Work Text:
Six, seven… eighth house.
Cloud pulled to a slow halt in front of the target, heaving the package over his shoulder as he swung off of Fenrir. He left the bike where it was in the middle of the beat dirt path. No one would try to steal it. Not here. Fenrir was still sleek and shiny, all glossy black and gleaming chrome. Cloud couldn’t bring himself to let it accumulate dirt, no matter how much he hated what its high-tech lustre conveyed to everyone who saw it. Cloud loved the thing despite himself, but he knew it reeked of money—new money, which was much worse than old nowadays.
At least they hadn’t embossed their stupid logo on it.
Cloud made his way slowly over to the front door. Some houses further down the road looked like they were rusting apart, but this place didn’t seem half bad. ‘Course, all the metal buildings looked the same to him most of the time, give or take one or two particularly ugly-looking pieces of steel bolted over the roofs.
He knocked a few times, loudly. The pounding produced an unpleasant, metallic rattling sound. Guy needed to invest in a better door. There was no response, so he knocked again in irritation. Normally, he’d just barge in, or dump the package at the door, but the client had explicitly asked him to knock. And now he wasn’t answering. A flicker of annoyance sparked through Cloud, momentarily cutting through the usual grey haze. He’d wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible. The migraine had long since died down to a throbbing headache, but it was hard to feel good about that when his head still, you know, hurt.
The door finally opened, grinding against the concrete beneath it in a screech that was something like nails on a chalkboard’s industrial-grade cousin. Cloud bit back a wince as the sound scraped at his ears. A sallow-skinned man who looked like he hadn’t seen the sun in a few weeks—or maybe months, considering how flat Sector 4 was—squinted down at Cloud like he wasn’t quite sure who Cloud was, where they were standing, or what anything was in general. Cloud pointedly ignored all of this, because it wasn’t his problem, and held up the package.
“Delivery,” he grunted eloquently.
The man blinked. Then a lightbulb seemed to turn on in his head and he reached for the bag with one hand, the other going into his pockets. Cloud watched, unconcerned. He’d been working all day after working all night and he really didn’t have the energy to care about being knifed right now. He hated when he had to switch hours without advance warning. Or rather, with no warning at all in this case. Did they think humans could turn night mode on and off in their settings like a smartphone?
The man withdrew a few coins and dropped them into Cloud’s waiting palm.
“Thanks,” the guy said hoarsely. Not the kind of hoarse a voice got from disuse, though. The kind that stuck to a throat after too many years of breathing bad air.
“Don’t mention it,” Cloud muttered, pocketing his pay. It was a measly few coins, barely worth the trouble, but money was money. He still needed new bills to fatten up his stash after the Don Corneo debacle. He turned to leave, and heard the man shuffle back in hurriedly. The door screeched closed a second later. Smart. People here were usually friendlier than the upperplaters, due to actually having personalities, but the sun was setting above the plate, and the locals had grown wary of strangers as of late. These days, nightfall brought a hush to the slums, a kind of re-alignment with the natural cycle of the heavens that the people down here hadn’t seen in years. The sheep didn’t know why people were going missing, of course. They speculated, and some of their whispers reached Cloud’s ears, wild and off-base enough that they blended into meaningless buzzing, and he was able to stomp down the desire to report to the Turks. But people knew that something was up. Someone—or something— had taken notice of the slum-dwellers who weren’t supposed to be noticed. That was never a good sign. There was something fouler than mako fumes in the air.
In fact, the whole undercity was choked with a thick, heavy atmosphere lately. Just trying to walk around and go about his day felt like moving through molasses. Cloud didn’t know if it was just his imagination or not, but he hated it anyway. It made the parched feeling in the back of his throat so much worse. He’d received more than a few cagey glances on his way here. These days he could feel people’s eyes on him like they were hot brands to the back of his neck. A foul taste rose in his mouth, rising over the usual bitter tang of mako coating his tongue. The image of how he must look right now danced around his head like a giggling spectre. He was dressed like one of their agents, wasn’t he? No, he wasn’t. But he looked like he was, or had a ride that looked like he was, and that was bad enough.
