Before My Eyes Part 1
Title: Before My Eyes
Rating: T
Summary: When Zack was five years old, he decided he wanted to marry Cloud Strife. Looking back, that was probably one of the best decisions he'd ever made. AU, Clack
Author's Note: My first Clack fic, and my first post to LJ! This is also on my FF.net account, under the same username. The premise of this is actually incredibly simple and ordinary, so I’m not sure how it came out so long. :/ I kinda just made up the whole thing as I went along, so I apologize if it’s sucky or jumps around too much. I hope the spacing isn't weird either. I had to re-double space everything when I transferred it to LJ, haha. Very tedious work, for such a long thing.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FFVII. If I did, Zack would have proposed to Cloud while he was comatose, so everyone would have more reason to cry their hearts out when he died and Cloud would have gone on to become even more emo than he already is.
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For 4 months, 12 days, 9 hours, and some minutes and seconds, Zackary Fair existed in a world without Cloud Strife. For approximately 32 hours, (approximate because his mom didn’t keep that accurate a record of time, which he could forgive her for, because she really couldn’t have known the importance of the event) Zackary Fair lived in a world where Cloud Strife existed, but he’d never met him. Zack always figured that those 4 months, 13 days, 17 hours, and some minutes and seconds had been one of the loneliest and darkest periods of his life. Of course he didn’t actually remember, but it made sense. Life before Cloud had to be miserable, at least to a degree.
Mrs. Fair and Ms. Strife had been friends since forever. (So they claimed. Zack knew this couldn’t be true, but didn’t bother calling them on it, because sometimes he told people he’d known Cloud since forever, pushing those dreadful 4 months to the back of his mind.) When Ms. Strife went into labor, Mrs. Fair went to the hospital with her and stayed the whole time. Cloud’s father had been a very nice, charming, young man, who had talked a lot about commitment, marriage, settling down, and having a family. As soon as Ms. Strife had gotten pregnant, he’d left town and was never seen again. Just goes to show some nice young men aren’t really all that nice.
So, as any good best-friend-since-forever would do, Mrs. Fair helped her through the pregnancy every step of the way. And while stupid lucky her got to be there when the most beautiful, amazing, gorgeous, every-positive-adjective-in-the-book creature was brought into existence, Zack was stuck home with his dad and old brother, Angeal. Neither of them had ever mentioned it, but Zack was pretty sure he spent his whole time with them crying, screaming, and hopefully pulling out someone’s hair. Because really, that would have been the only logical thing to do in that situation.
When Ms. Strife came home, Mrs. Fair (obviously realizing she had robbed her youngest son of what could have potentially been one of the most precious moments of his life) had run home, grabbed her family, and brought them over to the Strife household to meet the newest residence. This voyage hadn’t been a particularly long one. As far as Zack was concerned, he’d grown up on the best block in the entire town of Kalm. The Gainsborough’s lived on the corner, to the left of the Fair’s, who lived next to the Lockheart’s, who lived next to the Strife’s, who lived next to the woods that wrapped around the back of all their houses and extended further down the street, separating their little clump of houses from the rest on the block.
Thanks to this close proximity, Zack found himself being carted over to Cloud’s house quite often. And when he wasn’t over Cloud’s, it was usually because Cloud had been carted over to his house. Zack wasn’t sure what his oldest memory of Cloud was, and he wasn’t sure when they became best friends. He didn’t think it was too farfetched to believe it was the first time they laid eyes on each other. Either way, Zack knew he had been Cloud’s very first friend and that made him feel. . . well, he wasn’t really too sure. It made him feel something. Special maybe? Honored? Proud?
Sometimes it was difficult to place his emotions when Cloud was concerned, because Cloud made him feel all kinds of things he’d never felt before. He felt like there was a box in his mind labeled “CLOUD EMOTIONS” and every time Cloud talked, or laughed, or touched him, or even came into his vision, that box would explode, leaving him feeling light-headed, and giddy, and a million other things he couldn’t even describe. Then there were those horrible moments, usually only a few hours long, when Cloud wasn’t next to him and all those exploded pieces of that box would rebuild themselves until they were whole again and he felt kinda normal, but then Cloud would sneak up behind him and put his hands over his eyes, silently daring him to guess who, and of course he knew because no one had hands quite like Cloud’s and BAM! The box would explode all over again, leaving behind a Zack that smiled too much, laughed too quickly, and was a hundred thousand times more touchy-feely than normal.
When he was five years old, Zack decided he wanted to marry Cloud. He made this decision after a discussion with his Dad, where he’d asked what marriage was and why people did it. His father had explained that marriage was when two people loved each other very very much and they wanted to be together forever. He said they lived together, just like him and mom, and more often than not they had kids, just like him and mom had Zack and Angeal. Zack liked the idea of being with the person he loved most for forever, so he asked his Dad how to marry someone. Good ol’ Pops told him that first you had to ask that person to marry you, and that you usually gave them a ring when you did. He told Zack which one of mom’s rings he’d given her when he asked, and when Zack asked how much it cost he laughed and, ruffling Zack’s hair, told him it cost more than he could possibly imagine.
He proceeded to tell little Zackary about the ceremony, and that there was a party afterwards, and that he was waaaaaaaaay too young and he had to wait a long long long long long time before he could get married. At first Zack had been devastated, but after some deep reflection (back then deep reflection lasted about 2-3 minutes), he decided that it was okay, because that meant he had a long long long long long time to save up for Cloud’s engagement ring.
And save he did. Starting that day, Zack started putting away half of any money he got his hands on. Even if it meant going to his mom, or the cashier at the convenience store to ask for change. A few months after the marriage conversation, his mom bought him a new pair of shoes and he kept the box, putting his money (all $10.50 of it) inside and cleverly hiding it under his bed. He kept that box for 12 years, after which he started keeping the money in the bank. When he was going through elementary school, he learned from the other kids that boys weren’t supposed to marry other boys and girls weren’t supposed to marry other girls. He’d agreed and so had Cloud, but he still put half of all his money away. At the time he told himself it was out of habit.
When he was 11, PHS’s came out, and he’d wanted one badly. He complained about it a lot to his parents, no doubt to give them an idea of what he’d want should they suddenly decide to randomly buy their son a gift. Instead, his mom suggested he buy one himself with all that money he’d been saving under his bed. (She KNEW! What the hell!? That was a SECRET!) When Zack went upstairs, pulled out the box, opened the lid, saw well over enough to buy a PHS and still couldn’t bring himself to touch it, he knew he hadn’t just been saving out of habit.
At some point putting half of everything he earned grew impractical, seeing as his expenses seemed to grow with his age. But he still put money aside, (In his new super secret hiding spot, because seriously Ma? Angeal was totally right there when you said that, and everyone knows big brothers are thieves.) and he did so frequently. Sometimes, when he was older and he was hanging out with the gang (this included Aerith and Tifa, his neighbors, and of course Cloud) he would try to bum some money off of Tifa (he didn’t really need it, he just liked making her mad) and she’d ask him why he was always so broke when he worked so much. He always told her porn, because that made her even angrier. Cloud always knew he wasn’t serious when he said this, and he took some comfort in the fact that he knew that Cloud knew without asking, because by then he could read Cloud like a book and vice versa.
He was 12 when he asked Cloud to be his boyfriend. They were in 6th grade and it was the last week of the school year. It had been a hot day, and he remembered telling himself that it was the heat that was making him sweat so badly. He also told himself that the heat was the reason his mouth was so dry. Dehydration, clearly. At the time, he might have even believed all of that, but he knew exactly why he felt like he’d been punched in the gut by an angry Aerith (who, contrary to popular belief, was way stronger than an angry Tifa), and his heart felt like it was going to pop out of his chest and flop away down the sidewalk. He knew it was stupid to think that everyone could hear his pulse or that someone would notice that every now and then his hands or legs would start subtlety shaking, the same way he knew it was stupid to be relieved every time he spoke and found his voice was still capable of making sound.
