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

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."

"You wouldn't, though," he says, and for the first time speaks with actual conviction, some driving force that's more than his halfhearted (but meant well) suggestions, thus far into their unfortunate seclusion, together.

Because he knows this for a fact. He still remembers what it was like, to always be on the outside, and the curl of warmth that loosens in his chest like something broken snapping on its hinges is not a good or funny or pleasant feeling. Maybe he hates himself enough for both of them, maybe that's true, but he knows she doesn't have any reason to have changed her mind about him since that last night at the well, under the stars. Since he left town riding high on some stupid little kid's hopes and dreams. (Now there's futility for you, right there.) He hasn't given her any reason to change her mind, so he knows she hasn't.

"You wouldn't... Wanna be my friend, if you knew me." He drops his arms, at last, too cold and tired to hold up much longer and not risk a dangerous fatigue. He's shivering, already, but as long as his teeth aren't chattering, he can pretend not to notice. "I'm just saving you the trouble."

It was taking things a bit of time to sink through her brain, part cold, part fairly consuming misery, and so her brows sink slow over her eyes as he talks and she stays unmoving otherwise, listening to him. The words don't register quite as quickly as the pure misery on his part though and she has no idea why he's the one that seems that way - except he does and it steals her own self-involvement out of her because he's hurt and that always comes first in her world. Picking at them carefully, she untangles the words a bit slower inside her head but as she does the frown on her lips forms and grows, hidden behind her knees and sheltering arms.

Her first reaction is to of course dismiss his thoughts. He doesn't know her. He can't say whether she'll like someone or not and she likes most people. He would have had to do something really, really terrible for her to think otherwise and despite all her previous nasty thoughts to the contrary... she really does like him. Maybe it's the cold or perhaps there's just enough of the adult she'll be one day already inside of her though that she doesn't open her mouth right away and say any of that. Instead she just looks at him with her sad, worried eyes and she tries to think of what he needs to hear instead of what she wants to say. He's a good guy. She knows he is. She can't imagine that he acts all that differently when he's not around her than he does when he is, still young enough to believe in face value. So...

Her voice comes out young when she asks:

"You did something bad?"

His first instinct is to say no - no, I never did anything that bad, or at least not bad enough to deserve any of what I got - but he quashes it just as quickly. She couldn't understand and he wouldn't explain; experience is a killer, even at so young an age, and he knows the difference between hers and his is too far to gap with nothing but words. His words, anyway. They're never really enough.

"...Yeah," he admits, at length, a work in progress as he casts about for - if not the right words (or even good words), then just something to say to gloss this whole thing over. He hasn't told anyone else (not even Zack), and there's nothing practiced or easy to fall back on. No memory of how this is supposed to go, revealing the most vague version of the worst, rock-bottom, easily most horrible chapter of his life. He doesn't think that kind of thing comes recommended, anyway, shuffling to nowhere on the hard, wood floor. Stopping when another little needling spike of pain races up from his badly barked shin, and tightening his fists in the rough fabric of his jacket. He's been saving up for an advance issue of a new one (Shinra likes to wait until the boots are falling off and the pants don't fit, and that's not really soon enough), and that one tiny, lonely scrap of a thought makes him regret this situation all the more. He doesn't even have a nice coat to give her. (That she won't accept.)

"I... Hurt somebody. I hurt a lot of people."

oh.

[Her brows come down again and she understands because she really can't think of a worse thing to do in all the world than to hurt someone and to her 'hurt someone' expands to encompass hurting their feelings just as much as hurting them physically, perhaps more so really, being hurt emotionally seeming much worse, personally to her at least. Her eyes drift down and stare at a almost blue tinted knee in thought because - it's different if you feel bad about it afterward. It's one thing to hurt someone and be sorry because she knows she's hurt people's feelings often enough and she always feels horrible afterward when she realizes it. And... Clyde sounds like he feels bad over it. He must or he wouldn't think that hurting someone made him not worth being friends over. If he'd hurt people and didn't care that would be different but then he'd never even bring it up in the first place.

It takes a sadly long time for the fact that he's a soldier and 'hurting a lot of people' could mean in the line of duty and possibly even killing them for his job. She hadn't read about anything in the news but...

Her eyebrows squinch down again but this time it's in determination and she finally, slowly, starts to unwind from where she's wrapped around herself. It - hurts and that surprises her but she doesn't stop, moving slower than she usually would and the shivers momentarily abandon her body because it's busy doing too much else and move to her mouth. It makes her have to lock her jaw down as she slowly shifts around to get on her knees in front of him but her eyes search for his even though there's nothing to see except red like insect eyes.

Cautious, not sure it's still an offer, she reaches for his coat and it's not absolution for the past because she doesn't think she can give that but it is an observation about the way he is in the present.

"You're not hurting anyone now."

Maybe that's true, maybe none of this is his fault (although some of it probably is), and nothing he's done here has left all that painful a mark. But it rings false, when he knows so much more of the truth than she does. Ever will. The weight of it crushes any hope of forgiveness underfoot, however momentary. If she knew, she wouldn't absolve him so easily. Instead, she only thinks she does; instead, he has to bear up the disdain for both of them.

He hands her his coat when she reaches for it, even though now the cold is biting into every inch of exposed skin. It's how she must've felt from the very start of this disastrous day, though, wearing too little even for another pale, mountain-born body. He stops another shudder by locking his muscles as much as he can, and thinks of how much easier this will be, once he's a SOLDIER and not just... Whatever he is, now.

Curling his arms back around himself, tucking what he can under the edge of his reclaimed scarf, he huddles back over, into himself, carefully. The sides of his helmet settle on his shoulders. He looks to the light of the stove through the greenish tint of his visor, three red lights on the other side.

"I did. I should have come by myself."

She manages to put on his shirt even though it's much harder than it should be and for just a moment there's a flicker of worry through her that maybe things have been worse than she's thought they are. She pushes it aside though, both stubborn about being a good enough guide to handle anything and also with the eternal defiance of immortal youth. It does mean that she starts paying a bit more attention to just how poorly he's now dressed though and the pale color of his skin. She finally gets her second arm in the overlarge sleeve as he speaks up and even though it doesn't feel any warmer than she was before she put it on, a bit colder in fact while it presses cold fabric against her exposed skin, she knows her body heat will warm it up soon enough. It's big on her and the half sleeves of it come down to just below her elbows. There doesn't seem to be a lot of difference in length between them but if the way the shoulders sag is any indication, there are plenty of others. It...

it feels nice... wearing a guy's oversized shirt and she knows it's silly but her teenage heart still gives a little sound of happiness inside of her and somehow, it makes her feel a little better. She doesn't button it up though and once he's settled she shifts over and starts nudging again. Only this time she's not coming at him from the side. She's very deliberately working her way in front the front, first aiming between his knees with every intention of getting past his arms next. She's tired of whatever it is they're doing and he's only reaffirmed that he's actually a really good guy despite the confusing way he acts. All the other confusing stuff will just have to wait for later.

Without realizing that one day, and for the rest of her life, she'll think, if not say out loud, the exact same thing, she gives a little shaky snort as she nudges and answers:

"Don't be silly. You need me."

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The Cuddle Meme

A LIKELY STORY.

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