#but she does kind of feel like a 'oh I can chop these vegetables while the meat is starting to sear' person
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trying to decide whether melliwyk is a strict mise en place cooker or more of a controlled(?) chaos sort of person in the kitchen
#like the thing is her workstation(s) ARE always set up so everything is easy to grab immediately#and I definitely imagine her setting up all components for experiments or projects or ritual spells in advance#but she doesn't cook very often and I don't know that she takes it very seriously?#LIKE. one thing about melliwyk is that she's a (probably very surprisingly) good cook#but she does kind of feel like a 'oh I can chop these vegetables while the meat is starting to sear' person#who maybe times it badly more often than not because she's almost always out of practice in the kitchen#(why cook for yourself when you have the unseen servant spell! that's what it's FOR)#also the idea of her neatly pouring pre-chopped pre-portioned ingredients in a timely manner from organized prep bowls#feels less correct than mage hand grabbing ingredients from the pantry WHILE slicing onions AND stirring a sauce or whatever#my OCs#melliwyk
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Made with love <3
Sanji x AFAB Reader
Warnings: Sanji being a simp, cursing, she/her used, not checked for misspelling.
The Sunny was noisy as usual with Luffy playing with Usopp and Chopper on the deck while Robin read a book and Nami was in her room working on her maps. You however were bored out of your mind having nothing better to do, you could annoy Zoro while he trains, but last time you did that you got a chunk of your hair accidentally chopped off when you entered without knocking.
So you decided to do the next best thing, annoy Sanji! Considering he would be the nicest to you considering your a girl. So, you made your merry way to the kitchen to get a snack and annoy your favorite blonde on your crew. You passed up Luffy and silently entered the kitchen while Sanji had his back facing the doorway, you creeped up hoping to scare him. So you lean right behind his ear and—
“HEY SANJI!” She yelled
Sanji jumped up like a scared cat and let out a high pitched scream. He kicked nearly hitting her in her face with his flaming foot. He placed a hand on his chest and was hyperventilating.
“Y/n-swan- why on this planet or any other, would you scare me like that?!” He was trying to calm down and set the knife that was in his hand down on the counter
“Sorry drama king” she chuckled and had a grin on her face.
Sanji finally calmed down and went back to his usual simp-y attitude and straightened himself out.
“How can I help you Y/n-swan?~” he said with hearts in his eyes.
“I wanted to see if I could help you with cooking dinner!” She said with an innocent smile and leaned against a counter as she talked to him.
“That’s very kind of you y/n-swan! How about you julienne the carrots while I work on seasoning the broth.” He set a cutting board out with carrots and a knife and turned his back to her.
She picked up the knife and looked at it with uncertainty and knitted her eyebrows as she grabbed a carrot and tried to cut it. She started to cut and ended up nicking her finger and made a hiss.
“Damn it!” She winced and held her finger in pain. Sanji turned around and rushed to her and grabbed a towel to help clean up the little blood coming form her finger.
“Oh my! Are you okay y/n-swan?!” He had a very worried look on his face and he examined the cut.
“Should I help you to Chopper’s so he can check your finger out?”
“No I’ll be down, just a small cut is all.. do you have any bandaids in her?” She was still holding her finger.
She watched as Sanji went to grabbed the first aid from the wall and took out a bandaid and put it on her finger.
“Better y/n?” He had dropped the usual “swan” he added after the ladies name as he looked more seriously at her.
When he looked at her like that she felt her cheeks start to burn, whether it was from embarrassment of cutting her finger or maybe she was actually starting to form feelings for the blonde cook?..oh shit.
“Y/n?” He raised an eyebrow as he looked at her blushing face.
“I-I’m fine.. thank you Sanji…”
“Of course y/n..” he had such a loving look on his face as he looked at her.
Had he always looked at her that way? Had she just not noticed it? Does he look at nami and robin the same way? She felt a heavy feeling in her chest when she thought about whether he looked at Nami or Robin the same way.
“Seems like I’ll have to teach you how to cut vegetables then won’t I?” He said with a smile as he felt at ease that she was ok.
“Seems so” she cleared her throat and picked the knife up again and looked over at Sanji for guidance.
Sanji moved behind her and placed his hand over hers as his chest was pressed against her back and he leaned down with his head next to hers. He helped guide her hands while cutting the carrots.
“See, the difference between julienne and do icing is when you julienne carrots it’s long strips instead of small cubes and-“
She felt her face get hot with him so close to her. She kept listening to him as he kept talking and let out a “Mhm” every now and then so he knows she’s listening to him. Sanji wasn’t even paying attention to how close he is to her and pays more attention to helping her learn how to cut the vegetables. After he finished he pulled away and smiled at her as he stood beside her.
“So, you think you got it y/n?” He asked with his classic suave smirk on his face.
“Yeah I’ve got it, thanks Sanji.” She leaned close and gave him a kiss on his cheek without thinking and her face flushed along with his.
They stood their in the kitchen frozen with red faces looking like embarrassed tomatoes. She had a shocked look and turned her head away.
“Sorry Sanji I-i wasn’t thinking and-“
“It’s ok- y-you can do it again..” he had a slight nose bleed and the small hearts in his eyes again.
“Maybe I will..” she tiptoed again and kissed him on the cheek again and his face got warmer.
“T-thank you y/n” his face was redder and his nose bleed got worse and he grabbed the towel she had used for her finger and started to wipe his nose.
“Sanji the water!” She pointed to the boiling water that was boiling over on the stove and making a mess.
Sanji quickly ran and turned the heat down on the stove and he stored the water to help mix the flavor better. He kept his back towards her but his neck was red with embarrassment as he went back to cooking.
There was a comfortable silence as they kept cooking. While Sanji finished up plating everything for dinner and set it all out on the table as she helped put the silverware out and got the drinks for everyone.
“Foods ready everyone! Come and get it before Luffy gets it all!” He yelled as he put the plates out and watched as everyone poured in and pushed past before Luffy got it all.
She sat beside Sanji instead of beside Nami like usual and she kept her arm closed to his as they ate.
“This food is so good Sanji!” Luffy yelled with his face full of food
“It tastes as good as always Sanji” Robin smiled at him as she went back to eating.
“Thanks Robin-swan~ y/n actually helped cooked tonight which is why it’s better tonight.” He smiled and winked at her.
She felt her cheeks warm up slightly and moved to hold his hand under the table and looked at Zoro who was on the other side of her and started to talk.
“Thanks guys, I just made it with love.”she smiled and squeezed Sanji’s hand under the table.
It was true— the food was made with plenty of Love.
#black leg sanji#one piece#vinsmoke sanji#one piece sanji#sanji x reader#sanji#op sanji#x reader#fluff
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My Problematic Girl - Ch 9 | S.R
Character: College!Steve Rogers x Rich!Female Reader
Prologue: Steve has lived being nobody in this prestigious university. He just wants to graduate and get a job to get more money to pay the bills for his mother's surgery. But his life turned upside down when a new student attended his class. His quiet and dull life became dangerous and full of surprises.
×××
She exhaled the cigarette smoke from her lips. She still doesn’t care even though he told her he has asthma.
She looked at Steve and said, “Bark for me.”
Steve felt humiliated, and his pride was crushed. But she held his life and secrets. He had to bury his dignity to the ground, and he murmured,
“Woof.”
******
Any reblog, comment, and feedback are appreciated. I want to know what you guys think about this one.
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7 , Chapter 8 , Chapter 9,-
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“You’re not joking.” Y/N was surprised to see Steve come here the next morning carrying his stuff. She didn’t consider him serious about joining her revenge on Solomon.
“You will stay in that room.” She put her reading glass on the documents and brought him to the guest room.
Steve looked around the guest room. There’s a bed, desk, mirror and wardrobe. He wanted to put his outfit inside the wardrobe, but he saw inside there already someone else outfit; for a glance, he could tell it was a male outfit.
Y/N notices Steve's curiosity since he is stuck looking at the clothes. “It belongs to my friend who sometimes sleeps here if he has a hangover. You can throw it if you want.”
‘She has a friend?’
He was surprised when he heard Y/N had a friend. Probably, he has the same personality as her.
After he had arranged his stuff, Steve opened the fridge to put the food he had brought from his place. He was surprised by what he had seen. He’s poor but will try to buy various groceries like meat, vegetables, and instant food. But inside her fridge, there are a dozen boxes of chocolate milk, and who put a box of mac and cheese in the fridge, and there’s nothing in the freezer.
“This is your food?”
Y/N picked one of the boxes “It already has calcium and vitamins. It’s enough for me.” Besides, Y/N doesn’t know how to cook and only orders a delivery, or Tony will send food to her.
Steve shook his head. “I will go to the supermarket.”
Y/N took a $300 bill from her wallet and put it on the table counter near Steve's “Here.”
Once again, she gave him too much money. But this time, he will spend all of it. After she gave the money, she went back to reading a document.
“What are you doing?”
“Reading my client's request.” She answered without looking at him.
“Oh right, you’re a lawyer, the one who does money laundering.” Steve replied sarcastically.
Y/N chuckled. “You’ll be surprised it’s not just me who does this.”
Steve furrowed his eyebrows and asked, “What kind of lawyer who does money laundering?”
Y/N put a finger on her lips. “Cunning is necessary for this business.”
“Y/N you probably will be the only weirdest lawyer I ever knew.”
She giggled without feeling offended. “Glad to be the only one.”
Steve went back after he bought the groceries. This is the first time he enjoyed shopping without caring about money. After that, he returned to Y/N's apartment and started to cook dinner.
Y/N wasn’t keen on Steve's idea, “Just order a delivery.”
Steve was cutting the carrots with a knife on the chopping board. The knife he currently uses is of high quality, different from what he had. He wants to use the kitchen applicants in this apartment.
He waved the knife in his hand. “You just got a seizure; you need to eat homemade food. This time, listen to me; I’m holding a knife here.”
At Steve’s threat, Y/N scoffed, “That was the kindest threat that I ever had from someone holding a knife.”
Satisfied with her answer, he continued cooking while Y/N continued her reading.
After a while, Steve finished cooking. He put the chicken soup and garlic butter salmon on the table.
Before he called Y/N, she was already standing looking at the food. For her, it looks weird seeing someone cooking in the kitchen. Before her parents divorced, only her mother enjoyed cooking. Sometimes, she regretted not asking her mother to teach her about cooking. At least she could learn her mother's recipe.
Y/N doesn’t want anyone to touch the kitchen, but seeing Steve looking excited, she doesn’t want to kill his joy.
Both of them eat the food together. There was silence, but it wasn’t awkward. Because they enjoy it, Steve was impressed with the food he made today, and Y/N, it’s been a long time since she ate a simple home-cooked meal that gave her warmth.
When she stayed at Solomon, she couldn’t eat at all; it seemed like she got a stomachache every day. It is caused by stress. Since then, it’s easier for Y/N to drink milk than eating any foods.
Y/N put down the food utensils. “Thank you for the food.”
Still eating, Steve widened his eyes; he didn’t expect her to say thanks. “No worries. Thank you for letting me use the kitchen.”
Y/N hummed. She carried her plates to the sink and washed them. “I forgot to mention, you could use the kitchen, TV, and the space if you want to paint.”
Steve stared at her. Is it his illusion? Did he just see her being kind to him?
Steve was watching the TV in the living room. He wasn’t interested at first, but he always wanted to know how it felt like to watch a football game on 75-inch TV. When he turned it on, it was marvellous. His eyes were glued to it.
While watching, he smelled perfume from behind; he turned around and saw Y/N wearing a dress for a party. But why she’s carrying a gym bag? It doesn’t go well together.
“I'm going out tonight, don’t wait for me.”
“Where are you going? Don’t forget not to drink any alcohol.”
Y/n rolled her eyes. She closed the door and left. She is always like this, being secretive.
*******
At night, Steve was awake by a sound. It’s not loud, but the sound keeps repeating. He couldn’t recall the sounds, but he felt familiar.
Does it mean Y/N has come back?
He opened the door and saw Y/N sitting in the living room, her hands counting money. The sound he heard was from the money-counter machine. And the gym bag is beside her, but now there’s a lot of money inside the bag.
He rubbed his eyes. Is he dreaming or what?
Y/N felt someone was watching her. She lifted her head, and there he was, her new housemate. He looks dumbfounded, like a lost rabbit who enters the wolf’s den.
“What’s that?”
Y/N stared at Steve expressionlessly. It made him uncomfortable. Is this a borderline he couldn't cross? He should’ve stayed asleep and ignored her.
But then suddenly, Y/N called out his name, “Stevie. You’re really cute as shit.”
Steve was dumbfounded; in which part he’s cute?
Y/N tapped the stack of money on the table. “In front of you is what $500,000 in cash looks like.”
"Bank still opens at night?"
She chuckled while counting the money. "Don't be silly, I got this from gambling."
Her tone was playful, but he didn’t find this funny at all. Steve crossed his arms. When he thought she was good, the next thing she did always shocked him. He wondered if staying with her would be fine for his heart.
"Y/N, you play a dangerous game."
Y/N nodded, agreeing with what he said. She stops counting and looks at him, “You see, Steve. There's something wrong with me. I don't feel scared, guilt, lust and love. I love the adrenaline of taking a big risk.”
“I could see that.”
“You remembered my ex?”
The only man who made her uncomfortable was Brock Rumlow. Steve nodded.
“When we were together, I didn’t feel anything. And I think Brock knew that’s why he got another woman.”
Y/N liked being with Brock, but she noticed she didn’t feel any lust for him. She doesn’t want to kiss him or sleep with him. She tried using porn, a smut novel and even went to a strip club, but she doesn’t feel any lust.
She went to the doctor and learned she was diagnosed with impotence or female sexual dysfunction (FSD). The doctor knew Y/N's history, and she told her that her childhood trauma caused this.
Yeah, no shit.
“But I felt something when I saw your drawing, even though it's just a brief moment.”
Steve felt embarrassed when she mentioned the adult comic he made. Since he got paid, he didn’t continue the story. But what she said next made him want to dig the ground and hide.
“From the website, only your work triggered my lust.”
Y/N didn’t understand the reason why. She went to the doctor again and learned about Stendhal’s syndrome is a collection of intense physical and mental symptoms people may experience while or after viewing a work of art.
How lucky she was when she found out the comic creator was sitting beside her at Starks University.
Steve hides his red face with his hands. “Don't you feel any shame talking about this?”
She shrugged her shoulder. “Like I said before, I don't feel anything. I'm not embarrassed.”
“That's why you don't feel guilty for blackmailing me.”
Y/N smiled broadly. “You seem like the easy type to be bullied.”
Thank you for reading. I hope you like it.
You can tell me if you want to join the tag list. Don't be shy 😘💖💜💙
Any reblog, comment, and feedback are appreciated. I want to know what you guys think about this one.
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7 , Chapter 8, Chapter 9,-
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#my problematic girl series#steve rogers imagine#chris evans characters#steve rogers x reader#pre serum steve rogers#steve rogers x y/n#steve rogers fanfic#college!steve rogers#art college steve rogers#fanfiction#today on tumblr#steve rogers au#steve rogers fanfiction#marvel au
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PAPER RINGS part.4
So here we are, with another chapter, and now I wanted you to cry. Did you cry? I HOPE SO. Plus, our favorite Four boy is here!
MASTERLIST
4. I was screaming “Go, go go!”
FIVE MONTHS BEFORE CAPITOL
«Do you think Katniss will come to dinner?» You ask, chopping the last vegetables on the plate. You are not a great cook, Haymitch is definitely better when he is in the right mood, but today he spent the morning chopping wood - a great sight you might add, sweats on his shirtless chest - and you don’t want him to do everything.
«No, I don’t think so, from what I’ve gathered she wants to spend dinner on the phone with her sister.» Katniss can’t legally go to her sister in District One. Or Two, you don’t remember, you only remember that Mrs. Everdeen has been kind of a bitch about it. You understand it’s not easy for her to see her house being destroyed, the very same house she used to live with her husband, and Prim on a wheelchair has been the last straw, but at the same time she has two daughters, not one. Katniss is almost an adult, but by the way she always bargains in your home with an excuse she feels lonely without a parent. Hell, sometimes you miss Holly at home. Lora often tells you how Chaff has been fundamental for her in the months after the Games, he became a parental figure for her, helping her crisis. And she is young, but an adult.
Katniss is a teenager who killed a dictator, she needs a mom.
«Oh. So sad.» You beam at the kiss on the head Haymitch gives you. «So does that mean we don’t have to do anything today?»
«Not more than usual, no.» And you’ve done the usual. You cleaned, you removed the dust, you fed the disgusting birds. You are still recovering and he doesn’t even want you to do this, but you don’t want to feel useless.
«Can we snuggle up and watch a movie?» You propose, as you feel two strong arms around your hips. He doesn’t like Capitol movies, but you love them. And there is no such thing as a Twelve movie, so he better get used to them. You adore romantic films and he snorts all the time, but they put you in a romantic mood so he bears them if it means hot sex after the movie session.
«I have a better idea, tell me how you do what you do.» He proposes. You watch him, a little confused.
«What do I do?»
He looks at you like you don’t understand basic math. «Your dresses.»
«Really? You want to know that? You’ll be bored.» You don’t think he even knows what you do for a living. He knew better when you were a teacher, because he likes to read - he loves to read - but now you suppose he is in the dark. Sometimes he says you “Want to wear dresses”, and that would make you a model, not a stylist. And he must have some sense of the difference, in all these years of Games, but at that time Effie used to do all the work for him. He just had to show up and suffer.
«Let me choose if I get bored.» He kisses your knuckles.
You smile brightly, giving up your objections almost immediately. You feel proud that he wants to know you better. «Ok, I’ll show you.»
Five minutes after you are showing him your stuff. Some sketches, most of them are the ones you plan to show Portia, one or two for him. He is a great subject, and you like sketching clothes for him, something with a strong Twelve taste but also fashionable. You sewed him some outfits, and now he doesn’t always wear only a pair of jeans and a shirt, he wears three pairs of jeans and three shirts. Baby steps.
«And how do you begin?» He wants to know, and maybe for the first time he sees you working.
He is usually in the same room as you, but he is always doing something else. Feeding the geese or cooking or cleaning something. Or it’s the middle of the night and he is trying to sleep like the rest of the world, while your mind tells you “That idea is incredible and you have to draw it now or you will lose it!”.
«Well you sketch it, like this, then you make a model and then…» You continue to explain it, and he shows interest. You teach him about the dresses and the blouses, the shoes and the sandals, how to design a zip and what are the difficulties about it.
As you keep on, you find out he is watching you, not the sketches. «What?»
«You are fucking beautiful when you are passionate.» He whispers. He cups your cheek with his big hands. He is so gentle when he wants to, and he rarely wants to (you have bruises in mysterious places to prove that) but his touch can be the touch of a gentleman.
You try not to blush. «Why, thank you.»
«Thank you.» He leans out for another peck.
«For what?»
This time the kiss is deeper, slower. He wants to prove to you that he is here, he is not going away. The scent of pines and woods is intoxicating, it’s the kind of scent you steal sweaters for.
«For being mine.»
PRESENT DAY
It happens in a moment. Haymitch takes a step back and then sees you and freezes. Marjorie looks at you with a guilty expression on her face. Everyone is paralyzed, until Ivy waves her little hand at you. She is adorable in a new pink dress, different from the one before. This baby has more dresses than you.
«Hi, Auntie Daisy!»
You can’t cry in front of a child, so you pat her head and you take your bag.
Don't cry in front of Ivy, she'll think she did something wrong. Don't cry, don't cry.
«Goodbye.» You murmur, and you start running but Haymitch is right behind you. You don't even want to know what he has to say, you don't even care. He cheated on you. Kissing another person is cheating. Dear heavens, he is so jealous he would have killed someone if he was you.
«Daisy please-» He begins but this time you turn around quickly and you have such a murderous expression on your face that he takes a step back. He is a Victor and he adores it to remind you and to everyone else, and maybe you didn’t win anything, but you still survived the Hunger Games. You are a killer just like him, you have blood on your hands and nightmares too. He knows he can’t push it. He knows you are dangerous too and you are in therapy because of that, but therapy is not a miraculous system that cures you in two days.
«You don’t get to say please.» You are raging, and you are actually quite proud of yourself because your first instinct is to chop his head off. The second is to cry out loud, but now it would be showing weakness, and you won’t. The third instinct is, and you are very ashamed of yourself for that, to jump in his arms and forgive him immediately because the mere thought of not having him around is suffocating.
«Let me explain.»
«Did you fall and land on her lips?» You growl, a sound you rarely make.
«She kissed me.» He argues.
«I know. I know she fucking kissed you!» You turn around again, but this time he is faster than you and circles around to face you. «But you let her!»
«No I didn’t, I was surprised, she barged into the house…» That’s another thing to explore. What was Marjorie doing in your house? Oh, wait, it’s his house, just his, not yours. What was Marjorie doing in his house? She magically sensed you two were having a fight or what?
«You were surprised? Surprised? Haymitch, she’s been after you for a whole year, how could you be surprised?» You yell, but now you don’t care. You are giving a pretty show for the village to see. «Do you even want me?»
«What? Of course I want you, Daisy, we have to get married.» We have to. Like it’s something he doesn’t want to do anymore, like it’s an imposition. You defloured the girl, you ruined her and now you have to marry her. Or maybe, maybe you were thrilling at first, the pretty young girl who has a thing for him, and now you are just a boring woman he has to deal with on a daily basis.
«Then why do you spend time with her?»
«She, she needed help. I owed her.» The same fucking excuse all the time. She did it because of me. She lost everything because of me. Well, the entire district lost everything because of you victors and you don’t see him befriend everyone around.
«You are full of shit. So righteous. The great Haymitch Abernathy, the victor!» You shout, like you are introducing him in a show.
«Daisy-» He tries to grab your arm, but you shake it off of you. He can’t take another step in your direction, you can’t be trusted around him. You like him too much, you love him too much, and if you thought you were smart and intelligent, around him you feel like you are too young.
«Where was she when you were drinking? Did she clean you, did she stay with you? No, I did it. I was there. Don’t I deserve it too?»
He should have known better. He should have known that he could have hurt you so much you now feel like you are dying.
«Baby…»
«No Daisy, no baby and don’t you dare call me Sweetheart. I love you. But this is not working.»
His face goes pale in a second. «What?»
«We are not working. I can’t be the only one who cares about the wedding, and when I return home you say it’s your house and you kiss your ex fiancé!»
«We were sixteen.»
«You should tell her that, not me.» She is the one who kissed you. She is the one who is willingly ruining everything. You are the one who is letting her do it.
«Daisy please, let’s talk about it. Please. Please, don’t give up on us.»
«You are giving up on us! Not me, you! I never even once looked at someone in the Capitol. You kissed her. For a moment, tell me the truth.»
«Yes... For a moment. I didn’t even know what I was doing!»
«I can’t.» You try hard not to cry. «I can’t, let me go.»
«No.»
«Let me go!» You slap him to free yourself. He watches you in disbelief, but you are walking to the train station.
You slapped him.
You hit him.
You don’t do this. You, as a couple, don’t hit each other. Even when things are not pretty, even when the urges are there because there are urges to hit when you are in the Hunger Games, you don’t cross the line.
You cry all your way to the Capitol. You have your sketches and not much more, just what was in your bag at the moment. Your luggage is still in Twelve, but the thought of going back is heavy. You always have your id and your documents in your purse, so you don’t need anything else.
You keep thinking it was a mistake. He didn’t want to kiss Marjorie. You should come back. But your guts hurt and you don’t want to see him, not now.
Your Haymitch. This wasn’t a crush anymore, you loved him, you love him. And he loves you. He loves you, right? But if you love someone you don’t kiss someone else, this is not how it works, at least not for you. You see Perla, Effie or Lora are stunning but you don’t desire them, you only want him.
A voice tells you you couldn’t survive this. Your love flourished in war, you are at your best when your life is in danger, when everything is messy and chaotic and you don't know if there is going to be a tomorrow.
Some days are not good, some days you can't get out of bed. These days, Haymitch stays with you. He kisses your hair and keeps you in his arms, he doesn't care about tears on his shirt or smudge makeup from the day before.
«Don't worry, I'll protect you. I'm here now. Don't worry.» He sings like a chant in your ear, keeping you close.
«Forever?» You murmur.
«Forever and a day more, Sweetheart.»
Some days are bad for him too, days in which the urge for a drink is almost too strong for him to resist, the shaking is heavier and the headache is insufferable. He stays in the chair, worried he could hurt you, but you end up in his lap, stroking his hair and whispering sweet words. You are so strong, you are my man, you are courageous, be strong for me.
In this you excel. You are a great couple. But when things are quiet and calm and it’s all right to stop and breathe, you are not capable of doing it.
You have no clue why he asked you to marry him if he doesn’t want to. You didn’t expect it, it’s not something you joked about, and you have been on cloud nine because of it but you are so young it wasn’t your first thought. But now it is, now you want to get married with him, you want to be Daisy Abernathy, to sign with his name and you are proud to be his.
He is not proud to be yours. He doesn’t care one bit.
You still have three days, so you stop in the only place you can disappear to.
District Four.
When you knock at his door and he opens, Finnick Odair can’t believe you are there. His blonde hair is longer and he seems a bit tired, but he is handsome as always. You thought he was at work, but you now remember he doesn’t need to, he has the Victor’s money. Not everyone is like Peeta, who likes the bakery.
«Daisy?»
You try to resist, but you start crying hard and you push yourself in his arms. He is confused, you appeared in his district unannounced with no warning and you didn’t go to Perla but to him, but he is one of your best friends and you didn’t feel like giving any explanation to Perla.
Perla doesn’t like Haymitch. She will probably be very happy.
«Daisy, hei, what happened? You are worrying me.» He hugs you back. You must be a sight, with crazy hair, puffy eyes and a red face, without makeup on.
«I don’t think I’m with Haymitch anymore.»
THREE MONTHS BEFORE
«Do you like District Twelve?» Haymitch asks you. He is feeding the geese, and you are trying to mend a pair of his jeans, on the patio. The scene is so awfully domestic and you smile so widely it hurts.
You like living with Haymitch, lingering until ten in the morning in the bed, kissing every chance you can. It’s not forever, you will have a job but it’s the perfect recovery.
«Yeah, my love, I like the District where I was born and raised.» You laugh, «Why?»
«I mean, you didn’t choose it after the war. You didn’t even choose the house.» He shrugs. You can feel his brain working, he is one of those days. His hands are shaking more than usual and his mind goes in dark places. Places where he loses you, you go away because you are too young or too bright for him, at least it’s what he says.
«It’s a bit difficult when you are in a coma.» You deadpan as you see him walking towards you.
«Very funny.» He strokes your cheek. «You are happy, right?»
«I would have chosen it. I promise.» You get up to kiss him and you hum in joy when he puts his hands on the pockets of your trousers. «I would have chosen this house and this bedroom and this man over everything.»
«Isn’t it a bit boring for you?» Boring. You are not bored, you are never bored. You are enjoying your life, your peace. You thought you’d never have peace in your life ever again, so this is like paradise.
«Boring? Are you bored?» Maybe this doubt is his. Maybe he is the one who wants his life back. The old grumpy man who lives alone with his animals. It must not be easy for him to share his space with you all the time, even if he is the one who decided it. He switched from doing everything alone, with no timetables or schedules whatsoever, with a freedom you could only have when you live alone, to stay with you twenty four hours per day, a routine he has to be a part of, not always leading it. And with you of all people, a person who he loves, but you are not the easiest girl alive. You scream at night because of the nightmares, you are clingy, you have difficulties at being alone.
«No, but I’m forty. It’s not exactly fun around here.»
«You are fun!» You protest. «I’m always very entertained, thank you very much. I get what you mean, it’s not Capitol’s “All parties and stuff”, but I’ll have my fair share of them when I get to Portia. And we could arrange a holiday in Four to see Finnick and the kid. That way of life is a holiday, tho, a trip. This is real life. And I love it.» The smile you only give to him it’s so blinding he has to believe you.
«Yeah? You mending and me feeding the geese?» He goes for a peck that you decide to deepen, because he looks too good with his blonde hair in the sun and his eyes are so blue and his arms are majestic.
«Yes! And you cooking, and you baking, and you cleaning and you prepa- ah!» You squeal in surprise when he lifts you up in a laugh. «Ruffian! Put me down!»
«So it’s me cleaning and me cooking and me doing everything, and you?» He laughs, and he packs your ass.
«I look pretty.» You declare.
«I’ll tell you pretty.»
«Put me down!»
«Nope.» He goes straight to the house, with you on his shoulder. «You look too fucking beautiful for me to release you.»
PRESENT DAY
«Here, a cup of tea.» Annie hands you a beautiful light blue mug and you take it with a brief smile. Annie is sweet, and you can’t see a glimpse of an annoyed reaction for your ambush, but you feel a little guilty. She is only twenty two and a kid under one year, she must be exhausted.
«Are you sure I can stay here for a few days?» You ask her. You don’t feel like facing the truth, and you know you will need to give explanations. Effie has her problems, Lora too… Perla will comment on it and you can’t deal with it right now. You just want to lick your wounds in peace. And you are exhausted yourself.
«You are always welcomed here, darling.» She answers you with a sweet smile on her face. «Finnick is alive thanks to you.»
You actually don’t remember it this way. The way you know it, Finnick saved your life and now you are barely even.
«Go rest, my love.» Finnick kisses her cheek, with Finn asleep in his arms. «I’ll stay with Daisy.»
