Title: Expectations: Cloud
Prompt: Evil plot bunnies jumping around in my brain
Posted: 10-Jan-2009
Disclaimer: I have a job that doesn't include working for Square Enix, and this isn't helping me quit.
Pairings: Cloud/Tifa
Rating: PG
Summary: They're trying to do better, why isn't it enough?
Warnings: A little violence, a little swearing and blunt talk about sex.

Cloud

He just didn't get it.

He was doing everything they expected of him and it still wasn't enough. He didn't understand what he was doing wrong.

He answered his PHS now... most of the time.

Yuffie phoned every day but she usually didn't have anything important to say. He and Cid and Vincent had agreed that it wasn't rational to expect them to answer every time she called so they'd established a schedule. Cloud talked to her on the first day, Vincent took the second, and Cid answered on day three. Day four they all took off and ignored her.

Vincent usually only called when it was a planet-destroying emergency so Cloud always answered his calls. Cid called mostly about work related stuff but occasionally to talk about his newest airship. He didn't mind listening to the guy talk about engines and speed. The pilot often had ideas on how to make a better engine for Fenrir. He could live with Cid phoning him.

Barret though... Barret called mostly to brag about his latest find and how much money he'd be making soon, very soon. Although soon was never as quick as Cloud thought it should be, so Marlene was still staying with Tifa with just flying visits from her adoptive father. And when he did show up, the miner was loud, foul-mouthed and spoiling for a fight. He was like that on the phone too. Cloud sometimes answered Barret's calls.

He answered when Reeve phoned, even though the man liked to talk almost as much as Yuffie. The head of the WRO usually had work for him along with whatever gossip he felt the need to share. Sometimes it was deliveries, but sometimes there had been monster sightings along the road or close to a town, and he'd ask the blond swordsman to go out and investigate. Investigate and eliminate if necessary.

Those were the best calls.

Cloud would race out to wherever, pull out Tsuguri, and do what he did best against zoloms, marlboros, cactuars, dragons and wolves. Anything Gaia had put on the earth that could eat people, Cloud had fought it. He sometimes thought it was like a dance, speed, rhythm, footing, balance, and strength, all combined into a flow of motion that brought him truly alive.

He'd always thought he hated fighting but he'd realized, during the fight with the Remnants, that he actually loved it, loved the rush of adrenaline that heightened all his senses. He saw farther, moved faster, heard clearer. When he focussed on the creature in front of him everything was sharp and simple. At the end of the battle he'd be flushed and panting. He'd feel the blood rushing through his veins. It was like he could float or jump mountains, and he wanted to grin and laugh and shout from the joy of it.

Not like anything else in his life.

He'd moved in with Tifa like everyone had expected. Not just having a room above the bar either, but sharing her life, the routine of it. He cleaned the gutters and washed the dishes. He helped to look after the kids and tried to pretend they were a normal family. He didn't really know what a normal family was but he was trying. It just wasn't good enough.

Tifa would look at him. That look that said he'd done something wrong again, but she never told him what it was, or she did but it didn't make any sense.

Like when she'd asked him what colour to paint the halls. Not green and not white, he'd said. The labs in Nibelheim had been green and white. According to Tifa he hadn't been specific enough but it had answered her question. Just not the way she'd wanted.

He hadn't appreciated Marlene's picture enough, she'd say.

Well, no, probably not but that's because it looked like she'd used her toes to make a jumbled mess of crayon streaks in every conceivable colour. It's not like he'd say anything unkind when Marlene showed him another one of her 'paintings'. All he'd say was it was colourful.

It should have been good enough but it wasn't.

She expected him to help Denzel go through puberty because he knew about guy stuff, she said.

Help him how? He couldn't teach the kid how to shave. He couldn't remember ever having to shave, and even if there had been a time when he'd had facial hair that had ended in Nibelheim. He couldn't make growing pains go away or stop the kid's voice from cracking. But she'd looked at him so he'd tried to remember something, anything about his teen years and he had. He remembered thinking about sex all the time, walking around half the day with an erection, and jacking off most every night. He also remembered that all the boys in the barracks had done the same thing.

Since it was a good bet Denzel was similar to all those other boys he'd taken the kid aside and told him about sex and condoms and why masturbation was better than getting someone pregnant or catching a disease. Then he'd bought the kid some oil, so he wouldn't give himself friction burns, and a book, so he could get some ideas about what he liked. Stuff he could've used when he was Denzel's age.

When Tifa found them she'd stomped through the bar shouting Cloud's name and fucking hit him.

He didn't understand. He'd done what she'd asked but somehow it wasn't right.

Then there was his actual relationship with Tifa. It should be better than it was, he knew that, but it was something else he just didn't know how to fix. He didn't talk much, he never had, but he responded when she talked to him. They shared a bed and they fucked whenever she wanted to. He always made sure she got off first, too. He didn't know much about sex but he knew that. He let her do whatever she wanted with his body. If she wanted to be on top, or on the bottom, or even on their fucking sides he did it, after all, he didn't care what position they used.

He thought she'd be happy that he went along with what she wanted but she wasn't.

He wasn't putting enough into the relationship. He didn't communicate. He left her feeling empty.

What the fuck?

Yuffie and Shelke, even Barret, certainly agreed with Tifa. They'd go on and on about how he wasn't treating her with respect; how he wasn't contributing enough to the relationship. He'd even overheard a few comments from Shera and Reeve, all about how he should be doing better than this.

He was doing what they wanted. Why couldn't they be happy?