It was a week and a half since Leon had punched Cloud. A week and a half, and Leon had been steering away from all social contact. He just wanted to get everything in his head and body sorted out without any distractions and without that damn blonde appearing and immediately messing up all his efforts.
After that week and a half, Leon felt he'd actually sorted everything out. 'Stopped it in it's tracks', as it were. After much debating and internal struggle, he finally set his gummi-ship down on Hollow Bastion and stepped out.
His heart was hammering in his chest like he was about to die. He was either going to meet Cloud, and all his work will either shatter and he'll make a homosexual ass out of himself, or it won't, and Cloud will just leave him alone because Leon is back to his normal self, or, he won't meet Cloud at all, and life will be good for a few more hours.
Sighing heavily, Leon grabbed his bag of possessions from the gummi-ship and slung it over his shoulder, walking slowly through the streets toward Merlin's house, his eyes snapping this way and that, looking for any sign of a messy head of golden hair.
He turned a corner and immediately ducked back again, his heart practically leaping out his chest.
"C'mon, Cloudie!" Yuffie chimed, hand in hand with Cloud, dragging him through the doorway of Merlin's house and toward the marketplace. Cloud let out a quiet, irritated sigh and allowed himself to be dragged along.
Pressing the back of his head against the stone wall behind him, Leon sighed, listening to Yuffie blabber on about something or other, a quiet, low mumble from the blonde following her excited squeal, before their voices became weak and indistinct as they went up the stairs to the marketplace, away from Leon. Thank God.
Sighing again, Leon glanced over his shoulder before walking into Merlin's house, to find Aerith sitting on one of the couches, nursing a cup of tea. As soon as he entered, she looked up, and a bright, warm smile spread across her face.
"Leon," she smiled sunnily, placing her tea on the table before her before her and walking over to him. "We missed you."
Nodding understandingly, Leon gave Aerith a small smile. "Yeah, Sorry about disappearing like that," he mumbled, shrugging, his bag still slung over his shoulder.
Aerith gave his hand a quick squeeze and gave him a once-over. "Well, at least you've taken good care of yourself," she nodded, taking in his clean clothes and appearance, moving forward and giving him a hug.
Patting her shoulder gently, Leon gave her another quick smile when she stepped back, letting him pass her and walk to his room. "Would you like something to drink?" Aerith called at his back, standing by the arch of the kitchen. Leon shook his head and told her 'no', just entering his room, closing the door behind him.
Dropping his bag of possessions on his bed, Leon slowly began to unpack. Okay, Cloud was off shopping with Yuffie, and she won't release him until she's done bugging him, so, Leon had half an hour; hour, tops, of time he won't have to worry about bumping into the blonde.
Leon put everything away, running a hand through his hair and letting his Gunblade hang from his hip. He might as well look around to see how the restoration went without him.
Turning, he exited Merlin's house with a wave to Aerith, who smiled warmly, and he walked for the restoration-site.
As he roamed around, he found that quite a lot had been done, even if he hadn't been there. Smiling, he felt proud of the Hollow Bastion Restoration Committee. He continued roaming around the restoration-site, admiring his people's work until he'd forgotten how long he'd spent there.
Finally feeling the tell-tale signs of hunger, Leon turned and started walking back to Merlin's house, feeling content, the sun high in the sky. He didn't even know why he'd ever left! Hollow Bastion was such a beautiful place.
Turning the corner to Merlin's house, stepping down the stairs connecting the bailey to the borough, Leon froze.
Cloud sat on the steps of Merlin's house, knees brought up, arms crossed on top of them, his chin placed on his crossed arms, eyes staring blankly in front of him as Yuffie sat beside him and tied a little pink bow into one of his spikes.
Ducking behind the wall that stopped people falling off the stairs, Leon watched silently from around the corner, heartbeat speeding exponentially. God, Cloud was beautiful.
Tying another ribbon in Cloud's hair, Yuffie giggled delightedly, waving a hand in front of the man's face and getting no reaction whatsoever. The brown-haired little ninja dug in her bag of tricks and got out some pink hair-clips. Looking up again, Yuffie saw something move out of the corner of her eye.
Tilting her head to the side and staring in the direction of the stairs to the bailey, Yuffie saw nothing, shrugged, and started clipping Cloud's pretty golden hair back.
Cloud; however unresponsive he was to her, had moved.
His bright blue eyes were fixed unwaveringly up, in the direction of the metal grates at the top of the stairs that connected the borough to the bailey.
Walking quickly through the restoration-site, Leon ran a hand through his hair and gulped. Okay, he had enough self-control to keep away from Cloud, not to talk to him, and to keep his homoerotic fantasies to himself. Good.
Leon turned a corner and heard a high-pitched, airy whistle, immediately halting in his steps, a slab of metal slamming into the wall, where his head would've been a second later, if he'd kept on walking.