He’d meant to ask Cloud in the morning. Every day, for as long as he could remember, he, Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith would meet out front of Aerith’s house and walk to school together. 99.9999% of the time, Cloud and Zack got there first and had to wait for the girls. The older they got, the longer the wait seemed to be. Of course, that day just had to be the day that Tifa had decided to be quick and get her butt out the door in record timing, beating them both to the spot and ruining Zack’s plans of a private conversation. So Zack had to go the whole school day, shaking, and nervous, and jittery, and jumping a foot in the air every time Cloud said his name (he’d never realized how often he said it, until that day) or bumped his shoulder (again, he knew they did it but he’d never really stopped to count. . .), or brushed his fingers against his (32 times). Apparently he was flushed too, because Cloud asked if he had a fever and put his hand on Zack’s forehead while they were IN THE LOCKER ROOM!!! right before gym and they were CHANGING THEIR CLOTHES!!! and of course Cloud had to check while neither of them were WEARING A SHIRT!!! Zack almost went into cardiac arrest. At 12 years old. How sad.
At the end of the day, Zack told Tifa and Aerith to go home without them, because they had something to take care of. Cloud had looked at him (and of course he had to look up because even back then Cloud was a shortie), curious but trusting, and had backed him up, jokingly telling Tifa to stop complaining and promising her it wasn’t anything she’d be interested in, even though he didn’t really know that. The girls left, as did the rest of the students, and Zack led Cloud to a more secluded part of the courtyard. Then he spun around, so quickly that Cloud almost crashed into him, and asked. Just like that. No romantic lead in, or establishment of any kind of mood. No, the words just came pouring out like some kind of word vomit and before he could even comprehend that he’d said anything at all, he had an armful of Cloud who was smiling at him, and hugging him, and kissing every inch of his face, and saying, “Yes, yes yes!” in between it all. And somehow his mind un-goopafied itself and he was smiling too and picking Cloud up and spinning him around, and kissing him right back. It was one of the happiest days of his life. He was pretty sure it always would be.
Looking back, Zack always thought it was kind of amazing how mature they’d been. That first night of their official “boyfriendhood,” they didn’t lock themselves up in Zack’s bedroom and make out until after sundown. Okay, so maybe they did lock the door, and maybe there was a little kissing involved, but for the most part. . . they talked. They talked about them now, and them in the future, their feelings and expectations concerning different things. Sure, they had popped in a movie and were alternating between feeding and throwing popcorn at each other while they cuddled under a blanket at the foot of Zack’s bed during this whole serious conversation. But still, it was nonetheless pretty damn mature of them, Zack thought.
They had decided to keep it a secret. It had been a difficult decision, because they were both wanting to climb up to the roof and scream out that they were in love for the town, no the whole world!, to hear. They didn’t really care what most people thought. They knew they’d probably lose a few friends over it, but that didn’t matter much. As long as they were together, that was all they cared about. But they knew that middle school was cruel, and had a good feeling that high school was even crueler. They knew being gay would make them targets for hate, and they decided they really didn’t need that stress in their relationship. It was aggravating at times, not being able to hold hands in the halls, or go out on dates that actually looked like dates and not just two guys hanging out. Sometimes they’d see other couples kissing in the hallways at school, or holding hands, and he’d notice how Cloud would watch them with a sort of distant look in his eyes and Zack would throw an arm over his shoulders to let him know he was there, because that was really all he could do.
More than the aggravation they felt at not being able to display their affection publicly, they felt guilty. First it was just about their families. They wanted to say something, but they were so scared because homosexuality was never talked about, there was never a reason to talk about it, so neither of them knew how anyone felt about it. They trusted their parents enough to know they wouldn’t be hated, per say, but that didn’t mean their reaction would be good. They ran through a thousand scenarios, most of which involved them being forbidden to see each other and someone possibly moving away. They knew they had to tell them one day, but they decided to wait. After that decision was made they both tried talking to their parents more, looking them in the eye, and really just savoring every ounce of affection they could get from them because, even though they knew they could possibly hate them, well. . . There really wasn’t any harm in not taking your family for granted anyway, even if you did know they’d never abandon you, or disown you, or just stop loving you.
They started feeling guilty about Aerith and Tifa next. They felt even guiltier because it hadn’t really crossed their minds to feel guilty in the first place. It was Aerith that really got to them, which wasn’t too surprising considering Aerith could make a stranger feel guilty about killing an ant. That summer, her father had a stoke in the middle of the night. Only one person was allowed in the ambulance, which was Mrs. Gainsborough, so Mr. Fair drove her to the hospital because he had the biggest vehicle and Cloud and Tifa had insisted on riding in the same car as Aerith instead of with their own parents, and of course Zack was there too. They sat in the waiting room with her, because they weren’t allowed in the emergency room. Aerith had sobbed. Not cried, but full blown hysterically sobbed. And he remembered how they had surrounded her, like some sort of big Aerith cocoon, and took turns holding her and stroking her hair and kissing the tears off her cheeks.
Aerith’s father died that night. At some point they had let Aerith go to grieve with her mother, and they were all crying because they had all really liked Mr. Gainsborough. Tifa had thrown her arms around Cloud’s neck and sobbed into his chest while Zack wrapped one arm around Cloud and stroked Tifa’s back with the other. Everyone was exhausted when they finally left the hospital. Aerith had cried herself to sleep and Zack carried her out to the car. On the ride home Zack took Cloud’s hand and Cloud gripped back like he was afraid the world was going to be ripped out from beneath them. Nobody else noticed.
After the funeral, Aerith had taken all of them aside and thanked them for being there. She told them how they were her best friends in the world and she didn’t think she could get through this without them. She told them that she was so grateful to have met them and that she loved them and wanted to stay by their sides forever because oh goddess, she really really really loved them all. That was when the guilt set in. He’d been keeping a secret from two of the most important people in the world to him, and he hadn’t even thought about it and when he caught Cloud’s eye he realized that whatever sword was stabbing him in the chest had gotten him too.
Still, they didn’t tell. They agreed that they couldn’t tell their friends without telling their family, because that wouldn’t be fair, and they agreed that then wasn’t the time to be putting more stress and problems onto everyone. At least that was the excuse. Truthfully, they were more worried about the girls’ reactions than their families’, because Zack had a feeling that Tifa might have, sort of, maybe, kind of had a crush on Cloud. And Cloud had a feeling that Aerith might have, sort of, maybe, kind of had a crush on Zack. So when they said they were waiting for the right time, they both knew deep down that they were looking for a sign, preferably both of them getting boyfriends, that Aerith and Tifa weren’t looking at them through rose tinted glasses.
It was really subconscious, the way it happened, but somewhere along the line they had decided the best way to hide their relationship from their classmates was to pretend that they were pretending to be gay. Men could be as gay as they damned well pleased as long as everyone knew they were just joking. Cloud had been the one to start it, surprisingly enough. The first time had been in gym, in the middle of the 8th grade. Some girl had come over to Zack and started talking and talking and talking and she was standing in that way girls sometimes do, where they put their arms back a little to make their chest stick out, suck in their gut just a bit, and stick out their butt. And she wouldn’t. go. away.
And of course Cloud was standing right there, because he and Zack were inseparable before they started dating so there really wasn’t any point in suddenly changing that fact just to hide that they were gay. So they both stood there waiting for Mr. Highwind to come out of his office and start class and listening to this girl yammer on and on because neither of them could bring themselves to be rude enough to just walk away or tell her to shut up and of course Tifa and Aerith didn’t try to save them because girls were mean like that.
