Reno slouched in his seat and stared out the greasy window. The cafe lay a short and unwelcome walk from his apartment, and he'd dragged himself there with little enthusiasm and lots of grumbling under his breath. Inside the establishment the air was uncomfortably warm, the usually appealing aromas of food and coffee only serving to further turn his queasy stomach.

Less than an hour ago he'd been passed out on his sofa, blissfully unaware of the stomach-knotting, head-splitting morning-after he was about to endure. Rude sat in the chair opposite, fresh as a daisy, apparently having had a spare hour before work and a sudden desire for company with his breakfast. Reno didn't believe it for a minute; Tseng had put him up to this, no doubt wanting a damage report. He didn't begrudge the Director in that respect; if he was Tseng he'd want a play-by-play of how much Reno was suffering for his antics too.

He imagined the call had gone down like a lead balloon. Tseng's downtime was valuable and Reno had shit all over it, and that no doubt meant he also owed Elena an apology. Rude at least was used to towing his drunken ass home.

He could see his reflection in Rude's sunglasses, hollow-eyed and sallow-skinned. The split in his lip was as gruesome as it was painful and there was a yellowing bruise on his cheek. He vaguely remembered an errant fist and his own badly misjudged attempt to block it, but further memories of the fight were hazy and difficult to grasp. He'd instigated it, he was sure of that. The bastards had been looking at him funny.

When he'd opened the door, bleary-eyed, he'd assumed Rude wanted to talk about it all. Instead, the man had been as stoic as always, his only question why Reno hadn't answered his PHS. The invite to breakfast had been non-negotiable and he'd loitered in the hallway whilst Reno had struggled to find his other shoe.

He didn't answer his PHS because he didn't know where it was. Its whereabouts were lost in the alcohol-induced fog.

"Director put you up to this?" He didn't try to soften the agitation in his tone; they'd been friends long enough now for his sour mood to be ignored.

"Nope."

"You may as well get the speech out the way."

Rude stirred two sugars into his coffee, tapping the spoon sharply against the side of his mug. "Not here to give any speeches."

"Why are you here then?"

Rude just pointed at the enormous plate of food in front of him.

Reno scowled.

He knew his decision to head for her door had been a bad one, that much had been painstakingly clear when he'd peeled his eyes open and analysed his fleeting memories of the whole debacle. He'd drank too much, pouring neat spirits into a stomach that'd ingested little else, wholly enjoying the mind-numbing effects for the first hour or two. Starting a fight had been foolhardy, but that was nothing new, a stupid idea that he was paying for now. He prodded his split lip tentatively with the tip of his tongue and tasted copper. Going to Seventh Heaven in the state he'd been in had been fucking idiotic. He didn't know what had possessed him to do it.

That was a lie. He knew exactly why he'd headed for the bar. A shard of memory stirred, a warm hand pressed against his face, fingers twisting softly through his hair. Regret lanced through him, though this time it wasn't connected to his unsteady journey to her door. No, this time he regretted the alcohol he'd choked down that'd stripped the encounter from his recollection.

"There's nothing wrong with me." He dragged his thoughts away from Tifa to address the elephant in the room.

Rude raised his eyebrows behind his shades, his expression one of disbelief.

"So I had a bit too much to drink..."

"You were wasted."

"Yeah, whatever," Reno said, voice dismissive. "Not my finest moment."

"I'm not here to judge."

"Sure."

"Are you really not hungry?"

Reno glanced at Rude's breakfast, feeling sick. The mountain of meat and eggs turned his stomach, glistening unappetizingly on the chipped plate. Reno wasn't a regular for the morning meal at the best of times, rarely getting out of bed in time to eat before work. Today he could barely cope with the black coffee in his mug, nevermind the pile of food Rude was about to tuck into.

"Suit yourself," said Rude, picking up his knife and fork with a smug smile that suggested he knew exactly how rough Reno was feeling.

"How much trouble am I in?"

The eyebrows quirked upwards again. What do you think?

Reno laughed sarcastically, and when he spoke he could hear the bitterness in his voice. "Don't know why I'm so bothered. Not my fucking problem. I'm suspended."

