bakerstreet | The Cuddle Meme

The Cuddle Meme

The Cuddle Meme

HOW IT WORKS:
❧ Post a blank comment with your character's name, canon, and any preferences.
❧ Use RNG to choose your cuddle scenario (or choose your own).
❧ Cuddle!

CUDDLE SCENARIOS:
① Sweet dreams
It's been a long day and all you want to do is sleep or just rest your eyes for a bit. Hopefully whoever is close by doesn't mind if you use them as a blanket.

② Stormy weather
The heavy rain, thunder and lightning won't be letting up anytime soon. Luckily, it's the perfect weather to stay indoors and snuggle up close and keep warm.

③ Lazy dancer
It's the end of a party, or maybe it's only the two of you, but the tempo is slow and the lights are low. Let your dance partner take the weight and just sway.

④ Surprise attack
Time to invade someone's personal space. Are they working too much and need a distraction? Maybe you just wanted to brighten their day. Either way, they won't see it coming.

⑤ Movie night
It can be on the sofa or in a darkened theater, but you've got your popcorn and someone to settle against during your favorite movie.

⑥ I love you, man
It's totally platonic, really. You're just very good friends, no matter what people like to think. But you just love your friend so much you want to hug them, whether they like it or not.

⑦ Jeepers creepers
Welp. You were just frightened. Was it a spider in the washroom, a ghost in the attic, a bad dream? Either way, you're looking for someone to cling to right now, and who better than that person right there?

⑧ Hurt and comfort
Whether you're sick in bed, just been dumped or suffered a traumatic event, you need someone to wrap their arms around you and make everything go away.

⑨ Sunday morning
Maybe you just had a wild night. Maybe there’s just not enough space at your place and you need to share your bed. Or maybe you just got really tired and someone else happened to be there. Doesn't matter because now the person with you looks way more comfortable than any blanket or pillow. Drape to your heart’s content.

⑩ Moment after
You just had incredible, vigorous sex (playing out is totally optional) and if you weren't a cuddler before, you are now. You're probably too exhausted to do anything else anyway. Just enjoy the moment.

⑪ Ménage à trois
Or four, or five. Get a group and cuddle away.

⑫ Player's choice
Pick one or make up your own!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All

When she'd heard that Shinra was sending someone from SOLDIER to deal with the monster problem, Tifa had known exactly how the story was supposed to go. She'd known without a doubt that the SOLDIER that walked through the archway to their town would have blond spiky hair and mountain blue eyes and he'd remember his promise. She would have smiled and he would have smiled and everything else would have just fallen into place. What exactly that falling into place would have been, she hadn't been sure, vague on the details but there had been some kind of change that would have formed at that point, even if it was only letters and - and things would have changed for the better, slipping forward into a future that held more than just a sleepy, frozen town and a sleepy, frozen life.

Instead she'd ended up with something else entirely and, if she was being honest, she hadn't quite forgiven everyone that had come from Shinra for not having blond hair and a secret under a sky full of stars inside of them. She'd been trying though, to be helpful, to make a good impression of her town, to help them do what they needed to do because it was her job and she honestly did want them to think well of her home but also because - if she did, if she was impressive enough - than maybe they'd remember her and maybe she'd come up in conversation sometime and maybe a certain mountain grown boy would overhear it and think of her. Maybe.

This is the first time she's stopped trying so hard.

His hands feel good. Cold but warmer than her skin felt before and it's that he's chaffing warmth and circulation back into her pale skin but it's that she hasn't really been touched in years and it's that he's taking care of her even though it's supposed to be the other way around and it's that they're together in this and it's that he really actually talked to her when he's been mute as long as she's known him... and it's a dozen other small little things that she doesn't think about so much as simply feel. He's been taking care of her this entire time, she realizes belatedly and with a strange little jolt through her stomach. Up at the reactor and again on the way to the cabin and now again by warming her up and giving her his gloves. It's not single-handedly slaying a great green dragon for her but...

but she thinks she likes this better.

So much better.

If only they could do this without him getting hurt. She hates that part of it and she hates that it always seems to be for her sake...

Careful of those wounds now, she curls herself as much around him as she can, moving slow so that she won't jar his hands and risk his stopping, little subtle moves. He's taking care of her and she wants to take care of him too but she can't warm him up the way he's doing to her so there have to be other ways to do it. Her hands shift from where they're against her chest to curl against his and she lifts her eyes from where her head's on his shoulder to look at the triangle of his chin.

"I guess it doesn't snow like this in Midgar. I'd like to visit - one day. It sounds busy and exciting and loud and - not Nibelheim. Anything's supposed to be possible there but I guess you already know that. It must be fun, living where there's so much to do and see and all those people. But - I wonder if it's easier to be lonely there. I'd probably feel lost surrounded by so many strangers.

Snow? In Midgar? If he wasn't so busy trying not to move or breathe or shift in any way at all that could possibly give him away (even his hands still, for an instant, as she makes herself more comfortable, before resuming their repetitive motion for warmth), he might have actually laughed.

No, it doesn't snow like this, in Midgar, and even if it did, there'd be little to no accumulation, on the ground. (A fact that should remain so, he thinks, as he imagines the kind of vile, sludgy, mako-scented mush that might drift on those bleak, black streets. Considering the source, any children building snowmen would be liable to get eaten by them.) In his two (and just the start of one) winters' experience, rainy and humid are more like the city's main staples, with a couple of months of potentially dangerous ice somewhere in the middle. Snowfall there comes more like an ornamental dressing on the atmosphere - heavy or light, Midgar's busy inner workings, close quarters, and general overpopulation melt most flakes before they ever touch that ground above the ground. A light dusting is the most inclement he's ever seen the weather, there, save for on the very outskirts.

(It did occur to him, once, that maybe they see it worse in the slums - but the thought was dismissed just as quick. No, the Plate would keep most of it from their homes and businesses, like.)

At any rate, he should be listening - not reminiscing - in case she asks him something important, or has some imminent change of heart over their current position. To him, of course, the latter seems likely, but there isn't anything new in her speaking just to speak spiel. He can still clearly recall thinking much the same of Midgar, himself (or, more accurately, of everywhere else in the world, outside of their suffocatingly small town).

