FIC Responsive Part 12
Jul. 11th, 2006 09:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jessara40k_ljResponsive Part 12
Final Fantasy VII fic, pre-game, mostly, with a post-AC epilogue.
CloudxSephiroth - and yes that does mean Cloud is topping.
Rating R.
Sephiroth still had hold of the reports he’d been reading When Cloud came in as he kissed him, and he pushed them into Cloud’s hands when they pulled apart.
“Tell me how accurate you think these reports are please.” Cloud was pretty sure it wasn’t standard practice to ask someone who was being assessed whether or not he thought the reports were accurate or not, since he could see the reports were on how well he was doing in his training as a medic, and apparently his doubts showed. “I’m expected to sign off on almost everything to do with SOLDIER and the filter units, and I’d be personally assessing any trooper completing training as a medic, or to be trained as a medic, just not this way usually.”
“Ahh. Well...Corporal Miller’s report is a piece of crap, since his methods are useless, the only accurate thing is his report on how many spells I can cast in a given time frame. But I agree with what he’s saying about him having nothing left to teach me.”
“I thought so, he was already a medic when he was transferred to the 3rd Sword, and he wasn’t trained very well. The others?”
“I haven’t had the chance to use all of the spells that could be used for healing, but yes, I should be able to do that. They’re right, I do need some experience in assessing how badly people are injured and what sort of treatment they’ll need, and I’m not very good with more traditional healing methods, certainly not good enough to feel comfortable using them if there’s an alternative. I think they’re overstating my skills quite a bit though.”
“I’m signing off on their recommendations for further training then. Your squad won’t be assigned any duties outside Midgar for another two weeks at least.”
“I don’t understand.” Cloud gave the reports back to Sephiroth and sat down to watch as his lover put them away and signed off on something he put with them.
“Procedure is not to assign any squads with rookies to: do night duty until the end of the first week; patrol the labs until the end of the second week or beginning of the third: or outside Midgar until after a month, if possible.” Sephiroth came to sit beside Cloud as he spoke, leaning against him and into the arm Cloud put around his waist. “And your lieutenant requested the rest of your platoon stay here, so the medics could train you. It’s been done before, the only thing different with you was that I didn’t have to test you to see how good you were with materia, or whatever else made your lieutenant recommend you be trained as a medic before I signed off on the request.”
“Oh, thank you.” For explaining, and for not giving him special treatment. But Sephiroth seemed a bit uncomfortable. “Would you like to speak about something else?”
“Yes, two things, please. I thought perhaps we should experiment with what happens when you draw power from me the way you did on Saturday and don’t use it, and with how much extra energy you can take from me without hurting yourself.”
“Or you.” Although Cloud really didn’t think he could take enough of his lover’s energy to harm him, and from the look on his face neither did he. “About the first question, we might get some idea from Marius tomorrow, since I just poured a third again the energy it would take me to cast the Cure unslotted into his energy reserve, and he couldn’t use it.”
“You did what?” Cloud couldn’t understand why Sephiroth was so surprised by that.
“I poured the energy he’d need into his personal energy reserves, I did the same thing with you, didn’t you notice?”
“No, I can’t do that, I just feed it through the link, I don’t have any real control over the destination. And...I don’t have that much awareness of the state of my energy reserves, or I’d have known about the difference in energy needed for a slotted and unslotted materia.”
“Oh, then how did you know I’d used up the energy I took from you?”
“A report is automatically filed when someone uses the materia training room without proper authorisation. It got copied to me since I’m your sponsor. Don’t worry, you won’t be in trouble, not since you didn’t do any damage, you’ll just get a warning. And when you qualify as a medic you’ll have free access there anyway.”
“Thank you. We can set up some experiments, and perhaps recruit Zack to help.” Sephiroth shivered at that, and Cloud realised he could have worded that better considering what sort of experience his lover had to have with experiments. “What else did you want to talk about?”
“I...I read that book you got about gay sex and the one on relationships. I don’t think they give enough information on the sort of relationship we’re in.” Cloud felt Sephiroth tremble slightly against him. “I...you know I’m submissive and you’ve developed into a very good dominant, but...I think we need more information.”
“And you’re hoping it’ll convince me that it’s okay to tie you up during sex, or give us new ideas?”
“Y-yes. I’m sorry-”
“Don’t be. I like the thought of getting some new ideas, and I expect you to be a bit manipulative. So, how do you want to go about getting this extra information?”
“I’ll give you some money, and you could get some more books tomorrow, please?”
“If I can find anything suitable, yes. But I get to read them first, and if I say there’s a book you can’t read then you accept that, deal?”
“Oh, yes. Thank you Cloud.” Cloud wasn’t quite sure why Sephiroth was thanking him, but he pushed it from his mind and turned to kiss his lover.
“Shall we play now then?”
“That would be wonderful. What do you want me to do?” Cloud was used to this, and he stood, pulling Sephiroth up with him.
“Let’s take a shower first.” Cloud reached up and kissed Sephiroth hungrily, then began stripping him. “Undress me now.” Sephiroth obeyed, kissing Cloud’s skin as he exposed it, and when he’d finished, ending up on his knees in front of him, Cloud laughed and pulled him back to his feet, leading him to the shower. He kissed Sephiroth as he pulled him into the shower, turning it on and adjusting the temperature then beginning to wash his lover’s body, and letting Sephiroth return the favour at the same time. Cloud pushed him against the wall when he reached the groin and gathered Sephiroth’s wrists ‘in’ one hand, pinning those to the wall beside him and jerking Sephiroth off quickly, and whispering into his ear.
“You’re so sexy pressed up against the wall like this, all wide eyed and panting with desire, so sexy and all mine. You know I love the way you’ve got almost no hair on your body, and I think one day I’ll shave the rest of it off too.” Cloud kept on whispering dominating words to his lover until Sephiroth gave a cry and climaxed, then he laughed and batted away the hand Sephiroth reached to return the favour.
“No. I don’t want you to do that. You can suck me once we’re clean. If you want.”
“Please Cloud. I love how you taste.”
“I wish I could say the same about you.” Cloud understood Sephiroth’s fears, and he was perfectly willing to indulge them, he just thought they were a bit paranoid and he resented the things they kept him from having. “Hush, I’m not angry. I won’t try and make you do something you’re not comfortable with. Now, wasn’t there something you were supposed to be doing for me?”
“Yes Cloud.” And Sephiroth continued washing Cloud, ending up on his knees in front of him, and took him into his mouth. Cloud had sometimes wondered why Sephiroth didn’t seem to have a gag reflex, but after the hints he’d dropped about Uchiha he’d decided not to actually ask, but to let him tell his story in his own time. He let his hands drift down to caress Sephiroth’s hair, but he wasn’t going to try and take control of his head this time.
“Stay in there for a moment.” Cloud got out, leaving the shower on to keep Sephiroth arm, and dried himself off with a towel quickly. “You can turn the shower off and get out now.” He wrapped the towel he’d just used around Sephiroth’s hair, and picked up a second towel to dry him off with, before helping him into a robe and pulling one on himself, then leading him to the bedroom.
“Sephiroth, you remember what I said about wanting to shave you?” Cloud waited for Sephiroth’s nod, noting the surprise in his eyes - did he think Cloud had just been teasing him or something? “Would you be willing to let me do that?”
“I...you really want to do that?”
“If you really don’t want to then tell me, otherwise I’ll get what I need and we’ll do that tomorrow.”
“C-can...you tie me up to shave me?”
“If that’s what you want.” There was nothing he could use to tie Sephiroth to in the bathroom...but he could improvise with an Ice materia, and draw energy from Sephiroth to power the spells, since he didn’t think he’d have enough energy by himself. “We might have to put that off then, until I can figure out the right way to use the Ice materia. Instead we can experiment with that energy drain thing.”
“You mean sexually?” Sephiroth sounded excited, more than when Cloud had discussed shaving him, and he knew he’d made the right choice.
“Yes and no love. I wonder if I can affect you physically by draining your energy reserves?” He kissed Sephiroth then, checking to see that he could still establish the link easily enough, then releasing it and moving to ravage Sephiroth’s neck.