Rude stared at him for a second longer than was comfortable, then started cutting up his food. Silence filled the air between them, broken by the idle chit-chat of the other customers and the sound of the knife and fork scraping against the plate. The noise played across Reno's fragile eardrums like a hacksaw on a violin.

"It's bullshit anyway," he continued.

Rude paused, fork halfway to his mouth. The look on his face made it clear he didn't necessarily agree with Reno's sentiments and maybe a small part of Reno didn't either. Past indiscretions taken into account, Tseng had had every right to throw the book at him and he hadn't; two weeks suspension was getting off lightly.

"Fuck off."

Rude shrugged and resumed eating.

"Bitch is a fucking psycho," said Reno, watching the man chew.

"We knew that."

"No, I mean a fucking psycho."

"You gonna tell me what happened?"

"What's the point?" he snapped. "You'll hear it from Elena anyway."

"She's worried about you." Rude reached for his drink. "Tseng won't tell her anything and she doesn't know how to deal with you when you're like this."

"And you do?"

Rude took a sip of his coffee, screwing his face up in disgust before adding another spoonful of sugar. The lack of any other response annoyed Reno more than anything he could've said. So what if Elena didn't know how to deal with him? If she was dumb enough to worry that was her problem, not his. He knew exactly what was going on here. Rude was baiting him, laying a trap.

He dove into it headfirst.

"She got into my fucking head, okay? Manipulate materia or something. I don't know. But she… She made me see things. People I killed. The ones that…" Words failed him, struggling to free the demons. "The bad ones."

Rude's expression darkened but he didn't offer an opinion. Reno carried on regardless.

"Nightmares I can deal with. This was different." He picked at the dry skin around his fingernails. "I could smell the blood… See the fear in their eyes."

The next admission was difficult, the words choking in his throat.

"I was there, man. The plate. The smoke… the noise…" His voice cracked. "She put me back there."

Rude's response was characteristically short. "Shit."

Reno stared into his mug, thoughts lost in the reflections on the dark surface. Things circled back to the plate; they always had. Every nightmare, every self-deprecating thought, every doubt could be chased back to that evening on the maintenance platform, playing god above the slums. He'd dealt with it the only way he knew how but Rude had somehow managed to rise above the paralysing guilt, remaining solidly reliable and so much steadier than he had. Reno found himself envious that his partner had managed to move forwards, whilst he himself was trapped. The darkness was suffocating.

"How'd you do it?" When Rude frowned, he elaborated. "Deal with Sector Seven?

Rude put his fork down. "I talked to somebody."

His expression turned sceptical. "You? Talk?"

"Company therapist."

He laughed. "No thanks."

"That's what they're there for." Rude retrieved the utensil, using it to chase a scrap of meat across his plate. "You need a strategy."

"I'm not into all that psycho-babble shit."

Rude raised an eyebrow, a silent question.

"I have a strategy."

"You have a deathwish."

"Whatever."

Reno palmed his drink, seeking something to still his shaking hands. He blew across the top of it, wincing at the pain that shot through his lip.

"You should let us in," Rude added.

He laughed, although the sound was surprisingly hollow. "Right. You pay your shrink to tell you that?"

Rude smirked.

"I'm fine."

"Sure you are."

At a loss for a response, he took a sip of his coffee. His stomach protested as he struggled to swallow it down and he closed his eyes. He wasn't fine but he didn't have the words to admit it. Like Rude, he was part of the old firm, where Turks weren't supposed to show weakness or guilt or have a fucking conscience. Those months of training had served him well enough, a bloodstain here or there just a part of the job that he'd swallowed down and ignored. It'd started to unravel with Sector Seven and then the threads hadn't stopped coming loose, the over-analysis of his guilty conscience too difficult to resist.

He'd tried.

"What's your strategy?" he asked eventually.

"Kata." He stabbed his knife into the yolk of his egg and Reno's stomach flipped uncomfortably as the yellow goo leaked across his plate. "Elena can teach you."

He considered this. Elena sparred when she was wound up; he'd often walked in on her, after hours, kicking the shit out of the punch-bag in the company gym like a woman possessed. Usually, she'd had a dressing down or a fight with Tseng, although the two weren't mutually exclusive. The Director's coping methods were a little more refined. Reno remembered his first couple of kills vividly, and Tseng had taken point on both with such ruthless efficiency it'd chilled his blood. When Reno had wandered down the corridors of HQ later on, seeking reassurance, he'd been met by the eerie strains of violin music floating through the air.

