this came as a direct result of Cloud's decision to make things right with Tifa in the last chapter. The characters wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it. Set after ACC.

Seduction

by TamLin

Cloud Strife was seducing her.

Tifa stood at the kitchen counter with a knife in one hand and a mound of carrots next to the chopping board in front of her and stared absently out the window.

Cloud Strife was seducing her…

It had started out so innocently after the Geostigma incident that she'd missed it's beginning entirely. He'd started to linger over their breakfasts together. Or rather, her preparing breakfast for the still sleeping children and him sitting at the kitchen table watching her with a mug of coffee in his hands. In the past, he would have inhaled the coffee no matter how hot, made sure he knew what her and the children's plans were for the day and then been out the door the second his mug touched the bowl of the sink. Not rushing to leave them but rushing because his delivery days were always full. Now he still sat at the kitchen table with his coffee and watched her make breakfast. He still made sure he knew what she and the children were doing for the day. It was just… now he watched her instead of the ingredients she put into the breakfast. She could feel his eyes on her. His intent attention. The same way she could feel it as he listened to whatever she and the children had planned. An extra attention, as if he was more than listening but actively committing it to memory. That… and he would always wait until she was near the sink to bring his coffee mug over now. She'd tested it several times, lingering away from the sink when she knew it was time for him to go. And he'd waited. Pretending for all the world as if he had no idea what the time was even though she knew he always did. And when she'd move to the sink – because she couldn't bear making him late for long before she caved - he'd push back from the table and stand, walking over with his coffee mug in his hand to set it in the sink. Reaching around her to do it. Even if he incidentally had to have the coffee mug in the other hand to do it. Standing so close to her while he did so that she could feel the brush of his breathing against her cheek or shoulder as he reached past her to calmly set the mug in the sink. So close that his body would brush hers. And then he would turn and be gone with his usual estimate of when he'd be home that night, leaving her puzzled, and blushing and a little too warm while he acted as if he had no idea what he'd just done to her entire day.

And then there were the flowers.

Tifa didn't consider herself a flower girl. Not the way Aerith had been, not even close. But two weeks ago, Cloud had brought her a flower. Just a single flower. It hadn't been one of Aerith's lilies. It had been a small, bright, cheerful little thing that had still smelled of a grassy field somewhere and Cloud had brought it in with Fenrir's saddle bags thrown over his shoulder after coming back from a day and a half absence on deliveries. He'd given it to her in passing, holding it out to her absently while he gave her his usual kiss on her forehead, himself smelling like oil and road and sweat and wild wind, before he'd passed through the bar she'd been doing paperwork at the counter of and gone upstairs where she heard the shower start running. Leaving her sitting there, stunned and confused with the innocent little unsuspecting flower in her hands.

She'd tried to keep it alive but it had died within a few days, fading away and leaving her feeling strangely heartbroken.

Except he'd brought her another, different lost little wildflower, held delicately between his gloved fingers after a trip to Fort Condor later that week. A brush of lips against her forehead, the flower, the wonderful male scent of him and then he'd been gone again and the pipes had made their noise as the shower started.

There was no pattern to it. Just… random wildflowers and Cloud pretending he'd forgotten he had them in his hand when he gave one to her.

Sometimes when she thought about it at night she almost cried for no reason she could imagine. Remembering the first time he'd brought her a flower in a city without light, when he'd been a man she didn't know and yet always had.

He did worse to her abused heart than just flowers and breakfast though.

He picked up the children from school. They usually walked back to the bar. Seventh Heaven wasn't that far from Edge's only school and it gave them a chance to play with their friends. Homework always waited until after dinner anyway. Tifa thought children should be allowed to play. Marlene and Denzel knew what they could and couldn't do and she knew they liked the safe independence of walking home themselves. The first time she'd heard Fenrir outside in the late afternoon she'd assumed Cloud had forgotten something and gone to the bottom of the stairs to look across the bar at the front door in curiosity. Except the door had burst open with more force than Cloud usually used to open it and Marlene had come tearing in, giddy and helplessly desperate to tell Tifa that Cloud had surprised them all by picking them up at the school and how jealous all her friends would be by tomorrow. Denzel had come in with Cloud and it had made Tifa's heart swell to see the hero worship glow so bright in the little boy's eyes as he, forgetting he was too old, had clung to Cloud's hand. Those mako blue eyes had met hers with a soft smile in them and for that single moment, her family had been a real family and entirely whole and happy.

