#furiaei. claws wrap around your throat in a sweet embrace.

[minban]

"I don't think I want you to say anything. I want you to hold me." (okay but Mya being vulnerable with either Cloud or JY 🥺)

@furiaei / a quiet moment between us

there is so little he would normally say, so little words to express the myriad of emotions that courses through his heart as the world continues to turn around them. he has never been good at expressing himself, words often eluding him when he searches for so long to find the right thing to say, or the right emotion to show. but his heart still bleed and yearns all the same, it boils for the ones he holds dear. how many times has he said that he would do anything for his friends? how many times has he given up everything just so his friends may breathe another day? to live and see the end of days, cloud will gladly be a sacrifice.

words have never been his forte, and he has always preferred to show his care through his actions. for most, many will not wait to allow cloud to prove himself. perhaps that is why he adores the little family he has made throughout the years, this wonderful batch of mismatched people he would bleed and die for. they have allowed him to simply be himself with nothing to fill the silence but their breathing as they exist together, and it is so easy for cloud to wrap his hands around mya and pull her close to him. it is so easy for him to rest his head on top of hers as he adjusts himself so that mya fits perfectly against his chest and bundled up in his arms. it is so easy for him to step back with mya in tow, pulling her along with him as he allows himself to fall into bed with mya on top of him.

cloud holds onto mya like that, with her cradled against him as he brushes a hand down her back, watching as she moves with the rise and fall of his chest. like this, he feels as if he could fall asleep, so perfectly content with the weight of her pressing against him. like this, he feels as if there is nothing that can hurt them. he moves his hand to play with mya's hair, content, at ease, and waiting. for mya, he would do anything that she asks.

[minban]

you know me better than anyone on earth. ( for Cloud )

@furiaei / the can't-stop-flirting list

"do i?" cloud whispers against against her skin, tracing the light pattering scars with the brush of his lips. she feels warm as he presses against her, pressing soft kisses into her shoulder and the dip of her neck, lingering there for as long as he can, for as long as she allows. he has her pliant in his arms, an offering that has been bestowed onto him by her own hands and he treats this blessing with the utmost care. he lavishes her scars with bruises painted in reds and purples, drawing blood to the top of her skin until he can taste traces of copper on his tongue, until he is pulling away to marvel at the work he has made of her flesh.

admiration flits through is eyes as he gazes at mya, a gift from the goddess herself. she has been a pillar of strength in his times of weakness, alighting her blades with poison and burying them into flesh of all who dares to harm them. he has watched her lacerate men into pieces, and he has felt warmth pool around his core. there are times where he feels as if his yearning is a sin, emotions that dredges up his lack of worth and self loathing in the face of a woman worthy of so much more than he can ever offer. more than his love, more than the weight he bears. all that he carries is a sword strapped to his back, wielding it with movements that do not belong to him.

and she calls him her hero. and he believes that he has found his place, growing into the role he bears, swinging his sword with moves that he has made his own. the weight of the word hero presses down into him so unforgivingly, and yet when she speaks his name, calls him her hero so sweetly, he feels like it's just a little more bearable. if he were to fail as gaia's champion, then at least he still has her, at least he is still her hero as he holds her in his arms as he buries his face into the juncture of her skin. she makes him feel warm, giddy with the feeling as it courses through his veins and pools around the base of his core. she looks at him and he feels that everything is right in the world, as if he can keep going despite all the unfairness he must suffer at the hands of greedy men.

she looks at him softly and he feels like he is allowed to cradle her like this, allowed to partake in what she gives him as he places a kiss to her beating pulse. she speaks to him with heat, a fierceness akin to when she is splattered in blood and breathing heavy with the victory of her battle, and he feels like he can devour her, indulging in his own selfish wants as she gives herself to him in just the way he wants. "i think you know me better," he brushes his lips against her ears, placing soft kisses to every piece of skin that he touches, her jaw, her cheeks, her lips. he admires he as he looks at her, mya who has once been so hesitant to look into his mako stained eyes as if the shimmering green would bring ghosts clawing at her very feet now looks at him with heat akin to flames. he finds it heedy, how he would let himself burn beneath her hands should she wish to set him aflame. "you know me to the point where you can call me yours, and i will gladly agree."

[minban]

" hey, so, I really suck at this, I'll tell you as much. but, uhm... have you ever considered going out with me? you know, as in, a real date? do you think you'd like that? " ( okay but hear me out let Mya and Cloud be cute and awkward at the Gold Saucer 🥺 )

@furiaei

"uhm," cloud grimaces at his own hesitation. dates and romance have not been on the forefront of his mind for such a long time, and now the thought seems almost daunting. he would not consider the times spent being dragged around by his companions as dates. in times where his little group has afforded time to idle by and relax in between their endless battles, cloud has taken it upon himself to be a protector. a bodyguard, as his companions often like to refer to him. and that had been nice. he enjoys watching his friends scamper off and have fun in the moments afforded to them as he watches by in a quiet vigil.