Of the two, Cloud had always been the more mannerly, so while both of them were trying to make eye contact with miss what’s-her-face while she talked, Cloud went the extra mile to “hmm” and “hum” every now and then to give the impression that he was listening. Apparently though, those little hmms and hums were adding way too much to the conversation because Zack would glance at Cloud with every little sound he made and sometimes he’d even smile at him before looking back at miss what’s-her-face and for her, that was absolutely unacceptable. So unacceptable that, much to Cloud’s surprise, she walked closer and parked herself right in-between the boys, effectively pushing Cloud out of the group.
A few people in the bleachers started sniggering while Cloud stood there, mouth hanging open, and Zack was looking like the ground had just split in two and him and Cloud were on opposite sides of the ridge. He took a step to the right and so did miss what’s-her-face, so he took a step to the left, but she foiled him again (and she talked the whole time she did it!), and Zack was about ready to knock her over but he really didn’t want to because he didn’t hit girls, but he was so distressed! And Zack’s (perfectly reasonable) meltdown was made even worse when Cloud (who’d also been foiled by miss what’s-her-face’s clever side stepping) stormed away, fists clenched, and disappeared into the depths of the equipment room.
Part of the reason that what he did next was so funny was because it was so completely against Cloud’s nature. Cloud was generally soft-spoken and polite and he’d never ever made fun of a person in his whole life. So when Cloud came out of the equipment room, one hand on his waist, swinging his hips, with two basketballs stuffed up his shirt (he’d tied his shirt to keep the basketballs from falling, giving the whole class a fabulous view of his beautiful midriff), and had sauntered over to Zack (miss what’s-her-face was too shocked to side step) and circled him, letting his fingers trails over Zack’s shoulders before flipping his bangs out of his eyes and saying, “Hey there stud,” it wasn’t really a surprise that the whole class fell into a stunned silence. Zack remembered biting his tongue, so hard he thought it would bleed, to try to keep the grin on his face at bay as he put a hand to his chin and made a show of looking Cloud up and down before letting out a whistle and yelling, “Well, hot damn! Come to papa, baby!”
The whole class had positively roared with laughter, and Mr. Highwind had come running out hollering about what the expletive expletive expletive was expletive expletive expletive going the expletive expletive expletive on? and miss what’s-her-face had gone red and started yelling, not really words but just screechy girl noises, and she stomped her foot and pointed at Cloud, waving her arm around to draw more attention to the fact that she was pointing.
Everyone had fallen silent as they waited for Mr. Highwind’s reaction. Unfortunately for him, however, his reaction had to wait because the knot in Cloud’s shirt (which had been really taunt due to the large mass inside it) had decided to come undone and the silence was broken by the sound of two basketballs falling to the ground, bouncing a few times, then rolling away. If possible, the class started laughing harder than before. Mr. Highwind had grumbled something that probably wasn’t middle school appropriate (Zack often wondered how he kept his job) before screaming at them all to start running laps.
Later, when they were alone, Zack asked Cloud what had possessed him to do something like that, because really, it just wasn’t like him. Cloud had shrugged and told him that he hadn’t been jealous, because he trusted him and that meant there was no need for jealousy. Zack said he hadn’t been implying that he was and Cloud had frowned and said that he wasn’t crazy possessive. Zack said he hadn’t been implying that either. After that Cloud had glared (So Cloud called it. The rest of the world would have said pouted.) at him for few moments before saying: “I did it because there was a bitch flirting with my boyfriend and I thought basketboobs would be a safer alternative than beating her up. I’m not trying to get expelled you know.” Zack had laughed, poked Cloud on the nose, told him he was cute, then casually remarked that he should try wearing his shirt tied up like that more often. Cloud had told him to stop being a pervert and smacked him in the back of the head, then kissed it better when Zack started whining.
After that incident, they realized they could get away with being a little more loving in public. They could hold hands in the hallways, so long as they either swung their hands back and forth (preferably hitting the people walking in front of or behind them) or skipped while they did so. They could cup each other’s faces and gaze into each other’s eyes, providing they spoke to each other like they were the leads of a one gil romance novel the whole time. They couldn’t kiss, because they were pretty sure that was crossing the line as far as society was concerned, and they didn’t hug. By the time they were halfway through their freshman year in highschool, the whole school had grown accustomed to them pretending to flirt and pretty much everyone thought they were hilarious. It was a small comfort, knowing that if they slipped up on their facade they could easily play it off as a joke and everyone would believe them.
They were 14 the first time they had sex. They were in love, and their hormones were raging, and when Cloud’s mom left for the weekend to visit an old friend who’d just moved back to the Eastern continent from Wutai, they figured, why not? Cloud opted to stay home alone rather than go with her and she hadn’t questioned his decision. Zack told his parents he was staying the night, even though they hadn’t done that since they were kids, and his parents realized the childish allure of spending the night with your best friend without any supervision. They told him not to break or dirty anything, not to do drugs or drink, not to invite girls over, and not to look at porn. Then they sent him on his way without a second thought.
It was only after they got their clothes off that they realized they weren’t 100% certain as to what to do. Their sex education in middle school had been practically nonexistent, and the high school course on it wouldn’t start until they were juniors. Everything they had ever heard about sex had been of the female-male variety, and even then most of that information came from the dirty jokes their classmates told, or that they heard on TV. They were too embarrassed to go out and buy condoms or lubricant but they felt that was okay because neither of them could get pregnant and they thought lubricant was for girls. Cloud bottomed and neither of them knew that Zack could have prepared him with his fingers first and it was terribly painful, but they figured they were too far into it to just stop, so neither of them said anything even though they were both scared witless and they put all their energy into doing what they thought, not felt, was right.
It hadn’t been very pleasurable for either of them. They realized there was blood on the sheets after they were done. It wasn’t a lot, but it was still blood and nobody had ever ever ever mentioned blood. Zack almost hyperventilated when he saw it and Cloud had started crying. After Zack got his breathing under control he took the sheets off and cleaned the blood off with peroxide (something his mother had taught him as a kid when he used to come home with scrapes and cuts from playing in the woods) in the bathroom sink. When he was done, he threw them in the hamper and went back to Cloud’s room. Cloud wasn’t crying anymore, but they avoided eye contact as Zack climbed into bed next to him, throwing the comforter he’d picked up off the floor over them both, and they went to sleep with a sizable gap between their bodies. They didn’t say anything the next morning and Zack left almost as soon as the sun was up.
Things got awkward between them fast. They barely spoke to each other the first week, and after that they didn’t speak at all for almost four months. While Zack imagined the first four Cloudless months of his life must have been awful, at least he hadn’t known what he was missing. These four months he knew exactly what he was missing and it was really a wonder he didn’t go mad. Tifa had yelled at them a lot at first, telling them to suck it up and get over whatever stupid fight they’d gotten into. Eventually Cloud had snapped at her that Zack and he did not fight, ever. Tifa stopped yelling after that, but the sad looks she gave them were almost harder to bear. Aerith never yelled, or accused them of anything, but sometimes she’d catch Zack’s eye (and maybe Cloud’s too, he wasn’t sure) and she’d give him this look and for the first time Zack started thinking that maybe Aerith knew, maybe she’d known all along, and maybe all this time she had just been waiting for them to man up and trust her enough to tell her their secret.
Their parents had worried, of course, but they didn’t pry too much. They couldn’t have possibly realized to what extent their sons were falling apart. Angeal had been a senior in highschool at the time and going to the same school, even though he was in a different grade, had let him see the rift between his little brother and his little brother’s best friend a lot clearer. Angeal tried to talk to him about it, but Zack had snapped at him just like Cloud had to Tifa and ended up saying some hurtful things that he didn’t mean at all.
