Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/12318558.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Major_Character_Death, Underage
  Category:
      Multi
  Fandom:
      Final_Fantasy_VII, Compilation_of_Final_Fantasy_VII
  Relationship:
      Sephiroth/Cloud_Strife, Zack_Fair/Aerith_Gainsborough, Sephiroth/Tifa
      Lockhart, Tifa_Lockhart/Rude
  Character:
      Cloud_Strife, Miss_Cloud_-_Character, Zack_Fair, Aerith_Gainsborough,
      Sephiroth, Tifa_Lockhart
  Additional Tags:
      1920's_AU, sort_of, Based_off_of_'The_Great_Gatsby', Unrequited_Love,
      Unrequited_Lust, Sexual_Situations, Angst_and_Porn, Tragedy, OOCness,
      Multi-chaptered_fic, or_at_least_an_attempt_at_one
  Stats:
      Published: 2017-10-09 Updated: 2017-11-04 Chapters: 3/? Words: 9532
****** Let Me Pour Some Life Into Your Glimmering Glass! ******
by manyafukudere_(Manya_Kami)
Summary
     “We have bottles of 'Envy,' 'Disappointment,'
     and 'Despair!'”
     ------------------------------
     Zack Fair's an honest man, just an honest man, who's somehow gotten
     himself caught up in the convoluted love-story of one Miss Cloud:
     neighbor, millionaire, and Midgar's resident princess.
Notes
     So, this AU might seem weird as all fuck, but I rewatched Leonardo
     Dicaprio's The Great Gatsby not too long ago, and seeing as FF7 has
     been my fandom of choice as of late with the remake hype, this AU was
     born.
     Shut up.
     On another note, the title and first line of the description are from
     Club=Majesty, which is a Vocaloid song completely unrelated to the
     work and the AU.
See the end of the work for more notes
***** Chapter 1 *****
There was once a time in my life in which honesty, be it merely a way of life,
was something nonvalued to me. This was due to the naïveté I had possessed in
believing that honesty was something that everyone had.
It was during this time that I had up and decided to buy a house on the
outermost rim of Midgar’s Plate, a tiny, shanty little thing that sold for
cheap beneath the shadows of the local urbia. That, and of course, the wide
berth of Cloud’s - or rather, Miss Cloud, at the time - neighboring manor. I’d
given up since the war, and after years of short-paying odd jobs here and
there, I’d finally decided to quit drifting and pick my ass up to get a real
job. It was a nice, tame occupation with a small telephone company, and it’s
what’d led me to buy that little house with a view of the below-Plate strip and
the shadow of a millionaire to block me from the sun.
It was also convenient in the way that getting to said strip was made easy with
the shuttles, and upon that discovery I’d made a quick decision to visit one of
my oldest and dearest friends I’d known from the war: one Sephiroth Crescent.
Back in Wutaii he’d been my superior and to be frank, a hard-ass, but I’d
always prided myself for my ability to make good company with nearly anyone I
meet.
After we came back we’d gotten out-of-touch, but I’d come to an understanding
that he’d found himself something of a trophy wife and he’d settled down on the
strip, where the buildings towered high and the lights were bright.
So upon my move to this opposite side of society where even the slums glimmer
with the lights of the strobe, I’d naturally taken the initiative to arrange a
sort of reunion.
It’d been his wife who’d greeted me at the door. A fair, long-faced lady with
an ample bust and a tough disposition who’s name I could never remember for the
life of me. Even despite her enormously accentuated femininity, she was
unseductive in such a way that she came across as lively and enthused.
She greeted me in a welcoming, homey way, a “Glad you could make it, Zack!” or
something, and the conversation was light and tasteful until somehow I ended up
blurting out my lack of recollection of her name.
“You’ve never been that good at that sort of thing, have you? It’s Tifa.” And
the way she spoke her own name, like she was curling her tongue around a word
in a foreign language, was exotic and exciting in a way that did not make me
regret coming.
“You like our place, don’t you?” She’d gestured to the whole of it: a stately
house, taller than it was wide, with a petite fountain donning the front porch
and a yard much too small to be called even that. “Well, let me show you
inside.” And she did.
She’d been particularly excited to show me the bar that they’d installed in
their dining area, near the windows which were close enough to the sky that you
could look out and see the houses peeking over the edge of the Plate. She’d
been all excited to present to me her brewing skills, preparing drinks for me,
their other guest, and of course Sephiroth himself, whom I’d noted by then
hadn’t been present yet during my visit.
“Oh yes, of course. He’s in the parlor with Aeris.”
Absentmindedly I wondered how she could be so confident and certain in her
husband as to leave him in a room with another woman.
I maneuvered my way through the foreign territory of their home before arriving
at what obviously must’ve been the parlor, for inside was the man that I
remembered from the war, along with a tiny slip of a girl hiding behind her
enormous curled bangs.
Sephiroth had never been an unreasonably cold man, but he’d never been warm
either, and I should’ve expected nothing more in welcome than the simple,
“Hello again, Fair.” that I received.
The girl seated on a rocking chair, who simply must’ve been none other than
Miss Aeris, bounced up and smiled to me. “You must be Zack! I’m glad to meet
you; these two were telling me so many good things!” The way she spoke was so
chipper and contrasting to her gently quiet appearance that I was taken aback
for no short amount of time.
She hovered around me for a bit, cooing and cawing and saying my hair did
so remind her of a certain someone (who I couldn’t fathom, for I was always
told my hair was an extremely distinctive feature of mine), until Sephiroth
himself stood, raising his shot of liquor with him from a night table.
“How’ve things been for you, Fair? Since the war? Surely you found some place
that’d hire you.” Another thing I should’ve been expecting were his subtle
jabs, but I wasn’t at the time, and I was left in the wake of that comment
feeling lightly offended.
“‘Course I did. Took some time though, I’ll admit.”
“Where do you work at? I can’t imagine what place hires such charming young men
such as yourself!” Aeris chittered, still seemingly admiring my mere existence.