Once she's finished, Cloud shakes his head, back inside that ungainly helmet, and softens a little at the edges, for what little's visible. (And when he lets go of her shoulders to rub his hands together, he cups them close to his mouth to catch his breath, and takes the opportunity to stealthily tuck his hair back behind his cowl. His heart hasn't quite quit its breakneck pace, but this is beginning to feel manageable, at least.)

It isn't that great, in the city, and he's come to find far more dreams find their way there to die than ever to flourish, but even with a voice he wouldn't want to tell her that. Because if somebody had put it like that to him, all those years ago, he might never have left. And even a big city packed with broken hearts and forgotten or forever stagnating ambitions turned out to be a little better than their isolation, here above the clouds. Midgar has its own cap of fog, polluted and smoggy with discontent, but even there he's seen the sun shine brighter.

She watches him with large eyes, dark in the dim light and, for the first time, those garnet depths aren't conflicted. She's still cold though not as cold as she was but that's not why she finally feels calm inside. She's felt so trapped since Cloud left, suddenly waking up to realize just how small and caught in time their town is and how nothing ever changes, it just eventually disappears. Her safe world still feels safe but it's starting to feel stifling too and she isn't sure how to escape the way Cloud and the other boys did. She isn't sure she's brave enough. She's not even sure that she wants to, not just yet because in her heart she knows she's still just a kid and she's not quite ready to give that entirely up yet even if she's starting to move toward it. She's been trapped, waiting for something to change and yet not wanting anything to just yet. The soldiers from Shinra are change and yet not the one she had prepared herself for and for the first time, she's finally willing to just let them be who they are instead of who they aren't and - she thinks she likes Clyde.

Not like like of course because that's silly but she likes him best out of them all probably simply because he seems the most accessible. She likes Zack too but he's so over the top sometimes that she wonders how much of it's an act and how much of it's real. It doesn't make her not like him but it does wear her out a little trying to figure it out. Now that she's finally quieted down enough to notice it, Clyde's actually surprisingly comforting because he's just here and so it's okay for her to just be here too without having to do anything extra to be impressive. He's kind of the way she's imagined SOLDIERs to be in fact because, in her mind, SOLDIER are heroes and heroes don't get to be heroes taking care of rusted out reactors and company secrets. Heroes are heroes because they save people. Clyde's saved her at least twice and even got himself hurt while doing it. To her, that makes him a hero but even at fifteen she's aware that maybe that's a naive way to think and certainly not something you tell anyone else, especially the guy doing it. So instead she curls just a little bit more around him, until she's finally tucked in close and wishes she could do more for him because so far he's been doing most everything for her and that's really not fair. Just because she wants to be rescued doesn't mean she wants to not be part of things too. So without moving her head from his shoulder, she offers up her hands in his oversized gloves.

"You can have them back. My hands are warmer now and it's not fair for yours to be cold. I'm sorry I'm not doing more to help. You're taking care of me and I can't think of what to do to take care of you to. I'll make it up to you though. I'll find a way."

At first, he can only stare, dumbfounded, at the sight of her hands so ungainly in those familiar gloves. The monochrome green filter through which he sees the world all too often, these days, doesn't help to settle their situation any more in reality - but he wouldn't dare remove his helmet just to put a little peace to his mind. He's shaking his head again before he knows it, anyway, breaking through the brief fog of uncertainty in his own mind and going straight to the easiest route. Denial comes like second nature, over matters of inconsequential self-indulgence, and by his judgement, this is nothing more than that. He'd give her the jacket off his back, too, if he thought she'd take it, now (if he had the guts to even offer, if he could just remember whether this one'd had his name printed inside the collar in blocky, black permanent letters when he put it on, this morning - the morning that might as well've happened some time in another millennium, now).

The point is- He won't take back the gloves, shifting back a fraction to cross his arms over his chest and tuck his bare hands between them and his sides. Almost equally as awkwardly, he mimics the motion of rubbing her back, in this way, to build up a fraction of friction; even just the lower half of his expression seems almost expectant in his cautious regard of her, now, as if to say See? They're warm enough. Not that they are, but it's the principle and so long as they don't go numb or black with frostbite beyond a Cure spell's restorative powers, he won't complain.

She doesn't have to make it up to him, either, but he can't find a way to articulate that in any measure of uncomfortably stiff gestures. As far as Cloud's concerned, he's done a pretty bang-up job here holding down the fort, and that's not worth the commendation. The best he expects to find waiting for him back in town is a double hit of Be more careful followed close on the heels by a little What were you thinking. Depending on where he drags himself first, he supposes, he might manage to skip about half of that - his mom, at least, doesn't have to know that he's been gone up the mountain getting caught in blizzards and trying to kill himself over a girl who probably doesn't even remember him.

Hopefully, sometimes, when the memory of that night on the well comes back to him like a big stupid mistake, embarrassing in the bone-deep way only ignorant childhood confidence can ever manage to be.

Another hesitant, assessing glance at her, sitting there pressed up close against him, doesn't help the passing thought to not linger, but it does give him half an idea. The jacket may be out of the question, but he's still got on a bit more than he needs. Accessorizing isn't exactly the Shinra infantry's forte (too may belt buckles and straps and every once in a while on an early morning after a late night, he still gets tangled up in the damn things), but Cloud's a little thankful for the overzealous flair when he starts to undo the scarf around his neck. The tight, high collar of his black undershirt will keep his neck warm enough. She doesn't have anything.

She kind of expected the head shake. She'd really used to Clyde shaking his head by this point and she wonders, a little, on the side, if he knows how to nod at all. She doesn't feel mean when she thinks it - just a bit sad, wondering what kind of person shakes their head all the time. She takes his negative though and nods herself silently, tucking her gloved hands back up against her chest. She understands. It's a gift. You're not supposed to argue with gifts because it makes whoever gave it to you feel bad because giving things to people is supposed to make you happy. At least it always makes her feel happy and so she's not at all sure what to do when she can't give anything in return as well. Maybe her being grateful will be a kind of gift too, sharing how nice he's made her feel with him? It always makes her feel better when she knows someone really does love what she's given them, like her dad wearing that silly old scarf she tried to knit for him before she gave up on the idea of knitting, even though they both know it's got too many holes to keep his neck warm.

