A/N: Gift for Skycee2 on the FF7 Central Fanworks Exchange. Beta'd by tyrannosaurus_rose

The rain was light. It hung across Edge like a purifying mist, gentle with clouds sparse enough for splotches of sunlight. A rainbow blossomed in the distance, distracting pedestrians. The air smelled fresh. It was sort of otherworldly, magical, peaceful… romantic.

"This is almost like a date." Cloud said into the sky. If he focused hard enough, he could pretend they weren't in the middle of a crowded street, that he wasn't taking Rosso out on a probationary patrol, and that they weren't armed to the teeth for anything that might come up. Just a pleasant stroll around town.

"A date?" Rosso stopped at an intersection and glanced back at him. "Is this typical weather on this date? I would not know."

Cloud sighed, wondering if this was his karma for being ridiculously dense about the Gold Saucer date all those years ago. So he obligingly changed the topic. "I think the weather has changed since Midgar fell." Wouldn't be surprising, a lot had changed after all - mako reactors, plant life, the lifestream's flow.

"I would not know." Rosso again. She strutted forward as the light turned, ignoring both the view and the people like she always did. "Come, Cloud, we have patrol."

Cloud shrugged and followed her. So much for a romantic atmosphere. "What do you think about the weather? Do you like it?"

"It is wet. But not very. It's too uncertain. I do not like it." Rosso didn't even bother to look back this time.

Somehow Cloud felt like it was a jab at his own attempts to date Rosso. Sure these feelings had been growing, starting with the respect he felt when she wiped the floor with his face during the Deepground Crisis and growing into something like friendship in the time they spent at WRO together. And now they were just weird feelings Cloud wasn't quite sure what to do with.

"So do you want to go on one?" Cloud asked.

Rain pattered on tin roofs, people chattered, a car honked, Rosso turned and blinked at him. The rain was still light and it coalesced into droplets on her hair - like the sparkle of diamonds in red tresses.

"Go on what?" Rosso asked.

"A date."

Rosso made a face. "You cannot go on a date. A date is a period of time, you cannot climb time. It does not exist in the same space as us." She waved her hand like that was sensible - and it was. Sort of. Cloud wondered if he needed to word it differently.

"How about dating?"

"Dating what?" Rosso crossed her arms and shook her head slowly. It was dramatic and theatrical and Cloud didn't know if Rosso knew what she was doing. She was just being Rosso. "Dating is, what is it? Yes it's determining something's age. So what are we dating?"

"Forget it." Cloud decided he would think on it and try again later.

"Tch. What are we dating?" Rosso walked abreast of him and practically kicked people out of her way with her long legs. "You brought it up."

"The clouds." Cloud gave up, didn't know how to make it more obvious. "Date the clouds."

Rosso looked up. "That's ridiculous, darling. Who can even tell how old a cloud is? Aren't they temporary things? Why would you date that?"

"You're right." Cloud hadn't known what he'd been thinking saying that in the first place with that suggestion. It had been lined up perfectly to get shot down. "We have a patrol to do."

Rosso hummed beside him, clearly pleased to get back to work.

Cloud would let it slide for now. It wasn't like his feelings were going to go anywhere anytime soon: there would be plenty more opportunities to flirt, he was sure if it.

"Your hair looks nice today." Cloud tried.

Rosso looked up from sharpening her blades. "Does it look that soft?"

"Uh." Was that a trick question? Because he was pretty sure Rosso used more hair gel in a day than they could produce annually. "Yeah. It does."

"Tch." Rosso poked at the top of her head, the motion not at all sensual - just smooth and careful, gently running a single finger from the skin of her forehead, up the sharply defined ridge of her hair that reminded Cloud of a shark, and poking at the angled tip. Cloud's mouth was dry.

"Uh, is it… natural?"

"You think my hair is natural?" Rosso glared up at her finger, put it down, and then focused her ire on Cloud. "I must sharpen it daily. Without the troops to command, I have time to make it sharper. Like shark teeth." Rosso smiled one of her dangerous smirks as she said it.