with mya, he does not feel the need to keep his sword alight. she has lighten the burden of his mantle, allowing him to not feel suffocated beneath the weight of his sword. he does not know how she has done it, and he is grateful for it all the same. perhaps it is the way she is all sharp jagged edges coated with poison, a blade ready at the tip of her fingers to plunge into the nearest opponent. he feels safety in her bloodshed, and the thought of setting his sword aside for just a moment does not strike him as an unthinkable task. she can sink her poison into him in these moments, and yet that is anything unlike the situation present to him.

now, she stands before him and gives him such a simple offer such as a date. it is the way she does it, unsure in a way that is so unlike her that it sends a warmth to his core. cloud can understand the feeling, knows it in the way his own inability to blend in with social gatherings often clenches around his throat like a vice. for as much as people try to throw themselves at him, cloud has little to no experience with such mundane idlings. the thought had not crossed his mind in ages, and even in recent weeks, he has thought this a happenstance that could no longer be afforded to him.

there are little gives that has cloud thinking otherwise. the way they both indulge in their carnage on the field, the way they seek each other out in the cloak of night. mya has become a pillar of safety for cloud, a symbol of rest that he has come to indulge in everytime that mya offers. it would be beyond him to refuse something so simple as a date.

"yeah, sure," cloud quickly says, fearing that mya would take her offer away the longer he continues to stare at her like an idiot. he does feel like a fool in times like these. "i would like that. do you, uh... do you have any place you would like to go to first? this place is bigger than i had realized." slowly and with much hesitation, cloud takes mya's hand into his. "and don't say chocobo square."

[minban]

' all I have ever wanted was to have my home back, ' the redhead confesses, and the confession weighs millions, ' I wanted to hear my father's thunderous laugh again, I wanted to show him how hard I've worked on the song he'd left me to practice until he gets back. instead, what I got was my world ripped apart. '

the gloves meant for combat will never substitute the skin on skin contact, though, Mya reaches for Cloud's hand regardless. ' I'd tell you that you don't have to carry a whole world on your shoulders, ' offered in a murmur, ' but, much like my father, you'd do it anyway out of love. ha! ' a bitter laugh. ' I guess some girls do seek the ghost of their fathers in the boys they love. '

@furiaei / a ghost in green eyes

fingers curl around the smaller hand in his grasp, the hold so gentle and yet it feels as if she were searing red hot iron into his skin, so burning that he melts instead of bleeds, turning his flesh to ash with this act of comfort. for who, he wonders, is that comfort meant for. because it surely is not for him, not in the way she brings him the solace of sweet words to heal his wounds, not in the way she pours poison over the still open flesh, polluting the blood just as the final threads of his skin stitches together.

it is a wound that continues to fester, because what is he supposed to do, when the world relies on him so much just to see another day, when gaia herself bestows upon him the role of protector, of steel hearty hero who will always rise to protect the planet. the title of gaia's champion weighs heavy on his shoulders. and it is not a title that he is willing to lend to another, not one that he wishes at all to share, just so another person will not know the burden that he carries with him every waking second of their days. sometimes, the weight suffocates him during his sleep. sometimes the love of his companions are not enough to ease his pain of existence, and yet he bares it all the same.

just as mya says, cloud will carry the weight of the world on his shoulders out of love. he is just one person, just one boy, and he loves so dearly. he loves despite the horrors he has gone through, of years worth of torture, of losing years of his teenagehood to experimentation and mako tanks, of having his mind being controlled by a parasite that never knows when to die, when to fade out into existence. sometimes cloud wishes he can plunge himself into raw mako, letting the lifestream take him away into nothingness so that he cannot think, he cannot feel.

cloud looks at mya, brows pinched and eyes filled with the pain he has endured all these years. "must you always compare me to your father?" he says, tightening his hold on mya's hands even though it burns, her hands a brand that coils around his arm. these are words he has thought before, simmering and bubbling each time she mentions her father. and he understands, for there are so many similarities, it would be cruel to deny the woman he loves of the memories that she holds so dear. that she continues to see her father in the smallest of things means that she still loves her father, that she will continue to cherish the memories of him even when it is hard.

in the same breath that she breathes the beginnings of comfort, she throws a knife made with the whispers of her father into his heart, digging it in with a reminder of her love for him. a reminder that when she looks at cloud, she continues to see someone else. "i'm tired," he says, because he is so very tired of the reminders, of holding the world as if he were atlas, fated to bare the crushing weight, as if he were a stone pillar who will never crumble as the tides continue to crash into the surface. "please spare me," of what, he does not know, a wonder in his own weariness, of the comments of her father, of the weight of the world, "please. can we just... rest."