Kalm was a fairly temperate town, and they rarely got bad weather. Rarely wasn’t the same as never though, and every now and then a storm did hit. It was around 2:00 in the morning when Zack was awakened by a loud noise. He didn’t know it was 2:00 though, because the clock by his bed had gone out and when he got up and tried to turn on the light nothing happened. He went to the window just in time to be blinded as the sky lit up with another bolt and he wasn’t really sure why it crossed his mind, maybe he had been dreaming of his childhood before he got up, but suddenly all he could think about was that Cloud had been afraid of thunderstorms when he was little. And as he gazed out at Tifa’s house, willing it to disappear so he could see Cloud’s, he told himself that it was okay, because Cloud was afraid of thunder, not lightning, and really he wasn’t afraid of either because he’d outgrown that yeeeeeaaaars ago. But then of course it just had to start thundering, and it was so loud that Zack swore the house shook, and suddenly he was pulling on his sneakers and a hoodie and he was climbing out the window and down the trellis, then sprinting across Tifa’s backyard toward Cloud’s house.
When he reached Cloud’s window (Cloud’s house was only one story, so there was nothing to climb) he started pounding on it with his fist until Cloud opened it and the first thing he noticed wasn’t the complete look of surprise on his face, but the streaks running down his cheeks and the wide-awake look in his eyes and then he was scrambling through the window and kissing him and crushing him to his body, not caring that the window was still open and he was getting Cloud wet because Cloud had been scared and he hadn’t been there and oh goddess, how was it possible to miss someone who only lived two houses over that much!?
Zack had always thought it was stupid and overly sentimental when people said there was a difference between having sex and making love. That night he realized he had been wrong, and that there was a huge difference. Cloud had barely managed to close the window before he had him on the bed, and he didn’t really remember taking their clothes off but at some point they did, and Zack hadn’t thought once about what he should do or if they were positioned right, and he forgot to be scared because all he could think about was getting as close to Cloud as nature would allow. During their 4 months apart, Zack had gone to the library and, using the computer in the furthest corner of the room, had done some secret research (he kept another window open displaying a search for geometry information on Moogle.com, just in case someone walked by) on safe gay sex, and when Cloud grabbed his hand and started sucking on his fingers without him asking him to, it crossed his mind that maybe Cloud had done the same thing. Later they would both thank their lucky stars that the storm was as loud as it was, because they had both forgotten about Cloud’s mom (and who could blame them?) and neither of them had made much of an effort to be quiet.
When Zack left a few hours later it was still raining. Despite that Cloud still leaned out the window to give him one last kiss before he left, but when he pulled back Zack leaned in and kissed him again, then again, then again, then 20 more times before Cloud stepped out of reach, laughing softly and reminding him that he had to get home and he would get a cold if he kept standing out in the rain like that. Zack had smiled and told him he didn’t care, because it was worth it, and the look Cloud had given him when he said that was filled with so much pure, raw love that it had taken all of Zack’s willpower not to climb back in the window.
Aerith and Tifa had been shocked the next day when Zack slung his arm over Cloud’s shoulders on the walk to school, just like he’d used to do before the “fight.” Zack tried his best to keep from smiling like a buffoon every time he looked down at Cloud, and he was sure Cloud had tried his best to stop from giggling and burying his face in his shoulder every time he caught one of those smiles (which was pretty much every time), but it was one of those things they didn’t really realize they were doing until they were already doing it, and they received a lot of odd looks from Aerith and Tifa throughout the rest of the day.
Everyone had asked them what they had been fighting about. Both of their parents, Angeal, Tifa, their friends at school, their not-friends at school, even a few of their teachers. At first they told a half truth, that they hadn’t been fighting, but people didn’t really buy that so eventually they decided to take the “we don’t want to talk about it,” route. They fell right back into their old ways easily enough, and soon people stopped asking, because all was right with the world and most of them hadn’t really cared in the first place, they were just curious. The only person who really didn’t ask them about it was Aerith.
As the years passed, the two of them found themselves crossing through Tifa’s backyard in the middle of the night more and more often. By the time they were sophomores, they were meeting almost every single night. They always managed to get home before anyone else woke up, and eventually both of their moms started making remarks about them looking tired but they managed to blow it off, and they really didn’t mind the lack of sleep they were getting, because eventually they got to the point where they couldn’t sleep at all if the other wasn’t there. The older they got the more they learned about sex, mainly from practice, and Zack thought it was amazing how many new things he was learning about Cloud. When he was a kid, he thought he knew everything about his best friend. He found out that wasn’t true when they started dating and Cloud made the jump from best friend to boyfriend. It had been a little scary and a little exciting, getting to know Cloud on a completely different level, but eventually he reached the point where he thought he knew everything about his boyfriend. He found out that wasn’t true when they started sleeping together.
He felt like he was obsessed with finding out which ways he had to touch Cloud to get him to make that particular sound, or this particular sound, and he was enthralled to find out just how sensitive Cloud’s ears were and that when he touched his collarbone, or sometimes even just blew on it, Cloud’s breath would catch and his hips would buck of their own accord. And he loved how Cloud would cuddle up next to him after making love, and even if he fell asleep with his head on Zack’s chest, sometime during the night he would always always always scoot up a bit and bury his face into the crook of Zack’s neck, and Zack thought the fact that Cloud was doing this subconsciously was one of the sweetest things in the world.
Zack first brought up the possibility of Aerith knowing about their relationship while they were picnicking in a small clearing in the woods behind their houses. A few months earlier they had bought a cheap basket and blanket at the Gil Store and hidden them in a bush near the edge of the woods, because they had been afraid their parents would think picnics were girly. As far as they knew, their sons were going out to the woods to throw mud at each other or try to peg some squirrels with acorns or other. . . manly stuff like that.
It was a nice Spring day, a Sunday, and Cloud had been weaving flowers through Zack’s hair (The older he got the more his love for flowers seemed to grow. Zack blamed Aerith’s influence.) and snort-laughing at how ridiculous he looked when Zack asked if he thought Aerith knew. Cloud had stopped laughing and considered the question, still playing with his hair as he did so, before nodding and answering that he was certain she didn’t have a crush on Zack anymore, and he’d been getting the feeling that she knew too, and if they were both getting the same vibe then that probably meant it was true. Zack had frowned a little and asked him if he thought they should talk to her about it and then they’d discussed whether talking to Aerith and only Aerith was fair to their families and Tifa, because they didn’t think any of them were ready to know but at the same time they didn’t want to hurt them by having them find out later that they’d told Aerith and not them.
In the end, they decided to try to let her indirectly know that they knew that she knew. So one day that week when they were heading to a class that the three of them had but Tifa didn’t, they pulled her aside after everyone else entered the room and asked her if they could talk to her real quick. She’d glanced at the room, clearly not liking the idea of being late, but nodded anyway. She didn’t ever tell them to make it quick, which Zack thought was kind of touching. They told her that they just wanted her to know that they loved her, and they knew they were doing things that might hurt others later and that she might not approve of, but they were trying their best, and they wanted to thank her for sticking by them despite the wrongs they’d done her, and they loved her, and she was their best friend, and they loved her, and it meant soooo much to them that she was there, and they were sorry for anytime they hadn’t told the truth, and they loved her. Aerith had smiled gently, putting a finger to each of their lips to stop their rambling (that was the first time Zack realized just how much he and Cloud finished each other’s sentences), then kissed them each once on the cheek and told them they’d better get to class. They walked into the classroom feeling a hundred pounds lighter, and they were so relieved that they didn’t even mind the snarky comments Mr. Hojo made about them being late.