Another recruit had pulled him aside before he could make a fatal error. Tseng dealt with his darkness by carefully picking it apart, sipping at a glass of Wutain liquor and piecing it back together in solitude that was best left undisturbed. Even Elena knew to let sleeping dogs lie, and Reno had quickly learnt to steer clear as soon as he heard the haunting refrain in the halls.

"I'm coping just fine," he said, after another lengthy study of his rapidly cooling coffee.

He had a strategy, and it'd served him just fine until she'd gotten under his skin. Tifa was a problem, he knew. He wondered whether he should just rip the bandage off and let Rude decide on a course of treatment.

"You sure?"

"No," Reno admitted.

Rude slipped his hand into the breast-pocket of his jacket and retrieved a slim silver object. He held it out across the table.

Reno stared at it; the memory stick looked tiny in the man's large hand. "The fuck is that?"

"Everything we have so far. See what you can come up with."

He turned the item over in his fingers. Physically it felt light in his palm, but it brought with it a vast weight of implication. Rude was putting his neck on the line in handing this to him, he knew. Tseng would be livid if he found out.

"Can't do it without me?" he said, tone carefully flat, designed to conceal the plea for assurance in his words.

"No, we can't."

He slipped the stick into his pocket, heart thawing slightly. They needed him. The promise of something useful to focus on calmed him, as he suspected Rude knew.

"Why'd you go to the bar?"

"Why does anybody go to a bar?" Reno replied, distracted.

He was met with silence in response.

"I fucked Tifa Lockhart."

The admission left his mouth before he could apply a filter to it, the bandage well and truly ripped off, balled up and cast aside.

Silence formed again, stretching out between them. Reno scratched at a dried on smear on the table with his fingernail, unwilling to make eye-contact. He'd assumed that Rude would already know, given that Elena did. Apparently, he'd assumed wrong.

Rude whistled through his teeth. "Damn."

"I didn't mean to," he said quickly.

The expression on Rude's face called him out.

"Yeah alright…" he conceded. "I didn't plan on it."

"You never plan anything."

There was humour in Rude's tone, and Reno felt some of the tension in his gut dissipate.

"Fucking stupid idea, I know."

"Why?"

"Huh… We dropped the plate," Reno said, trying to keep his tone light and failing miserably. "I don't know what I'm doing, man."

His words were heartfelt, the statement covering so many bases. He didn't know what he was doing, every time he unscrewed the cap on another bottle, every time he picked another pointless fight. Where Tifa was concerned the uncertainty multiplied, exponential and impossible to contain.

"You told her about Veld," Rude pointed out.

"Yeah."

Rude waited, pushing his empty plate to one side.

"I wanted her to understand…" Reno kicked back in his chair. "Know what? I'm just a fucking asshole."

"Maybe."

"Thanks, partner."

Again, Rude waited, allowing Reno to fill in the blanks. He was wary of doing so, not wanting to admit to the mess he'd gotten himself into, but he still did. It'd always been easier to talk to Rude, with no risk of judgement or pity. The man was so unshakeable, so quiet.

"I fucked it up anyway," Reno admitted bluntly.

"Of course you did."

"You don't sound surprised."

Rude tilted his head slightly, and Reno wished he'd take his damn shades off. His reflection in the lenses wasn't getting any easier to stomach.

"She freaked out."

"You blame her?"

Reno paused as he considered this. "No."

"She's worried about you."

"She and every other fucker… She'd better get in line." It was supposed to be a joke, but the words felt hollow on his tongue.

"She cares."

It was Reno's turn to be silent at that revelation. He turned his attention back to the window, watching the early morning crowd as they went about their business. He wasn't sure how he felt about that.

"What're you gonna do about it?" Rude asked.

"No idea."

"You like her?"

He didn't answer. He'd known the man a long time, a career spanning many poor decisions and one-night affairs. Rude wouldn't have asked the question if he didn't already suspect the answer. Yes, he liked her.

"You want my advice?"

Reno rested his temple against the heel of his hand. "Do I have a choice?"

