have to look too far up. “Marlene and Denzel will be happy, too.”
Cloud's eyes are bright, clear, unconflicted. “Well, you know how it is, anything to make the kids smile.”
Tifa laughs, buries her fingers in blond spikes, and tilts her face up for another kiss, another of those gentle, exploring, kisses from a stranger that make her warm and fuzzy inside. Especially since it's Cloud, her Cloud.
He's staying this time. And even if he doesn't, he'll be back. She can be sure of that now. He's going to return. No matter what.
He'll come back.
* * * *
a/n: So yeah. Fluff. Not a lot of that going around. *laughs* But such was the request. Thanks for reading!
Enjoy!
Title: Anywhere But Gone
Pairing: CloudxTifa
Rating: T
Warning: mentions of het sex, spoilers, foul language, fluff, romance
Description: Tifa never asks for a promise; Cloud never gives one.
Dedication: For ginjaninja, who was the 44444th hit on my fanfiction website
Her toes are cold. That's the first thing that Tifa realizes and what jars her out of a deep, restful sleep. Her eyes peel open slowly even as she shivers and draws her legs up, trying to find a bastion of warmth for her freezing toes.
The second blanket has slipped off her bed in the middle of the night, puddling on the wood floor and it's no wonder that her feet are cold. Last night, Tifa hadn't protested the loss of the blanket – she'd had another body to warm her bed.
She rolls over and stares at the empty left side of the mattress. She waits for the surprise, the cascading feelings of hurt and betrayal and despair. She waits for the tears to prick her eyes.
Her only shock is that none of this occurs. She's surprisingly numb to find the bed empty, the blankets thrown back, the mattress cold when she slides her palm across the sheet. Maybe that's due to the temperature of the air, how quickly it steals body heat, but Tifa knows better. The mattress is cold because no one has laid there in a recent hour. Probably longer.
The place where Cloud should be is unsurprisingly empty. It hurts, but it no longer tears her apart. Tifa wonders if she should rejoice in this, or fear that it means what he's assumed all along – that her feelings for him would fade. Well, anything would wither away if left to rot, if stunted due to lack of encouragement.
Tifa sighs and rolls back onto her other side, staring at her wall with its mosaic of pictures, her family and friends, their smiling faces and images of days long gone. Days before Sephiroth's madness, days in Nibelheim, days after Meteor and after Sephiroth's second return and subsequent defeat.
Cloud probably left before the sun even broke the horizon, Tifa realizes. That's his usual pattern. He always runs when he gets too close. Like he's going to break the world if he lets himself feel something more than that blasted guilt. If there's one thing Cloud has in spades, it's that he blames himself for too much. It's not the insanity that's a problem; Tifa's pretty sure she's not sane either, who is these days?
It's the damned guilt complex.
It doesn't hurt. Tifa tells herself this over and over. It's a rut they are stuck in. A rut of Cloud coming back--
Always the fear, whispering the fear, what if this time he doesn't? He never said he would. It's just implied. He'll come back, Tifa knows he will! She hopes he does. That he comes back alive and whole, if a little missing in his head. But never a promise, never anything to rely on, to cling to, just a fear...
--dirty and broken a bit more, tired and needing a place to rest. He stays for a week, a month, more sometimes. He gets comfortable, relaxed. He teases Denzel and he smiles. He kisses Tifa one night, and she's too weak to tell him no when she knows she ought to. She's her own worst enemy sometimes.
And then, the next day, horrified by his own weakness, the desire to be happy, Cloud disappears before the sun rises and Tifa wakes to cold sheets and a crushing sense of disappointment. Yuffie keeps telling her that she can't fix Cloud with her wonderful wiles of womanhood. Maybe the kleptomaniac ninja actually knows what she's talking about for once.
Knocking on the door rouses Tifa from her sleepy contemplations.
“Breakfast!” she hears Denzel pipe up from the other side, never one to open the door without permission. Which is a good thing because the room probably still stinks of sex and Tifa herself isn't appropriately dressed.
She sighs. “Be there in a minute,” Tifa calls out.
“Okay!”
She listens as he moves away from the door, footsteps carrying him down the hall, and vaguely remembers a promise of pancakes. No wonder he knocked on the door.
Tifa rouses from the bed, foregoes making it in favor of stripping the sheets and doing some laundry, and digs through her closet for something appropriate to wear. It's too cold for her battle-time ensemble, so a pair of jeans and a sweater work just fine.
She takes a shower, letting the warm water cascade over her, finally heating up her chilled toes. She pointedly does not think about Cloud or the empty side of her bed. She does not wonder when Cloud's going to drag himself back – if he even does – or what state he'll be in when he does return.
