Chapter 2: Moonlit Petals and First Touch
The world was his breath against her neck, the heavy, real weight of him, the thunder of two heartbeats slowing into one quiet rhythm. The air in the church was cool, but their skin was fever-warm where they touched, a map of damp points and gentle pressures.
Cloud’s face was buried in the curve where her shoulder met her neck. His breathing was a ragged, open-mouthed thing against her skin. Aerith held him, her fingers threaded through his hair, feeling the tremors that still coursed through his back. Petals stuck to his sweat-slicked skin, tiny spots of color on the pale canvas of him.
He made a sound—a low, broken murmur that vibrated through her chest. It was her name. It was an apology. It was a thank you.
“Shhh,” she whispered, her own voice hoarse. She pressed her lips to his temple. “It’s okay. We’re okay.”
He finally lifted his head. In the moonlight, his eyes were glassy, wide with a vulnerability that made her heart clench. He looked wrecked. Beautifully, utterly wrecked. A strand of her hair was stuck to his cheek. She gently brushed it away, her thumb tracing the line of his scar.
“I…” he started, but the words vanished. He just stared at her, his gaze searching her face as if confirming she was real, that this was real.
“I know,” she said again, answering the question he couldn’t form. She smiled, a soft, wobbly thing. “Me too.”
He shifted, withdrawing from her body with a careful, almost painful slowness that made her gasp softly. He immediately froze, his eyes full of concern. “Did I—?”
“No,” she breathed, pulling him back down to her. “No, you were perfect.” She kissed him, a slow, languid kiss that tasted of salt and something profoundly sweet. “Just… stay close.”
He settled beside her on the bed of their discarded clothes, pulling her against him so her back was to his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, his chin resting on her head. They lay like that, listening to the night. The distant, ever-present hum of the plate above. The drip of water. The sigh of the flowers.
Her body thrummed with a deep, satisfying ache. It was a good ache. A real one. It anchored her to this moment, to him. She wove her fingers through his where they rested against her stomach.
“Your heart is still going crazy,” she murmured.
She felt him huff a quiet, embarrassed laugh against her hair. “Can’t help it.”
A comfortable silence stretched. It was different from any silence they’d shared before. It was full, porous, humming with the echoes of what they’d just given each other.
“We’re a mess,” Aerith said eventually, a giggle bubbling up as she plucked a white petal from his forearm.
“Hmm.”
“I mean, look at us. Covered in dirt and… well.” She gestured vaguely at themselves.
“Worth it,” he mumbled, his voice already thick with approaching sleep.
She squeezed his hand. “Yeah.” She paused. “My hair is full of soil.”
“Mmm. Mine’s probably full of flowers.”
“Good. It’ll make you smell nice for once.” She grinned when his arms tightened around her in a mock protest.
They lay there, talking in soft, disjointed fragments as the moon climbed higher. He told her, in his short, clipped way, about the feeling of the train ride—the terrifying moment he decided not to care who saw, to just hold her. She told him about the seeds they’d planted, what she hoped they would be. He listened. Really listened.
After a while, the cool air began to bite. Cloud sat up. “You’re getting cold.”
“A little.”
Without a word, he gathered her up, lifting her as easily as he had the bag of potting soil. She yelped, then laughed, clinging to his neck as he carried her past the flower beds to the small, curtained-off area that served as her living space. It was just a cot, a shelf, and a washbasin. He set her down on the cot and turned to the basin, wetting a clean cloth.
He came back and knelt before her. The sight of him—naked, solemn, holding a damp cloth in the dim light—was so disarmingly tender she felt tears prick her eyes again.
“Here,” he said, his voice gruff.
He started with her face, wiping away the traces of earth and sweat with a focused, gentle precision. He cleaned her throat, her shoulders, the valley between her breasts. His touch was clinical yet reverent. She watched his face, the way his brows knitted in concentration, the soft part of his lips.
“My turn,” she said softly when he was done. She took the cloth, rinsed it, and began on him. She washed the petals from his skin, the dirt from his hands. She cleaned the long, thin scar on his ribs, the older, rougher one on his bicep. He sat perfectly still, his eyes closed, his breath steadying under her ministrations.
When they were clean, he pulled a thin blanket from the cot and wrapped it around them both, lying down beside her. The cot was narrow, forcing them to curl together. It was better that way.
“Cloud?” she whispered into the dark.
“Yeah?”
“What happens tomorrow?”
He was silent for a long time. She could almost hear him thinking, the old walls trying to reassert themselves. Then his arm tightened around her.