She's finally quiet too, not trying to fill the silence with chatter and chirping comments. Most people like it when you talk, when you drown out the silence, but Clyde seems okay with it being quiet between them and it's a relief now that she's stopped to not have to keep trying to think of things to say. The look she gives him says she doesn't believe him about his hands though, lips twisting, eyes slanting a ruby look from the tops of their edges. The press of her lips though say she's not going to call him on it or argue the way she would have before to fill the silence. Instead she hunches her shoulders a little more toward him and thinks that, maybe, when his hands settle down, she'll take them between her own and see if maybe she can rub some warmth into them too the way he rubbed warmth into her. He's got very nice hands, because she notices, you can tell a lot about a person by their hands and everyone in Shinra seems to always cover theirs and she wonders if they know that they're hiding, but the point is he's got nice hands and she doesn't want them getting hurt any more than they already have.

Cloud must wear gloves, wherever he is off doing things for the company. She realizes she has no idea what his hands would look like because she didn't pay attention to other children's hands when she was still a child. Back then it was just adult hands that she noticed because it was so often what she saw of them first with head pats and offered cookies and gestures so rampant in her child's world.

Like mama's hands on the piano keys. The first set of hands she ever fell in love with.

Being tucked in close against someone is jogging those old memories because she doesn't get to be physically close to anyone these days and she misses it with only a partial realization of how desperate that missing is. Clyde is nice and solid though and even a little warm where she's tucked in close and he hasn't done anything to scare her by making her feel uncomfortable with looks or touches. When he starts to move, jostling her slightly, she lifts curious eyes to his face before sitting up a bit to give him space to move. It lets the cold that they'd driven off between them back in but maybe it's her imagination or maybe the stove is finally doing some good but it doesn't feel as miserable as it did before.

He's going for his scarf and he's way ahead of her because she hadn't realized he could wrap it around his hands to keep them warm until he was already working on it but she knows how the cold takes fine mechanics away from your fingers first and at least she can be helpful this way. So she slides her hands temporarily out of his gloves left in her lap and reaches up around his shoulders to help with fingers that are still warmed up enough to be a bit more nimble.

"I can help. They sure do make sure you guys have a lot of clothes to wear every day, don't they? I bet there are some places you wish they didn't." It's still chatter because it's her habit and because he won't talk back but it's not the chatter of before because she doesn't keep rolling with it, falling silent again so she can help him pull it clear and automatically straightening his collar afterward as she does.

Outside the wind hunts for cracks in the logs of the cabin but inside... inside Tifa doesn't think it's so bad anymore.

Her considering look is almost what he'd imagine something accusatory or suspicious might be, on that face, and Cloud feels his heart take another of those sudden, jerky leaps. The kind he'd almost forgotten, for a moment, as his pulse briefly evened in the nearly normal intermission between the shake of his head and her tacit acceptance of the mandate that she keep the gloves, really he doesn't need them. He sees nothing remarkable about his own hands (thin and pale and too small, even with the little buildup of callouses he's managed to accumulate over the past couple of years), doesn't stop to ponder them or hers or anything philosophical like that - just keeps them tucked under his arms until he needs them again.

The brief distance and intervening wedge of cold air doesn't escape him, but it isn't a big deal, either. He puts it to the back of his mind (along with the little tinge of regret, that kind of selfish, always around sort) and there it goes with everything else about this whole situation that's liable to distract him from the task at hand. Which is why, most likely, it takes him a second to recognize there's an extra set of hands in the mix, here.

His whole body jerks, this time, when he pulls away from Tifa, sucks in a breath that has more to do with the hurt that persists in his only temporarily treated wounds than his very real shock. A second before she elaborates, herself, and only one more after he's managed to make himself look like some kind of persistent weirdo, all over again.

Beneath his helmet, he shakes his head - not because it's all he knows how to do, but because it is just a reflex. As deeply ingrained by his own petty self-denial and what he's come to assume good manners are. A little bit of pride might even be tangled up in there somewhere, too, now. He can remove his own scarf; for whatever else he can't or hasn't been able to do, he can do that much- Even if he can't... Quite bring himself to push her hands away, or scramble back across the uneven floorboards to reclaim the precious personal space he might've - were she anybody else.

With his lips pressed into so pale and thin a line that they barely show but to underline what is an unimpressively grave expression cut off by his visor, he shakes his head yet again (only slightly) and holds the scarf out to her. Yeah, Shinra makes a lot of impractical fashion choices. A lot of extraneous bits that he can give up, if he really has to.

In the same rough, barely-a-whisper tone of voice as before, he clarifies, "Don't need it."

She doesn't react to his jerk away other than the lowering of her brows briefly and a little frown that slips over her lips and then dissipates. She's kind of getting used to him being jumpy too, the same way she's getting used to him always shaking his head. He doesn't do it when she raises her hand or scowls so she doesn't think it's because he's afraid she'll hit him. Which is silly anyway because guides don't hit their charges. Not unless they really, really deserve it. Instead, he flinches at weird moments and she hasn't quite figured out what sets him off. Maybe he's just not used to being touched? Tifa can kind of get that. She hasn't really been touched much since she hit puberty either, like you stop needing hugs and head pats at a certain age or something. Maybe he's been that way too but all his life. Which is kind of sad. Everybody should have someone to hug them sometimes, but she guesses there's not a lot of that in the military.

If he has a girlfriend, Tifa is very disappointed in her for not snuggling him more.