He saw his slightly shocked reflection in front of him as he recognised the metal slab and snapped his head to the side, in the direction the sword had come. Before he could even blink, he felt a fist slam into his gut, and another one grab hold of the front of his shirt and smash his back against the wall, the Buster sword still impaled in the purplish stone, barely an arms-length away.
"Hello, there," came a breathy whisper in his ear. Leon had never heard something so damn provocative in his whole life.
Cloud's grip in the front of his shirt tightened, pressing Leon's back and shoulders against the wall, his knuckles digging into the brunette's clavicles, letting his other fist drop to his side from punching Leon in the gut.
"You've been avoiding me," the blonde accused.
"No I haven't," Leon replied stiffly, opening his eyes just in time to see Cloud's fist slam into his cheek, his head snapping away, pain shooting through his neck and jaw.
He let out a quiet grunt, slowly moving his head back into the proper position, a few absent pops sounding from his neck.
"This is how it's going to work;" Cloud stated flatly, his voice sharp and dominating, Leon shifting slightly against the wall and leaning his head back, finally opening his eyes, staring at the blonde through his eyelashes as his cheek started to bruise and his neck cracked back into position. "You tell the truth, I stop punching you."
"I was telling the truth," Leon said; a split second later Cloud's fist slamming into his cheek for the second time, snapping Leon's head to the side, a sharp CRACK shooting through the air.
Leon grimaced, not even attempting to move his head back into position. He guessed that at least three of his disks in his spine had been shoved out of line.
He felt a cool glass vial being forced into his mouth and his head being moved backwards despite his grunt of pain, an Elixir trickling down his throat, healing his bruised gut and cheek, the disks in his neck popping back into place.
Spitting the empty vial out of his mouth, letting it shatter on the stony ground and turning his head back to Cloud, Leon glared at the blonde.
"Either you keep lying, I keep punching you, healing you, then punching you again," said Cloud, his grip tightening on Leon's shirt, the brunette vaguely noticing that the bows and clips Yuffie had put into his hair were gone, "or, you tell the truth, and I won't punch you."
Letting in a deep breath, Leon vaguely thought he deserved to be beaten up because of all his sick thoughts about Cloud, but, the fact he was enjoying it was disconcerting. Shifting a little again, he tried to ignore the quickly-growing throb in his tight leather pants.
"Do your worst," Leon stated.
Cloud asked him why he left. He said it was because he felt like it. Cloud punched him. Cloud asked him why he had been trying to avoid him. Leon stated he hadn't. Cloud punched him. Cloud asked him why he was acting so weird. He said he wasn't. Cloud punched him. Cloud asked him why he left...
The conversation went around in circles, stopping every five or so minutes for Cloud to force an Elixir down Leon's throat, literally, and go back to his interrogation. Cloud wanted to know, and he knew Leon was lying. He could see it in those stormy eyes of his.
But, the thing that confused Cloud the most, was not why Leon left, or even why he was lying, but it was the fact that Leon wasn't even trying to block the punches. It was like he wanted to be hit.
Finally, the sun was only just touching the horizon, almost sunset; the interrogation had gone around in circles, Leon keeping with his basic answers, and Cloud never pulling a punch, occasionally healing the brunette so he wouldn't pass out and force the blonde to stop his questions.
Finally, Leon thought it was basically useless to keep lying. He decided, reluctantly, to answer one of the questions truthfully. Spitting out another glass vial, Leon sighed.
"Why did you leave?" Cloud demanded, flexing his hand, his knuckles bruised under his leather glove, staring fixedly into Leon's eyes.
Slowly, oh so slowly, Leon's eyes floated away from Cloud and down to the ground. He mumbled something, and Cloud blinked.
"Excuse me?" the blonde prompted,
"I said, I had a dream about you..."
Cloud paused, before letting out a quiet snort of amusement. "Well," he smirked. "That certainly merits being a stuck-up little turd for three and a half weeks, doesn't it?"
Leon refused to spell it out for Cloud. He downright refused.
The brunette just glared icily at the blonde, who was still smirking. This is it, thought Leon. Cloud was supposedly not a 'dumb blonde', and it was all up to him to prove it.
It took all of four seconds for something to click in Cloud's head –putting Leon's apparent 'dream', the very slight pink flush that-was-definitely-not-bruising on Leon's cheeks, together–, and his eyebrows steadily rose before they disappeared underneath his spiky fringe, his eyes widened a fraction more than they usually did.
"Oh." Stated the articulate Cloud Strife.
"Yes." snarled Leon. "'Oh'."
Cloud blinked, face blank. "Oh," he repeated.
((TBC. He knows now! I have this thing for violent pairings at the moment, so, at writing Cloud punching the shit out of Leon, I was grinning all the way through it. Next chapter; Let Me Kiss You. Read, enjoy, and review if you feel like it!))