"No."

"Go on then."

"Stop drinking. Let her decide if you're an asshole."

"You think it's that easy?"

"She can help you."

"What if I don't want her help?"

Reno pulled his attention back around from the scene outside to find Rude frowning at him behind his shades.

"I'm not another fucking sob-story for her to deal with." He gestured dismissively, the flick of his hand betraying his agitation. "I can deal with this by myself. I'm not dragging her down with me."

The appraising expression on Rude's face rubbed him in entirely the wrong direction.

Temper flaring he straightened up, drumming his fingers on the sticky table. "The fuck are you looking at me like that for? I'm not good for her, okay? I'm not good for anybody."

"You ever stop and think about what you're bringing to her table?"

"What does that even mean?"

"She cares about you." Rude's voice carried frustration now, his patience apparently also wearing thin. "Stop being an asshole and work out why."

Reno pushed his coffee to the end of the table, barely touched. "You're spending way too much time with Elena."

Rude only grinned sarcastically in response.

He mulled over his partner's words on his way back to his apartment, hands jammed into his pockets. His thoughts were messy, a tangled web of guilt that seemed to hinge on so many things… his past actions, his ways of coping, whatever the hell this thing with Tifa was… He'd said things when angry that he definitely hadn't meant but was ill-equipped to retract. Whilst he knew it would be a mistake, the craving for a drink consumed him the more he tried to pick it all apart. The path he was headed down wasn't sustainable and he was risking too much for the increasingly fleeting moments of relief.

It didn't make them any less preferable to the noise in his head.

The memory stick in his pocket was calling to him, providing some hope of a distraction. He'd dig out his laptop and spend the day analysing and dissecting, see if he could find something they'd missed. He was good at this, seeking patterns in the chaos, a reflection of his disordered thought processes. If he could find something useful he could prove to Tseng he wasn't a liability, that he still deserved his place in the ranks and that he should be there.

He didn't want to be alone. Human contact was something he sorely needed, he just didn't like the questions it brought. But they didn't understand, they just kept pushing.

He turned the corner, ascending the stairs to his second-story apartment, the building as unassuming as any other in Edge. He'd chosen it specifically for its external access, preferring an easy escape route should the need arise. He'd be down the fire escape in seconds, no lifts or corridors to worry about. Old habits die hard.

When he reached the top she was waiting for him. Reno slowed, keys hanging uselessly from his fingers. Tifa looked exhausted, her dark eyes shadowed and her face even paler than usual. She'd had a late night he realised, guilt coiling through him. He'd caused this.

"Hi..." Her greeting was hesitant and she nervously tucked her hair behind her ears.

His response was more than a little blunt, his brain apparently no longer connected to his mouth. "How'd you get this address?"

"Tseng gave it to me."

Son of a bitch... "Why are you here?"

Tifa held out his missing PHS, fingers tightly wrapped around it. At least he'd avoid another awkward expense claim. Tseng would be so pleased. He offered his palm and waited for her to drop it. She did, fingertips brushing his skin, and he tried to ignore the shiver elicited by the whisper of contact. He shoved the PHS in his pocket and turned to unlock his front door.

Everything about this felt awkward. She hovered on his peripheral, waiting for something, and he didn't really know what that was. Did she want to come in? He didn't want her to, except he did, and he knew he shouldn't... but since when had that ever stopped him? Tired, cranky and hungover he wasn't good company; all he wanted was a shower and some sleep.

That wasn't all he wanted, not by a long shot, but what he actually wanted just posed more questions, more uncertainty, and he didn't even know how to begin making sense of it all. Maybe if he'd had more rest and less liquor he'd be able to. Maybe he'd done this to himself.

The decision was taken from his hands.

"Can I come in? I need to talk to you."

"I don't want to talk," he replied.

Her eyes narrowed a fraction, her reply clearly burning on her lips. The moment passed and it never came, her expression softening slightly instead.

He wondered what had changed her mind.

Reno entered his apartment without extending an invitation, trying to prove his point. He didn't close the door though, and his unease only grew when he heard it click shut and she padded quietly past him. His brain tried to rationalise what was happening, she'd come willingly, after all, but he knew it was pointless. There was no way to rationalise this, it was almost certainly a terrible idea.