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Next Chapter
Rating: T
Summary: When Zack was five years old, he decided he wanted to marry Cloud Strife. Looking back, that was probably one of the best decisions he'd ever made. AU, Clack
Author's Note: My first Clack fic, and my first post to LJ! This is also on my FF.net account, under the same username. The premise of this is actually incredibly simple and ordinary, so I’m not sure how it came out so long. :/ I kinda just made up the whole thing as I went along, so I apologize if it’s sucky or jumps around too much. I hope the spacing isn't weird either. I had to re-double space everything when I transferred it to LJ, haha. Very tedious work, for such a long thing.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FFVII. If I did, Zack would have proposed to Cloud while he was comatose, so everyone would have more reason to cry their hearts out when he died and Cloud would have gone on to become even more emo than he already is.
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For 4 months, 12 days, 9 hours, and some minutes and seconds, Zackary Fair existed in a world without Cloud Strife. For approximately 32 hours, (approximate because his mom didn’t keep that accurate a record of time, which he could forgive her for, because she really couldn’t have known the importance of the event) Zackary Fair lived in a world where Cloud Strife existed, but he’d never met him. Zack always figured that those 4 months, 13 days, 17 hours, and some minutes and seconds had been one of the loneliest and darkest periods of his life. Of course he didn’t actually remember, but it made sense. Life before Cloud had to be miserable, at least to a degree.
Mrs. Fair and Ms. Strife had been friends since forever. (So they claimed. Zack knew this couldn’t be true, but didn’t bother calling them on it, because sometimes he told people he’d known Cloud since forever, pushing those dreadful 4 months to the back of his mind.) When Ms. Strife went into labor, Mrs. Fair went to the hospital with her and stayed the whole time. Cloud’s father had been a very nice, charming, young man, who had talked a lot about commitment, marriage, settling down, and having a family. As soon as Ms. Strife had gotten pregnant, he’d left town and was never seen again. Just goes to show some nice young men aren’t really all that nice.
So, as any good best-friend-since-forever would do, Mrs. Fair helped her through the pregnancy every step of the way. And while stupid lucky her got to be there when the most beautiful, amazing, gorgeous, every-positive-adjective-in-the-book creature was brought into existence, Zack was stuck home with his dad and old brother, Angeal. Neither of them had ever mentioned it, but Zack was pretty sure he spent his whole time with them crying, screaming, and hopefully pulling out someone’s hair. Because really, that would have been the only logical thing to do in that situation.
When Ms. Strife came home, Mrs. Fair (obviously realizing she had robbed her youngest son of what could have potentially been one of the most precious moments of his life) had run home, grabbed her family, and brought them over to the Strife household to meet the newest residence. This voyage hadn’t been a particularly long one. As far as Zack was concerned, he’d grown up on the best block in the entire town of Kalm. The Gainsborough’s lived on the corner, to the left of the Fair’s, who lived next to the Lockheart’s, who lived next to the Strife’s, who lived next to the woods that wrapped around the back of all their houses and extended further down the street, separating their little clump of houses from the rest on the block.
Thanks to this close proximity, Zack found himself being carted over to Cloud’s house quite often. And when he wasn’t over Cloud’s, it was usually because Cloud had been carted over to his house. Zack wasn’t sure what his oldest memory of Cloud was, and he wasn’t sure when they became best friends. He didn’t think it was too farfetched to believe it was the first time they laid eyes on each other. Either way, Zack knew he had been Cloud’s very first friend and that made him feel. . . well, he wasn’t really too sure. It made him feel something. Special maybe? Honored? Proud?
Sometimes it was difficult to place his emotions when Cloud was concerned, because Cloud made him feel all kinds of things he’d never felt before. He felt like there was a box in his mind labeled “CLOUD EMOTIONS” and every time Cloud talked, or laughed, or touched him, or even came into his vision, that box would explode, leaving him feeling light-headed, and giddy, and a million other things he couldn’t even describe. Then there were those horrible moments, usually only a few hours long, when Cloud wasn’t next to him and all those exploded pieces of that box would rebuild themselves until they were whole again and he felt kinda normal, but then Cloud would sneak up behind him and put his hands over his eyes, silently daring him to guess who, and of course he knew because no one had hands quite like Cloud’s and BAM! The box would explode all over again, leaving behind a Zack that smiled too much, laughed too quickly, and was a hundred thousand times more touchy-feely than normal.
When he was five years old, Zack decided he wanted to marry Cloud. He made this decision after a discussion with his Dad, where he’d asked what marriage was and why people did it. His father had explained that marriage was when two people loved each other very very much and they wanted to be together forever. He said they lived together, just like him and mom, and more often than not they had kids, just like him and mom had Zack and Angeal. Zack liked the idea of being with the person he loved most for forever, so he asked his Dad how to marry someone. Good ol’ Pops told him that first you had to ask that person to marry you, and that you usually gave them a ring when you did. He told Zack which one of mom’s rings he’d given her when he asked, and when Zack asked how much it cost he laughed and, ruffling Zack’s hair, told him it cost more than he could possibly imagine.
He proceeded to tell little Zackary about the ceremony, and that there was a party afterwards, and that he was waaaaaaaaay too young and he had to wait a long long long long long time before he could get married. At first Zack had been devastated, but after some deep reflection (back then deep reflection lasted about 2-3 minutes), he decided that it was okay, because that meant he had a long long long long long time to save up for Cloud’s engagement ring.
And save he did. Starting that day, Zack started putting away half of any money he got his hands on. Even if it meant going to his mom, or the cashier at the convenience store to ask for change. A few months after the marriage conversation, his mom bought him a new pair of shoes and he kept the box, putting his money (all $10.50 of it) inside and cleverly hiding it under his bed. He kept that box for 12 years, after which he started keeping the money in the bank. When he was going through elementary school, he learned from the other kids that boys weren’t supposed to marry other boys and girls weren’t supposed to marry other girls. He’d agreed and so had Cloud, but he still put half of all his money away. At the time he told himself it was out of habit.
When he was 11, PHS’s came out, and he’d wanted one badly. He complained about it a lot to his parents, no doubt to give them an idea of what he’d want should they suddenly decide to randomly buy their son a gift. Instead, his mom suggested he buy one himself with all that money he’d been saving under his bed. (She KNEW! What the hell!? That was a SECRET!) When Zack went upstairs, pulled out the box, opened the lid, saw well over enough to buy a PHS and still couldn’t bring himself to touch it, he knew he hadn’t just been saving out of habit.
At some point putting half of everything he earned grew impractical, seeing as his expenses seemed to grow with his age. But he still put money aside, (In his new super secret hiding spot, because seriously Ma? Angeal was totally right there when you said that, and everyone knows big brothers are thieves.) and he did so frequently. Sometimes, when he was older and he was hanging out with the gang (this included Aerith and Tifa, his neighbors, and of course Cloud) he would try to bum some money off of Tifa (he didn’t really need it, he just liked making her mad) and she’d ask him why he was always so broke when he worked so much. He always told her porn, because that made her even angrier. Cloud always knew he wasn’t serious when he said this, and he took some comfort in the fact that he knew that Cloud knew without asking, because by then he could read Cloud like a book and vice versa.
He was 12 when he asked Cloud to be his boyfriend. They were in 6th grade and it was the last week of the school year. It had been a hot day, and he remembered telling himself that it was the heat that was making him sweat so badly. He also told himself that the heat was the reason his mouth was so dry. Dehydration, clearly. At the time, he might have even believed all of that, but he knew exactly why he felt like he’d been punched in the gut by an angry Aerith (who, contrary to popular belief, was way stronger than an angry Tifa), and his heart felt like it was going to pop out of his chest and flop away down the sidewalk. He knew it was stupid to think that everyone could hear his pulse or that someone would notice that every now and then his hands or legs would start subtlety shaking, the same way he knew it was stupid to be relieved every time he spoke and found his voice was still capable of making sound.
