Title: Dimly Lit Author/Artist: shiegra Fandom: Final Fantasy VII Pairing: Cloud/Tifa Rating: R to NC-17 to be safe. Warnings: Recipient: eleanor_pam A/N: I'm...very worried about the characterization in this, but I hope it worked in the interactions. Also, the first fifteen few drafts of this had no resemblance to it whatsoever. Just goes to show what a deadline will do for your creativity.
If she hadn’t talked to him beforehand, Cloud would never have been able to tell Tifa didn’t want to be here.
The artfully ambianced lights of the big room illuminated the rich and the on display, some celebrities, many businessmen, and of course the requisite; a few resident heroes, with the oh-so-appreciative gathering around them.
She was wearing a wine-deep dress that followed the lines of her body like a loving hand, cupping breasts and hips and draping over the long line of her arm, baring the graceful curve of her back. There was a wineglass in her hand, and she was laughing with her head tipped back, diamond earrings sparkling in her ears. Too much skin shown to the many eyes on her; Cloud pressed back into the shadows and only partly out of tedium noted with a dark frown all the gazes that lingered longer than was strictly decorous.
Tucked into the corner watching her speak to man after man and the occasional woman who ventured to impose on her, Cloud had to remember the cynicism with which she’d spoken of the event only that evening. “Fair weather allies,” she had said, her voice low and taut with discontent, modeling the earrings in the mirror with a dispassionate gaze. “They don’t really care that we saved the world, or that Shinra was destroying it in the first place.”
“Then why go?” He had been standing in the doorway, and the pale bared curve of her neck made his fingers curl against his thigh with the urge to touch.
She’d dropped her hands, letting hair spill over her shoulders like dark silk, and turned with a shrug. “Reeve asked me to.” She said practically. “And it won’t kill me.”
They were all over her, of course. Cloud watched them and had to remember Tifa in blood and sweat, hands on his arms as she hauled him to safety or leapt beside him into a fight like a tiger uncoiling with predatory eagerness. There was a warmth to her then, even in desperate straits, that he missed in the bleakness of her smile here and he didn’t like it.
Too much practice made it easy for him to skirt through the shadows and around the edge of the wall to reach her. Her eyes widened fractionally when she saw him over her current would-be-beau’s shoulder, and then she smiled faintly.
He took her elbow, the public touch still a little tentative, and tugged at her, murmuring her name. The smile growing, Tifa nodded to the unspoken question and followed him as he started away from the too-bright lights and intrusive eyes.
“Hey, I was speaking to the lady.” The young man said loudly, with an edge to his face granted by the arrogance of the affluent and the spoiled.
It made muscles tense in Cloud’s shoulders and he looked back at him, irritation rising. Something in his face—the flash of his eyes, maybe, or the sharply displeased slant of his mouth—made the man take a step back. Good. Cloud didn’t have time for him, though he might have spared some if his nose had been any closer to her cleavage.
Tifa put a hand on his face and stood on tiptoe, kissing the corner of his mouth. “Didn’t you come to rescue me?” She whispered, voice full of laughter. “Don’t get distracted.”
“Yeah.” He murmured, pulling her after him towards one of the smaller halls. He was distracted; by the scent of her hair, shampoo that smelled like some hot, tropical fruit, and the hint of subtle perfume she’d dabbed at her earlobes.
They ducked into the shadows, moving past anonymous doors until the sounds of aristocratic revelry were muffled. “We can go home.” He told her, and at this point, as much frustration as she was showing, he was definitely willing to take steps to convince her.
“No, I said I’d stay for a whole hour.” She insisted stubbornly.
Blowing out an exasperated sigh, he shook his head. “I don’t really know why you bother with them.”
Tifa touched his mouth with her fingers. “So that you don’t have too, obviously.” She shot back with a cheeky smile, and kissed him.
It was probably meant to be brief, and relatively chaste, but like always it shifted; he pulled her closer, deepening it until she was moving restlessly against him, moaning into his mouth and digging her fingers into his shoulders. Now that he actually got to touch her it was hard to stop, her body warm and responsive and insistent in his hands.
She broke away long enough to gasp. “We’re in a hallway—”
“Live dangerously.” He whispered against her mouth, felt her smile and spread her hands against his chest—warrior strong thighs at his hips, her body undulating against his like a wave, irresistible.
When he slid fingers up her thigh and touched lace—making him smile against her mouth—it was wet, drawing a shudder down his spine. “What…?”
She laughed, low and purring in the dim hall. “I got—ah!—bored.” Her hands tangled in his hair, tightened as she choked out a cry, back arching, when he slid his fingers deeper and into the sleek heated clasp of her body. She was a responsive lover, and he was drowning in her, trailing his mouth down her throat even as he thought vaguely that they’d better be quiet or they would get caught. Her voice was a low, velvet rasp. “While they talked at me, I thought of you.”
On second thought, he doubted Reeve would ask her social favors like this one if that happened. He smiled against her neck, pressed a heated, open mouthed kiss and then sucked hard enough that she would be bruised, the mark emblazoned on flesh generously bared by that dress that had so irritated him.
She slipped a hand down to grip him. His strength had been enough to hold her up but he was afraid his own legs would go out so Cloud stumbled forward, smacking her back into the wall. They shifted together in a moment of heated gasps and fumbling and urgency that was familiar and sweet enough to be half-laughing.
And then he slid inside, sweeter than any homecoming he’d ever had, and her laugh choked off into a musical cry as she bucked against him, her arms locking tightly around his ribs to press them close together. So close they were breathing each other in, and she buried her face in his shoulders and pressed a bruising kiss there, marking him in turn.
He moved—no, they moved together, honed to each other’s reactions, her strength and his, her lovely slender hands that could take him apart almost bruising on his forearms, his fingers digging into her hips. She threw back her head when he thrust sharply into her, her legs locked around him trembling with the force and as she clamped down on him, slick and rippling, he made two more ragged, uncontrolled thrusts and followed her, climaxing with a ragged cry of pleasure.
It took them moments just to let go of each other, and she slid down the wall, almost swaying on her feet. Cloud would have been smug—he couldn’t have said that his smile wasn’t—but he wasn’t all that more steady, even as they fixed their clothing and especially when she gave him a glorious, heated smile.
All the chill and distance in her gaze had vanished. “I don’t mind if we stay a little longer now.” He said, his eyes lingering on the mark on her neck. Tifa frowned faintly and raised her hand to touch it, and then gave him a look of unwilling amusement.
“A little more.” She said primly, dropping her hands to adjust the fall of her skirt. “Then we’ll go. You’ll give me a ride home, I assume?”
He drew in a slow, deep breath. “The dress will be ruined.”
She was walking down the hall back towards the lights already, and her reply drifted back to him over one shoulder. “Let it.”