“I...I’ve always been going on pure will...when I exhaust my magical reserves...it might affect me physically.”
“We’ll find out.” Cloud pushed away from his lover reluctantly. “Dry your hair while I get all my stuff in here. Then I can ravish you properly.”
o0()0o
Cloud much preferred it when Sephiroth woke him with something that he’d get pleasure from as well, and this time he seemed to have decided on frottage. He began kissing his lover when he woke up, wrapping his arms around Sephiroth and leaving him to keep on with what he was doing.
“Do you know why Zack wanted to meet you early?”
“No, but it doesn’t matter, does it?”
“I guess not. Do you want to borrow a materia from me today?”
“A Gravity would be nice please.” Cloud wasn’t going to rely on a Mystify materia, even with Zack as back-up, not when he wasn’t going to be equipping a second combative materia and he thought Earth was a bit too much of an area effect thing for this hunt. He’d rather leave that for later, when and if he was up to tackling more dangerous monsters. “If you’re not going to need it.”
“You never need to worry about that.” Sephiroth laughed. “ShinRa didn’t spare any expense in equipping their favourite weapon, I’ve usually got one or two mastered versions of any given materia. And since I only really get decent training by hunting monsters I mature them at a high rate, and pass them on once I’ve mastered them to Zack, or to some of his friends.” He pulled the Gravity materia out of the box by his bed, and then Cloud made the connection to the materia they’d been tested with on Saturday - the materia had been of maturity levels ranging from newly spawned, to mastered, but the only times the type had been duplicated there’d been one mastered materia, and one unmastered. “You’d best shower now, you don’t want to be late meeting Zack.”
“You know something about what he’s planning, don’t you?”
“He asked me not to say anything.”
“I wasn’t going to ask.” Cloud laughed, he had the feeling that if he had asked Sephiroth would have told him, and regretted it after. “I just wanted to know if there was something special about today, and your reaction confirms it.” Sephiroth blushed faintly as Cloud went to the shower, and he made a point of taking his shower as soon as Cloud came out. Cloud still managed to grab him for a kiss before he left for the canteen though. He did sometimes wonder whether anyone would be suspicious about how early he was leaving Sephiroth’s quarters, but he wasn’t going to deny himself or Sephiroth this pleasure, it would demean what they shared.
He ate quickly, then it was back to his barracks to change his clothes, dump his weights and pick up the squad Restore before he ran for the airstrip Zack had ordered them to meet him at.
“Want to let us in on the secret now?” Cloud glanced over at the helicopter being prepped for take-off, and Zack laughed nervously.
“Yeah, sure, I managed to wrangle us all a lift to and from Junon, we can go hunting there instead of around here, since I’ve no guarantees you’ll all be here after this week.”
“What do you mean Zack?” Cloud wondered if former cadets without a sponsor learned about this at all, but he didn’t really care.
“Squads that got new troops from the latest cadet class are kept in Midgar for about a month, then they can be assigned to other duties. Of course Cloud gets to spend at least the next two weeks here because he’s training as a medic.” Cloud just shrugged at the looks of mixed envy and pity on his friends’ faces when they looked at him.
“I can’t quite believe I’m supposed to be a medic after thirty odd hours one to one training and two weeks ‘further training’ whatever that means. Or is there more to my training than that?”
“I don’t know. You could always ask Sephiroth.”
“I probably will. Should we be boarding now?”
“Yes, come on. They won’t wait for us.” Zack led them onto the helicopter and they sat together as far away from the others as they could. “Right, Marius, I hear you managed three spells last time, and you managed two Alex.”
“I don’t think I can do it again.” Alex was quick to object, and Cloud frowned at that.
“Me either, I only managed because Cloud was pushing at me, and we were both dead on our feet afterwards.” Cloud brushed his fingers over Marius’ hand, linking to him the way Sephiroth had taught him and finding his personal energy reserve had increased more than it should have over the past four days, not by much, but enough that...
“You won’t have any trouble casting three spells today.” He did the same quick check with Alex. “And if Zack will agree to a little experiment I can make sure you can cast two spells today as well Alex.”
“Experiment?” Zack sounded just a little bit suspicious, not that Cloud blamed him.
“Apparently no one who’s been taught how to link to someone else and feed them energy for a spell ever thought of it, but you can also use the link to draw energy out of the guy you’ve linked to. On Saturday Sephiroth let me draw enough energy from him to cast a Cure unslotted, and I transferred it to Marius, although since he didn’t use that energy it’s lost, I can do the same with you and Alex, draw enough energy from you to cast a Bolt and transfer it to him.” He wasn’t going to use up his own energy to give Alex the ability to cast an extra spell today, since his friend didn’t have Cloud’s skill, but Zack would probably have enough energy to share, and he needed to find out if it worked with anyone beside Sephiroth.
“Go ahead.” Zack held out his hand, waiting for Cloud to try what he wanted, and Cloud took it, humbled by the display of trust. “But I expect you to use the second spell this buys you Alex.”
“Yes sir.” He wasn’t quite so compliant when it was Cloud pushing him to succeed, but Cloud wasn’t really that surprised. He laid a hand on Zack’s bare arm, linking into his energy reserves, smaller than Sephiroth’s, and more turbulent, then drew out as much energy as he would use to cast a Bolt from a third level Lightning materia, after all even if Alex did need a little more energy than Cloud did he already had enough in his reserves over what it would take for a single spell to compensate for the difference. Then he took Alex’s hand and fed the energy into his reserve, observing as it swelled to just over two thirds again its original size before breaking the link.
“I think you’ll find yourself using the energy I’ve just transferred to you first, then your own, but I can’t be certain.”
“Does it make a difference? And will I be able to tell?”
“No, and probably not. But I want to link to you again after you cast the first spell, to see if I can tell.” Since the portion of Zack’s energy he’d transferred to Alex had a different ‘signature’ for lack of a better term to Alex’s own energy, the turbulence still present even though it was separated from Zack’s own energy reserve.
“All right.” Cloud smiled at Alex’s easy acquiescence, and then Zack started planning for the hunt, addressing Alex and Marius first.
“So far I’ve seen you two work together and alone, and I’ve seen Cloud work on his own, but I haven’t seen either of you fighting beside him. So, the first two monsters we see I’ll want you to team up with Alex or Marius to deal with it Cloud. Understood?”
“Yes sir.” The three of them spoke almost in chorus, and Cloud turned his attention to the others. “So, how do you two want to do that? Should we just attack together with our swords, or would you prefer softening our opponent up with a spell first, and who should cast the spell?”
“I want to hold my spells back until I really need them.”
“So do I.” Their obtuseness irritated Cloud enough to make him snap at them.
“Marius, when I said you’d be able to cast three spells today I didn’t mean all at once, I meant spread out over the course of the hunt, so you had time to recover between spells. Alex, I’m really not that certain how long you’ll retain all of the energy I transferred to you from Zack, so you need to cast your first spell pretty soon as well.”
“What do you mean you’re not certain how long he’ll retain all of the energy we gave him?” Zack’s voice was slightly deadly now, and Cloud smiled at him in response.
“Just what I said. I know he’ll retain it for at least two hours, since I did the same thing with Marius during our training session with Sephiroth on Saturday, and I could monitor him for two hours after transferring the energy, but I don’t know how much longer than that he’ll be able to keep it. As long as Alex still retains at least half the energy we supplied to him when he casts his first spell he should be able to cast the two spells easily enough.”
“Can I take the third monster myself then, and use my first spell on that? I’d rather just use our swords on the one I fight with you.”
“A pincher manoeuvre then?” Cloud glanced at Alex, waiting for his reaction to the suggestion, ignoring the amused smile on Zack’s face.
“Yes, that’ll work.”
“I’ll use a Fire on our monster, then you can follow up with an attack, and I’ll help more if you need it.” Marius smiled at Cloud as he explained his intentions, and Cloud nodded in agreement.
