Author's Note: Hope you all enjoyed the last chapter, it was a joy to write and a hit with my beta readers. From the number of views it got, I think it was my most popular installment yet. Genesis' chapters are proving to be quite popular and since I love writing for him so much, maybe we will get a few more weekly readers.
Anyway, thank you all for reading, and let me know your favorite part(s) in the story so far. I'm so curious to know people's thoughts.
Marken: I wouldn't count Genesis as having truly been with Talin yet but they are certainly more than just friends at this point. 😉 Poor Sephiroth, missing out on all the fun. It will take time for Talin to trust our dear General again but till then Gen and the others will be there for our boy. While there is no major, in-depth, explanation of what the three said to Seph, there are a few parts in the future that address it. Hope you're enjoying all the ups and downs in the story so far, there is so much more to come.
Beta Readers: Pixie, Kiza, and Discord.
I do not own FF7 or any of its characters. Talin, Unit 28, and some other side characters are mine.
Enjoy and please R&R.
Chapter 35
Used to waking in the near pitch-blackness of the barracks, the lightening of the morning sky through the big windows was enough to rouse Talin from a dreamless sleep. The dim, pre-dawn glow was easy on his tired eyes as he opened them and blinked in confusion at the unusual sight. The massive metropolis of Midgar was still mostly asleep at this hour and was darker than he'd ever seen it.
Street lights had turned off after sensing the change in light, leaving the great city blanketed in deep shadows that reached between every building. Windows facing the rising sun showed the sky just starting to glow a soft orange, and Talin suddenly wished he had a better view.
Distracted as he was by the thoughts of seeing the sunrise, he'd not given any thought to where he was. Mind sluggish and still half asleep, he started to get up, thinking maybe he could see from the balcony beyond the sliding glass door. Somewhere in the back of his brain, he knew he was at Gen's, but when the Commander shifted and tightened his arms around the teen, Talin panicked.
A rough gasp forced air into his lungs, hands dove to the restraining arms, and the phantom flash of silver in his peripheral kicked him over into full-blown fight or flight. He struggled and thrashed against the blankets the tangled his legs while twisting and prying at the arm about his waist. Before he could make any progress in getting away, he was pulled flush against a hard body, legs hooked with his flailing ones, and a hand landed firmly over his eyes.
The sudden lack of sight forced his mind to focus on his other senses as he scrambled to free himself. The arms surrounding him were long and powerful, as was the body pressed tightly behind him, but the hand over his eyes was wrong. The calluses were softer and the fingers, while just as long, were more slender... "Talin, it's me. Easy. It's me, Love." The voice at his ear cut through his alarm and he ceased his struggles even as his heart continued to pound in his chest.
The words were a quiet, continuous murmur in his ear and he slowly relaxed into the body behind him as he tried to catch his breath after the unexpected fright. The thumb slowly stroking his side drew his attention to the harsh grip he had on that arm and he winced as he loosened his fingers.
His short nails had clawed into the skin of Gen's forearm and, as much as he was sure the SOLDIER would hardly notice the scratches, Talin mentally swore a blue streak that would've had Zack laughing and Angeal frowning in disapproval.
"I'm sorry, Gen. Shit, I'm so sorry." He drew his hands away, unsure how badly he'd mangled the 1st's skin due to the hand still covering his eyes. That hand pulled his head back, and he found himself tucked tightly against Genesis while he caught his breath and worked to slow his rapid heartbeat.
"It's alright, Love." The reassuring words were spoken against his hair and followed by a light kiss to his temple as the fingers covering his eyes slid away. "The real question is if you're ok?" Talin knew what he was asking and avoided the question.
"Ya, I'm fine. Just wasn't fully awake yet," He said and started to shift towards the edge of the bed. The SOLDIER didn't let him get away that easily. Arms that had been holding Talin gently tightened to prevent him from getting up and then the heavier man rolled them till he lay under that larger body. "Gen? C'mon, I'm fine. Let's look at your arm-" The light nip at his ear silenced him.
"'Geal and Zack might've let you get away with that, but I won't, Little Bird." Genesis sat up, firmly placing one hand between Talin's shoulder blades to keep him on the bed below him. The Commander wasn't ignorant of the sexual nature of their position. Him straddling the Cadet's hips, both of them still naked, it put all sorts of naughty ideas into his head, but that could wait for another time.
"You agreed to a few things last night, Love. One of them was that we would talk in the morning." He ran his hand up into red hair and smirked when the teen didn't try to move but relaxed into the petting touch. Even though his arm ached where Talin had grabbed him, Gen was feeling charitable and, leaning to one side, he grabbed a bottle of oil from the nightstand.
