Chapter 4: Aftermath
For a long moment, neither of us moved. The only sound was the rasp of our breathing, slowing, syncing. The neon glow from the window painted the scene in vulgar, honest streaks. I finally tilted my head, my cheek against her damp hair, and looked down the length of our bodies.
The damage was impressive.
My release was a thick, pearlescent web spanning from just beneath the soft swell of her breasts down to the neatly trimmed triangle of dark hair at her apex. It lay in glistening ropes and pooling patches across her sweat-sheened stomach, stark against her skin. Some had even speckled the undersides of her heavy breasts.
A low whistle escaped me. “Damn.”
Tifa shifted, peeling her cheek from my chest. She followed my gaze. Her amber eyes, still hazy with spent pleasure, widened. A slow, incredulous smile spread across her lips. “Holy shit, Ron. Did you save that up for a month?”
She pushed herself up onto her elbows, the movement making the cooling fluid shift on her skin. She looked down at herself with a kind of detached, scientific curiosity. Then, with a playful glint returning to her eyes, she dipped two fingers into the mess on her lower belly. She held them up, watching the thick strands stretch and then break.
“It’s… a lot,” she said, her voice laced with awe and a hint of laughter.
“Complaining?” I asked, my own voice rough but smiling.
“Not even a little.” She brought her fingers to her mouth, her eyes locked on mine, and slowly sucked them clean. The gesture was neither performative nor crude; it was a simple, frank assessment. A tasting. “Salty,” she pronounced, then smirked. “Expensive-tasting.”
I barked a laugh that hurt my ribs. “You’re impossible.”
I leaned in and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to the crown of her head. Her hair smelled of rain, sweat, and the cheap floral soap from the bar’s washroom. “Come on,” I murmured against her hair. “Let’s get cleaned up. This place probably charges extra for bio-hazard cleanup.”
She nodded, the playful energy shifting into a soft, post-coital weariness. “A shower sounds like heaven.”
Extricating ourselves was a sticky, inelegant process. We moved carefully, like survivors surveying wreckage. I swung my legs off the bed first, the floorboards cold under my feet. I offered her a hand. She took it, her grip firm despite her tiredness, and let me pull her up.
We stood there for a second, naked and painted in the evidence of what we’d done. She looked down at herself again and chuckled, shaking her head. “I look like I lost a fight with a condom factory.”
“The prettiest loser I’ve ever seen,” I said, and guided her towards the dim, narrow door that led to the ensuite.
The bathroom was a closet of cracked white tile and rust-stained porcelain. A single, bare bulb flickered to life when I yanked a grimy string. The shower was a rusted stall with a plastic curtain mildewed at the hem. I cranked the hot water knob, and after a groan and a shudder, a lukewarm spray spat from the showerhead.
The sound was loud, a percussive drumming on the plastic base. Combined with the roar of an ancient exhaust fan in the ceiling, it created a wall of white noise. A private, deafening little universe.
I stepped in first, testing the temperature, then held the curtain aside for her. She stepped under the spray with a grateful sigh, tilting her head back so the water sluiced through her dark hair, over her face, down her magnificent body.
I followed her in. The stall was cramped, forcing us into close proximity. The water quickly turned the sticky residue on her skin into slick, runny trails. I reached for a small, wafer-thin bar of soap in a rusted dish.
“Let me,” I said, my voice barely audible over the din.
She nodded, leaning back against the cool tiles as I began to work the soap into a weak lather in my palms. I started at her shoulders, my hands moving in slow, deliberate circles. I washed away the sweat, the city grime, the scent of the bar. I moved down her arms, over the defined muscle of her biceps and forearms, paying homage to the strength they held.
My soapy hands slid over the heavy curves of her breasts. I took my time here, cupping and cleaning each one, my thumbs circling her nipples until they beaded tight again, this time from the water’s chill and not desire. She watched me, her eyes heavy-lidded, her lips slightly parted.
I knelt in the spray, the water pounding my back. I soaped the flat plane of her stomach, washing away the last visible traces of my possession. My hands moved lower, through the neat thatch of hair, cleaning her with a clinical tenderness that felt more intimate than anything that had come before. She shifted her stance, allowing me access, her breath hitching as my fingers grazed sensitive flesh.
