Chapter Text
Chapter 13
For a moment, Cloud wasn’t sure what he was seeing.
Sephiroth wiping Vincent’s tears away, that was one thing – and it was certainly not something Cloud had ever expected to see – but then they were kissing.
Kissing, like Cloud and Vincent had kissed. Even though they were --
Cloud heard the noise he made, saw when Vincent registered it and went still. He turned his head, his eyes very wide. “Cloud,” he said, but that was all, just his name.
Cloud didn’t know what to say. He glanced between them, registering that despite Vincent pulling away, they were still so close, hands on each other. Sephiroth was staring at Vincent with a lustful, hungry expression that Cloud had only ever seen directed at him during battle.
That made him uneasy. The sight of Vincent and Sephiroth kissing, that – made him uneasy, too, mostly because he wasn’t at all surprised. Maybe he’d picked up on subtle signals, or maybe he just wasn’t surprised by anything Sephiroth did any more. It should surprise him, more, about Vincent….shouldn’t it?
Shouldn’t this bother him?
“Don’t hurt Vincent.” Cloud swallowed hard. “He doesn’t deserve it.”
“I’m not trying to hurt him.” Sephiroth’s eyes were still on Vincent’s. He drew his fingers over Vincent’s mouth. “I want him. He wants me. Don’t you?”
“Yes.” Vincent sounded miserable. “I shouldn’t, but gods. I do.” The look he gave Cloud was tortured. “I’m sorry. Cloud, please – I’m weak. I always have been….”
“Hey.” Cloud shook his head, trying to clear it. He couldn’t get the sight out of his mind, the two of them kissing. It was – gods. Gorgeous, even though he knew he shouldn’t think that. “Don’t – I’m not….” He shook his head, again, a little harder this time. “I don’t know what to do right now. Or say.”
“Come here,” Sephiroth said, calmly.
Cloud glanced at him. “Um.”
“Come here, Cloud,” he said, again. Imperiously. “Closer.”
Cloud had no idea why he obeyed; maybe he just wanted to be close to Vincent. He knelt behind Vincent and started stroking his back. “I’m not angry.” Cloud reached around to the fastenings of Vincent’s cowl and began to undo them.
“This – it’s wrong,” Vincent said, but he did not move. “How can either of you touch me when I have these terrible desires?”
Cloud met Sephiroth’s eyes from his place behind Vincent, finishing up with the cowl. “I don’t think I’m the best person to judge you for wanting Sephiroth.”
“Mmm. So you admit it, my stormcloud.”
Cloud rolled his eyes at the nickname, pulling Vincent’s cowl and working on the cape. “It seems like that’s what we’re doing. Confessing.” He tugged on the red fabric. Vincent was compliant and didn’t resist when Cloud tossed it aside. The last thing he did was pull the band from Vincent’s dark hair.
Sephiroth leaned in to kiss him again, and Vincent did recoil, though slightly. “Sephiroth –”
“I want you,” Sephiroth said, and though he didn’t say it to Cloud, Cloud still felt the reverberations of it through his body, an echo of lust that pooled low in his gut. “No one has ever been mine in the way you are.”
“It is not right,” Vincent protested, still pliant between them.
“Perhaps not. But I don’t particularly care. Do you? We were kept from each other. I won’t be kept from you, not any longer.”
“And you won’t be, but that isn’t – it doesn’t mean---” Vincent trailed off, and Cloud saw that Sephiroth had leaned forward and was kissing at Vincent’s neck. “It doesn’t mean this can happen.”
Cloud couldn’t help himself from reaching out and smoothing Vincent’s hair back from his neck. Vincent tilted his head, his eyes going to Cloud’s. “I – you should be angry at me….”
“I’m not.” Cloud pulled his head back by the hair, gently, and kissed him. He wondered if Sephiroth would be angry. He wondered why he cared, and it made him kiss Vincent with renewed vigor. Almost possessive.