“Just a cable company. Above the Plate.”
Sephiroth seemed to half-snort, half-chuckle into his glass of liquor (bourbon,
if I knew the man like I thought I did) and remarked, “Seems to be the place
everyone’s heading to nowadays.”
Aeris huffed, and placed her hands on her slim hips, pouting her rose-coloured
lips. “I don’t see what all that fuss is about. I’ve lived my whole life under
the Plate, and it’s just fine!”
“Well, we can’t all become something from nothing, like you.”
That seemed to shut her up. Aeris sat back down on the rocking chair looking
dejected and a little bitter, and I silently felt somewhat sorry for the girl.
I waved my hands gently to them. “No, it’s really not that big a deal. I only
live on the outside; on the edge!”
It was at that time that Tifa walked into the parlor, tray of cocktails in
hand, and made the offhanded remark that started it all, “If you’re on the edge
- well, surely you know the Missus, don’t you?”
“The Missus?” It had to be the most vague name with which to refer to someone
I’d ever heard.
Aeris perked back up. “She means Cloud!”
Sephiroth grumbled low in his throat, placing his now empty shot glass onto
Tifa’s tray, but neglecting to grab any of the drinks she so eagerly encouraged
him to. “Cloud?” He demanded. “What Cloud?”
“Miss Cloud! Oh, you know the one!”
The name of my neighbor flickered like a lightbulb turning on in my brain, but
before I could say anything Tifa had decided it would be better to engage in
drinking on the balcony and everyone seemed to agree, migrating out of the
parlor and leaving me in the dust.
Outside one could see the setting sun clearly, even against the neon lights of
the city and the pollution in the air, and the women of the group seemed to
find this enchanting.
“It’ll be summer soon, you know.” Aeris hummed, and turned to the rest of us,
away from the view. “We should do something! We should go somewhere! Why -
we’ve got the whole of Midgar just waiting for us out there!” The sunset seemed
to breathe through the silken fabric of her blush-pink skirt, and in that
moment I realized she was undeniably attractive to me.
“We’d have to get to planning, though. Do you want to plan?” I inquired, and
she playfully shook her head at me, huge curls bouncing with its twist.
“No, no. Planning is a man’s job! Doesn’t that sound like a man’s job to you?”
And she turned to Tifa, who gently nodded while she sipped away at her butter-
coloured wine.
“Well, I don’t -” I started, about to say that I don’t really think that’s the
sort of thing to require masculine disposition, but I was cut of when the
telephone inside began to ring.
“Oh my, that’s - I’ll get it!” Tifa set her delicately tall glass down and
skittered inside, Sephiroth turning suspiciously to watch her.
“So I’ll bet you don’t know,” I jumped, a little, when I hadn’t been expecting
to hear Aeris’s pleasant voice dropped low and close to my ear as she leaned in
to whisper to me.
She gestured subtly to Sephiroth, who at that point had walked inside as well,
and he and his wife appeared to be arguing over the telephone.
“Tifa’s got some man under the Plate.”
I blanched at that, turning to her. “Some man -?”
“Surprised you, too? You wouldn’t think she’s that type. She even lets him call
in the evenings!” She whispered the last sentence as though it was the most
scandalous thing one could do, a sin unspoken by all else.
That had been the first impossibly unchangable secret that had been shared with
me that summer.
The two inside bickered for some time more until Tifa looked ready to smack her
husband, but instead didn’t, in favor of slamming the telephone back down with
a kind of umph that at the time I’d established as the woman’s one
distinguishable characteristic.
Despite the argument crumbling away there hadn’t been any sort of climax, and
the tension in the air remained - until plucky little Aeris drug Tifa back over
to the front of the balcony to watch the traffic below.
“Everybody’s always in a rush nowadays. They should take more time to stop and
smell the flowers! Don’t you think so, Teef?”
Tifa agreed belatedly.
Aeris grabbed another glass of wine from the tray, and chugged it from behind
that curtain of curls. She seemed to have the situation under control.
I then left the slowly isolating company of the ladies, and joined Sephiroth
inside at the bar.
It seemed he’d acquired another glass of bourbon, and had been rendered less
than sober with its effects.
“You see, Fair, I’ve become disinterested in life, lately.” I remember thinking
at the time that it was an incredibly unusual thing for him to say, and looking
back I realize it was even more unusual that I was the one to hear him say it.
“I think it must’ve been the war.”
“The war?” It had been years since Wutaii.
“Yes, the war. Without it, I feel I’ve got nothing to do with myself.” It was
true to a point, I supposed. After Wutaii he’d been relieved of his position
out of honor for his successes, and now lived off of the money of his
retirement. He squinted harshly and pursed his lips. “It’s making me terribly
cynical.
“You know, not so long ago, my son had something to ask his old man.”
I remembered Sephiroth’s son well, for he had a name just as strange as his
father: Kadaj. He was a lively little boy, who wanted to spend more time
outside amongst the urbia than inside, playing with action figures and play-
houses, as boys his age rightfully should.
“He asked about love. Can you believe it? ‘Papa, what’s it like to fall in
love?’ I have to wonder whoever put such an idea in his head. And do you know
what I told him?” I didn’t.
“I said, ‘I shouldn’t know, for I’ve never known such a thing in my life.’ And
I stood there and hoped he’d never encounter anything like it. Strong men have
no business with such bittersweet emotions.”
And at the time I believed it was all true, that somber speech of his, for one:
because I believed everything was true, and for two: because I had staunchly
denied that Sephiroth had ever been a man to love.
I went home after that without fanfare, and the bitterness and relevance of my
first event of the summer rolled off my back in the shuttle, eliminated even in
the dark of night time by the strobe lights bleeding in from the strip.
My new little house was dark and musky and lonely when I returned, and as I
fidgeted with the damned jammed front door I looked to the source of my supreme
darkness: Miss Cloud’s looming manor beside the house.
