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If his day got any worse than it was, Cloud was pretty darn sure the migraine in his head was going to split him into two. First, he had stayed up the whole of last night finishing up his Computer Science assignment that took up a good portion of his final module grade. His dorm mates – Cid, Barret and Vincent – were absolutely no help at all, despite being self-proclaimed smart-asses a.k.a. graduate students consecutively on the Dean’s list, when they had conked out dead asleep like logs on their bunk beds.
Never mind his eye bags evidently hung around the rims of his eyes. His professor had to insist on a hardcopy submission by noon the next day. Not usually a problem when Cloud could always rely on his tightly-knitted group of friends who called themselves the Turks to carpool him from the campus residence to his faculty building. But not a single one of them – Reno, Rude, Tseng, Rufus – were in fucking town. They had the cheek to accept a drift-car race without their best rider (a.k.a. HIM) in some remote, distant town, and had duly skipped university classes for the day.
So that had quite succinctly explained why Cloud had spent the last thirty minutes trying to scowl his way out of late submission penalty at his gangly, bespectacled, hair-full-of-whiteness senior female Professor, who had on some account of Cloud’s relation to his late grandfather’s large charity of old money to Esthar University, granted him some leeway finally.
Cloud walked out of Professor Kadowaki’s room, heaving a sigh. His shoulders relaxed at last from all that tension in the last twenty-four hours. It sure helped that his grandfather had literally sponsored the hell out of this school in the last generation. More so that the Strife family name held enough power and status in the city of Esthar to intimidate even the school faculty staff whenever he needed to use it for his advantage.
He had his father – famous CEO of billion-dollar enterprise Mako Technology – to thank. It allowed him to get away with most of his shit doings on campus.
“Owww!” A male student cried out as he accidentally collided into Cloud in the hallway.
Cloud knitted his eyebrows together, his eyes never really quite focusing on the poor student who was now bowing desperately and cowering in fright.
“I’m sorry! It wasn’t on purpose!” His voice trembled. “Please excuse me, Cloud Strife!”
“Hn,” Cloud rolled his eyes. “Just stay out of my way.”
“Yessir!” The student bowed repeatedly in fervent apology and fled.
Cloud sighed. He would never understand the student population’s innate fear of him. Was he really that intimidating? Well, he did have a tendency of scowling and snapping at anyone who dared invade his personal space bubble. But Cloud suspected the majority cohort on campus had falsely built up this general consensus of him and brandished him off as the ‘bad blue-eyed boy’ simply by judging him as an impersonal, aloof, grouchy person.
Cloud blamed the Turks for that. His friends had garnered a reputation on campus for beating up or pranking anyone who had the balls to displease them. Rumors had it that offending the Turks were tantamount to one’s campus life being thrown into the shithole of shambles.
Scary Rufus, silent Tseng, hot-headed Reno, glum Rude.
All four Turks were future heirs to their fathers’ joint conglomeration of Shinra Telecommunications company, which as a loyal business partner of Mako, meant that their families and the Strifes were more than close – Cloud had literally grown up with the Turks since in diapers when their fathers used to spend an unhealthy amount of time working together to grow their businesses.
Ha! Being seen with the Turks too often on campus, plus riding daily into campus on his trusty Fenrir bike, had deservedly earned him that bad-ass reputation. Cloud hadn’t bothered to change anyone’s concept of him – who the fuck really cared anyway? He had other things to bother about.
…Like his Fenrir being destroyed into smithereens in last week’s dirt bike race with the infamous elite biker Roche in the sand pit of Midgar outskirts. It was now being repaired at his dorm mate Cid’s motor workshop.
Cloud would never admit it – but he was awfully grateful his dorm mates saw through his icy exterior and accepted him for who he really was despite the reputation he boasted. Just a boy with the emotional range of a teaspoon who needed their help too often to proofread his assignments to graduate at least with a magna cum laude by his final year before his dad had his throat.
Cloud rubbed his temples. God. He needed aspirins. Medication. Whatever to kill that splintering headache. Lack of sleep would knock him out faster than a dirt-bike race.
Or he could settle for a cheaper, more effective solution and find a place to catch a few winks. Now that idea was too good to pass, and there were more than enough places on campus to find a quiet spot to do that. He had at least an hour to kill before his Coding tutorial class was due to begin. Enough time.
