Chapter Text
After the kids kept retreating from Sephiroth at the table, Cloud sighed and wedged the huge General all the way into the booth then took the spot right next to him, glaring at his subordinates until they took the spots across and to his right.
Even with some space Gianni, across from Sephiroth and getting the full weight of his stare, was slowly sinking below the table top. It wasn’t a far trip considering he was starting with the advantage of being pretty short to start with. Cloud leaned into Sephiroth pointedly until the taller man broke his assessing gaze and looked down at Cloud instead, a considering expression on his face at their closeness.
The tension broke as happy restaurant staff brought out the steaming, family style platters and plates. The youngsters kept sneaking looks at Sephiroth, most of them going pale and sweating every time they did.
Cloud cleared his throat pointedly and they started to take (much smaller than usual) portions of their favorite dishes. Clearing out the train yards was fairly standard now, so none of these dishes were new.
Sephiroth looked over the plates interestedly, his slit pupils widening almost to ovals as he inhaled the smells. Cloud really loved when hey did that.
Cloud grabbed a dish. “Here, I’ll make up a plate for you- this one is good on top of this one, see, like this… and here’s some bread to sop up the stew- yeah, this one’s better with the dark bread. And the white bread is good with this other meat on top, since it’s sweeter.”
He piled some of the meat dripping in sauces up on the flaky crust white bread just like he preferred to demonstrate and offered it to Sephiroth.
Instead of taking it with his hand, though, the silver haired man leaned down and took a bite right from Cloud’s hand.
Cloud felt heat rush up his neck and into his cheeks as well as rushing south. Oh… well… he swallowed slowly. That was apparently a kink he had somehow managed to avoid discovering. Kind of impressive, really, right? Not even in so many loops he’d lost track... He realized he was staring at Sephiroth’s pink tongue as it chased a drop of sauce that had escaped. “Gungnir stab me in the kidney…” Cloud choked out.
“Hmm? Something wrong, Cloud?” Sephiroth purred.
Cloud made a strangled noise and slid the plate in front of the other man to try to encourage him to feed himself. Otherwise he was going to have his most embarrassing Sephiroth induced death yet- he hadn’t thought it was possible to top being murdered in a ripped silky dress but there you go...
Sephiroth lifted his right arm over the back of the booth behind Cloud and leaned into him. “No more recommendations, Cloud?” Sephiroth’s expression looked perfectly innocent- but considering the man usually looked blank that was very suspicious.
Cloud cleared his throat. “Don’t you need that arm to eat?”
“I’m left handed.” Sephiroth said.
“Mmmhmm.” Cloud said helplessly, melting into the leather coated side despite himself.
“And you said I could have as many hugs as I wanted- any time I wanted.”
“I did say that.” Cloud agreed.
“I think we can eat and sit like this at the same time, no? It actually saves space so your disciples have more room to get away from the big, bad General.” Sephiroth noted.
Said disciples jumped guiltily before taking suspiciously large bites or drinks to avoid getting roped into the conversation.
“That’s very thoughtful of you.” Cloud said wryly.
“Hmm.” Sephiroth agreed, before taking a bite of the darker bread with the blugu meat on top. He closed his eyes and chewed thoughtfully before making a soft humming noise.
“Good, right?” Cloud asked excitedly.
“Yes. Very good.” Sephiroth said as he opened his eyes and caught Cloud’s gaze.
And held it. For a lot longer than Cloud thought was really warranted- it was good, sure, but not like… several minutes of intense eye contact good.
What were they doing again?
“Thank you for including me, Cloud.” Sephiroth said softly.
“Always.” Cloud squeaked. “Of course.”
“So I would be welcome again?” Sephiroth asked, strangely hesitant.
The kids made choking noises but Cloud ignored them.
“I’m sure all these younglings, in desperate need of tutoring, would be very willing to have the most powerful man on the Planet give them tips and mentoring.” Cloud said pointedly and loudly as he side eyed his proteges.
“Isn’t that you, Cloud?” Sephiroth asked with a gleam in his eyes (metaphorical- he wasn’t actually glowing at the moment).
Cloud rolled his eyes. “Ok, fine. The two most powerful men tutoring them.”
Sephiroth huffed out a laugh. “I am happy to trade some tips for such delicious compensation in such pleasant company.”
Cloud felt his lips stretch in a pleased smile then slide back to neutral as Sephiroth held their gazes locked. He had really been doing that a lot lately… very strange.
Without looking at his plate Sephiroth picked up another morsel and ate it. Really slowly. Eyes still on Cloud’s face. Not like his usual laser beam focus like in battle, though, softer somehow.
Finally Cloud ducked his head and took a large bite from his own plate, his face warm for some reason. He glanced up at his proteges, frowning at their appalled (Romeo), sly (Trace, Nasir and Aiden), surprised (Jarod) and complicated (everyone else but Kobe, who was eating and not interested in the drama). They all hurriedly went back to their meals, though Trace broke out his (her) phone and was texting suspiciously quickly.
