FFVII, Reverently, Discreetly, Advisedly, Soberly
So, yeah, I just can't do short comment meme prompts. They just grow. But I had fun, so, um, please feel free to give me some more prompts. Maybe they'll actually keep resulting in things. Meanwhile, here is FF7 fic from the meme.
Title: Reverently, Discreetly, Advisedly, Soberly
Summary: "I'm beginning to feel like you don't think of me as a good marriage material, Seph," Zack said.
Warning & Disclaimer: This is a work of fantasy. All FF7 characters belong to Square-Enix.
Notes: For white_jenna, who wanted Sephiroth and Zack with the "pretending to be married" prompt from the trope meme. Despite the prompt, mostly gen.
Also, I swear to God, I really don't mean to keep writing stories where Cloud and Zack and Sephiroth get involved with baked goods. They just sort of happen.
"We have to get married or the world will end," Zack said, walking into the office and ducking the stapler that Sephiroth had thrown at him without even looking up from the paperwork he was doing.
"I'm not entirely sure where to begin addressing that request, but let's start with no," Sephiroth said in a monotone that was, if possible, even flatter than his usual.
Zack frowned. He'd really hoped to sell it with a strong opening statement. On to plan B.
"Okay, okay. We don't actually have to get married. We just have to pretend to be married. It's really important." He dug into his pocket and got down on one knee. "Look I have rings and everything."
He'd gotten them out of a prize vending machine at the Golden Saucer; it had taken a shit-ton of GP because he kept maneuvering the grip-hook wrong and he'd won three plush cactuars, four sheets of glittery chocobo stickers, seven potions (four of them with expiration dates from three years ago), and a mustache comb before he could get the rings.
"No," Sephiroth said, still staring at his paperwork.
"I'm beginning to feel like you don't think of me as a good marriage material, Seph," Zack said. "That hurts. It hurts me right here." He placed his hand over his heart.
"Go away."
"It's for a good cause! A great cause, even!"
"How do you even keep getting in here? I recoded my office door so your ID wouldn't work." Sephiroth finally deigned to look up, frowning. "Did you steal Cloud's ID again? I'm going to change the scanner so it needs a thumbprint as well."
"A good marriage can't function if one of the partners is constantly accusing the other of theft," Zack said, finally standing up because Sephiroth didn't seem like he was coming out from behind the desk any time soon. "Also, there was no stealing involved. I left him my ID, so that makes it okay."
"Yes, quite," Sephiroth said. "And just how many sectors have pictures of you next to the cash register saying Do Not Take Checks From This Man?"
"My credit is still good in sectors six, five, and two," Zack said. "And in at least two of the ones that won't let me in, it's because of Reno, not necessarily me."
"Get out of my office."
"Just hear me out about the marriage thing. It really is for a good cause," he said hurriedly, before Sephiroth could throw the tape dispenser at him. "So, there's this place in sector six, where, as I just reminded you, I still have good credit, so it's not like I'm even doing this because I need to borrow your reputation or your credit card again. This new bakery place just opened up and they're trying to drum up some business, so they're running a special promotion all through this week."
"The cafeteria here at Shinra provides adequate sustenance."
"Shut up, that is not even the point, and no, it doesn't," Zack said. "This place specializes in wedding cakes; they do all kinds of fancy shit. And for this week only, they're giving away free samples of all their kinds of wedding cakes to any engaged couples who visit the store."
Sephiroth looked at him, clearly waiting for something other than the incredibly obvious conclusion Zack had seized upon the second he heard about it.
"Free cake, Seph," Zack said urgently. "All you can eat free wedding cake samples! Come on, this is a once in a lifetime face-stuffing opportunity! Well, twice, if I go back on Friday and bring Reno as my new fiancé."
"I don’t know what's worse about what you just said," Sephiroth mused, his pen tapping against the desk surface. "If it's the fact you're at the point where you're contemplating being married to Reno, even for scam purposes, or the fact you think I would allow anyone to believe I had been dumped in favor of Reno."