“So, Spike, why don’t you tell us about your girl to pass the time?”
“How about you tell us about yours, if it’s the same girl you were with a month ago when you dragged Sephiroth and me out drinking with you.”
“Aeris you mean? She’s incredible, most of the girls I meet try to change to make me happy, but she doesn’t, and she’s got the most glorious green eyes...”
“Better than the General’s?” Cloud put a teasing smile on his face as he asked Zack that question. It would have been a bit risky, except that there were contact lenses commonly available to imitate the slit pupils in Sephiroth’s eyes.
o0()0o
Cloud started with the sections on ‘safety’, reading through what was in each of the books on that subject, and found himself just a little bit horrified to realise that he hadn’t even thought about how to free Sephiroth quickly if something went wrong. The fact that he hadn’t known about safewords was different, and wholly understandable, but he wasn’t going to use Sephiroth’s strength as an excuse for not considering something that obvious. He wished he’d known about the three types of safeword before that sensory play game where Sephiroth had asked him to stop, it would have saved him panicking when Sephiroth asked him to stop if he’d known all he really needed was for Cloud to slow down.
Most of the chapters on safety covered the same thing, in varying levels of detail, so he picked out the book with the most clear and comprehensive explanation, and put a marker at the beginning of the chapter. Sephiroth had to learn about this, and that was the best way of covering things...well, it might have been better for the sort of relationship they were in if Cloud explained it to him personally, but he’d rather do it this way, since he thought that would be better for Sephiroth.
He couldn’t quite believe how amenable Sephiroth had been to letting him control all the information about this type of relationship and he found himself wondering whether that was something he’d been taught to do, not to ask too many questions, or something he found arousing, not knowing anything except what Cloud told him.
He pushed that thought aside and picked up the most basic of the books he’d gotten, the one that seemed to focus most on the responsibilities of the dominant partner and the duties of the submissive partner rather than on any of the unusual techniques the other books seemed to cover. It was also the shortest, but that didn’t matter, what mattered was how clearly it was written, even if the section of safety was a bit sketchy compared to the chapter he’d picked out for Sephiroth to read. He’d got about a third of the way through it when Sephiroth arrived and immediately marked his place, putting it to one side and standing to greet his lover.
“You’ve eaten?” He knew that it wasn’t really romantic for that to be the first question out of his mouth when he pulled back from kissing Sephiroth, but his lover ignored his body’s needs so often that...
“Yes Cloud. How did your hunt go around Junon?” Cloud pulled Sephiroth to sit beside him before he replied.
“Pretty good. Zack wanted me to work with Alex and Marius on a monster as a pair, since I normally work alone while they normally pair up when we’re hunting with him and he was willing to help with those experiments about linking. We did the first experiment then and there as it happens.
“I checked to see that I could draw from other people beside you when I link to them, in case it was dependent on my linking to you and I transferred enough energy to Alex that he managed to cast two spells without a problem. And Marius had enough energy to cast three without difficulty, so I can conclude that transferring energy to someone without expending it results in a permanent enlargement of their reserve, although not as much as the energy transferred amounts to. He won’t be able to cast spells from an unslotted materia without having access to energy from someone else yet.”
“So you’ll get another benefit from draining my energy tonight.”
“Yes, but...that might be a reason not to take too much. On the other hand I managed to get eight spells out of the Gravity materia you lent me today.”
“Well done then. So, we’ll see how much of a power boost you can get. Do you want to try now?”
“You’ll tell me if you think I’m taking too much.” Sephiroth simply nodded in agreement as Cloud laid a hand on his chest and linked to that pool of strongly sensual power, pulling from it slowly. Then he paused in drawing the power to speak. “I’ve restored my reserves to their normal level. There isn’t any appreciable difference in your energy level yet.” Any more than there’d been an appreciable difference in Zack’s energy level when he’d supplied the energy to let Alex cast an extra spell.
“I see. Don’t stop then.” Something in Sephiroth’s voice caught Cloud’s attention and he questioned it as he began drawing power again slowly.
“Is this a turn on for you?”
“Having my power drawn from me? No. Having you control one more thing about me? Yes, definitely.” That was unnerving, but Cloud didn’t have time to think about it immediately, since he started to feel pain as he added more energy to his reserve.
“Shit! That’s it.” He broke the link almost violently, assessing just how much energy he’d added to his reserves.
“I...don’t think you took much energy Cloud. I can’t feel a difference.” There was a puzzled frown on Sephiroth’s face, something he found adorable.
“I think I’ve figured out the limits of how much energy someone can store in their reserve. I’ve got about three times my natural maximum energy in my personal reserve at the moment, and that’s when it started to hurt. Actually, I think that’s how much additional energy I supplied to Marius on Saturday, proportionally, his natural reserve was just over two thirds of what it would take me to cast a Cure unslotted, and I gave him a third more energy than I’d need to cast a Cure unslotted, just in case.”
“I see, and that’s not enough for you get anywhere near draining me, is it?”
“No, not unless you’re willing to provide the energy for me to experiment with the unstable energy levels of a materia.”
“I can do that, and I’d be pleased to. I can arrange a special lesson on using materia just for you, as an official cover.” He tipped his head to one side as he spoke. “This Saturday perhaps?”
“Whenever you want. I noticed something else, Alex’s energy and the energy I gave him from Zack were distinguishable, and Marius’ energy was obviously different from the energy I gave him on Saturday - and there was a difference between the energy I gave him from you, and the energy I gave him from my personal reserve.”
“Was the energy still different today?”
“No, it had shifted into his own energy pattern. It would be interesting to experiment and see how long that took, for the energy he’d been lent to shift to his own pattern and fall to the new permanent level.”
“But I don’t think we’ll have a chance to do that.”
“No, we won’t. Enough about our experiments, I want you to read the chapter I’ve marked in this book before we play any games, but if you want we can still make love now.”
“Please. Should I get clean first?”
“Go ahead, and meet me in the bedroom.”
“Yes Cloud.” He slapped Sephiroth’s ass lightly as he stood, enjoying the slight jump that got him and made his way to the bedroom. He didn’t have any particular plans, he just wanted a nice simple screw this time, as much fun as the kinky stuff was he really didn’t want to do any of that until after Sephiroth had read the chapter he’d picked out for him.
He’d stripped by the time Sephiroth walked in, naked, a slightly uncertain look on his face, something that mystified Cloud, he didn’t think he’d given his lover any reason to be nervous about tonight. Unless...
“Come here Sephiroth.” He pulled his lover to lie with his head in Cloud’s lap, stroking his hair gently. “Are you worried that I’m trying to find an excuse to stop the dominance games you enjoy so much?”
“A bit, yes. You don’t always like it that I submit to you.”
“I do like you submissive. Didn’t I tell you that just yesterday? You’re just remembering how reluctant I was at first. And are you saying I don’t dominate you well?”
“No, you’re wonderful, even if you don’t go as far as I’d like sometimes I can be patient, and in a way, your refusal makes it better, you’re doing what you want instead of allowing me to push you into anything and it’s another way of asserting your control.” Sephiroth was blushing as he spoke, and Cloud traced one high cheekbone absently.
“I can still tell you what to do, dominate you verbally, and I’m sure you’ll be able to read that chapter before the next time we get together.”
“Yes, I can do that. Cloud...please...” He turned his head to nuzzle at Cloud’s groin and Cloud laughed softly at that.
“Get your head out of my lap and spread your legs then.” Sephiroth obeyed quickly, arousal clear in his body language and Cloud came to lie on top of him, kissing his throat as he began stretching his lover. He twisted a nipple and bit lightly at Sephiroth’s throat as he entered him, then continued nibbling at his throat when he began moving properly. Afterwards he stayed inside Sephiroth, resting on his chest, fingers tracing idle patterns on his body.
“Is something wrong?” Sephiroth sounded faintly uncertain as he spoke.
“No, nothing. We haven’t done this before have we, me staying inside you until I’m ready to go again?”
“I don’t think so. I’d love it if you did that.”