“I’m glad your students look up to you so diligently.” Sephiroth said in that false-innocent sort of tone again. Cloud almost called him on it, but the other’s fingers started to glide along the back of his neck. He almost inhaled his gorkii meat in surprise- almost as much from the fact it wasn’t a pre-lethal grip as his touching him there at all.
“Yes.” Cloud cleared his throat. “Definitely.”
Someone snickered but Cloud was too distracted to catch who.
OOooOOOoOooo
“Reno!”
The Turk jumped at someone suddenly calling his name. He blinked and turned slowly- the voice had hailed him familiarly, like they knew him, but he didn’t recognize them. The short-ish man with a huge sword and a chocobo-butt head wasn’t someone he’d met, either, but he wasn’t a Turk for his good looks or charming personality. Well, not only because of his good looks and charming personality.
So of course Reno could recognize the number one confounder for all of Shinra trotting towards him. The question was why the stronger-than-a-SOLDIER, for some reason rocket obsessed crazy person was approaching him.
“Erm, hello.” Reno said tentatively. “Cloud, isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes.” Cloud came up beside Reno and clapped him on his shoulder. Fortunately not with his full strength as Reno only took a half step instead of being batted through the wall. “I have a favor to ask.”
“Yeah?” Reno said cautiously. He certainly should take this opportunity to get some more info- such as what ‘Shinra always falls’ or ‘damn, is this the cause of Geostigma’ might mean. Crazy mutterings or possibly signs of foresight? The Turks had several betting pools, got into fights almost daily, and Reno would get massive cred and hopefully a bonus to settle any of the many items of interest…
“I need your sex ed materials.”
Reno blinked. Of all the possible requests, that hadn’t even been one he’d considered. “Er… I think you might have me confused with someone…”
“No, no- I know you have it. The one with all the notes on the Shinra basic HR orientation. About consent stuff, that the Science Department doesn’t count as ethical BDSM, how to communicate effectively in polyamory and…”
Reno slapped his hand over the blond’s mouth, then regretted it and hoped he wouldn’t die for attacking someone with battle instincts that could take out Sephiroth. Fortunately the other just smiled, plucked Reno by the wrist and pulled his hand off his mouth.
“So you do know what I am talking about?”
“Those aren’t notes.” Reno hissed. “Those are what I wrote in the margins to avoid falling asleep in that terrible, vanilla, gas-lighting joke of a brief.”
“I dunno, that sounds like notes to me.”
Reno groaned. “Don’t get me fired, man- I’m actually good at this job.”
“I need them for something.” Cloud said. Overly vaguely.
Reno gave him an unimpressed look. “What, to give Sephiroth the Wind Wing and the Zuu talk?” He asked sarcastically.
Cloud’s face got a strange combination of pale and flushed and he broke eye contact.
“WHAT!?!”
“Shhh!” Cloud hissed. “Listen- he’s only ever had the Shinra one, sort of, maybe… and he was essentially raised by Hojo so I would like to refer back to the ‘Science Department is not ethical BDSM’ point. And… um… I just don’t think we’d be er… healthy you know, like emotionally… if that’s possible. Because of all the…” Cloud gestured vaguely. Fortunately not in a way that meant a sex thing, more like the ‘everything is messed up what can you do’ sort of way.
Not that Reno was generally opposed to sex things (obviously) but maybe he was a little bit opposed when it involved a complete nutjob and a usually uninterested stab-happy superior.
“Right.” Reno said, that word putting in a lot of mileage and he wasn’t even sure which of the interpretations he meant. “I want something in return.”
“Obviously.” Cloud nodded in agreement.
Reno eyed him warily. His eyes flicked up to the closest camera before he pulled Cloud out of range of the speaker. He wanted to get credit for whatever nonsense came out of Cloud’s mouth next. He wasn’t an idiot, though, so he pinched his cuff link to activate his personal recorder. “What do you mean by ‘Shinra is destined to fail’?”
Cloud blinked at him. “Did I say that?”
“You mutter it a lot.” Reno confirmed.
“Huh.” Cloud scratched the back of his head sheepishly. “Well, sure. See- the ‘Promised Land’ is really the Lifestream, which is just where you go when you die. Sort of. For the Cetra they maintain much more of their sentience, though, so for them they don’t die like the rest of us. Like, they die, but um… anyway, not important as that hardly applies.” Reno leaned so heavily on his training at staying impassive he felt his brain start creaking. But he kept his lips zipped you better believe it.
Cloud continued. “But mako messes with the Lifestream and poisons the land. And SOLDIERS of course will eventually get Degredation. Or Geostigma, maybe- but I don’t know if there’s a super direct correlation there. Anyway- all that is actually too long term. Shinra will inevitably fail because it is based on imperialism and exponential growth. Obviously since they’ve basically run out of new areas to exploit they will collapse from over consolidation of power and wealth to an unsustainable degree.”
Reno squinted at Cloud. That did not clear anything up at all and was going to spawn at least four more betting pools.
Cloud blinked at him innocently.
“I’ll get that packet for you.” Reno said finally in defeat.
