Chapter Text
Dragons obsessed, that was a fact.
Cloud ignored the unbearable heat and continued to press the palm of his hand soothingly between Squall’s eyes. His dragon form was gigantic, and he hardly even noticed Cloud sitting on his snout but he could offer more comfort from his impromptu perch rather than sitting beside him.
“You okay, dragon?” Cloud asked, getting an exhausted rumble in response that vibrated through his entire body. It had been a long day, or at least, he assumed more time had passed than he’d realized since Squall had come crashing into their nursery.
Just over ten years had gone by since Nibelheim had lost their damn minds and tried to sacrifice Cloud to a dragon that had only been passing by. Ten years since that dragon had gladly taken him and become the partner Cloud had never realized he’d wanted.
They’d built a home out of Squall’s den and silly dragons notwithstanding, Cloud had never regretted a moment of his time being hoarded. He was Squall’s greatest treasure. The center piece of his hoard, he counted himself lucky most days.
It had only been three months prior when Squall had brought up an interesting idea. The notion of a child. A kit for the two of them to raise together. Cloud had questioned the mechanics of such a feat but apparently all dragons could lay eggs if properly motivated.
Two months ago, they decided to try. Squall would start the process and Cloud was the one to ‘fertilize’ them. Cloud had begged Squall to stop using that word but Squall saw nothing wrong with the enjoyable process. Making a baby was always the fun part regardless of species.
It had been a week later that Squall confirmed he was with egg and Cloud hated that vocabulary too. The thought of a baby though? Cloud was more excited than he’d anticipated being. He didn’t remember his father, and now he was going to be one.
Calling Tifa to be able to talk about it had given him somewhere to go with his anxiety, but Squall slowed down much sooner than expected. Cloud had thought he’d understood the process but after the third week, Squall hardly left the den at all. He complained of the cramps, and said it must have been more than one egg slowing him down.
Cloud had choked at the notion of twins, but Squall had informed him as gently as possible that it was likely that only one of the eggs would be viable. It was a little heart breaking but it was also the natural order of things. He did his best to accept it, and instead focused on his dragon husband who was driving him crazy by eating metal. Metal sheets he’d gotten to upgrade their duct work had bites taken out of it. He was chewing on tree limbs and had even lamented over eating one of the diamonds he’d hoarded for three decades in a moment of lunacy.
He ate dried noodles that Cloud had bought at the market in town because he liked the crunch and a particular fish that Cloud knew was toxic. Squall called it spicy. Pregnant dragons were terrifying, and nothing came within five miles of their den, not even stray animals.
For two months, the pair of them had been preparing for the hatching of their kit. It amounted to Cloud purchasing more pillows and blankets and Squall had carved out a brand new room in their den. The nursery. In the center sat a large fire pit, and that’s exactly where Squall had gone that morning when he’d informed Cloud that it was time for the eggs to be laid.
He spit fire into the pit, the flames catching immediately. Without an explanation, Squall laid in the fire, the heat having no effect against his hardened scales. The heat had been ridiculous, but Cloud had dutifully sat nearby as emotional support when Squall did all the hard work involved with expelling an egg. Then one egg became two. Two eggs became three… Cloud was certain this wasn’t the time to ask questions but Squall hadn’t appeared to be done and he wasn’t offering any verbal acknowledgement. By the time he sagged and pulled himself out of the fire pit, five eggs were laid out side by side in the flames.
“You worked hard,” Cloud continued when his first question never got a real response. “I’m proud of you.” Five eggs also probably explained why his dragon had been such a pain in the ass the last week or two. Cloud would be an asshole too if he was carrying around five eggs.
The praise however earned him another soft noise, Squall’s eyes cracking open to look at him.
Cloud leaned down and pressed a kiss to his scales. “You can rest now, right? Take a nap. I will keep watch and let you know if there are any changes.”
Squall’s whole body moved when he heaved a tired sigh, and without disturbing Cloud on his snout, he blew out the flames that had swaddled the eggs. The nursery became like a sauna, and Cloud could see the heat wafting off the eggs.
“Just a while,” Squall finally mumbled. “Rest my eyes.”