The motion made the Cadet look up and then groan as long fingers slid across the skin of his back. "New deal," Talin said, sighing appreciatively at the glide of strong hands over his spine. "You keep massaging and I'll talk about whatever you want." The chuckle from the man above him was accompanied by the clever fingers digging into his shoulders to start working the knotted muscles.
"Ok then, start with this morning. Was it just that you were startled? Or was it more than that?"
"Both. I wasn't paying attention so you startled me and then..." He paused, thinking back to the moment, and sighed. "I thought I saw something..." The whisper trailed off.
Genesis heard the silent request to drop the subject and hesitated. He'd allowed Talin to avoid hard conversations before, particularly in their 3 am VR room confrontation, but not this time. This wasn't linked to an unknown history or childhood trauma and the outcome concerned them all. Ready for any reluctance or fight, he pushed.
Leaning down low, almost laying atop the Cadet, he again nipped Talin's ear in a light reprimand. "Keep talking," The eyes that snapped open to lock with his flickered with annoyance at the slight pain but quickly changed to reluctant compliance when the Commander cocked an eyebrow at him.
"I... I thought I saw... silver." It was muttered but Gen didn't need to hear more. Hands that had stilled while waiting for Talin to continue talking, started working once more.
"That would do it, wouldn't it?" His voice was soft and more understanding than the teen had expected. "What was it he did that made you so frightened?" He saw Talin's jaw lock and skimmed his hands back to an especially tight muscle he'd found and saved for just such a moment.
The gasp and flinch of pain jolted the teen out of the spiraling thoughts that tried to pull him under. When he looked up at the SOLDIER, he knew it'd been intentional. Talin was thankful for the distraction but still attempted to get out of the question. "Angeal said you all heard..." He ducked his head and tried to cover his ear with his hand when he felt Genesis lean down again.
Slippery fingers laced with his and pulled the protecting hand away, laid a kiss to his palm before he pinned it to the bed. His ear wasn't bitten but gently nuzzled as the 1st spoke. "We did hear, but only what you said about the building, nothing else." Another kiss was pressed just below his ear. "Why don't you start with what happened first? You entered the room, the door closed..." Gen started massaging in slow circles at Talin's low back when he felt the first tremor and leaned back to give the teen some space to think.
The redhead's eyes were unfocused when he opened them this time. Distant with memory as he thought back to the first moments of his misadventure. "He... He was angry. Told me to leave, but I didn't listen," Talin tried to focus on the fingers working along his spine as he continued talking. "Kept appearing behind me, taunting me, and disappearing... It pissed me off, so I told him to spar with me to blow off steam."
Genesis would have rolled his eyes if he could have done it without the Cadet seeing. Not at the teen, but at Sephiroth. The man seemed to delight in mind games and loved leaving his opponents off-balance whenever possible. That would've been fine normally, but Talin hadn't known the fight had started as soon as he'd stepped inside.
The next words were so quiet the Commander almost missed them. "I just wanted to help..." With a hard swallow, the young fighter turned his head to bury his head in the pillow but kept going, kept pushing the words out as if bleeding a wound of poison.
When Genesis heard what Talin had said to the Silver General, he felt his guts freeze. He'd gone after Sephiroth before, followed him when he'd been given the notice of deployment back to Wutai. He'd tried to relieve the man's ill humor with a fight or sex... Once. That's all it had taken for him and Angeal to never try again. He listened as the still trembling teen recounted the last of what he could recall from the encounter and did his best to soothe him.
Behind his eyelids, Talin could still see the glowering disapproval that had filled Sephiroth's eyes as he'd crouched over him. Could hear the sneer in his voice and knew word for word what had been said. It was only in recounting the event aloud that the teen realized what else had been said that day.
The insight was so sudden that he cut off what he'd been saying to puzzle it out. "Talin?" Genesis called his name softly, not wanting to jar him if perhaps Angeal had reached out or if he'd remembered something even more difficult. But at his prompting, the Cadet untucked his head from the pillow and had such a confused and troubled look that the SOLDIER hesitated to push further.
"Gen, he's not... He doesn't care about being sent to Wutai as a scare tactic or being called all those names or being feared..." Jade green eyes that had been so lost in thought now turned to him and focused as Talin locked onto the fact hidden amongst the assumptions and lies from that day. "He's afraid they're right... Afraid that he is the monster they make him out to be..."
Genesis held his gaze till he rubbed his hands up to the teen's shoulders and then down his arms. The Commander lowered himself to lay fully against Talin's back and the Cadet grunted a bit from the weight of the man pressing him down. "Every SOLDIER is a monster, Talin," Gen whispered as he rubbed circles along biceps and forearms. The 1st chuckled at his startled reaction and continued. "We are monsters made, not born. We take the lifeblood of the planet and absorb it into ourselves. Any man would be a fool to believe it doesn't change us."