OoOoOooOOOO
Packet secured in his room, Cloud waited for Sephiroth to find him again. He assumed with the handsiness that it would be fairly soon, but he didn’t see a single silver hair for the rest of the day.
Well, that was alright- he had a lot of paperwork to do to get the rocket project moving along. They were getting so close! Romeo was a rocket genius or… whatever that was called. Getting the kid in on the older work had led to identifying thirty seven separate incidents of sabotage of data, equations, fuel ratios… he was all over it and fixing it.
And the paperwork/Materia practice was having potentially awesome and definitely hilarious side effects. Like Kobe’s limit break of ‘No Bullshit’ which basically reverted sabotaged documents to their original version… talk about changing the world. Who needs super soldiers when they can have version control.
Cloud didn’t think much of the missing General- the man did have responsibilities, missions, training. Plus rockets were almost as interesting as battle and something new besides. His cute little minions were so close to fixing the JENOVA problem. With science! He could almost see how Hojo and Hollander had… yeah, no, never mind. Once you cross the line of torturing sentients Cloud lost sympathy.
Anyway! The initial thrust problem was so much easier if they leveraged Sephiroth’s unfair floating ability and Cloud’s and his sword thrust (hah- rocket thrust, but with swords!) getting the initial velocity.
They just needed some specifics on what the actual ‘package’ was, which meant Cloud would probably have to go talk to Jenova. And steal her. And maybe her cells? How much of her consciousness was decentralized? Could she pull it all into a small packet? Or… maybe it needed to be just some high percent of the cells or… would leaving cells on the Planet cause issues still? He sure hoped not since he wanted to keep Sephiroth not launch him into space.
Wait.
Cloud replayed that last sentence in his head. Possibly aloud based on his conversation with Reno. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to launch all the Jenova cells into… he couldn't even finish that thought before something fundamental in his person violently rejected it.
Oh.
Cloud was rubbing his face and having an existential crisis when Genesis kicked in his office door.
“Cloud! You need to come right now!”
“I… what?” Cloud was slower on the uptake than usual after his revelation.
“Sephiroth broke out of the Science Department and he’s been grabbing people- we’ve got six cases of mako poisoning already and he might start stabbing…”
Cloud leapt over his desk and Genesis cut himself off to spin on his heel and start running. Cloud followed.
“Does he have his sword?” Cloud asked urgently.
“No, thank the Goddess.” Genesis looked worried. “He gave it to Angeal when Hojo came for him and Angeal put it in his office.”
“Ok, that’s good.” Cloud started running scenarios in his head- damn. He was going to split Hojo’s skull with the Cure blade next time he saw him and see if that healed the fanatic’s broken ass brain, he swore to Odin.
The two of them skid around a corner and there he was- in the middle of a ring empty of people (tense around him) and chairs (flung to the corners of the lounge).
“Oh, Sephiroth…” Cloud said sadly.
Sephiroth’s eyes shot to Cloud, glowing intensely and pupils such tiny slits they were almost invisible. He was in his usual leather outfit, but his clothes and entire body were covered in thick, effervescing mako. His skin was so pale that either the exposure or the light radiating around him made him look sickly lime green. He was hunched over, a SOLDIER Second held to his chest with one arm.
“Hey, let him go, ok?” Cloud said, holding his hands out soothingly as he approached slowly. “Why don’t you come with me? It’ll be alright. I won’t let anyone hurt you, ok?”
Sephiroth dropped the Second unceremoniously and stumbled towards Cloud. Another SOLDIER grabbed him and pulled the groaning man over to what looked like an already fairly busy decontamination tent.
“That’s right.” Cloud cooed to Sephiroth. “Just come over here.”
“Where… where am I?” Sephiroth’s voice was gravelly and utterly unlike his usual smooth baritone.
“You’re with me.” Cloud said as he reached the man and held onto his elbows, steadying him. Cloud did a quick visual and there didn’t seem to be anything life threatening. Just rage inducing tubing sticking out of he neck and bleeding sluggishly. “I got you.”
“Cloud?” Sephiroth asked, his voice faint.
“That’s right.” Cloud reached up and grabbed the tubing. “This might sting a bit but I’m trying to make you feel better, ok?”
“I…” Sephiroth blinked. The first time he had since Cloud arrived actually. Dammit. “Yes.”
“Ok, great- you’re doing great.” Cloud said as he yanked the tube out then pressed his hand to Sephiroth’s neck to stop the bleeding. As pumped up with mako as the other was, it only took a few seconds.
“Please…” Sepiroth said.
Cloud didn’t know exactly what he wanted but he was pretty sure what he needed. “Keep people out of the path to his rooms.” Cloud ordered Genesis, who nodded in agreement before starting to bark orders at the various SOLDIERS and Shinra employees tense on the periphery of the lounge.
“We’re going to get you cleaned up, ok?” Cloud said. And himself, too. Damn- he’d really been trying to avoid mako poisoning on his vacation. So much for that! Thankfully he wasn’t like in his first loop… er, life. His tolerance was much higher. But the edges of his consciousness were definitely starting to fuzz.
Sephiroth collapsed on top of him.