“Tomorrow,” he said, his voice a low rumble in his chest against her ear, “you’ll probably ask me to move some heavy planter or something. And I’ll say I’m a mercenary, not a mover. And you’ll give me that look.”
“What look?” she teased.
“The ‘for me?’ look.” He sighed, a dramatic, put-upon sound that was entirely fake. “And I’ll do it.”
She laughed, snuggling closer. “That sounds about right.”
“And then maybe…” He hesitated. “Maybe we see if those seeds have sprouted.”
The simple hope in his words filled her chest with a light, expansive warmth. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”
Sleep pulled at them. Their legs were tangled, her head was a perfect weight on his arm, his breath was a steady metronome in her hair. Just before she slipped away, she felt his lips brush the crown of her head.
“Aerith?”
“Mmm?”
“On the train…” he whispered, the words slurred with exhaustion. “That was the first time I wasn’t lonely.”
The confession hung in the dark, more intimate than anything their bodies had done. She couldn’t find words big enough to answer it. So she just turned her head and kissed the skin over his heart, a silent promise against the steady, living beat.
When she awoke, the church was bathed in the familiar gold of morning. She was alone on the cot, but the blanket was still tucked carefully around her. For a single, heart-stopping second, she feared it had all been a dream. Then she saw his pants and boots by the door, his harness and sword still lying where they’d fallen in the flowers.
And she smelled eggs.
Sitting up, she wrapped the blanket around herself and peeked around the curtain. Cloud stood by a small hotplate she rarely used, his back to her. He was wearing only his pants, his hair defiantly spiky even after sleep. He was focused intently on a pan, using her small, bent spatula to push something around.
She padded over, the stone floor cool under her feet. She rested her cheek against the bare skin of his back, between his shoulder blades. He tensed for a second, then relaxed into her touch.
“You’re cooking.”
“Trying,” he grunted. “You don’t have much. Some eggs. A weird green thing.”
“That’s a pepper,” she laughed.
“It’s green.”
She peered around him. The eggs were a bit overdone, the pepper chopped into uneven chunks. It looked like the most beautiful meal she’d ever seen.
“It’s perfect,” she said.
He shrugged, but a faint pink tinged the tips of his ears. He divided the food onto two chipped plates. They ate sitting on the edge of the flower bed, shoulders touching, using the same fork because she only had one. The eggs were a little salty. She didn’t mention it.
“So,” he said, after scraping his plate clean. “Heavy planter?”
She grinned, bouncing up. “Later. First, we check on the promises.”
She took his hand, leading him to the patch of earth they’d worked the day before. The wilted lily stood a little taller, its leaves less pale. And in the small, neat divots where he had placed the seeds…
Tiny, almost impossibly fragile green tendrils had broken through the soil, curling towards the light. Two delicate leaves on each, no bigger than her pinky nail.
Cloud knelt down beside her, his expression one of pure, unguarded wonder. He reached out a finger, stopping just short of touching the newborn sprout.
“They grew,” he whispered.
“They did,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder. “Told you they were promises.”
He looked from the sprout to her, his blue eyes clear and quiet in the morning light. There were no grand declarations. No sweeping vows. Just a man, a woman, and a tiny green hope pushing its way through the dark earth.
He leaned in and kissed her, soft and lingering, tasting of eggs and pepper and a future quietly taking root.
“For you,” he murmured against her lips, the words not a question, but an answer.
“For you,” he murmured against her lips, the words not a question, but an answer.
The sound of it, that gravel-soft certainty, unraveled the last quiet knot in her chest. She kissed him back, her hands framing his face, holding him there in the morning light. When they parted, his breath was warm on her cheek. He looked at the sprouts, then back at her, and something shifted in his eyes. It was a decision.
He stood, bringing her up with him. Without a word, he led her back to the sun-drenched center of the church, to the softest patch of grass and clover where the light pooled thickest. Petals from the lilies overhead spun in the slow air.
“Cloud?”
He didn’t answer with words. He kissed her again, deeper this time, a kiss that held the taste of his promise. His hands slid into her hair, dislodging the makeshift tie holding her blanket-dress closed. It slid from her shoulders, a whisper of wool on skin, pooling at her feet. The sunlight touched her everywhere.
He looked his fill, his gaze a physical caress. “Beautiful,” he said, the word rough and barely audible. He began to lower her, his arm strong behind her back, guiding her down not onto the hard ground, but onto a thick bed of velvety petals and cool, fragrant clover.