He followed her, taking note of the way her eyes widened as she took in the sparse decor, the only sign of life the empty whiskey bottle on the coffee table, upended next to a stack of unopened mail. The concern in her expression annoyed him, and he wondered just how worried she'd be if she saw the pile of bottles he'd already rolled down the garbage chute. He took a seat on the sofa he'd passed out on and purposefully avoided meeting her eye.

She followed suit, hands on her knees, eyes on her hands.

More silence. Tifa didn't know him as well as Rude did and wasn't as adept at manipulating a response out of him. The void only grew, tense and unhappy. He settled back, arms stretched out along the back of the sofa, fingers drumming restlessly against the upholstery.

"How're you feeling?" She might as well have asked about the weather.

He shrugged. "I've been stabbed before."

He pulled at a loose thread, rolling it between his fingertips.

"You're not back at work?"

"Nope."

He caught her frown out of the corner of his eye, provoked by the curtness of his answers. He was being unnecessarily blunt, it was just easier than starting a real conversation. The questions would be inevitable, circling endlessly around answers he didn't want to give. He was too tired for this.

"I'm sorry." Her voice was quiet.

He stopped picking at the cushion, momentarily derailed. "What?"

"When I said I'd made a mistake before… I shouldn't have said that. So... I'm sorry."

He watched her carefully. Her expression looked so forlorn, staring through her dark lashes, teeth worrying at her bottom lip. He almost reached out, the urge to touch her crashing through the walls he'd inexpertly constructed.

He caught himself just in time, hiding behind his usual dry wit instead. "I get it. I'm a Turk. You shouldn't be screwing the enemy."

The speed of her reply surprised him. "You're not my enemy."

"You sure about that?"

When he tried to right the scales they didn't exactly tip in his favour, weighing up the reasons why she shouldn't be sitting there, why this line they were toeing shouldn't be crossed. The plate featured heavily, as it always did, but he couldn't ignore the other encounters that'd shaped their path. Sector Seven wasn't the only time he'd come up against her, and he'd shown little in the way of mercy during their other encounters either. The last couple of weeks were hardly a reliable benchmark, decisions fueled by little more than lust and opportunity. He'd pushed too hard, he realised, hadn't thought things through. Without Erin and Garrison to fuck things up and throw them together, he'd be little more than an unwelcome customer in her bar and maybe that's how it should've stayed.

He'd had a taste of her now though, and it'd thrown him for a loop.

"I'm sure," she said.

He caught her eyes then, and they glittered defiantly, her expression daring him to argue. The conviction in her words only fuelled his disquiet. She didn't need this, didn't need him.

"Why did you come to the bar?" she asked, oblivious to his internal conflict.

It'd seemed like such a simple concept to his liquor-soaked brain at the time. To see her.

Reno kept his answer vague on purpose. "Seemed like a good idea."

"You're hurt. What happened?"

He'd started a fight and only just staggered away victorious. After that, things were a lot hazier. He vaguely remembered stopping at another shitty bar, lured in by the neon lights and the drunken revellers, seeking out some more dutch courage on the way to her door.

She wasn't deterred by his lack of response. "When you went after Erin-"

He cut her off a little too sharply. "I'm not talking about what happened."

"I spoke to Cloud. He thinks she got into your head just like she got into his."

"So?"

"Let me help you," she said, voice soft.

"No thanks." He straightened up, knocking the coffee table with his boot and sending the empty bottle flying. His voice was brittle. "Look, babe… I don't wanna talk so maybe you should just go."

He didn't need her help. He wasn't another Cloud Strife, broken and reliant on Tifa to fix him. He didn't need help from anybody, he just needed some time to straighten himself out. He wanted her though and that scared him, the doubts and frustrations doing nothing to improve his mood. If she truly saw him for what he was she'd run, and he wouldn't fucking blame her.

Tifa reached for the bottle, setting it upright on the table with a little more force than she'd maybe intended. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Fine. Whatever." He stood up, agitated. "Do whatever the fuck you want."

Reno left her sitting on the sofa. He didn't trust himself to look back. Peel away the anger and the shame and he still wasn't good at this, having no real experience to fall back on. Pushing her away now was easier, the end result would be the same no matter what he said. Better to be the one in control of this shitshow than to bare himself to her and lose her anyway. His thoughts spiralled, twisting deeper and deeper into the darkness he sought to avoid. He needed a drink.

