The Video Game Yaoi Challenge (vgyaoi_lj) wrote, @ 2012-02-22 03:21:00 |
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http://video-game-yaoi.livejournal.com/3
He opened his eyes and only saw white.
He closed them again, the spot remained for a second behind his lids, then dissolved back into darkness. He tried opening them the second time, and found himself successfully staring at a dark grey ceiling. He couldn’t remember how he got here or where “here” was, exactly, but a strange yet oddly familiar smell in the air was trying hard to jog his memory. He sniffed, didn’t recognize it, and took in a deeper breath.
The subsequent pain was unexpected and fierce, spreading from the hollow of his throat all the way to his navel. He gasped as it hit and the act only compounded it, choking off his breath and sending another wave throughout his body.
“Try hold your breath in and let the air out slowly,” someone said close by. It would’ve startled him if it weren’t familiar enough that even in this state he recognized the speaker. Vincent closed his eyes, forcing his body to relax. He did what he was told, and found the pain starring to diminish and ebb way, just enough to convince him that the method was working.
When the pain was nothing more than a dull ache inside his chest, Vincent opened his eyes again. He saw the light-colored hair and the telltale spikes, and a hint of a relieved smile began to form on his lips. Cloud’s presence seemed to ground him some. The realization that he still remembered whom Cloud was grounded him more.
“Better?” Cloud asked, reaching over to light the stump of a candle on the bedside table.
Vincent just noticed it was still night outside, although judging from the windows across the room dawn was not far off.
“Where am I?” Vincent croaked, his throat felt as dry as sand.
“Wutai,”
That explained the candles, the wooden-framed windows, and that smell, Vincent concluded. “What happened?”
“You got hurt,” Cloud replied calmly. A tad too calm for Vincent’s liking. “We all got hurt, but you . . . nearly didn’t make it. It’s fine now.”
Liar, Vincent immediately thought. Cloud moved, picking up the glass of water already set on the nightstand and handed it to Vincent. Vincent drank greedily. When he was done he shifted a little, just enough to look at Cloud directly in the eye, and asked: “How?”
Cloud didn’t answer but kept Vincent’s gaze. One of his hands twitched, once, and Vincent deepened his scowl.
“How?” he asked again, unrelenting.
A minute later Cloud let out a sigh, and started talking. It had started out as a routine monster hunt, because the children had wanted to go to Gold Saucer but they were short on gil. Yuffie had said that there was a cave not far off with tough monsters that gave money in the thousands. Tifa, Cloud, and Vincent made up the team, with Yuffie as the guide. Unfortunately the quartet got lost around the bend of a river, and Yuffie suggested going up a nearby hill to find their location.
They were halfway up the slope when the monsters hit – flying creatures that breathed poison and fast mountain-climbers with whip-like tails. They were surrounded in minutes. The monsters tore into their skin and clogged their vision with green fogs. In the end it was Vincent’s berserked Limit that sent the creatures scattering, giving the team a very narrow escape.
Except afterwards they couldn’t stop Vincent’s bleeding.
Nothing worked. The creatures had tore open Vincent’s chest and his old scars, leaving his flesh ripped and bare. The Cures couldn’t mend fast enough and Life was burnt out. Tifa was frantic and told Yuffie to run for help, in which the ninja girl took off immediately. Cloud was digging through all of their supplies, hoping against hope that somewhere in there had left a single phoenix down.
There wasn’t.
Cloud stopped talking. Vincent swallowed, feeling slightly uncomfortable. It was one thing to hear how he was hurt and quite another when he started to remember, minutely, the sensations while he was lying on that mountain slope. He looked at Cloud and saw that the blond’s face was as pale as ashes and his mouth was set straight and hard.
“Then what?” Vincent asked tentatively. As difficult as it was, for the both of them, he still wanted, needed, to know.
“After a while we managed to stop most of the bleeding with remedies and elixirs.” Cloud said, so soft that Vincent had to strain to hear him. “But Tifa said you’d lost too much, and wouldn’t last on your way back. You needed some blood in you, but you were unconscious and couldn’t . . . transform. Luckily we still had a full med kit on us, so we thrown some needles and rubber tubes together. We didn’t know if it was going to work, or if we were too late already. But you were dying! We didn’t know what else to do . . .”
Cloud trailed off again, focusing on the joints of his knuckles and avoiding Vincent’s incredulous stare. Vincent couldn’t believe his ears – he was truly dying? He, brought back to life and filled with demons and Mako, was capable of dying? Not only that, but he still needed the blood in his body to sustain his seemingly unnatural life. Vincent didn’t trust this – perhaps it was simply a quick judgment under duress. But he had known Cloud for years, and through their past experience he didn’t think that mere adrenaline and fear could cloud that much of the blond’s judgment. Vincent Valentine was not immortal after all.
He didn’t know how to react to that, or even figure out what that really meant at this moment. So he resorted to a logical, follow-up question: “Whose is it?”
Cloud looked up and met his eyes. The tightly-pressed mouth loosened to a small smile, and the relief on Cloud’s face was ever visible.
“Mine,” Cloud said, matter-of-fact.
Because of the Mako, Vincent finished silently. Cloud Strife’s blood flows in my veins. Because of him, I am still here, alive. Breathing. I am still human, because I nearly died.
The runaway thoughts must have showed in his expression, for a moment later Vincent noticed that Cloud was staring at him with concern on his face. Vincent shook his head to clear it. He reached out to the blond, who didn’t flitch out of reflex but let Vincent’s cold fingers trace the equally cold skin along his jaw, the warmer pulse on his neck. Vincent pulled gently, and Cloud followed his gesture without protest, climbing onto the bed and settled alongside Vincent’s heavily bandaged torso.
Later he would ask Tifa the details, and she would tell him about how Cloud shook his unconscious form and repeatedly screamed his name. About how she was so shocked at the sight and nearly dropped their only glass syringe down the rocky slope. Tifa would also tell him about the eerie quietness that surrounded them while Cloud’s Mako-infused lifeblood was pouring into Vincent, and the mountain’s silence was frightening but the calm and empty expression on Cloud’s face was worse. He would ask about all of these later, but at the current moment Vincent was content with Cloud’s warmth next to him and the spiky blond hair poking the underside of his jaw. Cloud’s breathing was quickly becoming even – the blond was beyond exhausted – and Vincent wondered momentarily how this was going to pan out in the morning.
But morning seemed so far away. Vincent wrapped his arm tighter around Cloud and left a kiss between the blond eyebrows. Cloud didn’t stir. Vincent smiled, briefly, then closed his eyes. Behind his lids he saw nothing but a shifting darkness, and the faint scent of cherry blossoms filled his nose.