The sight of the Odair family, two people so young and in love, with their perfect life, it’s almost unbearable. You are envious, and you still want them to be the pretty family they are but you want it too, and since you are a spoiled little brat the first instinct is to stamp your food and demand for it.
As she goes, he looks at you. «You are not bothering anyone here. Stay as long as you want to.»
You want to cry. You love him so much, and you love his wife too. You just want to go to bed and cry for a week. You feel like your heart is not beating anymore. You just want to stop everything.
«Are you sure it’s not too much for Annie? I can help with the baby.»
«I don’t work, Daz. I can handle it. Now, do I have to kill him? Because I’m quite good at it. And I look good doing it.»
You really want to laugh but when you try your eyes fill with tears, so you just shake your head. «No.»
You quickly explain everything, and you must be really ridiculous in your yellow top and blue skirt, a happy outfit for what you’ve thought was a happy evening.
«Do you want to know what I think?»
«If it agrees with what I think, gladly.» You deadpan.
«I think you need to go back to Capitol City.» That’s new. You thought he was either going to say that you needed to talk to him or to forget him.
«Ok, I thought I needed to-»
He stops you. «I don’t care now, and I think you need a few days. You have to sleep, Daisy. I’m sorry but you look like…»
«Shit?» You guess.
He shrugs. «I wouldn’t put it in these words… but your eyes are red and you look terribly tired. Tell me what you usually do.»
«In a day?»
«Yeah.»
«I fail to understand what it has to do with-»
«Just tell me.» He sits on the couch with you and he takes your hand. You didn’t realize how much you missed him until now. You don’t have a brother, but you feel a little like he is. He is the one that saves you, and sometimes you hope you save him a bit too.
«I work. Basically I work.»
«And nothing else?» The mere thought of doing anything else is not fun. You don’t want to think about anything else, just Haymitch, but if you think about Haymitch you want to cry and scream and punch him.
You shake your head. «I don’t have much time. I want to go back to… I wanted to go back to get married.»
«But you are losing all the Capitol experience! Hell, I hate that city, but it’s a giant amusement park. And you are not taking advantage of it. So, my friend…»
«Yeah?»
«I’ll rescue you. Again.»
#haymitch x fem!reader#bad feeling#haymitch abernathy x reader#haymitch imagine#haymitch x reader#woody harrelson#haymitch abernathy x you#the hunger games#haymitch abernathy#fanfiction#daisy pinecone#princess daisy#paper rings#thg series#thg fanfiction#katniss everdeen#catching fire#peeta mellark#mockingjay#thgedit#thg#thg katniss#finnick odair
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Dean Winchester hates mornings.
It might have something to do with the four hours of sleep that precede them. Or perhaps the lingering memories of dragging a grumpy, petulant 12-year-old Sam out of bed for school when he was still an equally grumpy, petulant kid himself. Or maybe he just isn't wired to handle the early hours.
Whatever it is, Dean Winchester hates mornings.
And yet, he still wakes up early every day.
Drags his ass out of bed with a grumble and a sigh. Keeps his curses as quiet as possible so he doesn't wake Cas beside him. Scrubs at the sleep making his eyes gritty. Shuffles into a pair of pajama bottoms and his slippers with a disgruntled huff, like having to deal with the early morning chill is one of life's greatest inconveniences.
At the doorway, Dean pauses and looks back. Cas is still blissfully unconscious, his breathing slow and heavy and relaxed. The second Dean got out of bed he snagged all the blankets and cocooned himself in them, but by now his hand is out, searching for Dean so he can wrap his arm around him again. When it fails to find him, it curls around Dean's pillow. Cas buries his nose in it and lets out a tiny coo of contentment.
Dean smiles, his heart so full it aches. For just a second, he considers crawling back into bed with Cas. Succumbing to his hatred of mornings and going back to sleep with Cas nuzzled up against him like Dean is his personal teddy bear.
But he doesn't. He shuts the door behind him as quietly as possible and shambles down the hallway.
Dean's not quite firing on all cylinders without coffee in his system, so he bangs his shoulder on the doorway as he rounds the corner into the kitchen, and he swears a blue streak on his way to the sink. He's still grumbling under his breath as he grabs the lid of Sam's shaker bottle from the side of the sink and washes it with as much malcontent as he can muster. Sam always forgets to wash it when he rinses out his bottle, and Dean always has to clean it the next morning so Sam doesn't get yesterday's nasty protein shake crap mixed in with today's. He sets it beside the clean bottle and makes himself some coffee.
It's not long after the smell of fresh coffee fills the kitchen when Sam walks in, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and wearing running clothes like the health freak he is. "Hey."
Dean grunts in acknowledgement. Words are for after coffee. Sam starts making himself a protein shake without so much as a 'thank you' for cleaning his lid. Hell, he's probably not even aware Dean does it for him.
"Oh, can you do extra spinach in my omelette? Gotta use it up; it's getting kinda wilted," Sam asks on his way out the door, like it's a given Dean will make him an omelette. Because it is a given. Five people in the bunker and someone needs to make breakfast for them all. Might as well be Dean. "And tomatoes?"
"Yeah yeah, have it your way, Burger King," Dean grouses as he pours himself a mug of coffee. He dumps what's left and fills the carafe with more water.
"Awesome, thanks." And then Sam's gone off to do horrifying morning activities like jogging.
Dean, however, is doing something even more horrifying. He fills the coffee maker with pumpkin spice flavored coffee and grimaces. But God help him, Cas loves the stuff. And Dean loves Cas, so he'll make him some freakin' pumpkin spice coffee. Though this is the only point in the entire day when he questions his love for Cas. Just a little bit.
As nutmeg and cinnamon fill the air, Dean chugs his respectable cup of plain ol' dark roast and browses the contents of the refrigerator.
Blueberries. He should use those up too. Dean plucks them, some eggs, some butter, some milk, and all of the stuff for Sam’s atrocious vegetable omelette from the fridge.
Jack comes shuffling in while Dean is mixing up blueberry pancake batter, looking sleepy but chipper. He looks even happier when he sees what Dean’s cooking. “Excellent timing! Chop Sam’s tomatoes for me,” Dean commands before Jack even has a chance to say a ‘good morning!’ or grab some juice. The coffee is finally kicking in and dragging him into full wakefulness, but the patient parts of Dean’s brain don’t come online until at least 9am.
Eileen isn’t far behind Jack, but she takes one look at Dean with his spatula and Jack at the cutting board and immediately backs out of the kitchen. “Sorry! Dunno what you’re saying!” she shouts as she retreats, as if she expected Dean to try calling out orders after her. “I’m gonna shower!” Dean sighs and shakes his head. Probably for the best. She handles produce and a chef's knife the same way she does with vampires and a machete.
“Hello, Dean. Jack.” Cas drags himself into the kitchen with half-open eyes. His sleep-rough voice is adorable. The wild shock of hair standing up on one side, even moreso.
“Mornin’ Sunshine!” Dean croons at full volume, like he does every morning, because he’s kind of an asshole and secretly likes the way Cas scowls at Dean’s energy as he makes a cup of his terrible pumpkin spice coffee.
Cas comes up behind Dean and rests his chin over his shoulder to watch him cook, like he’s too tired to even bother holding up his own head. Dean has to be careful how he moves his arm so he doesn’t burn himself on Cas’ hot mug, but he’d be lying if he said this wasn’t one of his favorite parts of the day. Cas tucked up against his back, sleep hazy and warm from their shared bed, those beautiful blues blinking owlishly as Dean makes food for their family.
“Sure you don’t want any?” he asks, pointing down at the griddle even though he knows the answer already.
“No, too early to eat,” Cas grunts by his ear. “Coffee is enough. It smells delicious though.” He tilts his head down to press a gentle kiss to Dean’s shoulder before he pulls away to slouch down in a chair and finish waking up.
By the time Dean finishes breakfast, Sam and Eileen have filtered in too, completing their packed table. For a brief moment it’s utter chaos as everyone grabs plates of food and cutlery and coffee and juice, but before Dean can blink everyone is settled, chowing down on their breakfast or quietly drinking their awful flavored coffee. Dean lets out a weary sigh and sinks down into a chair next to Cas with his own stack of pancakes. It’s way too early to feel this tired.
Almost immediately Cas tilts sideways until he’s using Dean as a headrest again. "I don't see how you can stand getting up so early," Cas says around a slow sip of his coffee. He closes his eyes in appreciation and hums softly.
Dean glances around the table. At Sam, his overly long hair plastered to his sweaty forehead, scrolling through his phone as he shovels egg white omelette into his mouth like he's starving for it. At Eileen, a pleased grin on her face as her closed fist moves in a circle in front of her, her thumb pointed down over her stack of pancakes. At Jack, watching her intently as she teaches him a new sign, his fork suspended halfway to his mouth until a bite of pancake falls off it and smacks onto the table, making Eileen laugh.
At his family, fed and caffeinated and content, ready to start their days because Dean took the extra time to get things off on the right foot.
"I dunno," Dean says with a shrug as he passes Jack the bottle of syrup. He grins. "I kinda like mornings."
#destiel#deancas#dean winchester#supernatural#spn#destiel fanfic#deancas fanfic#supernatural fanfic#destiel fanfiction#deancas fanfiction#supernatural fanfiction#katie writes things#grumpy morning dean my beloved
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SR Deuce Spade Apprentice Chef Personal Story: Part 1
"Master Chef"
Part 1 (Part 2)
[Kitchen]
Master Chef – Deuce Version
～Let's Make Mackerel Curry 1～
Chef Ghost: Alright, let's wash our hands and begin!
Deuce: Ah, before we start… Chef, there was something I wanted to ask you.
Chef Ghost: What is it? Don't hesitate to ask!
Deuce: Next time I go home, I want to be able to cook for my mother.
Deuce: But I've never done any home cooking before so… What kind of food do you think would make her happy?
Chef Ghost: Deuce-kun, you're such a devoted son. The most important thing is to make it with with all of your heart to make your mother happy!
Deuce: All my heart…? Uhh, I was kinda hoping to hear a name of a specific dish or something…
Chef Ghost: Oh, does nothing come to mind? Then, let's go talk to "him".
Jamil: I wondered why you had suddenly pulled me over, but you're just wanting to figure out what homemade meals you can make your mother… Hm.
Deuce: Yes. I thought maybe you could give me an advice for what kind of dish I should cook for her?
Jamil: It really isn't anything to ask others for. When you think about the person you wish to cook for, the idea will appear to you.
Deuce: The person I wish to cook for…?
Jamil: If you think hard, can't you think of one or two possible dishes?
Jamil: Maybe like something she made you for your birthday, or something she fed you when you were sick…
Deuce: I would always get some kind of egg dish on my birthday. And I guess even when I was sick and didn't really have an appetite, I would always be able to stomach her porridge.
Deuce: Aah… I get it. My mom would always think about what my favorite foods were, or what would be easy to eat at the time and make it for me.
Deuce: So that's what the chef meant when he said that "the most important thing is to put all your heart into it."
Jamil: Most likely. If that's all, I'll be heading back to my own cooking.
Deuce: Thank you very much!
Chef Ghost: Jamil-kun, thank you～! Well, sounds like you got some good advice.
Deuce: Yes! I get why my mom would always say "with a pinch of love" whenever she would cook.
Deuce: I'll do my best to keep in mind both Jamil-senpai's and your advice when I make something for my mom!
Chef Ghost: Good, good, that's the spirit. Now, let's start cooking. Today's dish is Mackerel Curry.
Deuce: Oh, so we can use fish for it too. Whenever I think of curry, I tend to imagine it made out of meat.
Chef Ghost: We're going to make this curry with a whole can of mackerel.
Chef Ghost: The deep flavor of mackerel really goes well with the curry spices～ And it'll be healthy with an abundance of Omega-3 and Calcium.
Deuce: So, it's a dish that's both delicious and good for you. Alright, I'll definitely learn how to make it!
Chef Ghost: Okay, first let's cut the vegetables. Peel the carrots and cut them into larger bite-sized rolled wedges.
Deuce: R-Rolled…?? I'm sorry, could you say that one more time?
Chef Ghost: Rolled wedges. It is one of the ways to cut up vegetables. I'll show you how it's done, so watch closely.
Chef Ghost: While you roll the carrot… slice into it diagonally with the knife, and cut it into easy to eat pieces, like this.
Deuce: Ah! You're talking about the "chunky cuts"!
Chef Ghost: Chunky cuts…? That's an interesting name for it.
Deuce: That's what my mother called it. This is the first time I've ever heard of rolled wedges.
Chef Ghost: I can see how that would be easier for a child to understand. Alright then, let's try to cut them then!
Deuce: Yessir!
[chop, chop, chop] …
Chef Ghost: Ohh! You can slice them quite well. Have you cooked often at home?
Deuce: I've helped my mother back home a little bit. I've made chunky cuts… I mean, I've made rolled wedges before.
Chef Ghost: Good, good. You seem to have gotten the feel for it, Deuce-kun. I'm starting to look forward to your finished dish!
Chef Ghost: Now, let's keep cutting up all the veggies.
Deuce: Yessir!!
―15 minutes later
Chef Ghost: Next, we'll throw in the stir-fried vegetables and the pieces of canned mackerel into the pot, and start boiling everything.
Deuce: I got it!
Deuce: Ah… Viper-senpai is fileting a fish.
Deuce: (The way he can handle his knife with no hesitation is so cool…! I want to be able to cook like that too!)
Deuce: Chef, I have a request. Please teach me… how to work with fish!
Deuce: Of course, I don't mean right away, but… I'd be super happy if I could try it at some point during this program.
Chef Ghost: Deuce-kun, you're so eager that I'd be more than happy to teach you! Okay, then let's slice some fish right now.
Deuce: Eh, really!?
Chef Ghost: We’ll brown the mackerel and use it as a topping for the curry.
Chef Ghost: Now, dealing with fish is difficult. I won't hold anything back, are you prepared?
Deuce: Yes! Thank you very much!!
Part 1 (Part 2)
#twisted wonderland#twst#deuce spade#jamil viper#twst deuce#twst jamil#twst masterchef#twst translation
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do you write for zeke? if so could you please do some boyfriend!zeke (modern au) hcs? thanks🥺
tysm for requesting !!!
modern zeke jaeger dating headcanons
lowercase intended !
zeke jaeger x gn!reader
- biggest tease ever.
- i think you two wouldve started off as friends to lovers yk 😌✨
- v funny v teasing will make fun of you no matter what
- but its all lighthearted and you can genuinely tell hes joking and doesnt mean what he says
- hes a coffee person. all the way.
- almost always seen with a coffee in his hand
- after you keep stealing sips of whatever hes got he finally just caves in and will bring you your own drink whenever he sees you
- if you dont drink coffee, but prefer a sugary drink or something he'll tease you about it
- hes a very relaxed person and doesnt get jealous, hes not someone that will go balistic and get angry when you hug a friend he doesnt know or whatever
- also would be really cool with your exes if youre cool with them, like "oh yeah i remember you telling me abt them, congrats on your engagement btw" just a very civil man
- if he does have insecurities about your relationship he just kind of, wont say anything ???
- not that he doesnt want to he just doesnt know how to bring it up
- bae pls learn how to talk abt your feelings 😁👍
- anyways after a little bit youll notice somethings wrong, but he'll try and act "strong" bc thats what he thinks hes supposed to be for you
- baby no u can be vulnerable its okay 😐🤚
- he finally lets everything go and has a really long and progressive conversation with you about everything, and you guys work it all out !
- you assure him its okay to be honest and that hes always welcome to talk to you about how hes feeling and his heart just swells
- im also a firm believer in that zeke genuinely doesnt care what you look like, if he finds you cool he finds you cool, he dgaf
- poc ?? he loves you. plus sized ?? he loves you.
- if you even THINK of being like "lol im insecure" hes shutting it down and talking abt how beautiful he finds you
- hes also someone that likes to push you out of your comfort zone, but in baby steps ?? like hes not going to force you to do something when you say "zeke im genuinely not comfortable with this" but if youre very shy he'll try and help you kind of,, not be as shy (hopefully this makes sense 😁👍)
- also loves to cook with you.
- his favourite types of dates are just when you two go to each others' homes and just cook dinner together ?? maybe drink some wine while you chop vegetables and work together (if you drink obv, if you dont he wont drink either even if you say its okay)
- he thinks it makes the food taste better because "it was made with our love" yeah ok ig 🙄🙏
- his family is really cool !! his dads a doctor and his step moms a social worker, and theyre really nice people !! his younger brother is in college but after a while he grows to love you like a sibling
- his mom lives a couple hours away, so he only gets to see her during holidays, but shes a very kind woman who owns an art shop !
- hes a very family oriented man, and really likes that you like his family and vice versa, he thinks its really important that his s/o and family get along
- when hes with you he sees himself being with you for the long run, im talking marriage and kids (if thats what you want) but definitely marriage
- if you two had different friend groups i think it would be hard for either of you to kind of fit in with each others friends, but after a while you two get the hang of it and it gets easier to see them !!
- is the kind of guy who'll wake you up with kisses on your cheek 🤩
- also likes to spoon you or have your head on his chest. will NOT be the baby spoon no matter what.
- also the kind of guy who dramatically stretches and yawns in the morning
- likes it when you hold his hand, even if you guys are just sitting together on the couch watching something, its so simple and subtle but it makes him really happy
- if you have an office at home that you work in a lot, he'll come and check on you when it gets late. will just rub and pat your head and ask what youre working on, and ask if youll be done soon
- if youre stressing on something that needs to be done THAT NIGHT he understands and will just leave you to it
- when you come to bed late it wakes him up but hes glad it does bc then he can pull you into his arms 😌✨
- zeke has very warm hands, to the point where sometimes theyre sweaty and clammy, so when you have a stomach ache or cramps he has no problem just laying down behind you and rubbing your stomach where it hurts
- if you have a weird interest or hobby he wont discourage it as long as its not hurting you or anybody else, he'll try and get into it to but if he cant no harm done, he'll respect it and you
- i think he would have some acne scars on his cheeks from highschool (puberty am i right 🙄😤⁉️) and thats one of the reasons why he has a beard, just to make it hard to see
- its mostly bc hes cool though, and although he started growing it out BECAUSE he found the scarring weird, as hes gotten older he just doest care anymore
- if you think he looks hot clean shaven he'll do it for u, and he loves the compliments you give him
- zeke is the kind of guy that will flip through the tabloid magazines at checkout
- "babe did you know that jennifer lawrence has a dark secret ??" "i- i did not 😁"
- also the kind of guy that will laugh if he sees kids falling in public
- if he was a father he'd help his kid up obviously, but would do it while giggling the whole time
- has dad handwriting (u know what im talking about)
- everytime he calls his brother he answers with "hey asshole" ??? brotherly love 🙈✨
- is very into horror films, but ONLY good ones
- so like hereditary, midsommar, and black swan are some ones he loves
- the kind of guy that has captain crunch for breakfast every morning
- theres this guy at the law firm he works at that he has a "rivalry" of sorts with, his names levi and from what youve been told hes actually very intimidating ??
- loves to read and will read to you if you ask, would have you in between his legs with your back to his chest on the bed, and he'd have one hand in yours and the other holding whatever book you choose
- zeke needs to be in complete darkness to sleep but needs to have a room as bright as possible to be productive. so every morning after he stretches and gets out of bed hes immediately opening his curtains and letting light into the room because "its the only way he'll actually get ready"
- if he was ever to pop the question he'd do it alone at a very mundane time, just like "wow this is the moment" and ask you to marry him. doesnt matter if he has a ring or not, hes ready, and he realizes this, and he finds the beauty in just doing something so simple with you. hes content and happy, and you make him see life in things he hasnt before, and hes ready for the commitment that comes with marriage, and hes in love with you.
hope u all enjoyed 🤩🤩🤩 asks r open so request if ud like !!! okay love u all stay safe 🤩
#attack on titan#attack on titan fanfiction#erwin smith#hange zoe#levi ackerman#zeke jaeger#zeke yeager#zeke yaeger#zeke jaeger x reader#zeke yeager x reader#zeke jaeger headcanons#zeke yeager headcanons#zeke x reader#zeke jaeger x gn!reader#shingeki no kyoujin x reader
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getting better
pairing: alma greene/mason (featuring felix)
word count: 880
rating: T; language
note: a prompt for @wayhavensummer 8/15: cooking. alma is sick, and mason really should've texted nate instead.
💗---💗---💗---💗---💗
"I think it smells... okay so far." Mason stirs the simmering pot in front of him. It does not smell okay, and he sure as hell isn't going to taste it.
"Wait, add some of this—"
He blocks whatever Felix is trying to add. If he smells one more half-boiled vegetable, he'll lose it.
"No," he says, barely above a whisper. "It's got like five things in it already."
Felix doesn't know how to whisper.
"Wow, a soup with five whole ingredients. Let me tell you something, chef of the century, a little salt won't ruin your sad vegetable water."
The salt shaker flies across Alma's kitchenette, smacked from Felix's grip before he can sprinkle it in. It bounces across the counters, as if in slow motion, and their teeth clench tighter with each clang and clatter before Felix hurls himself across the space to stop it. He plucks it out of the air before it meets the wall.
Mason glares. "If you wake her up—"
"You did that! You understand the noise was the direct consequence of your action, right? Tell me you understand."
Being right doesn't make him less annoying. Mason leans against the counter, groaning into his hands.
"I know. I fucking know, okay?" He flings a dismissive hand toward the pot of soup that, yeah, looks a little miserable, even by his standards of food. "I just... What the fuck am I doing?"
"Making soup for your sick..." Felix winces in place of a label. The label. "Shit, I'm not actually sure what you guys are. Friends-with-benefits: hard mode? Extra-codependent fuck buddies? Dating?"
Mason leans his head back, long hair brushing the countertop, and groans again. Quieter this time, keenly aware of Alma's stifled breathing one room away. His ragged exhale carries through the singular, whispered word, "girlfriend."
It's... new.
Not just the label. The everything. The feelings, the proximity, the talking, and most of all, the fact that he doesn't hate any of it.
"Girlfriend," Felix starts, and the grin he's struggling to keep in check is far more giddy than Mason cares for. "She's your girlfriend? Our Alma is your girlfriend? When—how? Tell me everything!"
"No." He resumes his place at the stove, ladle in hand, frown firmly in place to ward off further questioning. God, this soup looks gross. "Okay, chuck some of that in here if you think she'll like it."
Felix frowns too, but adds a few shakes of salt.
"Fine, so you won't give me details. That's cool, I get it." He crosses his arms. "You care about her, and that's got to be terrifying for you."
"Terrifying?"
"Yeah. I mean, she's a human, which comes with all sorts of unfun life nerfs. That's why you're here now, right? Because she's sick?"
It's just a cold. She's been in and out of a low fever, sneezing pretty frequently, and right now she's wasted on night-time flu medicine in the middle of the day. She only had the one kind and refused to let him run out for the non-drowsy stuff.
He texted Felix for a resupply on medicine and tissues, and then shortly before falling asleep, Alma mentioned she was hungry. So here he is, stirring carrots and celery in salt water, under interrogation by his loudest friend, while the person occupying this unfamiliar space of "girlfriend" is one sneeze away from a nosebleed.
"I'm not scared." He turns off the burner. "She's gonna be alright. She's handled worse than a cold."
"Mason?" The tiny, nasal-y voice sounds miles away through the closed bedroom door, even with hypersensitive hearing.
Felix rubs his hands together, all traces of his previous frown forgotten. "Well, let's see you in action, Mr. Commitment."
Oh, he hates that.
Grumbling his distaste just loud enough to make the point, Mason spoons his concoction into a bowl and heads toward Alma's room.
Two light raps on the door before opening it. Cocooned in blankets, she turns over to watch him enter, disturbing the cat in the process. She's wrecked. Red-rimmed eyes and flushed cheeks, hair sticking out of her bun, nostrils flaky from blowing her nose, lips crusted at the corners. He swats away a few used tissues to sit on the edge of the bed, places the soup on the nightstand.
Felix leans against the door, and Mason can feel his disgusting glee from here.
"How're you feeling, sweetheart?" Mason pushes a few stray curls back from her forehead. It feels like the fever broke during this nap, thank fuck.
How many minor illnesses has Alma nursed herself through? She told him not to bother waiting this out, assured him he had more important things to do. Sure, she could handle this alone, sleep through the worst of it and try to get work done during the rare moments of lucidity. Holding herself together with acetaminophen and cough drops and the lie of "I feel fine." But Alma smiles, sleepy, squinty, grateful he stayed despite her protests, and where the fuck else was he supposed to be? This is his person.
It's new. It's everything.
"Like shit," she croaks. "Is that... Felix?"
Mason rolls his eyes as Felix waves from the doorway.
"How's it going, Alma? We made you some 'soup.'"
Alright, maybe the air quotes are justified.
"Soup? I could eat." Alma struggles to prop herself up on her pillow, so Mason grabs another one and helps her into an almost vertical position. She sighs with something close to comfort, "thank you."
Mason places the bowl in her outstretched hands, and forces himself to look away from her reaction.
"This is..." Alma mixes the clumps of chopped veggies with her spoon, doing a terrible job suppressing a painful-sounding giggle, "very clear. You know I have canned soups in the cabinet, right?"
"Canned soup!" Felix howls from the doorway, nearly doubled over. His infectious laugh spreads to Alma and makes her cough. "We could've avoided the nightmare broth altogether?"
"I'll eat your soup, Mason." Her hand brushes his arm and, for a moment, he's reassured.
She shoos away the cat and gives the spoon a testing sip. All three grimace before the verdict.
"Not bad, I guess. Needs more salt."
#azia writes#wayhavensummer#alma/mason#twc felix#i'm not editing this. consider it an exercise in dialogue#it fits the prompt if you squint#i just wanted an excuse to write some felix tbh#anyway i'm sorry that this event's gonna be oversaturated with almason this week#one day i'll make another mc but it's too late for this :'D#can you tell i've been watching entirely too much New Girl lately? i think it shows
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a twenty-five thousand word post about a twenty-three year old “debate”
As time goes on, I’m baffled that it remains a commonly held opinion that:
The LTD remains unresolved
SE is deliberately playing coy, and are (or have been) afraid to resolve it.
To me, the answer is as clear as day, and yet seeing so many people acting as if it’s a question that remains unanswered makes me wonder if I’m the crazy one.
So I am going to try to articulate my thought process here, not because I expect to change any hearts and minds, but more to get these thoughts out of my head and onto a page so I can finally read a book and/or watch reruns of Shark Tank in peace.
To start off, there are two categories of argument (that are among, if not the most widely used lines of argument) that I will try NOT to engage with:
1) Quotes from Ultimania or developer interviews - while they’re great for easter eggs and behind-the-scenes info, if a guidebook is required to understand key plot points, you have fundamentally failed as a storyteller. Now the question of which character wants to bone whom is often something that can be relegated to a guidebook, but in the case of FF7, you would be watching two very different stories play out depending on who Cloud ends up with.
Of course, the Ultimanias do spell this out clearly, but luckily for us, SE are competent enough storytellers that we can find the answer by looking at the text alone.
2) Arguments about character actions/motivations — specifically, I’m talking about stuff like “Cloud made this face in this scene, which means be must be [insert whatever here].”
Especially when it comes to the LTD, these tend to focus on individual actions, decontextualizing them from their role in the narrative as a whole. LTDers often try to put themselves in the character’s shoes to suss out what they may be thinking and feeling in those moments. These arguments will be colored by personal experiences, which will inevitably vary.
Let’s take for example Cloud’s behavior in Advent Children. One may argue that it makes total sense given that he’s dying and fears failing the ones he loves. Another may argue that there’s no way that he would run unless he was deeply unhappy and pining after a lost love. Well, you’ll probably just be talking over each other until the cows come home. Such is the problem with trying to play armchair therapist with a fictional character. It’s not like we can ask Cloud himself why he did what he did (and even if we could, he’s not the exactly the most reliable narrator in the world). Instead, in trying to understand his motivations, we are left with no choice but to draw comparisons with our own personal experiences, those of our friends, or other works of media we’ve consumed. Any interpretation would be inherently subjective and honestly, a futile subject for debate.
There’s nothing wrong with drawing personal connections with fictional characters of course. That is the purpose of art after all. They are vessels of empathy. But when we’re talking about what is canon, it doesn’t matter what we take away. What matters is the creators’ intent.
Cloud, Tifa and Aerith are not your friends Bob, Alice and Maude. They are characters created by Square Enix. Real people can behave in a variety of different ways if they found themselves in the situations faced by our dear trio; however, FF7 characters are not sentient creatures. Everything they do or say is dictated by the developers to serve the story they are trying to tell.
So what do we have left then? Am I asking you, dear reader, to just trust me, anonymous stranger on the Internet, when I tell you #clotiiscanon. Well, in a sense, yes, but more seriously, I’m going to try to suss out what the creator’s intent is based on what is, and more importantly, what isn’t, on screen.
Instead of putting ourselves in the shoes of the characters, let’s try putting ourselves in the shoes of the creators. So the question would then be, if the intent is X, then what purpose does character Y or scene Z serve?
The story of FF7 isn’t the immutable word of God etched in a stone tablet. For every scene that made it into the final game, there are dozens of alternatives that were tossed aside. Let us also not forget the crude economics of popular storytelling. Spending resources on one particular aspect of the game may mean something entirely unrelated will have to be cut for time. Thus, the absence of a particular character/scenario is an alternative in itself. So with all these options at their disposal, why is the scene we see before us the one that made it into the final cut?