The manor was enormous and domineering, with a lavish balcony that put the
Crescents’ to shame, stretching far enough over the edge that it hung over the
Plate.
And that’s where I noticed the figure standing there, a lovely lady in skirt
that flared out wide, who reached over the rail of that balcony, seeming to
grab almost desperately of the lights of the strip. Belatedly I realized that
must be Miss Cloud herself, and as I stepped inside my own dank little home, I
had to wonder just what it was she was reaching for.
 
 
 
 
 
***** Chapter 2 *****
Chapter Notes
     There are two lines in this one that were taken directly from the
     novel, so if they seem oddly familiar, that's why.
Now, if you were to go about describing the peak effects of post-war Midgar, it
would be notable to acknowledge not only the center Plate, the outer Plate, and
the strip - but also, of course, the slums. With the business boom after
Wutaii, they’d seemed to shape up a bit; lost some of the toxicity and gained a
minimal sense of general hygiene. Still, my point stands. The slums were a
dank, deep-set place where leaky plumbing from the Plate above washed
everything over in a drifting haze.
It was there where the nightlife really lied, though. Underground businesses
seemed to flourish there, and every smuggler, drinker, and bootlegger had his
fill of fun unseen by all amongst the darkness.
Despite that fact, it was commonplace for the traveling man to to have to
traverse across the entirety of the slum, bearing witness to the less than
pleasant scenery for however long his trip may take. Even if said man were to
take one of the newfangled shuttles to get to the upper levels of the center
Plate, the process of gaining entry was slow and solemn with nothing truly
profound to be viewing outside.
It was on a day when I was on one such trip, and I had been on the way to the
bustling glamor of the center Plate aboard a shuttle with none other than Miss
Tifa.
She’d wanted me to take her to lunch, you see. Called me up one early morning
on the telephone and said in that twirling voice of hers, “Zack! I’ve wanted to
go out for some time - I’ve even saved up some money for the shops. But
Sephiroth’s so very busy these days! Won’t you take me instead?”
Being the honest, open-scheduled man that I am, naturally, I’d told her yes.
We’d met each other at the station, Tifa being a fairly difficult woman to miss
with the way her cleavage appeared to have a mission to make itself shown to
the public. In fact, I’d say that on that day, she’d done even more than usual
to doll herself up, even powdering her cheeks and tucking her inky black bun
beneath a lovely yellow sun hat.
It was when we were on the shuttle, however, that Tifa’d up and decided to get
off at the slums. We’d been at the stop to move up the Plate when she’d picked
up her frilled golden dress and told me, “Zack! We’ll be getting off now.” She
grabbed my hand and yanked me forward. “There’s someone here that I’d like you
to meet.”
I wasn’t about to tell the lady that I’d rather not change our plans, but it
was already out of my hands by the time we were wading through the mud and slop
that covered the floor of the slum, on our way to a small, humble home-style
building.
There stood a single man outside said building, tinkering eagerly behind the
raised trunk of a messy black car, dented and smeared and sprayed with evidence
of a fast-paced life known only to one specific occupation.
Tifa set her tall heels back onto the floor when we came to the relatively
clean concrete driveway, and after stepping into them began to walk with a
ferocious, clicking determination that plucked the man out of his focus.
He was perhaps quite the oddest looking man I’d seen in my entire life, with
the whip of hair that seemed to gush down his back like red moscato into a
crystal glass. And do realize I’ve seen many odd-looking men.
His eyes, wide and eccentric, lit up like fireworks upon seeing Tifa’s perky
stride.
“Lockhart! Welcome back, good to see ya!” He wiped the sweat and grease from
his face with a towel that might’ve been white at some point in its existence,
and with his sullied hand he smacked Tifa warmly on the shoulder. “How’s the
ol’ General treatin’ ya?”
She smirked to him in that way that women do when uninteresting men flirt with
them, and said confidently, “Reno, you know how Sephiroth is. Like an absolute
dream, that man! I'm really such a lucky girl to have him to myself.”
The man - Reno, she called him - laughed loudly and crassly at that. “Lucky,
huh? I wonder how many other women out there would consider themselves lucky to
have a washed-up has-been for a husband, aye?! Haha!”
Tifa’s look grew increasingly cross at Reno, even as he stepped away, clutching
at his stomach at the apparent hilarity of Tifa being Sephiroth’s little wife.
But he was soon interrupted by the sudden drop in the mood. “Reno.” A deep,
heavy voice came from inside the house, a man’s strong baritone. “Leave the
poor girl alone.”
Briefly I wondered if it was simply the case that everyone who lived beneath
the Plate had a strangely glamorous appearance, and that because of the lack of
time I had spent in that particular society I had simply never known better.
For this new man who’d appeared resembled the dashing protagonist of one of
those action movies that’d been so popular as of late. Bald, through and
through; eyes masqueraded behind glinting shades; and a suit, proper and black.
This was the man that Tifa’d been wanting me to meet, I’d realized, when her
face lit up like the holiday season and with a jubilation exclamation - “Rude!”
- she dashed over to him.
He whispered to her in that impossibly deep voice of his, “Welcome back,
lovely.” and then turned to Reno, quipping with a harsher tone, “You. Why don’t
you get us some chairs? We’d’ll like to sit down and talk a bit.”
“A’ight, a’ight. You lot don’t make any big mess for me to pick up!”
With Reno’s disappearance Tifa snuggled into the embrace of her man - and well,
you see, it was then that I realized that her man, was the man that Aeris
herself had told me about at the dawn of the summer.
“So I’ll bet you don’t know. Tifa’s got some man under the Plate.”
So that someone was this Rude, then, who cradled Tifa like the pretty thing she
was in his burly arms.
“Rude, honey.” She hummed. “Let’s go out. Today. You’ll take me to lunch, won’t
you?”
Idley, I made mental note to smack myself later for not seeing that coming.
