Faith

Sorta sequel to Grace.

Cause I’ve been loving you, for such a long, long time
Expecting nothing in return
Just for you to have a little faith in me
You see time, time is our friend
‘Cause for us, there is no end—John Hiatt, Have A Little Faith In Me

“Reno, can I borrow your bike?”

“Sorry, boss?” It was an unusual request even for Tseng. Turks occasionally met in remote locations for security purposes. Reno chose to be transported there on Fenrir, allowable only because Cloud still technically held contract status.

“I do not wish to ride in a limousine with the President alone.”

“I see. What about Vincent and Elena?”

“Ever since the first time you and Cloud opted for such transportation, it has been a popular way to avoid sharing in the president’s ah…bar. Valentine received a lovely touring cycle from his lover for Christmas. I understand it is worth slightly less than my annual compensation.” Tseng toyed with a paperweight on his desk, as if contemplating the option of whacking Vincent over the head with it in envy. “Elena recently purchased a nice Wutian import model upon my advice. It is lovely, sleek. It suits her. I realize I will need to acquire my own eventually.”

Reno grinned and pulled a key off his ring. “It’s in our parking bay. It’s the one that is NOT Fenrir. See you tomorrow afternoon, Boss.”

Reno would never forget the first time he rode bitch with Cloud Strife. Clothed, that is. Cloud had just begun working with the Turks and his services had been deemed valuable; it was Reno’s task to bring the uncooperative man to one of their off-site meetings. Cloud sucked at driving and Reno’s relationship with the rules of the road was tenuous at best. They made the decision to take Cloud’s bike.

He had recently tried to kill Cloud with great sincerity—and not behind the wheel of a car either—so Reno wasn’t even sure he liked Cloud and the feeling was mutual. But Reno was sure he liked that bike in a very very very bad way. Not to mention it’s owner was almost as attractive; compact, powerful, sexy. It was a thought that pressed into Reno’s consciousness the more he tried to keep it out. They made a brief stop by both men’s apartments to repack their bags for the space concerns of bike travel, and Cloud looked up with a challenge in his eyes.

“You mind going fast?”

It was the start of a beautiful relationship.

They had been on the road for an hour when they came upon the back of the ShinRa caravan of staid, boring vehicles. Unmarked for security, nothing screamed “I am transporting important government figures!” louder. Cloud pressed his hand into the side of Reno’s thigh in warning, but still he barely had time to lean into the smaller man’s torso before being thrown from the bike completely. Cloud accelerated the bike to a speed Reno would have sworn violated all laws of physics and then passed the first car on the right, before tailgating and cutting between the second two. He cut between and in front of them with lawless abandon. Reno felt his ponytail whipping behind him and his heart in his stomach. He hadn’t felt so free in…well, never.

He caught sight of his driver in the rear view mirror. The man was smiling; a full on grin of pure joy. It had been a chance sighting, only a moment’s glimpse of things not seen, but Reno would be in love for the rest of his life.

There were times he would have sworn they were about to lay the machine down but for the skill of its driver. They blew through the front of the motorcade like a spark down a fuse. Reno felt the laughter stolen from his chest and knew Cloud shared it.

Damn, but it was awesome.

There was considerable time for drinking, thanks to Cloud’s utter disregard for speed limit signs. “You are going to be in soooooooooooo much trouble.” Reno wasn’t slurring, exactly, but his speech had taken on a softness that Cloud hadn’t picked up earlier in the day.

“Yes, seeing as how I am a contract employee of ShinRa with my own sources of livelihood, and don’t give a, oh how shall I put this politely, a rat’s ass-fuck, I will be sure to suck Rufus’ dick in apology.” Bonded by motorcycle lust and immoderate consumption of alcohol, it was as if the men had never been enemies a day in their lives.

“Way too vanilla for Rufus.”

Cloud snorted. He was several drinks ahead of Reno. “Really, that was awesome. Have you ever dropped acid?”

Was Cloud asking him if he’d ever tripped? He gave a little cough.

