Chapter 8: The Unspoken Request
The morning after the dream, the church held a different quality of silence. It was the hush of a held breath, thick with the memory of raw sound that had echoed off its walls just hours before. Sunlight, stronger now, cut brilliant colored shafts through the stained glass, painting Aerith’s sleeping back in panels of emerald and rose. Cloud was awake, had been for a while, trapped in a state of suspended awareness.
His erection was a solid, insistent weight against the cleft of her bare buttocks. They’d fallen asleep skin to skin, and now the warm, smooth press of her skin was a sweet torture. He willed it down, focusing on the dust motes dancing in a beam of gold, on the distant drip of water from the broken ceiling. It was a physiological response, nothing more. He wouldn’t burden her with it.
But as he lay perfectly still, she shifted in her sleep, a soft murmur escaping her lips. Her back arched just slightly, pressing her rear more firmly against him. A low groan vibrated in his chest before he could stifle it. The movement was innocent, unconscious, but it sent a jolt of pure hunger straight to his already-throbbing cock.
He began to ease away, the sheet whispering as he moved. He’d get up, douse himself with cold water from the pump, start the day.
A hand, warm and sleep-soft, reached back and clasped his hip, holding him in place. “Don’t go,” she mumbled, her voice thick with sleep.
“Aerith,” he said, the word strained. “It’s okay. Go back to sleep.”
She turned then, rolling onto her back to look at him. Her hair was a beautiful chaos on the pillow, her eyes still heavy-lidded. Her gaze traveled down his chest, over the sheet tented blatantly at his waist. A faint, knowing smile touched her lips. “Someone’s awake early.”
He flushed, a rare show of self-consciousness. “Ignore it. It’ll pass.”
“Why?” she asked simply, her hand sliding from his hip to rest flat on his lower abdomen, her fingertips just brushing the coarse hair at the base of his erection. He jerked at the contact. “I like it.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t have to,” she interrupted, her smile softening. Her green eyes were clear now, full of a gentle candor. “I want to. It’s part of you. It’s part of… this.” She gestured vaguely between them, at the sun-drenched church, at the rumpled bedding that smelled of them. “The ‘everything’ you promised. This is included.”
He swallowed hard, his resolve crumbling under her straightforward affection. She pushed the sheet down slowly. His cock sprang free, fully erect, curving up towards his stomach. The uncircumcised skin was drawn tight, the broad, dark-pink head slick with a bead of moisture at the slit. In the multicolored light, it looked almost obscene, a naked, primal demand amidst the flowers and quiet piety.
Aerith’s breath hitched. She’d seen it, felt it, taken it inside her many times now. But this quiet, morning observation felt new. There was no frantic heat, no dream-fueled desperation. Just them, and this part of him, presented without agenda.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered, her hand hovering, not touching.
He made a disbelieving noise in his throat. “It’s a cock.”
“It’s yours,” she corrected, as if that explained everything. Finally, she wrapped her fingers around him, not tight, just holding the heated, velvety-steel weight of him. Her thumb swept over the wetness at the tip, spreading it. He shuddered, his hips giving an involuntary twitch. “And it wants me.” She said it not as a question, but as a fact she found profoundly moving.
“Always,” he gritted out, the confession torn from him.
She guided him toward her, rolling onto her back and opening her legs in one fluid, welcoming motion. The thatch of chestnut hair at her junction was dark, glistening. She was already wet, her arousal a visible sheen on her inner folds, the scent of it—musky and sweet—filling the space between them. The readiness of her, the effortless way her body prepared for him, undid him completely.
He braced himself over her, his arms trembling. He nudged at her entrance, the swollen head catching, then sinking in a bare, exquisite inch. He paused, his eyes searching hers. The ring on her left hand gripped his bicep, the cool metal a grounding contrast to the feverish heat of their skin.
“Are you sure?” The same old question, his permanent checkpoint.
In answer, she lifted her hips, taking him deeper, a slow, consuming inch that made them both gasp. “I’ve never been more sure of anything,” she breathed, echoing her words from the rooftop, now a mantra for this daily choosing.
He sank the rest of the way, a slow, continuous slide until he was fully sheathed, buried to the hilt in her clinging, slick heat. They held there, impossibly joined, breathing each other’s air. The sunlight warmed his back. A petal drifted from a nearby lily, landing on the pillow beside her head.