—
Before we dive in, I also want to define two broad categories of narrative: messy and clean.
Messy narratives are ones I would define as stories that try to illuminate something about the human condition, but may not leave the audience feeling very good by the end of it. The protagonists, while not always anti-heroes, don’t always exhibit the kind of growth we’d like, don’t always learn their lessons, probably aren’t the best role models. The endings are often ambivalent, ambiguous, and leaves room for the audience to take away from it what they will. This is the category I would put art films and prestige cable dramas.
Clean narratives are where I would categorize most popular forms of entertainment. Not that these characters necessarily lack nuance, but whatever flaws are portrayed are something to be overcome by the end of story. The protagonists are characters you’re supposed to want to root for
Final Fantasy as a series would fall under the ‘clean’ category. Sure, many of the protagonists start out as jerks, but they grow through these flaws and become true heroes by the end of their journey. Hell, a lot of the time even the villains are redeemed. They want you to like the characters you’re spending a 40+ hr journey with. Their depictions can still be realistic, but they will become the most idealized versions of themselves by the end of their journeys.
This is important to establish, because we can then assume that it is not SE’s intent to make any of their main characters come off pathetic losers or unrepentant assholes. Now whether or not they succeed in that endeavor is another question entirely.
FF7 OG or The dumbest thought experiment in the world
With that one thousand word preamble out of the way, let’s finally take a look at the text. In lieu of going through the OG’s story beat by beat, let’s try this thought experiment:
Imagine it’s 1996, and you’re a development executive at what was then Squaresoft. The plucky, young development team has the first draft of what will become the game we know as Final Fantasy VII. Like the preceding entries in the series, it’s a world-spanning action adventure RPG, with a key subplot being the epic tragic romance between its hero and heroine, Cloud and Aerith.
They ask you for your notes.
(For the sake of your sanity and mine, let’s limit our hypothetical notes to the romantic subplot)
Disc 1 - everything seems to be on the right track. Nice meet-cute, lots of moments developing the relationship between our pair. Creating a love triangle with this Tifa character is an interesting choice, but she’s a comparatively minor character so she probably won’t be a real threat and will find her happiness elsewhere by the end of the game. You may note that they’re leaning a bit too much into Tifa and Cloud’s past. Especially the childhood promise flashback early in the game — cute scene, but a distraction from main story and main pairing — fodder for the chopping block. You may also bump on the fact that Aerith is initially attracted to Cloud because he reminds her of an ex, but this is supposed to be a more mature FF. That can be an obstacle they overcome as Aerith gets to know the real Cloud.
Aerith dies, but it is supposed to be a tragic romance after all. Death doesn’t have to be the end for this relationship, especially since Aerith is an Ancient after all.
It’s when Disc 2 starts that things go off the rails. First off, it feels like an awfully short time for Cloud to be grieving the love of his life, though it’s somewhat understandable. This story is not just a romance. There are other concerns after all, Cloud’s identity crisis for one. Though said identity crisis involves spending a lot of time developing his relationship with another woman. It’s one thing for Cloud and Tifa to be from the same hometown, but does she really need to play such an outsized role in his internal conflict? This might give the player the wrong impression.
You get to the Northern Crater, and it just feels all wrong. Cloud is more or less fine after the love of his life is murdered in front of his eyes but has a complete mental breakdown to the point that he’s temporarily removed as a playable character because Tifa loses faith in him??? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
Oh, but it only gets worse from here. With Cloud gone, the POV switches to Tifa and her feelings for him and her desire to find him. The opening of the game is also recontextualized when you learn the only reason that Cloud was part of the first Reactor mission that starts the game is because Tifa found him and wanted to keep an eye on him.
Then you get to Mideel and the alarm bells are going off. Tifa drops everything, removing her from the party as well, to take care of Cloud while he’s a catatonic vegetable? Not good. Very not good. This level of selfless devotion is going to make Cloud look like a total asshole when he rejects her in favor of Aerith. Speaking of Aerith, she uh…hasn’t been mentioned for some time. In fact, her relationship with Cloud has remained completely static after Disc 1, practically nonexistent, while his with Tifa has been building and building. Developing a rival relationship that then needs to be dismantled rather than developing the endgame relationship doesn’t feel like a particularly valuable use of time and resources.
By the time you get to the Lifestream scene, you’re about ready to toss the script out of the window. Here’s the emotional climax of the entire game, where Cloud’s internal conflict is finally resolved, and it almost entirely revolves around Tifa? Rather than revisiting the many moments of mental anguish we experienced during the game itself — featuring other characters, including let’s say, Aerith — it’s about a hereto unknown past that only Tifa has access to? Not only that, but we learn that the reason Cloud wanted to join SOLDIER was to impress Tifa, and the reason he adopted his false persona was because he was so ashamed that he couldn’t live up to the person he thought Tifa wanted him to be? Here, we finally get a look into the inner life of one half of our epic couple and…it entirely revolves around another woman??
Cloud is finally his real self, and hey, it looks like he finally remembers Aerith, that’s at least a step in the right direction. Though still not great. With his emotional arc already resolved, any further romantic developments is going to feel extraneous and anticlimactic. It just doesn’t feel like there’s enough time to establish that:
Cloud’s romantic feelings for Tifa (which were strong enough to launch his hero’s journey) have transformed into something entirely platonic in the past few days/weeks
Cloud’s feelings for Aerith that he developed while he was pretending to be someone else (and not just any someone, but Aerith’s ex of all people) are real.
This isn’t a romantic melodrama after all. There’s still a villain to kill and a world to save.
Cloud does speak of Aerith wistfully, and even quite personally at times, yet every time he talks about her, he’s surrounded by the other party members. A scene or two where he can grapple with his feelings for her on his own would help. Her ghost appearing in the Sector 5 Church feels like a great opportunity for this to happen, but he doesn’t interact with it at all. What gives? Missed opportunity after missed opportunity.
The night before the final battle, Cloud asks the entire party to find what they’re fighting for. This feels like a great (and perhaps the last) opportunity to establish that for Cloud, it’s in Aerith’s memory and out of his love for her. He could spend those hours alone in any number of locations associated with her — the Church, the Temple of the Ancients, the Forgotten City.
Instead — none of those happens. Instead, once again, it’s Cloud and Tifa in another scene where they’re the only two characters in the scene. You’re really going to have Cloud spend what could very well be the last night of his life with another woman? With a fade to black that strongly implies they slept together? In one fell swoop, you’re portraying Cloud as a guy who not only betrays the memory of his lost love, but is also incredibly callous towards the feelings of another woman by taking advantage of her vulnerability. Why are we rooting for him to succeed again?
Cloud and the gang finally defeat Sephiroth, and Aerith guides him back into the real world. Is he finally explicitly stating that he’s searching for her (though they’ve really waited until the last minute to do so), but again, why is Tifa in this scene? Shouldn’t it just be Cloud and Aerith alone? Why have Tifa be there at all? Why have her and her alone of all the party members be the one waiting for Cloud? Do you need to have Tifa there to be rejected while Cloud professes his unending love for Aerith? It just feels needlessly cruel and distracts from what should be the sole focus of the scene, the love between Cloud and Aerith.
What a mess.
You finish reading, and since it is probably too late in the development process to just fire everyone, you offer a few suggestions that will clarify the intended romance while the retaining the other plot points/general themes of the game.
Here they are, ordered by scale of change, from minor to drastic:
Option 1 would be to keep most of the story in tact, but rearrange the sequence of events so that the Lifestream sequence happens before Aerith’s death. That way, Cloud is his true self and fully aware of his feelings for both women before Aerith’s death. That way, his past with Tifa isn’t some ticking bomb waiting to go off in the second half of the game. That development will cease at the Lifestream scene. Cloud will realize the affection he held for her as a child is no longer the case. He is grateful for the past they shared, but his future is with Aerith. He makes a clear choice before that future is taken away from him with her death. The rest of the game will go on more or less the same (with the Highwind scene being eliminated, of course) making it clear, that avenging the death of his beloved is one of, if not the, primary motivation for him wanting to defeat Sephiroth.
The problem with this “fix” is that a big part of the reason that Aerith gets killed is because of Cloud’s identity crisis. If said crisis is resolved, the impact of her death will be diminished, because it would feel arbitrary rather than something that stems from the consequences of Cloud’s actions. More of the story will need to be reconceived so that this moment holds the same emotional weight.
Another problem is why the Lifestream scene needs to exist at all. Why spend all that time developing the backstory for a relationship that will be moot by the end of the game? It makes Tifa feel like less of a character and more of a plot device, who becomes irrelevant after she services the protagonist’s character development and then has none of her own. That’s no way to treat one of the main characters of your game.
Option 2 would be to re-imagine Tifa’s character entirely. You can keep some of her history with Cloud in tact, but expand her backstory so she is able to have a satisfactory character arc outside of her relationship with Cloud. You could explore the five years in her life since the Nibelheim incident. Maybe she wasn’t in Midgar the whole time. Maybe, like Barret, she has her own Corel, and maybe reconciling with her past there is the climax of her emotional arc as opposed to her past with Cloud. For Cloud too, her importance needs to be diminished. She can be one of the people who help him find his true self in the Lifestream, but not the only person. There’s no reason the other people he’s met on his journey can’t be there. Thus their relationship remains somewhat important, but their journeys are not so entwined that it distracts from Cloud and Aerith’s romance.
Option 3 would be to really lean into the doomed romance element of Cloud and Aerith’s relationship. Have her death be the cause of his mental breakdown, and have Aerith be the one in the Lifestream who is able to put his mind back together and bring him back to the realm of consciousness. After he emerges, he has the dual goal of defeating Sephiroth and trying to reunite with Aerith. In the end, in order to do the former, he has to relinquish the latter. He makes selfless choice. He makes the choice that resonates the overall theme of the game. It’s a bittersweet but satisfying ending. Cloud chooses to honor her memory and her purpose over the chance to physically bring her back. In this version of the game, the love triangle serves no purpose. There’s no role for Tifa at all.
Okay, we can be done with this strained counterfactual. What I’ve hopefully illustrated is that while developers had countless opportunities to solidify Cloud/Aerith as the canon couple in Discs 2 and 3 of the game, they instead chose a different route each and every time. What should also be clear is that the biggest obstacle standing in their way is not Aerith’s death, but the fact that Tifa exists.
At least in the form she takes in the final game, as a playable character and at the very least, the 3rd most important character in game’s story. She is not just another recurring NPC or an antagonist. Her love for Cloud is not going to be treated like a mere trifle or obstacle. If Cloud/Aerith was supposed to be the endgame ship, there would be no need for a love triangle and no need to include Tifa in the game at all. Death is a big enough obstacle, developing Cloud’s relationship with Tifa would only distract from and diminish his romance with Aerith.
I think this is something the dead enders understand intuitively, even more so than many Cloti shippers. Which is why some of them try to dismiss Tifa’s importance in the story so that she becomes a minor supporting character at best, or denigrate her character to the point that she becomes an actual villain. The Seifer to a Squall, the Seymour to a Tidus, hell even a Quistis to a Rinoa, they know how to deal with, but a Tifa Lockhart? As she is actually depicted in Final Fantasy VII? They have no playbook for that, and thus they desperately try to squeeze her into one of these other roles.
Let’s try another thought experiment, and see what would to other FF romances if we inserted a Tifa Lockhart-esque character in the middle of them.
FFXV is a perfect example because it features the sort of tragic love beyond death romance that certain shippers want Cloud and Aerith to be. Now, did I think FFXV was a good game? No. Did I think Noctis/Luna was a particularly well-developed romance? Also no. Did I have any question in my mind whatsoever that they were the canon relationship? Absolutely not.
Is this because they kiss at the end? Well sure, that helps, but also it’s because the game doesn’t spend the chapters after Luna’s death developing Noctis’ relationship with another woman. If Noctis/Luna had the same sort of development as Cloud/Aerith, then after Luna dies, Iris would suddenly pop in and play a much more prominent role. The game would flashback to her past and her relationship with Noctis. And it would be through his relationship with Iris that Noctis understands his duty to become king or a crystal or whatever the fuck that game was about. Iris is by Noctis’ side through the final battle, and when he ascends the throne in that dreamworld or whatever. There, Luna finally shows up again. Iris is still in the frame when Noctis tells her something like ‘Oh sorry, girl, I’ve been in love with Luna all along,” before he kisses Luna and the game ends.
(a very real scene from a very good game)
Come on. It would be utterly ludicrous and an utter disservice to every character involved, yet that is essentially the argument Cloud/Aerith shippers are making. SE may have made some pretty questionable storytelling decisions in the past, but they aren’t that bad at this.
Or in FFVIII, it would be like reordering the sequence of events so that Squall remembers that he grew up in an orphanage with all the other kids after Rinoa falls into a coma. And while Rinoa is out of commission, instead of Quistis gracefully bowing out after realizing she had mistaken her feelings of sisterly affection for love, it becomes Quistis’ childhood relationship with Squall that allows him to remember his past and re-contextualizes the game we’ve played thus far, so that the player realizes that it was actually Quistis who was his motivation all along. Then after this brief emotional detour, his romance with Rinoa would continue as usual. Absolutely absurd.
The Final Fantasy games certainly have their fair share of plot holes, but they’ve never whiffed on a romance this badly.
A somewhat more serious character analysis of the OG
What then is Tifa’s actual role in the story of FFVII? Her character is intricately connected to Cloud’s. In fact, they practically have the same arc, though Tifa’s is rather understated compared to his. She doesn’t adopt a false persona after all. For both of them, the flaw that they must learn to overcome over the course of the game is their fear of confronting the truth of their past. Or to put it more crudely, if they’re not lying, they’re at the very least omitting the truth. Cloud does so to protect himself from his fear of being exposed as a failure. Tifa does so at the expense of herself, because she fears the truth will do more harm than good. They’re two sides of the same coin. Nonetheless, their lying has serious ramifications.
The past they’re both afraid to confront is of course the Nibelheim Incident from five years ago. Thus, the key points in their emotional journeys coincide with the three conflicting Nibelheim flashbacks depicted in the game: Cloud’s false memory in Kalm, Sephiroth’s false vision in the Northern Crater, and the truth in the Lifestream.
Before they enter the Lifestream, both Cloud and Tifa are at the lowest of their lows. Cloud has had a complete mental breakdown and is functionally a vegetable. Tifa has given up everything to take care of Cloud as she feels responsible for his condition. If he doesn’t recover, she may never find peace.
With nothing left to lose, they both try to face the past head on. For Cloud, it’s a bit harder. At the heart of all this confusion, is of course, the Nibelheim Incident. How does Cloud know all these things he shouldn’t if Tifa doesn’t remember seeing him there? The emotional climax for both Cloud and Tifa, and arguably the game as a whole, is the moment the Shinra grunt removes his helmet to reveal that Cloud was there all along.
Tifa is the only character who can play this role for Cloud. It’s not like she a found a videotape in the Lifestream labeled ‘Nibelheim Incident - REAL’ and voila, Cloud is fixed. No, she is the only one who can help him because she is the only person who lived through that moment. No one else could make Cloud believe it. You could have Aerith or anyone else trying to tell him what actually happened, but why would he believe it anymore than the story Sephiroth told him at the Northern Crater?
With Tifa, it’s different. Not only was she physically there, but she’s putting as much at risk in what the truth may reveal. She’s not just a plot device to facilitate Cloud’s character development. The Lifestream sequence is as much the culmination of her own character arc. If it goes the wrong way, “Cloud” may find out that he’s just a fake after all, and Tifa may learn that boy she thought she’d been on this journey with had died years ago. That there’s no one left from her past, that it was all in her head, that she’s all alone. Avoiding this truth is a comfort, but in this moment, they’re both putting themselves on the line. Being completely vulnerable in front of the person they’re most terrified of being vulnerable with.
The developers have structured Cloud and Tifa’s character arcs so that the crux is a moment where the other is literally the only person who could provide the answer they need. Without each other, as far as the story is concerned, Cloud and Tifa would remain incomplete.
Aerith’s character arc is a different beast entirely. She is the closest we have to the traditional Campbellian Hero. She is the Chosen One, the literal last of her kind, who has been resisting the call to adventure until she can no longer. The touchstones of her character arc are the moments she learns more about her Cetra past and comes to terms with her role in protecting the planet - namely Cosmo Canyon, the Temple of the Ancients and the Forgotten City.
How do hers and Cloud’s arcs intersect? When it comes to the Nibelheim incident, she is a merely a spectator (at least during the Kalm flashback, as for the other two, she is uh…deceased). Cloud attacking her at the Temple of the Ancients, which results in her running to the Forgotten City alone and getting killed by Sephiroth, certainly exacerbates his mental deterioration, but it is by no means a turning point in his arc the way the Northern Crater is.
As for Cloud’s role in Aerith’s arc, their meeting is quite important in that it sets forth the series of events that leads her to getting captured by Shinra and thus meeting “Sephiroth” and wanting to learn more about the Cetra. It’s the inciting incident if we’re going to be really pedantic about it, yet Aerith’s actual character development is not dependent on her relationship with Cloud. It is about her communion with her Cetra Ancestry and the planet.
To put it in other terms, all else being the same, Aerith could still have a satisfying character arc had Cloud not crashed down into her Church. Sure, the game would look pretty different, but there are other ways for her to transform from a flirty, at times frivolous girl to an almost Christ-like figure who accepts the burden of protecting the planet.
Such is not the case for Cloud and Tifa. Their character arcs are built around their shared past and their relationship with one another. Without Tifa, you would have to rewrite Cloud’s character entirely. What was his motivation for joining SOLDIER? How did he get on that AVALANCHE mission in the first place? Who can possibly know him well enough to put his mind back together after it falls apart? If the answer to all these questions is the same person, then congratulations, you’ve just reverse engineered Tifa Lockhart.
Tifa fares a little better. Without Cloud, she would be a sad, sweet character who never gets the opportunity to reconcile with the trauma of her past. Superficially, a lot would be the same, but she would ultimately be quite static and all the less interesting for it.
Let’s also take a brief gander at Tifa’s role after the Lifestream sequence. At this point in the game, both Tifa and Cloud’s emotional arcs are essentially complete. They are now the most idealized versions of themselves, characters the players are meant to admire and aspire to. However they are depicted going forward, it would not be the creator’s intent for their actions to be perceived in a negative light.
A few key moments standout, ones that would not be included if the game was intended to end with any other romantic pairing or with Cloud’s romantic interest left ambiguous:
The Highwind scene, which I’ve gone over above. It doesn’t matter if you get the Low Affection or High Affection version. It would not reflect well on either Cloud or Tifa if he chose to spend what could be his last night alive with a woman whose feelings he did not reciprocate.
Before the final battle with Sephiroth, the party members scream out the reasons they’re fighting. Barret specifically calls out AVALANCHE, Marlene and Dyne, Red XIII specifically calls out his Grandpa, and Tifa specifically calls out Cloud. You are not going to make one of Tifa’s last moments in the game be her pining after a guy who has no interest in her. Not when you could easily have her mention something like her past, her hometown or hell even AVALANCHE and Marlene like Barret. If Tifa’s feelings for Cloud are meant to be unrequited, then it would be a character flaw that would be dealt with long before the final battle (see: Quistis in FF8 or Eowyn in the Lord of the Rings). They would not still be on display at moment like this.
Tifa being the only one there when Cloud jumps into the Lifestream to fight Sephiroth for the last time, and Tifa being the only one there when he emerges. She is very much playing the traditional partner/spouse role here, when you could easily have the entire party present or no one there at all. There is clearly something special about her relationship with Cloud that sets her apart from the other party members.
Once again, let’s look at the “I think I can meet her there moment.” And let’s put side the translation (the Japanese is certainly more ambiguous, and it’s not like the game had any trouble having Cloud call Aerith by her name before this). If Cloud was really expressing his desire to reunite with Aerith, and thus his rejection of Tifa, then the penultimate scene of this game is one that involves the complete utter and humiliation of one of its main characters since Tifa’s reply would indicate she’s inviting herself to a romantic reunion she has no part in. Not only that, but to anyone who is not Cl*rith shipper, the protagonist of the game is going to come off as a callous asshole. That cannot possibly be the creator’s intention. They are competent enough to depict an act of love without drawing attention to the party hurt by that love.
What then could possibly be the meaning? Could it possibly be Cloud trying to comfort Tifa by trying to find a silver lining in what appears to be their impending death? That this means they may get to see their departed loved ones again, including their mutual friend, Aerith? (I will note that Tifa talks about Aerith as much, if not even more than Cloud, after her death). Seems pretty reasonable to me, this being an interpretation of the scene that aligns with the overall themes of the game, and casts every character in positive light during this bittersweet moment.
Luckily enough, we have an entire fucking Compilation to find out which is right.
But before we get there, I’m sure some of you (lol @ me thinking anyone is still reading this) are asking, if Cloti is canon, then why is there a love triangle at all? Why even hint at the possibility of a romance between Cloud and Aerith? Wouldn’t that also be a waste of time and resources if they weren’t meant to be canon?
Well, there are two very important reasons that have nothing to do with romance and everything to do with two of the game’s biggest twists:
Aerith initially being attracted to Cloud’s similarities to Zack/commenting on the uncanniness of said similarities is an organic way to introduce the man Cloud’s pretending to be. Without it, the reveal in the Lifestream would fall a bit flat. The man he’s been emulating all along would just be some sort of generic hero rather than a person whose history and deeds already encountered during the course of the game. Notably for this to work, the game only has to establish Aerith’s attraction to Cloud.
To build the player’s attachment to Aerith before her death/obscure the fact that she’s going to die. With the technological limitations of the day, the only way to get the player to interact with Aerith is through the player character (AKA Cloud), and adding an element of choice (AKA the Gold Saucer Date mechanic) makes the player even more invested. This then elevates Aerith’s relationship with Cloud over hers with any other character. At the same time, because her time in the game is limited, Cloud ends up interacting with Aerith more than any of the other characters, at least in Disc 1. The choice to make many of these interactions flirty/romantic also toys with player expectations. One does not expect the hero’s love interest to die halfway through the game. The game itself also spends a bit of time teasing the romance, albeit, largely in superficial ways like other characters commenting on their relationship or Cait Sith reading their love fortune at the Temple of the Ancients. Yet, despite the quantity of their personal interactions, Cloud and Aerith never display any moments of deep love or devotion that one associates with a Final Fantasy romance. They never have the time. What the game establishes then is the potential of a romance rather than the romance itself. Aerith’s death hurts because of all that lost potential. There so many things she wanted to do, so many places she wanted to see that will never happen because her life is cut short. Part of what is lost, of course, is the potential of her romance with Cloud.
This creative choice is a lot more controversial since it elevates subverting audience expectations over character, and understandably leads to some player confusion. What’s the point of all this set up if there’s not going to be a pay off? Well, that is kind of the point. Death is frustrating because of all the unknowns and what-ifs. But, I suppose some people just can’t accept that fact in a game like this.
One last note on the OG before we move on: Even though this from an Ultimania, since we’re talking about story development and creator intent, I thought it was relevant to include: the fact that Aerith was the sole heroine in early drafts of the game is not the LTD trump card so people think it is. Stories undergo radical changes through the development process. More often than not, there are too many characters, and characters are often combined or removed if their presence feels redundant or confusing.
In this case, the opposite happened. Tifa was added later in the development process as a second heroine. Let’s say that Aerith was the Last Ancient and the protagonist’s sole love interest in this early draft of Final Fantasy VII. In the game that was actually released, that role was split between two characters (and last I checked, Tifa is not the last of a dying race), and Aerith dies halfway through the game, so what does that suggest about how Aerith’s role may have changed in the final product? Again, if Aerith was intended to be Cloud’s love interest, Tifa simply would not exist.
A begrudging analysis of our favorite straight-to-DVD sequel
Let’s move onto the Compilation. And in doing so, completely forget about the word vomit that’s been written above. While it’s quite clear to me now that there’s no way in hell the developers would have intended the last scene in the game to be both a confirmation of Cloud’s love for Aerith and his rejection of Tifa, in my younger and more vulnerable years, I wasn’t so sure. In fact, this was the prevailing interpretation back in the pre-Compilation Dark Ages. Probably because of a dubious English translation of the game and a couple of ambiguous cameos in Final Fantasy Tactics and Kingdom Hearts were all we had to go on.
How then did the official sequel to Final Fantasy VII change those priors?
Two years after the events of the game, Cloud is living as a family with Tifa and two kids rather than scouring the planet for a way to be reunited with Aerith. Shouldn’t the debate be well and over with that? Obviously not, and it’s not just because people were being obstinate. Part of the confusion stems from Advent Children itself, but I would argue that did not come from an intent to play coy/keep Cloud’s romantic desires ambiguous, but rather a failure of execution of his character arc.
Now I wasn’t the biggest fan of the film when I first watched a bootlegged copy I downloaded off LimeWire in 2005, and I like it even less now, but I better understand its failures, given its unique position as a sequel to a beloved game and the cornerstone of launching the Compilation.
The original game didn’t have such constraints on its storytelling. Outside of including a few elements that make it recognizable as a Final Fantasy (Moogles, Chocobos, Summons, etc.) and being a good enough game to be a financial success, the developers pretty much had free rein in terms of what story they wanted to tell, what characters they would use to tell it, and how long it took for them to tell said story.
With Advent Children, telling a good story was not the sole or even primary goal. Instead, it had to:
Do some fanservice: The core audience is going to be the OG fanbase, who would be expecting to see modern, high-def depictions of all the memorable and beloved characters from the game, no matter if the natural end point of their stories is long over.
Set up the rest of the Compilation - Advent Children is the draw with the big stars, but also a way to showcase the lesser known characters from from the Compilation who are going to be leading their own spinoffs. It’s part feature film/part advertisement for the rest of the Compilation. Thus, the Turks, Vincent and Zack get larger roles in the film than one might expect to attract interest to the spinoffs they lead.
Show off its technical prowess: SE probably has enough self awareness to realize that what’s going to set it apart from other animated feature films is not its novel storytelling, but its graphical capabilities. Thus, to really show off those graphics, the film is going to be packed to the brim with big, complicated action scenes with lots of moving parts, as opposed to quieter character driven moments.
These considerations are not unique to Advent Children, but important to note nonetheless:
As a sequel, the stakes have to be just as high if not higher than those in the original work. Since the threat in the OG was the literal end of the world, in Advent Children, the world’s gotta end again
The OG was around 30-40 hours long. An average feature-length film is roughly two hours. Video games and films are two very different mediums. As many TV writers who have tried to make the transition to film (and vice-versa) can tell you, success in one medium does not translate to success in another.
With so much to do in so little time, is it any wonder then that it is again Sephiroth who is the villain trying to destroy the world and Aerith in the Lifestream the deus ex machina who saves the day?
All of this is just a long-winded way to say, certain choices in the Advent Children that may seem to exist only to perpetuate the LTD were made with many other storytelling considerations in mind.
When trying to understand the intended character arcs and relationship dynamics, you cannot treat the film as a collection of scenes devoid of context. You can’t just say - “well here’s a scene where Cloud seems to miss Aerith, and here’s another scene where Cloud and Tifa fight. Obviously, Cloud loves Aerith.” You have to look at what purpose these scenes serve in the grander narrative.
And what is this grander narrative? To put it in simplistic terms, Aerith is the obstacle, and Tifa is goal. Cloud must get over his guilt over Aerith’s death so that he can return to living with Tifa and the children in peace.
The scenes following the prologue are setting up the emotional stakes of film - the problem that will be resolved by the film’s end. The problem being depicted here is not Aerith’s absence from Cloud’s life, but Cloud’s absence from his family. We see Tifa walking through Seventh Heaven saying “he’s not here anymore,” we see Denzel in his sickbed asking for Cloud, we see a framed photo of the four of them on Cloud’s desk. We see Cloud letting Tifa’s call go to voicemail.
What we do not see is Aerith, who does not appear until almost halfway through the film.
Cloud spends the first of the film avoiding confrontation with the Remnants/dealing with the return of Sephiroth. It’s only when Tifa is injured, and Denzel and Marlene get kidnapped that he goes to face his problems head on.
Before the final battle, when Cloud has exorcised his emotional demons and is about to face his physical demons, what do we see? We see Cloud telling Marlene that it’s his turn to take care of her, Denzel and Tifa the way they’ve taken care of him. We see Cloud telling Tifa that he ‘feels lighter’ and tacitly confirming that she was correct when she called him out earlier in the film. We see Cloud confirming to Denzel that he’s going home after this is all over.
What we do not see is Cloud telepathically communicating with Aerith to say, “Hey boo, can’t wait to beat Sephiroth so I can finally reunite with you in the Promised Land. Xoxoxo.” Aerith doesn’t factor in at all. Returning to his family is his goal, and his fight with Bahamut/the Remnants/Sephiroth/whatever the fuck is the final obstacle he has to face before reaching this goal.
This is reiterated again when Cloud is shot by Yazoo and seemingly perishes in an explosion. What is at stake with his “death”? We see Tifa calling his name while looking out the airship. We see Denzel and Marlene waiting for him at Seventh Heaven. We do not see Aerith watching over him in the Lifestream.
Now, Aerith does play an important role in Cloud’s arc when she shows up at about the midpoint of the film. You could fairly argue that it’s the turning point in Cloud’s emotional journey, the moment when he finally decides to confront his problems. But even if it’s only Cloud and Aerith in the scene, it’s not really about their relationship at all.