Instead, he headed for his bedroom and grabbed clean jeans and a t-shirt from the bottom of a drawer. He'd take a shower, let the water wash away some of the filth that clung to him and try and shake the hangover that was doing nothing at all to temper his mood. He needed to find some clarity and right now that was impossible.

Maybe she'd be gone by the time he resurfaced. Maybe he didn't want her to leave.

Standing underneath the hot water he tried to make sense of the turmoil in his head. It wasn't fair, it'd taken him years to find the fragile balance that let him cope with all the shitty things he'd done. Sure, it wasn't textbook, but it worked. And that psycho bitch had ruined it all and knocked down every defence he fucking had.

What did he even have left? He was torching bridges like a madman, pouring accelerant over everything and shakily holding out a flame. Even if Tifa was still out there, what good would it do? He'd only fuck it up some other way, say the wrong thing, get the wrong orders, be the wrong man. He didn't know why he wanted her anyway. He'd survived this far on his own.

He did know, all too clearly. She was light and warm, soft in the face of his rough edges. She possessed the ability to forgive him when he couldn't forgive himself.

He snapped, his fist impacting hard against the white tiles and he watched the water turn amber as it swirled down the drain. Pain surged through his fingers and into his wrist. Gingerly flexing his bleeding knuckles he closed his eyes and tried to focus on something else, anything else, other than the shit in his head.

The shower at least cleared the fog of his hangover. The rest of his morning routine happened on autopilot and he tried not to look too hard at his reflection in the steamed-up mirror. Feeling slightly more human he pulled clean clothes over damp skin, struggling to remember the last time he'd really worn anything other than his suit.

Maybe Tseng hadn't been wrong in the first instance. Maybe he did need some R&R.

It was a shame he was about to ruin it. The memory stick lay forgotten in his jacket pocket, his grimy suit and shirt left in a heap on the bathroom floor. He'd go out again, find somebody to distract him, crawl into the bottom of another bottle and stay there until the noise faded and reality didn't hurt anymore.

She was waiting for him outside the bathroom door.

Reno stopped in the doorway, watching her warily. She leaned against the wall with her arms folded, everything about her stance daring him to argue.

"Let me help you," she repeated, every bit as stubborn as he was.

"I already told you, I don't want to talk about it."

"That's not what I said." She peeled away from the wall, taking a tentative step towards him.

The bravado was an act, he realised, seeing the little things that gave her away. The flush creeping down her neck... her breath a little too shallow and a little too fast. The way her throat constricted when she swallowed…

His mouth was dry. His lips refused to cooperate, refused to tell her to keep her distance. He was only half-sure he even wanted her to. All he could do was stare as she took another step towards him, and another until she was so close the toes of her boots were almost touching his bare feet.

Closing the gap between them would be all too easy. All he had to do was lean into her.

What did he bring to her table? Shitty advice, inappropriate humour, a capable pair of hands in a fight. Sure, the sex had been pretty hot but he was fairly sure that wasn't what Rude had been getting at when he'd posed the question. The thoughts skittered through his mind, the proximity making it difficult to focus on anything other than her.

"What do you need?" she asked, voice quiet, the tremor in it making his chest tight.

In such close quarters he could smell her, the floral scent she wore taking him back to other, more enjoyable mistakes he'd made. He couldn't remember exactly why he'd wanted her to leave but the sudden certainty that he wanted her to stay had him rooted to the spot. What he needed was some company, free from the obligation to talk. He just needed her to be there.

It couldn't be that simple.

He tried his hardest to throw a spanner in the works. "I'm no good for you."

"Reno…"

His name on her lips finally shattered his resolve. His fingers skimmed her forearm and he took her hand and pulled her close, pressing his face into the crook of her neck. His arms wound their way around her waist and he crumbled.

She softened into him the instant he did, arms coming to rest on his shoulders, her fingers curling gently through his hair. He inhaled shakily, eyes closed, grounding himself in the feel of her skin, the heat of her, the pulse that tripped against his cheek. She didn't say a word, and it was a long while before he trusted himself to break the silence.