She pointedly does not worry, does not linger in heartache, and bathes quickly. She dries her hair, plaits it down the back just to get it out of the way, and stuffs her feet into thick socks. She examines herself in the mirror, wiping away the fogging with her towel, and breathes a sigh of relief that there are no visible marks left on her throat. The last thing she wants are a child's curious questions.
Tifa heads downstairs, fighting off yawns that speak of little sleep, and turns toward the kitchen. Still in a daze, she catches the smell of cooking food and the light bursts of chatter, but doesn't really register it. Her first step into the dining room, however, makes her pause in stunned surprise, blinking dumbly at the scene that greets her eyes.
Breakfast indeed. The table has been laden down by plates of eggs, bacon, and pancakes, along with a carafe of milk and another of orange juice. Denzel and Marlene are already seated at the table, their own plates piled high with food as they chatter between themselves. They notice her arrival and chirp a brief greeting before returning to their discussion of something that happened on a mutually favorite cartoon.
Her confusion palpable, Tifa wants to ask who the hell cooked all this for them. Maybe Elmyra stopped by as she often does. Or perhaps Yuffie swung by for a visit. She's a surprisingly decent cook and a whiz with a frying pan.
But no, the door to the kitchen swings open and Cloud strides in, carefully balancing a plate of steaming sausages that he sets on the table, and another empty plate, which he adds to a setting on the table by an empty chair. One meant for Tifa perhaps.
“Good morning,” he says, and he smiles at her, a genuine smile. One that reaches his eyes and makes them a bright blue, rather than the dull uneasiness of guilt and regret.
“You're still here,” Tifa replies dumbly. It's on the tip of her tongue and her mouth stopped connecting with her brain because she can't think of anything else to say.
He's still here.
Cloud blinks at her and the children stop eating. “Why wouldn't I be?”
All three of them are staring now.
“I...” Tifa's at a loss for words, trapped by the truth she doesn't want the children to know and her own desire to shove Cloud against a wall and demand he tell her what games he's playing now. That it's not right for him to trick her like this, play with her emotions, change the rules of the rut...
Cloud slides into a chair and gestures for her to take the last empty seat at the table. “Later,” he says, eyes flicking to Denzel and Marlene.
Later. There will actually be a later.
Tifa inclines her head and sits down. “Sure,” she replies, and reaches for the plate of pancakes, serving herself from the bounty of food that's spread over the table like there's something to be celebrated.
Cloud smiles at her, another one of those honest smiles, and turns his attention to his plate. Denzel and Marlene look between them, but for once, the two children don't bombard the adults with questions. They return to their bountiful breakfast, leaving Tifa to enjoy hers, her mind swimming with curiosities of her own.
She watches Cloud surreptitiously, watches how he jokes with Denzel and speaks warmly with Marlene, and it seems like everything is all right. It strikes her that for the four of them to sit here, eating breakfast together with peace, it feels like they've actually become a family. A real one. And not the facsimile of one that Tifa has been desperately trying to create in an effort to turn madness into order.
The thought makes Tifa smile, and she turns her attention to her breakfast, surprised herself at Cloud's skill in the kitchen. He's never demonstrated it before, but by the fluffiness of the pancakes, she's going to demand he take his turn more often.
That is, if he stays.
With the energy of children, Marlene and Denzel are the first to scurry from the table, pulling on coats and boots and gloves to play outside in the fresh snowfall. Tifa can see them from the window, Denzel falling back to make an angel in the snow, and Marlene carefully patting handfuls of the white powder into a frozen statue.
They'll be safe out there for now, here on the edge of town where ruthless hunting has pushed the monsters back, away from the city limits. They'll be safe while Cloud and Tifa talk, because that's definitely going to happen. The rhythm has been changed, the rules of the game, and Tifa refuses to teeter on this precipice for long.
She rises from the table, reaching for her plates and the ones the children left behind. “I'll do the dishes,” she says with a quick smile. “Seems only fair.”
“I'll help,” Cloud says, adding a pointed look her direction as he scoops more of the dishes off the table.
The four of them have managed to scrape every plate clean. They'll be nothing leftover, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Just means less cleaning up.
“You dry; I'll wash?” Tifa suggests.
Cloud nods, and they work in an odd sort of silence. Not awkward and uneasy, just there and tingling with anticipation. With all the questions Tifa wants to answer and whatever it is that's dancing on the tip of Cloud's tongue.