Let’s consider the context before this scene happens. Denzel and Marlene have been kidnapped by the Remnants; Tifa was nearly killed in a fight with another. This is Cloud at his lowest point. It’s his worst fears come to pass. His guilt over Aerith’s death is directly addressed at this moment in the film because it is not so much about his feelings for Aerith as it is about how Cloud fears the failures of his past (one of the biggest being her death) would continue into the present. If it was just about Aerith, we could have seen Cloud asking for her forgiveness at any other time in the film. It occurs when it does because this when his guilt over Aerith’s death intersects with his actual conflict, his fear that he’ll fail the the ones he loves. She appears when he’s at the Forgotten City where he goes to save the children. The same location where he had failed two year before.
This connection is made explicit when Cloud has flashes of Zack and Aerith’s deaths before he saves Denzel and Tifa from Bahamut. Again, Cloud’s dwelling on the past is directly related to his fears of being unable to protect his present.
Aerith is a feminine figure who is associated with flowers. That combined with the players’ memory of her and her relationship with Cloud in the OG, I can see how their scenes can be construed as romantic, but I really do not think that it is the creators’ intent to portray any romantic longing on Cloud’s part.
If they wanted to suggest that Cloud was still in love with Aerith or even leave his romantic interest ambiguous, there is no way in hell they would have had Cloud living with Tifa and two kids prior to the film’s events. To say nothing of opening the film by showing the pain his absence brings.
A romantic reading of Cloud’s guilt over Aerith’s death would suggest that he entered into a relationship with Tifa and started raising two children with her while still holding a torch for Aerith and hoping for a way to be reunited with her. The implication would be that Tifa is his second choice, and he is settling. Now, is this a dynamic that occurs in real life? Absolutely. Is this something that is often depicted in some films and television? Sure - in fact this very premise is at the core of one my favorite films of the last decade - 45 Years — and spoiler alert — the guy does not come off well in this situation. But once again, Cloud is not a real person, and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is not a John Cassavettes film or an Ingmar Bergman chamber drama. It is a 2-hour long straight to DVD sequel for a video game made for teens. This kind of messy, if realistic, relationship dynamic is not what this particular work is trying to explore.
(one of these is a good film!)
By the end of Advent Children, Cloud is once again the idealized version of himself. A hero that the audience is supposed to like and admire. We are supposed to think that his actions in the first half of the movie (wallowing in his guilt and abandoning his family) were bad. These are the flaws that he must overcome through the course of the film, and by the end he does. If he really had been settling and treating his Seventh Heaven family as a second choice prior to the events of the film, that too would obviously be a character flaw that needs to be addressed before the end of the film. It isn’t because this is a dynamic that only exists in certain people’s imaginations.
If the creators wanted to leave the Cloud & Aerith relationship open to a romantic interpretation, they didn’t have to write themselves into such a corner. They wouldn’t have to change the final film much at all, merely adjust the chronology a bit. Instead of Cloud already living as a family with Tifa, Marlene and Denzel prior to the beginning of the film, you would show them on the precipice of becoming a family, but with Cloud being unable to take the final step without getting over his feelings for Aerith first. This would leave space for him to love both women without coming off as an opportunistic jerk.
This is essentially the dynamic with Locke/Rachel/Celes in FFVI. Locke is unable to move on with Celes or anyone else until he finally finds closure with Rachel. It’s a lovely scene that does not diminish his relationships with either woman. He loved Rachel. He will love Celes. What the game does not have him do is enter into a relationship into Celes first and then when the party arrives at the Phoenix Cave, have him suddenly remember ‘Oh shit, I’ve gotta deal with my baggage with Rachel before I can really move on.’ That would not paint him in a particularly positive light.
Speaking of other Final Fantasies, let’s take a look another sequel in the series set two years after the events of the original work, one that is clearly the story of its protagonist searching for their lost love. And guess what? Final Fantasy X-2 does not begin with Yuna shacked up and raising two kids with another dude. And it certainly doesn’t begin with his perspective of the whole situation when Yuna decides to search for Tidus.
Square Enix knows how to write these kind of stories when they want to, and it’s clearly not their intent for Cloud and Aerith. Again, the biggest obstacle in the way of a Cloud/Aerith endgame isn’t space and time or death, it’s the existence of Tifa Lockhart.
A reasonable question to ask would be, if SE is not trying to ignite debate over the love triangle, why make Cloud’s relationship with Aerith a part of Advent Children at all? Why invite that sort of confusion? Well, the answer here, like the answer in the OG, is that Aerith’s role in the sequel is much more than her relationship with Cloud.
In the OG, it wasn’t Cloud and the gang who managed to stop Sephiroth and Meteor in the end, it was Aerith from the Lifestream. In a two-hour long film, you do not have the time to set up a completely new villain who can believably end the world, and since you pretty much have to include Sephiroth, the main antagonist can really only be him. No one else in the party has been established to have any magical Cetra powers, and again, since that’s not something that can be effectively established in a two-hour long film, and since Aerith needs to appear somehow, it again needs to be her who will save the day.
Given the time constraints, this external conflict has to be connected with Cloud’s internal conflict. In the OG, Cloud’s emotional arc is in resolved in the Lifestream, and then we spend a few more hours hunting down the Huge Materia/remembering what Holy is before resolving the external conflict of stopping Meteor. In Advent Children, we do not have that luxury of time. These turning points have to be one and same. It is only after Aerith is “introduced” in the film when Cloud asks her for forgiveness that she is able to help in the fight against the Remnants. Thus the turning point for Cloud’s character arc and the external conflict are the same. It’s understandably economical storytelling, though I wouldn’t call it particularly good storytelling.
As much as Cloud feels guilt over both Zack and Aerith’s deaths, it’s only Aerith who can play this dual role in the film. Zack can appear to help resolve Cloud’s emotional arc, but since he has no special Cetra powers or anything, there’s little he can do to help in Cloud’s fight against the Remnants. More time would need to be spent contriving a reason why Cloud is able to defeat the Remnants now when he wasn’t before or explaining why Aerith can suddenly help from the Lifestream when she had been absent before. (I still don’t think the film does a particularly good job of explaining this part, but that is a conversation for another time).
Another reason why Zack could not play this role is because at the time of AC’s original release, all we knew of Cloud and Zack’s relationship was contained in an optional flashback at the Shinra mansion after Cloud returns from the Lifestream. If it was Zack who suddenly showed up at Cloud’s lowest point, most viewers, even many who played the original game, would probably have been confused, and the moment would have fallen flat. On the other hand, even the most casual fan would have been aware of Aerith and her connection to Cloud, with her death scene being among the most well-known gaming moments of all time. Moreover, Aerith’s death is directly connected to Sephiroth, who is once again the threat in AC, whereas Zack was killed by Shinra goons. Aerith serves multiple purposes in a way that Zack just cannot.
Despite all this, though Aerith is more important to the film as a whole, many efforts are made to suggest that Zack and Aerith are equally important to Cloud. One of the first scenes in the film is Cloud moping around Zack’s grave (And unlike the scene with Aerith in the Forgotten City, it isn’t directly connected with Cloud’s present storyline in any way). We have the aforementioned scene where Cloud has flashes of both Aerith’s and Zack’s deaths when he saves Tifa and Denzel. Cloud has a scene where he’s standing back to back with Zack, mirroring his scene with in the Forgotten City with Aerith, before the climax of his fight with Sephiroth. In the Lifestream, after Cloud “dies,” it’s both Aerith and Zack who are there to send him back. Before the film ends, Cloud sees both Aerith and Zack leaving the church.
Now, were all these Zack appearances a way to promote the upcoming spin-off game that he’s going to lead? Of course. But the creators surely would have known that having Zack play such a similar role in Cloud’s arc would make Cloud’s relationship with Aerith feel less special and thus complicating a romantic interpretation of said relationship. If they wanted to encourage a romantic reading of Cloud’s lingering feelings for Aerith, they would have given Zack his own distinct role in the film. Or rather, they wouldn’t have put Zack in the film at all, and they certainly wouldn’t have him lead his own game, but we’ll get to the Zack of it all later.
The funny thing is, in a way, Zack is portrayed as being more special to Cloud. Zack only exists in the film to interact with Cloud and encourage him. Meanwhile. Aerith also has brief interactions with Kadaj, the Geostigma children and even Tifa before the film’s end. Aerith is there to save the whole world. Zack is there just for Cloud. If it’s Cloud’s relationship with Aerith that’s meant to be romantic, shouldn’t it be the other way around?
Let’s take a look at Tifa Lockhart. What role did she have to play in the FF7 sequel film? If, like some, you believed FF7 to be the Cloud/Aerith/Sephiroth show, then Tifa could have easily had a Barret-sized cameo in Advent Children. And honestly, she’s just a great martial artist. She has no special powers that would make her indispensable in a fight against Sephiroth. You certainly would not expect her to be the 2nd billed character in the film. Though of course, if you actually played through the Original Game with your eyes open, you would realize that Tifa Lockhart is instrumental to any story about Cloud Strife.
Unlike Aerith’s appearances, almost none of the suggestive scenes and dynamics between Cloud and Tifa had to be included in the film. As in, they serve no other plot related purpose and could have easily been cut from the final film if the creators weren’t trying to encourage a romantic interpretation of their relationship.
It feels inevitable now, but no one was expecting Cloud and Tifa to be living together and raising two kids. In the general consciousness, FF7 is Cloud and Sephiroth and their big swords and Aerith’s death. At the time, in the eyes of most fans and casual observers, Cloud and Tifa being together wasn’t a necessary part of the FF7 equation the way say, an epic fight between Cloud and Sephiroth would be. In fact, I don’t think even the biggest Cloti fans at the time would have imagined Cloud and Tifa living together would be their canon outcome in the sequel film.
Now can two platonic friends live together and raise two children together? Absolutely, but again Cloud and Tifa are not real people. They are fictional characters. A reasonable person (let’s use the legal definition of the term) who does not have brainworms from arguing over one of the dumbest debates on the Internet for 23 years would probably assume that two characters who were shown to be attracted to each other in the OG and who are now living together and raising two kids are in a romantic relationship. This is a reasonable assumption to make, and if SE wanted to leave Cloud’s romantic inclinations ambiguous, they simply would not be depicting Cloud and Tifa’s relationship in this manner. Cloud’s disrupted peace could have been a number of different things. He could have been a wandering mercenary, he could have been searching for a way to be reunited with Aerith. It didn’t have to be the family he formed with Tifa, but, then again, if you were actually paying attention to the story the OG was trying to tell, of course he would be living with Tifa.
Let’s also look at the scene where Cloud finds Tifa in the church after her fight with Loz. All the plot related information (who attacked her, Marlene being taken) is conveyed in the brief conversation they have before Cloud falls unconscious from Geostigma. What purpose do all the lingering shots of Cloud and Tifa in the flower bed in a Yin-Yang/non-sexual 69ing position serve if not to be suggestive of the type of relationship they have? It’s beautifully rendered but ultimately irrelevant to both the external and internal conflicts of the film.
Likewise, there is no reason why Cloud and Tifa needed to wake up in their children’s bedroom. No reason to show Cloud waking up with Tifa next to him in a way that almost makes you think they were in the same bed. And there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for a close-up of Tifa’s hand with the Wolf Ring on her ring finger while she is admonishing Cloud during what sounds like a domestic argument (This ring again comes into focus when Tifa leads Denzel to Cloud at the church at the end - there are dozens of ways this scene could have been rendered, but this is the one that was chosen.) If it wasn’t SE’s intent to emphasize the family dynamic and the intimate nature of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship, these scenes would not exist.
Let’s also take a look at Denzel, the only new character in the AC (give or take the Remnants). Again, given the film’s brief runtime, the fact that they’re not only adding a new character but giving him more screen time than almost every other AVALANCHE member must mean that he’s pretty important. While Denzel does have an arc of his own, especially in ACC, he is intricately connected to Cloud and Tifa and solidifies the family unit that they’ve been forming in Edge. Marlene still has Barret, but with the addition of Denzel, the family becomes something more real albeit even more tenuous given his Geostigma diagnosis. Without Denzel in the picture, it’s a bit easier to interpret Cloud’s distance from Tifa as romantic pining for another woman, but now it just seems absurd. The stakes are so much higher. Cloud and Tifa are at a completely different stage in their lives from the versions of these characters we met early on in the OG who were entangled in a frivolous love triangle. And yet some people are still stuck trying to fit these characters into a childish dynamic that died at the end of disc one along with a certain someone.
All this is there in the film, at least the director’s cut, if you really squint. But since SE preferred to spend its time on countless action sequences that have aged as well as whole milk in lieu of spending a few minutes showing Cloud’s family life before he got Geostigma to establish the emotional stakes, or a beat or two more on his reconciliation with Tifa and the kids, people may be understandably confused about Cloud’s arc. Has Cloud just been a moping around in misery for the two years post-OG? The answer is no, though that can only really be found in the accompanying novellas, specifically Case of Tifa.
Concerning the novellas, which we apparently must read to understand said DVD sequel
I really don’t know how you can read through CoT and still think there is anything ambiguous about the nature of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship. The “Because I have you this time,” Cloud telling Tifa he’ll remind her how to be strong when they’re alone, Cloud confidently agreeing when Marlene adds him to their family. Not to mention Barret and Cid’s brief conversation about Cloud and Tifa’s relationship in Case of Barret, after which Cid comments that “women wear the pants,” which Barret then follows by asking Cid about Shera. Again, a reasonable person would assume the couple in question are in a romantic relationship, and if this wasn’t the intent, these lines would not be present. Especially not in a novella about someone else.
Some try to argue that CoT just shows how incompatible Cloud and Tifa are because it features a few low points in their relationship. I don’t think that’s Nojima’s intent. Even if it was, it certainly wouldn’t be to prove that Cloud loves Aerith. This isn’t how you tell that story. Why waste all that time disproving a negative rather than proving a positive? We didn’t spend hours in FF8 watching Rinoa’s relationship with Seifer fall apart to understand how much better off she is with Squall. If Cloud and Aerith is meant to be a love story, then tell their love story. Why tell the story of how Cloud is incompatible with someone else?
Part of the confusion may be because CoT doesn’t tell a complete story in and of itself. The first half of the story (before Cloud has to deliver flowers to the Forgotten City) acts as a sort of epilogue to the OG, while the second half of the story is something of a prologue to Advent Children (or honestly its missing Act One). And to state the obvious, conflict is inherent to any story worth telling. It can’t just be all fluff, that’s what the fanfiction is for.
Tifa’s conflict is her fear that the fragile little family they’ve built in Edge is going to fall apart. Thus we see her fret about Cloud’s distance, the way this affects Marlene, and Denzel’s sickness. There are certainly some low moments here --- Tifa telling Cloud to drink in his room, asking if he loves her -- all ways for the threat to seem more real, the outcome more uncertain, yet there’s only one way this conflict can be resolved. One direction to which their relationship can move.
Again, by the end of this story, both characters are supposed to be the best versions of themselves, to find their “happy” endings so to speak. Tifa could certainly find happiness outside of a relationship with Cloud. She could decide that they’ve given it a shot, but they’re better off as friends. She’s grateful for this experience and she’s learned from this, but now she’s ready to make a life for herself on her own. It would be a fine character arc, though not something the Final Fantasy series has been wont to do. However, that’s obviously not the case here as there’s no indication whatsoever that Tifa considers this as an option for herself. Nojima hasn’t written this off ramp into her journey. For Tifa, they’ll either become a real family or they won’t. Since this is a story that is going to have a happy ending, so of course they will, even if there are a lot of bumps along the way.
Unfortunately, with the Compilation being the unwieldy beast that this is, this whole arc has to be pieced together across a number of different works:
Tifa asking herself if they’re a real family in CoT
Her greatest fear seemingly come to life when Cloud leaves at the end of CoT/beginning of AC
Tifa explicitly asking Cloud if the reason they can’t help each other is because they’re not a real family during their argument in AC. Notably, even though Cloud is at his lowest point, he doesn’t confirm her fear. Instead he says he that he can’t help anyone, not even his family. Instead, he indirectly confirms that yes he does think they’re a family, even if is a frustrating moment still in that he’s too scared to try to save it.
The ending of AC where we see a new photo of Cloud smiling surrounded by Tifa and the kids and the rest of the AVALANCHE, next to the earlier photo we had seen of the four of them where he was wearing a more dour expression.
The ending of The Kids Are All Right, where Cloud, Tifa, Denzel and Marlene meet with Evan, Kyrie and Vits - and Cloud offers, unsolicited, that even if they’re not related by blood, they’re a family.
The ending of DVD extra ‘Reminiscence of FFVII’ where Cloud takes the day off and asks Tifa to close the bar so they can spend time together as a family as Tifa had wanted to do early in CoT
Cloud fears he’ll fail his family. Tifa fears it’ll fall apart. Cloud retreats into himself, pushing others away. Tifa neglects herself, not being able to say what she needs to say. In Advent Children, Tifa finally voices her frustrations. It’s then that Cloud finally confronts his fears. Like in the OG, Cloud and Tifa’s conflicts and character arcs are two sides of the same coin, and it’s only by communicating with each other are they able to resolve it. Though with the Compilation being an inferior work, it’s much less satisfying this time around. Such is the problem when you’re writing towards a preordained outcome (Cloud and Sephiroth duking it once again) rather than letting the story develop organically.
Some may ask, why mention Aerith so much (Cloud growing distant after delivering flowers to the Forgotten City, Cloud finding Denzel at Aerith’s church) if they weren’t trying to perpetuate the LTD? Well, as explained above, Aerith had to be in Advent Children, and since CoT is the only place where we get any insight into Cloud’s psyche, it’s here where Nojima expands on that guilt.
Again, this is a story that requires conflict, and what better conflict than the specter of a love rival? Notably, despite us having access to Tifa’s thoughts and fears, she never explicitly associates Cloud’s behavior with him pining after Aerith. Though it’s fair to say this fear is implied, if unwarranted.
If Cloud had actually been pining after Aerith this whole time, we would not be seeing it all unfold through Tifa’s perspective. You can depict a romance without drawing attention to the injured third party. We’re seeing all of this from Tifa’s POV, because it’s about Tifa’s insecurities, not the great tragic romance between Cloud and Aerith. Honestly, another reason we see this from Tifa’s perspective is because it’s dramatically more interesting. Because she’s insecure, she (and we the reader) wonder if there’s something else going on. Meanwhile, from Cloud’s perspective it would be straightforward and redundant, given what we see in AC. He’s guilty over Aerith’s death and thinks he doesn’t deserve to be happy.
Not to mention, the first time we encounter Aerith in CoT, Tifa is the one breaking down at her grave while Cloud is the one comforting her. Are we supposed to believe that he just forgot he was in love with Aerith until he had to deliver flowers to the Forgotten City?
And Aerith doesn’t just serve as a romantic obstacle. She’s also a symbol of guilt and redemption for both Cloud and Tifa. Neither think they have the right to be happy after all that’s happened (Aerith’s death being a big part of this), and through Denzel, who Cloud finds at Aerith’s church, they both see a chance to atone.
I do want to address Case of Lifestream: White because it’s only time in the entire Compilation where I’ve asked myself — what are they trying to achieve here? Now, I’d rather drink bleach than start debating the translation of ‘koibito’ again, but I did think it was a strange choice to specify the romantic nature of Aerith’s love for Cloud. I suppose it could be a reference her obvious attraction to Cloud in the OG, though calling it love feels like a stretch.
But nothing else in CoLW really gives me pause. It might be a bit jarring to see how much of it is Aerith’s thoughts of Cloud, but it makes sense when you consider the context in which it’s meant to be consumed. Unlike Case of Tifa or Case of Denzel, CoLW isn’t meant to be read on its own. It’s a few scant paragraphs in direct conversation with Case of Lifestream: Black. In CoLB, Sephiroth talks about his plan to return and end the world or whatever, and how Cloud is instrumental to his plan. Each segment of CoLW mirrors the corresponding segment of CoLB. Thus, CoLW has to be about Aerith’s plan to stop Sephiroth and the role Cloud must play in that. In both of these stories, Cloud is the only named character. It doesn’t mean that thoughts of Cloud consume all of Aerith’s afterlife. Case of Lifestream is only a tiny sliver of the story, a halfassed way to explain why in Advent Children the world is ending again and why Cloud has to be at the center of it all.
Notably, there is absolutely nothing in CoLW about Cloud’s feelings for Aerith. Even if it’s just speculation on her part as we see Sephiroth speculate about Cloud’s reactions in CoLB. Aerith can see what’s going on in the real world, but she says nothing about Cloud’s actions. If Cloud is really pining after her, trying to find a way to be reunited with her, wouldn’t this be the ideal story to show such devotion?
But it’s not there, because not only does it not happen, but because this story is not about Aerith’s relationship with Cloud. It is about how Aerith needs to see and warn Cloud in order to stop Sephiroth. By the end of Advent Children, that goal is fulfilled. Cloud gets his forgiveness. Aerith gets to see him again and helps him stop Sephiroth. There’s no suggestion that either party wants more. We finally have the closure that the OG lacked, and at no point does it confirm that Cloud reciprocated Aerith’s romantic feelings, even though there were plenty of opportunities to do so.
I don’t really know what else people were expecting. Advent Children isn’t a romantic drama. There’s not going to be a moment where Cloud explicitly tells Tifa, ‘I’ve never loved Aerith. It’s only been you all along.” This is just simply not the kind of story it is.
Though one late scene practically serves this function. When Cloud “dies” and Aerith finds him in the Lifestream, if there were any lingering romantic feelings between the two of them, this would be a beautiful bittersweet reunion. Maybe something about how as much as they want to be together, it’s not his time yet. Instead, it’s almost played off as a joke. Cloud calls her ‘Mother’, and Zack is at Aerith’s side, joking about how Cloud has no place there. This would be the perfect opportunity to address the romantic connection between Cloud and Aerith, but instead, the film elides this completely. Instead, it’s a cute afterlife moment between Aerith and Zack, and functionally allows Cloud to go back to where he belongs, to Tifa and the kids. Whatever Cloud’s feelings for Aerith were before, it’s transformed into something else.
Crisis Core -- or how Aerith finally gets her love story
The other relevant part of the Compilation is Crisis Core, which I will now touch on briefly (or at least brief for me). In the OG, Zack Fair was more plot device than character. We knew he was important to Cloud — enough that Cloud would mistake Zack’s memories for his own -- we knew he was important to Aerith — enough that she is initially drawn to Cloud due to his similarities to Zack — yet the nature of these relationships is more ambiguous. Especially his relationship with Aerith. From the little we learn of their relationship, it could have been completely one-sided on her part, and Zack a total cad. At least that’s the implication she leaves us with in Gongaga. We get the sense that she might not be the most reliable narrator on this point (why bring up an ex so often, unsolicited, if it wasn’t anything serious?) but the OG never confirms this either way.
Crisis Core clears this up completely. Not only is Zack portrayed as the Capital H Hero of his own game, but his relationships with Cloud and Aerith are two of the most important in the game. In fact, they are the basis for his heroic sacrifice at the game’s end: he dies trying to save Cloud’s life; he dies trying to return to Aerith.
Zack’s relationship with Aerith is a major subplot of the game. Not only that, but the details of said relationship completely recontextualizes what we know about the Aerith we see in the OG. Many of Aerith’s most iconic traits (wearing pink, selling flowers) are a direct product of this relationship, and more importantly, so many of the hallmarks of her early relationship with Cloud (him falling through her church, one date as a reward, a conversation in the playground) are a direct echo of her relationship with Zack.
A casual fling this was not. Aerith’s relationship with Zack made a deep impact on the character we see in the OG and clearly colored her interactions with Cloud throughout.
Crisis Core is telling Zack’s story, and Tifa is a fairly minor supporting character, yet it still finds the time to expand upon Cloud and Tifa’s relationship. Through their interactions with Zack, we learn just how much they were on each others’ minds during this time, and how they were both too shy to own up to these feelings. We also get a brief expansion on the moment Cloud finds Tifa injured in the reactor.
Meanwhile, given the point we are in the story’s chronology, Cloud and Aerith are completely oblivious of each other’s existence.
One may try to argue that none of this matters since all of this is in the past. While this argument might hold water if we arguing about real lives in the real world, FF7 is a work of fiction. Its creators decided that these would be events we would see, and that Zack would be the lens through which we’d see them. Crisis Core is not the totality of these characters’ lives prior to the event of the OG. Rather, it consists of moments that enhance and expand upon our understanding of the original work. We learn the full extent of Hojo’s experimentation and the Jenova project; we learn that Sephiroth was actually a fairly normal guy before he was driven insane when he uncovers the circumstances of his birth. We learn that Aerith was a completely different person before she met Zack, and their relationship had a profound impact on her character.
A prequel is not made to contradict the original work, but what it can do is recontexualize the story we already know and add a layer of nuance that may have not been obvious before. Thus, Sephiroth is transformed from a scary villain into a tragic figure who could have been a hero were it not for Hojo’s experiments. Aerith’s behavior too invites reinterpretation. What once seemed flirty and perhaps overtly forward now looks like the tragic attempts of a woman trying to recapture a lost love.
If Cloud and Aerith were meant to be the official couple of the Compilation of FF7, you absolutely would not be spending so much time depicting two relationships that will be moot by the time we get to the original work. You especially would not depict Zack and Aerith’s relationship in a way that makes Aerith’s relationship with Cloud look like a copy of the moments she had with her ex.
Additionally, with Zack’s relationship with Angeal, we can see, that within the universe of FF7, a protagonist being devastated over the death of a beloved comrade isn’t something that’s inherently romantic. Neither is it romantic for said dead comrade to lend a helping hand from the beyond.
SE would also expect some people to play Crisis Core before the OG. If Cloud and Aerith are the intended endgame couple, then SE would be asking the player to root for a guy to pursue the girlfriend of the man who gave his life for him. The same man who died trying to reunite with her. This is to say nothing of Cloud’s treatment of Tifa in this scenario. How could this possibly be the intent for their most popular protagonist in the most popular entry of their most popular franchise?
What Crisis Core instead offers is something for fans of Aerith who may be disappointed that she was robbed of a great romance by her death. Well, she now gets that epic, tragic romance. Only it’s with Zack, not Cloud.
If SE intended for Cloud and Aerith to be the official couple of FF7, neither Zack nor Tifa would exist. They would not spend so much time developing Zack and Tifa into the multi-dimensional characters they are, only to be treated as nothing more than collateral damage in the wake of Cloud and Aerith’s great love. No, this is a Final Fantasy. SE want their main characters to have something of a happy ending after all of the tribulations they face. Cloud and Tifa find theirs in life. Zack and Aerith, as the ending of AC suggests, find theirs in death.
Cloud and Aerith’s relationship isn’t a threat to the Zack/Aerith and Cloud/Tifa endgame, nor is it a mere obstacle. Rather, it’s a relationship that actually deepens and strengthens the other two. Aerith is explicitly searching for her first love in Cloud, revealing just how deep her feelings for Zack ran. Cloud gets to live out his heroic SOLDIER fantasy with Aerith, a fantasy he created just to impress Tifa.
There are moments between Cloud and Aerith that may seem romantic when taken on its own, but viewed within the context of the whole narrative, ultimately reveal that they aren’t quite right for each other, and in each other, they’re actually searching for someone else.
This quadrangular dynamic reminds me a bit of one of my favorite classic films, The Philadelphia Story. (Spoilers for a film that came out in 1940 ahead) — The single most romantic scene in the film is between Jimmy Stewart’s and Katherine Hepburn’s characters, yet they’re not the ones who end up together. Even as their passions run, as the music swells, and we want them to end up together, we realize that they’re not quite right for each other. We know that it won’t work out.
More relevantly, we know this is true due to the existence of Cary Grant’s and Ruth Hussey’s characters, who are shown to carry a torch for Hepburn and Stewart, respectively. Grant and Hussey are well-developed and sympathetic characters. With the film being the top grossing film of the year, and made during the Code era, it’s about as “clean” of a narrative as you can get. There’s no way Grant and Hussey would be given such prominent roles just to be left heartbroken and in the cold by the film’s end.
Hepburn’s character (Tracy) pretty much sums it herself after some hijinks lead to a last minute proposal from Stewart’s character (Mike):
Mike: Will you marry me, Tracy?
Tracy: No, Mike. Thanks, but hmm-mm. Nope.
Mike: l've never asked a girl to marry me. l've avoided it. But you've got me all confused now. Why not?
Tracy: Because l don't think Liz [Hussey’s character] would like it...and l'm not sure you would...and l'm even a little doubtful about myself. But l am beholden to you, Mike. l'm most beholden.
Despite the fact that the film spends more time developing Hepburn and Stewart’s relationship than theirs with their endgame partners, it’s still such a satisfying ending. That’s because, even at the peak of their romance, we can see how Stewart needs someone like Hussey to ground his passionate impulses, and how Hepburn needs Grant, someone who won’t put her on a pedestal like everyone else. Hepburn and Stewart’s is a relationship that might feel right in the moment, but doesn’t quite work in the light of day.
I don’t think Cloud and Aerith share a moment that is nearly as romantic in FF7, but the same principle applies. What may seem romantic in the moment actually reveals how they’re right for someone else.
Even if Aerith lives and Cloud decides to pursue a relationship with her, it’s not going to be all puppies and roses ahead for them. Aerith would need to disentangle her feelings for Zack from her attraction to Cloud, and Cloud would still need to confront his feelings for Tifa, which were his main motivator for nearly half his life, before they can even start to build something real. This is messy work, good fodder for a prestige cable drama or an Oscar-baity indie film, but it has no place in a Final Fantasy. There simply isn’t the time. Not when the question on most players’ minds isn’t ‘Cloud does love?’ but ‘How the hell are they going to stop that madman and his Meteor that’s about to destroy the world?’