"Stay," he murmured, lips grazing her earlobe.

Her arms tightened around his neck. "I already told you. I'm not going anywhere."

He heard the hitch in her voice, a pitchy quality that dispersed the heaviness in his chest and sent his thoughts in a different direction entirely. The hands at her waist sought out the bare skin beneath her shirt and his mouth found her throat. A single kiss, light enough to be considered innocent. A test.

The fingers in his hair tightened.

Grinning against her skin he trailed kisses along her neck and jaw, pulling away just far enough to gauge her expression. His needs were fairly simple, and whilst her fingernails against his scalp suggested her agreement, he was keen to avoid overstepping the mark. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes heavy-lidded and fixated on his mouth.

He pressed her back against the wall, disentangling an arm from her waist to caress her cheek. She melted into his palm and he suspected then he had her.

"You know what I need?" he asked quietly, dragging his thumb along her bottom lip.

She shook her head slowly, eyes flicking back to his. He was so close he could feel the heat of her breath against his skin.

"You."

A shaky exhalation and her mouth found his, her body pressed so fervently against him he had to brace his hand against the wall to steady them both. He kissed her back as hard as he dared, his split lip protesting sharply but the fire in his blood burning too hot to ignore. One of her hands left his hair to travel down his neck, her fingers curling into the collar of his t-shirt and pulling him closer still.

They broke apart, panting and he pressed another, briefer kiss to her lips, loathe to stay away for too long. Earlier questions surrounding whether or not this was a good idea were suddenly no longer relevant.

This felt so natural, soft curves pressed into him, her eyes liquid and filled with longing. He kissed her again, slower this time, relishing the feel of her trembling against him and the needy cry that died on her lips as he deepened the kiss. He ground his hips into her, showing her exactly what he needed.

She gasped at the contact and his hand left the wall, fingers curling posessively through her silky hair to grip the nape of her neck. "And what about you?"

Her eyes fluttered closed as his other hand travelled lower, calloused fingers blazing a slow path along the back of her thigh.

"What do you mean?"

The question came breathless, distracted, her mouth arching towards his throat and unable to close the gap thanks to his hold in her hair. He raised his eyebrows, taunting her and her eyes narrowed in response, her lips forming a slick pout that turned his grin feral.

"What do you need?"

The demons lay in wait, temporarily silenced, as her tongue wet her lips. He knew the answer but he needed to hear it, his ego had crawled out of the darkness and was desperate to be fed.

"You," she whispered.

His grin widened, eyes dark. "Say it again."

His wandering fingers travelled higher, skimming the hem of her underwear beneath her skirt. The urgent sound she made only spurred him on further.

"I need you," she whimpered.

He pressed another chaste kiss to her lips, refusing her the freedom to retaliate. She frowned and his mouth curled into a smirk. He'd chase this rush, this scarce moment of distraction if it killed him. The heat in her eyes suggested it might. He grasped the hem of his t-shirt and tugged it over his head, casting it aside.

Tifa's eyes caught the scar at his shoulder, still raw and angry. Her expression changed, her lips already forming a question he didn't want to hear. So he kissed her before she could ask it, a bruising crush of his mouth that had her boneless in his arms, and he didn't stop, didn't let her draw breath until her hands were fisted in his hair again and her body was pressed back against him.

It was a cheap shot, he realised, as he pulled her with him through the door to his bedroom. And he'd talk about it all, eventually, when the words no longer brought the bile to his throat. Right now he needed something else to ease the pain and he knew exactly what that was. Her hands were wandering now, slipping down his neck, fingers exploring the scars on his chest, nails grazing his abs and lower still, fumbling for the button on his jeans.

His hands relieved her of her shirt as she stumbled out of her boots, their movements messy, driven by a mutual hunger for contact that he was only too happy to give her. By the time he had her beneath him, flushed and bare, nothing could've torn him away. As he settled between her legs, lips working urgently at every scrap of her they could reach, the demons finally scattered.

She kissed him back with equal fervour, legs wrapped around his waist, fingers winding through his hair. This exchange was easy, uncomplicated and he felt more present now than he had in days.

He let the high take him, only this time there was light waiting at the end of the tunnel.

This time he wasn't alone.