“A few times, uh, yeah.”

“You know those times when everything is just translucent and perfect and still, but you’re still moving? That’s what this afternoon felt like to me. I just thought, I can back off and ride behind them or I can…not.”

“I’m glad you didn’t slow down. Gods, I’m drunk.”

“Good timing. Here comes Rufus.”

Years later, Reno stepped into his and Cloud’s loft and dropped his keys and wallet onto the bar. “Boss borrowed my motorcycle so he doesn’t have to ride the Rufus Express.”

“The more things change…” Cloud sighed, stepping into an embrace that was all too familiar, yet never got old. “Mmmmm…you smell nice. Talked to Tifa.”

“And?”

“It’s a girl. They’re going to name her Lena, the old Nibel word for spring. Well, actually the word is Lengte but that sucks.” He chuckled into Reno’s neck.

Reno nodded. Spring. The last winter had pretty much sucked a goat dick. “Due date still the same?”

“You mean, nearly nine months after the end of the Crater Base assignment? Yes. I seem to remember a lot of sex going on right about then. And Rude is still nearly pissing himself in terror. When do you have to be at the meeting?”

Reno peeled through the onion layers of meaning in Cloud’s last question. Tseng’s timeliness fetish, how fast Cloud drove, the fact he was suddenly hard.

He remembered, randomly, watching some stupid nature special on television the week before. The narrator had commented that in the wild, few animals mated for life. Reno thought he could name two right off the top of his head.

“We got time for a quickie.”

He seriously did not know where this…this urgency had come from. Cloud always seemed able to conjure it from somewhere in his being. Here he was, a man of some importance now, not some lower plate gutter rat. He was second in command of the Turks. While he used to swashbuckle with the rest of them, he now spent most of his days filling out reports with the help of reading glasses. Glasses that his husband (ahem, how about that for bagging the big game, he smirked to himself) assured him were hot in that nerdy sort of way. But dammit, he was a grownup now.

A grownup with a stiffie like a flagpole, already a moaning puddle of need being led by Cloud back to the bedroom because he was incapable of walking on his own. Fuck this adult shit. Cloud had his number. He also had his tongue halfway down Reno’s throat.

They fell to the bed, wrestling with clothes and need. Cloud was still pulling off the last sleeve of his shirt when he rolled over on all fours. “Fuck me.”

Well then, even Reno’s dick could diagram that sentence. And it was a good thing because his brain had stopped working at the bedroom door. Gods, that man had an ass. Must be all that…riding.

“Reno?”

“Sorry. Distracted by the scenery.” Cloud pushed back a little in case Reno wasn’t getting the verbal cues. Reno opened the lube and found that his hands were shaking. He swallowed. His mouth was dry.

He slicked himself and then prepared his impatient lover, ramming into him almost violently. The only response from Cloud was a moan of relief; he grabbed Cloud’s hips hard enough to leave bruises. Reno noticed Cloud trying to stroke himself without losing balance in his thrusting.

Reno gave an inward chuckle. Convenient as the position was for quick and dirty sex, it did have its drawbacks. He snaked a hand around to give assistance and was rewarded by Cloud bucking back against him. He was almost instantly coated with liquid heat, Cloud’s spasms bringing him to a sharp hard climax only strokes later.

Well, he did say it would be a quickie. But damn.

They came down slowly, Reno turning them both gently on their sides. “I love you,” they both said accidentally in unison. “Are you going to be too late?”

“Not the way you drive, babe.” Reno reached for a cigarette. If ever a fuck called for a smoke, it was that one, but he stabbed it out halfway through. “Let’s go. Damn but what you do to me.”

They locked up and mounted Fenrir. Reno gave a hum of appreciation. “You really are insatiable. We just had sex, and very inspired sex I might add. What are you leering at now?” The complaint was without heat. Cloud’s libido ran just as high and they both knew they would be naked and moaning within hours, if not minutes, of reaching their destination. For his part, Reno just grinned without shame. He figured when anyone else had to sit there on a rolling vibrator with Cloud Strife’s firm round ass between their legs, they could judge.

