It was late at night before Cloud arrived home. He assumes that somebody had put Marlene and Denzel to bed but then he decides they would have taken advantage of this and stayed up late. The house was fairly quite when he walked in, no cartoons, or giggling, or banging pots, just faint snoring coming from the living area. He walks deeper into the house only to discover Denzel asleep on the floor and Marlene on the couch, her hand flopped over the side, her arm too short for her fist to sweep the carpet. Cloud sighs and sits down next to her gently stroking her soft brunette hair. He's muttering things that he's to tired to comprehend. Denzel overhears and awakes; he obviously wasn't sleeping all that hard. He rubs his eyes and stares over at Cloud with a smile. Cloud tries to smile back, but it must come out awkward because Denzel turns away quickly and stands up still rubbing at his eyes.
"Sorry, we must have… fallen asleep." Denzel mumbles and begins to pick up his and Marlene's mess on the floor.
"No problem," Cloud says, "I'll just bring Marlene into her room and then go do the dishes an-,"
"Done." Denzel says, throwing a wrapper or two into the trashcan.
"and pick up the stu-," Cloud starts.
"Done!" Denzel chimes, waking up a little more.
Cloud raises an eyebrow, "You did everything?"
Denzel nods, "We thought you would be tired." He's quickly rinsing out a glass and throwing it into the cupboard.
"Thank you." Cloud says scooping up Marlene and beginning for Marlene's bedroom "Thank you very much."
Denzel smiles to himself and yawns, he quickly finishes so that he can find his own bedroom and sleep. He's very, very tired, and he doesn't feel very well, the normal problems are bothering him and he's missing the way Tifa would nourish him back to health. He doesn't even think twice about asking Cloud for that kind of help- he wants Cloud to think of him as mature and capable young man- one that doesn't need help fixing his own wounds or somebody making him feel better when he's down.
Tifa's watching from the corner of her eye as Reno throws down another hand, coughing and laughing with his friends. She's tired, she's dying to sleep, the apartment is much too small for him to be throwing wild parties all the time, if he wasn't ready to settle down he shouldn't have hooked up with her but ohh… she remembers that once upon a time when they met she was a party girl looking to escape from having to settle down. Mentally she keeps beating herself up for that one; it's become a daily thing versus a weekly thing. As the days drag longer she misses her old 'family' more and more, even if none of them were blood related. She reaches for her phone thinking about contacting Cloud again. Their conversation ended on a bad note and she found some other ways to approach him this time. Maybe he wouldn't hang up but then again, maybe he wouldn't answer. She calls anyway and four rings later she about gives up when she hears the familiar stone cold voice on the other line.
"You can't keep calling," it mutters, dark and mysterious, no sweet hello.
Tifa sighs and slips into her chipper, bubbly attitude, its okay to play bimbo once in awhile because it makes Cloud curious to how much she's changed, hopefully curious enough to invite her out, "I know but we didn't end on a good note… I wanted to apologize?"
"Not accepted!" Cloud yells through his whispering, trying hard not to lose his cool and wake up the two sleeping children.
"And why not?" Tifa questions, irritated, about to blow a mental fuse.
Cloud reaches for the red button; it takes a click, a SIMPLE click.
"Don't hang up again… Please?" Tifa sighs, "I made mistakes- you make mistakes! You were never home! Can you blame me for not wanting to deal with everything on my own? Can you blame me for putting the things I had dealt with day after day on you?" She's growing angry but she doesn't want Reno's drunken friends 'checking up' on her so she tries to keep her voice down.
"I can blame you all I want." Cloud says through clenched teeth, "For everything you've put me and them through, I can blame it all on you because it's YOUR fault." He's speaking above a whisper, still under a yell, he doesn't even care anymore.
"Go ahead Cloud, but blaming me will get you nowhere- I want to come back, I want to help." Tifa pleads, "I should be able too, and after all, they were left with me- not you."
"Yeah but I stayed with them!" Cloud slurs, growing tired and bored of the conversation, "You're being melodramatic; you're being irritating; you're irritating me!"
Tifa hangs up the phone and chucks it at the wall; she stands up and throws some clothes in a bag then walks out of the bedroom into the path of cackling and easy going men. Reno doesn't stare up at her, a few others do. As she heads for the door the man keeps his mouth shut and she knows it's because he never really felt anything for her anyways- he'd much rather be with that other girl, the one who won't go out with him. They were just each other's second bests but now she's going back to get her number one- somewhere deep down she thinks settling might be a better idea.