He began to move. There was no driving pace, no frantic race to culmination. This was a slow, deep exploration. Each withdrawal was almost complete, a sweet agony of loss before each long, pushing return that filled her utterly. The wet, soft sounds of their joining were muffled by the ambient peace of the church. Her eyes were locked on the place where their bodies met, watching, fascinated, as his slick shaft glided in and out of her, her own arousal coating him, making the slide effortless.
“Look at you,” she murmured, dazed. “Look at how you fit me.”
He glanced down, the visual undoing him. His cock, shiny and dark, disappearing into her pink, yielding flesh. The sight was so raw, so intimately carnal, it tightened his balls and sent a fresh surge of pre-come seeping from him. “Fuck, Aerith…”
His rhythm lost a little of its measured control. The deep strokes became harder, more urgent, the angle shifting so the head of his cock dragged heavily over that perfect, sensitive spot inside her with every thrust. Her soft gasps sharpened into cries. One hand fisted in the sheet, the other, the ring-hand, clawed at his back.
“Right there, oh god, Cloud, right there!” Her back arched, her breasts pressing against his chest. Her inner muscles began to flutter around him, a frantic, rhythmic tightening that pulled a guttural groan from his throat.
“Come on,” he urged, his voice ragged against her ear. “Let go. I want to feel you come on my cock.”
The filthy, tender command shattered her. Her climax exploded, a silent scream on her lips as her body convulsed, clamping down on him in hard, successive pulses that milked his length. The intense squeeze tore his own release from him. With a broken shout, he drove deep and held, his hips jerking as he emptied himself into her, hot pulses of come flooding her depths, spilling out around the still-hard base of him where they were joined.
He collapsed, careful to keep his weight on his forearms, his forehead damp against her shoulder. Their breathing was the only sound, harsh and synchronizing slowly. He was still inside her, softening gradually, a warm, spent intimacy.
After a long while, he pulled out. A trickle of their mixed release seeped onto her thigh. He fetched the now-familiar cloth, cleaning her with a focused tenderness. As he wiped her inner thigh, she reached down and caught his wrist.
“Leave it,” she said softly.
He paused. “It’ll get uncomfortable.”
“I don’t care.” She met his gaze, her face radiant, flushed. “I like it. I like feeling… claimed. By you. Here, of all places.” A faint, mischievous smile. “Our version of holy water.”
A surprised laugh, short and quiet, escaped him. He tossed the cloth aside and gathered her to him, her back to his front, their bodies spooning on the sun-warmed bedding. He nuzzled her hair, inhaling the scent of flowers and sex and her.
“We should get up,” she murmured, making no move to do so.
“We have time.”
They lay there as the sun climbed, painting the flowers in brighter hues. The church wasn’t just a refuge for lost souls and blooms anymore. It was a testament. To a promise made on a rooftop. To a ceremony that never ended, witnessed by dust and light and petals. It was the place where Cloud Strife, former mercenary, learned that the most valuable thing he’d ever possess wasn’t a price or a prize, but this quiet, sun-drenched peace, with her breath steady against his arm and the evidence of their love drying on her skin.
It was the place where Cloud Strife, former mercenary, learned that the most valuable thing he’d ever possess wasn’t a price or a prize, but this quiet, sun-drenched peace, with her breath steady against his arm and the evidence of their love drying on her skin. The stickiness became a tangible, sweet discomfort. A fly buzzed lazily toward the bedside, and Cloud waved it away from her thigh with a grunt. “Told you,” he murmured, his voice sleep-rough. “Gets itchy.”
She laughed, a low, contented sound. “Okay, okay. You were right.” She stretched, a long, feline movement that made her joints pop. “The pump water will be ice-cold this early.”
“I’ll heat a kettle.” He slid from the bed, his naked body a pale, defined silhouette against the bright flowers. He moved with an efficient, unselfconscious grace, filling a battered tin kettle from the stone pump in the corner and setting it on the small gas burner. The mundane act, the way his shoulders flexed, the line of his spine as he bent, felt more intimate to Aerith than what they’d just done. This was the daily work of love.
While the water heated, they busied themselves with small, separate tasks that wove around each other in the silent church. She gathered their discarded clothes. He tidied the bedding, folding it with a soldier’s precision that made her smile. The kettle whistled, a sharp, homey sound. He mixed the boiling water with cold from the pump in a large, chipped ceramic basin, testing the temperature with his wrist.