A good little henchman, suggested a singsong voice in his head, not sounding like anyone in particular.
He spat on the side of the road before climbing back onto Fenrir. Of course, if it was that easy to get rid of unwanted thoughts he’d have puked all his blood up in an alleyway already. He listened to his bike’s rumbling purr as it came to life, letting it soothe him. The rumbling reverberated up his chest in a way that almost drowned out the glowing warmth that had pooled there. The nice thing about machines was that once you knew their programming, you could be reasonably sure they weren’t out to get you. Also they didn’t have eyes to see the kinds of faces you might be making.
The ride back to Sector 7 passed in a hazy blur. With his job done and no more tasks ahead of him for the rest of the night, a few dozen of his muscles he hadn’t known he was using seemed to unclench, and a familiar tension bled out of him. With nothing important left to focus on, it didn’t seem to matter if he paid attention to his surroundings or not as they flew by. His head still hurt, he blearily realized, but the pain was distant now. Good riddance. He couldn’t help but be paranoid when his head hurt, even when it was just a normal headache. It was an inevitability of the job. Besides, it wasn’t like he could ever really be sure a headache was just a headache. ‘Course, he usually couldn’t trust his head to tell him that it wasn’t screwed on right either. That’s what things like “hindsight” were for.
He blinked. He was parked right in front of Seventh Heaven. The neon sign on the second floor was as obnoxiously bright as always, and he could vaguely recognize some of the voices in the chatter drifting through the entrance. The regular bar patrons, probably. It was that time of night, after all.
A soft, fleeting moment of disorientation, like the brush of a feather. What had he been thinking about just now?
...Whatever, he thought morosely as he got off from Fenrir. The confusion wore off, giving way to a familiar, flat frustration. His hands ached as he detached them stiffly from the handlebars, as much from the cold as from tension. He didn’t have the energy to try to grasp on right now. Whatever it was, it probably hadn’t been that important anyway. It wasn’t worth the effort. At least he’d gotten home safe.
“Home.”
He paused, frowning. He hoped the bar was busy enough to keep everyone occupied for the rest of the evening. He was exhausted, and the last thing he wanted to do was start a conversation. For a brief moment, he considered scaling the building and clambering in through the window—she’d never know he was back at all. The next moment, reality caught up to him, as it was wont to do, and he shook his head, dismissing the thought. Like hell he was going to sneak like a cat burglar into his own house. Room. Whatever. He didn’t like it here much, but a haven was a haven. And he paid rent… when he remembered to.
He didn’t bother turning his head or looking towards the bar when he trudged in. He ignored the noise (just meaningless static) and stomped up the stairs, bag over his shoulders. The darkness of the upper hallway was comforting after the acrid brightness of the neons downstairs. His eyes always hurt. He stopped in front of his door and fumbled with his key, trying to ignore the loud buzzing in his ears. His fingers were just a little less dextrous than usual when they tried to turn the right key in the hole. Eventually, he heard a telltale click—finally. Cloud stumbled in, kicked his boots off at the foot of his bed and sank gratefully into the mattress without bothering to take his clothes off. Gods. His head was killing him—he’d thought his headache had gotten better, but clearly not.
He hadn’t locked the door, he realized, his face stuffed in a mound of blanket. Some small part of him nagged at him, urging him to go and turn the lock. But he was so tired. He couldn’t imagine getting up again now. And besides, who would come in and steal from him? Tifa would—
No, it would be fine. He’d wake up if anyone tried to break in, his instincts guaranteed it.
Cloud let out a slow breath and closed his eyes.
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Wake up.
Cloud cracked his eyes open and sat up mechanically. The faint yellow light of the undercity was seeping through the blinds, a little brighter than it had been when he slept. It was hardly blinding, but he still had to blink a few times to clear the haze from his vision. Apart from the noise trickling in from outside, the room was silent. The aches he’d had last night were gone, and stiffness aside, he felt totally normal.
He sat and waited for a few more moments, just in case.