I looked up at her. The steam was curling around us, fogging the plastic curtain. The roar of the water and fan was absolute. A secure bubble. A confession booth.
“Tifa,” I said, my voice louder to cut through the noise but still soft. “I need to talk to you.”
Her gaze sharpened, the sated haze clearing. She saw the shift in my eyes. “Okay.”
I stood up, the water cascading between us. I took her hands in mine, the soap making them slippery. “First, I’m sorry.”
Confusion flickered across her face. “For what? This? Ron, I was a willing participant. More than willing.”
“Not for this,” I said, shaking my head. Water dripped from my hair into my eyes. “I’m sorry for lying to you. By omission.”
Her posture changed subtly. The relaxed woman under the shower vanished, replaced by the cautious, resilient bar owner and resistance fighter. The walls came up, just a little. “Go on.”
The water beat down on us, a ceaseless, clamoring veil. I saw her mind working behind those amber eyes, calculating angles, weighing risks. The warmth between us cooled by degrees.
“I told you I was from Wutai,” I began, the words feeling sharp in my throat. “That’s true. I grew up ten miles from the border. But borders are thin places. Ideas, loyalties, jobs… they bleed through.”
I watched a droplet trace the scar on her collarbone. “I took work where I could find it. Sometimes for Wutai generals. Sometimes for Midgar syndicates who paid in untraceable Gil. Often for Shinra.” Her eyes flickered at the name. “Not as a grunt. Black ops. Deniable assets.”
My hands, still resting on her hips, remembered the soap’s slipperiness. “I saw what they do in the dark, Tifa. Not the propaganda, not the Mako lights. The other cost. Whole villages quieted for a pipeline. Scientists who asked the wrong questions vanishing into the bowels of the Plate. I have ghosts. I’m done adding to them.”
She was utterly still, a statue in the falling water. “Why tell me this now?”
“Because my current client has deep pockets and a singular goal,” I said, leaning closer so my lips almost brushed her ear over the fan’s roar. “They want to fund AVALANCHE. Properly. Not just grenade money. Real resources.”
A spark lit in her gaze, instantly smothered by hardened realism. “It’s a trap. It’s always a trap.”
“It would be,” I agreed, pulling back to see her face. “If we walked in blind. But we’re not. The Turks have you all under a microscope. Barrett’s rallies, Biggs’ and Wedge’s supply runs, Jesse’s tinkering… and you. Especially you. They watch who comes into Seventh Heaven. They have logs, photos, probably audio.”
Her jaw tightened. I could see the truth of it settling in, the violation of it stiffening her spine.
“So we give them a different story,” I said, voice dropping to a conspiratorial rasp. “We give them a scandal. A distraction. Something juicy and simple for them to report.” I took a breath. “You stop seeing… clients. At the bar. You leave Sector 7.”
I let the shock register before continuing. “My client’s money will get you a clean apartment in the Upper Plate. Nice clothes. An allowance. You’ll be my kept woman. My spoiled, secret mistress.”
Revulsion and understanding warred in her expression. “A cover.”
“The perfect cover,” I pressed. “Why is a mercenary with money funneling gear and intel to a slum bartender? Because he’s thinking with his dick. Because he’s bought himself a beautiful girl and she whispers pillow-talk about her terrorist friends. It’s messy. It’s human. It’s a story the Turks will swallow because it makes us look weak and predictable.”
The water was turning cold. She shivered, but I didn’t think it was from the temperature.
“I meant what I said in the bar. Every word,” I told her, my thumb stroking the sharp line of her hipbone. “This isn’t a lie. But it has to look like one. We have to be careful. We have to be performers.”
I searched her face, seeing the community leader, the fighter, the woman who had just come apart in my arms. “I am sorry, Tifa. For using this… what’s between us… as a tool. But the cause is real. The funding is real. And I can’t get it to you any other way.”
She was silent for a long time, the water plastering her hair to her cheeks. She looked through the mildewed curtain, through the wall, into the grim future we were sketching.