Steam began to curl in the colored light. He carried the heavy basin to a more private corner, behind a partial wall of crumbling brick, where they kept soap and rough linen towels. “Ready,” he said.
She joined him, the cool stone floor under her feet. He dipped a cloth into the warm water, wrung it out, and without a word began to wash her. Starting at her neck, his motions were slow, methodical. The warm cloth passed over her shoulders, down her arms, over the gentle swell of her breasts. He knelt to wash her legs, her feet, the cloth slipping between her toes. It was not a seduction. It was a purification, a practical and deeply loving reset. He rinsed the cloth, soaped it, and washed between her legs with a clinical gentleness that made her throat tight. He was cleaning away the proof of his own possession, and the care he took felt like a vow in itself.
When he was done, she took the cloth from him. “My turn.”
He stood passively, letting her wash him. She traced the hard planes of his chest, the defined ridges of his abdomen that formed a perfect, stark six-pack. His skin was smooth, hairless, a landscape of pale, faintly scarred marble stretched over tensile muscle. She loved the lack of hair, the sheer, clean expanse of him from his throat down his flat stomach. It made him seem both boyish and strangely ancient, like a statue. Her hands slid over the hard caps of his shoulders, down his arms where the muscles corded under satin skin, completely devoid of the dark hair so many men had.
She knelt, washing his legs, the powerful quads and calves that were just as smooth. Even when she took his soft, thick cock in her hand to wash it, the skin there was the only place with hair, a coarse, blond thatch at its base. He shivered under her touch, not with arousal, but with something closer to vulnerability.
“You’re so smooth everywhere,” she mused aloud, her voice echoing softly in the stone space. “I love it. It’s like you’re carved.”
He shrugged, a slight movement. “Never grew much. What I do get, I shave.” He ran a hand over his own jaw, which was, as always, perfectly smooth. At twenty-one, his youth held a kind of polished clarity, a clean-lined elegance next to her softer, twenty-two-year-old curves. He was only a little taller, but standing close like this, the difference felt definitive, protective.
“Done,” she said, dropping the cloth into the basin. The water was clouded now, a testament to their morning. They stood facing each other, dripping and clean.
Then she stepped into him, closing the last inch of space. She pressed her entire front against him, her still-damp breasts flattening against the hard, warm plate of his hairless chest. She let out a long, sighing breath, sinking into the contact. Her nipples, tight from the evaporating water, rubbed against his skin. She slid her hands up his slick back, feeling the powerful musculature there, the twin columns of muscle that framed his spine.
“Mmm,” she hummed, nuzzling into his throat. “This. I love this.”
He held her, his arms strong around her. His hands splayed low on her back, pressing her closer. The heat of their bodies began to steam the cool air around them. She could feel every contour of him, the unyielding solidity of his frame against her softer one. There was no urgency, only a profound appreciation for the architecture of him.
She leaned back just enough to look at him, her hands coming to rest on his chest. Her thumbs brushed over his small, pale nipples. “You’re beautiful, Cloud. All of you. Every single, smooth, hard inch.”
A faint pink tinged his cheeks. He wasn’t used to this kind of prolonged, worshipping scrutiny. He was used to being a tool, a weapon, something functional. Her gaze, her hands, they repurposed him. They made him art.
“It’s just a body,” he muttered, looking away.
“It’s your body.” Her voice held a gentle, unyielding firmness. “The one that carried you to me. The one that holds me. The one that… fits inside me.” She said the last part quietly, a secret in the steam. She rose onto her toes and kissed him, a soft, lingering kiss. His lips were smooth, cool.
The kiss deepened. The clean, soapy scent of them mixed with something warmer, older rising to the surface. His hands drifted down from her back to grasp her bare hips, his fingers digging in. Her own exploration became less reverent, more possessive. She ran her hands over the fierce cut of his obliques, the pronounced V that disappeared beneath his pelvis, that fascinating, hairless terrain.
He broke the kiss, his breathing harsher. His blue eyes had darkened, the softness burned away by a familiar, hungry focus. The atmosphere shifted, thickened. The cleansing was over. Something else was beginning.
“Turn around,” he said, his voice a rough whisper.
