Chapter 9: Midnight Confessions
The air in the Leaf House was different. It smelled of weak broth, old books, and the faint, clean scent of soap from freshly washed linens. It was a quiet smell, a caring one, a world away from the rot and rust of the train graveyard.
Elmyra—not their Elmyra, but a namesake coincidence that made Aerith’s eyes soften—was settled on a cot in a small back room, her breathing steadier under a worn quilt. The woman who ran the place, a broad-shouldered former nurse named Mara, had clucked her tongue and taken charge without a single question. “Night terrors, dehydration, and a pinch of loneliness,” she’d murmured to Aerith, patting her hand. “We’ll sort her. You two look like you’ve fought a war. There’s a room at the end of the hall. Water’s cold, but it’s clean. Use it.”
They used it. The room was little more than a storage closet cleared out, with a thin mattress on the floor and a single, high window letting in the polluted moonlight of the upper plate. But it had a lock on the door, and for now, that was a luxury.
Cloud stood under the feeble trickle of water from the makeshift showerhead—a perforated tin can hung from a pipe. The cold was a shock, a brutal scrape against the adrenaline still humming in his veins. He scrubbed at his skin, the grime and the memory of the attacker’s blood swirling down the drain in a rust-colored spiral. He could still feel the jarring impact of bone against his sword’s flat, the animal panic in the man’s eyes. He scrubbed harder.
The latch clicked behind him. He didn’t turn, but every muscle in his back tightened. The rusted chain of the showerhead clinked softly.
Aerith’s arms slipped around his waist, her front pressing against his wet back. Her dress was gone, her skin warm and dry against his water-chilled flesh. She laid her cheek between his shoulder blades, her breath a soft puff of heat.
“You’re freezing,” she whispered into his skin.
He leaned back into her, his head bowed under the dribbling water. Her warmth was an anchor. “Yeah.”
Her hands splayed across his abdomen, feeling the rigid lines of muscle clenched beneath his skin. She didn’t speak for a long moment, just held him as the water pattered against them both, slowly soaking her too. “He’s gone,” she said finally. “He won’t come back.”
“Others will.” His voice was flat. A fact.
“Let them try.” Her tone was light, but her hands tightened on him. “My grumpy chocobo will kick their asses, too.”
A noise escaped him—a half-choked sound that was almost a laugh. It felt strange in his throat. He turned within the circle of her arms. Water streamed down his face, plastering his hair to his skull. He looked down at her. Her hair was beginning to curl in the damp, her eyes huge and dark in the gloomy light. She was smiling up at him, but her smile didn’t reach her eyes. They held a reflection of his own coiled tension.
She saw it. She always saw it. She lifted a hand and traced the line of his jaw, his cheekbone, his bottom lip. “You’re here,” she said, echoing her words from the train car, but now it sounded less like a comfort and more like a command. A reminder to himself. “You’re with me.”
He caught her wrist, pressing a kiss to her palm, then her inner wrist, where her pulse thrummed against his lips. A steady, living beat. He turned her hand and kissed each of her fingertips, his eyes never leaving hers. The water traced paths between her breasts, down the gentle slope of her stomach.
She shivered, but not from the cold. Her other hand came up to cup his face, her thumb stroking the water from his lower lip. “Cloud,” she breathed, and the word was full of everything unspoken: the fear, the relief, the violent, possessive love that threated to crack his ribs open.
He kissed her. It was a drowning, a claiming. His mouth crashed onto hers, not with tenderness but with a desperation that tasted like rust and cold water and her. She answered him with equal fervor, her tongue sliding against his, her teeth nipping at his lip. Her hands gripped his wet hair, pulling him deeper.
He backed her out of the direct spray, her body sliding against his until her shoulders met the cracked, damp tiles of the wall. The cold ceramic shocked a gasp from her, swallowed by his mouth. He pinned her there, his hands cradling her face, his body a solid, unyielding bar of heat against hers.
He broke the kiss, his breath ragged. “You shouldn’t…” he started, the sentence dying. You shouldn’t have been there. You shouldn’t have seen that. You shouldn’t have to be in this world.