Sephiroth laughed, low and a shade too hungry to be menacing. “Cloud wants me as much as I want you.”
Cloud glared at him, damned by his own silence.
Vincent somehow took the opportunity to get free of them and leaped gracefully to his feet. His eyes were wild. He was, Cloud knew, going to put some distance between them. Stop this – whatever it was – from happening.
If he were smart, Cloud would let him. Sephiroth and Vincent couldn’t – Vincent and Cloud were – it just couldn’t happen. No.
“You said you would show me your scars,” Cloud heard himself say. He didn’t miss Sephiroth’s slow, pleased smile.
“That’s what you want?” Vincent asked, and Cloud wasn’t always the best at understanding subtleties or hidden meanings, but even he knew what Vincent was really asking him. He knew what would happen if Vincent took off his clothes.
And for once, Cloud Strife was tired of fighting. He nodded. “Yeah. If you do, then…so do I.”
Vincent exhaled and glanced at Sephiroth. The hunger on his face made Cloud’s cock tighten. He still wasn’t sure he could touch Sephiroth without it turning violent, but for some reason, he had no such problem when it came to watching Vincent with Sephiroth.
It should bother him, simply from a moral standpoint, shouldn’t it? Vincent was Sephiroth’s father. Granted, Cloud knew nothing about paternal relationships but he didn’t have to have one to know this wasn’t exactly normal.
Vincent sighed. “You will see the monstrous thing that I am, and you will not want to do anything but turn your back on me.”
“I highly doubt there is anything that would make me not want you,” Sephiroth said, moving closer, stalking Vincent almost like a hunter.
Cloud went to Vincent’s other side, and together, they began to take Vincent’s clothes off. Vincent was passive, his head bowed and his expression hidden in the fall of his midnight hair.
When he was naked, Sephiroth urged him to lay back on the bed. He and Cloud stretched out on either side of him, and looked at what was now exposed.
Cloud had expected it to be bad, and it was. The worst was the red, Y-incision scar vivisecting Vincent’s pale chest, the result of an autopsy performed ostensibly when Vincent was still alive – or perhaps, still sentient. There was the bullet hole from the shot that had felled him, and a thousand other scars slashing down his fair skin. There was something that looked like claw marks high up on his shoulder, ending in a series of cuts on his abdomen.
There were thick, ropey scars on both thighs, and on both of Vincent’s knees. There were even scars on the top of one of his feet. His arms were a mess, and the gauntlet was affixed with what appeared to be metal soldered right onto skin.
Before either of them could speak, Vincent rolled over – not to hide, but to show them his back. The claw marks from his shoulder continued down in fierce angry lines nearly to the swell of his ass. There were two identical cuts on either calf, down to the ankle. His tendons.
Cloud met Sephiroth’s eyes across Vincent’s back. Sephiroth’s narrowed, and he reached out, his long, pale fingers – so like Vincent’s– hovering over skin without quite touching.
“He hobbled me to keep me from leaving, but of course, my tendons grew back.” Vincent’s voice was gravelly and muffled from the bedding. “The scars on my back, from when I was shifting between this form and Gallian. Apparently I tried to claw out my spine.”
Cloud closed his eyes briefly, centering himself. The urge to dwell for a moment on the memory of Hojo’s death was almost overwhelming.
Vincent rolled over so he was lying on his back. His eyes gleamed, and he wouldn’t look at either of them.
“Hojo did this to you.”
Vincent nodded in answer to Sephiroth’s question. “Yes.”
“He did similar things to me, too.” Sephiroth’s voice was impassive. His fingers were tracing the bullet hole, the Y-incision. “I healed, of course. I remembered when he slit my tendon. I was nine. And he watched me try and crawl across the floor, bleeding. He said, you won’t scar, but I want you to remember this, Sephiroth. How easy it was to keep you from running away.”
Cloud heard a sound of a rage and realized it was him. “I’m glad he’s dead. Fucker.”