"No, see, I have that taken care of already," Zack said. "The cover story will be that you broke up with me, possibly because we couldn't agree on a cake, and the shock of our beautiful engagement being shattered into a thousand broken pieces drives me into a rebound marriage with Reno. Even though their cake destroyed my potential marriage to the general of the entire Shinra army, I have found new love, and we are bonding over cake before we go and elope at the Golden Saucer. Also, I am brokenhearted but would be less brokenhearted if they gave me a free cake."
"A free cake," Sephiroth said. "A free cake to get over your sham marriage while simultaneously celebrating your other sham marriage."
"Exactly," Zack said. "Except, you know, I won't say the sham thing out loud to them. Just the marriage bit. So. You in?"
"No."
"Seeeeppppphhhhh," Zack whined, drawing the syllables out with precision-it took nine seconds and emphasis on the "p" sliding into the "h" before Sephiroth winged the coffee mug at him; Zack dodged it with expert anticipation. It was perfect; there wasn't even any coffee, because he'd timed everything so he was in here in after Sephiroth's 1:15 post-lunch coffee had been finished, and before his 4:45 refill. "I need you here, Seph."
"Just take Cloud," Sephiroth said. "You've forced him to remain in your company long enough that I'm not sure you wouldn't qualify for a common law relationship anyway. Or some sort of Stockholm Syndrome."
"I can't take Cloud to a wedding-focused bakery opening, are you nuts?" Zack said, appalled. "I'd get arrested."
"That would probably be even more likely to happen without Cloud," Sephiroth pointed out.
"Yeah, but no, because, I mean, I love him to death and he's perfect for so many things and yeah, he's got that starving kitten look going on with his face that means people do try to shove food down his throat as soon as they meet him, but I can't take him to a wedding convention because he still looks like he only just hit puberty and I'd get thrown in jail for being engaged to a child bride and all kinds of statutory crap. It wouldn't work. You on the other hand-" and Zack leaned in and gave Sephiroth his best smile, "-are like, seven feet tall, and legal looking and all intimidating, too. I bet they'd be falling all over themselves to get you the best cake."
"The answer remains no."
Sephiroth signed the paper on top of the pile and put it in his outbox. Zack craned his neck to see if his own name was on it anywhere. It was probably too soon for the paperwork for the cow and fire extinguisher incident to have come through. The last thing Sephiroth had bitched him out for was the exploding urinal incident, and that had been over a week ago. (Sephiroth's version of bitching out had actually evolved into a mostly non-verbal process where he would just essentially just punch Zack as soon as he got through the door of the apartment, glare at him hard enough to peel the paint from the walls for roughly three minutes, and then either walk away if it was a normal insubordination report, or give him lectures on how to do it better next time if it was something that had also annoyed anyone that Sephiroth disliked. The time Zack had managed to flood Hojo's lab with all the leftover vats of Shinra cafeteria chowder, Sephiroth had actually smiled. Zack still got punched, but he considered that as the current high bar set for victory, and he was determined to vault all the way to a genuine Sephiroth laugh someday.)
Zack sighed, and decided to switch to emotional blackmail. "Seph, seriously, when was the last time I asked you to do something for me?"
"Two days ago, you threatened to hold your breath until you passed out if I didn't let you order pizza with cactuar bits on it when we were trying to decide what to have for dinner," Sephiroth said.
"That wasn't serious."
"After I refused, you pretended to pass out, and you laid on the floor for sixty two minutes, occasionally opening one eye to see if Cloud or I was paying attention to you. You miraculously regained consciousness when the pizzas were delivered."
"At least thirty of those minutes I actually was asleep," Zack explained. "Also, Cloud kept bending over to put shit away in the lower shelves. I saw you looking too, don't deny it."
"And yesterday, you sent me seventeen different emails with various video links in them, most of which involved animals defecating in some way and the rest of which were people getting hit in the groin, at least three of which I suspect you of engineering the event and also filming it. All of these were sent with the headers that I 'just had to watch' them, along with multiple exclamation points."