Cloud didn't know if sharpening was a euphemism for hair gel, or if her hair could actually slice someone up. "Well, I mean, it looks like blades. So I think you're doing good."

Rosso's smile turned gentle. "And you, Cloud? Do you sharpen your hair too?"

"No." Cloud self-consciously fluffed it. "It's natural."

"Oh. That must be why it looks so nice." Rosso shrugged and went back to sharpening her blade.

Cloud willed himself to stop blushing - it was barely a compliment, Cloud hated his hair - but Rosso had complimented him on something other than his fighting style. For once. It seemed like things were going well. Cloud could do this - things weren't hopeless between them after all.

Cloud took a steadying breath and prepared for his next attempt: "Rosso."

"Hm?" Rosso gave him her full attention, she was leaning against the wall like she had just shooed away photographers from a magazine shoot. Against the drab metal of the WRO, she was a flourish of color, like a carefully brushed painting.

Cloud refused to let himself get tongue tied. "I think you're a great fighter."

Rosso stared at him like she didn't quite understand. Which was fair. The confusion was sort of his fault for starting like that. "Are you asking for a spar?"

"No. Let's see, uh, you have an interesting sense of humor, you never back down from a challenge, and you're loyal to a fault."

Rossos furrowed her brow. "Are you recommending me for a proper WRO position?"

Cloud wondered if he was doing something wrong. "No. I just… I'm complimenting you. I think you're pretty."

"Pretty?" Rosso sounded confused and scrunched her face. "Pretty is an adverb. Pretty what?"

Cloud wanted to scream. Why was it so hard to compliment someone? Besides you could totally call someone pretty and it was a legitimate, complete endearment. "Uh. Pretty… great. Yeah."

Rosso made a contemplative noise as her features smoothed out. "Well, I think you're pretty great, too."

Cloud had no idea what her beef was. Either Rosso was as dense as she seemed to be (and Rosso seemed fairly smart and a competent leader so that seemed dumb) or she was being purposefully obtuse and toying with Cloud's emotions. Honestly, Cloud didn't know which was worse option at this point.

"So, did you want to spar?" Cloud wanted to stop talking and get into familiar ground.

"Yes." There was so much emotion in that one word: dripping with want, need, and promise. Cloud startled at it.

Rosso just smirked and pushed off the wall in a motion that drew Cloud's eyes to her shape. She beckoned him with a finger and walked away. It took far too long for him to realize they were headed to the training grounds and not to the nearest horizontal surface.

The spar was going about the way it usually did - Cloud had the upper hand until Rosso did something tricky. They'd even used training blades to keep her from shooting arrows at his ass. Rosso still did something sneaky without it.

On this day, in this spar, all she did was meet his blade, lean close, and say breathlessly, "My love. Don't stop."

A very different context popped into Cloud's head - the vision so unbidden, so sudden, that Cloud couldn't do anything but focus on it.

Cloud fell flat on his back, air forced from his lungs and the sharp pain of a kick stinging his ribs. Rosso's training blade at his throat. Everything about this woman just threw him off balance and left him breathless.

Rosso smirked down at him. "I told you not to stop, darling."

"Whatever." Cloud wheezed and rubbed at his chest. Rosso pulled back to let him up.

Cloud was startled to find the butt of a blade in his face. Rosso smiled down at him and he noticed she was holding the sharp with her thick leather gloves. That last part wasn't unusual Rosso behavior - she seemed to get a thrill out of catching throwing knives by the blade and not the hilt. Why she was pointing the hilt at Cloud's face was another question entirely.

"Uh?"

Rosso shook the weapon at him. "Grab hold, love."

"Sure," Cloud wasn't sure what was going on and decided to just go with it. Why not. What was the worst that could happen. He obeyed, grabbed the hilt, and Rosso pulled him up.

For a brief moment, Rosso and Cloud were face to face. They were close enough for her breath to ghost Cloud's lips, her nose to brush against his own, and her eyes to burn holes into his skull. If he leaned closer their lips would -

Rosso released the blade and stepped away.