“Good.” Cloud began petting Sephiroth’s body, carefully arousing him anew, and letting his lover’s reactions build his own arousal. This time he wanted something slow, and prolonged, so he moved carefully, almost gently until they climaxed again in unexpected unison.
o0()0o
Zack ambushed him on Friday as he was leaving his last lesson with Greg, not that he was really surprised since they’d scheduled today as a time for the three of them to sit and drink together - and for him to update Sephiroth and Zack on how his experiment with energy transfer had gone. Sometimes it unnerved Cloud how easily Sephiroth had accepted Zack and Cloud dividing his evenings between them, without really consulting him, but what bothered him more was that Zack hadn’t seemed surprised by that. He’d ended up assuming it was just part of Sephiroth’s carefully hidden submissiveness, but he couldn’t figure out what had made Zack dismiss Sephiroth’s attitude.
“Doesn’t it seem a bit odd to you that we’re the ones who decided who Sephiroth would be spending his time with on what nights?” They made arrangements at some point each week, usually on the night they were both meeting up with him.
“Not for every night. And he doesn’t mind.” Zack wasn’t seeing what Cloud was seeing, the problem was that Sephiroth didn’t mind the way they were treating him like a toy or a pet to be shared between them, not really as a person...Cloud sometimes thought that Sephiroth liked it. That or he was so used to being treated like an object that he thought it was normal, even when Cloud tried to draw him into the discussion on who he’d spend his time with the only thing Sephiroth was willing to insist on was having Tuesday and Wednesday nights with him.
But he couldn’t argue too much with Zack about that, not unless he wanted to risk letting him know how very submissive his lover was in bed, and so he fell silent. If Sephiroth ever felt comfortable enough to let Zack know the truth then he’d support his lover in telling him, but only if it was Sephiroth’s choice, not something forced by his mistake. So Cloud followed Zack to his quarters, picking Sephiroth up from his office on the way.
“So, what sort of increase did you get in your energy reserve?” Cloud knew it wasn’t the first thing on Sephiroth’s mind, but it was the question he could ask without bothering Zack. Zack looked just a little bored by the question, and went to get the drinks, He knew better than to offer Cloud anything but a beer, and Sephiroth always just drank the same thing Zack did.
“I’ve got a 5% improvement on my earlier natural maximum energy reserve, so, it’s a bit of a shortcut, but not enough to be really noticeable.”
“Good, so we can-”
“As long as it doesn’t happen too often. Once a week is probably pushing it, for me, not for you. I’m sure you can easily recover from letting me have the energy it takes to cast five unslotted Cures on a regular basis, that comes to perhaps half a percentage point of your normal reserves, but it would be suspicious if I kept on gaining power that fast.”
“I’d planned the other experiments for tomorrow. I...can’t cancel that.” There was an apologetic look in Sephiroth’s eyes as he sat down on the couch and Cloud joined him, leaning against his lover and wrapping an arm round his waist.
“Understood, but no more for two weeks after that, at least not with me. I have a few other ideas...”
“Like what?” Zack’s question was cheerful as he handed the drinks around before flopping down into his own chair.
“You could help if you wanted to. I want to see how long it takes transferred energy to change from the...pattern for lack of a better term of its donor to the pattern of its recipient and to study how the energy’s lost in changing that way.”
“So, what would you want me to do?”
“We found out that when Cloud links with someone he can sense things I can’t, and manipulate the link in ways it never occurred to me to try.” Cloud wasn’t sure he liked the hint of a sense of inferiority in Sephiroth’s voice, but he wouldn’t say anything about it, not directly.
“Not like you’d need to draw energy through a link. I think it’s probably because I’m so much weaker than you are that I notice little details you don’t.” Sephiroth glanced at Cloud, but he didn’t say anything to contradict that, and continued telling Zack what they wanted.
“Cloud can sense the difference in energy from different people, and tomorrow we’ll be trying to find out exactly what the unstable energy levels he can sense in materia can be used for. Since using one of those levels exhausted him when he tried I’ll be letting him link to me to get the energy. We thought he could transfer some of my energy to your reserve, I could link to you and see how he does that, and then he could check to see how the transferred energy was changing every ten to fifteen minutes.” They’d made the plan without deciding on a specific test subject, Zack had just been convenient, and he was certainly the most trustworthy option for helping them.
“So, you want me to meet up with you two and just sit around watching while you experiment with materia?” Cloud wasn’t sure if the question was a good sign, or a bad sign.
“Well, I won’t actually be doing anything besides letting Cloud draw power from me, so...”
“So I could bring a bottle of whiskey or something and we could talk while he plays with materia?” When Sephiroth glanced at Cloud to answer he wanted to curse, but it was just a single look, subtle enough to probably go unnoticed, and besides he’d be the one most likely to know if it would be a problem, since he’d designed the experiments.
“It won’t interfere or anything, and it will give me some practice with linking easily and swiftly, hopefully getting to the point I can manage it unnoticeably - although I don’t expect to manage that for a while.”
“Were you planning on surreptitiously ‘improving’ your friends’ energy reserves if you could?” Sephiroth’s voice was sharp and just a little suspicious and Cloud welcomed that.
“They’re both weak enough that it won’t be obvious, and quite frankly they’re unaware enough of what their natural reserves are like not to even notice as long as I don’t give them enough energy that it hurts them.” Cloud smiled back at Sephiroth, and lifted his free hand to stroke that beautiful hair. “Are you going to claim you wouldn’t do the same for me if you could get away with it? I just want to get them to a level where they can actually benefit from the teaching you provide them.”
“Will you be able to experiment enough with the Ice, or do you want to borrow a Fire and a Lightning materia to work with as well?”
“I don’t know, best bring the extra materia just in case, please. Even with the energy you’ll be lending me I don’t think I’ll be able to use all the unstable energy levels in the Ice.”
“Ah, yes, you said the unstable energy levels took more energy didn’t you. I’d almost forgot that. Do you think you’ll ever get to the point that you will know what an unstable energy level will do without testing it out first?”
“I don’t know.” Cloud laughed as he looked over at Zack. “You know, I think we’re being pretty rude, boring our host like this.”
“Yes, you’re right. Zack was never much into esoterica like this. I’m sorry.” Sephiroth looked over at Zack with a faint smile on his face.
“That’s okay. You got Spike’s duty schedule for the next week so we can make plans?”
“Yes, Cloud, you said your squad has a habit of going out for drinks together after patrolling the labs, will you want to do that on Tuesday?”
“I’ll tell them I’m visiting my girl, there’s been others who’ve begged off for that.”
“Right, you’ve got Seph tomorrow...” Zack trailed off speculatively.
“On Sunday and Friday you’re assigned to work in the infirmary,” Cloud had already known that, well about working in the infirmary on Sunday anyway, “and Monday and Thursday you’ve got training there when the rest of your squad’s finished.” Sephiroth’s explanation was quiet, and Cloud smiled at him, stroking his hair gently.
“So, the three of us meet up here next Friday as well, unless we’ve been sent out of the city. I’ll take Monday and Thursday...you can have this Sunday too Cloud. That sound okay to you?” That was...really generous, but Zack still didn’t seem to see any need to consult Sephiroth, and that bugged Cloud a bit, even though his lover looked almost happy to be disregarded like that.
“Yeah, oh, Sephiroth, I keep on meaning to ask, is what I’ve learned so far and another two weeks working part time at the infirmary really all the training I need to be a medic?”
“Not really, no, but it’s as much as ShinRa’s willing to allow for any squad trying to train up a medic, officially. And you’re good enough with materia that you don’t need as much training in other ways of healing as most would anyway.”
“Flatterer.” Cloud laughed as he responded to his lover’s explanation, looking over at Zack as well.
“You know, I don’t think they’ve ever tried training a trooper straight out of cadet training before. Normally medics are transferred in to the filter units, or experienced troopers, sometimes corporals who’ve failed one SOLDIER Entrance Exam.” Zack smiled at Cloud as he talked about his own experience. “My platoon didn’t have any squads without medics, but in my first squad the medic was training one of the older troopers to be a medic too, so he could transfer to the next squad with an opening for a medic.”