Cloud hummed his acknowledgement while patting his scales again before sliding off his snout. He didn’t want to wake Squall by moving later and he wanted so badly to get a look at the eggs. He didn’t dare touch, but each one was a stone grey with black speckles. They were only a little larger than a cantaloupe and while that didn’t seem to be very large when compared to a dragon… Cloud certainly didn’t want to pass a freaking cantaloupe out of any hole in his body.
“Careful…” Squall whispered, though he’d told Cloud half a dozen times already the last few weeks.
“The eggs are fragile,” Cloud said to put Squall at ease and prove he’d been listening. “Paper thin for the first twenty four hours before they begin to harden.”
“Yes,” Squall muttered, pressing the very tip of his large snout to Cloud’s back.
Cloud was certain nothing would happen while Squall rested, but he’d keep watch anyway. It would be another fifteen to sixteen weeks before they’d have a hatchling, and Cloud could admit to being excited and impatient.
The kit would be born a dragon and likely wouldn’t be able to shift into their human form for the first year of their life. That didn’t matter to Cloud though. He was just eager to hold his baby. Maybe even ‘babies’. With five eggs, he thought that meant there were higher odds of them having twins after all. Silently, he hoped so. He hoped his ma was watching from the Lifestream and would get to lay eyes on her grandchild.
At least Tifa would get to be an aunt.
Cloud sat beside the fire pit and watched the eggs for changes he knew wouldn’t come. The crackling of the dying fire kept them warm though there wasn’t a chance of the nursery cooling off any time soon. Cloud was sweating and he was only sitting there.
Leaning against Squall, he sighed. The first hurdle had been completed, and soon they’d be parents.
~
It was a week before Squall shifted back into his more human form. He was stiff and clung to Cloud like he was the answer to soothing his aches. Being a more manageable size meant Cloud could feed him again and Squall devoured the meals brought to him in the nursery. The eggs were never unattended, one of them was always close by.
Having recovered, Squall finally reached out to gently touch one of the eggs, the shell firm beneath his fingertips.
“We can make the nest now?” Cloud asked, having gotten the idea in his head and he wouldn’t be letting it go.
“The pillows and things?” Squall asked with a chuckle. “You know the eggs don’t need to be comfortable.”
“Maybe they do,” Cloud shot back with a smile. Squall kept the nursery the right temperature which was almost too hot for Cloud but he powered through the heat for their baby’s sake. “We don’t know which egg or eggs are viable so they all get the same treatment. Blankets are a nice start.”
“I won’t stop you,” Squall said with a fond gaze. “Do whatever you like, we just have to be extremely careful when lifting the eggs. They’re stronger now, but I would like to be cautious.”
“Fair,” Cloud agreed but he’d wandered away, both for water and to start dragging in the fabrics he’d been collecting on his trips to towns. New blankets, new pillows, and some that had been in their own bed at some point. They were eggs, but Cloud saw no reason to not have comfortable smells around. If nothing else, the sense of home would please Squall.
It began with Cloud making a soft bed for the eggs, Squall lifting each egg and resting them back into the folds of fabric. The dragon agreed that the blankets held onto the heat of the room a little longer and Squall didn’t have to heat up the den as often as before.
Egg rearing was a full time job and Cloud held onto what forms of entertainment he could in the form of books and scrolling on his phone. Tifa was loving his egg updates if nothing else.
Three weeks in, Squall stepped back into the nursery after a hunt, a gasp lodged in his throat when he saw Cloud sitting in the nest with the eggs. He’d moved two of them carefully to the side to make room for him while he read from an old book that rested on his thighs.
“What are you doing, Storm Cloud?” Squall said calmly, but Cloud heard the note of panic in his voice and glanced up.
“Bonding.”
Squall breathed out a strained laugh but his lips were curved upwards. “With the eggs?”
“Sure,” Cloud said easily. “I figured chocobo’s can hear each other's warks and it encourages them to hatch, so why not?”
“Why not?” Squall repeated, coming closer to stand at the edge of the nest. It was stifling, the heat making Cloud sweat, but Squall hardly noticed.
“It might be a little early for them to listen but I wanted to and it’s good practice,” Cloud said, and it was the closest he’d come to admitting that he was nearly crawling at the walls with anticipation.