[minban]

❛ it’s okay, you can touch me. i won't break. ❜ ( for Cloud, go wild )

@furiaei / an assortment of dialogue prompts.

she speaks her words with such conviction, so certain, so willing. and it has him wanting to believe in her words, to take them for what they are and embrace her in the way that he craves so deeply in his veins, so much that he feels like he's burning up. it is so hard for him, and it is entirely of his own doing, a fear that he will destroy what he places his hands on, that a person will crumble under his touch no matter how light the press of his fingers are. it shakes him to his core, that he will become the monster that he fears, the monster born of a young boy's dreams, so bright and strong then, so cruel and crushing now.

and yet she is offering herself up to him, and he is but a poor country boy who does not wish to give up what remains of his hopes, his dreams, his visions for the future. his hands shake as places them on her shoulders, sliding them down the expanse of her arms so that he may hold her hands in his. they shake still, even with the warmth in his hands, and he looks down to try to still the trembling. her nails are so pretty, he wonders in his own lost mind, the way that they narrow into clawed tips, ready to tear the flesh away from a man so that he is left wounded and bleeding and pleading for mercy in his last fading tendrils of life.

cloud wonders that maybe she is right, that she will not break under his hands, as she has done much worse before his very eyes. her hands as a weapon, her words like poisoned honey, so sweet and yet so very deadly. mya is so venomous, and cloud wants to put his hands all over her until he is feeling the sting of the poison rubbing off onto him.

"are you sure?" he whispers, leaning closer, leaning into mya's space so that he may steal a kiss from her lips. and he burns so deliciously, heat flaring up from his core and spreading through his veins, so much that there is a dim flush growing on his face. the warmth soothes his shaky limbs, even as his breathing grows just a little bit hitched, he feels calmer. another kiss then, to whisk his worries away completely, taken from her lips once more. and he bites her, so that he may taste the blood on her lips and soothe it away in the same way she does for him, licking the away the red and smearing it at the same time.

"if you allow it." he continues in the form of a nip to her neck, sucking the flesh so that he may leave a trace of himself on her in the form of a bruise. it will fade in time, and surely he may get a chance to replace it, to shower her neck in the affection and desire he so desperately wants to succumb to, so that she may remember him even as she sinks her pretty blades into flesh and turns them into gore. he wants her to feel him all the time, to think of him when she aches so tenderly, a pain so sweet in the hours after it was inflicted.

cloud pulls her closer to him, so that he may feel her warmth all around him through their clothes, so that her weight rests on top of him, so that his arms may reach every inch of her skin, so that he can put his lips on her as a reminder that she is here, that he may soothe himself in their shared space. mya has offered herself up to cloud, and cloud will take what is freely given.

[minban]

' your eyes awake in my mind the ghosts of the past, ' confession slips at last, after so long, ' my refusal to look you in the eye has never been about me hating you. it has been about me not wanting you to see that which haunts me. ' fingertips dirty with blood trace the contours of his face, the shadow of a smile dancing upon her lips as she faces his eyes. no hiding this time. ' for me, being seen as I am is as good as someone taking a knife and gutting me like a fish and seeing all down to my core. it's unbearable! now that I look at you, I see a similar emptiness to mine in you. ' her smile widens, but it doesn't carry warmth. ' if you like, you can stay. I won't promise to miraculously breathe life in your dead heart. but, I could help you forget about it all, if you like. ' ( you know for whom let's go ham )

shivers rushes down his spine, unfathomably cold and unforgiving. a warning that his body gives him in the face of danger, one that he finds himself struggling to heed. eyes watch with focus as blood dipped hands mar his face with a familiar feeling, painting his cheeks in the red that would splatter against his skin in the throes of battle. a deep, dark red that would fade away into his clothes and glares deathly bright against his pale flesh.

another shiver shakes him when he catches sight of her eyes. he feels trapped. captivated, for this is the first time that he looks at her and she looks back. with all of her attention, piercing into his eyes, and perhaps past that. he can't look away, not when her words sound like velvet against his ears, not when they feel like poison eating away against his skin. she speaks with words so vulnerable and yet they feel like knives slashing away into him, flaying him raw and exposed and exactly just for her.

and he wonders how long she must have felt this way. he wonders how long she's had to hold all of her inner voices inside of herself, so not to drown those around her with the emotions that are threatening to explode. he knows the feeling. knows the need to keep his companions at an arm's distance so that he doesn't hurt them with the phantom pains of his past. hurting so much that his heart feels like it's going to burst. drawing up walls to protect everyone who he loves from his own sword.

still, with her words soothing the hurt he's felt, an understanding of not being able to look at him, still, he feels like prey tangled up in cobwebs. there's a pressure in his chest, telling him to move. her smile is a trap, a decoration that feels out of place. she soothes him the same way she hurts him, telling him of truths he's tried to bury into the deepest parts of himself, burying it deep and out of sight of any prying eyes.

but she's so similar to him. and she's finally looking at him. he would tear his own flesh, ridding all the parts she doesn't like just so that she would stay. there would not be a care for his self destruction, not when all that he's ever had slips away between his fingers like sand blown away by the wind.

"forget about it?" he murmurs, leaning into her hand and placing his own hand over hers. "i spent so long trying to remember, and sometimes i regret it more with each passing day. every time i look at those i love, i remember how i failed the ones from the past. how they threw away their lives because of me."

he looks away from her, eyes drifting over her shoulder and looking at nowhere. something inside of him shudders, and he closes his eyes. "if you'll stay with me, then i would like that. i would like to forget, if you'll help me."

@furiaei / where she touches, he feels cold