"Those were emails," Zack protested. "They don't count!"
"Then," Sephiroth continued, "you called me at a quarter past three in the morning and asked me to loan you ninety thousand gil or, and I quote, "Wutainese gangsters will take my thumbs.' I note that you still have your thumbs, incidentally."
"Okay, I may have fallen asleep in front of the television while this movie was on and sort of dreamed that I had done this thing," Zack confessed. "I mean, I really didn't want to take the chance that I did owe the money. It seemed like the kind of thing I would do."
"Indeed," Sephiroth said. "And finally, you called me three hours ago during a board meeting that you were supposed to attend-" Zack winced because he could actually hear the italics in Sephiroth's voice, and they were sharp enough to cut glass-"in order to ask me if I knew where Cloud had hidden the last of the cookies that his mother had sent him. When I told you I didn't know and what's more, that you shouldn't be stealing his food in the first place, you then asked if I would buy the company that makes the Charlie the Chocobo's Chewy Choco-Clusters for you because according to you, all I use my money for is 'buying more sword polish and leather fetish gear'."
Zack opened his mouth, paused, and considered that. "Well, I mean, you do buy a lot of sword polish," he said. "And Charlie Chocobo makes an amazing cookie."
"Go away and let me work, Zack," Sephiroth said.
Zack huffed a long sigh. "Seph, Seph, Seph. Sephiroth. General. Sir. Snookums."
Sephiroth raised an eyebrow at him, but his pen momentarily stilled.
"Do you really, really want to stay in your office and do bullshit paperwork that only exists because Palmer is a complete cock, when you could instead eat some cake, terrify some bakery employees, and get a rush of moral superiority when I'll inevitably eat too much buttercream icing and various curd fillings, and then throw up in weird colors in a gutter for like twenty minutes while you lecture me and say 'I told you so'?" Zack threw up his hands. "Life is just too fucking short to waste time doing things you hate in places you hate surrounded by people you hate, when instead you can hang out with friends and eat free cake, even if it's obtained under morally dubious circumstances."
There was a long pause, and Sephiroth wasn't writing anything at all.
"Plus," Zack said, going in for the kill, "since I can't bring him along, I bet Cloud would be really happy if someone brought him home some free fancy wedding cake. Because, you know, he grew up with a poor, underprivileged childhood where he only got cake, like, once a year. He'll probably do that thing where he closes his eyes and licks the icing off his fingers. And, like, shivers."
The only sound in the office was the clock ticking and the hum of the air conditioning vents. Sephiroth closed his eyes, and opened them very slowly. Zack watched, more than a little fascinated. Even Sephiroth's blinks came off as deliberate; it was like observing some kind of exotic and probably deadly lizard.
"We will try no more than three kinds of cake, I will not wear a ring, and you will not refer to me with any kind of pet name while we are there."
"You are the best, Seph," Zack said. "Also, by three I assume you mean thirty. You forgot that zero at the end there. Snickerdoodle."
"What did I just say?" Sephiroth glared as he stood up from the desk. "Don't push it."
"I would never, I was just telling you one of the types of cookies they bake," Zack said, and waited five seconds. "Angel…" Sephiroth missed elbowing him by half an inch, and Zack danced backwards through the door and into the hallway-- "…food cake is a kind of cake they also might have."
"I will kill you. Don't think I won't."
"Babycakes… are the kind of cakes this place makes for babies."
"I will tell Reno you actually do want to marry him."
"Cupcake…s are also one of their specialties."
"I will tell the bakery you only want to try the sugar free samples."
"Muffin-face… is what happens when you stick two whole muffins in your mouth at once."
"Zack."
"Honeybun…s are tasty."
"Zack."
"Apple dumpling tootsy-wootsy butter brickle sweetie-pie," Zack managed to get out before Sephiroth made an animal noise of rage and dropped any pretense of not trying to murder him; as he started a full-out sprint for the elevator, Sephiroth in hot pursuit, Zack happily thought it was going to be the beginning of a beautiful marriage.