Tifa and I boarded the train not long after that, plans having been arranged
for a meeting in the Plate’s entertainment district, and a night spent on the
town. Tifa’d begged him to get a hotel, and like any man in love he’d listened,
forking over a suspiciously fat wad for a grand suite in some swanky place that
called itself a kind of Seventh Heaven.
“So what do you think, hm?” As we unloaded the train, Tifa cocked her head at
me, and a few stray locks from her bun cascaded out of her hat and down to the
floor.
“Of Rude?”
“No, darling! Of the slums.” She added quietly and with warning, “It doesn’t
matter what you should think of Rude.”
“Oh. I - Well, you see, that was my first time being down there, just now.” I
tried to think of something positive to say. “I think it’s very-”
“Ha! I’ll bet you don’t like it, do you? Who would! It’s a wasteland.”
I thought it might be odd for her to say such a thing, but she turned to me and
smiled. “A good man like Rude deserves a better place than that, don’t you
think?”
I did not tell her what I thought, given that I did not want to upset the
delicately rhetorical balance of a dreaming woman.
She had a small bag that she’d brought onto the train, a pretty floral duffel
that contained items for the night, and I, always the gentleman, offered to
carry them for her along with my own (which was considerably lighter, as my
pre-planned night out only consisted of paying for food, brushing my teeth, and
changing into sleepwear to do just that - sleep.).
“So, then, that other man at the house. What of him? Is he, well…” I didn’t
wish to come across as assuming to her. “...involved, with you, as well?”
Tifa’s eyes went comically wide. “Reno, you mean?” She pressed an appalled hand
to her bosom. “Why, I’d never! Not with that loon; not in one million years!”
I chuckled at that, and continued. “Does he know of you two?”
“Most certainly not. Even now, Rude’s probably told him he’s visiting that
Elena-”
Inwardly I groaned at the consistently sudden introduction of characters in the
show that was my life. “Elena?”
“Well, she’s something of a little sister to the two of them, and oh - you
simply have to met her! She’s just the perfect little doll!”
Little did I know that later on that night I would meet her, and make that very
same comparison myself.
We met with Rude when we finally got above ground level, and the warmth of the
sun that only center Plate folks seemed to appreciate beat against the sweating
skin of our backs.
That movie-star looking man was in a different suit, this time, (one that I
suspect was chosen specifically to earn Tifa’s praise) and the rich velvet blue
seemed to simmer in the daylight.
“Tifa, let’s go shopping. I'll buy you what it is you want.” Tifa, for one,
seemed very pleased to hear this. “Oh - you, Mister Fair - well, you come along
too.”
I never did figure out how it was that he learned my name.
The shops were crowded at that time of the day - no exceptions. Didn’t matter
where it was you went, inside there’d be many a woman with her man buying her
what it was she wanted.
Tifa’d bought a vase of perfume at one shop, a tray of macaroons at another,
and item after item of luxury before we stopped at a silly little place that
sold, of all things, dogs.
“They’re cute, aren’t they?” They were.
“Mister.” Rude addressed an employee of small stature with his looming
presence, and the little man shook under his intense gaze. “What kinds do you
have?”
“Lots. There are plenty of breeds here.”
Tifa piped up. “Well I want - something like a police dog-”
“Miss, I'm afraid all we’ve got are puppies right now-”
“I’ll buy it. That one, right there.” Rude’d selected a skinny little thing
with grey, grey fur, and handed over the money for his purchase. He picked up
the dog by its scruff, and placed it in Tifa’s waiting hands. “You like that
dog, don’t you, lovely?”
She nodded. “So very much!”
On that day they also purchased food for that dog, and clothing, and a separate
room for it to sit in at the suite later on that night, where it sat with only
the company of myself under the ruckus that came from the neighboring room.
It was not that I had no interest in what they were doing, in fact, a certain
part of me was very interested - but in the end, that was their business. I had
no place interluding.
That was one of the primary two reasons I’d wretched my mind violently from the
subject, and the second was that I knew if I were to focus on it I knew my
pleasant opinion of Tifa would undoubtedly change, and that was something I
didn’t wish to occur.
Looking back, there had been so many things that summer that I’d tried to
prevent from changing.
When the two reappeared from their unashamed rendezvous I was relieved to see
that Tifa didn’t look one bit mangled, and Rude, well, he appeared as I’d
expected him to: sharp, dashing, not a fiber of his good looks out of place.
He’d acquired a hearty whiskey from inside the other room, chilled with the
effects of sitting in an ice bucket for hours.
I had been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that afternoon;
so everything that happened has a dim, hazy cast over it, although until after
eight o’clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun.
I was more than surprised to see Tifa drink something that hadn’t been brewed
beyond recognition with twenty different alcohols, but nonetheless she did.
Drank it right out of a man’s shot glass as she took a seat on Rude’s spacious
lap and called up none other than Miss Elena on the telephone.
“Elena, darling! Have you got a night to spare? We’d all love to have you over.
Why - at the hotel, of course! The one just outside of 22nd - that Seventh
Heaven!”
The woman arrived no short time later, bustling into the hotel room all her
own. She was a skinny girl - not small, not in the way Aeris was, but skinny -
with perky breasts, hidden rightfully behind the slim top of her clinging black
dress.
Tifa herself had changed her attire after her afternoon activities with Rude,
and now donned a tight thing herself, a shocking, scandalous red thing that let
her cleavage hang practically free of confinement and rode up high on her
thighs.
“Your dress,” Elena began, the first words I’d heard her speak directed in a
feather-light voice at Tifa. “I love your dress. It’s really adorable!”
“Oh, don’t you start on this old thing,” Tifa feigned disdain and waved her
hand about. “It’s crazy!”
“But it really does look so good on you, you know. I’d love to have some poses
of you in it.”
I piped up at that. “Poses?”
Tifa’s airborne hand did a little twist, and she was talking excitedly to me
again. “Elena here is - what is it again? - oh! - she’s a kind of
photographer.”
This time it was Elena who pretended to be humble. “No, no. That’s not the
case! I’ve just got some pieces - I love the Plate. The edge is so photogenic,
you see.”