At the moment though, she's more worried about him pulling his wounds, which she's been careful herself not to press against and it has her frowning again, wishing she had something better than a small first aid kit, maybe a potion or even, if she was dreaming, materia. She's pretty sure the SOLDIER in the group have some but they're not here right now and she doesn't imagine Shinra can afford to outfit every single soldier on their payroll with materia as well. Still, she's just about to start fussing over him when he derails her by holding out his scarf. Again, her brows come down over garnet eyes but this time it's in utter confusion and his rasped explanation doesn't help to clear it up for her at all. Instead he get a wide eyed look that's utterly baffled and her hands stayed curled in front of her, not lifting to accept.

"But - you need that for your hands," is the only think she can think of to say.

"No. 'M fine," he insists in the same hoarse nothing voice, now only partially affected for the sake of masking his identity. (Not that, on some level, he isn't perfectly certain she wouldn't remember him, anyway. Kids say a lot of things, make a lot of promises - and teenagers mostly forget them.) All that baffled expression seems to do is firm his resolve, as his already dangerously pale lips thin down to a barely-there line.

"You don't... Have as much." The color that blooms now in his cheeks is spotty with the pallid tone of the cold under his skin, but fortunately not too visible, thanks to the shadow cast by the front of his visor. It's blessedly deep in the flickering play of the low fire glimpsed through the little open window of the pot-bellied old stove. Instead of waiting any longer for her acceptance, he makes the decision for her, setting his scarf down at her feet. He won't put it back on; it won't do anyone any good, if it just lies there.

Pulling his knees up closer to his chest, he tucks his bare hands behind them and resumes his standoffish watch. If there's one thing Shinra's taught him to perfect, it's the art of staring blankly ahead at all times. For as long as it takes (or as long as guard duty lasts - there's always plenty of that to go around, when you're just a grunt).

She'd be delighted he's talking to her so much, will be delighted once she's focusing again, but at the moment, she's just looking blankly at him with those large eyes before her chin dips to let her look at the scarf set on the ground in front of the toes of her boots.

It's... like a fairy tale knight leaving a gift at the princess' feet... and it doesn't matter if it's a scarf and, she's starting to suspect, she's a slightly lacking in delicacy princess, and he's an odd knight in battered armor... it's still a strange, sideways moment inside her that pushes up against her childhood dreams. So even if she could see the color over his pale skin, she isn't looking anyway, reaching out with her equally pale fingers to carefully lift up the scarf. It's a little soft, the fabric's obviously well worn and she doesn't suppose Shinra buys for anything but durability but as a mountain girl so far off trade routes, she can appreciate that even if she's still feeling the happy build up inside of the gift of it in the first place. She catches the second half of his whisper and there's the faintest hint of the adult she'll one day be in the thought, if not the fact she confesses it as she murmurs:

"I wanted to look cute."

Her eyes lift and the smile she gives him is a little tired and one day it will be her default smile but at the moment it just looks a little sad and a little wry and a little out of place in her young face. Because she knows was silly - now - and he will probably think it's silly too unless that maybe maybe not girlfriend of his does it often enough for him to understand too. "I hoped I'd see someone." The little movement of her shoulders says how that turned out but she's already concentrating on wrapping the scarf around her because there's enough loose fabric and it's not her neck or shoulders that are cold, she has hair for that, so the green fabric goes around her waist instead, lips pressed together as she concentrates on getting her bare fingers to tuck it in close against her exposed skin there. She debates asking Clyde about her blond haired SOLDIER but if Zack didn't know who she was talking about than Clyde certainly won't and she doesn't want to hear, again, that no one knows who Cloud is. She hasn't seen his name in the newspapers and the SOLDIER doesn't know who he is and - and maybe he just hasn't made it that far yet because it's only been two years and that's not a lot of time and there's a lot going on in the world and Shinra's a big company that probably has a lot of paperwork to slow things down and - and that means it's not because something bad has happened to him instead. They'd tell his mom if something bad had happened to him. Right? If she doesn't think about it, then she won't accidentally make it come true.

"There." It's tucked in and the bite of the cold is a little easier to handle when it's not creeping along her spine anymore. She tucks her hands back into his gloves, wiggling her fingers until they're on all the way. It's a reassuring feel, that leather. Maybe she should start wearing gloves too. Just not ones with fingers. It's important to be able to touch things. The smile she gives him is better than the last one, easier and more complete and she ignores his body language entirely, scooting back into her previous position against him and nudging and angling with the casual assurance of someone that's used to getting her way a second time just because she was allowed to have it the first time. Honestly, she just wants his arms around her again because it had been nice before but it also serves as a distraction from the almost embarrassed way she adds her:

"Thank you."

He pulls up his collar a little higher, unable to ignore entirely the way the scarf's absence leaves a cold, empty shape behind, without the weight of fabric to hold that little vestige of the freezing weather further at bay. He still has both the jacket he's clinging to and the thinner undershirt beneath, though, and he so he doesn't regret relinquishing a bit more of his uniform. Piece by piece, he'd give her the rest of it, too, if it wouldn't both bring his wounds into better light and cement his impression as far more than just slightly off.

A cadet stripped down to his socks, shorts, and helmet was something you'd occasionally see around recruitment drives (or on particular nights when SOLDIERs opted to drink with the army), but not a sight most civilians were apt to let slide. Especially not so when trapped alone with said cadet in the middle of a snowstorm.

Even if it would've been to her benefit, strictly. It's hard to imagine Tifa taking more from him, anyway, even as he watches her hesitantly (what he takes for reluctantly) picking up the scarf he's foisted off on her. It doesn't seem like any grand, romantic gesture, to Cloud - but neither does anything he's done for her, today. It's a duty, an obligation. A good one, and one he goes to willingly, without thinking, but the weight of his promise is still at war with his inability to become somebody worthy of keeping it. And while he doesn't know, now, it's likely always to be.

Even the distracting cold coupled with the muddled trails of his thought can't keep the surprise from his half-expression at her little confession, though. I wanted to look cute and I hoped I'd see someone put together send his heart through another of those uneasy lurches, no matter how quickly he tells himself it's a gut reaction and he knows it's wrong. His lips were freezing and now they're numb, his fingers and toes following after as he tries to imagine what that'd be like - how it would have felt to come home to Tifa's welcome, instead of in anonymous disgrace. To meet Tifa at the gate. Tifa, who'd dressed up in something special because she knew he was coming; Tifa, who would show him around all of the things that've changed in town, and laugh about all the things that haven't, and maybe about silly childhood promises, too.

