Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VII and its compilation are the creations of Square Enix, not mine.
Summary:There were ghosts in that place.
Author's notes: Fic #9 for Livejournal community Ficlets on Demand's Fic a Day June Challenge '08. Request: Cloud/Vincent/Zack, almost anything by solitaryjane.
Manor of Despair
by monitor screen
-o-
None of them were comfortable going back. Monster crawled, in that place - figurative or literal.
And there were ghosts.
Cloud found Vincent in one of the second-floor bedrooms, silhouetted against pale morning lights, eerily surreal amongst decaying decor.
"I can hear them, you know."
It took him a moment to register the source of the comment, so still was the other that he almost blended into all the wreckages. "Hear who?"
"The others. They keep lingering here." The gunman finally turned, unseeing eyes gleaming in the shade. "Listen."
And Cloud heard.
The footsteps were light, rhythmic and relaxed, almost with a swinging quality. There were slight crinkles of a sword in its holder, and the hum Cloud could recognise anywhere.
It could not be.
An impossibly familiar face rounded the corner, smile brightening as he spotted the blond. His old friend's face looked painfully vivid, features pulsing with life, not a speck of blood marring them, unlike last time...
His frown was kissed away, the brush of lips dry and warm, completely replicate of those past... Cloud whirled around, meeting crimson eyes watching, observing.
A hand petted his side gently, trying to ease his mind. The slow licks along his jaw were too real; Cloud closed his eyes, leaning back into the contact as he heard the faint steps of metal boots approach.
A second hand soon rested lightly on his chest, the second pair of lips brushing his. There was a moment of panic as Vincent stepped close - Cloud had feared that with comparison, he would find the presence behind him null and void, a hallucination of troubled mind.
But the warmth stayed.
It was easy, so very easy, to lose himself in all the touches and kisses that followed. And he knew it was not only him - he could feel them kissing too, when different pairs of hands stroked over him, over each other, in a tangle of caresses and explorations.
The bare, calloused hand slipped under his clothing, and Cloud moaned into Vincent's mouth, safe between strong bodies and the protection of feigned darkness. And then the hand started moving, and he could feel the bulge pressed into his backside, and it was all so real and wonderful...
When the white tides receded, Cloud found himself flush against the gunman, panting softly into the red fabric of his shoulder.
There was only Vincent's arm over his back.
He stirred in distress, but Vincent placed a hand at the back of his head, keeping them ear to ear, faces away from each other. His voice was firm, if choked, "There are ghosts here. I told you."
Nodding numbly, Cloud let the hold keep him. After a tense moment he sighed, relaxing into the embrace, and reached idly up to sift his fingers through straggly black hair. It was not the spiky strands he had forgotten to ruffle, their sway the image he strived to keep from fading; but they took what they could get in this bleak fallout - a shadow was better than nothing.
He wondered who the ghost had been for Vincent.
-o-