Kalli's Journal

Staff Information!
Hit Banners & Awards!

Contact Info

In Which Marlene Does The Talking

Cloud blinked a few times, trying to figure out why he was so warm. Someone was breathing beside him.

Which was better than someone beside him not breathing.

Vincent.

Sometimes, when Cloud woke up with Vincent in his bed and only fleeting memories of why Vincent was in his bed (other than the obvious, which was also the reason he was a little sore and a little sticky, but he didn't think about that until he'd gotten past the entire 'Oh, I can't scratch myself with abandon just yet' train of thoughts), he chose to stop and wonder why he always expected Vincent to be cold-blooded or something.

He reached over to touch pale skin and waited for Vincent to stir.

Thoughts of a nice wake-up blowjob passed through his mind, but since he really wanted to be on the receiving end of that and it wasn't damned likely, Cloud rolled over and stretched as he tossed off the blankets.

Tifa would make breakfast. Things would be quiet. And then he would take Vincent (and Marlene) down to the center of town where there was a nice little walk-in mobile phone shop.

A peaceful morning. Nothing going wrong...

His phone rang. He tried to ignore it, but Marlene had changed the ring tone (again) to the most insanely awful thing he'd ever heard (well, other than the last time she'd changed it).

"What?" he said harshly as he crashed into the hallway. Not that Vincent could have slept through whatever awful attempt at a melody the phone had been trying to play. Even his own (admittedly) lame piano skills were better than what his phone sounded like.

Besides, it was just Reno.

"Man, what's your problem?" Reno asked in his usual slightly-excited tone. "Catch you with your pants down?"

Cloud glanced downward. And then promptly ducked back into his bedroom to find his pants.

"What do you want?" Cloud asked back.

"Looking for a hand with a project tomorrow," Reno said smoothly. Cloud frowned and tried to do the one-handed-pants-dance back into the hallway.

"Maybe," Cloud replied. "Call you later."

"Hey!" Reno cried. But Cloud snapped his phone shut. It did not ring again. At least Reno had a little bit of common sense.

And two hours later (and after Marlene had set Cloud's ring tone back to a nice, normal phone-ish sound), they headed downtown.

"I get to pick it out," Marlene announced once they walked in the door.

Vincent glanced over at Cloud. Cloud shrugged. Neither one of them had much experience with children.

And seconds later, after being accosted by three salesclerks, the nightmare had only started.

"Awesome!" one of them said as he held up a phone similar to Cloud's.

"Amazing!" another tried as he displayed a different model.

"Astounding!" the lone female clerk attempted.

Marlene was the one to frown. "You guys have note cards, right? Or you spin a wheel? We really just need a phone."

She might have terrible taste in ring tones, but Cloud decided that Marlene could indeed do the rest of the talking.

Fifteen minutes after that, Marlene grabbed Vincent's new phone from the lone female clerk (who seemed to be the patient one) and quickly dialed a number.

Cloud's phone rang. It rang the chocobo racing song from the Gold Saucer (which meant that Marlene had no idea what a normal phone sounded like - he could deal with that, slowly, by docking her allowance) and just to get it to stop, he answered.

"Okay, here," Marlene said as she shoved the phone into Vincent's hand. "Just talk."

"Um," Vincent began as finally held the phone up to a normal phone-position. "Can you hear me now?"

Cloud thought it best to never, ever, let Vincent have his number.

"Marlene," he said as he handed her the phone, "I think it's for you."