He snarled, "maybe I'm not in love with Aeris, maybe I'm in love with you!"
Tifa didn't do all that much, besides gasp for breath.
"What did you say..?" she whispered, after an eternity drifted by, and her breath had made itself familiar with her lungs again.
She wasn't crying; she wasn't shaking. She wasn't calm either. She stood only three feet away from him.
Down here, nothing to lean on, no one to keep barriers up against besides each other (which they hadn't), it had become more natural for them to stand close by. Now she looked up at him, up at his face. As opposed to inexplicably, she was drawn to his mouth rather explicably. He had just kissed her, after all.
He looked back at her silently, angrily. His eyes seemed darker, he seemed years older. Still the most attractive man she knew. Then he just shook his head and closed his eyes. Never mind, his expression seemed to say.
"..Cloud.." She didn't even know what she had wanted to say so she stopped again. She wondered about his name. She had never really thought about it, about the word that formed his name, because it was so automatic to use it. But his name was gentle and bittersweet, as was the description of the weather form, the compact mist that shared his name. Imagine naming your child Cloud. She wished she had known his mother better before she died.
He saw her smile softly, and wondered who was losing it, her or him. Maybe both of them.
She considered how he had just suggested that perhaps he was in love with her. She knew it was why she couldn't wipe this stupid grin off her face, even as it grew.
"Do you know what you just said?"
She asked him, trying to hide the glee from her voice. The glee. Can you imagine? She wondered if she was about to have her period. She had never had mood swings quite like this before.
But then.. when Cloud had kissed her the first time, she had responded similarly. She had near-well gone insane.
"Do I realise what I just said.." he mused softly. "..of course I do. I regret saying it, at that."
"Why?"
Do I even have to explain?
He looked at her.
He looked down.
He looked up.
He looked at her, her eyes, her hair, her lips, her body.. he remembered how, when she was nervous, she started biting her nails. He looked at her nails and saw they were ragged. He wondered why she couldn't stand the thought of him loving Aeris. He had the feeling the truth was bluntly obvious and he was missing something, but didn't know what. He had the sudden urge.. to..
He pulled her to him again. She sucked in her breath, but didn't break away. He bowed his head, so their faces were almost touching again. They looked at each other without meeting each other's eyes.
"You know.. I used to have an incredibly humungous crush on you, when we were kids in Nibelheim." he said quietly. She stared at him, fascinated, clinging to his every word.
"And.. when I left, and I had been with ShinRa for a few years, well, I thought it had just been a childhood crush, and it was over." he paused a moment, a frown creasing his brow.
"I hung out only with the guys from SOLDIER, and we flirted around a lot then. But the childhood crush thing wasn't over like I thought, I found that out when I saw you again when I was sixteen. You had gotten even prettier than you were two years earlier. And I was a teenager. I fell in love all over again as you guided us through the mountains."
Was it her imagination, or were their mouths coming ever closer? He continued, haltingly but with determination. "And after that.. I hadn't really thought of you for about four years, I hadn't really thought of anything consciously."
She found her hands creeping up to touch him, hold his face. Possibly, there was still some part of her that resolutely refused to believe that this could be real. Possibly, she was trying to reassure this part of her, by touching him, touching him, proving he was real.
"I.. worked as a mercenary together with Zack as we travelled back to Midgar, but I got really sick at times still, so did he. I remembered you vaguely, but as someone I had cared for in the past and someone I would never see again. I thought you were dead. Zack was killed, and I got back to Midgar eventually. And found you there. Big surprise. Bet you hadn't expected to find me there. When you first found me.. I was thinking that you were -"
"What about now..? What do you think of me now?" she breathed, drawing closer to his throat, his jaw. Her lips parted a little but didn't touch him. He was very aware of her, right there, right there.
"I thought it was obvious."
She leaned her forehead in the hollow between his Adam's apple and chest. She pressed a kiss lightly on the curve of his collarbone and his eyes widened meaningfully, and he succeeded in keeping her from noticing.
They stood there like that for a while, at ease somehow, pretending not to know about all the bullshit they had been going through.
And after a bit..
"Cloud, you fucking idiot." she said suddenly, sounding amused.
"What?" Total confusion. And curiosity, that too.
"You can't be a clone. How could you think you were a clone?" She pulled away from him and pulled up his sweater. Her fingers ran across his abdomen until she reached the scar that Masamune had made.
"Here. This scar was made before you could have been 'cloned'. And a scar isn't part of your genetic material, it wouldn't have been cloned along with you. You're the real Cloud Strife because the real Cloud Strife got cut up by Sephiroth. You're real."