She looked through the mildewed curtain, through the wall, into the grim future we were sketching. The water beat down, colder now, but she didn’t move. Her expression cycled through emotions too fast to name. Then her eyes snapped up to mine, and in the fluorescent buzz of the bathroom light, I saw a storm break.
Anger, sharp and bright. Desire, a lingering heat from minutes ago. Hurt, deep and personal. A fragile, treacherous strand of hope. They warred behind the striking amber of her irises, twisting her beautiful face into something pained and furious.
Her fist came from nowhere.
It was a tight, professional hook, her body coiling and releasing with the efficiency she used on pads at the bar. I saw it coming. I could have moved. I didn’t. I took it.
The impact was a shocking burst of white light against my jaw. My teeth clacked together with a sound I felt in my skull. The surprising, brutal strength of the blow whipped my head to the side and slammed my shoulder into the slick, cold tiles of the shower wall. A coppery taste flooded my mouth.
I slumped against the wall, shaking my head to clear the ringing. I worked my jaw, testing it. She stood there, chest heaving, fist still clenched, water streaming down her furious form.
“You arrogant son of a bitch,” she spat, her voice raw over the water’s roar. “You think you can just… architect my life? Use this… use us… as some… operational footnote?”
I touched my lip, my fingers coming away smeared with red. “It was the only play that felt real,” I said, the words thick. “It had to be you.”
She stared at me, breathing hard. The anger didn’t fade, but it calcified into something harder, more practical. I saw her mind working, assessing the plan’s cold geometry. The fury in her eyes banked, replaced by a grudging, ruthless calculus.
“It’s good,” she admitted finally, the words pulled from her like shrapnel. Her voice lost its edge, gaining a low, tired warmth. “The plan is… strategically sound. And I’ve had worse proposals.” A ghost of her earlier smirk touched her lips, bruised by bitterness. “There are worse things than being your mistress, I guess.”
I chuckled, a pained sound that made my jaw ache. I spat a pink trickle of water and blood down the drain. “Just pretending, for the record. I’m not married. No wife to scandalize. So you’d only be pretending to be my mistress.”
She gave me a look that could have flash-fried a Lesser Drake. But then, slowly, her features softened. The fighter receded; the woman, tired and resolved, remained. “Fine,” she sighed, the fight draining out of her shoulders. She leaned back against the opposite wall, the spray between us. “What’s the next step?”
I pushed off the tiles, moving back under the water to rinse the blood from my chin. “We have to assume this room, maybe the whole flophouse, has ears or eyes. So we sell the rest of the night. We get out of this shower. We fool around some more. We sleep. Maybe a quickie in the morning before I go.”
She glared at me, a fresh wave of irritation tightening her mouth. But I saw it—the faint, undeniable blush that crept up her neck, the slight, involuntary clench of her thighs. She was still wired from earlier, from the shock, from the punch. The idea wasn’t entirely unwelcome.
“You’re insufferable,” she muttered, not meeting my eyes.
“Part of the cover,” I said, reaching past her to turn off the shrieking water. The sudden silence was a physical presence, broken only by the drip from the showerhead and the whirring fan. “Use the money I gave you already. The serious Gil. Buy a couple of fancy outfits. Something that says ‘expensive taste’ not ‘Sector 7 practical.’ Next week, I’ll meet you topside. We’ll look at apartments in a nice, bland, Upper Plate complex. You need to look the part.”
She pushed the curtain aside with more force than necessary, stepping out onto the sodden mat. She grabbed a thin, frayed towel, her movements brisk. “The part,” she repeated, wrapping the towel around herself. She looked at me over her shoulder, water clinging to her dark lashes. “And what part are you playing, exactly? The remorseful mercenary? The greedy one?”
I stepped out, taking the other towel. “The smitten one,” I said, and the words felt less like a lie than anything else I’d said all night. “The guy who saw something beautiful in a dive bar and decided to keep it for himself. It’s the only motive they’ll never fully question.”
The silence after the water stopped was thicker than the steam. My words about being smitten hung in the damp air between us, a flimsy construct built over a foundation of brutal necessity. She stood there, the thin towel clinging to her curves, her hair dripping onto the cracked tile floor. Her expression was unreadable, a mask of the practiced bartender weighing a customer's story.