That isn't how things are, though; at this rate, it's how they'll never be.

When she leans into him again, he jerks, avoiding the warmth in that smile because he isn't who it's meant for, whoever he is in her eyes. But he doesn't move further, just waits for her to settle close once more, just trying to hold steady because it's all that he can do. He isn't the one in the picture-perfect version of reality that should've been.

"Who?" he asks, though, anyway. Making a sound that's like clearing his throat but really just means he's trying to mask his voice more, as that numbness creeps into the rest of him. "...Who was it?"

"I wish you wouldn't keep twitching," since she was making confessions, that one came naturally as she ignored his jerk. She was starting to suspect the constant jumping on his part wasn't her fault since he seemed to do it so randomly and besides, he'd put his arms around her before so it couldn't be her specifically or he wouldn't have done that in the first place. Careful of his wounds she insisted on cuddling in closer, tucking her hands up against his chest as her head shifted to find his shoulder again. "I haven't bitten anyone in years."

It was really only a stalling method though and after a second more she sighed. "A boy." Which should have been obvious she supposed and she shut her eyes with another exhale. She'd been trying not to think about it but... he'd asked... And it wasn't as if she could tell anyone else in the world. And she needed to tell someone because it kept eating away inside her. "With blond hair and blue eyes. I made him promise he'd come back one day." Tucking her legs in against his side, she nudged against him, body starting to tuck smaller, and her voice slipped smaller to match it. "You don't forget a promise like that. Do you? You don't - forget someone you make a promise like that to. Right?"

You don't forget a promise like that.

But didn't you? The cold outside and the cold within the cracking, softening walls of the little wooden shack was nothing up next to the emptiness, that numb feeling that'd started at just the tips of his fingers and nose and eventually progressed down in to steal icy nothing fingers over his heart. Frostbite wouldn't bother him; if he'd bitten his lip hard enough to bleed, he wouldn't have noticed (and he nearly did, but not quite). Because she'd remembered, after all.

And he still hadn't managed to come through.

You don't - forget someone you make a promise like that to. Right?

Not even when they were better off forgotten, it seemed, no. He'd stopped flinching from her, at least - but that was only because he'd been petrified on the spot by her words. His bare hands were bound so tightly around one another that the knuckles had gone white and the nails might leave scars without even breaking the skin; he wouldn't be putting his arms around her again, either.

"No," he answered, at length, and in his own voice. Not that it must've mattered, either way. Even if she remembered the promise in the most vivid detail, his voice had changed since then, he'd grown up, he'd turned into someone else (someone not good enough). It was all he could do, now, not to stand up and shout or tear off his helmet in nervous, desperate horror with himself. Slipping from his hoarse, affected tone didn't register in his mind at all.

He might not have noticed losing his rasping mask but Tifa did, head lifting in curiosity against his shoulder to look at him in surprise. She didn't recognize the voice, not at all the childish one that had held only hints of the soft strength it would grow into that she only vaguely remembered from two years ago but she did recognize the fact it wasn't the rough whisper of before. Which meant Clyde could talk normally and just hadn't.

... which didn't make a lot of sense to her because why wouldn't you just talk normally? Talking like that had to make his throat hurt.

Usually wrapped up in her own head, viewing the world through her own storybook eyes, there was still a part of her that was attentive in the way someone who relied on others to tell them who they were was though and she noticed his frozen stillness. Without having the least clue why, she could still tell something was terribly wrong inside her companion and it pulled her brows down. It cut off her question about his voice and her first though was his wounds. It had her eyes skating down his body but she never got as far as the bandages because, even pale and vaguely mottled with cold, anyone would have seen the vise gripe he had his hands locked in. Her own insecurity and selfish misery over forgotten promises went out the window like a draft of wind and she was quickly leaning forward to wrap both of her hands around his, or as much around them as she could considering the difference in size. The gloves came off with a soft, annoyed sound seconds later and her slightly warmer skin closed around his again, starting to shift to rub warmth back into them.

"You should have said something if you were that cold. It's okay to, you know. You didn't have to let me just babble on about stuff that nobody cares about but me. Once I get your hands warmed up, you're putting your gloves back on. No arguments."

"I don't want them back," probably counts as an argument, but there's nothing in his tone (for once) that lends to further rebuttal. He finds it hard to say definite things, outside of situations which prohibit anything else - but that sense of finality comes easily to him, now. She isn't like fighting with a stranger, someone he could brush off and let suffer the coldest shoulder he can manage. But if he's honest with himself, Tifa isn't like anything or anybody.

Given time enough (and the will) to consider this feeling, he might've been surprised to find how his image of her hasn't deteriorated in the least, over the years. How she's still the one standing next to that impossible goal - accompanied by others, now, perhaps, but only as background noise. He doesn't want to be with them any less, but it's her who was there first.

So he keeps his hands knotted (because he isn't that person, yet), and he pulls them away from hers (because he hasn't merited that warmth). "Just..." he sighs, bringing his knees up in toward his concave chest, no matter how it pulls at the hurt in his side and the one above his ankle, and turning his head toward the far wall, empty space. As if he'd been stranded here, alone.

"Keep them."

Her hands go to her hips. It's an automatic and instinctive response that matches her eyebrows coming down dangerously over her eyes.

She doesn't get him. Not at all. She's used to boys acting funny around her and she's used to them being confusing or frustrating but at least even then, to her at least, they kind of make sense. Clyde... every time she thinks she's got him figured out, he throws her for another loop and she doesn't know why it matters except it does. It really does and it's important and it's not just that she's supposed to take care of him, though there's that too. She likes him - in those brief moments when he's not being - male. Frustrating male. She huffs out through her nose at him and shifts up onto her knees because he's all but blocked her out where she's sitting. His gloves get scooped up and shaken at him.