A smile formed on his face. A Goddamned embarrassed smile. All that time he had been so afraid, so depressed, so convinced of his own non-existence. And here she was, helping him out of it in ten seconds with her simple logic.
"Thanks." he said, wondering if the heat in his cheeks meant he was blushing.
"For what it's worth.. I wouldn't have cared if you WERE a clone. You're still the best thing that ever happened to me." she said, simply.
He swallowed and now she wrapped her arms around him, her whole body pressed against him. If they weren't sharing such a gentle revelation, he would have been going mad with desire by now -wait.. he was going mad with desire by now. But not.. -not just corporeal, but also this desire to tell her everything he had wanted to tell her, ever. No more truths, no more religions. Just who he was.
"Tifa." he said roughly. "Tifa, I love you. I've loved you forever and I thought I didn't and I hoped I didn't because I thought that it was no use to love you; but I do, even if it is no use. I-"
Her breath became happy, gaspy and shallow and excited and she pressed a thousand kisses everywhere she could. His lips, his chin, his jaw, his neck, his ear, his eye.. the two tears that came out of his eyes, the only two tears he had cried since he had seen a girl dying in a ShinRa Reactor a lifetime ago, those two tears she kissed away. Her tongue slid into his mouth and he met it readily. She had never really liked kisses that involved tongues, except for the three kisses she had now shared with Cloud, because they made her blood run cold and her flesh tingle and.. she just stopped thinking. They kissed, and this kiss again was different from the others they had shared. Passionate and true, no longer cautious or hesitant, because he knew now, and she knew, and they couldn't still this hunger they were feeling.
Cloud Strife was kissing Tifa Lockheart. Tifa Lockheart was kissing Cloud Strife.
*
Something had changed. The atmosphere of waiting, of worrying and of searching had disappeared, and had been replaced by an atmosphere of rest. Tifa sat in Cloud's lap again, finding this was one of the most comfortable seating arrangements she had ever known. Cloud certainly saw no problem with it.
Tifa mused of all sorts of things. She thought of what it would have been like, had they started 'dating' like teenagers did. She imagined them as if each were just a teenager, cheered on by their hurriedly whispering friends at the school dance, braces clicking against the other's in the Kiss (do note the capital K), half-wanting to pull away from the foreign, _moving!?_ thing, feeling its way in their mouth, but really much too excited to actually do that, and then do it anyway. And then stare at each other rather shyly for two people who just shared all sorts of bacteria and body fluids.. very unsure, rather disconcerted, very excited and even more in love. That would have been them had they been normal human beings with normal human lives.
She sighed and wondered how much they really had missed.
He was playing with her hair again. It sent small waves of warmth down her back. At one point he sighed and wrapped his arms around her waist from behind her, and rested his head on her shoulder. She put an arm up and caressed his face, gently resting her fingers on the nape of his neck. She thought to herself it was a very sexy part of the body, the nape of the neck. Though it sounded kind of stupid; the 'nape'. She wished she could kiss his (his 'nape'? Heh.) right now, but felt too lazy to actually get up.
"Are you ready to go back to the surface yet?"
"No."
"Cloud."
"NO."
"Why not?"
"Because."
"Because what?"
But at that point, the conversation kind of got lost because he started trailing kisses from her shoulder up to her neck, where he started to nibble on her ear. She laughed a little. This was absolutely marvellous.
"Cloud."
"Be quiet."
"You know you're a great kisser when you're drunk?"
"Eh? I wasn't drunk when I kissed you the first time."
"Yes you were."
"How could I have been drunk, we were down here.."
"Mm.. stop it for a sec, I'm trying to talk to you.." she pleaded as he continued to kiss her. Interestingly enough, now he was focused mainly on the nape of her neck.
"No.."
She laughed. "If you don't stop.. I'll have to write for help.." and she laughed again. He didn't stop. She knew it was just to tease her. She started to squirm and his grip tightened a little.
"Ah, okay. Anyways. The first time you kissed me actually, you wouldn't remember because you were drunk."
He stopped, took her by the waist and turned her so she was facing him more.
"Excuse me?"
"It was right around the time you and Barret had done the first Reactor. You and the gang came back and got drunk off your asses at Heaven, and you kissed me."
"With all of them standing there?" he asked incredulously.
"No, silly, we were alone."
"What kind of kiss? Like a peck?"
"Nope. French like the fries. Lasted long, too."
He groaned and buried his face in her hair. "Man.. I can't believe it, I got to kiss you and then forgot. Aargh. Was it a good kiss?"
She smiled a little. "You have no idea."
"What was it like?"
She lifted her face to his, smile growing. His had already grown.