…Nothing. Probably just a memory, or a voice from his dreams, then. The normal kind. He let out a low sigh of relief even as something twinged in disappointment in his chest. He tried to ignore it as he got up and shuffled into the bathroom, going through his morning routine on autopilot. Not that he was sure if it was actually morning. He hadn’t bothered checking his phone.
If he wasn’t needed for anything, it didn’t matter anyway.
He indulged himself with a great old yawn as he stepped out, which was clearly a big mistake, because a moment later a voice drifted out from the staircase opposite him.
“Long day yesterday?”
Tifa was coming up the stairs, peering at him from behind the stack of folded towels she was carrying. Her voice was cheery enough, for someone doing chores, and she looked and sounded a little expectant, but didn’t otherwise seem mad or annoyed.
Cloud avoided her gaze. “Not really.”
I didn’t hear you come in, he thought she would say accusingly. For an instant he saw it play out vividly in his mind’s eye. Instead, she quirked an eyebrow and her mouth twisted in something that had to be amusement. For her, quite the show of mirth. Was there something on his face?
“Oh, really?” she asked. “I haven’t heard you yawn like a baby in ages. Did you sleep okay?”
“Fine,” Cloud muttered, tone sullen even though it was, in fact, true that he’d slept fine.
“There’s some leftover breakfast on the counter if you don’t mind it being cold,” she said, moving past him. With a foot, she hooked open the door to the utility closet that someone (possibly Cloud but he could neither confirm nor deny it) had left ajar, and placed the towels on the middle shelf. “You still like eggs, right?”
Eggs. Yes, he still liked eggs. That was one thing they hadn’t taken from him. Probably because they didn’t give a shit what kind of solid food he ate. When it came to breakfast, he was still the same old Cloud. Was that what she wanted to hear?
“Yeah,” he forced out. “Eggs are fine.”
She didn’t seem to notice anything, rearranging the contents of the shelf. Cloud bit back the sudden wave of prickliness. It was too early for this shit. And he knew Tifa probably didn’t mean it that way. She just wanted to know if he’d eat her grub.
Because, you know, he was an unpredictable asshole.
“You got work today?” she asked casually, taking out rolls of paper towels.
Cloud’s lips thinned. “I hope not.” They’d really been making him run around lately. If there was one thing Cloud hated, it was being treated like an errand boy. His delivery job was all right, but work—half the time he felt like a dog playing fetch, and the other half he had absolutely no idea what he was even supposed to be doing.
Because obviously they couldn’t tell just him what they were up to. Goddamn bloodsuckers.
Tifa didn’t say anything. She didn’t seem to care much about his answer. Of course, why would she? They went through this every time he came back. She always asked the same thing. He always gave the same answer. It was always the same sad dance, with the two of them.
You guys got bad blood? Zack had asked once, looking at him inquisitively, face curious but innocent in a way that assured Cloud he was completely oblivious about his terrible word choice. Zack was a good guy, but there were some things he didn’t—couldn’t understand.
Bad blood. As though Tifa had anything to do with that.
“Actually, here,” Tifa’s voice drifted over from somewhere to the left. “I’ll reheat them for you, how ‘bout that?”
Cloud forgot the noncommittal sound he made in response moments after making it. He eyed his phone in his hand warily, as though daring it to ring. The smooth black surface seemed to mock him, feeling far too expensive in his hand though he couldn’t feel the weight of it. His eyes traced over every infinitesimal scratch and hairline fracture in the screen, the only evidence of all the abuse he’s put it through in the last year. His eyes seemed to get hooked on something in the outline of the time display; he found his gaze circling slowly to read it over and over again, to get it to stick in his head. 14:36. 14:36. A good time. Not morning after all, but not too late.
“…maybe some for dinner?”
Not too late for a job call to come in.
Though when was it ever really too late for that?
“Yeah,” he said after a moment, without looking up. “Eggs are fine.”
He’d just woken up, after all, and he was still groggy. He’d probably feel better after eating some breakfast. If it could be called breakfast.
What time was it again?
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