She catches him watching her from the corner of his eyes, that bright blue gaze skipping over her face in profile, before he focuses back on his drying, carefully swiping the towel over each plate. Tifa watches him, too, watches the subtle flex of muscles in his bare arms – the cold never touches Cloud half as much as it touches them – and the small furrow of concentration on his forehead.
Tifa wants to know what's going on. But she doesn't want to start the conversation. She fears that if she starts asking, she won't stop, and Cloud will never be able to get a word in edgewise.
She wants to know if last night is any different from the other nights. She wants to know why Cloud stayed this time. If he's still going to leave when she's not looking, after she's been lulled into dropping her guard, into believing this time around. If he's just waiting for one more chance to break her heart, make her truly understand that her fantasies are just that, fantasies, and she's holding out for a warped, impossible dream.
Beside her, Cloud wipes down a drinking glass, returns it to the cupboard, and then sighs. “I'm tired,” he says.
Tifa blinks. The statement seems rather incongruous to the current situation. “... What?”
He exhales slowly, shifts his body to look at her with a visible wince. “No, that's not what I meant,” Cloud replies with a slow shake of his head. “I want to stay. Here. With you.”
Her heart skips a beat entirely without her permission, and Tifa clobbers down that ridiculous hope with a fierce hit of Meteodrive. Her hands are still buried in soapy warm water, but Tifa has already stopped scrubbing.
“I've never asked you to leave,” she says quietly.
“Yes, but...” Cloud's face contorts with frustration and sadness and determination. “I never tried not to either.”
In typical Cloud fashion, the words make sense, but only after Tifa picks them apart and reorders them.
She pulls her hands out of the water, dries them on a kitchen towel, and slings said towel over her shoulder. She turns to look at him, bracing one elbow on the counter. “And now?”
His hands are warm and a little damp when they cup her face, fingers teasing at her cheeks, his face so close. His eyes are bright – blue Mako bright – and when he pulls her into a kiss, she doesn't fight him. She doesn't think to hesitate or pull away. She just parts her lips and lets him in, lets him sweep his tongue over hers with his usual fraction of hesitation and then building confidence.
It's nothing like last night. Hurried gropes in the dark, breathless and moaning, so dark the only glow comes from Cloud's eyes and even that is faint. It's nothing like clothes flung in all directions, each kiss more a bite, a press of mouth to flesh and nothing more.
It's something more, if that even makes sense. This kiss is slow and cautious, exploratory. Like sitting down and getting to know someone new.
It's different in all the best kinds of ways, for all that it is mostly chaste, and when Cloud pulls back, Tifa almost follows him, just to taste the lips of a stranger again.
She inhales slowly, runs her tongue over her lips, and still doesn't let herself get weak in the knees. “That wasn't exactly a verbal answer,” Tifa says, but she softens her statement with a light smile.
“I've never been good with words,” Cloud admits, and his hands slide from her cheek down to her shoulder, where one thumb idly strokes her collarbone. “I want to stay this time, Tifa. If you'll have me.”
Her breath hitches. “You say that now,” she replies quietly. “But when you take off in a month, what am I supposed to do?”
“I can't promise that I won't leave,” he says, completely focused on the motion of his thumb over his skin, his eyes bright and beautiful. “But I will always come back. I can promise that much.”
For some reason, the words are more relieving than a vow to never leave. Because this actually sounds possible, plausible, like something Cloud could pull off. Rather than a promise not to leave, it's a promise to return.
Tifa can trust in that, put her faith in it. She knows why Cloud wants to leave. Hell, sometimes Tifa would like to steal Fenrir and ride off into the sunset herself. Just for a few precious hours of silence and alone time, where her thoughts can wander and she doesn't have to think of the past as the wind whips through her hair and slaps against her face.
Yes, she can understand Cloud's desire for that sort of freedom.
Her hand rises, sets on his waist, pulls him closer. “I can live with that,” Tifa says, and their bodies fit neatly together. Cloud's so damn short for a man, but she likes it that way. Likes that she can nestle against him and not have to look too far up. “Marlene and Denzel will be happy, too.”
Cloud's eyes are bright, clear, unconflicted. “Well, you know how it is, anything to make the kids smile.”
Tifa laughs, buries her fingers in blond spikes, and tilts her face up for another kiss, another of those gentle, exploring, kisses from a stranger that make her warm and fuzzy inside. Especially since it's Cloud, her Cloud.
He's staying this time. And even if he doesn't, he'll be back. She can be sure of that now. He's going to return. No matter what.
He'll come back.
a/n: So yeah. Fluff. Not a lot of that going around. *laughs* But such was the request. Thanks for reading!