“Ah, thanks.”
o0()0o
Final Fantasy VII fic, pre-game, mostly, with a post-AC epilogue.
CloudxSephiroth - and yes that does mean Cloud is topping.
Rating R.
Sephiroth still had hold of the reports he’d been reading When Cloud came in as he kissed him, and he pushed them into Cloud’s hands when they pulled apart.
“Tell me how accurate you think these reports are please.” Cloud was pretty sure it wasn’t standard practice to ask someone who was being assessed whether or not he thought the reports were accurate or not, since he could see the reports were on how well he was doing in his training as a medic, and apparently his doubts showed. “I’m expected to sign off on almost everything to do with SOLDIER and the filter units, and I’d be personally assessing any trooper completing training as a medic, or to be trained as a medic, just not this way usually.”
“Ahh. Well...Corporal Miller’s report is a piece of crap, since his methods are useless, the only accurate thing is his report on how many spells I can cast in a given time frame. But I agree with what he’s saying about him having nothing left to teach me.”
“I thought so, he was already a medic when he was transferred to the 3rd Sword, and he wasn’t trained very well. The others?”
“I haven’t had the chance to use all of the spells that could be used for healing, but yes, I should be able to do that. They’re right, I do need some experience in assessing how badly people are injured and what sort of treatment they’ll need, and I’m not very good with more traditional healing methods, certainly not good enough to feel comfortable using them if there’s an alternative. I think they’re overstating my skills quite a bit though.”
“I’m signing off on their recommendations for further training then. Your squad won’t be assigned any duties outside Midgar for another two weeks at least.”
“I don’t understand.” Cloud gave the reports back to Sephiroth and sat down to watch as his lover put them away and signed off on something he put with them.
“Procedure is not to assign any squads with rookies to: do night duty until the end of the first week; patrol the labs until the end of the second week or beginning of the third: or outside Midgar until after a month, if possible.” Sephiroth came to sit beside Cloud as he spoke, leaning against him and into the arm Cloud put around his waist. “And your lieutenant requested the rest of your platoon stay here, so the medics could train you. It’s been done before, the only thing different with you was that I didn’t have to test you to see how good you were with materia, or whatever else made your lieutenant recommend you be trained as a medic before I signed off on the request.”
“Oh, thank you.” For explaining, and for not giving him special treatment. But Sephiroth seemed a bit uncomfortable. “Would you like to speak about something else?”
“Yes, two things, please. I thought perhaps we should experiment with what happens when you draw power from me the way you did on Saturday and don’t use it, and with how much extra energy you can take from me without hurting yourself.”
“Or you.” Although Cloud really didn’t think he could take enough of his lover’s energy to harm him, and from the look on his face neither did he. “About the first question, we might get some idea from Marius tomorrow, since I just poured a third again the energy it would take me to cast the Cure unslotted into his energy reserve, and he couldn’t use it.”
“You did what?” Cloud couldn’t understand why Sephiroth was so surprised by that.
“I poured the energy he’d need into his personal energy reserves, I did the same thing with you, didn’t you notice?”
“No, I can’t do that, I just feed it through the link, I don’t have any real control over the destination. And...I don’t have that much awareness of the state of my energy reserves, or I’d have known about the difference in energy needed for a slotted and unslotted materia.”
“Oh, then how did you know I’d used up the energy I took from you?”
“A report is automatically filed when someone uses the materia training room without proper authorisation. It got copied to me since I’m your sponsor. Don’t worry, you won’t be in trouble, not since you didn’t do any damage, you’ll just get a warning. And when you qualify as a medic you’ll have free access there anyway.”
“Thank you. We can set up some experiments, and perhaps recruit Zack to help.” Sephiroth shivered at that, and Cloud realised he could have worded that better considering what sort of experience his lover had to have with experiments. “What else did you want to talk about?”
“I...I read that book you got about gay sex and the one on relationships. I don’t think they give enough information on the sort of relationship we’re in.” Cloud felt Sephiroth tremble slightly against him. “I...you know I’m submissive and you’ve developed into a very good dominant, but...I think we need more information.”
“And you’re hoping it’ll convince me that it’s okay to tie you up during sex, or give us new ideas?”
“Y-yes. I’m sorry-”
“Don’t be. I like the thought of getting some new ideas, and I expect you to be a bit manipulative. So, how do you want to go about getting this extra information?”
“I’ll give you some money, and you could get some more books tomorrow, please?”
“If I can find anything suitable, yes. But I get to read them first, and if I say there’s a book you can’t read then you accept that, deal?”
“Oh, yes. Thank you Cloud.” Cloud wasn’t quite sure why Sephiroth was thanking him, but he pushed it from his mind and turned to kiss his lover.
“Shall we play now then?”
“That would be wonderful. What do you want me to do?” Cloud was used to this, and he stood, pulling Sephiroth up with him.
“Let’s take a shower first.” Cloud reached up and kissed Sephiroth hungrily, then began stripping him. “Undress me now.” Sephiroth obeyed, kissing Cloud’s skin as he exposed it, and when he’d finished, ending up on his knees in front of him, Cloud laughed and pulled him back to his feet, leading him to the shower. He kissed Sephiroth as he pulled him into the shower, turning it on and adjusting the temperature then beginning to wash his lover’s body, and letting Sephiroth return the favour at the same time. Cloud pushed him against the wall when he reached the groin and gathered Sephiroth’s wrists ‘in’ one hand, pinning those to the wall beside him and jerking Sephiroth off quickly, and whispering into his ear.
“You’re so sexy pressed up against the wall like this, all wide eyed and panting with desire, so sexy and all mine. You know I love the way you’ve got almost no hair on your body, and I think one day I’ll shave the rest of it off too.” Cloud kept on whispering dominating words to his lover until Sephiroth gave a cry and climaxed, then he laughed and batted away the hand Sephiroth reached to return the favour.
“No. I don’t want you to do that. You can suck me once we’re clean. If you want.”
“Please Cloud. I love how you taste.”
“I wish I could say the same about you.” Cloud understood Sephiroth’s fears, and he was perfectly willing to indulge them, he just thought they were a bit paranoid and he resented the things they kept him from having. “Hush, I’m not angry. I won’t try and make you do something you’re not comfortable with. Now, wasn’t there something you were supposed to be doing for me?”
“Yes Cloud.” And Sephiroth continued washing Cloud, ending up on his knees in front of him, and took him into his mouth. Cloud had sometimes wondered why Sephiroth didn’t seem to have a gag reflex, but after the hints he’d dropped about Uchiha he’d decided not to actually ask, but to let him tell his story in his own time. He let his hands drift down to caress Sephiroth’s hair, but he wasn’t going to try and take control of his head this time.
“Stay in there for a moment.” Cloud got out, leaving the shower on to keep Sephiroth arm, and dried himself off with a towel quickly. “You can turn the shower off and get out now.” He wrapped the towel he’d just used around Sephiroth’s hair, and picked up a second towel to dry him off with, before helping him into a robe and pulling one on himself, then leading him to the bedroom.
“Sephiroth, you remember what I said about wanting to shave you?” Cloud waited for Sephiroth’s nod, noting the surprise in his eyes - did he think Cloud had just been teasing him or something? “Would you be willing to let me do that?”
“I...you really want to do that?”
“If you really don’t want to then tell me, otherwise I’ll get what I need and we’ll do that tomorrow.”
“C-can...you tie me up to shave me?”
“If that’s what you want.” There was nothing he could use to tie Sephiroth to in the bathroom...but he could improvise with an Ice materia, and draw energy from Sephiroth to power the spells, since he didn’t think he’d have enough energy by himself. “We might have to put that off then, until I can figure out the right way to use the Ice materia. Instead we can experiment with that energy drain thing.”
“You mean sexually?” Sephiroth sounded excited, more than when Cloud had discussed shaving him, and he knew he’d made the right choice.
“Yes and no love. I wonder if I can affect you physically by draining your energy reserves?” He kissed Sephiroth then, checking to see that he could still establish the link easily enough, then releasing it and moving to ravage Sephiroth’s neck.
