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"You asked what happened in Wall Market."
Sunglasses snatched off, Barret did an idiotic double take. The old shock across his face at finding a "stranger" in the room had been replaced by new shock, figuring out the stranger was Cloud. Just, dressed like he was.
"Remember you said you didn’t recall. Knew you were full of shit…" Cloud waved flippantly before clasping his hand in front of himself, again. With Barret’s laser-focus attention on him, he stopped any squeeze his fingers might’ve tried.
It was a risk even visiting Midgar again. But since kicking the sheets off of him and Cloud that morning, Barret had been in an adamant mood about checking in on Marlene one last time, when it seemed Sephiroth’s trail was treading across the ocean with no easy ticket back. Cloud finally agreeing to go with Barret had gotten him the okay from the group.
At Elmyra’s, not far from Wall Market, Cloud got the crazy, dumb idea. If that really was their last day on the continent, he might not get the chance for a while.
Asking Barret, You good? and ignoring him bitch about Cloud not needing a babysitter to go where he wanted, Cloud headed off.
Should’ve expected getting the dress back would be a pain in the ass. Getting to Wall Market, going to the Honeybee Inn, and gruffly requesting a meeting with Andrea, on the off chance Andrea even had the thing after Cloud discarded it in Don Corneo’s mansion, felt ridiculous.
But, Andrea led him to the back of what must have been a storage room for stage costumes, or whatever, and Cloud followed his footsteps gliding between the racks that were full of leotards, and scarves, and other garments. They came out the other side, where, out of a chest, Andrea lifted the blue and black corset and dress.
He draped it wide across his raised arms, and turned to present it to Cloud.
"You’re… not gonna ask why I want it back?" wondered Cloud. Andrea raised his arms a little higher, waiting for Cloud to stretch his out the same to receive the dress.
Cloud remembered how heavy all that fabric was, after Andrea made the transfer, and then dropped his hands away so the dress laid fully on Cloud. Cloud, after a moment spent staring at it, folded it loosely in the hopes of not wrinkling it too bad while he carried it close to his chest.
"I’m not. The dress belongs to you, as I see it. Whatever you do with it is none of my business. Although… whoever has the chance to see you wear it again should consider themselves the luckiest soul in Midgar."
"…Thanks."
"Hmm…" Andrea turned his crinkling eyes back to the chest, reaching inside again. "One moment, Cloud. There are a few more accessories we can’t have you forgetting… here."
Cloud wrapped the necklace inside the - bolero, Andrea provided - and tucked them both in the middle of the refolded dress. "Thanks, again, Andrea."
"Cloud." Yeah, said Cloud. He thought he had everything. Apparently Andrea thought different, going by the smirk that donned his lips. "I can’t have you leaving without the proper makeup."
Staying longer than he planned, Cloud got the rundown on how to get into his wardrobe and put on the makeup from a Honeybee, Andrea having to excuse himself for the night’s show, he said, with a parting assurance that Cloud was in expert hands. Wiping his face clean, Cloud grumbled, Thanks, at the Honeybee who winked at his reflection in the mirror and said, Wow, such a quick learner! Told you, you were born for this.
He was given a box to carry all his stuff in after all. Even though Cloud grabbed the handle of the sword on his back to remind what any robber would be dealing with, the Honeybee was unreasonably nervous at the idea of Cloud lugging around a million gil gown out in the open, through Wall Market, of all neighborhoods.
Back at Elmyra’s, Barret said, "I was about to come track your ass down, y’know. The hell you got there?"
"Nothing," Cloud told him. Barret saw the golden bee logo on the face of the crisp white box, though.
"You go back to Wall Market?" Cloud, eventually, answered, Obviously. "Seriously, what the hell happened there with you guys-"
"Marlene’s asleep now, right?" Well, yeah. "Then let’s get back to the others."
Barret snorted. But replied, "Fine. Lead the way, you tight-lipped…"
Cloud set the box down as carefully as he would a bomb, on the bed he’d claimed in the room he was sharing with the other man at the inn outside Midgar. Red XIII raised his head from the floor in front of the fireplace, and pawed down the hall to the girls’ room for the rest of the night, mentioning he’d only been waiting around to fulfill a promise to report in when they’d gotten back.
Barret eyed the box again. Cloud could feel his eyes penetrating the back of Cloud’s hand curling away from the top lid. "Alright, for real. Spill."
No point in getting the damn thing if Cloud didn’t do what he’d planned. He glared at Barret over his shoulder. "You wanna know so bad? Come back in an hour."
"Huh?"
"An hour."