She obeyed, facing the rough brick wall. He pressed against her from behind, and she felt him, hard and urgent once more, nestling into the cleft of her buttocks. His hairless chest was a hot, smooth slab against her back. He kissed her shoulder, her neck. One hand slid around her front, palming her breast, thumb flicking over her nipple. The other hand trailed down her stomach, through the neat thatch of hair, and found her core.
She was already slick. His fingers slipped easily through her folds, circling her clit with a pressure that made her knees weak. “You’re always ready,” he breathed into her ear, a note of awe in his voice. “Fucking always wet for me.”
“For you,” she gasped, pushing back against his erection. “Only for you.”
His fingers left her, and she heard him spit into his own hand. A crude, wet sound. Then the broad, blunt head of his cock was nudging at her entrance. He didn’t guide himself in. He rubbed it up and down her slit, coating himself in her wetness, teasing her, painting her with it. The sensation was maddening. “Cloud, please…”
“Please what?”
“Fuck me. Just fuck me. Now.”
He pushed inside with a single, deep, relentless thrust that filled her completely in one stroke. She cried out, her forehead pressing against the cool brick. He was so deep, so impossibly deep from this angle. He held there, buried, letting her adjust to the overwhelming fullness. His hairless chest was glued to her back by a film of fresh sweat.
Then he moved. His grip on her hip was iron. He set a punishing, rhythmic pace, pulling almost all the way out before slamming back in. The slap of his flesh against hers, the wet, rhythmic sounds of their joining, were obscenely loud in the small space. There was no tenderness left, only a raw, driving need. Each thrust jolted her forward, her breasts rubbing against the rough brick.
“Is this what you wanted?” he grunted, his voice strained. “My clean, smooth body fucking you dirty against a wall?”
“Yes!” she sobbed, the friction burning perfect and brilliant inside her. “God, yes!”
One of his hands snaked between her and the wall, finding her clit again. He rubbed it in hard, tight circles in time with his thrusts. The dual sensation, the deep penetration and the targeted pressure, coiled a spring too tight inside her. It snapped.
Her orgasm was a silent, blinding convulsion. Her mouth opened in a soundless scream as her inner muscles clamped down on him in violent, fluttering waves. The fierce clenching of her pulled his own release from him. With a choked, animal sound, he drove in one last time, hilting himself, and she felt the hot, sudden pulse of his come flooding into her. He shuddered against her, his smooth chest heaving.
They stayed like that, locked together, leaning against the wall for support, breathing in ragged unison. The steam from the abandoned basin had mostly dissipated. Sunlight now hit the puddle of water on the floor, making it shine.
Slowly, carefully, he pulled out. He turned her around and gathered her to him, not seeming to care about the new mess they’d made. He just held her, his face buried in her damp hair. Her arms wound around his waist, her hands resting on the smooth, firm muscles of his lower back.
“We need another bath,” she mumbled into his chest, her voice wrecked.
A rumble that might have been a laugh vibrated in his chest. “Kettle’s cold.” He kissed the top of her head. “Later.”
“Later.” The word hung in the cool, damp air, a promise of reprieve. They stood there for a long moment, still joined at the hip, his softening flesh still nestled against her thigh. The silence wasn’t empty. It was full of their breathing, the distant drip, the warm smell of sex and stone. She didn’t move. She wanted to live inside this exact second—the rough brick against her palms, the solid, hairless heat of him plastered to her back, the slow, tender ache between her legs that was his doing.
He was the one who moved first, his hands sliding up her sides. They weren’t grasping. They were smoothing, as if wiping away the imprint of his own forceful grip from moments before. His touch traveled up her ribs, over the slight sting where the brick had abraded her skin, and came to rest on her shoulders. He began to knead the tension there, his thumbs pressing deep into the muscle. It was an apology without words, a translation of I got carried away into the language of his hands.
“Okay?” he murmured into her hair.
“More than okay.” She leaned back into him, her head lolling against his shoulder. “I feel… liquefied.”
A soft puff of air from his nose, his version of a laugh. He pressed a kiss to her temple, then straightened. “Bath. For real this time.”
He reheated the kettle. She watched him move, this boy-man with the smooth, carved body that housed such devastating gentleness and ferocious need. He was a series of contradictions that made perfect sense only to her. He could split a helmeted skull with that sword, but his hands, those same hands, now measured powdered soap with meticulous care, ensuring it wouldn’t sting her. He had fucked her senseless against a wall with a frantic, possessive rhythm, but now he was testing the water temperature twice before offering his hand to help her into the newly filled basin.