“Zack here lives on the edge!”
Elena’s inquiring eyes turned to me and brightened on impact. “Do you? I wonder
if you know that Miss Cloud.”
“She’s my neighbor.” I replied.
“You know,” She lowered her voice, but not enough so that the other couple in
the room wouldn't here. “I hear she’s a niece of that old man Shinra.”
“Really now?” Shinra had been an old crazy tycoon who monopolized the liquor
industry, known for killing off the low-lying bootleggers who tried to take the
business into their own hands. It wasn’t until after Wutaii, I think, that he’d
finally had justice served to him.
Elena nodded to me.
“She’s quite scary, if you think about her in that way. I most certainly
wouldn’t want her to have anything on me.” It was then that realized that
despite her apparent love for photography, this Elena was no doubt involved in
the same business that Rude and Reno were in.
She glared at me for a few more hard seconds, before turning back away, her
face softening. “Still, I’d like to do more work there. It really is pretty.”
“Why don’t you give her a letter of introduction?” Rude’s heavy voice joined in
this time, and he addressed Tifa alone. “That’s right. A letter of
introduction. Won’t you?”
“I don’t think I quite understand.” Tifa demanded.
“Give little Elena here a letter of introduction to your husband, so she can do
some studies of him.” There was an odd, teasing loll in his voice, despite his
cool expression. “Where the Great General is Now, or something like that.”
This time is was Elena whispering into my ear, not Aeris, and I had to wonder
how many women were planning on doing that to me this summer. “He just can’t
stand that Sephiroth, I swear.”
“What?” It hadn’t clicked to me until then that Rude had any sort of opinion on
his lover’s spouse. “ Really?”
“Can’t stand him! Don’t you get it? Because it’s him that’s keeping those two
apart.”
“Sephiroth is?” By marriage, I supposed he was.
“You see, what I think is, is that the little lady should go and get a divorce
- but the ol’ General’s a Catholic, and they don’t believe in divorce.”
I knew for a fact that that was untrue, and to be so blatantly lied to was
incredibly hard to swallow.
The conversation continued for about an hour, until Tifa had somehow gotten
ahold of a second bottle of whiskey (from Rude, I suspect, but then again,
Elena too had since been added to the subject list) and it was passed around to
all.
That was when the good spirits of the night began and things really did begin
to blur, and by eight-thirty in the nighttime I found myself with my hands on
the wide hips of Miss Elena, and listening to the obscene soundtrack of Tifa
and Rude’s intimacy in the same room.
It was then that I did see Tifa in reckless abandon as she lovingly squeezed
herself around Rude. Her limbs coiled around his figure and her back was
pressed against the single bed in the room. In addition, she was completely
topless, with her bloomers hanging from her left ankle in a pretty pink pump.
Elena on the other hand, was wearing nothing at all, I soon discovered as I
contentedly ran my hands along her slim thighs and into the crevice beneath her
skirt. She huffed in that husky way that women do, sensually and lowly, and I
hadn’t even realized until I heard that noise that my fingers had found their
way to her slit.
We stood near the one of the two gapingly huge windows that adorned the room,
and to gain leverage I took charge in the same way that Rude must’ve and pushed
her back against it.
Elena moaned again when I hiked her skirt up and delved impossibly deeper, her
juices coating my fingers and allowing easy entry into her core.
Irrationally, in that moment I didn’t care if she was ready or even if I was
myself, because she was hot and wet and warm and the opportunity was too close
to just taste anymore. I gritted my teeth, used one free hand to wipe the sweat
from my brow, and penetrated.
“Oh, Mi-Mister Fair!” Her voice was high and feathery and light, totally
unseductive and yet, I plunged deeper in hope to hear more of those little
calls.
Elena wrapped her legs around my back as if to pull me in deeper as I set a
steady pace, and as this act became more and more intimate I lost focus of all
else in the room, even the couple that was finishing behind me.
All that mattered was the pleasure, the plushness of her insides and the
slickness of her slit as it slid across my length; and of course my own iron
hardness and the pressure that built up within my desire for her as I neared
climax.
I could tell that she too was close as well, as she began to lose coherency and
her light wails became unpleasant shrieks.
When I finally arrived to completion all I knew it that moment was a kind of
white-hot irritation that was somehow pleasurable, and it sparked through my
just like power charging to a lightbulb.
Elena was only seconds behind, and she was louder than ever, but at that point
I wasn’t listening. The moment had passed. I had come down.
My head, which was resting against Elena’s small shoulder, was directed at the
window, overlooking the city.
I realized in my sudden sobriety that ours was only one of many brightly lit
hotel rooms above the city that shared its lot of secrets, and every casual
passerby on the sidewalk below could gain a sudden view and knowledge of so
many people. I was him, and that man was me, watching and wondering.
It was the first instance of that summer in which I was both within and
without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of
life.
 
 
 
 
 
***** Chapter 3 *****
Chapter Notes
     The wealthy drag queen Cloud finally makes his first appearance.
There was something socially awkward and oddly voyeuristic, to me, to have been
the neighbor that I was that summer to such a rich lady who threw such
glamorous parties in the nights. So often would the coming-and-going crowd
drive by my house, and I felt as though I really had no right to be seeing such
people so often.
It might be comparable to a situation, I think, in which one is sitting aboard
the shuttle between two friends. The friends talk to each other, despite the
character sitting in the middle, and, well. I think it was a similar enough
feeling, to say the least.
But still, the parties came and went. People came and went. Music - jazz, I
believe, was to Cloud’s taste at the time - would swell up and over the great
gates of the manor and the wild bursts of festive fireworks would wake me from
my creaking bed in a cold sweat during the night. I would always look out of my
blurry little window to in those moments, and my eyes would catch on the light,
and I would be hit with an uncanny desire to be at the party among those who
cheered and hollered so.