"…Alright. Fine. I’ll go hang out downstairs, then."
"I don’t care what you do."
Barret scoffed on his way out the door, This secret had better be worth dealing with your uptight ass…
Alone, Cloud grit his jaw, looking at the box. He dropped his shoulders and sighed, after lifting its cover off. Nothing left but to get dressed. And rummage for the bottle Barret kept with his things.
Cloud rinsed his fingers and fanned the dark layers of the skirt out, and smoothed his hand down the front of the deep blue corset, and then tugged the ruffles at the end of the mesh sleeves, that obviously didn’t need any more adjustment. He finally clasped his hands in front of himself, just when Barret came back into the room. And yanked his sunglasses off, and told Cloud he was full of shit.
"Well?" Barret said to Cloud.
Cloud guessed more of an explanation was, yeah, probably needed. "This…" He swung his arms outward to not block himself completely off, his upraised hands curled in the air and elbows still tucked close to his sides. "It was my disguise to get into Corneo’s."
"Yeah, alright. I get that, now." Cloud felt the irritated pull of his brow. If it was so obvious, then why the hell had he wasted his breath? "You just gonna stand there lookin’ pretty?"
Cloud blinked. "I-"
"C’mere, gorgeous."
Cloud’s mouth parted, but nothing got out.
Never thought that word would seriously apply to him. Never imagined it would be coming out of Barret’s mouth about him.
Never knew he’d be so… pleased, to have it aimed at him.
His shoes clicked on the floorboards when he made his way to Barret on the other side of the room, still in front of the closed door he hadn’t moved from yet. Because he was closer, Cloud didn’t raise his voice above a gruff murmur.
"You don’t have to… call me stuff like that. You don’t usually call me…"
Barret deeply hummed. His eyes were hooded, looking down and tracing slowly over Cloud’s features. Had to be, with how much taller he was. "That right? Well, would’ve done it a lot more if I’d known you liked hearing it so much…"
Heh, he chuckled, at Cloud’s expense. The twist of Cloud’s mouth didn’t do anything to get rid of the flush he felt dyeing his face.
"Whatever, man."
"You’d really prefer I call you, what, a hardass right now? 'Cause that’s the usual term for you."
"I’d prefer that you shut up."
"Fine."
Barret’s hand wrapped all the way around the back of Cloud’s bicep, wresting him forward. Cloud moved stiffly, breathed harshly out through his nose to relax once Barret’s mouth firmly covered his. The bitter taste of lipstick was faint when Cloud licked his lips after. Most of it had smeared onto Barret’s mouth. Barret pushed his tongue out over his own bottom lip, and Cloud unintentionally sighed from his throat watching him get a taste, too.
"Hey… you’re awfully tense." Barret jostled Cloud’s arm still in his grip to emphasize his point. Cloud narrowed his eyes, and averted them to stare at nothing over by some edge of the room. "More than usual, I mean. You nervous?"
Cloud prickled, pissed at himself for being so transparent. "Seriously, Barret, shut up."
He hadn’t expected Barret’s knuckle to tilt him under his chin. Or how deep his frown would be, considering Cloud by his face. He bowed and, with a deliberately slower press, kissed. Uncharacteristically feeling things out.
Eventually, Cloud transitioned with him, matching the weird, delicate gentleness. He tracked Barret’s eyes on him when they parted again, waiting, and watching him think.
Barret dropped his hand suddenly from Cloud’s chin. Didn’t touch him at all, actually. He asked Cloud, "Where d’you want me?"
Cloud, still staring at Barret’s eyes, was aware he’d asked him something. Cloud gave his delayed, genius response. "Huh?"
Barret repeated, "How’d you wanna do this?" He stood akimbo, waiting for Cloud to give an actual decent answer.
Cloud thought he suspected what Barret was doing. Testy, like hardass, was another word more often applied to him, by Barret. He didn’t need Barret to hand him the reins. Though he’d take them.
Cloud eyed him, then the room. Opposite the beds was a table and some seating around a metal-framed window.
"Chair," he said, sending his eyes to catch a glimpse of what Barret thought of the idea.
He said, "'Kay."
The chair creaked, dangerously, under Barret’s backward lean as he got comfortable. He spread his knees, taking up more room than the chair gave him, which was usually how a man of his bulk had to sit. Remembering, he took a moment to unclamp his gunarm, and sighed heavily at the release of weight.
Cloud waited for Barret to prop the gun out of the way. Then he stood beside him, and then lowered to sit on top of one of his thighs. He kept his legs bent together under the dress, braced his upper body by a spread palm behind Barret’s shoulder, to keep his balance. Barret gripped the curve of his hip to help, pulling the line of him snug against Barret’s barreled chest.