Cloud didn't want to lose that moment, felt like he hadn't been the only one thinking about the chemistry between them and asked in a rush, "Are you free tonight?"

"Free?" Rosso barked a laugh. "I am under the WRO's thumb. I am never free."

Cloud tried again. "Maybe we could hang out."

"Hang out what?" Rosso perked up. "Will we be hanging the laundry - no clotheslining?" Rosso had a particularly feral grin and Cloud had the distinct image of her clotheslining innocent bystanders. The part of Cloud that wanted to see it couldn't win against the part that recognized it was an awful thing to do.

"No, just us. Hanging out."

Rosso made a face. "Cloud. I am not ready to die."

"What?" Cloud tried to see the connection and failed. "What do you think I'm asking you?"

"To hang."

"Yes."

"As in hanging by the neck."

"What? No." Cloud had no idea how this kept happening. It was like he said something and it went completely over Rosso's head.

"Oh." Rosso posed and thought. "if that is not what it means why are you asking me?"

"Because I want to spend time with you." Cloud had the feeling it would be easier to pull teeth than have this conversation. Considering how easy it had been to pull Denzel's loose teeth...

"We have already spent time together." Rosso gestured around them.

"More time, then."

Rosso looked at him without comprehension.

Cloud decided he needed to get some advice. Collect his thoughts and regroup. "I actually have to go. So I'll talk to you later?"

Cloud was aware that Rosso was watching him leave, but when he looked back she was just confused, eyes trained on the blade still in his hand. Cloud thought it was particularly unfair that Rosso could look so cute with that expression.

Cloud didn't know how to handle delicate situations. When push came to shove his best plans were the ones he pulled out of his ass. Which is why he tracked down Vincent on a gut instinct - one of the few sane people he knew who dealt with Rosso on a frequent basis - and asked him upfront: "Is Rosso flirting with me?"

Vincent just assessed Cloud, burrowed into his cloak like he wanted to talk about anything else, and said: "No."

Vincent was always blunt, but usually he offered his candid opinion after Cloud explained the situation.

"Are you sure? Because Rosso -"

"No. She's not flirting with you."

Cloud just wasn't having luck talking with people in red lately. "Why would you say that?"

"You are referring to Rosso's penchant for the dramatic and affectionate appellations, then no. Rosso is not flirting with you. She is looking for a fight."

Cloud didn't want to believe that. If every time she said those words - those breathless things that sounded more like moans and bedroom whispers in his memory - she was out for blood, it seemed to imply that Cloud wasn't worth anything to her if he didn't have a weapon in his hand. "So that's all you think it is?"

Vincent glanced at Cloud. "She ripped the protomateria out of my test while whispering sweet nothings. Yes. That is all I think it is."

"Right." There had been a report about that. Cloud still wasn't convinced though because he felt something. "She does other things too, compliments me sometimes."

"On what?"

"Like my hair. And uh, my fighting style."

Vincent shook his head. "Whatever you heard was probably respect mixed with an insult. Rosso enjoys laughing at others."

Cloud wanted to point out that Vincent had a strong first impression of her and those weren't always accurate, but the more he thought about it the more he wondered if Rosso hadn't just parroted Cloud's words - especially if she thought they were insulting. Cloud thought commenting on how someone's nice hair was a good thing, maybe Rosso didn't. "Huh. Okay, well, what about when she poses?"

"Poses?"

"You know how she does that thing with her legs and twists her torso and yanno… poses ." Cloud had no way to describe the sheer Rosso-ness of the movement.

"I highly doubt she is doing that to win your affection." Vincent shrugged. "It appears to be part of her personality. Showmanship."

Cloud didn't buy it - recalling instances of her parading around full of confidence, the same movements no matter who the audience, the same lines no matter who she engaged - but the more he thought about it the more right Vincent sounded. Cloud leaned against the counter with a heavy sigh and debated ordering a midday drink. "So maybe that's why nothing I did worked."

"Nothing you did?"

