A/N: Sardonic Grin is back with another Cleno fic because that's all I write! Love feedback so please leave comment if you enjoyed this first chapter! More to come with updates, hopefully, every 2 weeks on Tuesdays. ENJOY
Chapter One: I Slept Through the War You Raged
So I make believe I've discovered peace
But I'll skin the man alive
And sell the meat
I'll wait in the dirt where he left your blood
If he returns for it, I can make it right for good
Oh, how I wish he would-Moor, Everytime I Die
Reno pointed the gun at the space between the door.
The cold metal pricking his skin. A familiar best friend.
First, he was shocked when the phantom footsteps, which creaked against the splintering wood, had not yet materialized. Then disappointed when only the sound of a ticking clock joined him in the cool darkness of his bedroom.
He dropped his arm with a sigh.
Was he dreaming?
He hadn't dreamt since the war. And was sure he heard the advancing echo of steel-toed boots as he laid on top the back of the slim, toned, body resting in his spot in his bed. He had reached for the weapon he kept hidden in the nightstand. Careful of his movement. Breath lodged in his throat. Expecting to fire a bullet through the skull of the fool who dared break into his apartment.
Instead, he met the void of 3 am.
Reno looked at the man who shared his bed. Made a note to move the gun in case this was to become a reoccurring event.
Not that Cloud Strife should even be there in the first place. And Reno can't remember when they moved these meetings from the chill of the abandoned remains of Sector 5 to Reno's modest place in Edge.
But there he laid.
The former merc, half-naked, under stiff sheets. Breathing even. Blissfully unaware of the man, whose name he grunted into the very pillow, now sat alert with the gun still clenched in his hands. And Reno wondered how the blonde could sleep so calmly in, basically, a stranger's home. No wonder he didn't make it through SOLDIER.
No, Reno shouldn't add this habit of bringing home strange heroes with PTSD to his list of vices. He's not even entirely sure how a bar fight a year and a half ago has resulted in a pissy blonde currently hogging his sheets. They were fine keeping their rendezvous outside, in the open, up until this, particular night. This night...was different. And Reno couldn't pinpoint how they went from Cloud slicing through the red-head's exposed chest and Reno straddling the blonde's hips and forcing him to lick the wound he created…to pushing him through the door with hands buried in soft blonde hair-
But he could dwell on his bad choices another time.
The red-head- now wired- performed a sweep of place regardless of the dense silence which permeated the broken stone walls. Scanning his cold blue eyes along every darkened corner of the modest one-bedroom on the third floor of Reeve Tuesti's newer residential complexes. A far cry from the luxury apartment overlooking Sector 8's booming business district. That place, dressed in chrome and white had solidified his success. A testament to how he crawled through the blood and mud of the slums, proving to every single weary-eyed citizen he left behind wrong. He made it. And he could look down on all of them from his castle in the sky, with a smirk and a glass of expensive scotch.
Not that it mattered anymore.
This tragedy he silently lamented on the torn leather seat in the corner facing the front entrance.
Cheap scotch in his left hand.
Gun in his right.
As if still waiting for a spook, with his photo in their pocket, to slide through the door on a mission. Growing more and more disillusioned.
The old place was a beacon luring all the ghosts from his past itching to put him in the ground. And the satisfaction of spraying their blood on the white and chrome remained unmatched. He mourned the sound of a silent bullet ripping through the air and slicing through skull and tissue. He missed the whimpers from the ones he tortured, more. The way they'd sob through broken teeth. Choked on thick, red, liquid as they tried to find the words to plead to a devil. Until they held their tongues in fractured fingers.
Two years.
He took a sip of smokey liquid. They're all gone now, he assumed. Or maybe there are more important things to worry about since Meteorfall. Maybe the grudges were buried under the shattered remains of the Sector Eight Slums.
What a shame how things changed.
Orange light spilled from the bedroom and Reno didn't even move when Cloud stepped into his space. The shimmering Mako eyes rested on the drink, then the gun, then finally the closed door.
"Expecting guests?" Cloud inquired.
Reno's lips twitched, "You could say that."
The mako-eyed warrior offered a bored shrug in response, "You coming back, or can I spread out?"
Reno took a moment to look at the disheveled blonde. Drenched in the artificial glow illuminating the red marks and scratches along his athletic body. Reno's artwork; painted scars from both passion and violence. Cloud's arms folded over his chest with the slightest pivot of his hips that almost elicited a smirk from the red-head, but he swallowed his smile with another sip. Under the musty orange light and dust falling like snowflakes over his spikey blonde hair, Cloud was just as attractive as when Reno first spotted him, under a collapsing Church flushed with flowers. Maybe more so. Half naked and exposed for Reno to devour. Even with eyes weighed by sleep. Looking like he belonged.
"Don't get comfortable, kid," Reno warned-a duel suggestion- before returning his leer to the unopened front door. He didn't catch the smirk Cloud offered, as if Reno's words were weak at best before he returned to the comfort of black sheets.
Reno sat in the quiet darkness for a while.