Title: Reverently, Discreetly, Advisedly, Soberly
Summary: "I'm beginning to feel like you don't think of me as a good marriage material, Seph," Zack said.
Warning & Disclaimer: This is a work of fantasy. All FF7 characters belong to Square-Enix.
Notes: For white_jenna, who wanted Sephiroth and Zack with the "pretending to be married" prompt from the trope meme. Despite the prompt, mostly gen.
Also, I swear to God, I really don't mean to keep writing stories where Cloud and Zack and Sephiroth get involved with baked goods. They just sort of happen.
"We have to get married or the world will end," Zack said, walking into the office and ducking the stapler that Sephiroth had thrown at him without even looking up from the paperwork he was doing.
"I'm not entirely sure where to begin addressing that request, but let's start with no," Sephiroth said in a monotone that was, if possible, even flatter than his usual.
Zack frowned. He'd really hoped to sell it with a strong opening statement. On to plan B.
"Okay, okay. We don't actually have to get married. We just have to pretend to be married. It's really important." He dug into his pocket and got down on one knee. "Look I have rings and everything."
He'd gotten them out of a prize vending machine at the Golden Saucer; it had taken a shit-ton of GP because he kept maneuvering the grip-hook wrong and he'd won three plush cactuars, four sheets of glittery chocobo stickers, seven potions (four of them with expiration dates from three years ago), and a mustache comb before he could get the rings.
"No," Sephiroth said, still staring at his paperwork.
"I'm beginning to feel like you don't think of me as a good marriage material, Seph," Zack said. "That hurts. It hurts me right here." He placed his hand over his heart.
"Go away."
"It's for a good cause! A great cause, even!"
"How do you even keep getting in here? I recoded my office door so your ID wouldn't work." Sephiroth finally deigned to look up, frowning. "Did you steal Cloud's ID again? I'm going to change the scanner so it needs a thumbprint as well."
"A good marriage can't function if one of the partners is constantly accusing the other of theft," Zack said, finally standing up because Sephiroth didn't seem like he was coming out from behind the desk any time soon. "Also, there was no stealing involved. I left him my ID, so that makes it okay."
"Yes, quite," Sephiroth said. "And just how many sectors have pictures of you next to the cash register saying Do Not Take Checks From This Man?"
"My credit is still good in sectors six, five, and two," Zack said. "And in at least two of the ones that won't let me in, it's because of Reno, not necessarily me."
"Get out of my office."
"Just hear me out about the marriage thing. It really is for a good cause," he said hurriedly, before Sephiroth could throw the tape dispenser at him. "So, there's this place in sector six, where, as I just reminded you, I still have good credit, so it's not like I'm even doing this because I need to borrow your reputation or your credit card again. This new bakery place just opened up and they're trying to drum up some business, so they're running a special promotion all through this week."
"The cafeteria here at Shinra provides adequate sustenance."
"Shut up, that is not even the point, and no, it doesn't," Zack said. "This place specializes in wedding cakes; they do all kinds of fancy shit. And for this week only, they're giving away free samples of all their kinds of wedding cakes to any engaged couples who visit the store."
Sephiroth looked at him, clearly waiting for something other than the incredibly obvious conclusion Zack had seized upon the second he heard about it.
"Free cake, Seph," Zack said urgently. "All you can eat free wedding cake samples! Come on, this is a once in a lifetime face-stuffing opportunity! Well, twice, if I go back on Friday and bring Reno as my new fiancé."
"I don’t know what's worse about what you just said," Sephiroth mused, his pen tapping against the desk surface. "If it's the fact you're at the point where you're contemplating being married to Reno, even for scam purposes, or the fact you think I would allow anyone to believe I had been dumped in favor of Reno."