Reno was three minutes late. How many of those he had spent buried inside the heat of Cloud’s body and how many had been made up by the same’s near criminal driving, he really didn’t want to know. He knew it was probably five minutes later than Tseng would have preferred but was still too sated to care, and went inside to register them. Cloud scurried over to Vincent.

“Is that the new bike?”

Vincent pointed one red eye like a laser in his direction, a wordless reply for a stupid question.

It was gorgeous. Cloud finally understood Reno’s Fenrir fetish. The thing was the size of a small car, blood red and tastefully accented with chrome. He reached out a finger to touch it; Vincent looked as though he would snap it off at the knuckle. He sat on his bike protectively as though he suddenly feared Cloud would defile it in some disgustingly sexual way.

Looking at Cloud’s face, it wasn’t out of the question.

Finally, in the name of friendship, the two men stepped away from the motorcycle and went inside to meet Reno at the bar. “I saw Vin’s new bike. He’s a little protective so don’t try to touch it.” Cloud said it in the same tone of voice one would use to keep dogs off the furniture. Vincent gave a low growl.

Reno just laughed. “Rude was even later than I was but he was forgiven because he brought ultrasounds. Will someone please tell me what I’m supposed to say when someone shows me those things? Because I’ve never seen one that looks like a baby, let alone a girl. It’s like those ink blot things they use to tell if you’re crazy or not.”

Cloud kept himself from asking what Reno had seen in a Rorschach test, but just.

“I didn’t see anything either, so I just said congratulations. I hope that was sufficient?” Vincent always ended sentences like that in a question as though the finer points of etiquette escaped him. Ironic, as he was the most polite of the three, the scene at the motorcycle notwithstanding.

“It was fine, Vin,” Cloud assured him. “We should form a riding club.” Reminded, Vincent got up for the fourth time to look out the window and check on his baby, parked in the very secure Turk parking area. “I just don’t know what we would call it.”

“Turks who don’t want to be molested by the president on road trips?” Reno offered helpfully, joining Vincent at the window in hopes that he could at least look at the motorcycle. But then he looked at Fenrir, which reminded him of sitting behind Cloud, which made him hard again.

When did puberty end?

He faked a stretch, badly, and muttered something about having to be up early, yo. Cloud and Vincent shared a bemused look as Cloud followed him to the room.

“You don’t have to be up for ten hours, Reno.”

“I’m up now, dammit.” He pulled Cloud down into a loose embrace on the bed and kissed him. Not roughly, but thoroughly. “All I could think about the whole meeting.”

“Why? I’m behaving. Or I was.”

“Little things. The way you put your hand on my back when you’re getting up to get something. The way you make sure our hands touch when you give me the phone or the newspaper. Do you even realize you’re doing it?”

“Oh, I realize it. I just like touching you. Before we were together, I’d do it because it was all I could sneak in. Then after…well, after, I just loved the feel of you.” Cloud smiled at the memory and kissed him again, taking in the familiar taste of whiskey and cigarettes.

“And you call me insatiable. Are you sore? From this morning.” As if there were some other random event to slip into their day and give Cloud a sore ass, he thought. Still it wasn’t often they were that rough with each other. Just special occasions.

“Not too sore, I don’t think.”

“Doesn’t matter. I don’t mind riding bitch again.” Actually, just thinking about it was making funny feelings rush through Reno’s groin. “In fact…”

“I thought we were supposed to be two old married guys having ho hum sex,” Cloud grinned, his hand already around Reno’s shaft, Reno moaning and grinding into his fist. “This makes twice in one day.”

“Yeah, ho hum was you this morning, dragging me into the bedroom and shoving your ass in my face.”

“Fine, I’ll look bored then.” Cloud finally came up with the lube from his shaving kit, seconds before Reno throttled him from sheer sexual frustration. He opened the bottle and Reno stopped him.