With Zerith’s depiction in Crisis Core, there’s a sort of bittersweet poetry in how the two relationships rhyme but can’t actually coexist. It is only because Zack is trying to return to Midgar to see Aerith that Cloud is able to reunite with Tifa, and the OG begins in earnest. In another world, Zack and Aerith would be the hero and heroine who saved the world and lived to tell the tale. They are much more the traditional archetypes - Zack the super-powered warrior who wants to be a Capital-H Hero, and Aerith, the last of her kind who reluctantly accepts her fate. Compared to these two, Cloud and Tifa aren’t nearly so special, nor their goals so lofty and noble. Cloud, after all, was too weak to even get into SOLDIER, and only wanted to be one, not for some greater good, but to impress the girl he liked. Tifa has no special abilities, merely learning martial arts when she grew wise enough to not wait around for a hero. On the surface, Cloud and Tifa are made of frailer stuff, and yet by luck or by fate, they’re the ones who cheat death time and time again, and manage to save the world, whereas the ones who should have the role, are prematurely struck down before they can finish the job. Cloud and Tifa fulfill the roles that they never asked for, that they may not be particularly suited for, in Zack and Aerith’s stead. There’s a burden and a beauty to it. Cloud and Tifa can live because Zack and Aerith did not.
All of this nuance is lost if you think Cloud and Aerith are meant to be the endgame couple. Instead, you have a pair succumbing to their basest desires, regardless of the selfless sacrifices their other potential paramours made for their sake. Zack and Tifa, and their respective relationships with Aerith and Cloud, are flattened into mere romantic obstacles. The heart wants what it wants, some may argue. While that may be true in real life, that is not necessarily the case in a work of fiction, especially not a Final Fantasy. The other canon Final Fantasy couples could certainly have had previous romantic relationships, but unless they have direct relevance to the their character arcs (e.g., Rachel to Locke), the games do not draw attention to them because they would be a distraction from the romance they are trying to tell. They’ve certainly never spent the amount of real estate FF7 spends in depicting Cloud/Tifa and Zack/Aerith’s relationships.
At last…the Remake, and somehow this essay isn’t even close to being over
Finally, we come to the Remake. With the technological advancements made in the last 23 years and the sheer amount of hours they’re devoting to just the Midgar section this time around, you can almost look at the OG as an outline and the Remake as the final draft. With the OG being overly reliant on text to do its storytelling, and the Remake having subtle facial expressions and a slew of cinematic techniques at its disposal, you might almost consider it an adaptation from a literary medium to a visual one. Our discussions are no longer limited to just what the characters are saying, but what they are doing, and even more importantly, how the game presents those actions. When does the game want us to pay attention? And what does it want us to pay attention to?
Unlike most outlines, which are read by a small handful of execs, SE has 23 years worth of reactions from the general public to gauge what works and what doesn’t work, what caused confusion, and what could be clarified. While FF7 is not a romance, the LTD remains a hot topic among a small but vocal part of the fanbase. It certainly is an area that could do with some clarifying in the Remake.
Since the Remake is not telling a new story, but rather retelling an existing story that has been in the public consciousness for over two decades, certain aspects that were treated as “twists” in the OG no longer have that same element of surprise, and would need to approached differently. For example, in the Midgar section of the OG, Shinra is treated as the main antagonist throughout. It’s only when we get to the top of the Shinra tower that Sephiroth is revealed as the real villain. Anyone with even a passing of knowledge of FF7 would be aware of Sephiroth so trying to play it off like a surprise in the Remake would be terribly anticlimactic. Thus, Sephiroth appears as early as Ch. 2 to haunt Cloud and the player throughout.
Likewise, many players who’ve never even touched the OG are probably aware that Aerith dies, thus her death can no longer be played for shock. While SE would still want the player to grow attached to Aerith so that her death has an emotional impact, there are diminishing returns to misdirecting the player about her fate, at least not in the same way it was done in the OG.
How do these considerations affect the how the LTD is depicted in the Remake? For the two of the biggest twists in the OG to land in the Remake — Aerith’s death and Cloud’s true identity in the Lifestream — the game needs to establish:
Aerith’s attraction to Cloud, specifically due to his similarities to Zack. This never needs to go past an initial attraction for the player to understand that the man whose memory Cloud was “borrowing” is Zack. Aerith’s feelings for Cloud can evolve into something platonic or even maternal by her end without the reveal in the Lifestream losing any impact.
Cloud’s love for Tifa. For the Lifestream sequence to land with an “Ooooh!” rather than a “Huh!?!?”, the Remake will need to establish that Cloud’s feelings for Tifa were strong enough to 1) motivate him to try to join SOLDIER in the first place 2) incentivize him to adopt a false persona because he fears that he isn’t the man she wants him to be 3) call him back to consciousness from Make poisoning twice 4) help him put his mind back together and find his true self. That’s a lot of story riding on one guy’s feelings!
The player’s love for Aerith so that her death will hurt. This can be done by making them invested in Aerith as a character by her own right, but also extends to the relationships she has with the other characters (not only Cloud).
What is not necessary is establishing Cloud’s romantic feelings for Aerith. Now, would their doomed romance make her death hurt even more? Sure, but it could work just as well if Cloud if is losing a dear friend and ally, not a lover. Not to mention, her death also cuts short her relationships with Tifa, Barret, Red XII, etc. Bulking those relationships up prior to her death, would also make her loss more palpable. If anything, establishing Cloud’s romantic feelings for Aerith would actually undermine the game’s other big twist. The game needs you to believe that Cloud’s feelings for Tifa were strong enough to drive his entire hero’s journey. If Cloud is shown falling in love with another woman in the span of weeks if not mere days, then the Lifestream scene would be much harder to swallow.
Cloud wavering between the two women made sense in the OG because the main way for the player to get to know Aerith was through her interactions with Cloud. That is no longer the case in the Remake. Cloud is still the protagonist, and the player character for the vast majority of the game, but there are natural ways for the player to get to know Aerith outside of her dialogue exchanges with Cloud. Unless SE considers the LTD an integral part of FF7’s DNA, then for the sake of story clarity, the LTD doesn’t need to exist.
How then does the Remake clarify things?
I’m not going go through every single change in the Remake — there are far too many of them, and they’ve been documented elsewhere. Most of the changes are expansions or adaptations (what might make sense for super-deformed chibis would look silly for realistic characters, e.g., Cloud rolling barrels in the Church has now become him climbing across the roof support). What is expanded and how it’s adapted can be telling, but what is more interesting are the additions and removals. Not just for what takes place in the scenes themselves, but how their addition or removal changes our understanding of the narrative as a whole vis-a-vis the story we know from the OG.
Notably, one of the features that is not expanded upon, but rather diminished, is player choice. In the OG, the player had a slew of dialogue options to choose from, especially during the Midgar portion of the game. Not only did it determine which character would go on a date with Cloud at the Gold Saucer, but it also made the player identify with Cloud since they’re largely determining his personality during this stage. Despite the technological advances that have made this level of optionality the norm in AAA games, the Remake gives the player far fewer non-gameplay related choices, and only really the illusion of choice as a nod to the OG, but they don’t affect the story of the game in any meaningful way. You get a slightly different conversation depending on the choice, but you have to buy the Flower, Tifa has to make you a drink.
So much of what fueled the LTD in the OG came from this mechanic, which is now largely absent in the Remake. Almost every instance where there was a dialogue branch in the OG has become a single, canon scenario in the Remake that favors Tifa (e.g., having the choice of giving the flower to Tifa or Marlene in the OG, to Cloud giving the flower to Tifa in the Remake). Similarly, for the only meaningful choice you make in the Remake — picking Tifa or Aerith in the sewers — Cloud is now equidistant to both girls, whereas in the OG, his starting point was much closer to Aerith. In the OG, player choice allowed you to largely determine Cloud’s personality, and the girl he favored — and seemingly encouraged you to choose Aerith in many instances. In the Remake, Cloud is now his own character, not who the player wants him to be. And this Cloud, well, he sure seems to have a thing for Tifa.
In fact, one of the first changes in the Remake is the addition of Jessie asking Cloud about his relationship with Tifa, and Cloud’s brief flashback to their childhood together. In the OG, Tifa isn’t mentioned at all during the first reactor mission, and we don’t see her until we get to Sector 7.
Not only does this scene reveal Tifa’s importance to Cloud much earlier on than in the OG, but it sets up a sort of frame of reference that colors Cloud’s subsequent interactions. Even as Jessie kind of flirts with him throughout the reactor mission, even with his chance meeting Aerith in Sector 8, in the back of your mind, you might be thinking — wait what about his relationship with this Tifa character? What if he’s already spoken for?
Think about how this plays out in the OG. Jessie is pretty much a non-entity, and Cloud has his meet-cute with the flower girl before we’re even aware that Tifa exists. It’s hard to get too invested in his interactions with Tifa, when you know he has to meet the flower girl again, and you’re waiting for that moment, because that’s when the game will start in earnest.
After chapter 1 of the Remake, a new player may be asking — who is this Tifa person, and, echoing Jessie’s question, what kind of relationship does she have with Cloud? It’s a question that’s repeated when Barret mentions her before they set the bomb, and again when Barret specifies Seventh Heaven is where Tifa works — and the game zooms in on Cloud’s face — when they arrive in Sector 7.
It’s when we finally meet her at Seventh Heaven in Ch. 3 that we feel, ah now, this game has finally begun.
It’s also interesting how inorganically this question is introduced in the Remake. Up until that moment, the dialogue and Cloud are all business. Then, as they’re waiting for the gate to open, Jessie asks about Tifa completely out of the blue, and Cloud, all of a sudden, is at a lost for words, and has the first of many flashbacks. That this moment is a bit incongruous shows the effort SE made to establish Tifa’s importance to the game and to Cloud early on.
One of the biggest changes in the Remake is the addition of the events in Ch. 3 and 4. Unlike what happens in Ch. 18, Ch. 3 and 4 feel like such a natural extension of the OG’s story that many players may not even realize that SE has added an whole day’s and night’s worth of events to the OG’s story. While not a drastic change, it does reshape our understanding of subsequent events in the story, namely Cloud’s time spent alone with Aerith.
In the OG, we rush from one reactor mission to the next, with no real time to explore Cloud’s character or his relationships with any of the other characters in between. When he crashes through the church, he gets a bit of a breather. We see a different side of him with Aerith. Since we have nothing else to compare it to, many might assume that his relationship with Aerith is special. That she brings something out of him that no one else can.
That is no longer the case in the Remake. While Cloud’s time in Sector 5 with Aerith remains largely unchanged though greatly expanded, it no longer feels “special.” So many of the beats that seemed exclusive to his relationship with Aerith in the OG, we’ve now already seen play out with both Tifa and the other members of AVALANCHE long before he meets Aerith.
Cloud tells the flowers to listen to Aerith; he’s told Tifa he’s listening if she wants to talk; told Bigg’s he wants to hear the story of Jessie’s dad. Cloud offers to walk Aerith back home; he offered the same to Wedge. Cloud smiles at Aerith; he’s already smiled at Tifa and AVALANCHE a number of times.
Now, I’m under no illusion that SE added these chapters solely to diminish Aerith’s importance to Cloud (other than the obvious goal of making the game longer, I imagine they wanted the player to spend more time in Sector 7 and more time with the other AVALANCHE members so that the collapse of the Pillar and their deaths have more weight), but they certainly must have realized that this would be one effect. If pushing Cloud/Aerith’s romance had been a goal with the Remake, this would be a scenario they would try to avoid. Notably, the other place where time has been added - the night in the Underground Shinra Lab, and the day helping other people out around the slums — are also periods of time when Aerith is absent.
Home Sweet Slums vs. Budding Bodyguard
Since most of the events in Ch. 3 were invented for the Remake, and thus we have nothing in the OG to compare it to (except to say that something is probably better than nothing), I thought it would be more interesting to compare it to Ch. 8. Structurally, they are nearly identical — Cloud doing sidequests around the Sectors with one of the girls as his guide. Extra bits of dialogue the more sidequests you complete, with an optional story event if you do them all. Do Cloud’s relationships with each girl progress the same way in both chapters? Is the Remake just Final Waifu Simulator 2020 or are they distinct, reflecting their respective roles in the story as a whole?
A lot of what the player takes away from these chapters is going to be pretty subjective (Is he annoyed with her or is he playing hard to get), yet the vibes of the two chapters are quite different. This is because in Ch. 3, the player is getting to know Tifa through her relationship with Cloud; in Ch. 8; the player is getting to know Aerith as a character on her own.
What do I mean by this? Let’s take Cloud’s initial introduction into each Sector. In Ch. 3, it’s a straight shot from Seventh Heaven to Stargazer Heights punctuated by a brief conversation where Tifa asks Cloud about the mission he was just on. We don’t learn anything new about Tifa’s character here. Instead we hear Cloud recount the mission we already saw play out in detail in Ch. 1 But it’s through this conversation that we get a glimpse of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship — unlike the reticent jerk he was with Avalanche, this Cloud is much more responsive and even tries to reassure her in his own stilted way. We also know that they have enough of a past together that Tifa can categorize him as “not a people person” — an assessment to which Cloud agrees. Slowly, we’re getting an answer to the question Jessie posed in Ch. 1 — just what kind of relationship does Cloud have with Tifa?
In Ch. 8, Aerith leads Cloud on a roundabout way through Sector 5, and stops, unprompted, to talk about her experiences helping at the restaurant, helping out the doctor, and helping with the orphans at the Leaf House. It’s not so much a conversation as a monologue. Cloud isn’t the one who inquires about these relationships, and more jarringly, he doesn’t respond until Aerith directly asks him a question (interestingly enough, it’s about the flower she gave him…which he then gave to Tifa). Here, the game is allowing the player to learn more about the kind of person Aerith is. Cloud is also learning about Aerith at the same time, but with his non-reaction, either the game itself is indifferent to Cloud’s feelings towards Aerith or it is deliberately trying to portray Cloud’s indifference to Aerith.
The optional story event you can see in each chapter after completing all the side quests is also telling. In Ch. 3, “Alone at Last” is almost explicitly about Cloud and Tifa’s relationship. It’s bookended by two brief scenes between Marle and Cloud — the first in which she lectures him about how he should treat Tifa almost like an overprotective in-law, the second after they return downstairs and Marle awards Cloud with an accessory “imbued with the fervent desire to be by one’s side for eternity” after he makes Tifa smile. In between, Cloud and Tifa chat alone in her room. Tifa finally gets a chance to ask Cloud about his past and they plan a little date to celebrate their reunion. There is also at least the suggestion that Cloud was expecting something else when Tifa asked him to her room.
In Ch. 8’s “The Language of Flowers,” Cloud and Aerith’s relationship is certainly part of the story — unlike earlier in the chapter, Cloud actually asks Aerith about what she’s doing and even supports her by talking to the flowers too, but the other main objective of this much briefer scene is to show Aerith’s relationship with the flowers and of her mysterious Cetra powers (though we don’t know about her ancestry just yet). Like a lot of Aerith’s dialogue, there’s a lot of foreshadowing and foreboding in her words. If anything, it’s almost as if Cloud is playing the Marle role to the flowers, as an audience surrogate to ask Aerith about her relationship with the flowers so that she can explain. Also, there’s no in-game reward that suggests what the scene was really about.
If there’s any confusion about what’s going on here, just compare their titles “Alone At Last” vs. “The Language of Flowers.”
I’ll try not to bring my personal feelings into this, but there’s just something so much more satisfying about the construction of Ch. 3. This is some real storytelling 101 shit, but I think a lot of it due to just how much set up and payoff there is, and how almost all of said payoff deepens our understanding of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship:
Marle: Cloud meets Tifa’s overprotective landlady towards the beginning of the chapter. She is dubious of his character and his relationship with TIfa. This impression does not change the second time they meet even though Tifa herself is there to mediate. It’s only towards the end of the chapter, after all the sidequests are complete, that this tension is resolved. Marle gives Cloud a lecture about how he should be treating Tifa, which he seems to take to heart. And Cloud finally earns Marle’s begrudging approval after he emerges from their rooms with a chipper-looking Tifa in tow.
Their past: For their first in-game interaction, Cloud casually brings up that fact that it’s been “Five years” since they’ve last, which seem to throw Tifa off a bit. As they’re replacing filters, Cloud asks Tifa what she’s been up to in the time since they’ve been apart, and Tifa quickly changes the subject. Tifa tries to ask Cloud about his life “after he left the village,” at the Neighborhood Watch HQ, and this time he’s the one who seems to be avoiding the subject. It’s only after all the Ch. 3 sidequests are complete, and they're alone in her room that Tifa finally gets the chance to ask her question. A question which Cloud still doesn’t entirely answer. This question remains unresolved, and anyone’s played the OG will know that it will remain unresolved for some time yet, as it is THE question of Cloud’s story as a whole.
The lessons: Tifa starts spouting off some lessons for life in the slums as she brings Cloud around the town, though it’s unclear if Cloud is paying attention or taking them to heart. After completing the first sidequest, Cloud repeats one of these sayings back to her, confirming that he’s been listening all along. By the end of the chapter, Cloud is repeating these lessons to himself, even when Tifa isn’t around. These lessons extend beyond this chapter, with Cloud being a real teacher’s pet, asking Tifa “Is this a lesson” in Ch. 10 once they reunite.
The drink: When Cloud first arrives at Seventh Heaven, Tifa plays hostess and asks him if he wants anything, but it seems he’s only interested in his money. After exploring the sector a bit, Tifa again tries to play the role of cheery bartender, offering to make him a cocktail at the bar, but Cloud sees through this facade, and they carry on. Finally, after the day’s work is done, to tide Cloud over while she’s meeting with AVALANCHE, Tifa finally gets the chance to make him a drink. No matter, which dialogue option the player chooses, Tifa and Cloud fall into the roles of flirty bartender and patron quite easily. Who would have thought this was possible from the guy we met in Ch. 1?
This dynamic is largely absent in Ch. 8, except perhaps exploring Aerith’s relationship with the flowers, which “pays off” in the “Language of Flowers” event, but again, that scene is primarily about Aerith’s character rather than her relationship with Cloud. The orphans and the Leaf House are a throughline of the chapter, but they are merely present. There’s no clear progression here as was the case with in Ch. 3. Sure, the kids admire Cloud quite a bit after he saves them, but it’s not like they were dubious of his presence before. They barely paid attention to him. In terms of the impact the kids have on Cloud’s relationship with Aerith, there isn’t much at all. Certainly nothing like the role Marle plays in developing his relationship with Tifa.
The thing is, there are plenty of moments that could have been set ups, only there’s no real follow through. Aerith introduces Cloud around town as her bodyguard, and some people like the Doctor express dubiousness of his ability to do the job, but even after we spend a whole day fighting off monsters, and defeating Rude, there’s no payoff. Not even a throwaway “Wow, great job bodyguarding” comment. Same with the whole “one date” reward. Other than a quick reference on the way to Sector 5, and Aerith threatening to reveal the deal to cajole Cloud into helping her gather flowers, it’s never brought up again, in this chapter, or the rest of the game.
Aerith also makes a big stink about Cloud taking the time to enjoy Elmyra’s cooking. This is after Cloud is excluded from AVALANCHE’s celebration in Seventh Heaven and after he misses out on Jessie’s mom’s “Midgar Special” with Biggs and Wedge. So this could have been have been the set up to Cloud finally getting to experience a nice, domestic moment where he feels like he’s part of a family. And this dinner does happen! Only…the Remake skips over it entirely. Which is quite a strange choice considering that almost every other waking moment of Cloud’s time in Midgar has been depicted in excruciating detail. SE has decided that either whatever happened in this dinner between these three characters is irrelevant to the story they’re trying to tell, or they’ve deliberately excluded this scene from the game so that the player wouldn’t get any wrong ideas from it (e.g., that Cloud is starting to feel at home with Aerith).
Speaking of home, the Odd Jobs in Ch. 3 feel a bit more meaningful outside of just the gameplay-related rewards because they’re a way for Cloud to improve his reputation as he considers building a life for himself in Sector 7. This intent is implicit as Tifa imparts upon him the life lessons for surviving the slums, and then explicit, when Tifa asks him if he’s going to “stick around a little longer” outside of Seventh Heaven and he answers maybe. (It is later confirmed when Cloud and Tifa converse in his room in Ch. 4 after he remembers their promise).
Despite Aerith’s endeavors to extend their time together, there’s no indication that Cloud is planning to put down roots in Sector 5, or even return. Not even after doing all the Odd Jobs. If anything, it’s just the opposite — after 3 Odd Jobs, Aerith, kind of jokingly tells Cloud “don’t think you can rely on me forever.” This is a line that has a deeper meaning for anyone who knows Aerith’s fate in the OG, but Cloud seems totally fine with the outcome. Similarly, at the end of the Chapter 8, Elmyra asks Cloud to leave and never speak to Aerith again — a request to which he readily agrees.
Adding to the different vibes of the Chapters are the musical themes that play in the background. In Ch. 3, it’s the “Main Theme of VII”, followed by “On Our Way” — two tracks that instantly recall the OG. While the Main Theme is a bit melancholy, it's also familiar. It feels like home. In Ch. 8, we have an instrumental version of ‘Hollow’ - the new theme written for the Remake. While, it’s a lovely piece, it’s unfamiliar and honestly as a bit anxiety inducing (as is the intent).
(A quick aside to address the argument that this proves ‘Hollow’ is about Cloud’s feelings for Aerith:
Which of course doesn’t make any damn sense because he hasn’t even lost Aerith at this point the story. Even if you want to argue that there is so timey-wimey stuff going on and the whole purpose of the Remake is to rewrite the timeline so that Cloud doesn’t lose Aerith around — shouldn’t there be evidence of this desire outside of just the background music? Perhaps, in Cloud’s actions during the Chapter which the song plays — shouldn’t he dread being parted from her, shouldn’t he be the one trying to extend their time together? Instead, he’s willing to let her go quite easily.
The more likely explanation as to why “Hollow” plays in Ch. 8 is that since the “Main Theme of FFVII” already plays in Ch. 3, the other “main theme” written for the Remake is going to play in the other chapter with a pseudo-open world vibe. If you’re going to say “Hollow” is about Cloud’s feelings for Aerith then you’d have to accept that the Main Theme of the entire series is about Cloud’s feelings for Tifa, which would actually make a bit more sense given that is practically Cloud’s entire character arc.)
Both chapters contain a scripted battle that must be completed before the chapter can end. They both contain a shot where Cloud fights side by side with each of the girls.
Here, Cloud and Tifa are both in focus during the entirety of this shot.
Here, the focus pulls away from Cloud the moment Aerith enters the frame.
I doubt the developers expected most players to notice this particular technique, but it reflects the subtle differences in the way these two relationships are portrayed. By the end of Ch. 3, Cloud and Tifa are acting as one unit. By the end of Ch. 8, even when they’re together, Cloud and Aerith are still apart.
A brief (lol) overview of some meaningful changes from the OG
One of the most significant changes in the Sector 7 chapters is how The Promise flashback is depicted. In the OG, Tifa is the one who has to remind Cloud of the Promise, in a rather pushy way, and whether Cloud chooses to join the next mission to fulfill his promise to her or because Barret is giving him a raise feels a bit more ambiguous.
In the Remake, the Promise has it’s own little mini-arc. It’s first brought up at the end of Ch. 3 when Cloud talks to Tifa about her anxieties about the upcoming mission. Tifa subtly references the Promise by mentioning that she’s “in a pitch” — a reference that goes over Cloud’s head. It’s only in Ch. 4, in the middle of a mission with Biggs and Wedge, where Tifa is no where in sight, that a random building fan reminds him of the Nibelheim water tower and the Promise he made to Tifa there. There’s also another brief flashback to that earlier moment in the bar when Tifa mentions she’s in a “pinch.” Again, the placement of this particular flashback at this particular moment feels almost jarring. And the flashback to the scene in the bar — a flashback to a scene we’ve already seen play out in-game — is the only one of its kind in the Remake. SE went out of the way to show that this particular moment is very important to Cloud and the game as whole. It’s when Cloud returns to his room, and Tifa asks him if he’s planning to stay in Midgar, that this mini-arc is finally complete. He brings up the Promise on his own, and makes it explicit that the reason he’s staying is for her. It’s to fulfill his Promise to her, not for money or for AVALANCHE — at this point, he’s not even supposed to be going on the next mission.
The Reactor 5 chapters are greatly expanded, but there aren’t really any substantive changes other than the addition of the rather intimate train roll scene between and Cloud and Tifa, which adds nothing to the story except to establish how horny they are for each other. We know this is the case, of course, because if you go out of your way to make Cloud look like an incompetent idiot and let the timer run out, you can avoid this scene altogether. But even in that alternate scene, Cloud’s concern for Tifa is crystal clear.
Ch. 8 also plays out quite similarly to the OG for the most part, though Cloud’s banter with Aerith on the rooftops doesn’t feel all that special since we’ve already seen him do the same with Tifa, Barret and the rest of AVALANCHE. The rooftops is the first place Cloud laughs in the OG. In the Remake, while Cloud might not have straight out laughed before, he’s certainly smiled quite a bit in the preceding chapters. Also, with the addition of voice acting and realistic facial expressions, that “laughter” in the Remake comes off much more sarcastic than genuine.
It’s also notable that in the Remake, Cloud vocally protests almost every time Aerith tries to extend their time together. In the OG, Cloud says nothing in these moments, which the player could reasonably interpret as assent.
One major change in the Remake is how Aerith learns of Tifa’s existence. In the OG, Cloud mentions that he wants to go back to Tifa’s bar, prompting Aerith to ask him about his relationship with her. In the Remake, Cloud calls Tifa’s name after having a random flashback of Child Tifa as he’s walking along with some kids. Again the insertion of said flashback is a bit jarring, prompting Aerith to understandably ask Cloud about just who this Tifa is. In the OG, this exchange served to show Aerith’s jealousy and her interest in Cloud. In the Remake, it’s all about Cloud’s feelings for Tifa and his inability to articulate them. As for Aerith, I suppose you can still read her reaction as jealous, though simple curiosity is a perfectly reasonable way to read it too. It plays out quite similarly to Aerith asking Cloud about who he gave the flower to. Her follow ups seem indicate that she’s merely curious about who this recipient might be rather than showing that she’s upset/jealous of the fact that said person exists.
For the collapsed tunnel segment, the Remake adds the recurring bit of Aerith and Cloud trying to successfully complete a high-five. While this is certainly a way to show them getting closer, it’s about least intimate way that SE could have done so. Just think about the alternatives — you could have Cloud and Aerith sharing brief tidbits of their lives after each mechanical arm, you could have them trying to reach for each other’s hand. Instead, SE chose an action that is we’ve seen performed between a number of different platonic buddies, and an action that Aerith immediately performs with Tifa upon meeting her. Not to mention, even while they are technically getting closer, Cloud still rejects (or at least tries to) Aerith’s invitations to extend their time together twice — at the fire and at the playground.
One aspect from these two Chapters that does has plenty of set up and a satisfying payoff is Aerith’s interest in Cloud’s SOLDIER background. You have the weirdness of Aerith already knowing that Cloud was in SOLDIER without him mentioning it first, followed by Elmyra’s antipathy towards SOLDIERs in general, not to mention Aerith actively fishing for information about Cloud’s time in SOLDIER. (For players who’ve played Crisis Core, the reason for her behavior is even more obvious, with her “one date” gesture mirroring Zack’s, and her line to Cloud in front of the tunnel a near duplicate of what she says to Zack — at least in the original Japanese).
Finally, at the playground, it’s revealed that the reason for all this weirdness is because Aerith’s first love was also a SOLDIER who was the same rank as Cloud. Unlike in the OG, Cloud does not exhibit any potential jealousy by asking about the nature of her relationship, and Aerith doesn’t try to play it off by dismissing the seriousness. In fact, with the emotional nuance we can now see on her face, we can understand the depth of her feelings even if she cannot articulate them.
This is the first scene in the Remake where Cloud and Aerith have a genuine conversation. Thus, finally, Cloud expresses some hesitation before he leaves her — and as far as he knows, this could be the last time they see each other. You can interpret this hesitation as romantic longing or it could just as easily be Cloud being a bit sad to part from a new friend. Regardless, it’s notable that scene is preceded by one where Aerith is talking about her first love who she clearly isn’t over, and followed by a scene where Cloud sprints across the screen, without a backwards glance at Aerith, after seeing a glimpse of Tifa through a tiny window in a Chocobo cart that’s about a hundred yards away.
The Wall Market segment in the Remake is quite explicitly about Cloud’s desire to save Tifa. In the OG, Aerith has no trouble getting into Corneo’s mansion on her own, so I can see how someone could misinterpret Cloud going through all the effort to dress as a woman to protect Aerith from the Don’s wiles (though of course, you would need to ask, why they trying to infiltrate the mansion in the first place?). In the Remake, Cloud has to go through herculean efforts to even get Aerith in front of the Don. Everyone who is aware of Cloud’s cause, from Sam to Leslie to Johnny to Andrea to Aerith herself, comments on how hard he’s working to save Tifa and how important she must be to him for him to do so. In case there’s any confusion, the Remake also includes a scene where Cloud is prepared to bust into the mansion on his own, leaving Aerith to fend for herself, after Johnny comes with news that Tifa is in trouble.
