#lightsflash

FFVII. aerti. cakeverse au.

The look on Aerith’s face leaves Tifa breathless. She looks completely wrecked, blood smeared down her chin, glassy eyed, pupils huge. There’s a scrap of gore clinging to her lower lip and Tifa watches with a mix of revulsion and fascination as Aerith sucks it into her mouth with an expression of trembling bliss.

They stare at each other like this for an endless beat, eyes locked, and then Aerith snarls and lunges towards Tifa’s open wounds again, fighting against Tifa’s tight grip on her hair. In a rush of adrenaline and impulse, Tifa’s hand snaps out and she slaps Aerith hard across the face.

ffvii. jenova/lucrecia. our wives under the sea au.

Yes, Jenova agrees. My chosen, my beloved. For you, there is only me.

Lucrecia nods, her old life already forgotten. On the metal floor, Jenova’s appendages seem to extend, a squirming lattice of tentacles reaching for Lucrecia, and Lucrecia gasps as they wind themselves around the delicate bones of her ankles and she realizes what Jenova intends.

If Lucrecia is Jenova’s bride, then this is a marriage of sorts. And a marriage must be consummated.

Yang confesses it at twilight, in front of the cheerful brazier, her fingers entwined with Blake’s, her heart full and pounding and put out on broad display.

Blake’s eyes are golden. They sparkle, tilt up at the corners when she smiles. “What stopped you?”

Every answer catches in Yang’s throat and lodges there: I didn’t think you liked me. You were somebody else’s date. I thought we had more time. You weren’t there, you weren’t there, and then you were back and it felt so enormous. We never had time, and then all we had was time, and I was afraid. I was afraid I would never be worthy of you.

All Yang does is shrug. “Guess I was just waiting for that perfect dramatic setting. Wanted to make sure your foot popped, you know?”

Blake is still smiling, and it reminds Yang of the tremendous way that she smiles into her mouth when they kiss. “I think you could have kissed me anywhere and my foot would have popped,” Blake says slyly.

A slow grin spreads across Yang’s face. Her fingertips slide from Blake’s hand to her forearm, tracing the veins that map out from the inside of Blake’s wrist, and she feels Blake’s tiny shiver.

They buy a house there, barely bigger than the apartment they shared on their first visit (the incognito one), an old mattress dipping under two sets of weight. They go back in every season, in any weather.

In the winter, Beatrice teaches Ava to ski, and Ava looks like Bambi on ice, legs akimbo and knocking knees – but full of breathless laughter and a tireless, dogged spirit that yields an impressive learning curve, that Beatrice adores her for.

In the spring, they hike through the mountains and smell fresh life bursting in the air, sweet relief after all the love and loss and holy wars.

In the summertime, they reminisce: Those hazy nights at the bar, sweet as lemon drops and long after closing, stacking chairs and wiping tables and giggling at one thousand and one kinds of inside jokes. Those sharp blue days lying lazily by the pool, or running through the pines with exhilarating winds in their hair.

In autumn they watch the changing leaves with spicy mugs of hot mulled wine and their fingers interlaced.

FFVII. aerti. post-college road trip au

Aerith gulps and does as she is told. Tifa leans against the open door with her arms braced. Her knees are still dirty, and there’s that smear of dirt across her face. Her braids are starting to unravel. She wears a faded blue work shirt tied around her waist. Aerith takes in all these details, and is sunk under the slow, mesmerizing realization that she is stuck like a butterfly to a card.

“I don’t want to just talk,” Tifa says in that same low voice. “And I don’t want to dial back the physical stuff.”

Aerith’s breaths are coming shallow as Tifa leans further into the car. She reaches across Aerith, and Aerith feels every fine hair on her skin stand on end. Tifa keeps going, reaching past Aerith, and takes firm hold of the seat adjuster. She yanks on it hard, and Aerith’s seat slides back with a fast jolt that she feels through her body.

(The real kind, where the light never bounces off a metal horizon and sometimes they can spot the hectic streak of a shooting star. The kind Tifa grew up with. The kind Aerith never had.)

It’s a teetering precipice of something else when Aerith remembers the firm turn of Tifa’s hands on her hips as she showed Aerith how to hitch a ride on the wide unpaved road leading away from Midgar, nearly slotted against one another, Tifa’s breath a warm exhale on the bare nape of Aerith’s neck.

(In Midgar, they would fall into each other’s arms, finish each other’s sentences, say each other’s names. Could that mean something? Anything at all?)

Change isn’t new, when it comes to Blake and Yang. Yang can catalogue their growth in laden looks and touches: The way Blake had tumbled into Yang when she’d held her in that classroom at Beacon, relief and trust leaking between their hearts. The aching sweetness of their first dance. The moment Blake had taken Yang’s shaking hand in front of a waterfall and kept a promise. The heat of their last dance, in a smoky club in Atlas, their hips bumping together and their lips nearly grazing. So no, change isn’t new between Blake and Yang. But this time…

This time, the change between them is electric, open hearted, surprisingly playful. Yang had felt it when Blake had thrown herself into her arms when they’d reunited, in the flirtatious way they bump shoulders and trade jokes while they amble down whimsical forest paths of folklore.

There are a thousand moment when Yang would have kissed Blake in the past – quiet hours in the dorms, adrenaline-soaked moments on the battlefield, within the scattering of partings and reunions and oaths that have bound them – but Blake was never ready, and Yang has never been patient, but she’d learned a measure of it, waiting.

FFVII. aerti. post-college road trip au

“Me?” Zack asks, spluttering incredulously. “You! You homo! You do homo too!”

Aerith flushes, remembering the feel of Tifa’s body pressing against hers at the lookout point. “That’s not the same thing at all,” she insists. “I’m not like, seducing her or anything. We’re just… friendly. I know your moves, Zack. You’ve used them on me.”

Zack at least has the dignity to look a little guilty at that. “I’m not doing it on purpose,” he mutters. “I’m not trying to, anyway.” He sounds nearly distraught about it.

Aerith can relate.

“Hey, be honest,” Zack says, “Is it just me, or is there something a little… lavender about those two?”