The water was gloriously warm. She sank into it with a sigh that came from her bones. He climbed in behind her, the basin large enough for them to sit facing each other, legs entwined. He took up the cloth again. This wash was different. It was a reclamation. He washed the sweat from her throat, the smudge of brick-dust from her collarbone. He soaped her arms and rinsed them, lifting each limb as if it were something fragile and precious.
Her mind wandered back, not to the frantic coupling minutes ago, but to all the times before. In their bed, against the wall, on the rooftop under the stars. She thought of his hands. Always, always his hands. In the throes of it, when passion crested into something mindless, other men in stories might slap, might leave stinging marks on flesh as a brand of possession. Cloud’s hands grasped. They pulled her closer. They cupped the fullness of her backside not to deliver a sharp shock, but to anchor her, to tilt her, to fit her more perfectly against him. His palms would mould over the curves of her ass, fingers spreading wide to hold her entire hip, his grip firm and claiming but never violent. It was a hold that said you are mine and I have you in the same gesture. He would sometimes squeeze, a slow, possessive compression that made her moan into his mouth, but the intent was never to degrade or inflict. It was to possess, wholly, and with a reverence for the very flesh he was worshipping.
And his mouth, gods, his mouth. When he was buried inside her, breathing harsh and ragged against her neck, he never once cursed her. The filth spilled from him, directed at the situation, at the feeling, at his own lack of control. Fuck, you’re so tight. Oh god, I can’t last. You feel so fucking good. But never you bitch, never you whore. Those words had no place here. They were for enemies, for things to be despised. She was his opposite. She was Aerith. He might groan you’re going to kill me as she clenched around him, but it was a plea, a celebration. His vocabulary in those moments was one of overwhelmed awe, not contempt.
He washed between her legs now with the same focused tenderness as before. The cloth was soft, his strokes soothing on her sensitized flesh. She watched his face, the concentration there, the slight furrow between his brows. He was ensuring every trace of their joining was gently removed, caring for the place he had just used with such raw hunger.
“You never spank me,” she said aloud, her voice quiet in the steam.
His hands stilled. He looked up, blue eyes clear and questioning. “What?”
“When we’re… you know. You hold me. You grip me. But you’ve never spanked me. Or called me names.” She trailed her fingers through the water. “I’ve thought about it. I notice it.”
He was silent for a beat, processing. He rinsed the cloth, wrung it out, and draped it over the edge of the basin. His hands returned to her, but not to wash. He placed them on her knees under the water, a solid, warm weight. “Why would I?” The question was genuine, tinged with a faint confusion. “You’re not something to be punished. Or insulted.” He looked down at their submerged legs, her pale skin against his. “What we do… it’s not a fight. It’s not a conquest.” He struggled for the words, his jaw tight. “It’s us. Coming together. Literally.” A faint flush crept up his neck. “Hitting you, calling you filthy names… that would feel like I was attacking part of us. I don’t want to dominate you, Aerith. I just… want you. All of you. Desperately.”
The simplicity of his logic undid her. For him, it wasn’t a conscious choice of chivalry. It was an intrinsic truth. To mar her skin, to debase her with language, would be to violate the sanctity of what they were building. His desperation was for union, not subjugation.
She slid forward in the water, closing the distance until their faces were inches apart. The water sloshed gently. She took his face in her wet hands. “I love that,” she whispered. “I love how you want me. I love that your hands know how to hold me without hurting me. I love that your mouth knows how to swear about the feeling, but never at me.”
He turned his head, pressing a kiss into her palm. “You deserve to be held. Not hit.” He said it like it was the most obvious fact in the world, a fundamental law of their private universe. “Even when I’m so far gone I can’t see straight, I know that. Here,” he took her hand and placed it over his own heart, its beat strong and steady under her fingers, “I always know that.”
Tears pricked her eyes, hot and sudden. She blinked them back, leaning in to kiss him. It was a deep, slow, water-soft kiss that tasted of soap and shared understanding. Under the water, his hands found her hips again, but this time they simply rested there, a calm, steady connection.
The water cooled around them, but they didn’t move. The sun climbed higher, the colored light from the windows marching across the floor. The day was waiting, with its chores and its promises. But for now, there was only this basin, this quiet, and the profound peace of being loved by a man whose hands, even at their most possessive, knew only how to cradle.