Next Time You Call

Chapter 20: Reaping Word Count: 86,484 (total) Fandom: Final Fantasy 7 (post Advent Children) Pairing: Cloud Strife/Rufus Shinra Rating: Explicit

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It’s the alluring aroma of coffee that first rouses Cloud from slumber.

Oddly enough, he isn’t weighed down by grogginess or that certain measure of dread that accompanies yet another day of toil lying at his feet. As he blinks under the comfort of a nice, fat duvet, he’s acutely aware of his surroundings, and with a bitten lip he allows himself to smile. Rufus has already fled the bed, but even that doesn’t bother him. Nothing is bothering him. It’s a new experience, to say the least.

A sumptuous ache lingers where the ropes clung, and the welts still have plenty to say, if he focuses on them. 

Not a single complaint.

He can hear the faint sound of a body moving in the room, sitting or shifting positions, and he instinctively knows it’s Rufus. With a languid stretch he faintly groans his arrival to the waking world. Sitting up exposes him at last, the cover toppling down as he lazes back against the headboard to peer over at Rufus, seated at the little table near the center of the room. He’s somewhat put together already, with a familiar pair of pants for lounging peeking from beneath the split of a plush white robe. A white, slender carafe is placed on the table in front of an open chair, patiently awaiting Cloud’s eager hand, but he pauses a beat for his host to acknowledge him.

“He wakes?”

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Since it took me a while to reply, just gonna link the ask that this is in response to here, for reference!

Agreed that media portrays sex poorly, or at least, it's often a bizarrely sterilized, fantasy version that is almost comical to watch. Then your other option is...porn? Which is like a comical fantasy in the opposite end of the spectrum! Neither do a very good job at portraying what it's actually like, but then again that's not their goal, is it?

I guess that's why I have fun writing the fic. I felt early on that I wanted to practice writing smut, but I also feel sometimes like it gets a bad rap...like it's pure self-indulgence and people who enjoy it are somehow less-than. Or that it's not a "real" narrative device. Well, I wanted to write my self-indulgent story in such a way that legitimized the sexuality and the scenes in which they're physically intimate. I wanted those things to be inextricable from the story. I understand that it has the capacity to alienate some readers, and I can accept that. It's most important to me to write something that is fun and interesting and true to my own vision, at the end of the day. Way back in 2016...I had no readers. It was just me throwing ideas into the void. I only had myself to impress. I try to keep that in the back of my mind every time I sit down to write.

I'm glad we share these headcanons, anon! It really was a fun ask, so thank you! (✿◡‿◡)

chatting with a friend about current FF7 fics we’re reading and I mentioned being in valenwind hell:

heppi thorsday