"Don’t think I said…" Barret slid his hand up, twisting his thick fingers through the laces running along Cloud’s back, and putting even more tension on them, unintentionally squeezing Cloud around his middle tighter. "It suits you."
Cloud wrapped his hand powerfully behind Barret’s head and yanked their mouths flush.
The two of them only broke when Cloud stood to ruck his dress up and swing a leg to sit astride. Barret’s palm roamed the curve Cloud dipped his back into, before it folded around one side of Cloud’s pinched waist. He uttered, Damn. A cocky grin pushed along his cheek.
"What you got goin’ on under here?"
Cloud stared down his nose, then finally knocked his chin at the bigger man. "Go ahead and find out."
Up to his elbow was draped by Cloud’s dress once he reached under. His eyes went wide from grazing the lace.
"This I gotta see."
He tried to push all of the fabric in his way up onto Cloud’s hip. Cloud finally grudgingly helped out, two handfuls holding the dress higher, enough for Barret to get the look he wanted.
Barret stared. The muscles in Cloud’s thighs twitched as he stopped himself from fidgeting. "You get a good enough look, already?"
"Uh, no. Ain’t ever gonna get my fill of this."
Cloud rolled his eyes. And rolled the dress back down, ignoring Barret’s miffed objection, Hang on, now. "Think you have."
"Don’t tease me with that, hot stuff."
A thick forearm barred Cloud’s back to tug him forward. Cloud grunted at the sudden movement. Ass pressed up to Barret’s waist and against his rough pants, he could feel the round strain currently reshaping them.
Barret’s breath was hot on his delusive cleavage. "Nothing as exciting as that under my pants, but I’ll bet you won’t be disappointed. Give a guy a hand with this, huh?"
Barret’s zipper almost broke off in Cloud’s grip.
Barret jolted, and told Cloud, Whoa - easy down there! Cloud gave a slight shrug, waited for Barret to settle down, and finished tucking his hand inside Barret’s pants.
The backs of his knuckles brushed Barret’s balls, when he reached under to pull through Barret’s length. Mostly, it sprung out by itself, nearly hard already. Heavy blood dropped to Cloud’s own groin at the view, faced with the proof that Barret was turned on by him. Even in the dress. Maybe because of the dress, too.
Barret mm-ed, when Cloud readjusted his seat, then his grip. Gave a full-throated groan on the upstroke of a rhythm Cloud started, to get him all the way hard.
"Fuck… yeah, that’s it, that’s real nice, beautiful."
Cloud swore he could feel his pupils widen at the sound of that name. He kept his eyes on Barret’s face, watching when his mouth became open and round, and every time his brow twitched. He felt his own breaths deepen, aware more than he normally would’ve been of each one, with ribs expanding against the stiff cage of the corset.
When Barret started shifting, his hips restlessly, impatiently bucking, Cloud reached under the ruffled top edge of his corset for the condom he’d stuffed there. He snagged it between his teeth to tear open without letting go of Barret, while Barret grinned, and chuffed at where it had appeared from.
"Your dress not have pockets, huh?"
"Yeah, well… one downside to it," Cloud said, letting a smirk creep onto his face.
Barret’s eyes widened and brightened with warmth, all of a sudden. "Hey, alright… that’s better."
"…What is?"
"Don’t worry about it." At Cloud’s narrowed look, he tightened his elbow to drag Cloud even closer. Looked from Cloud’s hand to his face again. "Ready and waitin’, here-"
Cloud snapped the rubber on. Barret tugged the middle band of Cloud’s panties to one side. They pushed him in by feel, blind to what was going on below the dress.
Had to pause though, for Cloud to adjust. Barret’s hand stayed under the folds, keeping on Cloud’s thigh, probably to feel his muscles shift, when he started rising and falling. The noises Cloud made were low.
"Ah… yeah…"
He almost forgot he was wearing the dress, all his focus narrowing in for a long moment on the feel of Barret slotted deeply in him. But the tinkling metal of his earrings swinging beside his neck, and the heavy jewel tapping on his collar with each bob, registered again, and he looked down the length of his corset to the drape of his dress falling around both of their hips, and over his own erection.
He leaned back, gripping the hard bulk of Barret’s thighs behind him. He threw his head up with a groan he couldn’t bite back. The right press, and heat flashed through his insides.
"Goddamn, just look at you… all dolled up for me. Shit." Cloud moaned again, not just from the tip of Barret’s cock nudging his prostate again. "Should’ve expected you’d look just as insanely hot in some nicer clothes as you do in your usual gear."
