🙏: our muses’ hands brush as they walk side by side . // tension, a symbol meme.
for as much as aerith gainsborough despised repetition she was quite comfortable in familiarity, and there was certainly something familiar about treading the back alleys of the slums with cloud strife. the ever-present pout tugged the corners of his lips downward while consternation wrought itself into those glowing eyes of his. aerith couldn’t help but keep a more private smirk of her own in place while he worked - some other sort of job handed out to him for gil. precious gil, he’d probably be happy to drown in it, if he could.
but for now she paced behind him, hands clasped behind her back and the familiar glimmer of mischief catching whenever the light hit her the right way. she fashioned herself something of a puckish imp in these moments, where the cogs in her head churned this way and that and ideas came to formation on how she’d get him to do something other than look an absolute miserable mess. she was at her peak when she threw people for a loop, after all.
“ so ... what are we supposed to be hunting? ” her voice was a chime, a cool and sleek knife cutting right through the silence between them. she heard cloud’s sharp exhale versus the crunch of gravel beneath their feet and though he didn’t look at her she could tell he was narrowing his eyes at her. planet forgive that she couldn’t read minds. the alley twisted this way and that, evidence of whatever beast he was tasked to put down becoming more notable as they made their way, and aerith knew their path would narrow steadily from here on out.
it was the push of abandoned stalls versus the wall of the slums, the stack of long-forgotten boxes that had rusted and whatever was inside gone stale or rotten away entirely, the culprit. “ hey cloud, the path gets really narrow up here. ” she warned, though it hardly seemed necessary as they crested the next corner and all that was left to them was but a small space to squeeze through. and she chuckled as she tapped his shoulder, breezed beyond him and flattened herself into the small gap to push through.
“ hey, wait. ” she heard behind her, but too late ---she was already almost halfway through. he’d catch up. and he did ... the brush of his arm against hers as he slid beside her, the scrape of his sword dismounted from his back so he could afford to fit both he and it through. aerith felt the gentle tickle of soft, worn leather against the flat of her hand, easing static into her pinky as they went, and grinned.
“ almost there! ” perhaps they’d be assailed the moment they cleared the space? but no, when aerith crested from the other side it was empty ---the trail gone cold for whatever it was they were hunting. and cloud came out behind her, eyes narrowed in the push of sunlight, standing just as close as he had moments before. still with the tips of his fingers easing against her own hand (surely he felt it?) as they both stepped forward at the same time, then another few paces with just as little proximity between them.
“ oops, ” aerith mused, casting verdant greens up to the soldier and offering an apologetic smile. “ i think we went the wrong way. ” and he groaned, shifted to set the sword onto his back once more, and more fully bumped his fingers into her palm.
did she spy red? perhaps. it wasn’t difficult to spread onto his face, after all. but no less amusing, no less marked in her own mind as a personal victory.