“Let me.” Reno was in no hurry. He licked the single drop from the head of Cloud’s penis; Cloud arched back into the pillow in response. Reno then took the whole of him into his mouth, breathing in the lingering scent of his leather riding clothes. He looked up at Cloud’s face, aroused but peaceful, blond hair spread out on the pillow.

He removed his mouth to slick Cloud, took only the briefest time to prepare himself in his impatience, and sank down slowly.

He gasped a little then at the stretching filling sensation. Not painful but nearly overwhelming. Cloud’s eyes opened then. “Bored?” Reno’s response was to brace on either side of him and so slowly, gently thrust down on him. That would teach the little smart aleck. Or not.

Gods, it felt just too good to rush, just yet. As if of their own accord, Cloud’s hands moved around first to Reno’s ass, then the small of his back, finally drifting up to his erection which was near painful with need. He reached for the lube again, pumping Reno harder this time. The effect was immediate. And damn near electric.

“Gods…motherfucking…what…oh gods!” Lost in sensory overload Reno forgot all about not rushing things. And Cloud was right there with him, the pleasure pooling in his groin suddenly pulsing through him in waves and filling Reno from beneath. Reno’s hand joined his--thank Gaia, he was suddenly incapable of anything requiring motor skills—as Reno spurted helplessly over both their fingers.

For a time the room was filled with nothing but the sounds of their own gasping breath. Reno pulled himself up and lay beside Cloud, reaching for a smoke and his whiskey. “Damn, babe. I guess we should, I don’t know, find something to throw the spark back into things.”

“We could always sneak down and fuck on Vin’s bike.”

“I want to live to see thirty. Not that we haven’t abused poor Fenrir half to death.”

All the remembered sex on Cloud’s bike made them clutch their sides with laughter. They wouldn’t run out of ideas any time soon.

Tseng kept his Turks in meetings the entire next day, releasing a ragged and edgy group near dinner. Elena in particular looked weighed down.

“I’ll never leave the basement again!” She ran her hand through her hair until she was in very real danger of looking like Cloud.

“What’s up?” Elena’s new twin asked when he caught up with Reno.

“There are reports of a new group afoot, looking for the old labs.” Reno filled him in during his first smoke break in six hours. “No one uses that word anymore, ‘afoot.’ It’s a cool word.” He took a long drag while Cloud got him a drink. “Anyway, we have nothing but some eyewitness reports and circumstantial evidence. It of course falls to Elena to make some kind of sense of it. I don’t envy her but she’s damn good at her job.”

So was Reno but he tended not to believe it. Tseng strode up to the bar and slapped shut the laptop Elena had opened at the far end. “Work waits till Monday, people. And I can say with some authority it will suck. Today sucked. Tonight, drinks are on ShinRa.”

Reno was on his fourth or fifth whiskey. Cloud was drunk enough to have lost count. Elena was dancing with Tseng, her feet bare, her bob length hair falling out of its short ponytail. She looked like a sixteen year old leg-humping her teacher, Reno thought to himself.

“I adore you,” he slurred into Cloud’s ear. He meant it to be seductive. He realized it was about as sexy as most drunks were. It didn’t matter. Cloud turned to reply and fell off the bar stool.

It was the funniest thing either of them had seen in ages.

“Okay. You can touch it. You just can’t sit on it.” The voice seemed to come from nowhere.

“Excuse me? Vincent, I don’t believe we have that kind of relationship.” Reno hiccupped.

“The bike. The two of you can touch it. Once. Don’t leave fingerprints.” The three of them weaved down to the parking area and lined up to touch Vincent’s motorcycle. Afterward, Vincent rubbed the spots with a cloth as Cloud and Reno headed back upstairs to their room.

“I wonder what’s going to happen the first time a bird shits on that thing, yo.”

“Cerberus, meet bird,” Cloud snorted. They paused at the stair landing; Reno put his arm around Cloud’s shoulder and they stood in drunken companionship for a few moments, looking up at the night sky. Nothing really needed to be said. It was good. They crawled in bed and slipped off into a drunken sleep, already thinking of the ride back home and the feel of the road beneath them.