Cloud explained in detail his flubs of the past few days. Vincent was definitely laughing at him, but had way too much riding on his mysterious personality to do it too loudly.

"I doubt she reciprocated."

"Yeah." Cloud wondered how much shit Tifa would give him for coming to the bar at lunch. "I guess I should give up." Cloud sighed again.

Vincent patted his shoulder awkwardly. "Love is hard."

"Ain't that the truth." Cloud didn't bother to point out that it wasn't love - not yet - but it was a cool line so he'd let it slide.

Cloud had thrown in the towel - and in doing so he had decided that he was going to get her to wear pants. Rosso didn't actually appear to have much care about her appearance - she had put on a shirt easily when asked, but for some reason the pants just didn't stay. So he was going to try and if it worked he was going to thank the planet and if it didn't he would just continue dealing with it.

Cloud asked nicely.

"You have brought pants to do battle with me?" Rosso stared at them. Cloud had gotten them in red - he couldn't imagine her in anything else. And skinny jeans, because that was what they had. Yeah.

Cloud didn't know if she was joking or not, so he handed them over with a shrug. "I guess so."

Rosso took them, looked at Cloud pointedly and then walked away.

Cloud tried not to think that the look might have been an invitation. Rosso had invaded his thoughts and he needed to get his mind out of the gutter - Rosso was bred for fighting, it was in her blood perhaps even more than Sephiroth. If she was going to do battle with the pants. That was what she was going to do.

Rosso walked back out - in ridiculous cropped red booty shorts and her gilded belt. Actually, on closer inspection, they weren't shorts, the fabric was hanging from her hips and a shredded bit was rolled on her thighs and down to her knees - held together by whatever was behind her. On her face was a particularly vicious smirk, "I am victorious."

"Excuse me?"

"Your pants," Rosso stood with her arms akimbo. "Have lost against my body scythe."

"Your what ?" Cloud had only ever thought that she was wearing a belt, not a damn weapon on her crotch.

Rosso shook her hips enough to let the metal sway - its sharp edges caught the light. "It is very lovely, isn't it."

"Why do you even have that?" Cloud had been harangued for his odd choice of belts and weapons, but Rosso really took the cake - a bow sword, body scythes. Honestly, at this point her hair might be a weapon and he just didn't even know it.

"Because it is useful." Rosso shrugged and leaned down.

Riiip . The dangling fabric was pulled off. Now Rosso had extremely suggestive holes on her thighs. Cloud almost thought it was worse than her bootie short and thigh high boots. In fact he wished she was wearing them right now so they would distract him from the realization that he would never be able to get Rosso to wear proper pants.

"Tifa's shirt won, though," Rosso tugged at it. "Kevlar."

Cloud had the sudden image of holes in Rosso's shirt, pale skin peeking through red fabric. And the added image of doing it multiple times, with a rainbow of colors, and Rosso smirking down at the holes like she had won a major battle. Somehow his mind's eye had conjured something that seemed more obscene than her original outfit.

Cloud decided not to think about that anymore and refocused his attention on the bladed kilt Rosso was wearing.

Cloud had no idea how the supposed 'body scythe' was useful. To keep away suitors, perhaps? To destroy her clothes? To look shiny? Only one of those sounded reasonable - the one that sounded the death knell to Cloud's potential romance with Rosso.

"We'll have to find you some better pants." Cloud pointedly didn't look down at pale thighs and sparkling - distracting - metal. He should have been telling her not to wear that dumb thing - but he knew how hard it was to give up a piece of yourself (even if it was imagined). After Meteor, Cloud wore Zack's clothes for a while.

"Hahaha, we'll see." Rosso quirked a brow at Cloud. "Would you like to try again?"

"I have to find the pants first." Cloud huffed and turned around. "If you're up for it we could spar."

"Spar?" The eager lilt in her voice made Cloud's heart jump. It was followed by a rip.

Rosso was down to bootie shorts again, the legs of the pants were around her ankles. She kicked them off. "I am ready. Let us go."