She understood. She always did. Her eyes gleamed. “I’m exactly where I should be.” She shifted against him, and the heat at the junction of her thighs burned through the chilling damp. “Right here.”
One of his hands slid from her face, down the column of her throat, over the slick curve of her shoulder, coming to rest on her breast. His thumb swept roughly over her nipple, feeling it pucker instantly into a hard peak against his palm. A sharp, needy sound tore from her throat.
“Show me,” she whispered, her voice husky. “Show me you’re here. That I’m here.”
His control, already frayed to a thread, snapped.
He dropped to his knees on the wet floor. The cold of the tiles bit into his skin. He didn’t feel it. His hands hooked behind her knees, pulling them over his shoulders. He yanked her towards him, his mouth finding her center with unerring precision.
She cried out, her hands flying to his hair, fingers twisting in the wet strands. He didn’t tease, didn’t build slowly. He licked into her with a single, broad, flat stroke, soaking in her taste—sweet, musky, uniquely her. He groaned against her, the vibration making her legs tremble.
“Oh, god, Cloud… yes…” Her head thumped back against the wall.
He feasted on her. His tongue speared inside her, fucking her with short, brutal thrusts before flicking mercilessly over her clit. He used his lips, his teeth with careful, grazing pressure. He was a man starved, and she was his only sustenance. Her hips began to jerk, fucking herself against his face, her moans echoing in the small, tiled room, mingling with the sound of the dripping water.
“Don’t stop, don’t you fucking stop,” she chanted, her words slurring into a moan. “Right there, oh, right there…”
He redoubled his efforts, his hands gripping the backs of her thighs, holding her open for him. He could feel her tightening, hear her breaths coming in sharp, ragged gasps. Her heels dug into his back, urging him on. He sucked her clit into his mouth, applying a steady, rhythmic pressure.
She came with a shattered cry, her body arching off the wall, her thighs clamping around his head. He rode her through it, his tongue lapping at her, drawing out every last pulse and shudder until she was boneless, sagging against the wall, her breaths coming in sobs.
He didn’t give her time to recover. He surged to his feet, water sluicing from his body. He was hard, painfully so, his cock standing thick and heavy against his stomach. He looked at her, her face flushed, her lips swollen, her body glistening with water and her own release. Her eyes were half-lidded, sated, but they flicked down to him and darkened with renewed hunger.
She reached for him, her hand wrapping around his length. Her touch was firm, knowing. She stroked him once, twice, her thumb smearing the bead of moisture at his tip. “Inside,” she demanded, her voice raw. “Now. I need to feel you.”
He needed no further invitation. He hooked an arm under her thigh, lifting her, pinning her back against the tiles. She wrapped her legs around his hips, her ankles locking at the small of his back. He guided himself to her entrance, the head of his cock nudging against her slick heat.
He pushed in.
It was an invasion, a homecoming. She was so wet, so impossibly tight around him, still fluttering from her orgasm. She gasped, her nails biting into his shoulders as he filled her inch by relentless inch. He buried himself to the hilt, their bodies meeting with a wet slap of skin on skin. He stopped, trembling with the effort of holding still, buried inside her to the root.
Her eyes were wide, her mouth open. “Fuck,” she breathed, the crude word reverent on her lips.
He began to move. There was no finesse, no practiced rhythm. It was a raw, primal driving of his hips, pulling almost all the way out before slamming back into her. The force of it shook her body against the wall, knocked the breath from her lungs in sharp, rhythmic cries. Each thrust was a punctuation mark, a brutal, physical confirmation. Alive. Here. Mine.
“Harder,” she begged, her head rolling against the tile. “Yes, just like that, Cloud, fuck me harder.”
He obliged, his pace turning punishing. The sound of their bodies meeting was obscenely loud in the small space, a wet, rhythmic slap punctuated by her choked moans and his guttural grunts. He could feel his climax coiling, a tight, hot spring in the base of his spine. He was close, so close.
She was there with him. Her inner muscles clenched around him in rhythmic pulses, milking him. “Come in