I’d watch through my window on the evenings of every Friday, as shipments of
fruit and fine food and drink would be trucked through that enormous gate and
the yard inside would be so elaborately tended to by hired caterers until it
all looked like the set of some fantastic film.
Long tables were displayed outside, each donning a feast of quality brands, and
inside the main hall a righteous brass rail was stocked with liquors and
alcohols so impossibly aged that the fermenters surely would’ve walked at the
same time of the ancients themselves.
Of course there’d be an orchestra too, with trumpets and oboes and long horns
originating from places terribly far away. They’d all sit in there great rows,
First-Chair, Second and Third, kiltered to the side and away from the masses to
provide the aesthetic of sound and nothing else.
This is when the people would arrive. Oh, so many people, from all the walks of
life. Rich people, poor people, white people, black people, Plate people, slum
people. They’d all arrive uninvited and unprepared, the lot of them, but still
with enough pomp and circumstance to welcome the Emperor himself.
The evening starts smooth in a cool kind of way, with low blues music playing
and everyone slowly working their way around what both the manor and the party
are offering to them. People grab drinks, people start laughing. One
reluctantly plays with the idea of dancing.
But then one does; chugs the rest of her cocktail in one hand and taps her
little black shoes against the brisk cement, and as the orchestra finds itself
fitting to her own passionate tempo, word gets out that she’s a lead in some
new show known as LoveLESS. The party has begun.
On the first night I had been to one of these fabulous events I was convinced I
must’ve been the only soul that’d actually been invited. The rest of the cast
to this magnificent play had merely found their way there on their own, showing
up of their own accord. Each claimed to have some reason to be there of course,
though they really hadn’t any need to do so; they’d make claims that they knew
the Missus Cloud somehow, usually through the convoluted ties that came with
friend-through-friendship. In the end the vast majority would leave without
having met the woman at all, but instead they’d leave with happiness in their
heads, a sense of satisfaction, and a guarantee that the next day’s hangover
would not break until noon.
I, on the other hand, was quite literally invited to join in on the
festivities. Earlier that morning as I’d walked across my shaggy lawn to grab
the morning paper, a certain someone had crossed the lawn in a stride greater
than mine and called out to me, “Mister Fair! I’ve got a letter for you from
the Missus.” And he dusted off his dapper serving suit and handed the object of
that little interaction over crisply. “Do spare a moment and give it a read,
won’t you.”
It was a cream-colour piece of thick starch paper, tri-folded neatly into
place. Inside, it was formal and addressing: the honor would be entirely Miss
Cloud’s, to have me as an attendee to the ‘little party’ she planned on hosting
later on that night. She had seen me on several instances before but simply
hadn’t had time to make pleasantries - signed Missus Cloud, in a majestic hand.
I had picked up by then exactly how those ‘little parties’ of hers usually
played out, and was caught aggressively in the decision between dressing
formally or festively for such an event before finally figuring that my chances
of actually meeting the lovely lady herself were minimal and deciding on the
latter.
I found myself a stylish straw hat to hide away my untamable mane in and dolled
myself up in a suit of charming, complementary flannels, and headed across the
lawn at seven sharp.
I entered the gate exactly one minute past, and stood struck in immediate awe
at the fantastical world that laid on the other side of that cool black metal.
I’d never seen so many people making merry in one place before; they stood all
in swirls and eddies and crop-circles, chatting away to each other with such
light vowels and such tempered diction that I hadn’t quite believed my ears
upon hearing such chipper tones. It was early on in the night and no one yet
had seemed to be inebriated, so the whole lot of people appeared good-natured
and pleasant.
I was so lost in the endless ocean of people that I decided right then and
there that the best thing I could’ve done to busy myself was to head out in
search of my hostess.
I asked around this man telling me that she was outside and that man telling me
that she was in, and the goose chase that I’d inevitably been sent on grew so
wild so quickly that I realized that none of them would’ve had the slightest
idea at where she really was. In my defeat I was frustrated and to be quite
honest, bored, and so I did then what any frustrated, bored young man would do:
I made my way to the cocktail table and clung to it desperately like a leech,
for it was the only place that I could linger for any long amount of time
without looking odd and out of place.
It was from my place there among other frustrated, bored young men that I
noticed Miss Aeris walking out of the house and down the grand stairway to
entry, and those massive ringlet bangs of hers bounced each step of the way.
My plan of how to spend my night shifted then, because if there’s a place more
suitable for a frustrated, bored young man than by the side of a bar, it’s by
the side of a woman.
“Good evening to you!” I called out to her, and my own howl was brash and crass
in a way that it rang over the chittering voices of the nearby talkers. I
shouldered the embarrassment that crept to me out of my head and made my way
over when her bangs perked up and she smiled to me.
“I’m glad you’re here.” She told me. “I imagined you would be.”
She took my hand and shook it daintily with her own tiny, childish one, and I
quickly took note of her posse; two trailing women I’d never seen before in
matching yellow dresses with large black sunhats, who both loudly introduced
themselves as Miss Giggle.
They walked to the rim of one of the illustrious fountains and sat down as
Aeris and I followed. “You’ve never met us before.” One of them told me. “But
don’t worry; we know you just fine.”
“You lot come to these parties often, don’t you?” Aeris folded her hands neatly
in her lap as she turned to the giggling women, who responded rapidly and
ridiculously.
“Why - it’s just a wild thing I do on the sometimes. It doesn’t matter when or
why, I also have a good time. And the last party I’d been to - oh, what was it
darling? - I was in a chiffon dress, and I ran into that Miss Cloud herself!
Can you believe that?”
I couldn't believe it, but Aeris certainly did, and she nodded to the woman in
earnest.
“And that lady, she’s really the nicest dear, she told me, “Why, you look so
fine in that dress, darling! It would do you good to wear those more
often.” And next thing I know I receive a package, and inside, three matching
dresses - chiffon red, blue and this yellow thing I’m wearing right now!”
I noted lightly that the dress she was wearing was in fact yellow chiffon.