Both Cloud and Aerith get big dress reveals in the Remake. If you get Aerith’s best dress, Cloud’s reaction can certainly be read as one of attraction, but since the game continues on the same regardless of which dress you get, it’s not meant to mark a shift in Cloud and Aerith’s relationship. Rather, it’s a reward for the player for completing however many side quests in Ch. 8, especially since the Remake incentives the player to get every dress and thus see all of Cloud’s reactions by making it a Trophy and including it in the play log.
A significant and very welcome change from the OG to the Remake is Tifa and Aerith’s relationship dynamic. In the OG, the girls’ first meeting in Corneo’s mansion starts with them fighting over Cloud (by pretending not to fight over Cloud). In the Remake, the sequence of events is reversed so that it starts off with Cloud’s reunion with Tifa (again emphasizing that the whole purpose of the infiltration is because Cloud wants to save Tifa). Then when Aerith wakes, she’s absolutely thrilled to make Tifa’s acquaintance, hardly acknowledging Cloud at all. Tifa is understandably more wary at first, but once they start working together, they become fast friends.
Also interesting is that from the moment Aerith and Tifa meet, almost every instance where Cloud could be shown worrying about Aerith or trying to comfort Aerith is given to Tifa instead. In the OG, it’s Cloud who frets about Aerith getting involved in the plot to question the Don, and regrets getting her mixed up in everything once they land in the sewers. In the Remake, those very same reservations are expressed by Tifa instead. Tifa is the one who saves Aerith when the platform collapses in the sewer. Tifa is the one who emotionally comforts Aerith after they’re separated in the train graveyard. (Cloud might be the one who physically saves her, but he doesn’t even so much give her a second glance to check on her well-being before he runs off to face Eligor. He leaves that job for Tifa). It almost feels like the Remake is going out of its way to avoid any moments between Cloud and Aerith that could be interpreted as romantic. In fact, after Corneo’s mansion, unless you get Aerith’s resolution, there are almost no one-on-one interactions at all between Cloud and Aerith. Such is not the case with Cloud and Tifa. In fact, right after defeating Abzu in the sewers, Cloud runs after Tifa, and asks her if what she’s saying is one of those slum lessons — continuing right where they left off.
Ch. 11 feels like a wink-wink nudge-nudge way to acknowledge the LTD. You have the infamous shot of the two girls on each of Cloud’s arms, and two scenes where Cloud appears as if he’s unable to choose between them when he asks them if they’re okay. Of course, in this same Chapter, you have a scene during the boss fight with the Phantom where Cloud actually pulls Tifa away from Aerith, leaving Aerith to defend herself, for an extended sequence where he tries to keep Tifa safe. This is not something SE would include if their intention is to keep Cloud’s romantic interest ambiguous or if Aerith is meant to be the one he loves. Of course, Ch. 11 is not the first we see of this trio’s dynamic. We start with Ch. 10, which is all about Aerith and Tifa’s friendship. Ch. 11 is a nod to the LTD dynamic in the OG, but it’s just that, a nod, not an indication the Remake is following the same path. Halfway through Ch. 11, the dynamic completely disappears.
Ch. 12 changes things up a bit from the OG. Instead of Cloud and Tifa ascending the pillar together, Cloud goes up first. Seemingly just so that we can have the dramatic slow-mo handgrab scene between the two of them when Tifa decides to run after Cloud — right after Aerith tells her to follow her heart.
The Remake also shows us what happens when Aerith goes to find Marlene at Seventh Heaven — including the moment when Aerith sees the flower she gave Cloud by the bar register, and Aerith is finally able to connect the dots. After seeing Cloud be so cagey about who he gave the flower to, and weird about his relationship with Tifa, and after seeing how Cloud and Tifa act around each other. It finally makes sense. She’s figured it out before they have. It’s a beautiful payoff to all that set up. Any other interpretation of Aerith’s reaction doesn’t make a lick of sense, because if it’s to indict she’s jealous of Tifa, where is all the set up for that? Why did the Remake eliminate all the moments from the OG where she had been noticeably jealous before? Without this, that interpretation makes about as much sense as someone arguing Aerith is smiling because she’s thinking about a great sandwich she had the night before. In case anyone is confused, the scene is preceded by a moment where Aerith tells Tifa to follow her heart before she goes after Cloud, and followed by the moment where Cloud catches Tifa via slow-motion handgrab.
On the pillar itself, there are so many added moments of Cloud showing his concern for Tifa’s physical and emotional well-being. Even when they find Jessie, as sad as Cloud is over Jessie’s death, the game actually spends more time showing us Cloud’s reaction to Tifa crying over Jessie’s death, and Cloud’s inability to comfort her. Since so much of this is physical rather than verbal, this couldn’t have effectively been shown in the OG with its technological limitations.
After the pillar collapses, we start off with a couple of other moments showing Cloud’s concern over Tifa — watching over her as she wakes, his dramatic fist clench while he watches Barret comfort Tifa in a way he cannot. There is also a subtle but important change in the dialogue. In the OG, Tifa is the one who tells Barret that Marlene is safe because she was with Aerith. Cloud is also on his way to Sector 5, but it’s for the explicit purpose of trying to save Aerith, which we know because Tifa asks. In the Remake, Tifa is too emotionally devastated to comfort Barret about Marlene. Cloud, trying to help in the only way he can, is now the one to tell Barret about Marlene. Leading them to Sector 5 is no longer about him trying to help Aerith, but about him reuniting Barret with his daughter. Again, another moment where Cloud shows concern about Aerith in the OG is eliminated from the Remake.
Rather than going straight from Aerith’s house to trying to figure out a way into the Shinra building to find Aerith, the group takes a detour to check out the ruins of Sector 7 and rescue Wedge from Shinra’s underground lab. It’s only upon seeing the evidence of Shinra’s inhumane experimentation firsthand that Cloud articulates to Elmyra the need to rescue Aerith. In the OG, they never sought out Elmyra’s permission, and Tifa explicitly asks to join Cloud on his quest. Rescuing Aerith is framed as primarily Cloud’s goal, Tifa and Barret are just along for the ride.
In the Remake, all three wait until Elymra gives them her blessing, and it’s framed (quite literally) as the group’s collective goal as opposed to just Cloud’s.
In the aptly named Ch. 14 resolutions, each marks the culmination of the character’s arc for the Part 1 of Remake. While their arcs are by no means complete, they do offer a nice preview of what their ultimate resolutions will be.
With the exception of Tifa’s, these resolutions are primarily about the character themselves. Their relationships with Cloud are secondary. Each resolution marks a change in the character themselves, but not necessarily a change in Cloud’s relationship with said character. Barret recommits to AVALANCHE’s mission and his role as a leader despite the deep personal costs. Aerith’s is full of foreshadowing as she accept her fate and impending death and decides to make the most of the time she has left. After trying to put aside her own feelings for the sake of others the whole time, Tifa finally allows herself to feel the full devastation of losing her home for the second time. Like her ultimate resolution in the Lifestream that we’ll see in about 25 years, Cloud is the only person she can share this sentiment with because he was the only person who was there.
Barret does not grow closer to Cloud through his resolution. Cloud has already proved himself to him by helping out on the pillar and reuniting him with Marlene. Barret resolution merely reveals that Barret is now comfortable enough with Cloud to share his past.
Similarly, Cloud starts off Aerith’s resolution with an intent to go rescue her, and ends with that intent still intact. Aerith is more open about her feelings here than before, it being a dream and all, but these feelings aren’t something that developed during this scene.
The only difference is during Tifa’s resolution. Cloud has been unable to emotionally comfort Tifa up until this point. It’s only when Tifa starts crying and rests her head upon his shoulder that he is able to make a change, to make a choice and hug her. Halfway through Tifa’s resolution, the scene shifts its focus to Cloud, his inaction and eventual action. Notably, the only time we have a close-up of any character during all three resolutions (I’ll define close-up here as a shot where a character’s face takes up half or more of the shot), are three shots of Cloud when he’s hugging/trying to hug Tifa. Tifa’s resolution is the only one where Cloud arcs.
What of the whole “You can’t fall in love with me” line in Aerith’s resolution? Why would SE include that if not to foreshadow Cloud falling in love with Aerith? Or indicate that he has already? Well, you can’t just take the dialogue on its own, you how to look at how these lines are framed. Notably, when she says “you can’t fall in love with me,” Aerith is framed at the center of the shot, and almost looks like she’s directly addressing the player. It’s as much a warning for the player as it is for Cloud, which makes sense if you know her fate in the OG.
This is followed directly by her saying “Even if you think you have…it’s not real.” In this shot, it’s back to a standard shot/reverse shot where she is the left third of the frame. She is addressing Cloud here, which, again if you’ve played the OG, is another bit of heavy foreshadowing. The reason Clould would think he might be in love with Aerith is because he’s falsely assuming of the memories of a man who did love Aerith — Zack.
For Cloud’s response (”Do I get a say in all this?”/ “That’s very one-sided” depending on the translation), rather than showing a shot of his face, the Remake shows him with his back turned.
Whatever Cloud’s feelings may be for Aerith, the game seems rather indifferent to them.
What is more telling is the choice to include a bit with Cloud getting jealous over a guy trying to give Tifa flowers in Barret’s resolution. Barret also mentions both Jessie and Aerith in their conversation, but nothing else gets such a reaction from Cloud.
It also should go without saying that if Aerith’s resolution is meant to establish Cloud and Aerith’s romance, there should have been plenty of set-up beforehand and plenty of follow-through afterward. That obviously is not the case, because again, the Remake has gone out of its way to avoid moments where Cloud’s actions towards Aerith could be interpreted romantically.
Case in point, at around this time in the OG, Marlene tells Cloud that she thinks Aerith likes him and the player has the option to have Cloud express his hope that she does. This scene is completely eliminated from the Remake and replaced with a much more appropriate scene of father-daughter affection between Marlene and Barret while Tifa and Cloud are standing together outside.
The method by which they get up the plate is completely different in the Remake. Leslie is the one who helps them this time around, and though his quest to reunite with his fiance directly parallels with the trio’s desire to save Aerith, Leslie himself draws a comparison to earlier when Cloud was trying to rescue Tifa. Finally, when Abzu is defeated again, it is Barret who draws the parallel of their search for Aerith to Leslie’s search for his fiance, making it crystal clear that saving Aerith is a group effort rather than only Cloud’s.
Speaking of Barret, in the OG, he seems to reassess his opinion of Cloud in the Shinra HQ stairs when he sees Cloud working so hard to save Aerith and realizes he might actually care about other people. In the Remake, that reevaluation occurs after you complete all the Ch. 14 sidequests and help a bunch of NPCs. Arguably, this moment occurs even earlier in the Remake for Barret, after the Airbuster, when he realizes that Cloud is more concerned for his and Tifa’s safety than his own.
Overall, the entire Aerith rescue feels so anticlimactic in the Remake. In the OG, Cloud gets his big hero moment in the Shinra Building. He’s the one who runs up to Aerith when the glass shatters and they finally reunite. In the Remake, it’s unclear what the emotional stakes are for Cloud here. At their big reunion, all we get from him is a “Yep.” In fact, when you look at how this scene plays out, Aerith is positioned equally between Cloud and Tifa at the moment of her rescue. Cloud’s answer is again with his back turned to the camera. It’s Tifa who gets her own shot with her response.
Another instance of the Remake being completely indifferent to Cloud’s feelings for Aerith, and actually priotizing Tifa’s relationship with Aerith instead.
It is also Tifa who runs to reunite with Aerith after the group of enemies is defeated. Another moment that could have easily been Cloud’s that the Remake gives to Tifa.
Also completely eliminated in the Remake, is the “I’m your bodyguard. / The deal was for one date” exchange in the jail cells. In the Remake, after Ch. 8, the date isn’t brought up again at all; “the bodyguard” reference only comes up briefly in Ch. 11 and then never again.
In the Remake, the jail scene is replaced by the scene in Aerith’s childhood room. Despite the fact that this is Aerith’s room, it is Tifa’s face that Cloud first sees when he wakes. What purpose does this moment serve other than to showcase Cloud and Tifa’s intimacy and the other characters’ tacit acknowledgment of said intimacy?
(This is the second time where Cloud wakes up and Tifa is the first thing he sees. The other was at Corneo’s mansion. He comes to three times in the Remake, but in Ch. 8, even though Aerith is right in front of him, we start off with a few seconds of Cloud gazing around the church before settling on the person in front of him. Again, while not something that most players would notice, this feels like a deliberate choice.)
Especially since this scene itself is all about Aerith. She begins a sad story about her past, and Cloud, rather than trying to comfort her in any way, asks her to give us some exposition about the Ancients. When the Whispers surround her, even though Cloud is literally right there, it's Tifa who pulls her out of it and comforts her. Another moment that could have been Cloud that was given to Tifa, and honestly, this one feels almost bizarre.
Throughout the entire Shinra HQ episode, Cloud and Aerith haven’t had a single moment alone to themselves. The Drums scenario is completely invented for the Remake. The devs could have contrived a way for Cloud and Aerith to have some one-on-one time here and work through the feelings they expressed during Aerith’s resolution if they wanted. Instead, with the mandatory party configurations during this stage - Cloud & Barret on one side; Tifa & Aerith on the others, with Cloud & Tifa being the respective team leaders communicating over PHS, the Remake minimizes the amount of interaction Cloud and Aerith have with each other in this chapter.
On the rooftop, before Cloud’s solo fight with Rufus, even though Cloud is ostensibly doing all this so that they can bring Aerith to safety, the Remake doesn’t include a single shot that focuses on Aerith’s face and her reaction to his actions. The game has decided, whatever Aerith’s feelings are in this moment, they’re irrelevant to the story they’re trying to tell. Instead we get shots focusing solely on Barret and Tifa. While the Remake couldn’t find any time to develop Cloud and Aerith’s relationship at the Shinra Tower (even though the OG certainly did), it did find time to add a new scene where Tifa saves Cloud from certain death, while referencing their Promise.
A lot of weird shit happens after this, but it’s pretty much all plot and no character. We do get one more moment where Cloud saves Tifa (and Tifa alone) from the Red Whisper even though Aerith is literally right next to her. The Remake isn’t playing coy at all about where Cloud’s preferences lie.
The party order for the Sephiroth battle varies depending on how you fought the Whispers. All the other character entrances (whoever the 3rd party member is, then the 4th and Red) are essentially the exact same shots, with the characters replaced. It’s the first character entrance (which can only be Aerith or Tifa) that you have two distinct options.
If Aerith is first, the camera pans from Cloud over to Aerith. It then cuts back to Cloud’s reaction, in a separate shot, as Aerith walks to join him (offscreen). It’s only when the player regains control of the characters that Cloud and Aerith ever share the frame.
On the other hand, if Tifa is first, we see Tifa land from Cloud’s POV. Cloud then walks over to join Tifa and they immediately share a frame, facing Sephiroth together.
Again, this is not something SE would expect the player to notice the first or even second time around. Honestly, I doubt anyone would notice at all unless they watched all these variations back to back. That is telling in itself, that SE would go through all this effort (making these scenes unique rather than copy and pasting certainly takes more time and effort) to ensure that the depictions of Cloud’s relationships with these two women are distinct despite the fact that hardly anyone would notice. Even in the very last chapter of the game, they want us to see Cloud and Tifa as a pair and Cloud and Aerith as individuals.
Which isn’t to say that Aerith is being neglected in the Remake. Quite the opposite, in fact, when she has essentially become the main protagonist and the group’s spirtual leader in Ch. 18. Rather, her relationship with Cloud is no longer an essential part of her character. Not to mention, one of the very last shots of the Remake is about Aerith sensing Zack’s presence. Again, not the kind of thing you want to bring up if the game is supposed to show her being in love with Cloud.
What does it all mean????
Phew — now let’s step back and look and how the totality of these changes have reshaped our understanding of the story as a whole. Looking solely at the Midgar section of the OG, and ignoring everything that comes after it, it seems to tell a pretty straightforward story: Cloud is a cold-hearted jerk who doesn’t care about anyone else until he meets Aerith. It is through his relationship with Aerith that he begins to soften up and starts giving a damn about something other than himself. This culminates when he risks it all to rescue Aerith from the clutches of the game’s Big Bad itself, The Shinra Electric Company.
This was honestly the reason why I was dreading the Remake when I learned that it would only cover the Midgar segment. A game that’s merely an expansion of the Midgar section of the OG is probably going to leave a lot of people believing that Cloud & Aerith were the intended couple, and I didn’t want to wait years and perhaps decades for vindication after the Remake’s Lifestream Scene.
I imagine this very scenario is what motivated SE to make so many of these changes. In the OG, they could get away with misdirecting the audience for the first few hours of the game since the rest of the story and the reveals were already completed. The player merely had to pop in the next disc to get the real story. Such is not the case with the Remake. Had the the Remake followed the OG’s beats more closely, many players, including some who’ve never played the OG, would finish the Remake thinking that Cloud and Aerith were the intended couple. It would be years until they got the rest of the story, and at that point, the truth would feel much more like a betrayal. Like they’ve been cruelly strung along.
While they’ve gone out of their way to adapt most elements from the OG into the Remake, they’ve straight up eliminated many scenes that could be interpreted as Cloud’s romantic interest in Aerith. Instead, he seems much more interested in her knowledge as an Ancient than in her romantic affections. This is the path the Remake could be taking. Instead of Cloud being under the illusion of falling in love with Aerith, he’s under the illusion that the answer to his identity dilemma lies in Aerith’s Cetra heritage, when, of course, the answer was with Tifa all along.
Hiding Sephiroth’s existence during the Midgar arc isn’t necessary to telling the story of FF7, thus it’s been eliminated in the Remake. Similarly, pretending that Cloud and Aerith are going to end up together also isn’t necessary and would only confuse the player. Thus the LTD is no longer a part of the Remake.
If Aerith’s impact on Cloud has been diminished, what then is his arc in the Remake? Is it essentially just the same without the catalyst of Aerith? A cold guy at the start who eventually learns to care about others through the course of the game? Kind of, though arguably, this is who Remake!Cloud is all along, not just Cloud at the end of the Remake. Cloud is a guy who pretends to be a selfish jerk, but he deep down he really does care. He just doesn’t show this side of himself around people he’s unfamiliar with. So part of his arc in the Remake is opening up to the others, Barret, AVALANCHE and Aerith included, but these all span a chapter or two at most. They don’t straddle the entire game.
What is the throughline then? What is an area in which he exhibits continuous growth?
It’s Tifa. It’s his desire to fulfill his Promise to Tifa. Not just to protect her physically, but to be there for her emotionally, something that’s much harder to do. There’s the big moments like when he remembers the Promise in Ch. 4., his dramatic fist clench when he can’t stop Tifa from crying in Ch. 12, and in Ch. 13 when he watches Barret comfort Tifa. It’s all the flashbacks he has of her and the times he’s felt like he failed her. It’s the smaller moments where he can sense her nervousness and unease but the only thing he knows how to do is call her name. It’s all those times during battle, where Tifa can probably take care of herself, but Cloud has to save her because he can’t fail her again. All of this culminates in Tifa’s Resolution, where Tifa is in desperate need of comfort, and is specifically seeking Cloud’s comfort, and Cloud has no idea what to do. He hesitates because he’s clueless, because he doesn’t want to fuck it up, but finally, he makes the choice, he takes the risk, and he hugs her….and he kind of fucks it up. He hugs her too hard. Which is a great thing, because this arc isn’t anywhere close to being over. There’s still so much more to come. So many places this relationship will go.
We get a little preview of this when Tifa saves Cloud on the roof. Everything we thought we knew about their relationship has been flipped on its head. Tifa is the one saving Cloud here, near the end of this part of the Remake. Just as she will save Cloud in the Lifestream just before the end of the FF7 story as a whole. What does Tifa mean to Cloud? It’s one of the first questions posed in the Remake, and by the end, it remains unanswered.
Cloud’s character arc throughout the entire FF7 story is about his reconciling with his identity issues. This continues to develop through the Shinra Tower Chapters, but it certainly isn’t going to be resolved in Part 1 of the Remake. His character arc in the Remake — caring more about others/finding a way to finally comfort Tifa — is resolved in Ch. 14, well before rescuing Aerith, which is what makes her rescue feel so anticlimactic. The resolution of this external conflict isn’t tied to the protagonist’s emotional arc. This was not the case in the OG. I’m certainly not complaining about the change, but the Remake probably would have felt more satisfying as a whole if they hewed to the structure of the OG. Instead, it seems that SE has prioritized the clarity of the Remake series as a whole (leaving no doubt about where Cloud’s affections lie) over the effectiveness of the “climax” in the first entry of the Remake.
This is all clear if you only focus on the “story” of the Remake -- i.e., what the characters are saying and doing. If you extend your lens to the presentation of said story, and here I’m talking about who the game chooses to focus on during the scenes, how long they hold on these shots, which characters share the frame, which do not, etc --- it really could not be more obvious.
Does the camera need to linger for over 5 seconds on Cloud staring at the door after wishing Tifa goodnight? Does it need to find Cloud almost every time Tifa says or does anything so that we’re always aware of his watchfulness and the nature of his care? The answer is no until you realize this dynamic is integral to telling the story of Final Fantasy VII.
I don’t see how anyone who compares the Remake to the OG could come away from it thinking that the Remake series is going to reverse all of the work done in the OG and Compilation by having Cloud end up with Aerith.
Just because the ending seems to indicate that the events of the OG might not be set in stone, it doesn’t mean that the Remake will end with Aerith surviving and living happily ever after with Cloud. Even if Aerith does live (which again seems unlikely given the heavy foreshadowing of her death in the Remake), how do you come away from the Remake thinking that Cloud is going to choose Aerith over Tifa when SE has gone out of its way to remove scenes between Cloud and Aerith that could be interpreted as romantic? And gone out of its way to shove Cloud’s feelings for Tifa in the player’s face? The sequels would have to spend an obscene amount of time not only building Cloud and Aerith’s relationship from scratch, but also dismantling Cloud’s relationship with Tifa. It would be an absolute waste of time and resources, and there’s really no way to do so without making the characters look like assholes in the process.
Now could this happen? Sure, in the sense that literally anything could happen in the future. But in terms of outcomes that would make sense based on what’s come before, this particular scenario is about as plausible as Cloud deciding to relinquish his quest to find Sephiroth so that he can pursue his real dream of becoming at sandwich artist at Panera Bread.
It’s over! I promise!
Like you, I too cannot believe the number of words I’ve wasted on this subject. What is there left to say? The LTD doesn’t exist outside of the first disc of the OG. You'll only find evidence of SE perpetuating the LTD if you go into these stories with the assumption that 1) The LTD exists 2) it remains unanswered. But it’s not. We know that Cloud ends up with Tifa.
What the LTD has become is dissecting individual scenes and lines of dialogue, without considering the context of said things, and pretending as if the outcome is unknown and unknowable. If you took this tact to other aspects of FF7’s story, then it would be someone arguing that because there a number of scenes in the OG that seem to suggest that Meteor will successfully destroy the planet, this means that the question of whether or not our heroes save the world in the end is left ambiguous. No one does that because that would be utterly absurd. Individual moments in a story may suggest alternate outcomes to build tension, to keep us on our toes, but that doesn’t change the ending from being the ending. Our heroes stop Meteor. Cloud loves Tifa. Arguments against either should be treated with the same level of credulity (i.e., none).
It’s frustrating that the LTD, and insecurities about whether or not Cloud really loves Tifa, takes up so much oxygen in any discussion about these characters. And it’s a damn shame, because Cloud and Tifa’s relationship is so rich and expansive, and the so-called “LTD” is such a tiny sliver of that relationship, and one of the least interesting aspects. They’re wonderful because they’re just so damn normal. Unlike other Final Fantasy couples, what keeps them apart is not space and time and death, but the most human and painfully relatable emotion of all, fear. Fear that they can’t live up to the other’s expectations; fear that they might say the wrong thing. The fear that keeps them from admitting their feelings at the Water Tower, they’re finally able to overcome 7 years later in the Lifestream. They’re childhood friends but in a way they’re also strangers. Like other FF couples, we’re able to watch their entire relationship grow and unfold before our eyes. But they have such a history too, a history that we unravel with them at the same time. Every moment of their lives that SE has found worth depicting, they’ve been there for each other, even if they didn’t know it at the time. Theirs is a story that begins and ends with each other. Their is the story that makes Final Fantasy VII what it is.
If you’ve made it this far, many thanks for reading. I truly have no idea how to use this platform, so please direct any and all hatemail to my DMs at TLS, which I will then direct to the trash. (In all seriousness, I’d be happy to answer any specific questions you may have, but I feel like I’ve more than said my piece here.)
If there’s one thing you take away from this, I hope it’s to learn to ignore all the ridiculous arguments out there, and just enjoy the story that’s actually being told. It’s a good one.
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Soft Hands - Part 5
ʚ P.O.V. : Aphrodite
ʚ Summary : Ares tries to cook for Aphrodite. They talk, and both feel something between them.
ʚ Warning / Themes: Fluff | Soft | Ansgt | Marital infidelity
The place Ares called home was spartan at best. Clean and well kept, but bare, devoid of any warmth or feeling.
"Please, excuse the sparse arrangements," Ares mumbled as I took in everything I set my eyes on. "I have never developed a talent for baubles and finery."
He was right. And yet, this place felt more welcoming than my own home.
Ares looked around as if wondering what he should do next. "Would you like to join me in the kitchen? I find it is much warmer in there."
"The kitchen would do nicely for me."
He looked pleased as he showed me the way. "I hope you do not mind simple fair," he says. "If I try to make anything too elaborate I might end up burning the kitchen down. I almost did once, and Athena has never let me live it down."
"Perhaps I can help you," said I. "With the food, I mean. I have been told that I am a good cook."
He gives me a measured look, then grins. "All right," Ares opens the door to the kitchen and looks around for the aprons. "Dazzle me with your skills, oh lady of love and beauty."
There was no maliciousness in his tone. No ill will. Truth to be told, I found myself liking his company. "Prepare to be dazzled,” I grab the apron he gave and put it on me. “Oh lord of war.”
--
Ares was not jesting when he said he had no talent for baubles and finery. I find the larder bare, save for some smoked meat, a few vegetables and some herbs. No matter. I would have set myself to work had Ares not butted in. "No," He took the vegetables out of my hands to wash them himself. "Let me."
The man may not have had a talent for finery, but he certainly had a gift with blades. The vegetables were cleaned and chopped with such precision, that it left me impressed.
"I thought I was going to be the one cooking?" I cock an eyebrow while trying not to stare.
"I thought it would have been rude to let you do all the work," said he. "Especially since it was I who invited you for a meal."
I had no reply other than thank you. He smiled, truly smiled, when he looked at me. I bite back a sigh, as Hephaestus never looked at me that way.
"I should be the one thanking you," said Ares as he started cutting the meat for me. "For tending to me that day. No one had shown me such kindness before."
It saddened me, for I believed everyone was deserving of kindness. "I am sorry for that. But may I ask, why do the other Gods spurn you so?"
Ares thought about it. "It spread from my parents, really. They found it difficult to love me. The others simply followed their lead."
How was such a thing possible? "Why do they not love you?"
He stopped what he was doing and faced me. "To explain that I will have to tell you about my parents' marriage."
I nod, to encourage him to go on.
"By the time I was conceived, my father had gotten into the habit of bedding any female that caught his eye, and my mother, in her pain and anger, would unleash her vengeance on all she hated. Their marriage had turned into a poisoned prison by the time I was born, and since they barely had any love for each other, they had little to spare for me. I suppose you could say it made me what I am."
"But your mother was so kind to me," I remember Hera showing understanding to my struggles. "She..."
"My mother was kind to you because she does not like Hephaestus either. Be grateful for that."
I had nothing, except for growing anger toward my father. What did he marry me into?
"Do not worry yourself over our squabbles," Ares went back to chopping. "I do not."
My heart hurt for him all the same. To be shown no love or kindness just because he is who he is.
"You look at me like I am a wounded little bird," he mumbled. "I would rather you did not."
I have made him uncomfortable. "Forgive me for that. But to not be loved by your parents... I cannot even imagine it."
"Do you think even someone like me deserves love?"
The way he looked at me. It honestly made my heart flutter. "I do, yes."
"And you are not just saying it because you are the lady of love?"
"I mean every word." Not knowing what came over me, I reach out and touch his arm. His skin felt so warm beneath my palm. "We all deserve it. A chance, at the very least."
His eyes close as my hand moved up and brushed against his cheek. I felt a sigh as his own hand rested over mine.
"This is not right," Ares pulled away and shook his head. "I have no right. You are married to my brother."
I quickly took my hand away, my eyes stinging from reasons I cannot even fathom. Why was I upset with him pulling away?
"Please do not think I am rejecting you," Ares blurted in a rush. "I mean, it is not that I do not like you or..." He shakes his head. "What am I saying? Erm.. Let us simply enjoy our meal, and I will walk you home."
"Yes," my mind was a roil, and I needed time to clear my head and think. "That sounds like a good idea."
--
The rest of the evening went well and without incident. We stuck to lighter topics as we had our meal, and nothing else happened. Before either of us knew it, the meal was over and I had to leave, which I did so rather reluctantly.
Ares, in keeping with his promise, walked me home.
"You truly are a wonderful cook, and wonderful company," he said appreciatively. "Your husband is a right fool, for not seeing what he has in you."
It was not meant for me to hear, but I heard it all the same. I look over at him discretely and find his cheeks turning several shades of red. It was endearing, really.
