#chaoscheebs

“Chetchi says you’re terrible.”

“Chetchi doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“Malborowaifu doesn’t think you’ll do it either.”

“Why don’t you ever read out the nice comments,” Cloud complained, gaze focused on the screen in front of him. He flicked his gaze to Genesis’ form, registering the other man’s teasing smile before returning his attention to the game.”Boost my confidence, or something like that.”

“They’re so hard to find though,” Genesis whined, burrowing further into his warm jacket and focusing on the chat he had opened in front of him. “Everyone’s complaining that you’re butchering their favourite songs.”

“I’m not butchering them!” Cloud said, amusement colouring his tone as he selected the next piece of music for the night. “I’m barely missing the notes!”

“Whatever helps you get through the day,” Genesis responded, leaning back against the couch. He brought up the poll for the next song selection and groaned when he saw what the next few songs would be. “They’re going through my music library again,” he whined, gazing at the titles of four songs by one of his favourite bands.

“I’ll make sure to butcher those,” Cloud promised, flexing his hand around his controller as he started the song. “Find something nice to say while I do this.”

“Alright,” Genesis said, switching back to the chat and reading what the comments that crawled across his screen. It was just a small stream tonight, late and easy-going for the subscribers, usually the second Friday night of the month was reserved for the four of them a fighting game of some kind but both Aerith and Sephiroth were own of town and they’d decided to just relax with a rhythm game.

They’d started with a few songs that Cloud liked before opening up to viewer requests, when things got fun. They’d sent in the most amusing requests; troll songs, opening themes, actual requests and he even thought he’d recognized the Chocobo Warriors theme song amongst the pieces Cloud had already played through, then they’d starting sending in some of his and Cloud’s favourite artists. Watching Cloud become frustrated over his inability to play his favourite pieces of music was amusing to say the least.

With Cloud’s request for him to find something nice to say to him, the chat was flooded with questions, queries and encouragement. He snorted at a few of the more amusing messages from Cloud’s more amusing subscribers, shifting to a comfortable position as he responded to the ones that had caught his eyes.

“Aerith and Seph are away, Drago,” Genesis answered one of the questions in the chat, skimming the crawling words for compliments to give Cloud once he was done with his current track. “They’re searching for replacements.”

“They won’t have to work hard for that,” Cloud muttered, pulling a laugh from Genesis’ throat. The chat erupted with amused responses to the man’s words and a few people that didn’t quite grasp their particular brand of humour needing to have the joke explained to them.

The track finished in the next minute, showing off Cloud’s score and his overall ranking. It was a decent score, much better than the scores he had gotten little more than an hour before, Cloud was definitely getting better as he went. The chat had noticed as well, if the flood of congratulatory messages was any indication.

Cloud set down his controller on the table in front of him, reaching out towards where Genesis was sitting. “Come here,” Cloud urged, patting the space next to him before holding his hand to him again. “I wanna see the trash they’re saying about me.”

Genesis snorted but grasped Cloud’s hand and allowed him to tug him from his comfy seat and next to him, burrowing into his side to soak up as much of the other’s warmth as he could. He handed the man the device he had been reading the chat on, leaving him to interact with the viewers as he got himself comfortable again.

“Shut up guys,” Cloud grumbled, rolling his eyes at the camera for the audience. “We’re not being ‘sweetly domestic’, Gen’s just being a heat sponge again.”

“I’m stealing that term for later,” he informed the other man, stretching his legs out along the couch until he was tucked against Cloud’s side. “It’s perfect for us.”

“Don’t encourage them,” Cloud said, words coloured with an exaggerated sigh. His hand lifted from where it had been resting and started to run through his hair with absent-minded movements, pulling a pleased noise from Genesis’ noise as he relaxed against him completely. “Chetchi’s threatening us with fanart, again.”

“I love Chetchi’s art,” Genesis said, teasing smile in place as he looked up at Cloud. “The one they did of you and Seph as Air Pirates is the most adorable thing ever.”

Cloud flushed slightly but ignored him, focusing on interacting with the chat for a bit. “Thank you for the compliments Gravedigger,” he said, eyes moving over the chat quickly. “And thank you, Breezy, for the grievous insult to my skills.”

Genesis smiled, content to listen to Cloud talk to the chat as he remained pressed to his side and enjoyed his warmth and the relaxed feeling of the stream. It wasn’t that uncommon for them to end up curled up together during the streams, despite how flustered Cloud always got, and the viewers were well aware of that fact; Chetchi’s wouldn’t be the first piece of them curled up together, nor did he think it would be the last. A lot of them were incredibly cute and he loved embarrassing Cloud with them.

He focused back on Cloud when a particular comment caught his attention, turning towards him and speaking without a second thought.

“- not just dating me for my looks, Ravencloak! There’s other reasons!

“I really like a man who’s good with his hands.”

Cloud paused, looking down at him with flushed cheeks and an expression that told him how foolish he was being. He blinked after a few moments, turning away from him as he responded. “I’m glad you said ‘man’ instead of ‘person’ there.”

“Oh?”

“Yup,” Cloud answered, gaze purposely trained on the chat. “If you had said ‘person’ then you’d probably dump me for Aerith at least once every month.”

Genesis opened his mouth to say something in response but froze, considering what Cloud had said. “Point,” he said, reaching out and taking his device back from Cloud. “The things that woman can do with her hands are positively sinful.”

He felt no qualms in labelling Aerith that way; she was a champion at fighters and ensured that they remembered it. During one of their previous streams together he’d turned the video onto her hands so the viewers could see the exact precision and speed of her hands during the matches; to say it was impressive was putting it lightly. It was one of their highest viewed clips, aside from the one where Seph and Cloud got jumpscared by a RPG-maker game.

First things first; I adore his colour palette, variousshades of red is one of my favourite colour schemes for a character. That andoff-white with anything. I saw his design long before I even knew where he wasfrom and immediately scouring the internet to find out who he was.

Secondly, his personality is really appealing to me. Ireally like characters that are passionate about their thing and will literallyfight someone over it. I also really enjoy how he contrasts with the othercharacters in Crisis Core, I think he worked really well with everyone else andI enjoy that immensely about Crisis Core and really FFVII in general.

Then the fact that he’s a red mage in a program fillof people where the standard issue weapon is a broadsword. I really like thatabout his character, especially when I think about how difficult it must havebeen for him to get to SOLDIER First in that environment and how much effort hewould have had to put in to get respect for the other SOLDIERs.

Finally, I love how his character arc progresses; thedescent into madness and deplorable actions followed but remorse and the needto achieve penance (even if there’s no pay-off for him which annoys me but I’drather no pay-off than a failure of a pay-off). I also really enjoy charactersthat have a descent into madness, I think it’s one of my favourite charactertropes beside ‘I can’t do anything about what’s going to happen, fuck.’