Ennui

By: Strange and Intoxicating -rsa-

Warning: Boysex mentioned

Author Notes: Not much to say, given I have such little interest in this pairing. However, I wrote it because it's been essentially demanded of me by a few of my lovely friends and readers, and I figured I may as well give it a shot. Reno/Cloud really isn't my cup of tea.

Disclaimer: Don't own, don't want to own.

Ennui

Cloud remembered a lot of things from the past, some good and some bad. It wasn't as though most of it mattered now, when the world was changing and floating around him, so very different to the place he had called home for the first twenty some odd years of his life. This world was a little more clean, but so much less beautiful. He was living in a place where the people and the cars and even the flowers weren't right.

It wasn't that the people were different, because Cloud knew that their faces seemed to stay the same no matter where he went. That wasn't the difference. It wasn't even that people began to build churches and pray to Minerva again. Neither was it the fact that the government started to actually care about the people, holding their hands like helpless children, leading them forward to a place that was a little more bright.

The world wasn't beautiful anymore. The people walked on with their modest lifestyles and plump wallets, donated to their churches and erecting beautiful marble statues in a goddess's name, but they weren't beautiful people. Their hearts clinged to the ideas out of neccessity, rather than hope or dignity. That was his problem; he had saved the world from being destroyed, watched as the people used courage to combat the grime, and then promptly watched it all fall around them.

This world was ugly.

Cloud took a sip from the bottle of clear liquid, feeling it slosh against his bottom lip. He wiped it with the back of his hand before putting it down. It left a clear, wet ring on the table.

"I hate these people," he murmured.

"Welcome to the club."

Cloud leaned his head on his hand and blinked. Red hair.

"What do you want, Reno?" Cloud sighed. He leaned harder on his elbow, digging it into the table. "Want to drink? Or maybe just push a few buttons? We all know how great you are at that."

Reno looked down before swinging himself off of the stool, brushing off some dirt from his suit. Cloud was always surprised that Tseng never made the Turk change. "Don't need ta be an asshole, yo. I just wanted to come by, see how you were doin'. You've got this look on your face like the world's endin'." He reached into his pocket and extracted a pack of cigarettes. "An' it's not like I've got anything better to do. This place is fuckin' boring an' I've got another three hours to may shift."

Cloud almost laughed, but instead turned his face away from Reno, looking over the bar, at the rows upon rows of liquor. "You gunna stand there all day, or are you here for something? I don't have time--"

"You've got plenty o' time, kid."

"Fine, I don't have the patience to deal with you."

"Rawr, no need to get snappy," Reno said, scratching at his skull with his goggles. "You're sittin' here mopin'; I was wonderin' why. It's not like you ain't got your girl in the back who's waitin' on you hand an' foot. You're a pretty lousy guy."

Cloud snorted. "Pot calling the kettle black, is it?"

"Nah," Reno said as he leaned in close, his desert-dry lips vivid in the dim glow of the bar. He lifted the cigarette to his lips, licking the filter suggestively before lighting it. "I don't got me a girl to be waitin' on me."

Cloud sat there for a moment, Reno breathing his smoke down on him, the wisps tickling his nose and his hair like butterfly kisses. "That's not my problem," he said, finally.

"But you're here mopin' around like someone killed your puppy, and you can't even say why."

"Fuck off, Reno. I don't have the patience."

"You've said that twice now, Blondie, and you've yet to push me away. Give me a good reason why I should leave."

Cloud was lucky there weren't any other patrons in the bar (but why would there be anyone when you're drowning your sorrows so early in the afternoon?) because within a moment he had Reno pinned below him, his fist ready to crush into Reno's skull.

This world was so fucking ugly, and Reno was the most ugly of them all.

"Why are you not you anymore?" Cloud asked, hysteria blooming in his words. "Why are you all such fucking cowards? Why aren't you you?"

Reno looked a little more than perplexed, and even though he was being held in such a threatening position by someone who clearly wasn't a friend, he smiled. It was one of his shit-eating grins that made Cloud remember what he was like before everything happened, before the world started to change, became this ugly monster. The sneer that came over his entire face a moment later, before grabbing Cloud's skull and bashing it into the bar was exactly what the blonde needed.

This ugliness was what Cloud wanted, yearned for so desperately needed that when Reno gave it to him, upstairs in his bedroom with the chair in front of the door, he felt like he would die.

This ugly thing was so beautiful it made Cloud want to die.

It was rough and passionate-- almost nothing was passionate here, not anymore-- and the feeling of Reno's hair in his mouth, their sweat, his aching and sore body when they were finished with each other... it was unimaginable. How could the world be like that when this barbaric ritual of rutting against each other, tangled, sticky, and smelly was so pleasurable?

Cloud didn't want to ask.

"You hate people, too?" Reno said after, as they just laid together in peaceable silence. Cloud was curled to the left, and Reno was on the right, smoking his cigarette. He put it out on Cloud's night-stand.

"This world is fuckin' ugly, Cloud. You just got to go with it."

"There's nothing worth anything anymore."

"Well, then we jus' gotta stay together."

So, what do you think?

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