"Look. I want to be your friend. I'm really trying. Stop being such a - a stubborn chocobo about it." The little sigh has her face softening and saddening, because she's not mad, she's just - she's tired of being pushed away and then almost welcomed back and then pushed away again. She isn't used to being rejected. It's a young gesture but she reaches out with her other hand and catches at his pinkie, just the tip, with her fingers. "What am I doing wrong? Tell me so I can fix it."

It's difficult to balance doing what he hopes is all that he can to look after her and keeping a distance deep and wide enough between them that she won't start to get genuinely curious about the stranger beneath the mask - and apparently he's doing pretty poorly at it. Like so many other things in his life, never trying simply hadn't been an option, but the harder he does try, the worse he seems to get.

When she sits up and flaps his gloves at him, he recoils again, just a fraction, as if he isn't the only armed and armored member of their makeshift party. This time, she really does look ready to hit him, and he probably deserves that (definitely does, for lying to her both now and back then). He should just sit silently and take the lashing, however it comes- Let her start to dislike him again, hate him if she has to, and then everything will be back to status quo by the time they're home in the village, again.

Only - she doesn't do anything like that. She just... Deflates, and implores him. And that's somehow so much worse, in the long run, because he knows he still can't just tell her the truth, in turn. "It's not... That."

You. Though the way he refuses pointedly to look her direction (even as she grabs at his hand, again, catching just the one finger and rendering it unusually difficult to pull away). "Just keep them."

She's never had such a hard time winning anyone over. Usually most people seem to love her right away and even the stubborn hold-outs usually give in once she's been friendly enough or helpful enough or cheerful enough. She's self-aware enough, barely, at that age to realize that there are some people that are never going to like her no matter what she does - the stand offish Shinra general for one - and she's all right with that. Clyde's saved her though. Several times. He's been her hero and even if he's not blond with a childhood promise to make him strong, she won't deny that it means a lot to her. And he's nice too. He's given her just about everything he has that he can spare to try to keep her warm and he'd been polite to her, even tried to be helpful and put her first instead of himself. It makes her like him and that's the problem because she's never had anyone she liked not like her back. It gives her a funny, unpleasant feeling in the center of her, not even his dislike so much as the vague feeling that she's worth being disliked. In her small town, only surrounded by people that have always seemed to love her, it's a new feeling and one she's distinctly uncomfortable having.

Which just means she's going to have to try harder to make him like her obviously. He must kind of already because he treats her so nice so it's just a matter of making him realize that.

Obviously she's going to have to be devious about this though because he's really, really stubborn. It means she's going to have to use what he's already showed her is important.

"No." Her grasp on his finger disappears and the gloves get dropped on his raised knee even though she's already starting to feel the cold numbing her fingers again this long without them. Determined though she goes for the scarf she's had wrapped around her waist as well, intent on giving that back too even if it does mean she's going to be even colder than she already is. "Friends share things. Friends take care of each other. If we're not friends than I'm just your trail guide and you don't take care of me, I take care of you. You only get to take care of me too if we're friends. That's the only way I'll keep the gloves."

He's used to being thwarted, ignored, overridden - but never quite in this fashion. Or almost never, as it were. Come to think of it, there's at least one other person on the Planet who's so vehemently insisted upon being liked by him, of all possible people. But comparing Tifa and Zack is practically unthinkable; their similarities begin and end somewhere around dark hair and bright eyes and an unflappable determination to make him feel as small as humanly possible.

"I won't - take them back," he says, still looking away as he shuffles his empty gloves off his knee and crosses his arms. With his bare hands tucked up under his arms, they'll probably survive the cold with minimal frostbite (or nothing a potion and a real fireplace won't fix, at any rate). The wind is already dying down, or at least evening out, and the conditions could be clear enough for travel in another hour or two.

Another hour or two of this.

Just the thought makes him feel sick with hopelessness in fresh waves, and he shifts away from the fire and the sight of Tifa trying to unravel his scarf from around her. "And I don't want to be friends."

Her head snaps up at that and the look on her face reflects exactly what she feels inside as she stares at him in frozen shock. He couldn't have caught her more off guard if he'd just taken his rifle butt and slammed it into her chest and - it kind of feels like he just did. She had thought he was just being stubborn - which just meant she had to work harder to earn his liking her but...

I don't want to be friends.

That uncomfortable feeling in her stomach turns into a clammy feeling and, in a move that will grow more common as she gets older, her chin ducks, eyes following.

"oh." For all her self-confidence, she's still just a teenage girl and 'I don't want to be friends' translates into a clear 'because you're not worth it' to her. There's a brief flare of anger - because she thinks she's a pretty darn good friend, lots of people think she's a good person to have as a friend - but it gutters out quickly and twists inward. Good girls, nice girls, don't get angry. There must be something wrong with her, at least to him, if something as simple as her friendship can be so flatly and finally refused.

It's not a good feeling as it sinks in.

Swallowing thickly, she locks her jaw in place. It's his right. No one says he has to like her or even not dislike her. Just because he saved her - so it's his job. Saving someone doesn't have to mean you care. Being stubborn about giving them your gloves doesn't have to mean you care. Taking care of someone - it doesn't have to mean anything at all. She guesses she knew it already but - it's a hard lesson to swallow down because it changes so much more than just now and just him. It changes -

The scarf comes off and gets folded as neatly as she can manage on top of the fallen gloves. She's still too young to put practicality over stubborn pride. If he has to walk back to town alone after this, it serves him right. Except even as a teenager, she knows that's over-dramatic. She's not going to let herself die up here. There's nothing a potion or more won't be able to fix with her once this is over and, as long as she can still move, it's her job to get him back to town. That makes her swallow too and she shrugs awkwardly out of her vest to wrap it clumsily around her waist, cold setting into new places. She'll bring him back to town because she promised she would and... promises are supposed to mean something right? - and then she's done. If they want to go out again they can find someone else. Her new plan is to stay in her room until they're gone - and they can take their thick, uncomfortable feeling in her stomach and their confusing glove fixation with them when they go. Pulling her knees up to her chest, for the first time, she turns her back entirely on Clyde. She'll bring him home because she said she would but she doesn't want to ever see him again after that. Besides... then he can stop getting hurt. Folding her arms down between her legs and her chest, she tries to fit herself into the smallest ball she can manage against the cold - of course it's against the cold. She won't let some jerk hurt her feeling that bad. Right? right. He doesn't even know her. What right does he have to come into her home town and make her feel this way? Who in their right mind doesn't even want friendship with someone - someone that's been helpful and friendly and just wanted things to be nice between them? It isn't her fault she isn't some fancy city girl... who probably knows just what to say and giggles and wears ribbons and bows. Pretending it can block things like that out, Tifa presses her face down into her knees and curls her shoulders inward, eyes firmly closed.

