Notes - i forgot why i stopped writing about cloud and tifa. the mountain of angst they have building for each other has so much potential. i always like the schematics of their relationship more than any other ones in the game. anyway, a bit rusty here, so sorry about that. also posted at my livejournal, but uploaded it here for its timestamp in case of future plagiarism (which is partly the reason why i left fandom in the first place).

counting pulses
a romantic egoist

• •

a pale september looms beyond the dusk, darkness falling with glittering stars and a paper moon against a luminescent sky, brightly lit by the street lamps and lights that flicker in small houses that dot the city. the clouds move slowly, tendrils folding, condensation building – tufts of silver that rumble and shudder like butterfly wings. the rain falls softly, quietly, whispering against the misted windows.

with honeyed breath and blue veins, he unravels himself for her, lifting the shirt over his head and dropping it to the floor. he hovers on top of her, knees straddling her waist, and she can't see anything. she marvels at the space between them – the space that stops them. her fingers graze the cool metal of his necklace, and it seems easier to touch every part of him except his entire self – as if the skin might burn her, that he could be a silhouetted phantom, that she could be dreaming this.

and he waits. her fingers move of their own accord, tracing the outline of his shoulders and the sharp lines of his collarbones and his chest where his heart resides and beats chaotically red beneath his snowskin. she reaches up and holds his face between her palms and pulls him down, arms curving around his back and touches her lips to his forehead, his cheek, breathing against his skin – breathing the ghost away from him.

the heat lingers, he tenses, spine straight and muscles taut like his skin is slowly melting away from her blue wind-kisses that never seem to touch him. for a lingering minute, they're starchildren again, waiting by the well, opalescent eyes with the breath of july.

he could give up flowers and grace for this. everything for this. only this.

i'm home.