He’d meant to ask Cloud in the morning. Every day, for as long as he could remember, he, Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith would meet out front of Aerith’s house and walk to school together. 99.9999% of the time, Cloud and Zack got there first and had to wait for the girls. The older they got, the longer the wait seemed to be. Of course, that day just had to be the day that Tifa had decided to be quick and get her butt out the door in record timing, beating them both to the spot and ruining Zack’s plans of a private conversation. So Zack had to go the whole school day, shaking, and nervous, and jittery, and jumping a foot in the air every time Cloud said his name (he’d never realized how often he said it, until that day) or bumped his shoulder (again, he knew they did it but he’d never really stopped to count. . .), or brushed his fingers against his (32 times). Apparently he was flushed too, because Cloud asked if he had a fever and put his hand on Zack’s forehead while they were IN THE LOCKER ROOM!!! right before gym and they were CHANGING THEIR CLOTHES!!! and of course Cloud had to check while neither of them were WEARING A SHIRT!!! Zack almost went into cardiac arrest. At 12 years old. How sad.
At the end of the day, Zack told Tifa and Aerith to go home without them, because they had something to take care of. Cloud had looked at him (and of course he had to look up because even back then Cloud was a shortie), curious but trusting, and had backed him up, jokingly telling Tifa to stop complaining and promising her it wasn’t anything she’d be interested in, even though he didn’t really know that. The girls left, as did the rest of the students, and Zack led Cloud to a more secluded part of the courtyard. Then he spun around, so quickly that Cloud almost crashed into him, and asked. Just like that. No romantic lead in, or establishment of any kind of mood. No, the words just came pouring out like some kind of word vomit and before he could even comprehend that he’d said anything at all, he had an armful of Cloud who was smiling at him, and hugging him, and kissing every inch of his face, and saying, “Yes, yes yes!” in between it all. And somehow his mind un-goopafied itself and he was smiling too and picking Cloud up and spinning him around, and kissing him right back. It was one of the happiest days of his life. He was pretty sure it always would be.
Looking back, Zack always thought it was kind of amazing how mature they’d been. That first night of their official “boyfriendhood,” they didn’t lock themselves up in Zack’s bedroom and make out until after sundown. Okay, so maybe they did lock the door, and maybe there was a little kissing involved, but for the most part. . . they talked. They talked about them now, and them in the future, their feelings and expectations concerning different things. Sure, they had popped in a movie and were alternating between feeding and throwing popcorn at each other while they cuddled under a blanket at the foot of Zack’s bed during this whole serious conversation. But still, it was nonetheless pretty damn mature of them, Zack thought.
They had decided to keep it a secret. It had been a difficult decision, because they were both wanting to climb up to the roof and scream out that they were in love for the town, no the whole world!, to hear. They didn’t really care what most people thought. They knew they’d probably lose a few friends over it, but that didn’t matter much. As long as they were together, that was all they cared about. But they knew that middle school was cruel, and had a good feeling that high school was even crueler. They knew being gay would make them targets for hate, and they decided they really didn’t need that stress in their relationship. It was aggravating at times, not being able to hold hands in the halls, or go out on dates that actually looked like dates and not just two guys hanging out. Sometimes they’d see other couples kissing in the hallways at school, or holding hands, and he’d notice how Cloud would watch them with a sort of distant look in his eyes and Zack would throw an arm over his shoulders to let him know he was there, because that was really all he could do.
More than the aggravation they felt at not being able to display their affection publicly, they felt guilty. First it was just about their families. They wanted to say something, but they were so scared because homosexuality was never talked about, there was never a reason to talk about it, so neither of them knew how anyone felt about it. They trusted their parents enough to know they wouldn’t be hated, per say, but that didn’t mean their reaction would be good. They ran through a thousand scenarios, most of which involved them being forbidden to see each other and someone possibly moving away. They knew they had to tell them one day, but they decided to wait. After that decision was made they both tried talking to their parents more, looking them in the eye, and really just savoring every ounce of affection they could get from them because, even though they knew they could possibly hate them, well. . . There really wasn’t any harm in not taking your family for granted anyway, even if you did know they’d never abandon you, or disown you, or just stop loving you.
They started feeling guilty about Aerith and Tifa next. They felt even guiltier because it hadn’t really crossed their minds to feel guilty in the first place. It was Aerith that really got to them, which wasn’t too surprising considering Aerith could make a stranger feel guilty about killing an ant. That summer, her father had a stoke in the middle of the night. Only one person was allowed in the ambulance, which was Mrs. Gainsborough, so Mr. Fair drove her to the hospital because he had the biggest vehicle and Cloud and Tifa had insisted on riding in the same car as Aerith instead of with their own parents, and of course Zack was there too. They sat in the waiting room with her, because they weren’t allowed in the emergency room. Aerith had sobbed. Not cried, but full blown hysterically sobbed. And he remembered how they had surrounded her, like some sort of big Aerith cocoon, and took turns holding her and stroking her hair and kissing the tears off her cheeks.
Aerith’s father died that night. At some point they had let Aerith go to grieve with her mother, and they were all crying because they had all really liked Mr. Gainsborough. Tifa had thrown her arms around Cloud’s neck and sobbed into his chest while Zack wrapped one arm around Cloud and stroked Tifa’s back with the other. Everyone was exhausted when they finally left the hospital. Aerith had cried herself to sleep and Zack carried her out to the car. On the ride home Zack took Cloud’s hand and Cloud gripped back like he was afraid the world was going to be ripped out from beneath them. Nobody else noticed.
After the funeral, Aerith had taken all of them aside and thanked them for being there. She told them how they were her best friends in the world and she didn’t think she could get through this without them. She told them that she was so grateful to have met them and that she loved them and wanted to stay by their sides forever because oh goddess, she really really really loved them all. That was when the guilt set in. He’d been keeping a secret from two of the most important people in the world to him, and he hadn’t even thought about it and when he caught Cloud’s eye he realized that whatever sword was stabbing him in the chest had gotten him too.
Still, they didn’t tell. They agreed that they couldn’t tell their friends without telling their family, because that wouldn’t be fair, and they agreed that then wasn’t the time to be putting more stress and problems onto everyone. At least that was the excuse. Truthfully, they were more worried about the girls’ reactions than their families’, because Zack had a feeling that Tifa might have, sort of, maybe, kind of had a crush on Cloud. And Cloud had a feeling that Aerith might have, sort of, maybe, kind of had a crush on Zack. So when they said they were waiting for the right time, they both knew deep down that they were looking for a sign, preferably both of them getting boyfriends, that Aerith and Tifa weren’t looking at them through rose tinted glasses.
It was really subconscious, the way it happened, but somewhere along the line they had decided the best way to hide their relationship from their classmates was to pretend that they were pretending to be gay. Men could be as gay as they damned well pleased as long as everyone knew they were just joking. Cloud had been the one to start it, surprisingly enough. The first time had been in gym, in the middle of the 8th grade. Some girl had come over to Zack and started talking and talking and talking and she was standing in that way girls sometimes do, where they put their arms back a little to make their chest stick out, suck in their gut just a bit, and stick out their butt. And she wouldn’t. go. away.
And of course Cloud was standing right there, because he and Zack were inseparable before they started dating so there really wasn’t any point in suddenly changing that fact just to hide that they were gay. So they both stood there waiting for Mr. Highwind to come out of his office and start class and listening to this girl yammer on and on because neither of them could bring themselves to be rude enough to just walk away or tell her to shut up and of course Tifa and Aerith didn’t try to save them because girls were mean like that.