“I...I’ve always been going on pure will...when I exhaust my magical reserves...it might affect me physically.”
“We’ll find out.” Cloud pushed away from his lover reluctantly. “Dry your hair while I get all my stuff in here. Then I can ravish you properly.”
Cloud much preferred it when Sephiroth woke him with something that he’d get pleasure from as well, and this time he seemed to have decided on frottage. He began kissing his lover when he woke up, wrapping his arms around Sephiroth and leaving him to keep on with what he was doing.
“Do you know why Zack wanted to meet you early?”
“No, but it doesn’t matter, does it?”
“I guess not. Do you want to borrow a materia from me today?”
“A Gravity would be nice please.” Cloud wasn’t going to rely on a Mystify materia, even with Zack as back-up, not when he wasn’t going to be equipping a second combative materia and he thought Earth was a bit too much of an area effect thing for this hunt. He’d rather leave that for later, when and if he was up to tackling more dangerous monsters. “If you’re not going to need it.”
“You never need to worry about that.” Sephiroth laughed. “ShinRa didn’t spare any expense in equipping their favourite weapon, I’ve usually got one or two mastered versions of any given materia. And since I only really get decent training by hunting monsters I mature them at a high rate, and pass them on once I’ve mastered them to Zack, or to some of his friends.” He pulled the Gravity materia out of the box by his bed, and then Cloud made the connection to the materia they’d been tested with on Saturday - the materia had been of maturity levels ranging from newly spawned, to mastered, but the only times the type had been duplicated there’d been one mastered materia, and one unmastered. “You’d best shower now, you don’t want to be late meeting Zack.”
“You know something about what he’s planning, don’t you?”
“He asked me not to say anything.”
“I wasn’t going to ask.” Cloud laughed, he had the feeling that if he had asked Sephiroth would have told him, and regretted it after. “I just wanted to know if there was something special about today, and your reaction confirms it.” Sephiroth blushed faintly as Cloud went to the shower, and he made a point of taking his shower as soon as Cloud came out. Cloud still managed to grab him for a kiss before he left for the canteen though. He did sometimes wonder whether anyone would be suspicious about how early he was leaving Sephiroth’s quarters, but he wasn’t going to deny himself or Sephiroth this pleasure, it would demean what they shared.
He ate quickly, then it was back to his barracks to change his clothes, dump his weights and pick up the squad Restore before he ran for the airstrip Zack had ordered them to meet him at.
“Want to let us in on the secret now?” Cloud glanced over at the helicopter being prepped for take-off, and Zack laughed nervously.
“Yeah, sure, I managed to wrangle us all a lift to and from Junon, we can go hunting there instead of around here, since I’ve no guarantees you’ll all be here after this week.”
“What do you mean Zack?” Cloud wondered if former cadets without a sponsor learned about this at all, but he didn’t really care.
“Squads that got new troops from the latest cadet class are kept in Midgar for about a month, then they can be assigned to other duties. Of course Cloud gets to spend at least the next two weeks here because he’s training as a medic.” Cloud just shrugged at the looks of mixed envy and pity on his friends’ faces when they looked at him.
“I can’t quite believe I’m supposed to be a medic after thirty odd hours one to one training and two weeks ‘further training’ whatever that means. Or is there more to my training than that?”
“I don’t know. You could always ask Sephiroth.”
“I probably will. Should we be boarding now?”
“Yes, come on. They won’t wait for us.” Zack led them onto the helicopter and they sat together as far away from the others as they could. “Right, Marius, I hear you managed three spells last time, and you managed two Alex.”
“I don’t think I can do it again.” Alex was quick to object, and Cloud frowned at that.
“Me either, I only managed because Cloud was pushing at me, and we were both dead on our feet afterwards.” Cloud brushed his fingers over Marius’ hand, linking to him the way Sephiroth had taught him and finding his personal energy reserve had increased more than it should have over the past four days, not by much, but enough that...
“You won’t have any trouble casting three spells today.” He did the same quick check with Alex. “And if Zack will agree to a little experiment I can make sure you can cast two spells today as well Alex.”
“Experiment?” Zack sounded just a little bit suspicious, not that Cloud blamed him.
“Apparently no one who’s been taught how to link to someone else and feed them energy for a spell ever thought of it, but you can also use the link to draw energy out of the guy you’ve linked to. On Saturday Sephiroth let me draw enough energy from him to cast a Cure unslotted, and I transferred it to Marius, although since he didn’t use that energy it’s lost, I can do the same with you and Alex, draw enough energy from you to cast a Bolt and transfer it to him.” He wasn’t going to use up his own energy to give Alex the ability to cast an extra spell today, since his friend didn’t have Cloud’s skill, but Zack would probably have enough energy to share, and he needed to find out if it worked with anyone beside Sephiroth.
“Go ahead.” Zack held out his hand, waiting for Cloud to try what he wanted, and Cloud took it, humbled by the display of trust. “But I expect you to use the second spell this buys you Alex.”
“Yes sir.” He wasn’t quite so compliant when it was Cloud pushing him to succeed, but Cloud wasn’t really that surprised. He laid a hand on Zack’s bare arm, linking into his energy reserves, smaller than Sephiroth’s, and more turbulent, then drew out as much energy as he would use to cast a Bolt from a third level Lightning materia, after all even if Alex did need a little more energy than Cloud did he already had enough in his reserves over what it would take for a single spell to compensate for the difference. Then he took Alex’s hand and fed the energy into his reserve, observing as it swelled to just over two thirds again its original size before breaking the link.
“I think you’ll find yourself using the energy I’ve just transferred to you first, then your own, but I can’t be certain.”
“Does it make a difference? And will I be able to tell?”
“No, and probably not. But I want to link to you again after you cast the first spell, to see if I can tell.” Since the portion of Zack’s energy he’d transferred to Alex had a different ‘signature’ for lack of a better term to Alex’s own energy, the turbulence still present even though it was separated from Zack’s own energy reserve.
“All right.” Cloud smiled at Alex’s easy acquiescence, and then Zack started planning for the hunt, addressing Alex and Marius first.
“So far I’ve seen you two work together and alone, and I’ve seen Cloud work on his own, but I haven’t seen either of you fighting beside him. So, the first two monsters we see I’ll want you to team up with Alex or Marius to deal with it Cloud. Understood?”
“Yes sir.” The three of them spoke almost in chorus, and Cloud turned his attention to the others. “So, how do you two want to do that? Should we just attack together with our swords, or would you prefer softening our opponent up with a spell first, and who should cast the spell?”
“I want to hold my spells back until I really need them.”
“So do I.” Their obtuseness irritated Cloud enough to make him snap at them.
“Marius, when I said you’d be able to cast three spells today I didn’t mean all at once, I meant spread out over the course of the hunt, so you had time to recover between spells. Alex, I’m really not that certain how long you’ll retain all of the energy I transferred to you from Zack, so you need to cast your first spell pretty soon as well.”
“What do you mean you’re not certain how long he’ll retain all of the energy we gave him?” Zack’s voice was slightly deadly now, and Cloud smiled at him in response.
“Just what I said. I know he’ll retain it for at least two hours, since I did the same thing with Marius during our training session with Sephiroth on Saturday, and I could monitor him for two hours after transferring the energy, but I don’t know how much longer than that he’ll be able to keep it. As long as Alex still retains at least half the energy we supplied to him when he casts his first spell he should be able to cast the two spells easily enough.”
“Can I take the third monster myself then, and use my first spell on that? I’d rather just use our swords on the one I fight with you.”
“A pincher manoeuvre then?” Cloud glanced at Alex, waiting for his reaction to the suggestion, ignoring the amused smile on Zack’s face.
“Yes, that’ll work.”
“I’ll use a Fire on our monster, then you can follow up with an attack, and I’ll help more if you need it.” Marius smiled at Cloud as he explained his intentions, and Cloud nodded in agreement.
“So, Spike, why don’t you tell us about your girl to pass the time?”