"No, see, I have that taken care of already," Zack said. "The cover story will be that you broke up with me, possibly because we couldn't agree on a cake, and the shock of our beautiful engagement being shattered into a thousand broken pieces drives me into a rebound marriage with Reno. Even though their cake destroyed my potential marriage to the general of the entire Shinra army, I have found new love, and we are bonding over cake before we go and elope at the Golden Saucer. Also, I am brokenhearted but would be less brokenhearted if they gave me a free cake."
"A free cake," Sephiroth said. "A free cake to get over your sham marriage while simultaneously celebrating your other sham marriage."
"Exactly," Zack said. "Except, you know, I won't say the sham thing out loud to them. Just the marriage bit. So. You in?"
"No."
"Seeeeppppphhhhh," Zack whined, drawing the syllables out with precision-it took nine seconds and emphasis on the "p" sliding into the "h" before Sephiroth winged the coffee mug at him; Zack dodged it with expert anticipation. It was perfect; there wasn't even any coffee, because he'd timed everything so he was in here in after Sephiroth's 1:15 post-lunch coffee had been finished, and before his 4:45 refill. "I need you here, Seph."
"Just take Cloud," Sephiroth said. "You've forced him to remain in your company long enough that I'm not sure you wouldn't qualify for a common law relationship anyway. Or some sort of Stockholm Syndrome."
"I can't take Cloud to a wedding-focused bakery opening, are you nuts?" Zack said, appalled. "I'd get arrested."
"That would probably be even more likely to happen without Cloud," Sephiroth pointed out.
"Yeah, but no, because, I mean, I love him to death and he's perfect for so many things and yeah, he's got that starving kitten look going on with his face that means people do try to shove food down his throat as soon as they meet him, but I can't take him to a wedding convention because he still looks like he only just hit puberty and I'd get thrown in jail for being engaged to a child bride and all kinds of statutory crap. It wouldn't work. You on the other hand-" and Zack leaned in and gave Sephiroth his best smile, "-are like, seven feet tall, and legal looking and all intimidating, too. I bet they'd be falling all over themselves to get you the best cake."
"The answer remains no."
Sephiroth signed the paper on top of the pile and put it in his outbox. Zack craned his neck to see if his own name was on it anywhere. It was probably too soon for the paperwork for the cow and fire extinguisher incident to have come through. The last thing Sephiroth had bitched him out for was the exploding urinal incident, and that had been over a week ago. (Sephiroth's version of bitching out had actually evolved into a mostly non-verbal process where he would just essentially just punch Zack as soon as he got through the door of the apartment, glare at him hard enough to peel the paint from the walls for roughly three minutes, and then either walk away if it was a normal insubordination report, or give him lectures on how to do it better next time if it was something that had also annoyed anyone that Sephiroth disliked. The time Zack had managed to flood Hojo's lab with all the leftover vats of Shinra cafeteria chowder, Sephiroth had actually smiled. Zack still got punched, but he considered that as the current high bar set for victory, and he was determined to vault all the way to a genuine Sephiroth laugh someday.)
Zack sighed, and decided to switch to emotional blackmail. "Seph, seriously, when was the last time I asked you to do something for me?"
"Two days ago, you threatened to hold your breath until you passed out if I didn't let you order pizza with cactuar bits on it when we were trying to decide what to have for dinner," Sephiroth said.
"That wasn't serious."
"After I refused, you pretended to pass out, and you laid on the floor for sixty two minutes, occasionally opening one eye to see if Cloud or I was paying attention to you. You miraculously regained consciousness when the pizzas were delivered."
"At least thirty of those minutes I actually was asleep," Zack explained. "Also, Cloud kept bending over to put shit away in the lower shelves. I saw you looking too, don't deny it."
"And yesterday, you sent me seventeen different emails with various video links in them, most of which involved animals defecating in some way and the rest of which were people getting hit in the groin, at least three of which I suspect you of engineering the event and also filming it. All of these were sent with the headers that I 'just had to watch' them, along with multiple exclamation points."
"Those were emails," Zack protested. "They don't count!"