"You don't even have boots." Cloud pointed out. He much prefered thigh high boots to

Rosso's endless, milky white legs.

"I'm giving you an advantage. Perhaps you will win today."

Rosso had no idea that going bootlegs guaranteed she was going to wipe the floor with his face.

Cloud hadn't been avoiding Rosso, but he had reduced their off-hour interaction. If it wasn't a spar, a probation meeting, or a patrol, Cloud didn't want to deal with it. He was trying to take his feelings, ball them up, and toss them where they wouldn't bother anyone.

Cloud was surprised to find Rosso in the halls. He shouldn't have - this was WRO headquarters, she was free to roam wherever she wanted here. But Rosso tended to lurk near the weapons and training rooms accosting anyone who came close enough to have a spar with her.

She looked just about as poorly clothed as the last time he had met her and her face was filled with grim determination. At least she had her boots on this time.

"Rosso?" Cloud wondered if he should be worried.

Rosso stared him dead in the eye and said, "Fuck you."

Cloud had no idea how to respond. She didn't say it like it was malicious, or an invitation to fight. She just said it, kind of normally actually. How was he supposed to respond to that?

"Uh… fuck you, too? I guess." Cloud scratched at his head before he could catch himself.

Rosso smiled - the sharp line of her mouth transitioned from predatory to smooth. It was a smile that dazzled Cloud and struck him right in the core and made him weak in the knees. And then she laughed - it was a ringing sound, it sounded full-bellied but not tinged with the usual bite. Cloud realized he still had it bad for Rosso.

Then Rosso looked at him, like he was everything - the earth beneath her feet and the sky above her head - and Cloud struggled to breathe.

"Well?" Rosso asked him.

Cloud wasn't aware that Rosso had asked him a question. "Uh. What?"

Rosso looked like she was dealing with a very slow child. It was a look Marlene sometime got with Barret. "You said you would, so do it."

"Do… it?" Cloud wracked his brain trying to remember when he had agreed to do anything - especially anything related to Rosso. Deepground? No, nothing new there. Then. Pants! Ah, that was it. Getting her proper pants. "Right. I'll go… do that."

Rosso smirked at him.

Cloud turned and walked away. When he glanced back at Rosso like a fool, she looked like she didn't understand. "Uh. Bye?"

Rosso didn't respond, just watched him walk away. Cloud didn't know what to make of it.

Rosso slammed the door to the server room open and whatever WRO employees had been faulty enough to stay scattered like flies. They'd be back.

"Rosso." Shelke didn't even bother looking away from her computer screen. Rosso didn't know what it was she did all day and frankly didn't care.

"Shelke. I have problem." Rosso sat herself on the terminal Shelke had been working on - a surefire way to get the former Tsviet's notice.

Shelke glanced up at Rosso, down at the console, back up again, and obediently gave Rosso her full attention. "What is it?"

"Cloud." Rosso had never been so vexed by a single person in her life. Cloud was a surprisingly difficult man to kill - she was fairly certain she had won that first battle only because Cloud had been unaware of her abilities. The ones after it felt more like play fights than actual spars.

"What about Cloud?"

"He ignored my advances." Rosso enjoyed the flicker of frustration on Shelke's face as the console beeped ominously with her movements. She shifted some more to prove a point.

"Have you listened to him patiently? Clarified his questions like a good leader?" Shelke glared at Rosso's leg where it bounced against her chair.

"Of course! His questions, his statements. Yet he waddles in the wrong direction like a lame chocobo!" Rosso kicked the console with the back of her heel, enjoying the feel of dented metal. Dented anything.

"Did you give him advice?"

"Yes, I told him to sharpen his hair."

Shelke rolled her eyes. "Give him the butt of a blade during a spar as an invitation for bedroom activities?"

"Do you take me for an idiot?" Rosso tossed her hair and kicked her heel again. "I even invited him to challenge my body scythe!"

"That always gets the boys." Shelke frowned, visibly thinking and said, "I bet you didn't even try to order him to fuck you."