Squall took a couple of calming breaths, letting the sight before him really sink in before his gaze softened on Cloud. The eggs weren’t as fragile as they had been when freshly laid, but he worried all the same. Cloud eager to bond with their kit however, melted any reservations he might have had
“Alright,” Squall said, moving to sit so he was pressed against Cloud’s back. “What are you reading?”
“Ah that?” Cloud muttered, traces of embarrassment in his voice. “A book of myths and stories my ma used to read me when I was little.”
There was a short growl in Squall’s chest, a pleased noise. “A treasure.”
“Yeah, my ma certainly would have seen it that way,” Cloud muttered, imagining how she would have loved a grandchild. A dragon grandchild would have delighted her to no end.
Squall dropped a kiss on Cloud’s shoulder. “Keep reading to them. Perhaps they can hear you. I don’t remember being a hatchling so young but I do remember my own mother’s attention and it meant the world. Our kit should know yours.”
“They will,” Cloud said, resting a hand on one of the eggs. He already had plans to sit between different eggs each time he read to them, not knowing if it would make a difference or not. He started reading again, ignoring how hot he was in the sweltering nursery as he continued reading about the old and mostly forgotten Nibel gods.
It didn’t take much for Cloud’s care of the eggs to rub off onto Squall. Squall had been so focused on guarding his eggs that he hadn’t thought of what it meant to really take care of them. They took turns sitting in the nest now, and both would talk to the eggs just waiting to see if any movement or sounds could be heard from them as the weeks progressed.
They were all heavy which was a good sign but not all together helpful.
“Shame we can’t candle them,” Cloud mused, two of the melon sized eggs in his lap one afternoon.
Squall had the other three, each of them held carefully. “Candle?”
“Yeah, works with birds and reptiles. You place a light underneath the egg to see what’s inside. You’ll see the blood vessels and it’ll eventually form into a silhouette of what’s inside. Doesn’t work for dragon eggs.”
Squall gave him a look and snorted out his amusement. “You tried?”
“Shut up. Yes, I tried. The egg is just too thick for the light to shine through. That and the shells are oddly textured so that would cast weird shadows anyway.” Cloud’s face was pink but Squall was just giving him that look that said he wanted to polish Cloud again.
“It won’t be long. Then we’ll know which egg to focus on.”
Cloud nodded once, patting the eggs he held carefully. “I still think twins are likely.”
“Well, you’re not wrong,” Squall said. “One or two is the most common. I rarely hear about a dragon laying more than three eggs in one clutch. It is possible that two of them are viable, but we’ll find out. It’s not as though we’ll pitch the other eggs the second one hatches. They’ll all have a chance.”
That eased a knot in Cloud’s chest he didn’t know was there. He loved his dragon, and Squall was far from heartless but the thought of not giving all five of their eggs a chance was nauseating. The number of kits didn’t matter, not to Cloud.
Squall gave him a look. “There’s always trying again in two or three decades.”
“That long?”
“You are vastly underestimating what it’s like to raise a baby dragon,” Squall offered him a smile that was all teeth. “It will take you that long to recover from baby dragon nonsense.”
Cloud barked out a laugh and was still floored by the idea of living as long as Squall would. It made him wonder why the dragon population wasn’t a little larger. Those were questions that could wait.
~
It was fifteen weeks and three days when Cloud climbed out of a shower he’d built himself. Squall’s den had become much more habitable once he’d gotten the water and gas hooked up and Squall tended to enjoy the human sized shower as well. It was big enough for two though they hadn’t been able to share in weeks. Cloud couldn't help but wonder what a bath or shower would be like with a kit crawling around them.
“Cloud!”
Cloud jumped as he pulled a shirt over his head, hearing Squall call for him through the curving tunnels of their den. Cloud knew exactly where Squall was.
“Cloud!” He called again and Cloud snatched his phone and raced to put on his pants before he took off running. When he got to the nursery, Squall was on his knees, hovering over one of the eggs. “It’s hatching!”
His barely contained excitement was contagious and Cloud ran in, standing behind Squall with his hands on the dragon’s shoulders to peer over him and watch as the little egg rocked and rolled. The crack along the top of the egg was nearly a straight line that veered towards the end and Cloud had to fight to keep his hands to himself and not pull away any stray piece of shell he could.