Sephiroth glanced at him. “Certainly you don’t mean that for my sake, Strife.”
“I mean it for nine-year-old you,” Cloud bit out. “And for Vincent. But I don’t think these scars make you hideous. I think it makes Hojo hideous. I think it just makes you strong that you survived them.”
Vincent turned to glance up at him. He wasn’t stopping Sephiroth’s touch, so Cloud reached down and added his own, tracing the Y-incision. “I’m not strong. If I was, I would have saved Lucrecia. I would have saved our child.”
“Listen to me.” Sephiroth reached out and took Vincent’s chin between his fingers. “You could not have saved me. And it doesn’t matter. The past is over. I have seen your scars and I am still here. I still want you.”
“I still want you, too,” said Cloud, and because he wasn’t nearly as gifted with words, he did the only thing he could think of. He leaned down and began to kiss Vincent’s chest, running his tongue over the edge of the Y-incision nearest to him.
Vincent shuddered, his claw hand sliding in Cloud’s hair. The talons scratched at his scalp, and Cloud found he rather liked how it felt.
“Cloud,” Vincent moaned, but it was not an entreaty to stop.
Cloud felt Sephiroth’s eyes on him and looked up, his expression etched with challenge. Sephiroth leaned down and, amid a fall of silver hair, did the same thing on the other side of the Y-incision scar. Vincent made a low sound in his throat and his human hand came up, grabbing Sephiroth’s hair as they both licked the wicked scar.
Cloud was so close to Sephiroth he could feel his breath. Their eyes met and held. Sephiroth’s were gleaming, and his knowing little smirk made Cloud want to hit him. It also made him grind his hips down against the bed.
“You want me,” Sephiroth breathed, breath fluttering the strands of his hair hanging in his face.
“This is about Vincent, right now,” Cloud growled, his hand rubbing over the scars low on Vincent’s abdomen. “Not us.”
“You fight so hard, my little stormcloud.” Sephiroth reached down before Cloud could hit him for calling him that, grabbing his hand. Unlike Vincent’s skin, which was cool even in the midst of passion, Sephiroth’s burned hot like a flame.
He’d never touched Cloud before, not like – like this. Cloud didn’t know what to do, but he didn’t have much of a chance to think of something before Sephiroth wrapped both their hands around Vincent’s hardening cock.
“Always,” Cloud murmured, his eyes narrowed and caught by Sephiroth’s, as together they stroked Vincent’s cock. He glanced up at Vincent, his expression easing into a smile. Vincent’s head was tossing on the bed, his hand and his claw still buried in Sephiroth and Cloud’s hair, respectively. “Gods. Look at him.”
“You look much better in the throes of passion than angst, Vincent.”
A laugh came from Vincent’s throat, but it wasn’t Vincent.
“I tell him that. And yet. He does not listen.” Vincent’s head raised; his smile was tipped with fangs, his eyes glowing bright amber.
“Begone, demon,” Sephiroth demanded, with the sort of arrogance Cloud expected of him. “I am attending to Valentine now, not you.”
“You didn’t get that pride from your father,” Vincent-Chaos said. The demon’s grin stretched across Vincent’s mouth, too-wide.
“Mmm. Perhaps I got it from the man who raised me?”
Chaos laughed, the sound making the hair stand up on the back of Cloud’s neck – in a way that he was ashamed to admit he enjoyed. Vincent turned his head, and the demon’s bright amber eyes settled on Cloud’s. It was Vincent and yet it was not; the smile was purely inhuman, as was the sound of the demon’s hiss. The tongue that licked out was forked.
“I find I quite like my host brought low by mortal desire. Let it be known that I shall have a taste of you both, later. You make him feel so many things. It pleases me.”
“He’s as fond of monologues as you are,” Cloud murmured softly to Sephiroth, though of course Chaos could hear.