"I did! And he said he would! Then he walked away!" Rosso wanted to tear her own hair out. The more she thought about Cloud, the more maddened she was.

Shelke sighed a small sigh and her shoulders drooped. "Well, it can't be helped."

Rosso obediently moved when Shelke waved her off the console and started pressing buttons; she made sure to look at the buttons being pressed, just in case Shelke tried to get out of answering Rosso's question.

A picture of Cloud appeared on the screen immediately distracting Rosso. It was a much younger and much weaker looking Cloud - malnourished and exhausted, but with grim eyes that made Rosso's body hot.

"Rumor has it that Cloud is a Sephiroth clone. And by that nature quite obsessed with Sephiroth." Shelke clicked a few more buttons and brought up a few files on screen - most of the documents were illegible. 'Reunion' was highlighted - it was a word Rosso was familiar with but hadn't given a damn about. "If Sephiroth calls for him, Cloud will follow. That, and he continues to spend an inordinate amount of time socializing with Sephiroth's remnants."

The prospects for Cloud were looking rather dim. "Are you saying he only likes dick?"

Shelke only shrugged. "Whether he can sustain interest with anyone who isn't Sephiroth, let alone a body of the opposite sex, is a question I can't answer."

Rosso leaned closer at the statistics, skimming them - too much was classified or blackened out. Even Shelke had limited access. "Well damn."

Cloud - who had been driving her to the point of madness consistently in the past three months - had no interest in her that way. Of course.

"Time to give up." Rosso slumped over the desk.

"Yes. Now leave and mourn privately." Shelke began to tap at the keyboard. Rosso didn't have to look up to know that Cloud's files were being closed and hidden back into the file system. "I have work to do."

Rosso overloaded a few servers on her way out. They gave out high pitched moans of despair as they died. It was balm to her soul.

That Shelke attempted to main her afterward was an added bonus.

Cloud walked up, looking like he had just come from war and was ready for more - blood splatters on his cheeks, dirt on his clothes. Logically, the level of damage implied clearing monsters off the roads, but the image stuck in Rosso's mind. Cloud looked ready to impale her a thousand times and then a thousand more.

Rosso sighed and threw her head back until it thumped against the wall. Cloud wasn't in it for the vagina. She'd killed lesser men for toying with her like that in Deepground, but she could forgive Cloud for it. She had to forgive Cloud for it. You weren't allowed to kill people for playing with your lust, not on the surface - Shelke had double checked.

Regardless, Cloud was good to look at, oblivious or no. Apparently "just looking" was what surface dwellers contented themselves to - what idiots.

"Hey, Rosso, want to spar?"

Oh, did she. She wanted to spar, she wanted to slice him up pretty, pin him to the ground, and have her way with him. Their blades would sing, blood would boil, and they would pant. Oh it would be glorious!

"Tch." She was just looking. Right. "No. I do not."

"Uh. Really?" Cloud wanted it just as much as she did. He did, she could see it! But it would be only fighting. Which wasn't what Rosso wanted today - didn't know if she could tolerate it from him any longer.

"Yes. Really. Is that hard to understand? I am busy." Rosso walked away, wondering if there were anyone else she could spar with to alleviate her growing frustration.

"Okay then… see you around?"

Rosso looked back, and Cloud stared back at her, confused and wanting. She clicked her tongue again. Of course he couldn't interested in her.

Rosso stared into the rain - feeling the drops on her skin, making their way along the creases in her skin, making tracks down her face and dripping from her hair. It was refreshing, like a hard-earned shower. She loved these downpours - they always reminded her of the first rain she'd experienced, of the day she and Cloud had their first battle. It made her nerves edgy and ready for a fighting.

"There's some cover," Cloud pointed out the twisted mass of wreckage - enough space for them to stand under without crowding. A thing which Rosso had promised herself to avoid since that revelation about their relationship.

Rosso followed Cloud through the partially cleared walks of old Midgar, enjoying the confident way he walked, the way he carried his sword, and the way he casually ignored the rain. To be fair, rain was a fairly common occurrence on the surface.