“And, and - do you have any clue what the total of all those was? I’ll tell you
what it was. It was fifty dollars past seven-hundred!”
She finished with enough enthusiasm and vigor that I was convinced at that
point that the woman mustn’t have been human, for she seemed to have taken no
pauses for air at all during her story.
The other woman in yellow, however, scrunched her nose at the story. “You know,
there’s just something terribly odd about that. Not once, I ever met a woman
who’d go and spend her money on another woman. B’sides - how many women you
know have money these days?”
As a matter of fact, Miss Cloud had been the first woman I’d met who’d seemed
to earn her own living.
“You have to wonder how it is she earned it, too!”
This time Aeris leaned into the circle of women, and her voice dropped low in
that way it gets sometimes - that low, rich, velvety thing that makes her even
more attractive.
“You know what I heard? I heard that she was once married - and she killed her
man!”
A wave of silence and awe washed the group, before the first Miss Giggle spoke
up, and waved her left gloved hand in a flirting motion.
“Now, now - surely that’s not the case. It’s really the case of her running
some of those courtesan houses. You know, those in the slums.”
Our little group had grown a little bit by then, and a nearby man in a tight
grey suit nodded in agreement. “I heard that too. Heard that from a girl who
worked in one of her houses.”
Someone else piped up, a woman this time. “No, it couldn’t possibly be that,
because all those down there’re run by a mobster called Corneo.”
“You’ve got to just look at her sometimes.” The second woman in yellow spoke
this time, voice barely above a whisper. “When she thinks nobody’s watching
her. Looks like - like somebody who killed a man.”
There was a tension that rang through the little cluster that we’d become, and
I wondered wildly for a moment if Missus Cloud had ever been a real woman, for
there was no way that someone human could pull the kind of eerie fascination
out of other humans the way she pulled it out of the crowds.
When the first supper - there would be another one after midnight - was
beginning Aeris curtsied cutely to the women in yellow the crowd we had
garnered, looped her skinny arm around mine and led me to the table where her
party sat, inviting me to join them. The party consisted of several bouncy
women, a couple or so brooding men, and her escort, a fumbling, drunken fool,
younger than I, who would not give me his name at any point in the evening. He
continued to pester Aeris by running his long, large hands up and down her
petite expanse, but she never once looked annoyed - in fact, it was during this
the she abruptly stood, curtly told the table with a smile, “We’ll be going.”
and grabbed him, then walked with him inside the house, no doubt to continue
their odd banter - probably of a more intimate persuasion.
Once they left most others seated at the table decided it would be a good time
for them to take leave as well.
The vast population of the partiers were healthily drunk by now and dancing for
simply the enjoy of having one’s body moving in that way. Women hiked up their
skirts and danced shoeless and the marble tile surrounding the pool and men
sloshed their glasses and themselves into the sparkling water that filled it.
Everyone laughed and everyone sung, a bold Tenor soloist here and a trio of
poorly tuned altos there, the music all blending together not unpleasantly and
in good humor.
By the time Aeris came back, her escort no longer in tow and her hair hanging
out of its long topknot in favor of cascading tremendously down her slim
shoulder, the event was in its fullest swing, and everything glimmered with a
kind of magic that something deep inside me was terribly aware that it would
only last until the party ended.
We sat at a different table, a round one this time, in the company of one
chittering little girl who laughed at everything uncontrollably and
relentlessly, two young men in matching plum red vests, and a young lady in a
skirt that billowed ridiculously from her with the aid of a ruffled petticoat.
Once the trembling, slow note of a trumpeteer's solo finished she turned to me
in the wake of lull and said, “You were in the war, weren’t you?”
Her voice was quiet and timid, but held a heavy kind of weight that I’d never
known any woman to have, and I responded to her with slight shock at that as
well as the question itself. “Why - what makes you say that?”
“Your face. I've seen it before. It was in the paper. You went to Wutaii,
didn’t you?”
“If you only recognize my face, how are you so sure it was in the paper where
you saw it?”
Her eyes, such luminescent blue bells, glowered into me immensely. “I
always remember the faces I see in the paper.”
As I stared at the woman who crossed her legs and folded her hands beneath her
pretty round chin in front of me, I suddenly took note of the vast differences
between her appearance and that of the others there at the party. Her outfit
came in two parts: a loose, silky blue blouse and that stiff purple skirt that
was so ridiculously wide that it held its shape even as she sat. Her hair was a
wild thing, like the leaves of a golden oak tree framing her soft face, and the
excess was tied into two twin whips at the back of her head. It was an older,
more ancient kind of style that the flappers and bootleggers of that era had
seemed to have forgotten, and yet, she seemed to wear it with such confidence
that a sort attraction to this woman had formed in me.
“Why, yes.” I answered belatedly. “I did go to Wutaii.”
She smiled then, and looked back to the entertainment, however, her focus did
not shift from me. “I knew it.”
Our conversation remained pleasant and idle for a while before she asked me,
“How about you go with me sometime? Into the city of the Plate?”
“What time?”
“Oh, sometime.”
I’d meant to ask for her name as her voice grew dreamy and her eyes drifted far
away, but a light attentive tap to my arm brought my attention back to Aeris’s
easygoing smile.
“Having a good time now?”
“Oh, yes.” And I was - two finger-bowls of champagne can give a man a very good
time indeed. “You know, this party is so unusual to me. I just live right next
door, and I’ve never even seen the hostess - !”
“The hostess?” The heavy voice that I'd turned back my back to interluded.
“That would be me. I'm Missus Cloud.”
“What!” I felt immediately sobered and exclaimed this loudly and ceremoniously,
accenting it by involuntarily slamming my hand flat onto the table. In my
embarrassment I stuttered, “Oh my, I - excuse me, I've had so much to drink.”
She however chuckled warmly and understandingly at that. “I apologize. I
thought you realized!” The laughter died down a little and her eyes too were
understanding. “I’m afraid I'm not much of a hostess.”