Sephiroth scowled at him, and the demonic entity that was overshadowing Vincent gave one last hiss of laughter and then was gone.
Vincent panted at them, mouth parted, his eyes returning to their usual red. He looked, predictably, like he was going to say something – a protest, or an apology.
Sephiroth spoke up before Vincent could say anything. “Suck him, stormcloud. Show me what he likes.”
Cloud, fed up with the nickname, reached out and took a handful of Sephiroth’s beautiful hair – which was literally everywhere – and yanked, hard. “Stop calling me that.” He pulled harder for good measure, then went still at the outright moan that got out of his nemesis.
“Oh.” Cloud blinked. “You liked that.”
“Which I’m sure means you’ll never do it again, hmm?”
“This is about Vincent,” Cloud reminded him. “But when it’s about us? Oh, yeah. I’ll do it again.” And again, and again, and….
Sephiroth smiled at him, all menace and sinister promise, like there blades between them instead of a lover. Cloud thought about how he was going to fuck Sephiroth, with Sephiroth on his back, pulling his hair and forcing Sephiroth to come on his cock – and smiled right back.
Later. Time for that later.
If he’d ever given a blowjob with someone watching, it certainly wasn’t by choice and Cloud was unaware of when that might have been. But he never would have thought it would arouse him to do something like that under scrutiny; maybe it was because of his audience. Sephiroth, whom Cloud had killed over and over in an act more intimate than sex, was watching him with those mako eyes that burned like fire.
He said nothing, but a few seconds later Cloud felt Sephiroth’s fingers card through the spikes of his hair as he sucked Vincent’s cock. Then Cloud felt those sinful long fingers rub against his mouth, which was stretched around Vincent’s erection. He knew what Sephiroth wanted and allowed it, hearing the moan Vincent made as he felt Sephiroth’s fingers in the warm, wet heat of Cloud’s mouth, rubbing up against his spit-slick cock.
“Gods,” Vincent gasped. His back was arched, his head fallen back, black hair a dark spill around him. His thighs, beneath Cloud’s hands, were trembling.
Sephiroth removed his fingers, and Cloud didn’t bite since he was also sucking Vincent off – likely the only reason Sephiroth put them there in the first place. But Cloud did give him a lick with his fingers, and he smiled inwardly at the soft hiss Sephiroth gave as he slid them free.
Cloud felt where Sephiroth was pressing his fingers, and Vincent’s hips bucked forward as Sephiroth pressed them inside. He had no idea if one of them was supposed to fuck Vincent, there weren’t battle plans for impromptu threesomes, so Cloud just kept sucking, making it wet and messy and pushing his own hips restlessly against the mattress to ease his own arousal. Vincent liked being fingered, and it was clear Sephiroth was hitting him in the right place with every thrust of his hand.
“I’m – close,” Vincent bit out, his voice dark, a hint of Chaos’s growl overlaying the words.
Sephiroth’s hair got everywhere, and Cloud had to brush it out of his way a few times while he took Vincent’s cock as deep as he could. He wondered how it felt against Vincent’s skin, thought about feeling it on his own, draped over his thighs, his cock --
Cloud doubled his efforts and he assumed Sephiroth was doing the same; it didn’t take long before Vincent gasped out in obvious pleasure, warmth filling Cloud’s mouth as Vincent’s hips bucked up in one last, desperate thrust.
He’d just eased his mouth off Vincent’s cock when Sephiroth’s fingers were suddenly twined in the spikes of his hair, pulling, pulling – and Sephiroth’s mouth was on his, and they were kissing, Cloud sharing Vincent’s taste with him in a kiss that rocked him to the core of his being, the one Sephiroth used to control with silken strings. Cloud made a noise but he didn’t know if it were angry or desperate, and he didn’t much care.
He pulled away when he needed to breathe, and was both surprised and maybe a little disappointed that Sephiroth let him go.
“Like you said,” Sephiroth murmured, his voice a low warm rumble that went straight to Cloud’s throbbing erection. “We’ll have our time later, little stormcloud.”
