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Degrading left you cold.
It was a side effect that Hollander hadn’t really talked about - so minor in the face of the looming spectre of death that it never warranted a mention. The focus had been on the decay crawling through his flesh like the creep of frost, leaving him feeble and weak, the clouding of his mind obscuring his judgement.
But for Genesis - who always ran hot, fire magic dancing between his fingertips - it was one of the worst parts.
The cold started in his fingers, leaving them numb - the grip on his sword trembled, unable to even feel the handle or the gloves that futilely tried to protect them. A perpetual winter rested in his bones, adding lethargic weight to every movement, and as it progressed the numbness only took more and more of him.
His skin and hair were ashen and grey, a hideous palette of monochrome like the cold that blanketed him had stolen the colour from the world - even his blood, seeping still from the wounds that no longer healed, appeared dull and lifeless as it fell onto the snow.
He looks in the mirror and loathes his own pallid complexion, frost spreading over his skin and around bloodshot eyes, the cold dragging him down, down, the weight of frigid death approaching and -
Genesis wakes up, air dragging into his lungs.
The winter’s air is still in their darkened bedroom. The dimmed clock blinks an obnoxious 05.52 when he rolls over to stare at it.
Goddess damn it, he was sick of this.
Even this many years after his degradation was gone, it hadn’t truly left him - the chill that lay dormant in his bones invited regrets and nightmares when the winter came, and Genesis had learned to dread the turning of the seasons.
“Gen…” Cloud mumbles, voice rough with sleep, and Genesis tries to still the shaking of his still-freezing hands.
Intellectually, he knows he isn’t this cold. If only his traitorous body knew the same.
“Go back to sleep, dearest.” He replies, so soft as to be nearly breathless in the oppressive stillness of the air. He curses himself for how his voice shakes with the tremble starting in his shoulders, the frost he’d seen in his dream feeling as though it still clung to his skin.
“Hey,” Cloud pulls himself up in the bed, blanket falling from his otherwise-bare shoulders, but he didn’t seem to feel the same all-consuming cold that plagued Genesis, “hey, what’s up?”
Genesis doesn’t answer, but he can’t miss the sweep of Mako glow across his skin as Cloud’s eyes come to rest on his hands. He has them twined tightly with each other, trying to get some warmth back and hide the weakness that he loathes to show. Cloud sighs, quiet and sad, and Genesis tastes bitterness like venom in the back of his throat.
“Go back to sleep,” He says again, trying to ignore the way Cloud’s hands curl gently over his with a burst of shocking warmth, “or doesn’t the great hero of the Planet need his rest?”
He regrets it as soon as he says it, but Cloud never rises to his taunts anymore.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” Cloud says, his voice so soft and warm and everything out of Genesis’s reach, “but I don’t want to leave you like this.”
Pathetic, Genesis thinks in a voice that isn’t his, just a failed experiment. Never as good as Sephiroth, never good enough for his killer.
He wonders if Cloud hadn’t had enough of poison in his life, to keep it close to him so willingly.
He draws forward and Cloud wraps his arms around him, Genesis burying his face in Cloud’s shoulder as a hand strokes comfortingly over his spine. Cloud’s calloused hand stops next to his shoulder blade, the misshapen scar tissue where his wing used to be staying his movement, and Genesis tries to forget the agonising cracks and tears of bone and tissue. It hurts tonight, but he can’t even tell if the pain is real or just another phantom like the cold that has buried itself in his bones. Cloud’s hand traces the outline of the uneven skin, chasing away the chill, and Genesis’s hand comes up to cling almost pleadingly to Cloud’s own shoulder.
“Are you cold?” Cloud murmurs in his ear, and Genesis wonders if he can feel it.
“A little,” Genesis allows, and Cloud hums in reply as he draws even closer, as if he could chase winter away with his presence alone.
Genesis wonders if he’s allowed to covet the man who embodies the sun the way he does - wings stripped away, the skies out of reach, no wax to melt but nothing to stop him from hitting the ground.
Little by little, the press of Cloud’s skin against his begins to thaw the phantom frost.
“May I ask you something you don’t want to answer?” Genesis breaks the silence, his eyes closed as he keeps his face pressed against Cloud’s shoulder. Cloud’s hand pauses in its movement but he otherwise stays silent, which Genesis takes as assent, “The geostigma...what did it feel like?”
Cloud stays still and silent for a long time.
“Tired,” he says finally, “I was always tired. The stigma - I think the cells,” Cloud swallows hard, his other hand flexing against where it had come to rest on Genesis’s hip, “the cells are still...there, and they would react. It would feel like he was always right there, behind me.”
Genesis brings the hand on Cloud’s shoulder up to rest in his hair, wrapping his limbs around Cloud as though he was enough to ward off the spectre that haunted them both.
“I would see things - remember things,” Cloud continued, his cheek pressed against Genesis’s hair so that his near-silent voice was right next to his ear, “like a nightmare you can’t wake up from. And it was kind of gross,” and he huffed a humourless laugh, “the rot dripping off my skin, so I had to change my bandages all the time.”
You will rot, whispers Sephiroth, and Genesis thinks but I haven’t yet.
“You thought you were going to die,” Genesis says more than asks, and Cloud’s head shifts enough that Genesis thinks it’s a nod, “but you didn’t.”
“We didn’t.” Cloud has a sudden conviction in his voice, his palm flat and reassuring against the scar tissue across Genesis’s back, and Genesis can’t help the wry smile at being seen through.
“We didn’t,” he agrees, and he feels weighed down by something he can’t name, “but then where do we go?”
Cloud’s response is near-instant, pulling back only to put both of his hands against Genesis’s face, holding him still as the Mako glow of both their eyes illuminates their faces.
“Here,” he says with the conviction Genesis loves and fears, the same iron will that stood between the world and the kind of destruction Genesis himself had once sought, “right here.”
And the air remains still in their darkened bedroom, lit only by the glow of their eyes and the clock that still blinks obnoxiously from the bedside table. Genesis tilts his head just enough, leaning into the warmth of Cloud’s hands, that he can see the barest hint of the approaching sunrise through the frost-bitten window.
“I know,” he says, still looking out at the glimpse of the rising sun, “I know.”
She guides us to bliss, her gift everlasting, he thinks.
Cloud leans forward, pressing a kiss against his jaw, then the corner of his mouth.
“You know that I love you, right?” Genesis suddenly feels the pressure to ask, the words crawling out of his throat like they have a will of their own. He hates himself for it instantly, the question quiet and pathetic in the raw silence.
“Of course I know,” Cloud whispers fervently, “of course.”
Genesis turns his head to press his mouth to Cloud’s, near-bruising in his intensity, kissing him as though he could steal the warmth from Cloud’s lips and store it in his chest to ward against the cold that haunts him. He thinks Cloud would let him if he could, always more generous than wise, and he loves him, he loves him, he loves him-
He lets the kiss break when Cloud pulls away, wrapping Genesis into a tight embrace again.
“Sleep?” Cloud prods, and Genesis lets him lay them down, still holding onto each other as tightly as they can, though Cloud briefly moves his arm to pull the blanket back over their shoulders.
Cloud returns his arms to their place around Genesis, drawing him in, and beneath the blanket and the warm embrace Genesis finally feels the last of the chill recede. Cloud’s cheek brushes his as he trails feather-light kisses up the side of Genesis’s neck, stopping right below his ear.
“You know that I love you too, right?”
Genesis closes his eyes.
“Of course I know,” he echoes.
The words don’t have the bitter taste of a lie, and so he knows them to be true.
“Of course.”