The massaging fingers worked down to his hands, flipping them over to rub his palms. "You are an odd exception to that, you had no choice... and neither did Sephiroth." He felt the slight shiver at the mention of the other SOLDIER's name and saw the confusion cross Talin's face as he listened. Genesis wasn't normally one to share what wasn't his to tell, but most of the story was somewhat public knowledge already. Goddess knows he won't be likely to tell anyone anyways...
"I'm sure you've heard some of the stories about him? That he was raised here to be the first SOLDIER?" Talin nodded. "Well, he wasn't just raised in Shin-Ra, he was born here." That got a response. The Cadet tried to roll to look up at Gen but wasn't able to go far with the weight settled on him. He let out an annoyed huff when he saw the glint of amusement in the green-blue eyes and resettled himself as he felt hands returning to their previous task.
"So then... how many of them are true?" Talin asked, disturbed by several tales he'd remembered thinking were too vile to possibly be fact.
"Depends what you heard, but most of them agree that he was an experiment. Born within the lab with mako in his bottle instead of milk. That last part was made up, but you get the point." The Cadet did and he could better understand the General's bone-deep fear. Talin himself had only been exposed to Mako once before coming here, even if that one exposure was... extensive. If what Genesis said was true, then the General had been given Mako in one form or another all his life.
He was lost in thought for a while, and the Red Commander let him sift the information as he rubbed the moisturizing oil deeper into his skin. He watched the teen's face while he worked and was keenly interested in the emotion he saw flying across the defined features. Sadness was the first he noticed followed by a spark of irritation that dissolved into a flinch of pain from an old memory. He saw thoughts bloom and wither in those green eyes and wondered if he'd done the right thing in telling him.
The eyes that finally focused on him several minutes later were no less troubled. "I... I don't know-" Gen saw him trying to find words and hushed him with a finger to his lips.
"Don't try to think on it all now." The 1st leaned back up and carefully moved off the confused teen. "Roll over first, I'm out of things to massage..." It was a half-truth. He was only out of things to rub that wouldn't lead to something other than a massage.
Talin complied, his mind too full of other thoughts to question it. The Commander straddled his thighs over the protection of the blankets he'd pulled to the Cadet's hips and applied more oil to his hands. "Slight change in topic, Love." Gen put his hands down on the developing muscle of the teen's chest and petted more than rubbed. "I need you to answer something very honestly," and he paused to ensure Talin was paying attention.
"What do you want to do now?" Talin's hands had come to rest upon Genesis' knees on either side of his hips and they gripped slightly tighter at the question. He looked away from the blue-green eyes as he tried to think. There was so much going through his head that he wasn't really sure what he should do next, let alone what he wanted to do. An oil-slicked finger under his chin made him look up at the handsome 1st. "What's your first instinct? What thought came to mind when I asked?"
The Cadet hesitated, bit the inside of his cheek for a moment, and then said the thing he'd been wishing for since this whole mess started. "I want to go back to the way it was... I want..." He took in a deep breath as if more air would give him the strength to say the next few words. "I just... I want my mentor back." Unsaid was the wish to return to the friendship they'd had. To be comfortable with each other, to spar, to relax, to trust... The longing wasn't voiced, but the SOLDIER still heard it.
Gen went back to his gentle massage and felt guilty for his next statement, but knew it needed to be said. "You know things will never be the same as they were." It was fact, not a question, but Talin still nodded and closed his eyes as he listened. "Be that as it may, if you want to fix what was broken, you'll have to start from the beginning again."
The eyes that opened to look up at him still showed the barest hint of doubt and worry, but also determination and a plea for guidance. "What do I do?" It was the question of a Cadet seeking an order, and Genesis smirked.
He again lowered himself over Talin, resting on his elbows as he looked down into swirling jade green. "You, Little Bird, do nothing." Confusion flooded the teen's face and with a chuckle, Gen kissed him lightly on his nose before continuing. "If you were to go to him right now and ask to continue training, he wouldn't think anything of it and nothing would be resolved. Instead, you will make him come to you." A devious light played in the 1st's eyes as he sat back up.
"But, I have lessons with-" The protest was cut off by another smug look from the man.
"Your schedule has been changed, Love. Effective immediately. Till the investigation into the lab incident is over, you're excused from attending classes and your afternoon training sessions will be with Angeal, Zack, and myself." Talin couldn't respond, too surprised that, after his demands yesterday, the General had agreed to let the others take over his training.
"Just because you're excused from the classes, doesn't mean your excused from the assignments. Your unit mate will be coming up to study with you on the deployment floor most nights. But, for now," Gen shifted off the Cadet and sunk back under the blankets before pulling Talin to him. "It's far too early to get up and you need more rest."
The teen didn't fight as he was pulled flush against the SOLDIER but knew he wasn't going to be able to sleep.