“How about you tell us about yours, if it’s the same girl you were with a month ago when you dragged Sephiroth and me out drinking with you.”
“Aeris you mean? She’s incredible, most of the girls I meet try to change to make me happy, but she doesn’t, and she’s got the most glorious green eyes...”
“Better than the General’s?” Cloud put a teasing smile on his face as he asked Zack that question. It would have been a bit risky, except that there were contact lenses commonly available to imitate the slit pupils in Sephiroth’s eyes.
Cloud started with the sections on ‘safety’, reading through what was in each of the books on that subject, and found himself just a little bit horrified to realise that he hadn’t even thought about how to free Sephiroth quickly if something went wrong. The fact that he hadn’t known about safewords was different, and wholly understandable, but he wasn’t going to use Sephiroth’s strength as an excuse for not considering something that obvious. He wished he’d known about the three types of safeword before that sensory play game where Sephiroth had asked him to stop, it would have saved him panicking when Sephiroth asked him to stop if he’d known all he really needed was for Cloud to slow down.
Most of the chapters on safety covered the same thing, in varying levels of detail, so he picked out the book with the most clear and comprehensive explanation, and put a marker at the beginning of the chapter. Sephiroth had to learn about this, and that was the best way of covering things...well, it might have been better for the sort of relationship they were in if Cloud explained it to him personally, but he’d rather do it this way, since he thought that would be better for Sephiroth.
He couldn’t quite believe how amenable Sephiroth had been to letting him control all the information about this type of relationship and he found himself wondering whether that was something he’d been taught to do, not to ask too many questions, or something he found arousing, not knowing anything except what Cloud told him.
He pushed that thought aside and picked up the most basic of the books he’d gotten, the one that seemed to focus most on the responsibilities of the dominant partner and the duties of the submissive partner rather than on any of the unusual techniques the other books seemed to cover. It was also the shortest, but that didn’t matter, what mattered was how clearly it was written, even if the section of safety was a bit sketchy compared to the chapter he’d picked out for Sephiroth to read. He’d got about a third of the way through it when Sephiroth arrived and immediately marked his place, putting it to one side and standing to greet his lover.
“You’ve eaten?” He knew that it wasn’t really romantic for that to be the first question out of his mouth when he pulled back from kissing Sephiroth, but his lover ignored his body’s needs so often that...
“Yes Cloud. How did your hunt go around Junon?” Cloud pulled Sephiroth to sit beside him before he replied.
“Pretty good. Zack wanted me to work with Alex and Marius on a monster as a pair, since I normally work alone while they normally pair up when we’re hunting with him and he was willing to help with those experiments about linking. We did the first experiment then and there as it happens.
“I checked to see that I could draw from other people beside you when I link to them, in case it was dependent on my linking to you and I transferred enough energy to Alex that he managed to cast two spells without a problem. And Marius had enough energy to cast three without difficulty, so I can conclude that transferring energy to someone without expending it results in a permanent enlargement of their reserve, although not as much as the energy transferred amounts to. He won’t be able to cast spells from an unslotted materia without having access to energy from someone else yet.”
“So you’ll get another benefit from draining my energy tonight.”
“Yes, but...that might be a reason not to take too much. On the other hand I managed to get eight spells out of the Gravity materia you lent me today.”
“Well done then. So, we’ll see how much of a power boost you can get. Do you want to try now?”
“You’ll tell me if you think I’m taking too much.” Sephiroth simply nodded in agreement as Cloud laid a hand on his chest and linked to that pool of strongly sensual power, pulling from it slowly. Then he paused in drawing the power to speak. “I’ve restored my reserves to their normal level. There isn’t any appreciable difference in your energy level yet.” Any more than there’d been an appreciable difference in Zack’s energy level when he’d supplied the energy to let Alex cast an extra spell.
“I see. Don’t stop then.” Something in Sephiroth’s voice caught Cloud’s attention and he questioned it as he began drawing power again slowly.
“Is this a turn on for you?”
“Having my power drawn from me? No. Having you control one more thing about me? Yes, definitely.” That was unnerving, but Cloud didn’t have time to think about it immediately, since he started to feel pain as he added more energy to his reserve.
“Shit! That’s it.” He broke the link almost violently, assessing just how much energy he’d added to his reserves.
“I...don’t think you took much energy Cloud. I can’t feel a difference.” There was a puzzled frown on Sephiroth’s face, something he found adorable.
“I think I’ve figured out the limits of how much energy someone can store in their reserve. I’ve got about three times my natural maximum energy in my personal reserve at the moment, and that’s when it started to hurt. Actually, I think that’s how much additional energy I supplied to Marius on Saturday, proportionally, his natural reserve was just over two thirds of what it would take me to cast a Cure unslotted, and I gave him a third more energy than I’d need to cast a Cure unslotted, just in case.”
“I see, and that’s not enough for you get anywhere near draining me, is it?”
“No, not unless you’re willing to provide the energy for me to experiment with the unstable energy levels of a materia.”
“I can do that, and I’d be pleased to. I can arrange a special lesson on using materia just for you, as an official cover.” He tipped his head to one side as he spoke. “This Saturday perhaps?”
“Whenever you want. I noticed something else, Alex’s energy and the energy I gave him from Zack were distinguishable, and Marius’ energy was obviously different from the energy I gave him on Saturday - and there was a difference between the energy I gave him from you, and the energy I gave him from my personal reserve.”
“Was the energy still different today?”
“No, it had shifted into his own energy pattern. It would be interesting to experiment and see how long that took, for the energy he’d been lent to shift to his own pattern and fall to the new permanent level.”
“But I don’t think we’ll have a chance to do that.”
“No, we won’t. Enough about our experiments, I want you to read the chapter I’ve marked in this book before we play any games, but if you want we can still make love now.”
“Please. Should I get clean first?”
“Go ahead, and meet me in the bedroom.”
“Yes Cloud.” He slapped Sephiroth’s ass lightly as he stood, enjoying the slight jump that got him and made his way to the bedroom. He didn’t have any particular plans, he just wanted a nice simple screw this time, as much fun as the kinky stuff was he really didn’t want to do any of that until after Sephiroth had read the chapter he’d picked out for him.
He’d stripped by the time Sephiroth walked in, naked, a slightly uncertain look on his face, something that mystified Cloud, he didn’t think he’d given his lover any reason to be nervous about tonight. Unless...
“Come here Sephiroth.” He pulled his lover to lie with his head in Cloud’s lap, stroking his hair gently. “Are you worried that I’m trying to find an excuse to stop the dominance games you enjoy so much?”
“A bit, yes. You don’t always like it that I submit to you.”
“I do like you submissive. Didn’t I tell you that just yesterday? You’re just remembering how reluctant I was at first. And are you saying I don’t dominate you well?”
“No, you’re wonderful, even if you don’t go as far as I’d like sometimes I can be patient, and in a way, your refusal makes it better, you’re doing what you want instead of allowing me to push you into anything and it’s another way of asserting your control.” Sephiroth was blushing as he spoke, and Cloud traced one high cheekbone absently.
“I can still tell you what to do, dominate you verbally, and I’m sure you’ll be able to read that chapter before the next time we get together.”
“Yes, I can do that. Cloud...please...” He turned his head to nuzzle at Cloud’s groin and Cloud laughed softly at that.
“Get your head out of my lap and spread your legs then.” Sephiroth obeyed quickly, arousal clear in his body language and Cloud came to lie on top of him, kissing his throat as he began stretching his lover. He twisted a nipple and bit lightly at Sephiroth’s throat as he entered him, then continued nibbling at his throat when he began moving properly. Afterwards he stayed inside Sephiroth, resting on his chest, fingers tracing idle patterns on his body.
“Is something wrong?” Sephiroth sounded faintly uncertain as he spoke.
“No, nothing. We haven’t done this before have we, me staying inside you until I’m ready to go again?”
“I don’t think so. I’d love it if you did that.”
“Good.” Cloud began petting Sephiroth’s body, carefully arousing him anew, and letting his lover’s reactions build his own arousal. This time he wanted something slow, and prolonged, so he moved carefully, almost gently until they climaxed again in unexpected unison.