He reached the adjacent building in record time, desperate for a nap. Here at the Performing Arts building, he could easily find a quiet theatre room or an empty dance studio. The cohort here was smaller in numbers; the space quieter. A place where he could actually not worry for once about the staff or students disturbing his peace. No one would ever pay attention to a boy from the geeky Computer Science faculty.
He pushed open the door to a dark performing hall big enough to house a five-hundred strong crowd. Empty, but massive enough to make his presence negligent. Perfect place to hide and sleep. Sinking into a chair, he shifted the table in front of him so he could plop his elbows down and nestle his spikey head within his arms and sleep fitfully.
Bliss. He couldn’t wait.
His eyes almost shut.
…Until a vision appeared, on stage.
His eyelids fluttered open. Who the hell had dared wake him up from his soon-to-be glorious sleep? Senses alert, the scowl on his face signaled his intent to make that person’s life very miserable soon.
Yet when a spotlight had shone in the center and a silhouette floated into sight, the thought in his brain vanished instantly.
Dust gathered in his throat.
A butterfly?
He saw the glow of the blue skirt first, spinning and twirling mid-air before a pair of porcelain lean legs swept the hems afloat, bringing flight to the surreal mix of azure and cerulean colours scattering across the incandescent lights.
She was no butterfly… An angel?
Possibly, when she was pirouetting like an angel on a pin spinning in syllabled joy feeling the loft beneath her as she glided across the stage. As if gravity didn’t work on her. She defied physics with her windswept muse, as her feet turned out under the pool of her skirt and guided her from one leap into the next without so much as a trying effort.
The pastel pink of her pointe shoes molded to the tip of her toes like fitting gloves, as she transformed her graceful moves and balletic motions into an art of masterpiece to be revered. Every subtle step, every fluid chaîné turn – precise, calculated – added to the allure and all-consuming elegance she exhibited with reckless transparency and abandon.
He couldn’t see her face – the shadows of the dimly-lit hall cloaked the mystery of her identity.
Yet for all his twenty-one years, he had never been so entirely captivated. Utterly hypnotized.
Watching her skirt unfurl around her as she danced was akin to watching an everlasting butterfly land on the bluest of petal with the lightest touch.
He held his breath, all desire to catch up on sleep forgotten as his eyes soaked in her vision.
Who is she?
Perhaps another typical dancer enrolled at the Performing Arts faculty. Yet, curiosity piqued, his feet had moved with a will on their own as he approached the lights of the stage.
Closer. He wanted to get closer. Her enigma gnawed at him, tearing him asunder.
And then the mysterious dancer with her amber halo of haphazard hair carelessly cascading in tumbles past her back, had drawn a sharp breath.
His heart nearly stopped beating. Had he blown his cover?
No. Thankfully.
Gasping, she had misjudged her leap, landed on a wrong angle, and crashed into a heap onto the floor.
“Ouch,” she was mumbling under her breath, wincing as her small hands reached to her toes and tore her pointe shoes off.
That non-existent gentleman in him he never knew existed had jumped into his body like a monster. He found himself hurling past the steps straight onto the stage to reach her side in seconds before he even realized his actions.
“You okay?” The words had rolled off his tongue before he could help it.
Shit. The first time he caught a glimpse of her face in the light’s clarity, the air in his lungs vanished.
Her eyes. The most brilliant shade of green. He had never seen anything like that.
She was staring at him, mouth agape, wondering where in the world this mysterious stranger lurking around the shadows had come from. He didn’t blame her astonishment.
How long had he been watching her? Who was he? A million questions flashed on her face.
“Who are you?” She asked, forgetting about the callouses and bruises on her blistered feet. Her pointe shoes dangled mid-air in her hands.
A heartbeat passed. Two.
I’m who they call the bad blue-eyed boy on campus. But you don’t need to know that.
“…Cloud Strife. And who are you?”
Eyes wide, she shrank away. “I’m Aerith. Aerith Gainsborough. You…are not here to hurt me, are you?”
Ah…fuck. His reputation definitely preceded him.
end/tbc
a/n:
I wrote this with full intentions for it to be an AU one-shot, hence the dilemma to end it with an ‘end/tbc’ ambiguous note. Just because I had this idea dangling in my mind and decided to go along with the vibe I was feeling and get it out of my system.
yep borrowed alot of elements from other FF series, in case you're wondering where I stole some names etc. from.
Sorry I’m a sucker for bad boy-good girl kinda ship. So why not apply it to Clerith in another lifetime, too. YASSSSS.
review/comment! always makes my day a lot better while I drown in my piling workload of life.
Myst-san