Sparks fly from screeching metal against metal, Roche's new blade already chipping away at the dark patina to Cloud's Buster sword. It's been ground down to a wicked edge with steady but firm strokes against the grit of a whetstone and the easy glide of filtered water, factory edges were always leaving him rather wanting.
"Like it? Not really my style, but-" he admits, putting on more pressure and forcing them to spin in place, Roche's height advantage leading the blonde by the nose during their fight.
"-made me think about you, Spitfire."
A manic grin that all teeth and impulse at the wheel, but he employs the barest modicum of self-control. Wouldn't want to put an end to their little tryst so quickly.
Cocking his head to the side, his eyes sear a slow and heavy trail down the length of Strife's body, his figure's svelte and tightly compacted muscle, snake-like in that steel was deceptively masked by a smooth and supple layer of healthy skin. He was built for speed along with power, which is exactly Roche's type.
When Cloud jumps back he knows what's coming, just narrowly evading that massive slab of alloy chopping a limb clean off. The concrete shatters where he had been standing, Roche having spun out of the way and was currently using his momentum come in hot and slide an arm around his partner's waist.
He throws his head back and laughs, peals of it echoing off of scrap steel and rumbling through his broad chest. Leaning back and stabilizing himself against his left leg as it pivots, he forces Cloud into a kind of reverse dip, his smaller frame having nowhere to go but against Gallo's larger torso.
"You love it when I punch your dance card, don't you? Do I make your engine roar, baby?" he purrs, smirking as the blonde struggles to regain his footing. Cloud looks like he's ready to drop the sword and just strangle him to death.
"Keep those baby-blues on me, Gorgeous. Only me," he murmurs into blonde's neck, lips pulling back into another rakish smile before giving the lobe of Cloud's ear a gentle tug with his teeth.
Cloud wants to believe that Roche’s incessant flirting is part of a grand strategy to disarm him in some way. As far as strategies go, it’s not a terrible one. Use pure shock value to catch your opponent off guard, then cut him down when he’s distracted. Or most likely, Roche must have an insatiable urge to run his mouth. Just like Cloud has an insatiable urge to gouge out the other man’s eyes when he realizes that Roche is not in fact assessing him, but undressing him with his eyes.
“Don’t. Normal people use magazines or some shit,” Cloud growls. He leans his weight back on his heels into a spin that comes up too slow: the battered edge of the Buster Sword catches only concrete. Worse still, the wide arc that his sword cuts into the air leaves him wide open. Not enough time to recover or stop the momentum of his own swing–
Winded, a lovely epithet cursing Roche’s ancestors dies on his lips. In fact, the ability to string together a coherent sentence becomes an altogether impossible task when he feels the SOLDIER’s breath gust hotly against his neck.
Motor oil and musk, the exact shade of blue of his eyes, the prickle of goatee against his skin; all in the span of a few seconds. Too many details. Way too many.
Cloud can barely feel the muscles in his own face other than the heated mask of a blush that stretches from his cheeks all the way down past his neck. The Buster Sword slips from his hands and drops to the asphalt like a two-ton weight in favor of allowing Cloud to scramble upright and make a straight lunge for Roche’s throat.