Then, with a sigh that seemed to leave her body, she turned and walked back into the gloom of the bedroom. I followed, the worn floorboards cold under my bare feet. The neon sign’s rhythm painted her in intermittent flashes as she stood by the bed, her back to me, a silhouette of tension.
I crossed the space. My hands found her shoulders, feeling the knot of muscle there. I pulled her close to me. She stiffened, then her body yielded with a shuddering exhale. She struggles, but there's no fight behind it. It was the residual tremor of released anger, of a soul adjusting to a new, confined shape.
I bent my head, my lips brushing the shell of her wet ear. I whispered softly, the words a secret for her alone in the bugged room. "I'm going to spend the rest of tonight apologizing to you... thoroughly. And again tomorrow morning. If you'll let me." I paused, letting the promise settle. "That part was real."
She didn't speak. But I felt the heat bloom across the back of her neck, a visible tell even in the poor light. She blushed, trying to avoid my gaze by staring fixedly at the peeling wallpaper. I kept one arm around her, my other hand coming up to cradle her jaw. I tilt her chin upwards and kiss her softly. It was nothing like the hungry clashes from before. This was a question, a correction, a quiet anchor.
Her lips were still beneath mine for a heartbeat. Then she sighs, a sound of profound and weary surrender, and kisses me back. Her mouth opened, slow and warm, and her hand came up to rest on my chest, over the scar tissue her fist had slammed into moments ago.
The kiss deepened, not with frenzy, but with a drowning sort of need. We stumbled back into the bedroom, our feet tangling. The towel falling from her body was an accident, a slip of damp terrycloth that pooled at our feet. We didn't notice. My hands are all over her body, relearning the landscape without the slickness of soap or the urgency of first discovery. The water-cooled skin of her back, the resilient swell of her ass, the damp trails left in the valleys of her spine.
She was noticeably less sensitive than she was before, her nerves softened by exhaustion and spent passion. When my mouth left hers to trail down her throat, she didn't gasp; she hummed, a low, tired vibration. I lower her back onto the bed, the mattress groaning its familiar protest. I followed her down, kissing my way back down her body. My lips traced the faint, ghostly outline of my own release, now washed clean from her stomach. I kissed the sharp shelf of her hipbone, the strong line of her thigh.
She grumbles wordlessly, a sound of sleepy protest, as I nudged her legs apart. Then, with a shift of her weight, a purely practical motion, she spreads her legs, giving me access to her sex again. The view was different now. Softer, used, the flesh flushed and slightly swollen from earlier attentions. The scent of her was clean soap and her own deep, musky warmth.
I didn't dive in. I just looked, for a long moment, committing this quieter version of her to memory. Then I leaned in and kissed her there, a chaste, closed-mouth press against her inner thigh. She jerked, a flicker of surprise. “Ron…” Her voice was thick, a warning or a plea, I couldn’t tell.
“Just apologizing,” I murmured against her skin, my breath hot. “Thoroughly, remember?”
My tongue followed, not the frantic, driving rhythm from before, but a slow, mapping exploration. I licked along the outer lips, tasting the clean water and the lingering, essential salt of her. She was tender, and I could feel her tense at the first direct contact, her body instinctively guarding against overstimulation. I adjusted, my touches becoming softer, more diffuse. I kissed the thatch of hair above, nuzzled the crease of her thigh, let my lips wander in aimless, soothing patterns until the tension leaked out of her hips and she sank deeper into the thin mattress.
Her hand found my hair, not guiding, just holding. Her fingers tightened slightly when I finally, carefully, touched my tongue to her clit. Not to push her toward another peak, but simply to acknowledge it, to soothe the little bud with soft, circling passes. A long, shaky sigh drifted down from above. It wasn’t the sound of building pleasure, but of a profound, accepted tenderness.
I kept at it until her grip in my hair went lax, until her breathing evened out into something close to sleep. Then I kissed my way back up her body, feeling the slow, steady drum of her heart under my lips. I settled beside her, pulling the rough sheet over us both. The neon pulsed outside, casting its relentless, red-and-blue truth across her sleeping face. The room, for all its imagined ears, held only the sound of her breath and the echo of my promise in the dark.