"Thank you," I say simply. "And thank you for your company. I truly enjoyed it."
There was that jaw-dropping smile again. "It was a pleasure for me, to have you."
That smile vanished the moment my home came into view. "And now I must take my leave of you." Ares bowed, then surprised me by taking my hands to his lips. "Good night, my lady."
With that, he turned sharply on his heels and walked away. I watch him fade into the distance, my skin still tingling from his kiss.
#sft hnds prt 5#ares#ares and aphrodite#ares god of war#aphrodite#greek mythology#greek gods#creative writing#writing#amwriting#writeblr
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At Last (Frankie Morales x gn!Reader)
Summary: you, Frankie, and your fur baby go camping! Little does Frankie know what you have planned.
W/C: 2.1k
Warnings: flirting, innuendo, alcohol, food, language, otherwise, this is toothaching fluff!
A/N: SAMMY MY BELOVED @sanchosammy GAVE ME THIS IDEA! I hope it’s as cute as I think it is :) also, Charlie (Frankie’s pup) isn’t involved in this fic but she is still part of the fam :)
Pine trees surround you on either side, tall and majestic. You can see the blue-gray sky patching through the canopy; the clouds are leaving, but some linger a little longer to clog up the sky. The air is warm and slightly humid, but a wonderful breeze rustles through the trees and rushes across your bare arms. Your trail shoes squelch underfoot in the damp ground. You sigh, totally content with this moment.
Frankie’s flannel is tied around his waist, leaving him in his khaki cargo pants and t-shirt. A couple of curls peek out from under his ball cap, turning into little ringlets at the nape of his neck. He walks in front of you on the trail, his boots pressing prints into the soft ground. His back profile is beautiful, even with the large camping pack, and you can’t help but grin.
Foxtrot embodies her name- Frankie is holding her leash, and the auburn and white dog trots up ahead of him, sniffing along the mulched and muddied path. The air smells of humidity that’s just passed over and that wonderful accompanying petrichor. Fox’s white paws are surely getting dirtied, but that’s only to be expected. You don’t care, too excited to watch your boyfriend and dog walk ahead of you.
Frowning at the bend of Frankie’s back, you catch up and take his free hand. “Let me carry something, baby.”
“No,” he shakes his head, lacing his fingers through yours. “You have important cargo,” he teases and pats your back lightly.
Strapped to your back, in a backpack-style blue case, is your ukulele. One hand carries the cooler, slung over your shoulder, filled with food and drinks for tonight. Frankie carries the heavy-duty stuff- the tent, stakes, more essential supplies. “At least let me take Fox.”
Her red ears perk up at her name and she stops, turning and growing excited, as if she forgot you were there. “Yeah, hi Foxy!” You coo as she runs towards you, jumping with her front paws in the air in excitement. “Yeah, you love it out here, don’t you?” You ask her in a baby voice, scratching behind her ears as she circles around your legs and prevents you from moving. Frankie drops her leash in order to prevent your legs from being tourniqueted by it, and it drags behind her in the mud.
When you pick up the leash, it’s sludgy and damp, but you don’t mind too much. You continue the hike forward and Frankie and Fox follow at your sides, both beaming ear to ear and enjoying the serenity of the woods.
Frankie picked the campsite, so he’s technically leading the way, but the trail is fairly straightforward, meaning you don’t need to be led. Frankie points out wildlife here and there: chipmunks, rabbits, cardinals and chickadees flitting through the pine-needled canopy. He’s in his element, and you’re in yours: with him.
The mud gives way to drier ground ahead, and luckily enough Frankie pulls off to the side. It’s the perfect spot, with a beautiful little field of wildflowers. “Welcome to your five-star hotel for the night, babe,” he assures you and kisses you softly, making you giggle and kiss him back with excitement and a pinch of nerves in your stomach.
There’s a routine the two of you have silently adopted. Frankie sets up the small tent, just big enough for the two of you and Fox. You gather kindling, set up a fire, arrange the chairs and all-around make the outdoor area of your campsite ideal.
Frankie is a man of patience, truly, but sometimes the little portable tent proves to be a challenge. You allow Fox off of her leash, knowing she’s well-trained enough to stick around the site, and find your way to the mess of fabric and stakes covering the man. “Baby. For the love of God, we do this all the time,” you tease.
“Well, something must’ve fucking changed,” he grumbles as he fiddles with the parts.
You get on your knees on the soft bed of dried pine needles and help him out. With your help, the tent takes no time at all to put up, and you stand and brush off your hands. Frankie gives you a sheepish smile and you give him a kiss.
The two of you don’t need to converse while you set things up. You enjoy the woods, the rustling of the wind and chirping of birds. Fox curls up on the blanket you set out for her, and when everything is done, you unzip the cooler and hand Frankie a beer. “Well, now we’re all set.”
“Let the fun begin,” he chuckles and twists the top open, clinking his glass bottle to yours.
“So, Francisco,” you smile over at him. “What do you have planned for this trip? I know you have some sort of plan laid out up there,” you tease and rap on his head softly, through the trucker cap resting there.
He blushes a little and looks away. “I don’t always have a plan.”
“Hey.” You turn his face back to yours by the chin. “You do and I absolutely love it. Now tell me about it, please, baby.”
Frankie removes his hat and runs a hand through his curls. “Well, I figured we could start the fire soon, cook dinner over it. It’ll get dark pretty quick. Then hang around the campfire, maybe play some of the games I packed.”
“Is a quiet tumble in the tent on the cards?” You ask him with a teasing grin, nudging his side.
He shrugs, jokingly, as if he’s considering it. “I don’t see why we couldn’t squeeze that in. We only have, oh… three hours of time in between these plans.”
“Then we’ll use all three of those hours,” you shrug and steal a kiss, smiling into his lips. “I love you. And I love it out here.” You were never a nature person before Frankie, usually preferring indoors adventures to hiking or camping. Frankie looks like he belongs out here, and he probably thinks he does. Even if you didn’t enjoy the fun of outdoors adventuring, you’d have at least one thing to enjoy: Frankie’s excitement and enthusiasm over it. “Thank you.”
Fox is curled at Frankie’s feet, and he bends over to scratch her ears, running his fingers through her scruffy fur. “Thank you, baby. For coming out here with me and putting up with all of this. I couldn’t ask for a better adventure partner.”
-
You do, indeed, cook dinner over the fire. You’d prepped all kinds of chopped vegetables to be grilled over an open flame, and had additionally packed pre-cooked hot dogs as well as s’mores ingredients. Frankie is a firm believer that it’s not camping if it doesn’t include graham crackers, chocolate bars, and marshmallows.
Luckily, your Frankie is a skilled griller. He always is, always has been. He takes care of the cooking part, since you prepared everything else, though he lets you hold the hot dogs over the fire to roast. “I feel like I’m at camp again,” you laugh as you slowly rotate the food over the fire.
Frankie is taking charge of the vegetables, expertly. They’re getting a beautiful char, you notice. “It’s much better, because you don’t have to sneak around to make out with your boyfriend at night, huh?” He teases and tosses you a grin.
“But I get my boyfriend all to myself,” you nod and confirm. “And I have my baby girl with me,” you coo as you rub Foxtrot’s head, where she’s resting at your side.
The meal is delicious, of course, when the two of you work together and each used your strong skills. Frankie slips bites to Fox when he thinks you’re not looking, of course, but it’s endearing, the way the dog’s big brown eyes mirror those looking down at her.
There’s not much conversation while you eat, mouths occupied with food rather than speaking. That’s alright. There’s plenty of time for that tonight and tomorrow.
The sun starts sinking lower when Frankie brings the marshmallows from the tent. “Guess what time it is!” He exclaims as he rips open the bag, skewering two marshmallows and holding them over the fire.
Like he’s a skilled griller, he’s also a wonderful marshmallow-toaster. Frankie toasts yours to perfection, just the way you like it, and you do your part as the s’more-sandwicher, shoving the marshmallow between the graham crackers and chocolate.
There’s no signal out here, and you agreed neither of you would use your phones unless an emergency happened. Frankie frowns as he sees your phone. “Hey. Put that away. Don’t use that.”
“There’s an emergency, Frankie,” you whine, opening the camera app with one hand and eating the sugary dessert with the other.
“And what’s that?” He asks, taking a bite of his s’more.
Strings of gooey marshmallow connect the sandwich to his lips, making him laugh, and you snap a picture at the perfect moment: Frankie’s closed-lipped smile as his s’more falls apart on him. “You’re too damn cute, that’s the emergency,” you laugh and set the photo as your lock screen, tossing it away.
Frankie’s schedule actually worked itself naturally. After the s’mores and a wet-wipe hand-washing to remove the endless marshmallow from Frankie’s hands, you find yourself sitting around the fire, no light left in the sky. When you look up, all you can see is inky blue and pine trees, the stars yet to make their nightly rise.
“I have a song request,” Frankie asks and raises his hand like a child in a classroom.
“Yes, Francisco?” You tease as you walk to the tent, grabbing your ukulele and returning with it, sitting back in your lawn chair with it. “Hit me.”
“Only The Good Die Young by Billy Joel. No, wait- Country Roads.”
Laughing, you noodle around with the strings for a moment. You knew this moment would come, and here’s the opportunity. “I can play all of those and more, Frankie. We’ll do the Billy Joel first,” you nod decisively.
Frankie sounds like the forest wolves at night when he sings along. He absolutely howls, taken away by the song, taken to a place where his voice isn’t just a little on the rougher end of good. He belts the words and dances along in his seat, like you do.
Then Country Roads. You thought the last one was bad before you hear Frankie’s booming voice echoing the ballad of West Virginia through seemingly the entire preserve. But you don’t care in the slightest. You sing along proudly, strumming your ukulele harder and harder until you’re sure you can’t add any more volume before snapping a string.
After the song, you pause and rest your ukulele flat on your lap. “Frankie, baby. Can I ask you something?”
He nods, smiling over at you. “Any time. What’s up, buttercup?” He asks, taking one of your hands and kissing the knuckles.
“Will you marry me?” You ask. The question is straight and to the point, blunt and honest. Your face conveys your hope, and the grandiose speech follows. “I love you beyond belief, Frankie. I love you almost as much as you love these woods. I know you love me too. I just… think it’s time. We’ll be perfect for it. What do you say?”
You can feel Frankie’s slightly-chapped lips curve into a smile against your hand. He’s grinning and then he’s crying, soft water droplets forming in the corners of his eyes. “Of course I’ll marry you,” he grins, grabbing your ukulele and setting it aside.
Once the ukulele is on the ground, Frankie stands in front of your chair and lifts you to your feet, kissing you with such fervor you can’t help but gasp. When he breaks away, you smile, eyes watering too. “I know it wasn’t the most elegant of proposals, but-”
“It was the most us,” Frankie cuts you off with a teary grin. “I would be honored to be your husband, my love. You really want me enough to do that?”
“Frankie,” you coo, cupping his face in your hand. “You are the best husband I could ever want, could ever dream for,” you assure him and kiss his nose gently.
The man laughs, wiping his tears away. “Then let’s get married,” he whoops excitedly, then lets out an excited shout to the woods. “We’re getting married!”
You laugh at his loud and booming declaration, but nothing can detract you for the love and joy in your heart.
When you and Frankie settle down in your chairs again, you pick up the ukulele and finish off with one last beautiful song that you and Frankie have always adored, with a title that truly fits: At Last.
-
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The one where you’re both idiots
Part 8 of The one where Bucky has a cute neigbour series!
Pairing: Bucky Barnes X Reader (f)
Summary | Reader and Bucky become friends after he saves her from a creep in their apartment building. Each chapter explores a different point in their friendship - very slow burn!
Warnings | 18+ only, Smut in later chapters (this is a slow burn), swearing, unprotected sex, oral sex, (later chapters)
This is my favourite chapter so far as we’ll start seeing the events of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier impact the story more.
Chapter 8 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 1 | Masterlist
“How was your session with the world’s worst therapist?” You asked as you started unpacking your groceries. You’d run into Bucky on your way home from picking up a few things for your evening meal and had invited him inside with the offer of a home cooked meal.
Taking the milk from you, he helped put your items away as he pondered his response. “Same as always, she asks about the nightmares, I lie to her and she starts writing on that damned notepad.” Taking a tomato from the bag, he snuck one into his mouth and put the rest away, giving him a second to think before continuing. He’d been at your apartment that many times by now he knew where everything lived.
Hoisting himself up onto the kitchen countertop, he sat in his usual spot as he watched you busy around, pulling your utensils out ready to cook. “She also brought up how alone I am.” Despite his efforts, his voice broke slightly, something that you didn’t fail to notice.
“Well that’s a load of bull” You scoffed as you turned to face him, opening your arms wide. “You’ve got me!”
He smiled back at you, his face lightening up. “That I do doll, that I do.”
Satisfied, you turned your back on him once again and began washing the vegetables.
“I had lunch with Yori,” He continued.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah... I’ve also got a… got a date tomorrow” Your hands froze as you felt your heart break, your stomach twisting into knots. A second later you composed yourself and continued with the task at hand, rubbing your hands over the mushrooms repeatedly.
“Oh.” You remarked, not trusting your voice to say anything further.
“Yeah, Yori kind of set it up. I tried to explain there was a bit of a dance to this sort of thing but he went ahead with it anyway.” Bucky had missed your reaction when he’d told you about the date and proceeded to pick up one of your kitchen knives, twirling it between his fingers as a distraction.
Those seconds were all you needed to compose yourself as you shut off the water and began chopping the veg up, mentally preparing your response in your head. “Well it’s good to get out there, when was the last time you had a date?”
“1942 Stark Expo” He replied with no hesitation. You turned on your heel and gestured towards the cupboard above Bucky's head. With a smile, instead of moving aside, he spread his legs for you to step into. For a second, his smile made you forget what he’d just told you and you were back to it just being you and him, no mystery woman who you feared would take him from you.
“Lazy shit.” You muttered as you stepped between his open legs swinging the cupboard door open and reaching up for a can.
For Bucky, he was enjoying the view. Your top had risen and he had a perfect view of your stomach, begging to be kissed.
As you placed the can on the counter beside him and searched for the opener something suddenly dawned on you. “Does that mean you’ve not gotten laid since 1942?” Your eyes met his and he chuckled in response.
Picking up the can, he jabbed his knife into it and expertly cut into the lid, opening it with ease. Handing it back to you he shot you another smile.
“Believe it or not, courting women in the 1940’s was a bit different. Girls didn’t fuck outside of marriage as they do now, and if they did it was a rarity. But, that didn’t mean both of you couldn’t get off if you put other things to use.” He smirked back at you as your jaw dropped, mouth hanging open at his honesty. Not quite knowing what to do with that information you turned back to the stove, your cheeks flushed from not just the heat.
“Well… I’m sure your date tomorrow will be a welcome relief.”
“Eh… She's a nice girl and all but I don’t see it going anywhere. Beer?”
“Oh, um yes please.” A few moments later you heard your fridge open and close and the sound of bottle lids going into the trash. Leaving your beer to the side, he resumed his previous position and continued watching you cook.
“When was the last time you saw any action?” Bucky wasn’t sure why he asked in all honesty, he’d rather not know as just picturing you with anyone else drove him mad.
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” You laughed. “No but seriously I think it’s been two years now?” Taking a swig of your beer you leant against the counter and faced him. “Oh god, it’s been seven. I forgot about the blip. Holy shit.” Grabbing your beer again, you took a few more gulps, enjoying the liquid running down your throat.
Despite not really wanting to know the answer, Bucky found himself slightly pleased you’d not been with anyone in a while for purely selfish reasons.
The rest of the evening was spent eating good food and watching TV, something which Bucky didn’t take for granted. He’d only told his therapist part of the truth. When he was alone with you, enjoying each other's company, talking about nothing and everything, he felt calm - content.
The following day Bucky didn't hear from Y/N at all and his date went as he expected. The girl was nice, charming even but he didn’t feel a connection. He felt bad for lying about his gloves and even worse when she brushed off his comment around his age. Yori was the last straw and he had to get out of there. The guilt was overwhelming, suffocating and heavy. He’d rushed over to Yori’s place with the intention of confessing his sins but something held him back. It wasn’t the first time he’d hesitated, something about him just made him stop every time. Maybe it was the fact that Yori was a friend, someone who seemed to understand his odd quirks, put up with his grumpiness and still wanted to be around him. Then again, maybe he only did that as he got a free meal out of it.
He found himself back at his apartment building, banging on Y/N’s door, praying you were home. But he was met with silence.
He spent the rest of the night watching TV, drinking as many beers as he could before he eventually passed out, either out of boredom or tiredness, the mental battering he’d taken finally taking its toll.
It wasn’t until the following evening he finally saw you. The sound of bags dropping to the floor as you muttered explicits under your breath whilst searching for your keys was undeniably you.
Without a second thought, he opened his door, eager to see you.
“Hey doll”
Turning your heel, you faced him. “Oh hey Buck”
“Lost your key again?” He remarked, smirking.
“As usual” You muttered, finally finding them amongst the junk in your purse.
“I was worried about you y’know.” Your head snapped up, eyes meeting his piercing blues as he stared back at you. “You didn’t come home last night, it’s not very…. You. Who is he?”
A laugh escaped your lips before you could stop it. “She is called Lauri and I just ended up staying over.” You tried to make yourself sound as convincing as possible, knowing deep down you hadn’t wanted to overhear any late night activities if his date had in fact gone well.
“Oh. Oh!” His eyes went wide when he thought he’d realised something but couldn’t have been further from the truth. “Well, I hope she’s treating you right.”
And he truly meant it. Despite pining after you these past few months, your happiness was his priority, regardless of how desperately he wanted to be the one fulfilling that for you.
You slowly opened your door with your back to him, trying to suppress a grin. “Way off the mark there Buck, although I’m pretty sure she would show me a great time, it’s not like that. We’re just friends.”
The small sigh of relief that left his lips as he processed what you said, making you pause for a moment. Surely he wasn’t happy that you - ? No, impossible.
“Fair enough.” He replied, coughing to hide a slight choke.
“Do you want to come in?” You asked, opening your door wide for him to enter. With a gentle smile he nodded, closing his own door behind him he walked into your apartment. You tried your best to not notice the way his t-shirt hugged his body in all the best ways, tightening around his broad shoulders before delving down to his biceps, the metal of his arm reflecting the light from the hallway. You said a silent prayer before following him in, urging your eyes to stop flitting back to his body and the way his jeans fitted around his tight- no Y/N, no.
You followed him further into your small apartment as he settled on the couch whilst you put your bag into your bedroom. Pulling the door, you gave yourself some privacy as you pulled some loungewear from your drawers before sliding your top off over your head. “How did your date go?” You asked. You’d prepared it over and over again in your head, testing your tone and delivery to avoid him picking up on the nervousness you felt asking the question.
“Disaster, I let half way through.”
Your eyes unintentionally lit up as you unfastened your bra, throwing it into the laundry basket in the corner of your room. “Jesus Buck, what did she do?”
You heard a shuffle coming from your living room, Bucky no doubt playing with the thread coming off your couch as he usually did when he was deep in thought. “It just didn’t feel natural y’know? I wasn’t comfortable with her, I couldn’t be myself, and then she brought up Yori and I-” He couldn’t quite finish his sentence and grunted as he struggled to find the words. Not needing to hear any more, you finished getting changed into your clothes and went back into the living room, plonking yourself down next to him.
“Well first off, not cool leaving half way through. But… this is New York so I'm pretty sure she’ll have been on worse dates.” You joked, trying to lighten the mood. Bringing your sock clad feet up onto the couch, you stretched your leg out and prodded the man beside you, prompting him to turn and face you. “You’ll tell him whenever you’re ready. For now though, focus on the positive. You went on a date with a girl…. Regardless of how short said date was” You covered your mouth as you giggled, his eyes rollg only forcing more laughs from you. Taking enough of your teasing, Bucky took action and tossed one of your many cushions towards you, landing squarely in your face knocking you back.
“Dick!” you squealed.
“Brat”
#bucky#bucky barnes#bucky x female reader#bucky barnes x reader#bucky barnes x you#bucky fanfic#bucky barnes x y/n#bucky x y/n#tfawts
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A Freak in a Sheet (Ghost!Bakugou x Reader) part 2 NSFW
part 1
AO3
There are more advantages to living in a haunted house than just cheap rent.
Warnings: swearing, sex (gender-neutral reader)
It was a shit day if you’ve ever had one, and at the end of it, you just want to curl up on the couch and binge the fuck out of Keeping up with the Kardashians. Kicking off your shoes, you call out to Bakugou.
“You wanna see what Kim’s been up to?”
“Fuck yeah I do!” He answers from the living room. You grin. You are extremely lucky to live with someone who shares your passion for cheesy reality television.
When you walk into the room, he’s already waiting for you, TV remote in hand. “You look like shit,” he observes upon seeing you. You don’t take it personally though, knowing it’s his own unique way of encouraging you to open up about what’s been troubling you.
You stifle a yawn and plop down next to him. “Tough day. Customers were acting entitled as usual. And I forgot my wallet at home, so I didn’t have enough money for lunch. Or dinner.” Honestly, worse things have happened to you. It won’t be the first, nor the last day you went without eating.
Bakugou doesn’t see it that way.
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” He yells, jumping up from the couch, surprising you. “You can’t be skipping meals!”
“It’s okay dude, I can just order takeout or something,” you try to calm him down, but Bakugou is bit like a really spitty cat when he’s angry – the more you try to soothe him with words, the more aggressive he becomes.
“No pizza for you today. No fucking way. We’re gonna cook you a real ass dinner with real ingredients,” he huffs, already on his way to the kitchen. Confused, you trail after him.
The concentrated manner in which he gathers all his supplies tells you he knows exactly what he’s doing. He definitely has a presence in the kitchen, like some Michelin chef. And his chopping technique! You’ve never seen anyone chop onions that fast.
“Whoa,” you say, feeling kinda awkward just standing around and letting him do all the work, “you’re really good at this.”
His cheeks redden, his hand holding the knife slowing down momentarily. “So what If I am?!”
“Man, you really need to learn how to take a compliment,” you chuckle, “what are we making, by the way?”
“Fried rice. So make yourself useful and grab me a pan and a bag of rice, would you?”
“Roger.”
You work well together, you think. While he takes care of chopping and cutting the vegetables, you heat olive oil on medium heat, waiting for that tell-tale sizzle. You soon catch yourself humming some tune you heard on the radio at work, hips swaying as you stir the vegetables, rice and meat Bakugou put in the skillet. You giggle as he makes you surrender the frying pan so that he can toss the rice, and subsequently you marvel at how expertly he’s doing it. It’s been a while since you last cooked. You almost forgot how fun it is – even more so in good company.
“A shame we don’t have cashew nuts,” said companion murmurs, frowning at the contents of the pan after they’ve been tossed and fried and spiced to his liking. He looks at it almost longingly; you can’t help but notice. Ghosts can’t smell or taste anything. Bakugou told you he feels things, like pressure or texture to a certain level, but only if he concentrates.
“Ah, well, this is a low-budget kitchen,” you wave your hand in dismissal, eager to lighten up the mood. “Never mind though! It smells absolutely delicious!” And it looks absolutely gorgeous, but you don’t say that aloud, fearing his ego might explode.
“You should taste it before serving, just to be sure,” he suggests, already bringing a spoon to your lips. You hesitate for a second, suddenly hyperaware of all the sounds, smells and sights in the kitchen. The oil sizzling. The sweet smell of spices and fried onion. Bakugou, staring at you expectantly with an undecipherable expression on his stupidly attractive face as you part your lips and slowly, tentatively lick the spoon.
He shouldn’t have need for oxygen, but his breath hitches all the same.
“So, how is it?” He asks, voice so low it’s almost a whisper.
“Delicious,” you answer, but in truth, it’s not the food you’ve been paying attention to.
He positively glows in the kitchen lights. Like some otherworldly, ethereal being, and in a way, he is one. You look at him and have to fight the impulse to touch, hold, never let go.
“That’s all?” He questions further, with that adorable frown of his.
And his lips. They look soft. If you were to kiss him, right now, right there next to the stove under the lights and in your silly little apron, would he reciprocate it?
Stop it. You’re being disgusting. He’d probably, no, certainly think so, and push you away and never talk to you again.
“Why don’t you taste it as well?” You blurt out, realizing your error far too late. The spoon has already been pushed to his mouth, conveniently open as he was about to say something – most likely tell you to get fucked – and then he swallows and his eyes widen like he’s discovered something amazing.
“You…” You start to say, only to get immediately cut off by him.
“How in hell is this possible?!” He shouts, but not angrily, more like he can’t hide his excitement. “I…could taste it. The onions. The carrots. The…the fucking chili.” He brings the spoon to his mouth one more time and here it is again – that glint in his eyes. To the evident surprise of both you and him, he laughs, a rich, beautiful sound you’ll never get sick of.
Happy Bakugou is a foreign concept, but you like it very much.
“You kidding me?!” You exclaim. “That’s excellent news! Does that mean your sense of smell is back as well?”
He sniffs the air before grinning widely. “It wasn’t there just a few minutes ago, but now there’s no mistaking it. That’s some good fucking fried rice we made, all right.”
We made. You and Bakugou, together. And for some reason he can feel like a human now? You can only speculate why that happened, but maybe your grandma would know? She’s the one who introduced you to the world of the not-living, after all. You have to ask her, gosh, she���s going to be angry with you for not giving her a call in so long – but first, first you have to hug Bakugou.
And so you do. You squeeze him for all you are worth and he responds in kind, arms wrapping around your back to press you even further into his firm chest. As always, he’s slightly cold to the touch, but warms up quickly enough.
The hug lasts for ages, and as much as you wish to fall asleep like this, the food must be getting cold. You wonder if he can eat it with you – it’s not too much to hope for, is it?! – but when you attempt to wriggle free from the embrace, he grunts and presses you against him even tighter. And that’s when you notice, when you feel it, the unmistakable hardness poking you in the lower belly.
Oh. So that works too.
This is impossible, and flattering, and far too tempting to not comment on.
“All that just from a hug?” You tease, as if you yourself weren’t practically dripping just from him spoon-feeding you.
“Shut up and kiss me.”
Well, he doesn’t have to tell you twice.
You kiss him like your life depends on it. He appreciates the intensity of it, judging by the groan escaping from low in his throat, the way his hands drop from your sides to knead at your ass. He slides his tongue into your mouth, rubbing it against yours. You’re only kissing and your head is spinning already.
He nibbles at your lower lip before releasing it and looking you straight in the eye. “You want more?” He asks, urgently.
Incapable of responding verbally, you only nod.
He gives your ass one last playful squeeze before lifting you up onto the kitchen counter, the fried rice all but forgotten as you dive in for another heated kiss. Bakugou, you find, is a very hands-on kind of lover. His calloused palms venture under your shirt, exploring your smooth flesh and curves with unhidden curiosity.
“So soft,” he informs you in between kisses, making you blush even more if that’s even possible, “and you smell nice.”
You disagree, seeing as you’re in a sore need of a shower after the long day you had, but you’re not about to argue with a man who has his tongue in your mouth.
He lifts the hem of your shirt and pulls it over your head, chuckling when you get trapped, and gasping when you free yourself and grind against his still clothed cock in revenge.
It soon becomes painfully clear the kitchen won’t survive you fucking in it once you knock over the bottle of chili and it spills on the ground, creating an ominous red pool.
“Bed?” You say, breathlessly, and he agrees. “Bed.”
You stumble into the bedroom as in a drunken haze, and while you remember him undressing you on your way to the bed, him becoming suddenly naked was not your doing. Well, he is a ghost. You can’t exactly say you’re bothered by it, as it saved you significant time and trouble.
“Before we do this,” you whimper as he lavishes your neck and chest with wet, open-mouthed kisses, “I need t-to tell you…”
He slides further down your body, positioning himself between your thighs. Your breath catches in your throat, knowing what he’s about to do. “B-Bakugou…”
“You can tell me later. Just relax now,” he purrs, his hands spreading your legs further apart. You close your eyes and press the side of your face into your pillow.
The very first touch of his tongue to your overheated sex is enough to send your mind reeling. You whine, wanting more pressure, but he keeps you in place, keeps teasing you with short little licks and bites to your inner thighs. It’s infuriating. Every time he brings you close to the edge, he purposefully slows down, robbing you of your release. It’s hardly fair; he hasn’t so much as felt anything in years, you’ve only gone without sex for months, so how does he find himself with so much more patience than you?
“I think you’re ready for it now,” he notes, finally reappearing from between your legs.
“I have been forever now, thanks for noticing,” you roll your eyes.
He narrows his eyes at you. “If you don’t like it…”
“Never said I don’t! Shit…look…j-just do it already, okay?!” You bite your lip, looking at him pleadingly without actually saying please. You’ll save begging for later. Something’s telling you you’ll need it.
Bakugou’s expression is that of concentration as he aligns himself with your entrance. “Say if it hurts.”
It doesn’t. You thought it would be cold too, but he’s just as warm as a real man. He is a real man, you remind yourself. He certainly takes you like one, all hard thrusts and savage grunts as he chases his, and your release.
And God fucking damn it, he’s beautiful. Illuminated by moonlight, shining with sweat – yours? Do ghosts even sweat? – producing all those sounds that are pure music to your ears. You run your fingers through his spiky, soft blonde hair, scratch his scalp and have him reward you with a particularly deep thrust. It’s usually awkward with new lovers, not knowing what they prefer, having to learn it the hard way, but with Bakugou, you fuck like you were made for each other.