Of the two, Cloud had always been the more mannerly, so while both of them were trying to make eye contact with miss what’s-her-face while she talked, Cloud went the extra mile to “hmm” and “hum” every now and then to give the impression that he was listening. Apparently though, those little hmms and hums were adding way too much to the conversation because Zack would glance at Cloud with every little sound he made and sometimes he’d even smile at him before looking back at miss what’s-her-face and for her, that was absolutely unacceptable. So unacceptable that, much to Cloud’s surprise, she walked closer and parked herself right in-between the boys, effectively pushing Cloud out of the group.
A few people in the bleachers started sniggering while Cloud stood there, mouth hanging open, and Zack was looking like the ground had just split in two and him and Cloud were on opposite sides of the ridge. He took a step to the right and so did miss what’s-her-face, so he took a step to the left, but she foiled him again (and she talked the whole time she did it!), and Zack was about ready to knock her over but he really didn’t want to because he didn’t hit girls, but he was so distressed! And Zack’s (perfectly reasonable) meltdown was made even worse when Cloud (who’d also been foiled by miss what’s-her-face’s clever side stepping) stormed away, fists clenched, and disappeared into the depths of the equipment room.
Part of the reason that what he did next was so funny was because it was so completely against Cloud’s nature. Cloud was generally soft-spoken and polite and he’d never ever made fun of a person in his whole life. So when Cloud came out of the equipment room, one hand on his waist, swinging his hips, with two basketballs stuffed up his shirt (he’d tied his shirt to keep the basketballs from falling, giving the whole class a fabulous view of his beautiful midriff), and had sauntered over to Zack (miss what’s-her-face was too shocked to side step) and circled him, letting his fingers trails over Zack’s shoulders before flipping his bangs out of his eyes and saying, “Hey there stud,” it wasn’t really a surprise that the whole class fell into a stunned silence. Zack remembered biting his tongue, so hard he thought it would bleed, to try to keep the grin on his face at bay as he put a hand to his chin and made a show of looking Cloud up and down before letting out a whistle and yelling, “Well, hot damn! Come to papa, baby!”
The whole class had positively roared with laughter, and Mr. Highwind had come running out hollering about what the expletive expletive expletive was expletive expletive expletive going the expletive expletive expletive on? and miss what’s-her-face had gone red and started yelling, not really words but just screechy girl noises, and she stomped her foot and pointed at Cloud, waving her arm around to draw more attention to the fact that she was pointing.
Everyone had fallen silent as they waited for Mr. Highwind’s reaction. Unfortunately for him, however, his reaction had to wait because the knot in Cloud’s shirt (which had been really taunt due to the large mass inside it) had decided to come undone and the silence was broken by the sound of two basketballs falling to the ground, bouncing a few times, then rolling away. If possible, the class started laughing harder than before. Mr. Highwind had grumbled something that probably wasn’t middle school appropriate (Zack often wondered how he kept his job) before screaming at them all to start running laps.
Later, when they were alone, Zack asked Cloud what had possessed him to do something like that, because really, it just wasn’t like him. Cloud had shrugged and told him that he hadn’t been jealous, because he trusted him and that meant there was no need for jealousy. Zack said he hadn’t been implying that he was and Cloud had frowned and said that he wasn’t crazy possessive. Zack said he hadn’t been implying that either. After that Cloud had glared (So Cloud called it. The rest of the world would have said pouted.) at him for few moments before saying: “I did it because there was a bitch flirting with my boyfriend and I thought basketboobs would be a safer alternative than beating her up. I’m not trying to get expelled you know.” Zack had laughed, poked Cloud on the nose, told him he was cute, then casually remarked that he should try wearing his shirt tied up like that more often. Cloud had told him to stop being a pervert and smacked him in the back of the head, then kissed it better when Zack started whining.
After that incident, they realized they could get away with being a little more loving in public. They could hold hands in the hallways, so long as they either swung their hands back and forth (preferably hitting the people walking in front of or behind them) or skipped while they did so. They could cup each other’s faces and gaze into each other’s eyes, providing they spoke to each other like they were the leads of a one gil romance novel the whole time. They couldn’t kiss, because they were pretty sure that was crossing the line as far as society was concerned, and they didn’t hug. By the time they were halfway through their freshman year in highschool, the whole school had grown accustomed to them pretending to flirt and pretty much everyone thought they were hilarious. It was a small comfort, knowing that if they slipped up on their facade they could easily play it off as a joke and everyone would believe them.
They were 14 the first time they had sex. They were in love, and their hormones were raging, and when Cloud’s mom left for the weekend to visit an old friend who’d just moved back to the Eastern continent from Wutai, they figured, why not? Cloud opted to stay home alone rather than go with her and she hadn’t questioned his decision. Zack told his parents he was staying the night, even though they hadn’t done that since they were kids, and his parents realized the childish allure of spending the night with your best friend without any supervision. They told him not to break or dirty anything, not to do drugs or drink, not to invite girls over, and not to look at porn. Then they sent him on his way without a second thought.
It was only after they got their clothes off that they realized they weren’t 100% certain as to what to do. Their sex education in middle school had been practically nonexistent, and the high school course on it wouldn’t start until they were juniors. Everything they had ever heard about sex had been of the female-male variety, and even then most of that information came from the dirty jokes their classmates told, or that they heard on TV. They were too embarrassed to go out and buy condoms or lubricant but they felt that was okay because neither of them could get pregnant and they thought lubricant was for girls. Cloud bottomed and neither of them knew that Zack could have prepared him with his fingers first and it was terribly painful, but they figured they were too far into it to just stop, so neither of them said anything even though they were both scared witless and they put all their energy into doing what they thought, not felt, was right.
It hadn’t been very pleasurable for either of them. They realized there was blood on the sheets after they were done. It wasn’t a lot, but it was still blood and nobody had ever ever ever mentioned blood. Zack almost hyperventilated when he saw it and Cloud had started crying. After Zack got his breathing under control he took the sheets off and cleaned the blood off with peroxide (something his mother had taught him as a kid when he used to come home with scrapes and cuts from playing in the woods) in the bathroom sink. When he was done, he threw them in the hamper and went back to Cloud’s room. Cloud wasn’t crying anymore, but they avoided eye contact as Zack climbed into bed next to him, throwing the comforter he’d picked up off the floor over them both, and they went to sleep with a sizable gap between their bodies. They didn’t say anything the next morning and Zack left almost as soon as the sun was up.
Things got awkward between them fast. They barely spoke to each other the first week, and after that they didn’t speak at all for almost four months. While Zack imagined the first four Cloudless months of his life must have been awful, at least he hadn’t known what he was missing. These four months he knew exactly what he was missing and it was really a wonder he didn’t go mad. Tifa had yelled at them a lot at first, telling them to suck it up and get over whatever stupid fight they’d gotten into. Eventually Cloud had snapped at her that Zack and he did not fight, ever. Tifa stopped yelling after that, but the sad looks she gave them were almost harder to bear. Aerith never yelled, or accused them of anything, but sometimes she’d catch Zack’s eye (and maybe Cloud’s too, he wasn’t sure) and she’d give him this look and for the first time Zack started thinking that maybe Aerith knew, maybe she’d known all along, and maybe all this time she had just been waiting for them to man up and trust her enough to tell her their secret.
Their parents had worried, of course, but they didn’t pry too much. They couldn’t have possibly realized to what extent their sons were falling apart. Angeal had been a senior in highschool at the time and going to the same school, even though he was in a different grade, had let him see the rift between his little brother and his little brother’s best friend a lot clearer. Angeal tried to talk to him about it, but Zack had snapped at him just like Cloud had to Tifa and ended up saying some hurtful things that he didn’t mean at all.