The room, for all its imagined ears, held only the sound of her breath and the echo of my promise in the dark. I listened to it, watching the neon shadows crawl across the water-stained ceiling. Her body was a warm, solid weight against my side, one arm flung across my chest. Sleep came for me in slow, cautious increments, my mind cycling through plans and her face, the feel of her fist against my jaw, the softer feel of her mouth after. The two sensations merged into a single, complicated ache.
I woke to the gray, soupy light of a slum morning filtering through the dirty window. The neon had bled away, replaced by the dull glow of diffused Mako and particulate smog. My body registered two things immediately: a stiff jaw, and the warm pressure of Tifa curled into the hollow of my chest. Her knee was hooked over my thigh, her cheek pressed just below my collarbone. Her hair fanned out, a dark riot against the dingy pillow.
I didn’t move. I just breathed, feeling the slow, steady rise and fall of her ribs. After a minute, she stirred. Her head shifted, and I looked down to find her amber eyes already open, watching me. A faint, sleepy smile touched her lips, softening the usual careful vigilance she wore like armor.
“Morning,” I rasped. My voice was gravel from disuse.
“Mmf,” she replied, nuzzling slightly before going still again. Her fingers absently traced a pattern on my sternum, over an old shrapnel scar. The silence was comfortable, thick with the unspoken events of the night. The peace felt fragile, a bubble over a deep pit.
“Tifa, about last night—” I began, the apology forming automatically on my tongue.
She stopped me. Not with a word, but by shifting upward and covering my mouth with hers. It was a soft, slow, closed-mouth kiss, a gentle press that held the taste of sleep. She pulled back just an inch, her eyes searching mine. “Stop,” she whispered. “Just… stop.”
She took a deeper breath, her gaze dropping to where her fingers still rested on my chest. “I’ve been thinking. Last night… you could have. When I was on top of you. I was so far gone, Ron. If you’d asked to put it in, I would have said yes. I wanted to. I was right there.” Her eyes flicked back up, holding a complicated blend of honesty and relief. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
The admission hung between us, more intimate than anything physical we’d done. It was a gift of raw truth, and it demanded one in return.
“You’ll always get the truth from me,” I said, my hand coming up to cup the side of her face, my thumb stroking her cheekbone. “Even when it’s ugly. Even when it’s a shitty plan. And if we fuck, Tifa, it’ll be because you look at me in the clear light of day and tell me you want to. Not because the moment got away from us. Not before.”
Her smile returned then, warmer, reaching her eyes. It was a real smile, not the bartender’s special or the fighter’s grimace. It was smaller, more private. She leaned into my touch. “Okay,” she said, simply. Then that smile turned playful, a sly curve. “So, Mr. Truth-Teller. You have any other ideas? Since we’re awake and supposedly performing for the walls.”
I matched her grin, the movement pulling at the tender spot on my jaw. The night’s weight began to lift, replaced by the sharp, bright potential of morning. My body was responding to her proximity, to the feel of her skin against mine, to that look in her eye.
“I’ve got one,” I said, my voice dropping. “But it’s a two-part request.”
“I’m listening.”
“First,” I said, guiding her with a hand on her hip. “Sit on my face.”
Her eyebrows shot up, a blush instantly staining her neck and chest. She laughed, a surprised, genuine sound. “Bold. What’s the second part?”
“If you’re feeling really generous,” I continued, tracing the line of her spine. “You could lay down on me after. Reverse of last night. Suck my cock a little while I take care of you. Carefully, though.” I tapped her bottom lip with my thumb. “No more attempts at deep throating. We stick to geometry we know works.”
She held my gaze, the blush deepening but her expression turning thoughtful, assessing. The playfulness was still there, but underneath ran a current of intense, focused curiosity. She was considering the mechanics, the angles, the yield.
“You drive a hard bargain,” she finally said, her voice a low purr.
Then she moved. In one fluid, powerful motion, she swung her leg over my chest and settled her knees on the pillow beside my head. She paused there, looking down at me, her hair creating a dark curtain around our faces. The morning light outlined her form, a vision of powerful thighs and soft curves above me. Her scent, warm and deeply her, filled my senses.
“Just geometry,” she murmured, echoing my words from the shower as she began to lower herself.