Cloud dug the heels of his hands into the tops of Barret’s shoulders, to forcibly hold him in place while he pounded their hips. "Fuck, fuck - Barret-"
There was an alarming crack. But nothing else happened that they could tell - except, Barret giving way to his climax.
Cloud rode him through the quakes, reveling like he did every time he beat Barret by holding out longer, how he’d reduced Barret - strong, burly Barret - to a shaking mass.
When Barret finally peeled his eyes back open, he half-sneered at the smug expression Cloud knew was on his face. "No matter how good you look, your attitude still sucks. C’mere, pretty boy-"
Barret moved his hand from Cloud’s thigh to the inside of his hip.
"Wait," Cloud said, sharper than he’d meant in his panic. "Sh-shit. I don’t want to ruin my dress-"
"Get up." Cloud did. "Pull your skirts up." Cloud did that, too.
Barret reached around and grabbed the back of Cloud’s underwear to tug it down around his thighs. Then he wrapped his lips around Cloud.
Heat, and wet warmth, surrounded Cloud’s cock. Two quick glides back and forth, and Cloud spilled down Barret’s throat.
Slowly, gradually, Cloud released his clenched fingers from the wrinkles he’d twisted into his dress. He kept it hiked around his arms, as he pulled the lace back up. Gratefully got off his wobbling legs, when Barret lugged him back down to sit, his face pillowing into Cloud’s padded chest.
Cloud rubbed his forehead hard against Barret’s. Until Cloud found his feet again, flapping the dress to get it to lay straight down his legs.
They both realized what that cracking sound had been, when Barret got to his feet next. The chair he’d been sitting on collapsed, splintered leg thunking on the floor, before the rest of the seat toppled with a final clatter.
Barret rubbed the back of his head. "Well. Not surprised." He turned to Cloud with a smarmy grin. "You rode hard."
Cloud snorted softly, then smirked himself. Guess he had.
Barret gave him another once-over. "Can’t believe you were keeping something so good from me."
Cloud shrugged. "Kinda a taboo in Wall Market, digging into why you're there, or what you’re doing."
"That how it is? Shit, then right now, I really feel like the luckiest son of a bitch on the Planet."
Epilogue
"Maybe," Cloud admitted, when Barret said, Look like you could use an extra hand yourself.
Barret planted his feet and stood behind Cloud, and started helping him get undressed.
There was a long black bow at the bottom back of the corset, which seemed the place to start. Barret grabbed one hanging end under his thumb and pulled, until he felt the tension slipping through the knot. Then, same as undoing bootstrings, he hooked a finger through the crossed parts of the laces to loosen them up.
Cloud made an exerted kind of sound, when finally let out of the corset. He grabbed its stiff sides and tossed the whole thing over onto one of the beds. It flopped where it landed, still bending around its cupped form.
Then there was a weird piece underneath, that covered Cloud’s middle and flared out on his hips and the rest of the dress, and had the tiniest hidden zipper down its back that Barret fumbled to get a grip on. He managed, and pulled that off too, revealing Cloud’s bare spine.
The pads of his fingers followed the knobs between the two halves of his back. Cloud’s head turned slightly toward Barret, before bowing forward, so he could reach with both hands for the back of his neck and unhook the necklace. When he shrugged out of the - what the fuck had he called it, again, a bolero? - Barret pressed his mouth shut to the skin revealed.
Usually Cloud naked head to waist, especially that neck he usually kept collared up, would be enough to get Barret’s blood pumping. If he hadn’t already shot his load. Lethargy had settled in his bones, and the whole undressing was more utilitarian than anything… even downright domestic.
Barret could’ve spent the rest of the night just pressing his lips to all the little marks that dotted Cloud’s shoulders and back.
But he shuffled to give some space, so Cloud could bend forward to pick up the skirt where it dropped around his feet. And turned away, with a shake of his head, hand on his hip.
"So, uh…" Barret turned back around, just in time to catch Cloud finish pulling his ribbed tank down his torso. He met Barret’s look with a guarded one. "That wasn’t… too weird."
"Hell, no." Naked, in a dress - Cloud could be dressed up just about any damn way, and Barret would still think he was infuriatingly the hottest thing on two legs.
Still, he wanted to make sure. "You’re keeping it, right?"
Cloud’s downcast eyes, and shitty smirk, told Barret how pleased he was. "S’pose so."
"Alright. Maybe you’d even let me take you out in it sometime, good-lookin’."
"Shut up, Barret."