Zack ambushed him on Friday as he was leaving his last lesson with Greg, not that he was really surprised since they’d scheduled today as a time for the three of them to sit and drink together - and for him to update Sephiroth and Zack on how his experiment with energy transfer had gone. Sometimes it unnerved Cloud how easily Sephiroth had accepted Zack and Cloud dividing his evenings between them, without really consulting him, but what bothered him more was that Zack hadn’t seemed surprised by that. He’d ended up assuming it was just part of Sephiroth’s carefully hidden submissiveness, but he couldn’t figure out what had made Zack dismiss Sephiroth’s attitude.
“Doesn’t it seem a bit odd to you that we’re the ones who decided who Sephiroth would be spending his time with on what nights?” They made arrangements at some point each week, usually on the night they were both meeting up with him.
“Not for every night. And he doesn’t mind.” Zack wasn’t seeing what Cloud was seeing, the problem was that Sephiroth didn’t mind the way they were treating him like a toy or a pet to be shared between them, not really as a person...Cloud sometimes thought that Sephiroth liked it. That or he was so used to being treated like an object that he thought it was normal, even when Cloud tried to draw him into the discussion on who he’d spend his time with the only thing Sephiroth was willing to insist on was having Tuesday and Wednesday nights with him.
But he couldn’t argue too much with Zack about that, not unless he wanted to risk letting him know how very submissive his lover was in bed, and so he fell silent. If Sephiroth ever felt comfortable enough to let Zack know the truth then he’d support his lover in telling him, but only if it was Sephiroth’s choice, not something forced by his mistake. So Cloud followed Zack to his quarters, picking Sephiroth up from his office on the way.
“So, what sort of increase did you get in your energy reserve?” Cloud knew it wasn’t the first thing on Sephiroth’s mind, but it was the question he could ask without bothering Zack. Zack looked just a little bored by the question, and went to get the drinks, He knew better than to offer Cloud anything but a beer, and Sephiroth always just drank the same thing Zack did.
“I’ve got a 5% improvement on my earlier natural maximum energy reserve, so, it’s a bit of a shortcut, but not enough to be really noticeable.”
“Good, so we can-”
“As long as it doesn’t happen too often. Once a week is probably pushing it, for me, not for you. I’m sure you can easily recover from letting me have the energy it takes to cast five unslotted Cures on a regular basis, that comes to perhaps half a percentage point of your normal reserves, but it would be suspicious if I kept on gaining power that fast.”
“I’d planned the other experiments for tomorrow. I...can’t cancel that.” There was an apologetic look in Sephiroth’s eyes as he sat down on the couch and Cloud joined him, leaning against his lover and wrapping an arm round his waist.
“Understood, but no more for two weeks after that, at least not with me. I have a few other ideas...”
“Like what?” Zack’s question was cheerful as he handed the drinks around before flopping down into his own chair.
“You could help if you wanted to. I want to see how long it takes transferred energy to change from the...pattern for lack of a better term of its donor to the pattern of its recipient and to study how the energy’s lost in changing that way.”
“So, what would you want me to do?”
“We found out that when Cloud links with someone he can sense things I can’t, and manipulate the link in ways it never occurred to me to try.” Cloud wasn’t sure he liked the hint of a sense of inferiority in Sephiroth’s voice, but he wouldn’t say anything about it, not directly.
“Not like you’d need to draw energy through a link. I think it’s probably because I’m so much weaker than you are that I notice little details you don’t.” Sephiroth glanced at Cloud, but he didn’t say anything to contradict that, and continued telling Zack what they wanted.
“Cloud can sense the difference in energy from different people, and tomorrow we’ll be trying to find out exactly what the unstable energy levels he can sense in materia can be used for. Since using one of those levels exhausted him when he tried I’ll be letting him link to me to get the energy. We thought he could transfer some of my energy to your reserve, I could link to you and see how he does that, and then he could check to see how the transferred energy was changing every ten to fifteen minutes.” They’d made the plan without deciding on a specific test subject, Zack had just been convenient, and he was certainly the most trustworthy option for helping them.
“So, you want me to meet up with you two and just sit around watching while you experiment with materia?” Cloud wasn’t sure if the question was a good sign, or a bad sign.
“Well, I won’t actually be doing anything besides letting Cloud draw power from me, so...”
“So I could bring a bottle of whiskey or something and we could talk while he plays with materia?” When Sephiroth glanced at Cloud to answer he wanted to curse, but it was just a single look, subtle enough to probably go unnoticed, and besides he’d be the one most likely to know if it would be a problem, since he’d designed the experiments.
“It won’t interfere or anything, and it will give me some practice with linking easily and swiftly, hopefully getting to the point I can manage it unnoticeably - although I don’t expect to manage that for a while.”
“Were you planning on surreptitiously ‘improving’ your friends’ energy reserves if you could?” Sephiroth’s voice was sharp and just a little suspicious and Cloud welcomed that.
“They’re both weak enough that it won’t be obvious, and quite frankly they’re unaware enough of what their natural reserves are like not to even notice as long as I don’t give them enough energy that it hurts them.” Cloud smiled back at Sephiroth, and lifted his free hand to stroke that beautiful hair. “Are you going to claim you wouldn’t do the same for me if you could get away with it? I just want to get them to a level where they can actually benefit from the teaching you provide them.”
“Will you be able to experiment enough with the Ice, or do you want to borrow a Fire and a Lightning materia to work with as well?”
“I don’t know, best bring the extra materia just in case, please. Even with the energy you’ll be lending me I don’t think I’ll be able to use all the unstable energy levels in the Ice.”
“Ah, yes, you said the unstable energy levels took more energy didn’t you. I’d almost forgot that. Do you think you’ll ever get to the point that you will know what an unstable energy level will do without testing it out first?”
“I don’t know.” Cloud laughed as he looked over at Zack. “You know, I think we’re being pretty rude, boring our host like this.”
“Yes, you’re right. Zack was never much into esoterica like this. I’m sorry.” Sephiroth looked over at Zack with a faint smile on his face.
“That’s okay. You got Spike’s duty schedule for the next week so we can make plans?”
“Yes, Cloud, you said your squad has a habit of going out for drinks together after patrolling the labs, will you want to do that on Tuesday?”
“I’ll tell them I’m visiting my girl, there’s been others who’ve begged off for that.”
“Right, you’ve got Seph tomorrow...” Zack trailed off speculatively.
“On Sunday and Friday you’re assigned to work in the infirmary,” Cloud had already known that, well about working in the infirmary on Sunday anyway, “and Monday and Thursday you’ve got training there when the rest of your squad’s finished.” Sephiroth’s explanation was quiet, and Cloud smiled at him, stroking his hair gently.
“So, the three of us meet up here next Friday as well, unless we’ve been sent out of the city. I’ll take Monday and Thursday...you can have this Sunday too Cloud. That sound okay to you?” That was...really generous, but Zack still didn’t seem to see any need to consult Sephiroth, and that bugged Cloud a bit, even though his lover looked almost happy to be disregarded like that.
“Yeah, oh, Sephiroth, I keep on meaning to ask, is what I’ve learned so far and another two weeks working part time at the infirmary really all the training I need to be a medic?”
“Not really, no, but it’s as much as ShinRa’s willing to allow for any squad trying to train up a medic, officially. And you’re good enough with materia that you don’t need as much training in other ways of healing as most would anyway.”
“Flatterer.” Cloud laughed as he responded to his lover’s explanation, looking over at Zack as well.
“You know, I don’t think they’ve ever tried training a trooper straight out of cadet training before. Normally medics are transferred in to the filter units, or experienced troopers, sometimes corporals who’ve failed one SOLDIER Entrance Exam.” Zack smiled at Cloud as he talked about his own experience. “My platoon didn’t have any squads without medics, but in my first squad the medic was training one of the older troopers to be a medic too, so he could transfer to the next squad with an opening for a medic.”
“Ah, thanks.”