This round – because you know there will be more – looks like it’s going to be a short one. You’re too overstimulated from his earlier ministrations and Bakugou, well, he isn’t exactly pacing it out with how fast he slides in and out of you.
In the last few seconds, as need for release overdrives all his senses, he grabs onto your hips so hard you’re sure he’ll leave bruises, and buries himself into you for one last time before coming with a shudder. You’re close behind, burying your face into his shoulder while babbling incoherently. You don’t believe you ever came this hard. Your ears are ringing, heart beating fast like a hummingbird’s.
“What?” He asks, petting your hair comfortingly as you try to catch your breath. He sounds fine, if not a little dazed. His chest does not heave with uneven breaths, nor is he all red and sweaty in the face. And, the wetness sticking to your inner thighs is all your own.
“You wanted to say something, before,” he murmurs, as you begin to calm down, “so what was it?”
You meet his eyes with your own, finally. You must look like a mess, but he doesn’t seem fazed. Instead he stares at you like you’re the only thing on Earth he doesn’t hate, and the feeling’s mutual.
“I love you, you asshole,” you sob.
“I love you too idiot. So whatcha crying for?” He frowns, wiping a stray tear with his thumb. You lean into his touch, drawing a sharp breath before answering.
“I’m just so damn happy.” And you are. Really. You’ve spent years believing there wasn’t a person alive who could possibly love you in a way that you deserved, and turns out you were right.
You lie there for a while, limbs intertwined, dreaming up a wonderful future together, until you’re propelled to sit up by a terrible thought. “The food!”
“Shh. You can still microwave the shit.”
“But it won’t taste as good! I don’t wanna let your good food go to waste…”
“Hey.” He pulls you back into the bed just as you were going to leave it. “I can bring it to you. Get some rest, pipsqueak.”
Fried rice in bed?! The man wants to spoil you.
And you don’t mind in the least.
#bakugou x reader#bakugou katsuki x reader#bakugou x you#bakugou smut#if you are reading this i am sorry mom
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she used to be mine (x) waitress au
summary: Inspired by the broadway musical. Y/N Beck is a pie baking force to be reckoned with. She’s pregnant with her lazy ass husband, Quentin Beck’s baby. As everything around her turns upside down, Doctor James Buchanan Barnes charms his way into her life.
pairing: Y/N x Bucky
tags are closed
chapter 10: I didn’t plan it
Two months pass and I realize it’s only a matter of weeks before I meet my baby girl. I’ve been working hard to save more money but I’m still not even close to the amount I’m gonna need for the birth AND the divorce. It’s been really hard to put my pride aside and accept the help my friends offer, I guess I’m used to being left to my own devices since I was very young. But I love my little family. Bucky and Sam drive me home every night after closing and Wanda has been bringing me gifts for the baby. Nat’s contact will be handling my divorce and she said they would give us a payment plan so that it won’t be so difficult to pay all at once. I still don’t understand how that’s gonna work but I trust her. She’s being very strange though, but Natasha’s one of those people who deal with issues on their own and compartmentalizes everything. Still, I’m worried about her. I guess I can’t judge her, we’re the same in that department.
Old Nick hasn’t been around much lately, says he’s taking care of his health. Guess my pies aren’t the healthiest meal for an eighty-something year old man. Maybe I should start adding more vegetables to my own diet, I’m creating life inside of me after all.
-
“Hey boys, what can I getcha?” Wanda flirts with Steve at the counter and Bucky laughs, he seems to be getting used to their corny, slightly inappropriate conversations.
“Oh I don’t know, sweetheart. What’s the special pie today?” Steve flirts back at her.
“Well, Y/N made her famous ‘Slutty brownie pie’ today and if you want, I could make it even sluttier-”
“Guys! Not in front of my salad, please!” Sam scolds them and Bucky’s just laughing at Steve’s red cheeks. Wanda rolls her eyes at him and motions Steve to follow her away from the group.
I come out of the kitchen ready to leave and see Steve and Wanda making out in the far corner of the counter, while Bucky and Sam talk about an AC/DC concert they both attended back when they didn’t know each other. Sam’s also taking care of his diet it seems, but Bucky’s stuffing his mouth with my brownie pie. I don’t actually understand how he can eat so much and still look absolutely stunning.
“Guys! Keep it in your pants. It’s movie night, we’re leaving!” I scold them and Steve’s blush has reached his ears and neck at this point.
“Thank you! I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who thinks those two are such horny teenagers”. Sam throws his hands in the air and hangs his apron, ready to go.
“I think they’re adorable, but I’m tired and hungry, and I don’t want any more pie today so let’s go, where’s Nat?” I look around trying to find the redhead.
“She said she needed to be alone tonight but she’ll be at the party tomorrow”. Wanda says and we share the same worried look on our eyes.
“Oh, okay. Shall we?”
We get to Bucky’s apartment and today’s pick is on Steve cause tomorrow’s his birthday. He chooses 1986’s Labyrinth. We order pizza and sushi and enjoy the magical spectacle on the screen.
I can’t stop thinking about my divorce and all the bills that are waiting for me in the future. Raising a child isn’t cheap. Bucky holds my hand at one point, under the blanket that we’re sharing. I guess he senses my worry and tries to make it go away. I’m glad he does. Lately I’ve just been letting myself fall for him because fighting against it it’s a lost cause. He’s the sweetest guy, brings me home safely anytime he’s able to, he cares about my friends and most importantly, he’s patient and doesn’t rush me to do anything I’m not ready to do. His parents raised him right, what’s a girl supposed to do?
-
Next day is organized chaos, thanks to Wanda and her frantic need for everything to be perfect. She really loves Steve and he’s a good guy. They deserve each other, truly.
Nat’s helping Sam hang decorations around Wanda’s backyard. It’s a mixture of 4th of July colors and Happy Birthday signs. We’re not doing the whole fireworks thing, since Wanda’s birthday present for Steve wouldn’t like the noise. But there’s a flatscreen set up to watch them on tv.
I’m in the kitchen, chopping some tomatoes for a pico de gallo I’m making. Bucky’s setting up the barbecue outside and I can see him from the window. He keeps messing it up and starting again, making the funniest, exasperated faces. I told him Steve could do it in no time but he insisted he’s the birthday boy and should just enjoy this day.
Speaking of Steve, he’s on his way. It ain’t a surprise party but we still wanted to set everything up before he got here.
-
We’re all enjoying the cool summer breeze, watching football on a projector Wanda set up in the backyard, we have hotdogs and guacamole and chips, the guys have beer which of course I can’t have, but Bucky was kind enough to make me an entire jug of pink lemonade just for me. I’m not really interested in the game, to be honest and my bladder is full so I separate myself from Buck and look around to realize Natasha isn’t here. Since this is not my house and I need to find the restroom I ask Wanda for some help instead and we enter the house together.
She points me to the toilet and I open the door to find Nat and Sam wrapped around each other, half naked.
“OH MY GOD! What’s happening here?!” I immediately cover my eyes and close the door.
“Y/N, you’re okay? What is it? Don’t tell me you found a rat cause I hate them so much, Gosh I told Steve we should’ve done this at my place, is way cleaner”.
“I- I- no- um. It’s not a rat it’s a- um. I’m sorry-”
“Y/N! Let me explain-” Natasha comes out the restroom with her blouse half buttoned up, makeup almost completely ruined.
“I don’t- I don’t need you to expla- can somebody please lead me to another bathroom or something? I’m about to piss myself!”
“Sure, honey, let’s go”. Wanda grabs me, she apparently understands what’s going on, looking at Nat’s disheveled state and brings me upstairs to another room.
-
“What’s going on? I heard the girls yell”. Bucky enters the house and sees Sam and Nat cornered in the kitchen, looking like they’ve seen a ghost.
“Nothing, man. I think it’s time for me to leave. Say happy birthday to Steve for me”. Sam kisses Nat on the cheek and leaves the house.
“Wha- Natasha, are you okay?” Bucky stands there awkwardly, trying to break the tension.
“I’m fine, but the girls and I need to talk privately. Would you distract Steve for us? He doesn’t need to hear about this. Tell him we’re talking about pregnancy stuff with Y/N or something”.
“Oh-kay? Are you sure you’re alright though, you seem-”
“I’m fine, Bucky. Now go talk to Steve, he’s out there alone on his birthday”.
“Well, he looks fine! He’s watching the Patriots destroy the- Okay got it, see you later”. Bucky awkwardly scurries down to the kitchen and grabs a couple more beers and brings them outside.
-
“Knock-knock”. Natasha enters Steve’s bedroom and sees Wanda sitting on the bed.
“Hey”.
“Hey. Y/N still peeing?”
“I don’t think so. But I think she’s crying”.
“God she’s always so dramatic”.
“Hey! You should’ve told us! Do you know how worried about you we’ve been? We thought you were sick or something! Not wanting to hang out with us. We were supposed to plan a baby shower for her by now but you’ve been M.I.A.”.
“ I know, and I’m sorry”. Nat sighs and knocks on the bathroom door.
“Y/N, come out. We know you’re done so let’s go. We need to talk”.
-
I wipe my tears. I don’t know why I feel betrayed. Sam and Nat are my best friends, I should be happy for them. Damn hormones making me cry like a little baby every time something’s out of place.
“Hey”. I sniff and open the door to see Natasha rolling her eyes at me.
“Why the hell are you crying?”
“Oh I’m sorry for being a hormonal mess but seeing two of my best friends, one of them who’s married by the way, making out like horny teenagers would definitely cause me some distress!”
“Uh huh, and how is this any different to you and Bucky holding hands and making eyes at each other every single minute? May I remind you, you’re still married too!”
“Oh my God, Natasha, you did not! I’m getting a divorce, you know that!”
“Yeah, I know. And I understand and not make a fuss about it, until you decide to judge me for the exact same thing you’ve been doing!”
“Why- ah. Sorry, I know I’m looking like a complete hypocrite right now. It’s just- you guys are my friends and you’ve been acting so strange lately, it had me so worried and I feel like I could’ve been there for you, just as much as you’ve been there for me. You guys are my sisters”.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. But Sam and I wanted to figure out what we wanted first and you know how I am. I fall down the rabbit hole and I keep it to myself cause I’m too proud to admit I’m weak”.
“Natasha, please. You’re anything BUT weak. You’re the one who’s always showing us how strong we really are!” Wanda chimes in and holds both mine and Nat’s hands in hers.
“Okay girls, listen up, from now on we need to make a pact that whenever one of us starts to close off from each other, we will make an intervention for that person and keep ourselves accountable for our shitty ways to cope with men, and life, and money problems, and cleaning obsessions, is that clear?” Nat kisses the top of my head and Wanda laughs at her declaration.
Somehow I feel like everything’s about to change, hopefully for the better.
-
chapter 11: she used to be mine
#she used to be mine#waitress au#waitress musical#bucky x reader#doctor!Bucky#waitress!reader#avengers au#marvel au#Bucky Barnes#natasha romanoff#wanda maximoff#sam wilson#quentin beck#Steve Rogers#nina writes
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Breakable Things
Martin is big.
Not in a strapping film-star kind of way. Not tall or broad-shouldered, not a ‘mountain of a man’ or a ‘tall drink of water’ or anything like that.
Just big (a dumb, blunt, smack of a word.)
He was big as a lad, he’s bigger now. He always had the kind of body that inspired too many teachers to push him toward wrestling, football, rugby even (apparently his dad had been involved with the clubs. Apparently he’d been a fair tighthead back in the day, before he left Martin’s mum, and left Martin to gather up the pieces, cutting his fingertips on every one.)
It didn’t take Martin’s teachers or schoolmates long to realize that Martin’s size did not equate to any sort of athletic skill. And once the - inevitable rumours started circulating around Year Seven, well. Any motivation he might have had to be ‘part of a team’ was drained out of him like a tire going flat (that metaphor needs work. Doesn’t really convey the violence, try again.) His motivation left him like the air being knocked from his lungs, shove after hard shove against the lockers.
Martin is strong.
Physically. He doesn’t know why - got it from his father, didn’t he - his wide back, his thick fingers, his solid legs. He took a cricket bat to the face once - ought to have broken his nose, blackened his eyes, but it didn’t. Got in a car accident when he was seventeen, didn’t even crack a rib. Flipped the whole thing into the ditch, and his mum screamed herself hoarse when she found out, but Martin walked away from it. Physically. He walked away.
He doesn’t bruise easily. If he cuts his hand chopping vegetables, it heals quickly. He doesn’t have any scars (he has stretch marks though, all over his stomach and thighs, and for all that he is strong, he’s soft. He’s soft and he knows it, all pudding and poetry and fear, oh, fear most of all. It's pathetic how easy he is, how quickly he caves, rolls over and does whatever's asked of him.
In most situations, anyway. With most people.)
“Why don’t you want me coming with you?”
Jon is in his office, seated in front of that bloody tape recorder as always. The sight of him there is so familiar, like the negatives from a film camera. Like even if Jon wasn’t there, the imprint of him would still linger, white as a ghost against the darkness.
He doesn’t seem surprised to hear Martin’s voice. Neither does he glance up from the desk where he’s shuffling papers, gathering up books. His hands move constantly, restless and bird-boned and Martin is always looking at them, even when he tries not to.
“I don’t want you getting hurt.” Jon’s voice is low, rough with exhaustion, and it makes Martin wince. Makes him want to fuss (when is the last time the man got a decent night's sleep? Someone should bring him a cup of tea, someone should rub his shoulders, someone should do something -
He knows he has a caretaking thing. He knows it’s not - good. And the sharp ones get to him like anything, he wants to win them over in a pathetic, salivating way. It’s a sickness, but -
- but there was a point when it suddenly stopped being about Martin’s Whole Thing, and just started being about Jon.
He’ll talk to someone about it, swear. A professional, even. If the world doesn’t end.)
“It’s fine if you get hurt, though, is it?”
Jon does look up now, and Martin forces himself not to take a step back under the dark-lashed scrutiny. The heavy eyebrows, the shimmer of scars. Sometimes Jon’s skin reminds Martin of the surface of a planet, a rough and distant moon. He wonders how it is that Jon can be so narrow, so small, and still take up so much room in the Archives, and in the world, and in Martin’s big (and soft and so so stupid ) heart.
“It is my job.”
“No. This - this is not your job.” Martin struggles to put the words together in the face of this vast, ridiculous injustice. “Going off to - what? Do battle with some sort of evil, circussy death-cult, that’s not your job . You don’t get paid for that.”
Jon snorts, derisive, and Martin wishes he could be angry. It’d be easier if he was angry with Jon.
But he isn’t.
“Melanie needs you here. And I can’t be - there, thinking about -“ Jon stops. He swallows and looks back down at the scattered papers on his desk. A snowfall of horror stories, laid out neatly on Hammermill Bright White. “Worrying about you.”
(“Leave it, Martin, I’m fine just - leave me alone -” Mum smacks him away with a vein-bruised hand.)
“Because I’ll make a mess of things - is that what you think? I can help you, I want to help you-”
“I will feel better knowing you’re here.”
“And how do you think I’ll feel? Knowing you - you and, um Tim and Daisy - are out risking your lives while I’m sat on my hands, drinking tea, being useless -”
“You aren’t.” Jon’s voice is suddenly loud, as if he’s in pain. He pinches the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. “And I don’t - I can’t - you’ll be helpful here. The Institute needs you, and Melanie needs you, and I -”
-don’t, Martin hears.
Though Jon doesn’t say it, Martin hears it.
“Right,” he manages. “All right.”
He should go. He’s going to go. But he lingers for a moment more, committing as much of Jonathan Sims to memory as he can. The angles of him, compact and rigid with anxiety. The fall of hair across his forehead, ink black shot through with grey. Thin pink lines that a blade left below his jaw, a ripple of lacy scar tissue on his hand (and Martin mostly, mostly doesn’t wonder what those scars would feel like against his own skin. On his shoulder or - or sliding down the length of his throat. At the back of his neck, tugging him into a kiss.)
Come back, come back, come fucking back. Martin isn’t religious, never one for church, but it’s as much of a prayer as he’s ever said.
“Is there something else you want?” Jon asks, terse and tired and - for one thoughtless moment he is the Archivist and only the Archivist, and Martin can’t help but gasp out a shocked, “yes.”
Jon knocks a book off the desk. It slams to the floor loud as a gunshot, and Martin flinches.
“Sorry,” he says quickly, “I’m sorry, I -”
“No, I’m - I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking -”
“It’s fine - I know you didn’t -”
“I would never -”
“But you can.”
There’s a horrible silence, like the moment after the tape recorder shuts off, statement ends. Martin feels sick to his stomach and Jon looks like - like -
He doesn’t know what Jon looks like. Maybe that’s why he keeps talking.
“You can ask me. What I - what I want.” Heat is rushing to his face, a blush that feels like thorns. Jon just stares at him, and this was a bad, bad idea. It’s obvious, isn’t it? Jon doesn’t even need to ask the question, probably knows the whole awful story just by looking at him. “If you wanted.”
When Jon says nothing, just keeps staring, Martin tries desperately to double back.
“Never mind, that was -” He flaps his hands a bit, moving towards the door. His shoulders hunch, an old defense mechanism, useless body trying to make itself look as harmless as possible. Trying to make itself so small it’s beyond notice (it never works.) “I shouldn’t have. I can’t believe I - just - be safe. All right? That’s all I -”
“Martin -”
“That was - stupid, such a - I’m sorry, I only -”
“-what do you want?”
The words are spoken quietly. Barely above a whisper. But Martin doesn’t need to hear them - his whole body hears them, and suddenly every syllable feels golden in his mouth. Saying it out loud isn’t frightening or humiliating, it’s easy. Answering the Archivist is like falling asleep in a patch of sun-warmed grass, or gasping for air after holding your breath underwater.
“I want you to come back.” It’s honey dripping off his tongue. “I want you to come back for me. And I want the world not to end, and I want to know what your hair feels like, whether it’s soft or coarse and whether I can tell the difference between the black parts and the silvery parts just by touching them.”
Jon is absolutely frozen behind his desk. He might not even be breathing, but that’s okay; Martin can’t remember why anyone needs to breathe.
“And I want to help you. And the others. I want to matter. And I want Sasha to be okay, and I want Tim to be okay, and I want Elias to finally face some fucking consequences for once. I want to take you on holiday and - and watch you while you sleep so you know you don’t have to be afraid. I want to wake you up if you have nightmares and make you tea in the morning and bake things for you, and - and I want to kiss you, even if it’s just once. Only once, just so I know, and only if you want me to. That’s what I want.”
The sweetness ends the moment the last word leaves his mouth. Suddenly the honey is cloying and acrid, suddenly his heart is unsteady with embarrassment, skipping beats like he’s just had a shot of adrenaline. Martin chokes on a breath and slams his eyes shut against the spinning room.
“Fuck.” His voice cracks on the word, insult to injury, and he claps a hand over his mouth. “Oh God - I’m - oh God. That was -” He barely remembers what he said, which is the only thing keeping him upright at the moment. He just knows it was soft, pathetically soft. Even his fantasies are as weak as his jawline. “I’m going to - go, I’ll go. I shouldn’t have -”
“W-wait.”
Martin doesn’t want to open his eyes. But he does. Just in time to see Jonathan Sims stand up. Start to walk around the desk.
And Jon is not big. Or strong, physically. Martin knows a bit about anatomy, took a couple art classes, was always fascinated by the bones of things. As Jon steps closer, Martin can only see the breakable things about him. Collarbones, fingers, bridge of his nose. What’s that bone in the arm that everyone’s always breaking?
Humerus.
Ulna.
Jon is not strong, and he is scarred, and he is small and fragile and God he is the bravest person Martin’s ever met.
“Martin, you -” Jon stops in front of him and Martin looks down, gaze almost level with the top of Jon’s head. “You can ask me. What - what I want.”
He’s shaking, Martin can see it - and it makes him realize that he’s shaking too. He barely manages the “What -” before he forgets how to say the rest, forgets how words work (but Jon, Jon is brave.)
“I think - I would like -” Jon reaches for Martin’s hand, and lifts it to his mouth. Presses a dry kiss right in the centre of Martin’s palm.
It’s a ruining sort of softness, and Martin’s big (physically) and strong (physically) but somehow Jon knows where his weaknesses are - the loose dragonscale, the slipped disc.
(And of course, after this the world will almost end (but not quite.) After this, there will be Elias and Martin’s humiliating tears over a statement he knew damn well, a beholding that came as no surprise to anyone.
After this Jon will die.
Almost. Not quite.)
But now: Jon is murmuring, “I think -” as he leans up to kiss Martin (and his warm mouth is shocking and brief, a knife sliding home.)
But now: Jon is still shaking when their lips part, and Martin’s hands are on either side of his face, tips of his fingers settled lightly in Jon's hair (it’s softer than anything, as it turns out, and the silvery parts are softest of all.)
Their foreheads press together, both of them breathing harder than one kiss should warrant. And Martin doesn’t say any of those other things he wants, any of the white-hot words he’s scratched down on paper or typed into the notes app. He doesn’t say anything about the shape of Jon’s shoulder-blades through that thin grey t-shirt he wears, doesn’t bring up any metaphors about fading light or seaglass or breakable things that are also strangely beautiful.
Because what good is poetry at the end of the world?
“Be careful,” Martin says instead (and Jon won’t be.)
“Come back,” he says (and Jon isn’t going to. Not for a long, long time).
And hours later, standing in that empty office, Martin will see the lighter that Jon left on his desk. He will notice the black handful of ashes in the rubbish bin, and wonder what Jon was burning.
And Martin is soft. People-pleasing and pathetic and terribly, terribly in love.
But Jonathan Sims kissed him once (once) and for a moment, in that office, with a small blue flame leaping in his hand -
Martin is not afraid.
#the magnus archives#jonmartin#trying to remember how this writing thing goes#some consensual beholding between bros#Season 3 episode 117#missing scene#homophobia cw#bullying cw
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It’s Glaringly Obvious
More Ned-does-it-wrong Whumptober for your fluffy enjoyment!
Prompt 12: I think I've broken something (broken bones)
Prompt 30: Where did that come from? (hiding an injury)
***
At least one of Link's fingers is broken. It's glaringly obvious, as he's been favoring his right hand while cooking and opening doors and even his usual exuberant hand gestures are a little lopsided.
He's otherwise acting as if nothing's wrong. He's gone about his usual daily chores, and done his usual exercises (although he did announce that it was "leg day" as if she ever had any interest at all in his training regimen). He went into town and bought ingredients for dinner and while he was there, he helped find three lost cows, so it must not be hurting him that badly.
She notes with suspicion that he's wearing full gloves today.
Definitely hiding something.
He grins at her across the table as they sit down to dinner (which he made). Maybe she's wrong. He picks up his spoon with his left hand. Maybe she's right.
She bows her head in a prayer of thanks for the meal, and throws in a prayer at the end for Link's hand.
"How was your day?" she asks.
"Good," he says. He scoops the whole radish out of his soup and balances it on his spoon. "I found some cows."
"That is impressive. And how are you feeling?"
He thinks for a second. Then says, "I feel kinda gross. Cows are gross."
"Indeed."
They eat in silence for a moment. They're sitting catty-corner from each other, as there's a large chunk of a dissected guardian turret on the other side of the table. She watches him from the corner of her eye before getting an idea. She’s going to make him use his hand.
She reaches over and places her own hand on his knee.
He looks up at her, curious, but when he sees her meeting his gaze head on, his face softens. The smile he gives her is fond. He shifts slightly closer to her in his seat so she doesn't have to reach so far.
He does not cover her hand with his own. He does not remove her hand from his person.
Instead, he goes back to eating.
Frustratingly, dinner ends without her gaining any more information about his silly hand.
#
Link most likely has a broken rib. It's glaringly obvious, as he has been visibly wincing every time he's lifted something or reached for something or turned or sat down since he came home from his monster hunt. When he goes into the storage area to get plates for dinner and he thinks she can't see him, he makes an attempt at stretching, reaching an arm over his head. But then he hisses and shrinks in on himself, slapping his elbow to his wounded flank and grabbing at his side with his other hand.
She stomps to the doorway, plants her hands on her hips, and demands, "Are you hurt?"
He spins on her, his eyes wide with the knowledge that he's been caught.
"No," he says. "Just--you know--stretching." He draws his arm across his chest and locks it in place with his opposite forearm. He grins at her and then gives a happy sigh as he releases.
He definitely just stretched the uninjured side.
She narrows her eyes at him.
On further consideration, she's unsure if it's a broken rib or some kind of flesh wound. She analyzes how his tunic is lying across his side, trying to detect the bulge of a bandage.
She needs to get a look at it. Or, barring that, she needs him to admit that there's something wrong with his side. And then let her look at it.
He collects a basket full of ingredients to haul outside to the cooking pot, and she moves to grab it for him.
"I got it," he says, one of his eyes twitching as he lifts it.
Again, she tries to take it. "Let me get it for you. You shouldn't be lifting that much weight."
He twists away from her with a grunt. "Why not?"
"Because you're hurt."
"I'm fine. I think you just want to stand too close to me." He winks at her.
She flushes and takes an instinctive step back.
He grins and walks past her and--
Ugh! Absolutely infuriating.
Outside, he's set himself to chopping up vegetables with tiny little chops. She takes a seat nearby and ponders how to make Link crack. She needs to ask him to do some serious physical activity so he'll call uncle. Or would that just hurt his body more when he refuses to hurt his pride? She doesn't actually want to injure him really.
It's a puzzle.
He's stirring slowly when she gets an idea. Wanting to stand too close to him, is she?
She scoots closer. And closer. And then leans against him under the guise of smelling dinner. She looks over at him from just a few short inches away and beams. "That smells delicious."
He smiles back. Leans against her a bit before turning back their meal.
She reaches up and traces the stitching on the edge of his tunic, letting her fingers drag. When he turns back to her, she gives him a flirty look from under her eyelashes. At least she hopes it's flirty. She's not an expert.
He gives her a bemused look. "You're frisky tonight." Then he turns back and stirs the soup some more.
Frisky!? She is indignant. Yes, she is--technically--trying to seduce him in hopes that he'll go "Oh ouch! My side!" But "frisky"?
He calls her frisky and then turns back to his pilaf?
That will not do at all.
With a huff, she snatches his spoon from his hand, throws it aside, twists so she's straddling his lap, and kisses him.
Let's see him turn away from that!
He makes a muffles noise of surprise, but then grabs for her back and pulls her closer. The kiss turns eager, desperate, and--wait, she had a mission. He was supposed to refuse her because he was so injured and she was supposed to throw a victorious finger in his face and--oh shit, she's kissing Link.
She doesn't stop kissing him.
He moans into her mouth, and she's not sure if it's in delight or discomfort. Maybe she shouldn't be doing this. Because of his injury.
Neither of them stop.
A few minutes later, one of his hands is in her shirt, and she's rucking up his tunic, and it's snagged on something, and--
He breaks the kiss with a curse, and she blinks at him in confusion until her senses return. Her hand is most definitely grazing a bandage. She yanks his shirt up to his armpits for a better look.
"Ah ha!" she says. She grins at him, but she's much more breathless than she was in her imaginings of this moment. "I knew it."
"You're very smart," he agrees, then grabs the back of her head and drags her in for another kiss.
#
Link has been shot in the leg. It’s glaringly obvious, as the arrow is still there, sticking out the side right under his knee. The leg gives out beneath him as he stumbles towards her, and he falls to one knee.
“Oh Goddess, Link!” She runs to him, bending to grip his shoulder.
Wincing, he says, “It’s fine. I’m good.”
“You are most certainly not good. You’ve been shot in the leg!”
“I’m...It’s fine.”
She frowns at that, and then straightens up and crosses her arms over her chest. If he’s fine, then he doesn’t need her help. “I see, so you’re just on the ground for the fun of it.”
“I’m not on the ground. This is...a kneel.”
“Well then, excuse me. Carry on.”
“I...meant to be down here.”
“Oh? Tying your shoe, are you?”
His boots do not have laces, but he looks down to check anyway.
“I...um...” His eyes dart around for an excuse.
She waits with pursed lips until his frantic searching lands on her face.
“Um. Will...you marry me?”
She blinks at him. And then explodes. “I beg your pardon!?”
He puts some effort into making his voice sound more confident, as if that will make a difference. “That’s what I’m doing down here. Asking you to marry me.”
He reaches for her hand, and she bats him away.
“I can’t believe you would—This is— Ugh! What on earth would you do if I said yes?”
“...Get...married?”
“Ugh!” She throws her arms in the air and starts to pace. Link, of course, stays where he is. “I can’t believe you would be so flippant about—This is a serious matter, and—am I’m just a joke to you?”
“No! What? Zelda, marry me.”
“Why would I do such a foolish thing?”
His brows crinkle in confusion. Or maybe pain. “Because I love you?”
“Ha!”
She considers leaving him here in the road.
“Are...you turning me down?” he asks.
“Are you seriously asking me to marry you instead of admitting you’ve been shot?”
He nods. “I’m seriously asking you to marry me.”
She stops pacing and narrows her eyes at him. He gives her his most hopeful look.
“Fine,” she says. “I’ll agree when you admit there’s an arrow in your knee.”
He stares at her. Then he licks his lower lip. It takes him a very long time to say, “Um. Clearly you can see...”
He gestures at his leg and trails off.
She folds her arms again, stares him down, and waits.
“Zelda,” he says. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you. And I’ve been shot. In the leg. With an arrow.”
...Well. That’s...
“Actually, there’s also a second one in my shoulder.”
“Link!”
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