“Make noises,” Cloud muttered, poking Squall’s cheek.
With a huff of amusement, Squall did as Cloud demanded and started rumbling in his chest. It wasn’t quite a purr but it certainly wasn’t something a human could do. He chuffed and growled periodically and after twenty minutes of watching the egg rock back and forth the top of the shell snapped and a head and part of a wing popped out.
“Fucking Odin…” Cloud whispered, pulling out his phone to take a quick picture.
“You can do it,” Squall’s voice had softened. “Just a little more, you’re almost there.”
There was a stretch of a few minutes where the hatchling just rested and Cloud had to think the little one was catching their breath. Finally they made a noise like a chirp and started struggling again.
“Fuck… that was the cutest noise i’ve ever heard,” Cloud muttered.
“You’re in for a treat,” Squall chuckled, tone thick with emotion. “Baby dragons are nothing but little noises.”
They watched like they were hypnotized, the hatchling squirming and ripping away pieces of the shell like it was nothing. Every crack and creak made Cloud nearly wince at how strong the eggs had become over time.
A light touch to Cloud’s ankle had him nearly jumping again but he gasped just as quickly. “Squall! Squall! Look!” Cloud pointed at the egg next to him, a second egg cracking just like the first had. “Twins!”
“Twins…” Squall repeated in awe, looking between his hatchling and the second egg. “We managed twins…”
“They’ll need names,” Cloud said, absently stroking his fingers through Squall’s hair.
“Twins…” Squall repeated, the names could wait. Everything would wait until their kits had finally freed themselves from their eggs.
It took another ten minutes for the first hatchling, and forty minutes until the second one was free. They were beautiful, and Squall finally scooped them up to examine them, letting Cloud hold one when he was done. They were perfect and healthy and responding like they should.
The scales of the first to hatch were lighter than the second’s much darker scales but both had bright blue eyes and a good set of lungs if their crying was any indication.
Squall had hated to pull away, but he needed to hunt down appropriate meals for the little ones. Frogs, lizards, small fish. Each hatchling was only two or three pounds but they’d be able to eat their weight in meat soon. For their first few months, Squall really would be their main provider when it came to meals.
Squall had left, promising to hurry while Cloud promised he wouldn’t leave the nest even for a second. He had the first hatchling, Ventus, sitting on his left thigh and the second hatchling, Vanitas, on his right. They’d both burrowed into him, chirping and clicking and evidently, the sapphire charm of claim he wore around his neck was saturated in so much of Squall’s magic that the kits instinctively knew he was their other parent.
He’d taken a dozen pictures already and had fallen into retelling a fairytale his ma had liked just to keep a silence from growing. He had no idea if they were listening or not but Ventus settled against his stomach to listen to his story while Vanitas gnawed lightly on his pants.
Nearly an hour and a half had passed before a crack startled Cloud right out of the climax of his story and he’d reflexively grabbed both kits, holding them against his chest while he searched for the source of the noise and instead found a crack in a third egg.
“Triplets…” Cloud whispered, his heart beating a mile a minute. He’d been trying not to think about mourning the three remaining eggs and here was another one…hatching…
“Triplets!” He yelled, getting a squeak from the kits he held but his raised voice was enough.
Squall might have gone to hunt down little things, but he hadn’t gone far. Even a mile or two away meant Cloud was still well within Squall’s range of hearing.
An amused part of Cloud had wondered if Squall had even been listening to the story he was recounting for the kits but there was no way he missed the rise of Cloud’s voice in alarm and then excitement.
“Triplets!”
A full five minutes had passed before Squall was rushing in, out of breath with a large bowl under one arm that probably held his bounty. “Did I miss it!?”
“No,” Cloud said immediately. “It’s just the initial crack and some pecks.”
Squall sagged in relief and moved to sit by Cloud’s side. Many of the animals were still alive much to Cloud’s disdain but some had been cleanly killed with a single claw wound. Just like that, Ventus and Vanitas ate their first meal of limp lizard while Cloud and Squall kept an eye on the third egg.
The more noise Ven and Van made, the harder the third egg seemed to shake.