As random as her flowers, Cloud picked up the children from that point on. Quiet surprises that were scattered enough to still make all of their hearts shudder with both longing and love.

He wasn't just seducing her. He was seducing his entire family.

As if the children hadn't already been hopelessly in love with him.

As if she hadn't…

Tifa exhaled and looked down at the carrots. She'd promised the bar patrons pot pie tonight and she needed to start soon if she wanted the crust to be as light and flaky as they seemed to think only she could make it.

Cloud had started smuggling her food.

It made the edges of her lips curve as she tried not to smile.

It had started with one of Shera's 'to die for' chocolate scones. She knew the other woman hoarded them for the rare times Cloud visited on his deliveries. It didn't matter what kind of schedule he was running or how far behind it he was, Shera's scones could stop him in his tracks and glue him to a chair until they were entirely gone. Tifa knew because they'd both giggled over it at the other woman's wedding when Cloud had 'innocently' wandered into her kitchen that was supposed to be off limit to the guests looking for them.

So Tifa hadn't been sure she'd been seeing what she really had when she'd gone into her bedroom late one night with only thoughts of her soft bed in her mind and seen one of those coveted scones sitting on a napkin on her nightstand. Three days later it had been a powder cake from the Gold Saucer. A week later it had been one of the honey rolls from Cosmo Canyon. Last night had revealed a little shredded coconut and lime concoction she'd never had before but that had reminded her of Costa del Sol.

Cloud was always in bed and asleep by the time she found them and he never mentioned them the next morning. The one time she had thanked him, he'd just looked calmly at her and acted as if he didn't know what she was thanking him for. Even if his blue eyes had looked pleased and happy as he'd done it.

She could have excused all of it, tucked it away as Cloud quietly making it a point to be a part of his family, and been entirely happy with that explanation. Except… there was the touching…

…oh… the touching…

Tifa finally set down the knife and gave in and wrapped her arms around herself.

Cloud was starting to touch her.

It wasn't that they hadn't touched before. With people that he cared about Cloud could get very handsy. It was rare to see one of the children near him without his hand on their shoulder or head or around theirs. And, even though he never instigated, he certainly didn't shy away when one of their friends touched him. Cid was forever pounding him on the shoulder in greeting and Yuffie had taken to whirlwind hugs that gave her an excuse to pat him down for new materia. Cid's rough affection always got one of Cloud's shy, quiet smiles and she noticed that he intentionally switched out his usual armlet materia with flashier bits he didn't mind losing whenever he had forewarning about the arrival of the little ninja. Well, all right – that last part might be less to encourage Yuffie's hugs and more as a common sense measure against having something he actually needed stolen from him but still – it wasn't as if he actually dodged the ninja hugs when they came. She'd even caught him dozing in the curve of a sleeping Nanaki's side once or twice when one of the group's parties had gone on for longer than its usual two-day crawl. She had a hoarded picture of one time that had happened and a mischievous Cait Sith had crawled into his crossed arms just so that Tifa could get a picture that still made her heart giggle whenever she looked at it on her nightstand.

It would have shocked strangers to hear that Cloud Strife enjoyed physical contact. Between his eyes and his mannerisms, he managed to hold the rest of the world at further than arm's length. But from his closest friends and particularly his family, Cloud Strife accepted physical touch and, for the children, he actually even instigated it. Sometimes, he had even been known to instigate it with her too. So it wasn't unusual, for instance, for Cloud to kiss her forehead or rest his hand on her shoulder. She'd taught him how to hug. It wasn't even unheard of, if he was tired enough and helpless enough, – he was particularly susceptible, she'd learned, when he was trying to suppress his emotions - for her to be able to lure him into snuggling on the downstairs couch after the children had gone to bed and the bar was closed.

Since the Geostigma though… no, since he'd found her in the church after she'd fought that remnant and Marlene had been taken… yes, since than, the touches had started to change.

