Romance was just a social construct, and worldly inclinations didn't concern them in the slightest.
Cosmic Frequencies
Some men were born romantics. Showmen, even. They were all about the meticulous planning, the financial sacrifice, and the spectacle of the grand gesture.
For a man from a mountain village who had grown up too soon, the mechanical precision required to qualify as romance-adept, as did some other things, fell past the extent of his sensibilities.
He knew love, though, and it coiled an ethereal thread around the heart of a barmaid with fists of steel and patience of even greater fortitude. She, uniquely sharing his roots, didn't need him to be anybody else; romantic, a showman, or otherwise. She knew, and she would tell him, that what he already had was worth more than what he did not. And he was enough.
He had hands—deft, sturdy, perfectly imperfect—for combat, for changing the oil on Fenrir, for stirring the batter just a little too finely. For working out the kinks in Tifa's taut, adamantine back. For bandaging her knuckles split open like volcanic plains after a battle. For braiding her hair in bed, inventory sheets and expenditure records strewn haphazardly around them.
Cloud had a mouth—pink, tender and faintly cracked—for sharing, on rare occasion, his musings while the moon set him alight in a blue glow. For sharing his dreams and her place in them, the few words materialised she harvested preciously like winter bloom. For moaning her name in a low rumble while she writhed beneath him. For trailing kisses along her palms, hardy with old and new scars. For smirking at the way she undressed him with her eyes as he hunched over the sink shaving, cleaning up after himself before more mess was made.
They were simple by all accounts; elementary in a world that demanded extravagance and hollow social conventions. Their hearts weighed more than any deed, word or sentiment. Sometimes love and despair were just chemicals, sex, just means to an end. But their hearts bound by spirit: transcended space, time and logical sequence.
{fin}
A/N: So I'm feeling a little melodramatic, sue me.