He followed her down, bracing himself above her, his shadow covering her. The light made a halo of his blond spikes. His eyes, fixed on hers, were the color of a sky she rarely saw.
“Okay?” he asked, his voice a thread of sound.
She nodded, her throat tight. She reached up and traced the line of his jaw. “Always.”
He kissed her then, a slow exploration that melted her bones. His hands learned her, not with urgency, but with a reverent curiosity that made her skin sing. He mapped the slope of her shoulder, the arch of her rib, the dip of her waist. Every touch was a question, and her sigh was the answer.
He broke the kiss to trail his mouth down her throat. She arched into him, her fingers clutching at his shoulders. He was everywhere, his scent, his heat, the faint tremble in his muscles. He took his time, worshiping her with a patience that felt like a miracle. His lips closed over one peak, his tongue a hot, slow circle, and she cried out, the sound swallowed by the green quiet.
“Cloud, please…”
He soothed her with a hand on her hip, a gentle press. “I’ve got you.” He continued his devastating path downward, kissing across her stomach, nuzzling the soft skin of her inner thigh. The air was cool, his mouth was searing. When his tongue found her core, she nearly came off the ground.
He held her hips down, anchoring her. The sensation was slow, focused, utterly consuming. He learned her rhythms, listened to her gasps, and followed them. Pleasure built in a deep, coiled spring, tightening with every stroke of his tongue, every soft suck. She writhed, a moan tearing from her lips, her hands fisting in his hair.
“I’m… I can’t…”
He eased back, kissing her thigh, letting her hover on that trembling edge. He moved back up her body, settling between her legs, his weight a delicious pressure. His eyes were dark, his pupils wide. He was breathing hard.
He reached between them, guiding himself. The first touch was electric. He pressed forward, just an inch, and stopped. A strained sound escaped him. Her body stretched, a bright, unfamiliar fullness. She gasped, her nails digging into his arms.
He froze. “Too much?”
She shook her head, panting. “No. Just… new. Don’t stop.” She rolled her hips, a tiny, instinctive movement, taking him deeper.
He groaned, a raw, helpless sound. He sank another inch, his forehead dropping to hers. “Tell me.”
“Good,” she breathed. “It’s so good.”
He moved with a slowness that was its own kind of agony. Every fractional advance was a negotiation, a silent check-in. He filled her by degrees, pausing at every soft hitch of her breath, letting her body stretch and welcome him. The feeling was immense, more than physical. It was the breaking of a solitary space inside her she hadn’t known was empty.
When he was fully sheathed, he went perfectly still, buried deep. They were fused. She could feel his heart hammering against her chest, feel the fine tremor in his thighs where they pressed against hers. He was inside her, and she could see the awe in his eyes, the barely-contained shock of it.
Tears welled, blurring his face. He was so careful. He was ruining her, in the best way.
“Aerith?” Panic touched his voice. He tried to pull back.
She locked her legs around his hips, holding him there. “Don’t you dare. They’re happy tears.” She kissed him, salty and deep. “Move. Please.”
He began to rock, a gentle, relentless tide. The friction was exquisite, a building heat that spread from their joining to the very tips of her fingers. He set a rhythm that was pure feeling, each withdrawal a sweet loss, each thrust a homecoming. He watched her face, reading every flicker of pleasure, every wince of sensitivity.
“Here?” he whispered, adjusting his angle.
The change sent a sharp jolt of pure sensation through her. She cried out, a short, sharp sound. “Yes. Right there.”
He focused there, that perfect spot, his thrusts becoming more deliberate, more sure. The coil inside her wound tighter, tighter. Her pleas became a broken litany against his skin. His name. Please. More. His own control was fraying. His breaths came in ragged grunts, his hips moving with a driven purpose.
“Look at me,” he pleaded.
She opened her eyes, swimming with tears. He was there, right there, his expression wide open, stripped bare. She saw the boy from Nibelheim, the soldier, the mercenary, all of them, loving her. It was the final key. The coil snapped.
Pleasure detonated, a silent, white-hot burst behind her eyes. It rolled through her in endless waves, pulling a sob from her throat. Her body clenched around him, milking his own release from him. He shouted, a raw, stunned sound, as he pulsed deep inside her. He collapsed, catching his weight on his elbows at the last second, his face buried in her neck.
They drifted back, tangled and spent. The world slowly reassembled itself—the drone of a single bee, the pattern of light and leaf-shadow on his back. He was still inside her, softening. He lifted his head. His cheeks were wet.