Those changing touches of his were what was starting to drive her just a little bit crazy.

And she would swear he knew it.

It was in his impossible blue eyes when his fingers would 'accidentally' slid over her stomach as he reached around her to get something the children had asked for that she could have gotten herself just as easily. It was in the soft hum he made when he'd rub his lips over her shoulder sometimes when he was standing behind her and thinking over something they were discussing over the kitchen sink in the morning. It was in the edges of his lips when he would stand behind her when she was taking a delivery order on the phone for him and he would casually hook his thumbs into the waistband of her pants as he rested his hands on her hips and rested his chin on her shoulder, as impatient as any of the children for her to get back to whatever the family had been doing before the phone had interrupted it. Last week while she'd been mending one of Denzel's shirts in the evening, he'd laid down on the couch next to her while the children played a board game on the floor and he'd rested his head in her lap and gone to sleep. That wasn't new for them. What was new was that before he'd gone to sleep he'd turned his head and placed a soft kiss against the exposed skin of her stomach as casually as if he was kissing her forehead.

Kissing her stomach did an entirely different thing to her nerves than kissing her forehead did.

She'd almost stabbed herself with the needle. She'd certainly had an alarming moment when she'd forgotten there was anyone else even in the room with them before he'd turned his head and shut his eyes with that quietly smug smile and the children's chatter had found its way back to her ears.

Her eyes, staring unseeing out the window, narrowed.

She knew the man was doing it on purpose.

Her fingers began to tap against her arms.

The same way he'd taken to 'forgetting' his shirt in his room so that he had to walk across the hall without it on when he got out of the shower, a towel thrown over his shoulder and his hair wet and clean smelling and his bare feet making him ridiculously attractive for some unknown reason. Even worse, he'd stop to talk to her if he caught her nearby. And he always seemed to come out of the bathroom just as she was either coming up the stairs or coming out of her bedroom door. It was like the man waited or something. He'd talk to her. Cloud Strife, king of grunts and silence, would stop to talk to her about the most random and unimportant things, standing there with drops of water running down his long throat and amazing, bare chest, smelling impossibly wonderful and clean and male and wild wind, his low voice doing absolutely nothing to distract her from wondering how his usually warm skin would feel with the extra layer of cool water over it.

In the kitchen, reliving it now, Tifa grit her teeth.

That…that… man!

She still had no idea what she'd agreed to yesterday when he'd done that to her, just that afterward she'd been sure, as he turned to head to his room and given her a breathtaking view of his back and made her think how nice it would be to be able to press into it… she'd sworn she'd seen the glint of a mischievous smugness in those blue eyes.

That man! That Cloud Strife!

He was doing it on purpose.

Tifa folded her arms across her chest now and continued to glare out the window.

When he took her out on Fenrir now, and it suddenly seemed like there was always an excuse for him to need to, he always tugged her arm around his waist until she was curled around his back before he'd kick off and go racing the wind down the road. He still carried her up to her bed now when she fell asleep on the couch on nights when he was late coming home but now he stayed instead of going back to his own room. It didn't matter that he tucked her under the blankets and slept on top. He knew he was warm and she always kicked off the blankets and snuggled up against him in favor of that warmth whenever she fell asleep next to him. And even though he usually woke up first thanks to his years in the army, she knew the way they ended up tangled together after a night of sleeping that way was impossibly intimate and something they only let themselves get away with because their excuse was that they'd been asleep when they'd settled that way.

That man was taking advantage of her.

Tifa didn't know whether to blush or scowl or give in to the silly girly giggles she felt trying to get out past her chest. Instead she bent her head and rubbed her palm over her lips to hide the smile.

Cloud Strife was taking advantage of her.

Her eyes focused on the carrots in front of her and she gave them a thoughtful look. She had several hours still before the bar opened. Cloud would be back soon, bringing her back the sacks of potatoes she'd asked for. She made a snap decision and strode out of the kitchen to head up the stairs.

She'd put her hair up in one of those loose ponytails that Cloud always liked to take down and change into that shirt that always 'accidentally' slipped off of her shoulder.

Then she'd go downstairs and make sure she was chopping carrots when Cloud got home.

Two could play at this game.