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Fighting with Genesis is not something Sephiroth enjoys.
Not sparring, that he likes that fine – more than fine, considering how it usually ends. But fighting with Genesis, with words, about things Sephiroth does not understand why they’re suddenly a big deal when they haven’t been before….
“He’s only doing it to get a rise out of you,” Angeal says, shaking his head, after one such incidence. “He likes that.”
“There are easier ways to get me in bed, if that’s what he wants,” Sephiroth responds, frowning. “I don’t particularly want to speak with him at the moment, much less do anything else.”
Angeal sighs. “He doesn’t – it’s not just about sex, Seph. It’s about getting you riled up. Angry.”
“Why would he want that?” Sephiroth’s eyes narrow. “I was under the impression Genesis had some…regard for me, out of bed, that would keep him from wanting me to be in foul temper.”
Angeal smiles, sighs and shakes his head all at once. “He does. And – you know what? I think you should ask him why he does it, if you want to know.”
It takes a few days, in which Sephiroth ignores him and Genesis tries to poke at him like he’s a sore muscle. Finally they meet in the training room – just the two of them, Angeal isn’t as fond of this particular kind of foreplay – and it takes a good long duel and a fuck against the wall before they speak without snarling.
“Angeal says you like to make me emotional,” Sephiroth says, lying flat on the floor in his undershirt and pants, sweat cooling on his skin thanks to the ventilation fans in the ceiling.
“Emotional,” Genesis snorts, turning to look at him. He’s relaxed, bare-chested, his skin marked up with bites and scratches and his pants pulled up but not buttoned. His smile lacks the edge it sometimes has, when it’s directed at Sephiroth. “Yes Seph. I like to make you emotional. I like to make you angry. Everyone else is too afraid of you to do it.”
“Why do you want to make me angry?” Sephiroth pushes his hair away from his damp face. “He says it’s not about sex, but….”
“Because you’re too…too much a thing and not a person, when you don’t have someone there to annoy you,” Genesis says. “And no, I don’t do it because I want to fuck. When I want to fuck, you’ll know.”
Sephiroth isn’t sure about that. Genesis is not an easy man for Sephiroth to understand; he is fire to Sephiroth’s ice, to Angeal’s earth.
“I don’t think you’ve ever been allowed to have an emotion in your life,” Genesis says. “I think every time you dared have a feeling, Hojo manipulated you into pretending you didn’t. Weapons don’t feel, do they? They just fire.”
“Hmm.” Sephiroth pushes up on his elbows and looks over at him. “So you’re taking it upon yourself to, what? Fix this lapse in my education?”
“Not your education, your emotional well-being. Your humanity.”
“You don’t do this to Angeal,” Sephiroth mutteres.
“Because he doesn’t need it. He’s laid-back by nature. You’re not. You’re a writhing cauldron of emotion and you insist if you slam a lid on it, it’s not there. But it is.” Genesis moves with his usual lethal grace and straddles Sephiroth, his skin warm and his hands insistent. “You’ll thank me one day, Seph.”
“Hmm.” Sephiroth tangles his hand in Genesis’ messy hair and pulls him down for a kiss.
***
Sephiroth stands in front of the tank in Nibelheim, Zack’s voice a drone in his ears –
Stop this, Sephiroth, listen to me, you’re not a monster –
The hate is so hot it feels like it’s burning him up into ash.
((Come to me, my son. Let me take this from you.))
Her voice is cool like water, like ice, blanking the flames of his incendiary rage.
You’ll thank me one day, Seph.
Maybe it would have been enough if they’d had more time, if they’d had a thousand more annoyances and irritations layered on top of each other.
But they didn’t, and it’s not.
***
He faces Cloud in the Northern Crater and feels death coming, reaching up and offering, in its own way, the same thing Jenova did when she whispered to him in the metal tomb of a dying reactor.
An end, a ceasing. Darkness to put out the light.
Death comes for him at the end of a sword, in lightning-bright slashes that rip him to pieces.
It is dark in the Lifestream, but it still burns.
***
He covers the sky with the storm of his rage above ShinRa’s tower of ruin, and Cloud bests him again with his shining sword and his mako-bright eyes.
The darkness takes him but he knows he won’t sleep.
***
Aren’t you tired of this? she asks, her voice sweet.
Sephiroth – or whatever he is, now, this consciousness torn in a thousand different ways by a thousand different masters – remembers the training room floor and the sweat cooling on his skin, remembers a voice saying you’ll thank me one day, remembers falling, and breaking, and the way it feels to be ripped apart down to the soul.
Yes, he says. But all I know how to do is fight.
You fight because you don’t want to feel, she says.
(Weapons don’t feel, do they? They just fire.)