Kalm was a fairly temperate town, and they rarely got bad weather. Rarely wasn’t the same as never though, and every now and then a storm did hit. It was around 2:00 in the morning when Zack was awakened by a loud noise. He didn’t know it was 2:00 though, because the clock by his bed had gone out and when he got up and tried to turn on the light nothing happened. He went to the window just in time to be blinded as the sky lit up with another bolt and he wasn’t really sure why it crossed his mind, maybe he had been dreaming of his childhood before he got up, but suddenly all he could think about was that Cloud had been afraid of thunderstorms when he was little. And as he gazed out at Tifa’s house, willing it to disappear so he could see Cloud’s, he told himself that it was okay, because Cloud was afraid of thunder, not lightning, and really he wasn’t afraid of either because he’d outgrown that yeeeeeaaaars ago. But then of course it just had to start thundering, and it was so loud that Zack swore the house shook, and suddenly he was pulling on his sneakers and a hoodie and he was climbing out the window and down the trellis, then sprinting across Tifa’s backyard toward Cloud’s house.
When he reached Cloud’s window (Cloud’s house was only one story, so there was nothing to climb) he started pounding on it with his fist until Cloud opened it and the first thing he noticed wasn’t the complete look of surprise on his face, but the streaks running down his cheeks and the wide-awake look in his eyes and then he was scrambling through the window and kissing him and crushing him to his body, not caring that the window was still open and he was getting Cloud wet because Cloud had been scared and he hadn’t been there and oh goddess, how was it possible to miss someone who only lived two houses over that much!?
Zack had always thought it was stupid and overly sentimental when people said there was a difference between having sex and making love. That night he realized he had been wrong, and that there was a huge difference. Cloud had barely managed to close the window before he had him on the bed, and he didn’t really remember taking their clothes off but at some point they did, and Zack hadn’t thought once about what he should do or if they were positioned right, and he forgot to be scared because all he could think about was getting as close to Cloud as nature would allow. During their 4 months apart, Zack had gone to the library and, using the computer in the furthest corner of the room, had done some secret research (he kept another window open displaying a search for geometry information on Moogle.com, just in case someone walked by) on safe gay sex, and when Cloud grabbed his hand and started sucking on his fingers without him asking him to, it crossed his mind that maybe Cloud had done the same thing. Later they would both thank their lucky stars that the storm was as loud as it was, because they had both forgotten about Cloud’s mom (and who could blame them?) and neither of them had made much of an effort to be quiet.
When Zack left a few hours later it was still raining. Despite that Cloud still leaned out the window to give him one last kiss before he left, but when he pulled back Zack leaned in and kissed him again, then again, then again, then 20 more times before Cloud stepped out of reach, laughing softly and reminding him that he had to get home and he would get a cold if he kept standing out in the rain like that. Zack had smiled and told him he didn’t care, because it was worth it, and the look Cloud had given him when he said that was filled with so much pure, raw love that it had taken all of Zack’s willpower not to climb back in the window.
Aerith and Tifa had been shocked the next day when Zack slung his arm over Cloud’s shoulders on the walk to school, just like he’d used to do before the “fight.” Zack tried his best to keep from smiling like a buffoon every time he looked down at Cloud, and he was sure Cloud had tried his best to stop from giggling and burying his face in his shoulder every time he caught one of those smiles (which was pretty much every time), but it was one of those things they didn’t really realize they were doing until they were already doing it, and they received a lot of odd looks from Aerith and Tifa throughout the rest of the day.
Everyone had asked them what they had been fighting about. Both of their parents, Angeal, Tifa, their friends at school, their not-friends at school, even a few of their teachers. At first they told a half truth, that they hadn’t been fighting, but people didn’t really buy that so eventually they decided to take the “we don’t want to talk about it,” route. They fell right back into their old ways easily enough, and soon people stopped asking, because all was right with the world and most of them hadn’t really cared in the first place, they were just curious. The only person who really didn’t ask them about it was Aerith.
As the years passed, the two of them found themselves crossing through Tifa’s backyard in the middle of the night more and more often. By the time they were sophomores, they were meeting almost every single night. They always managed to get home before anyone else woke up, and eventually both of their moms started making remarks about them looking tired but they managed to blow it off, and they really didn’t mind the lack of sleep they were getting, because eventually they got to the point where they couldn’t sleep at all if the other wasn’t there. The older they got the more they learned about sex, mainly from practice, and Zack thought it was amazing how many new things he was learning about Cloud. When he was a kid, he thought he knew everything about his best friend. He found out that wasn’t true when they started dating and Cloud made the jump from best friend to boyfriend. It had been a little scary and a little exciting, getting to know Cloud on a completely different level, but eventually he reached the point where he thought he knew everything about his boyfriend. He found out that wasn’t true when they started sleeping together.
He felt like he was obsessed with finding out which ways he had to touch Cloud to get him to make that particular sound, or this particular sound, and he was enthralled to find out just how sensitive Cloud’s ears were and that when he touched his collarbone, or sometimes even just blew on it, Cloud’s breath would catch and his hips would buck of their own accord. And he loved how Cloud would cuddle up next to him after making love, and even if he fell asleep with his head on Zack’s chest, sometime during the night he would always always always scoot up a bit and bury his face into the crook of Zack’s neck, and Zack thought the fact that Cloud was doing this subconsciously was one of the sweetest things in the world.
Zack first brought up the possibility of Aerith knowing about their relationship while they were picnicking in a small clearing in the woods behind their houses. A few months earlier they had bought a cheap basket and blanket at the Gil Store and hidden them in a bush near the edge of the woods, because they had been afraid their parents would think picnics were girly. As far as they knew, their sons were going out to the woods to throw mud at each other or try to peg some squirrels with acorns or other. . . manly stuff like that.
It was a nice Spring day, a Sunday, and Cloud had been weaving flowers through Zack’s hair (The older he got the more his love for flowers seemed to grow. Zack blamed Aerith’s influence.) and snort-laughing at how ridiculous he looked when Zack asked if he thought Aerith knew. Cloud had stopped laughing and considered the question, still playing with his hair as he did so, before nodding and answering that he was certain she didn’t have a crush on Zack anymore, and he’d been getting the feeling that she knew too, and if they were both getting the same vibe then that probably meant it was true. Zack had frowned a little and asked him if he thought they should talk to her about it and then they’d discussed whether talking to Aerith and only Aerith was fair to their families and Tifa, because they didn’t think any of them were ready to know but at the same time they didn’t want to hurt them by having them find out later that they’d told Aerith and not them.
In the end, they decided to try to let her indirectly know that they knew that she knew. So one day that week when they were heading to a class that the three of them had but Tifa didn’t, they pulled her aside after everyone else entered the room and asked her if they could talk to her real quick. She’d glanced at the room, clearly not liking the idea of being late, but nodded anyway. She didn’t ever tell them to make it quick, which Zack thought was kind of touching. They told her that they just wanted her to know that they loved her, and they knew they were doing things that might hurt others later and that she might not approve of, but they were trying their best, and they wanted to thank her for sticking by them despite the wrongs they’d done her, and they loved her, and she was their best friend, and they loved her, and it meant soooo much to them that she was there, and they were sorry for anytime they hadn’t told the truth, and they loved her. Aerith had smiled gently, putting a finger to each of their lips to stop their rambling (that was the first time Zack realized just how much he and Cloud finished each other’s sentences), then kissed them each once on the cheek and told them they’d better get to class. They walked into the classroom feeling a hundred pounds lighter, and they were so relieved that they didn’t even mind the snarky comments Mr. Hojo made about them being late.
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