She wiped a tear with her thumb. “You too?”
He couldn’t speak. He just nodded, his eyes red-rimmed and astonished. He kissed her, a soft, trembling press of lips that spoke of gratitude and a shock so profound it bordered on fear. Finally, he shifted, withdrawing, and gathered her against him. She felt open, raw, completely known.
They lay in the flowers for a long time, until the sunbeam had moved off them. Her body hummed with a deep, satiated peace. His fingers traced idle patterns on her arm.
“The sprouts are gonna be okay,” he said suddenly, his voice husky.
She smiled against his chest. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. We’re here.” He said it like it was the most logical thing in the world. If they were here, together, then the promises in the dirt would hold. She believed him.
She believed him. The certainty was a warm stone in her chest, as real as the ache between her thighs or the petal stuck to his shoulder blade. She picked it off, a smear of crimson against his skin. “We’re a sticky mess,” she murmured, her voice husky.
“Told you it was worth it,” he mumbled into her hair, not moving.
The sun climbed, its heat becoming more insistent. The pleasant musk of their sweat and sex began to mix with the richer scent of damp earth and warming flowers. A bee investigating a nearby lily seemed unbothered. Cloud’s stomach growled, a loud, rude sound against the quiet.
Aerith giggled. “You’re still hungry? After my gourmet breakfast?”
“Your breakfast was one pepper and two eggs. And I did most of the work.” He finally lifted his head, his hair wild, his eyes squinting against the light. “I’m a growing mercenary.”
“Oh, is that what you are?” She pushed at his chest until he rolled onto his back beside her. The sunlight painted his torso in stark relief, highlighting the welts her nails had left on his sides. She traced one gently. “I think you’re just a stray who eats too much.”
“Your stray.” He caught her hand, bringing her knuckles to his lips. The gesture was so simple, so unconscious, it stole her breath.
“Yeah,” she whispered. “Mine.”
The stickiness was becoming less romantic and more genuinely uncomfortable. She sat up, wincing at a new, tender stiffness. “We need a proper wash. Like, with actual water and soap.”
Cloud glanced toward the curtained-off area with the small basin. “That little bowl isn’t gonna cut it.”
“There’s the rainwater cistern around back. For the flowers.” A mischievous smile touched her lips. “It’s big enough.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You want to take a bath in the flower cistern.”
“It’s clean! Well, clean-ish. It’s rainwater.” She stood, stretching, utterly unselfconscious in her nakedness. The light gilded her skin. “Come on. It’ll be fun. For me?”
He groaned, throwing an arm over his eyes. “You don’t fight fair.” But he was already getting up, scooping his pants from the ground.
They gathered her soap, a few clean, threadbare towels, and made their way to the back of the church. The cistern was a large, sunken stone basin, half-covered by a wooden lid, fed by a rusting gutter from the roof. Aerith pushed the lid back. The water was cool and clear, reflecting the slice of sky above. A few stray lily pads floated on the surface.
Cloud tested the water with his hand. “It’s cold.”
“It’s refreshing,” she corrected, already stepping over the rim. The water came up to her thighs as she sank down. A sharp gasp escaped her. “Okay, it’s really cold.”
He laughed, a real, short bark of sound that made her heart flip. He climbed in after her, the water sloshing. He hissed as it hit his skin. “Refreshing, huh?”
“You get used to it,” she said through chattering teeth. She grabbed the bar of soap. It smelled like herbs and plain lye. “Here. Turn around.”
He obeyed, presenting his back to her. She wetted the soap and began working it between her palms, then spread the lather over his shoulders. His skin was warm under her cool, slick hands. She worked in slow circles, over the hard planes of his shoulders, down the knotted ridge of his spine. The tension there was deep, historical. She kneaded it with her thumbs, feeling the muscles gradually relent.
He let his head fall forward with a low sigh. The sound was pure surrender. She washed every inch of his back, rinsing by scooping handfuls of water over him. She turned her attention to his hair, working the soap into his defiant spikes. They collapsed under the moisture, turning dark gold and clinging to his neck and forehead.
“Your turn,” he said, his voice quiet. He turned in the water, which now felt pleasantly cool against her own overheated skin. He took the soap from her.
He started with her face, his touch infinitely careful. His soapy fingers traced her eyebrows, the line of her jaw, the curve of her ears. He washed her neck, her collarbones, paying solemn attention to every detail. This was different from the clinical clean-up with the cloth. This was a ritual.