I sat there as her soft chuckling came to a closure, and basked in the aura of
warmth that seemed to radiate from her. It was a strange warmth that seemed to
comfort you, pat you on the back and tell you that you’ve done nothing wrong,
no, you’re, that’s it - a perfect person.
As the warmth faded though, I was left in the wake of it seated next to an out-
of-fashion, absurd young lady who couldn’t be a day over twenty-two. It was her
youth that clashed with her speech and her looks, and I got the unyielding
impression that there was someone she wished to please by behaving like that.
Just after the moment Miss Cloud introduced herself to me a butler came to
speak with her, bringing with him the fact that a telephone caller from Junon
demanded her presence.
She stood, brushed the dust off of that ridiculous skirt, and told me, “You
want for anything, don’t be afraid to just ask me. Now, please excuse me. I’ll
return later.”
And she left, heels clacking against the marble stairs in her way up and into
the house, totally vanishing.
Immediately I turned to Aeris. “Who is she? Do you know?”
“She’s just a lady called Cloud. Oh - don’t you call her that though; she hates
not being addressed as Missus.”
“Well - no, I - where is she from, I mean? What did she do?”
Aeris laughed at me, and it was so soft, bell-like and empty, completely and
wholly different from Miss Cloud’s understanding chuckle. “Now she’s pulled
you in, too. Well, she told me once that she married well.”
“Who?” I demanded. “Who did she marry?”
“Wouldn’t tell me. I, personally - well, I don’t believe it.”
Her voice held a tone eerily similar to the other girl’s “Like somebody who
killed a man.” and aroused a curiosity in me that I had never before known
myself to possess.
I would’ve understood, perhaps, if Miss Cloud was indeed a married woman with a
wealthy business man on her arm or even perhaps a retired soldier - except that
there wasn’t anyone like that, at least no one I had heard of, and young women
on their own don't typically rise up mysteriously and joblessly into positions
of great wealth.
“Anyhow, she gives large parties,” Aeris sighed, smirked, and leaned back so
that her face was hardly visible from behind her curls. “And I like large
parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”
It was then that the orchestra had started a new piece, something profoundly
brassy and amusingly quick, and something about the joyous swing of the tune
worked its way into the heads of young girls who grabbed the arms of the first
man near them and began dancing in a stupendous groove. It was then that my
eyes again came to rest at the top of those marble stairs, and standing there
was Miss Cloud, quiet, pretty, and wholly unmenacing in each way. She was not
swooning into the arms of any young man and not dancing in any way that might
raise her skirt up higher (not that it could, stiff thing that it was), and I
was suddenly extremely tempted to walk up there and ask if I may have this
dance, until the attentions of Aeris and I were brought to a young man who
addressed us.
“Pardon me.” It was Miss Cloud’s butler. “Miss Gainsborough? Pardon me, but
Missus Cloud wishes to speak to you.” He quickly noted my presence. “Alone.”
“Why - ! Really now? With me?” Aeris exclaimed.
“Yes, madame.”
She followed him inside with a skip in her step not unlike a madman’s and I was
left truly alone for the second time during that night.
I sat there and watched the rest of the party as one might watch a film;
distantly, yet acutely aware of all that was happening. I realized I had been
wrong, previously, in my assumption that the magic would only wear off once the
party had ended, for as I sat there and watched the magic of it all began to
wear off before my eyes.
The alcohol consumed earlier that night no longer made merry but instead made
women shout and lash at their husbands, who broke into pitiful fits of self-
pity at the attacks. Many had decided that around then would be a good time to
up and fall asleep and that’s just what they did, anywhere, everywhere, even on
the rim of pool at risk of falling in.
At the head of the stairs for all to see an angry wife wailed to her husband
about the issue of leaving the party altogether.
“You - you always take me home, right when I’m having a good time for once - !”
“No, no, please. The orchestra’s been gone for some time now, nobody’s having a
good time anymore…”
I decided then that it was unlikely I’d see my hostess again that night and it
would be a good time for me to head out the gate and across my lawn, but as I
made my way inside the hall to get my hat I ran into none other than Miss Aeris
and Miss Cloud themselves.
They walked down one of the inner flights of stairs and the latter’s seemingly
relaxed manner immediately tightened as she was approached by many a party-goer
who wished to tell her good-bye.
In the rush of people trying for Miss Cloud’s attentions I spotted Aeris’s
escort as her grabbed her and removed her from the crowd, and they passed me on
the way out.
“Oh, Zack! I’ve just heard the most amazing thing!” She hollered to me in her
shortness of breath. “It all makes sense now, you see!”
“What?” I crained my neck just to see her. “What makes sense?”
“Everything! But - I swore I wouldn’t tell! You’ll have to talk to me, over the
tele’...” Her voice faded beneath the commotion, and she was gone.
I was embarrassed and alone again, and in my shame that I had stayed so late on
my first appearance I joined the swarm that had gathered around Miss Cloud with
hopes to apologize to her.
“Don’t mention it.” She reassured me, and it was back, that warmth, and the
curl of her painted lips and the narrowness of her iridescent blue eyes held
more familiarity than they ever should’ve. “Don’t give it any other thought.
And - we’ll be going out tomorrow, you and I. Nine o’clock sharp. Don’t
forget.”
Then that pesky butler was back, with a hand on her broad shoulder. “A caller
from Gongaga on the telephone for you, Missus…”
“Alright. In a minute. Tell them I’ll be right there.” She reassured the
butler, who scurried off then. “Good night.”
“Good night.”
“Good night.” She repeated it even as her turned around and made her way
towards the innermost staircase, and even from their I could feel the pleasant
significance of her warmth. “Good night, yes, good night…”
And as I walked away and my evening came to a closure I decided that truly it
would not be so bad to ever come back to one of those parties, if it meant that
I would feel that reassuring warmth again.
 
 
 
 
 
End Notes
     Yes, you might've noticed that Midgar's 'anatomy,' if you will, has
     been altered; that's only to help support the setting of the story.
Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed
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