"Then," Sephiroth continued, "you called me at a quarter past three in the morning and asked me to loan you ninety thousand gil or, and I quote, "Wutainese gangsters will take my thumbs.' I note that you still have your thumbs, incidentally."
"Okay, I may have fallen asleep in front of the television while this movie was on and sort of dreamed that I had done this thing," Zack confessed. "I mean, I really didn't want to take the chance that I did owe the money. It seemed like the kind of thing I would do."
"Indeed," Sephiroth said. "And finally, you called me three hours ago during a board meeting that you were supposed to attend-" Zack winced because he could actually hear the italics in Sephiroth's voice, and they were sharp enough to cut glass-"in order to ask me if I knew where Cloud had hidden the last of the cookies that his mother had sent him. When I told you I didn't know and what's more, that you shouldn't be stealing his food in the first place, you then asked if I would buy the company that makes the Charlie the Chocobo's Chewy Choco-Clusters for you because according to you, all I use my money for is 'buying more sword polish and leather fetish gear'."
Zack opened his mouth, paused, and considered that. "Well, I mean, you do buy a lot of sword polish," he said. "And Charlie Chocobo makes an amazing cookie."
"Go away and let me work, Zack," Sephiroth said.
Zack huffed a long sigh. "Seph, Seph, Seph. Sephiroth. General. Sir. Snookums."
Sephiroth raised an eyebrow at him, but his pen momentarily stilled.
"Do you really, really want to stay in your office and do bullshit paperwork that only exists because Palmer is a complete cock, when you could instead eat some cake, terrify some bakery employees, and get a rush of moral superiority when I'll inevitably eat too much buttercream icing and various curd fillings, and then throw up in weird colors in a gutter for like twenty minutes while you lecture me and say 'I told you so'?" Zack threw up his hands. "Life is just too fucking short to waste time doing things you hate in places you hate surrounded by people you hate, when instead you can hang out with friends and eat free cake, even if it's obtained under morally dubious circumstances."
There was a long pause, and Sephiroth wasn't writing anything at all.
"Plus," Zack said, going in for the kill, "since I can't bring him along, I bet Cloud would be really happy if someone brought him home some free fancy wedding cake. Because, you know, he grew up with a poor, underprivileged childhood where he only got cake, like, once a year. He'll probably do that thing where he closes his eyes and licks the icing off his fingers. And, like, shivers."
The only sound in the office was the clock ticking and the hum of the air conditioning vents. Sephiroth closed his eyes, and opened them very slowly. Zack watched, more than a little fascinated. Even Sephiroth's blinks came off as deliberate; it was like observing some kind of exotic and probably deadly lizard.
"We will try no more than three kinds of cake, I will not wear a ring, and you will not refer to me with any kind of pet name while we are there."
"You are the best, Seph," Zack said. "Also, by three I assume you mean thirty. You forgot that zero at the end there. Snickerdoodle."
"What did I just say?" Sephiroth glared as he stood up from the desk. "Don't push it."
"I would never, I was just telling you one of the types of cookies they bake," Zack said, and waited five seconds. "Angel…" Sephiroth missed elbowing him by half an inch, and Zack danced backwards through the door and into the hallway-- "…food cake is a kind of cake they also might have."
"I will kill you. Don't think I won't."
"Babycakes… are the kind of cakes this place makes for babies."
"I will tell Reno you actually do want to marry him."
"Cupcake…s are also one of their specialties."
"I will tell the bakery you only want to try the sugar free samples."
"Muffin-face… is what happens when you stick two whole muffins in your mouth at once."
"Zack."
"Honeybun…s are tasty."
"Zack."
"Apple dumpling tootsy-wootsy butter brickle sweetie-pie," Zack managed to get out before Sephiroth made an animal noise of rage and dropped any pretense of not trying to murder him; as he started a full-out sprint for the elevator, Sephiroth in hot pursuit, Zack happily thought it was going to be the beginning of a beautiful marriage.