"I'll still bring you home. And I'll give that SOLDIER a new guide name for you guys to use. I promised."

He can keep his friendship - and his rescues and stupid, stupid gloves and his talking to her and - and - drat him for it. Who cares? Not her. Not her at all.

That quiet little oh tears at him worse than either his wounds or the cold, but he doesn't turn back to look at her. He can't bring himself to, at all; it's as if the blizzard has already done its work, and he's frozen out here, after all, muscles locked down to his bones and uniform stiff and crisp over pale bluing skin. That sick hopelessness is everywhere, now, and it feels like he's done something irrevocable as himself, rather than just as the nameless trooper she's being forced to coexist with until the storm passes. This isn't the kind of thing they'll be able to laugh about, some years down the road. He doesn't think she'll forgive him, can't stretch the delusion that they'll ever know each other again quite so far.

It ought to make him feel worse - he even thinks that might be the idea - but the prospect of a new guide almost takes the slightest edge off the queasy, hateful feeling resting heavy in the pit of his stomach. No more putting Tifa in danger he can't save her from, no more walking on eggshells around the other guys, no more sidelong, judging looks from Zack when he won't talk or take off his helmet. If she quits, it'll be easier to finish the mission, here, and then run back to Midgar with his identity kept safely under wraps. In another few months, he might even stop hearing about it from the others (and a few months after that, he might stop getting those looks). And the next time he comes home, he'll do it right. He'll be somebody; he won't have to wear this stifling headgear at all, and she won't have to know that it was a mercy - to her promise and to his own beaten down pride - that he once kept her away as a faceless infantryman.

Once it's silent again, except for the wind and the muffled buffet of the snow falling against the roof and sides of their inadequate shelter, he begins to thaw. There is no sound but the faint, nearly inaudible rustle of fabric, as he turns his head - first to the fire, still crackling away low in the stove, and then to her back turned on him - but it feels like some great, creaking lurch just to move, once more. His gloves are still on the floor, now half-hidden beneath a neatly folded green scarf, and he reaches for them in the same halting, cautious motion.

Ordinarily, it would be easier to unfasten his jacket without them, but his fingers are so cold from clutching his knees that he doesn't trust them on their own. He tugs his gloves back on, still only the sound of quietly shuffling cloth, and then forces his hands through the motions. The cold of the armor he pulls from his shoulders radiates through the thin leather, and he's almost grateful - except she should've kept them, in the first place. With his coat off, the short-sleeved black undershirt loses most of its insulated heat instantly, but he firms his jaw against a shiver. If he starts, he doesn't think he'll be able to stop, and that'll just aggravate his injuries, again.

That's all right, though, because he doesn't have to move far to retrieve his scarf - or to drape his jacket over her hunched up shoulders.

She ignores Clyde and the barely there sounds he makes, single-mindedly turning into herself. She doesn't want to deal with him and... she doesn't want to deal with the way he makes her feel. He doesn't like her? Fine. She doesn't like him either. It's his own stupid fault anyway. She's a good friend, a great friend and he's just missing out on somebody that's important enough to be worth making a promise to come back to.

... even if it's already been two years

and she kind of had to force the promise in the first place

and maybe she's only special in Nibelheim where there aren't other girls to prove she's not really all that special at all and who might seem more important to make promises to...

Maybe Clyde's just saying what anyone outside of Nibelheim would already tell her.

It's instinctive to reach for the well worn memory, clutching at the promise that she's someone special to someone special. It's one of her heart's touchstones, like the keys on her piano or the earrings her mother used to wear all the time. Memories aren't ivory or pearl though and so it's not the first time she's reached for reassurance and finds her mind picking away at it instead, like slender fingers picking at a frayed edge, worrying away at weaknesses in the fabric.

People leave and never come back. ...people leave me and never come back...

Miserable already, the thought certainly didn't start with the arrival of Shinra soldiers, but it's usually easier to dismiss when she's surrounded by people that do obviously think she's precious, easier to trust that she really is and those doubts are just silly teenager doubts. Here though, right now - she's not even worth being a friend? She hates it. She hates the jerk nearby for saying it, hates having to face that sick feeling it puts inside of her and - and mostly she just hates herself for doubting. It doesn't matter if some Shinra jerk doesn't even think she's worth it, doesn't even like her even after he's saved her and she's spent all this time worrying about him. He's just some guy and what does she care if what he thinks of her? Some faceless - guy doesn't count. Who cares that she wanted to be friends with him? Obviously he isn't worth it anyway. She's better off this way. Jerk. At least she's still got a promise that will come back one day and find her.

right?

he has to... She doesn't know what she'll do if he doesn't...

She doesn't feel it when the heavy overshirt drops down around her at first. The sick, miserable feeling in her stomach takes precedence over the slow freeze of her skin and it's a long moment before that stolen heat both manages to start to reverse the process and does so enough to pull her out of where her mind's running its sporadic circle. It takes even longer for her to realize why, mind sluggish, heart reluctant to let go of it's retreat. Five minutes ago a gift this extravagant and self-sacrificing would have done amazing, dangerous things to a teenage girl's heart. Now it just churns up an uncomfortable muddy mix of anger and hopelessness and childish 'it's not fair' that leaves her hurting and feeling ugly inside.

Her shoulders shrug and the jacket falls off to land on the floor of the cabin with a soft thud. She doesn't want his stupid help anymore. He doesn't care and she won't either.