The cover was pitiful on closer inspection - but at least they could protect their weapons from the worst of the weather. Rosso examined the sky - the blanket of gray fluff that hung in the sky like a particularly wet ceiling. It reminded her of the cooling systems soldiers would devise when ventilation went down - standard issue blankets, dripping with water as they laid under it like lazy bums who wanted their throats slit. It was an awful design anyway - it always trapped more heat than it cooled.

"I always imagined the sky to be different," Rosso decided to share in the silence between them.

Cloud looked at her, and then at the sky. Cloud had always been a surface dweller, he wouldn't understand.

"I have heard so many stories, darling. The blue sky will blind, the gray sky will oppress - stories of rain and snow. They made the clouds sound so much more interesting than they really were." Rosso shrugged. "I prefer the Cloud standing next to me."

Cloud moved closer to her, until they were abreast, fingers almost touching. There was a redness in Cloud's cheeks that looked like sickness.

"You are cold? I thought you were a super soldier." Rosso wanted to spar with him, to spill his blood and for their bodies to collide in a delicious way.

Cloud's face sharpened into a frown. "No." Then he stepped away. "I thought we were having a moment."

Rosso was fed up. Cloud had been doing this consistently - dangling something in front of Rosso, saying something asinine, and then walking away. She wouldn't stand for it anymore. It wouldn't suddenly win her sex, but she wanted to know.

Rosso followed him and crowded his space. "A moment of what, Cloud?"

Cloud huffed. Then his eyes flashed green, narrowed, and he faced her fully. It was the kind of look that leaders got when they made a decision. "I thought you were flirting with me."

Rosso didn't bother to control the laughter, she threw her head back and laughed until her belly was strained. How in earth had she been flirting with him? She had put a hard halt on all attempts to woo Cloud into bed for at least a week. "You surface dwellers have awful romantic sense."

Cloud waited until she caught her breath and he glared at her. "You didn't think that was romantic? Please, I've been flirting with you for weeks."

"Weeks?" Rosso nearly choked as she laughed, she couldn't be bothered to tell if it was spit or rainwater. "What have you been doing?! I've been flirting with you for months. You've just been too daft to notice."

With a growl, Cloud crossed his arms, and said, "So I've been flirting with you. And you've been flirting with me. And we didn't notice. At all? You can't just blame this all on me now."

Rosso waved away the worries, the little details. Those didn't matter. "That doesn't matter, darling. You want me, and I want you. Yes?"

" Yes ." There was a hint of desperation in Cloud's voice, tinged dark with lust.

"Then no more talking." Rosso pulled him closer by the shirt and their mouths met in a clash of teeth. "I have been well behaved for far too long."

"Seconded." Cloud's hands pulled at her hair. He pulled away with a gasp, "Why is your hair so sharp ? I think I cut myself."

Rosso laughed at the fool she had finally wooed. "No more talking."

"I understood from Lucrecia's memories that flirting was slightly different on the surface, but I assumed that information was dated." Shelke pointed out.

Vincent nodded in agreement and summarized (rather necessarily), "What we assume is romantic is clearly different from what Deepground does."

"Should we tell them?" Shelke asked, thinking of pre-emptive measures. The WRO server room had taken some damage from Rosso's frustration. Rosso had never let her failed conquests live very long - she would likely come back to harass Shelke again.

Vincent shrugged. "If we could come to a conclusion, then I'm sure they can. There are certainly more opportunities for miscommunication than we can feasibly reason. If Cloud asks me, I'll tell him."

Shelke pondered that a bit. "That's fair. If they can't figure this out, it is likely that any relationship deeper than coworkers would be impossible to sustain."

Vincent made a noise like he wanted to wash his hands of this whole affair and never think of it again.

Right at that moment, Cloud walked in with a particularly large hickey on his jawline. The bite marks had healed, but Shelke could recognize Rosso's handiwork anywhere.

"I don't think we need to tell them anything." Shelke smiled.

Vincent made an awful noise in the back of his throat. "Who leaves hickies there ?"