“I really hate that nickname,” Cloud muttered, but Sephiroth had turned his attention to Vincent and was no longer listening.
Vincent had pushed himself up on his elbows, his crimson eyes wide, mouth parted as he caught his breath. His dark hair was a messy tangle, his pale, scarred skin flushed. He looked like sex, like sin, so attractive that it seemed almost impossible. Cloud stared at him, unable to really believe he had the right to touch Vincent with his hands, his mouth. The scars did nothing to make him any less beautiful, lent a fierceness to his wild beauty that Cloud found utterly enchanting.
“Gods, you’re beautiful,” Cloud muttered, then blushed when both Vincent and Sephiroth turned toward him. Of course they’d heard. They both had enhanced senses. There was no point in whispering.
“I’m nothing of the sort, but thank you, Cloud.” Vincent reached out with his human hand for Cloud’s. “Come here.”
Cloud let himself be tugged up next to Vincent on the bed, aroused and a little uncertain what would happen now. It was easy to focus on Vincent, less so on the man on Vincent’s other side. “I – I don’t – I can’t have him touch me. Not – not yet.”
Vincent tipped Cloud’s chin up. The scars on his knuckles were the most faded, as if perhaps they were the oldest of all of them. “Then tell him that, Cloud.”
Cloud glanced over at his nemesis, who was watching with an inscrutable expression. The only evidence of Sephiroth’s arousal was the quickening of his breath, the way his eyes seemed a bit brighter, the slit pupils that were more dilated than usual.
“You don’t wish me to ease your arousal, Cloud?”
Cloud made a face. Honestly. “I – what? No, I just said I didn’t want you to touch me.”
“Then I won’t touch you,” Sephiroth said, his voice amused. “Lay back. Take yourself in hand. I’ll tell you how to get yourself off.”
“I know how,” Cloud snapped, glaring at him. “I don’t need you telling me anything. I’ve done it before.”
Vincent laughed. “I know how to bring Cloud pleasure. Perhaps I could do so, while you watched.”
“Hmm. Very well. Entertain me.” Sephiroth sprawled in the chair next to the bed, one hand stroking his own erection over the top of his pants. Cloud and Vincent both watched as Sephiroth paused and wrapped several strands of his hair around his wrist –enough so that it pulled when his wrist moved. “What? As you so astutely noticed earlier, I enjoy having my hair pulled.”
Cloud’s mouth went dry at the thought, the image – he gave a little shake of his head and let Vincent push him back on the bed.
Things became confused, after that; Vincent’s mouth on his, his dark hair falling around them both. Vincent’s human hand on his dick and the claw teasing at his mouth, and the weighty, heavy feeling of Sephiroth’s catlike eyes watching, watching. He could hear Sephiroth’s breathing, but Vincent was very good and soon Cloud was tumbling over into orgasm, back arching as he came in Vincent’s fist.
It took, all told, a shockingly short amount of time to get him off. It was the combination of Vincent’s talent with his hand, the cool slide of metal against Cloud’s mouth and the inescapable knowledge that Sephiroth was watching him fall apart.
When it was over, the room was almost too-warm and smelled like sweat and sex. Cloud turned his head and blinked lazily at Sephiroth, sprawled obscenely with his pants open and shoved down his thighs. His softening cock was bared to Cloud’s gaze, nestled in a patch of silvery hair.
Cloud looked up at Sephiroth.
“If you make a joke about the carpet matching the drapes,” Sephiroth said, pointing at him. He was clearly still catching his breath, strands of his hair sticking to his sweaty face. Even Calamity’s Son looked human with his pants down.
“You’ll what?” Cloud smiled. Then he laughed. The absurdity of the situation, of that comment, it was all too much. He threw a hand up over his eyes and laughed, laughed until the rest of the tension drained from his body.
He didn’t remember falling asleep.