He moved lower, his hands slick and warm as they passed over her breasts. He wasn’t seeking pleasure now, not directly, but the simple, devoted attention was its own kind of arousal. He lathered her arms, her stomach, each of her fingers. He turned her gently to wash her back, his palms sweeping in broad, soothing strokes from her shoulders to the base of her spine.
“Sit on the edge,” he murmured. She hoisted herself to sit on the stone rim of the cistern, her legs still dangling in the water. He stood between them, the water lapping at his waist. He soaped her legs, starting at her ankles, moving up her calves with a firm, massage-like pressure that made her groan. He spent an absurd amount of time on her feet, washing between each toe with a focus usually reserved for maintaining his sword.
When he was done, she was clean, and he was looking up at her from between her knees, his hair plastered down, water droplets clinging to his eyelashes. He looked young. He looked hers.
“Your hair,” she said softly. He nodded, ducking under the water to rinse the soap from his own head. When he surfaced, shaking water like a dog, she laughed. He pushed his hair back, and the gesture, so ordinary, made her chest ache.
He moved back to her, his hands settling on her hips. He leaned in and kissed her stomach, just above her navel. A slow, damp kiss. Then another lower. He was kneeling in the water now, his mouth tracing a path through the slick soap that still clung to her skin. His lips were soft, insistent. He kissed the inside of her thigh, his stubble a rough contrast that made her shiver.
“Cloud…” Her voice was thin.
He didn’t stop. He washed her there too, with a touch so tender and thorough it blurred the line between cleansing and worship. The water, the open air, his unbreaking focus—it was overwhelming. Her head fell back, her fingers tangling in his wet hair. When he finally lifted his head, his eyes were dark, his breath coming fast.
He stood abruptly, water cascading from him. He gripped her waist and pulled her off the ledge, back into the water and flush against him. The entire length of his body pressed to hers. And she felt it, unmistakable and insistent against her lower back—the hard, thickening heat of him, still soft-skinned and full from their earlier time together, now awakening again.
He buried his face in the wet curtain of her hair at her neck. His arms locked around her, holding her tight. His whole body trembled.
“Sorry,” he breathed into her skin, the word ragged. “I’m sorry. I can’t… it’s just you. Being close. I can’t help it.”
The apology, for this, nearly broke her. She turned in his arms, the water swirling around them. She cupped his face, forcing him to look at her. He looked mortified, frustrated with his own body’s betrayal.
“Don’t you dare apologize for that,” she said, her voice fierce. “Not ever.” She kissed him, pouring every ounce of her feeling into it. She could taste the clean water, the faint bitterness of the soap, and him. Her hands slid down his chest, through the water, and found him. He jerked against her touch, a sharp intake of breath whistling through his teeth.
She stroked him, learning the new, velvety softness of him, the hard ridge beneath. She felt him swell and stiffen completely in her hand. His eyes screwed shut, his forehead falling against hers.
“Aerith…”
“I love you,” she whispered, the words vibrating against his mouth. “I love all of you. Every single part.”
That was the truth of it. God, having Cloud as her boyfriend was the best thing in the whole ruined world. This stubborn, beautiful, wounded man who washed her feet and got hard holding her in a tub of rainwater and apologized for wanting her. His helpless, physical need for her was a gift. It was honesty in its purest form.
She kept kissing him, slow and deep, her hand moving on him with a rhythm that soon had his hips making tiny, helpless thrusts into her grip. His breaths were shattered things, his fingers digging into the flesh of her hips. The water magnified every sensation, every slide of skin.
He was mumbling against her lips, a stream of desperate, broken phrases. “I love you… so much… you feel… don’t stop…”
She didn’t. She led him to the edge again, that sweet, coiling tension rebuilding in him so quickly after the morning’s release. His control was thin, frayed by emotion and exhaustion. It didn’t take long. With a choked-off cry that was her name, he came, spilling hot into the cool water between them, his body bowing into hers as he shuddered through the waves.
He slumped against her, boneless, his face hidden in the curve of her neck. She held him up, her arms strong around him, kissing his wet hair. The water slowly cleared around them.
After a long while, he whispered, “I’ve never… I mean, twice in a…”
She smiled, stroking his back. “Yeah. Me neither.” She felt him smile against her skin.
“You’re gonna kill me, Gainsborough.”
“But what a way to go,” she sighed, perfectly content. The sun was high now, baking the stone around them. The church was quiet. The seeds were sprouting. He was here, clean and spent and utterly hers in the water. She had never been so happy. She knew, with a certainty that felt like gravity, that she never would be without him.