“I think someone knows they're missing out on breakfast,” Cloud mused, making Squall smile. “You didn’t expect three, did you?”
“In no way did I expect three,” Squall said in a low voice. “It’s happened, sure but…it’s not common.”
Cloud gave him a look. “Good sex?”
Squall nearly sputtered but he gave Cloud an amused look. “Of course, that must be it.”
Cloud shared the look with him, head whipping around again when the egg finally snapped and a head pushed out, wings already trying to flap. Cloud got the picture before he missed the adorable first moment.
“Three’s good…” Cloud muttered, watching Squall hold out a frog by its leg and the third hatching gobbling it up, still half stuck in their egg.
“Three’s good,” Squall repeated, a proud smile on his face.
~
They’d fallen asleep in the nest. It didn’t matter that the blankets were a little gross from the moisture of the eggs hatching. It also didn’t matter that there were a few frogs hopping around that got free of the bowl Squall had brought in. What mattered were the three kits curled up between them, safe and sound and ready for their first naps outside of their eggs. Three little boys who were going to grow to be the spitting image of their daddy someday.
Cloud’s cheek was resting on his arm, their third hatchling, Sora, was curled up against his throat like a kitten. It would probably take a few more days for Cloud to cycle through all of his emotions but he’d get there.
When Squall placed a hand on his hip, he didn’t think much of it. It woke him up, but it would have been easy enough to stretch once and fall back asleep.
“Cloud…”
Cloud’s eyes shot open when his name broke on Squall’s lips. “What’s wrong?” he asked, half slurring as he tried to force himself to wake up. He pushed up onto his elbow, one hand out to make sure he didn’t knock into Sora.
“Squall?”
Squall’s breathing was shaky, but he pointed to the two remaining eggs that were still snuggled into the blanket nest. Both of them with jagged lines pecked along the tips of the eggs like a seam. A second later, Cloud watched one of the eggs move a little.
Cloud’s breath caught, “Both of them?”
Squall was in a state of shock, his gaze never leaving the eggs. “I think so,” he whispered.
“Quins…”
“What?”
“Five. Quintuplets. Quins,” Cloud repeated, torn between the intimidating number of children and the quiet joy that he may have no one to mourn.
Squall nearly looked like he could topple over. “I’ve never heard of this.”
Sitting up, and careful not to bother the hatchlings, he scooted closer to Squall. “So we’re the first. We’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out and it’ll be okay.”
“This is…” Squall swallowed. “A gift. A treasure trove.”
The tension bled out of Cloud, “Yeah. Yeah it is. How… How long was I asleep?”
“Four hours,” Squall said, not raising his voice at all as if that would break some kind of spell. “To think they’d all be hatched in under ten hours.”
“We’re ready,” Cloud said, hoping they were. Vanitas woke with a chirp, and he was offered a dragonfly to crunch. Between his noises and Squall’s occasional chuffs, their fourth hatchling finally freed themselves, answering Vanitas’ cries with his own. He was given a lizard eat, and the name Roxas as he finally shifted free of the shell that tried to cling to his wings.
For all they seemed to start hatching at the same time, Roxas had been fully freed before the fifth hatchling finally made their debut with a scream, looking utterly done with the whole ‘egg’ business.
“A little girl,” Squall mumbled, love in his gaze.
“How can you tell already?”
“The shape of her jaw,” Squall said. She had darker scales like Vanitas where Roxas’ seemed to match Ven’s. Sora, oddly enough, was somewhere in the middle when it came to the colored gleam of his scales but Cloud wanted to see them in sunlight rather than den light.
“Ah,” Cloud smiled, holding back a laugh when Roxas also started to bite at his sister’s shell. “One more to name.”
“Xion.”
Cloud didn’t argue, there was no need to. It had taken six months of waiting, but their hatchlings were finally here.
“We’re never going to sleep again, are we?” Cloud asked.
Squall gave him a fond look and reached to pick up Roxas as Xion finally got a wing free. They were tiny and precious and a few more pictures wouldn’t hurt.
“You were right before. We’re ready,” Squall leaned closer, pecking a kiss against Cloud’s mouth. They were parents now, there was no backing out. This was a far greater treasure then he’d ever be.