It's impossible to explain - or justify, even to himself, regret sharp and gnawing away at the edges of his resolve, already - why pretending to be somebody else doesn't extend so far as accepting her friendship. They were never really friends to begin with, and though two years ago, he would've jumped at the invitation- Things have changed, since then. Or haven't, enough, for him to say anything.

He still isn't strong enough to keep his promise (who'd want an infantryman in lieu of a SOLDIER?); he can't come home until he is. And he doesn't deserve even the false shadow of her affinity until then. It won't stop him from trying (few things in life have ever attained that lofty goal), doing what he can under the guise of detached anonymity, until this grueling trial is over. But that doesn't make this, here, now feel any less damning. Beneath the enduring numbness, that is.

When his coat slips off her shoulders, he's already turning (creakily) back to sit down again. If he huddles over his knees like before, he might be able to keep in a little bit of body heat, in spite of his newly bare arms. He can drape his scarf around his shoulders and probably scoot a little closer to the fire in the stove, and-

And he can't do any of that with the quiet echo of that seemingly innocent shuff of heavy fabric sliding to puddle on the floor behind her ringing in his ears. Any little sound is so much bigger, in this eerie silence, with the wind playing the constant backdrop, and he hesitates a second before shuffling back around. Maybe the cold's gotten into more than just his skin and his most distal points, because another few seconds tick by before he's able to comprehend what's happened - the jacket's fallen off, because he didn't set it over her right, and she must be too cold (or too angry) to want to reach for it.

It's understandable.

Leaning over again to collect the discarded article of clothing, he straightens it out and reaches up carefully to settle it over her shoulders, again. It's difficult to touch her, even though he can't feel much, any longer, but he starts with an effort to be a little more careful, this time. Just because they're not talking doesn't make him any less intent on trying. At what, exactly, he isn't totally certain, anymore. But that's never stopped him, either.

When she's older, she'll be practical. She'll worry about things like both of them freezing to death and swallow down hurt if it gets in the way and pride will, usually, take a back seat to survival.

When she's older.

At the moment though, she's fifteen and immortal and hurt feelings mean more than anything else in the world. At the moment, his persistence, which she would usually find reassurance in, just hurts her even more. Because - to her - it means caring enough to keep trying despite things and she wants that needs that but he's already said he doesn't care and so it's mixed signals and Tifa doesn't like the way it tears at her inside. She wants to react to the gestures because they're so thoughtful it's instinctive to her to want to reciprocate - but his previous words are sharp thorns in the way and she can't get around them. His flat rejection is too raw inside for her to do anything that would risk a second encounter with it. So his persistence about the shirt just makes her even more twisty and uncomfortable inside her chest and stomach.

If he really means the shirt, than he's not a jerk. And if he's not a jerk than she can't hate him. And if she can't hate him than - than it can't be a mutual hatred and that means the problem isn't him. It's her. Because if he's a jerk and doesn't like her it doesn't matter. But if he's actually a nice guy and doesn't like her -

Her shoulders shrug free, more forcefully this time before the jacket even has a chance to fully settle and it starts a chain reaction of shivers through her now that she's moved enough to lose the frozen hold on her muscles. What she wants to tell him is 'go away' - except even at fifteen, she's aware that he just might and then she'd have to follow because it's her responsibly to see him safely back to the village. Instead what comes out is a bit chattering and muffled because like heck is she going to lift her face and acknowledge his existence (or let him see he's made her miserable).

"Don't act like you care."

Acting like he cares? Is that what she thinks he's doing? His fingers catch and fumble in the once again rumpled fabric of the jacket pooled there on the rotten-if-they-weren't-frozen floorboards, and he hesitates in his automatic retrieval. This time, of course, there was no mistaking that she shrugged the coat off with clear intent, but it takes his mind another moment to catch up - a problem not even thawing out might relieve him of - and he can't stop the reflex. There's something determined in him, too, trying to work its way past the walls he's put up himself, in clear spite of common sense. Rational thinking isn't his strong suit, though, and Cloud is (and always will be) just better at persisting.

If there's one thing he does know as fact, though, it's that he's misstepped here - and quite severely. And there's only one (obvious) answer to follow through, when you know you're that far in the wrong.

"...Sorry."

It's the one thing that doesn't hurt to say - though that might just be because his lips are sort of numb - quiet but earnest enough so as to be impossible to mishear, even under the dull roar of another rolling gust of wind. He doesn't move from his spot, kneeling and holding out the familiar faded blue of his uniform jacket. But he doesn't try to put it back on her, either. "Futility" isn't a concept he's entirely familiar with (or ever will be).

"It's not... Because of you."

(You don't want to be friends with someone like me.)

She lives in a world where 'sorry' still means something and even if it didn't... the way he says it does. It's enough to cut through some of the sick misery and hurt because... he sounds kind of miserable and hurt too and Tifa's very bad about wanting to emphasize with others. It's easier to understand other people when they do strange things if you pretend it's you and... and it's how she doesn't feel so alone. Thinking about other people has become a natural defense to her to keep her from thinking about herself and even though she stubbornly doesn't want to trust him - it's a little too late. Her head turns. Not much. Just enough for a single vulnerable eye to peer at him cautiously over the safety of her pale arm. It's still reproachful but she's never going to get any better at hiding the hopefulness there either.

Except -

"Of course it's me." It comes out muffled and maybe a little slurred and her chin tucks so that the eye almost but doesn't quite disappear, a wild little animal edging out into the open but ready to bolt for the trees the second something looks like it's going to hurt. Except it already hurts. "It's not like I said I didn't want to be friends with you."

The Cuddle Meme

engineered the whole move. the WHOLE thing just to hide the horns!

my god. we've all walked right into your trap

admittedly, it worked even better than I'd intended but I ain't complainin'

can this count as my first cast of final attack + phoenix, because i am reviving things all over

it doesn't seem to be equipped to the right character but I say as long as it works go for it!

look who's talking ms wrong journal. 8)

so ashamed - I know, it was the utlimate ironic fail

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I'm sure I have no idea who you're talking about

A LIKELY STORY.

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