He felt submerged by the untouched silence crying in his ear- deep wails which trickled down his spine. He threw his gaze to the window. The skeletal horizon silhouetted against the navy night sky. What's left of Midgar. People would say they could hear ghostly screams echoing from the rubble. Souls lingering; unmoved by the call of the lifestream. Damned to roam the ruined earth. Lost. He caught many survivors rushing to provide offerings to the phantoms-the scarce food meant to honor the deceased, laid rotting in the sun by the outskirts of the newly built town and only served to feed the real monsters which guard the corpse of a once-great city.
Reno scoffed at the stupidity; these people cling to archaic beliefs like it'll save them from the next sociopath with a lust for destruction. They all still hide behind false saviors and worship metal idols, trading true freedom for the illusion of security-like that ever worked in the first place. Cowards. All of them.
He thought about leaving, more than once, when the dust settled and he stood in the gray sunlight; covered in blood and ash with the rest of the zombies. It would be the perfect opportunity. But…
He looked too damn good in a suit.
A yes, definitely ego kept him attached to these toxic roots. Which he once watered with the crimson river from all his kills; now dried up.
He's a remnant. The last of a dying breed.
Worst of all, he's bored of it all.
Reno downed the rest of the hot liquid down his throat, mocked by his ghastly reflection in the glass window, and wondered for a moment if he's much different from the rotting meat suits he finds so easy to ridicule.
The rustling of clothes jostled Reno awake. Though he hadn't exactly slept. He grumbled as he sat up with the crack of his neck and back- a consequence of one too many falls from high places. And his eyes rested on Cloud in the center of the room pulling his pants over his briefs. The blonde was silent as he glided a belt around the loops and grabbed the discarded vest from the corner of the floor. Reno stifled a laugh with a cigarette, as he recalled complaining about the obscene amount of belts Cloud twisted around his frame- like chains to keep the villains out and only got in the way.
Cloud gave the redhead a once over. Reno rested against the bedframe with the cigarette between his smirking thin lips. A blanket thrown over his waist to hide the prize which Cloud greedily enjoyed hours ago. The blonde couldn't ignore the smug twinkle in Reno's turquoise eyes as they examined every curve of muscle that rippled along with his form.
"Has anyone ever told you you sleep like a wererat in a burlap sack?" Cloud asked blankly.
Reno wanted to say no one's sharing my fuckin bed to know, but he wasn't about to inflate the blonde's ego. "Has anyone ever told you you talk in your sleep?" He returned instead.
"Did I reveal any deep dark secrets?"
"Ya sure did."
"Damn," Cloud paused with a frown, "Now I have to kill you."
"I'd like to see you try there, blondie." Reno exhaled the smoke into Cloud's direction and shifted so the sheets could fall just slightly below his hips. Enough to give the man before him just enough of a show.
The blonde tilted his head with a doe-eyed expression which amused the Turk; as if considering making a return to those sheets and have Reno work to taste him one last time. But under the misty morning hue, Cloud looked more like a young boy trying to play dress up, and not the seething warrior who had once snarled in Reno's face with his sword against his neck. Flames cascaded around them. The crack of steel. The taste of his blood. Back when all he wanted to do was turn the tables in his favor, and crush that perfect, pale, freckled face like angel with the business side of his electromag rod until Cloud was mush under his shoe.
He wanted that for a long time after he crushed Sector 7 instead of Cloud.
And for a bit after Sephiroth finished the job with the rest of Midgar.
Up until he finally had Cloud pinned under him-hand around his neck as blood pooled around his lips... And the blonde smiled
Now, though...now, he's not sure what he wants from the man standing in the middle of his room, whose own eyes seem to be taking inventory of every scar, and bruise, and welt sprinkled along Reno's tone body. The glow of mako-eyes travel up the length of his exposed torso, tracing the Litchtenburg scars which cover his skin like a forest of macabre trees-a twitch of his lips seal the question Cloud meant to ask.
"Raincheck," the blonde said instead. "I have to make a delivery out by Junon."
"Psh," Reno scoffed, "that's a fuckin' trek."
"Three days there. One-day layover. Three days back." Cloud gathered the last of his belongings, his fusion sword, locking it to his back with a loud clack. He paused for a moment, then matter-of-factly, said, "I might miss our meeting."
Reno clicked his tongue, "you come, you come. You don't, you don't. Ain't no skin off my dick, yo."
"Heh," Cloud chuckled, "see you 'round then, Turk."
And just like that, Reno watched the ex-SOLIDER, former war hero, current delivery boy bitch walk out his room-out of his apartment with the loud slam of the steel door-and vanish as quickly as he came. The Turk, smoked the rest of his cancer, blowing black into the stagnant humid air as he listened to the roar of the motorcycle they rode on the night before. Trying to forget how it felt to lean against that back as it vibrated against his chest. Forget the way Cloud groaned when Reno ran his hands over his thighs as he tried navigating from their original meeting spot to the redhead's modest apartment in Edge. Not caring who made the suggestion first. He tried to forget how that same back felt bare, and exposed, against those same hands as he pressed the Cloud into those stiff black sheets.
He wanted those memories to die in the engine of Fenrir as it rode away-but he wasn't entirely sure why.
