Work Text:
Cloud shivered. There was a dampness at his back, soaking his clothes through, and with a shudder, he bolted upright.
Bright light blotted out his vision. For a moment, all he could see was a heavenly white glow, and fear spiked in him. Had he finally died?
But as the scorching light settled, he recognized the shape of the building around him: those high rafters, those tall windows. Aerith’s church, and from the damp chill running through him, he’d just crawled out of the opalescent healing pool at its heart. His pants and shirt clung uncomfortably to his skin, and he shoved damp hair out of his eyes impatiently as he searched for his sword.
There was someone across from him, on the other side of the pool. He recognized the dark, familiar uniform of the Firsts, water-logged and heavy, on a person who was likewise getting up from where they had been sprawled on their back.
Cloud’s heart seemed to slow, nearly to a stop. Each thud seemed to pound through his body like an earthquake trying desperately to shake him loose.
That hair...that grin...
He’d forgotten everything about them, for a time, and then later, they never stopped haunting him.
“Zack?”
His voice hurt as if he’d been coughing up lungfuls of water, and it came out scratchy, hushed. Afraid.
Zack’s eyes snapped to his, that unforgettable mako gaze burning through Cloud like a lance, and Zack jolted, surging halfway back into the water at the sight of him.
“Cloud?” he called, blearily incredulous. “You’re alright?”
A laugh, cracked and spluttering tore itself free of Cloud. “How did you get here?”
Zack’s grin was slapdash and broad across his face, so unburdened and long-lost that Cloud could hardly stand it.
“God, what do I know?” Zack said. “Cloud, come here.”
Cloud didn’t need to be told twice. He charged knee-deep into the pool and Zack lunged to meet him at its center, crashing together. Cloud held him tight, even as Zack near crushed him between his arms, and Cloud didn’t know what to think, or to believe, so he shoved his face into Zack’s neck to ignore every thought screaming at him that this was impossible, a dream, an illusion from his fractured mind. If fake, it was the kindest thing his delusions had ever afforded him.
“Cloud,” Zack breathed. Cloud didn’t dare answer, but clung to him harder, thigh deep in water and mindless to the cold. Zack was warm, a furnace, exactly as Cloud remembered. Zack was whispering something into Cloud’s hair, so low that Cloud couldn’t understand it, and Cloud felt everything in him relax, more than he could ever remember feeling, as relief took over.
Finally, Cloud forced himself to pull back. He stared at Zack unsteadily, unsure how afraid he should be for his own sanity, and unwilling to tarnish the dream before him.
“What is this?” he asked hoarsely. “I don’t understand. I was there, I watched you die—” His voice failed him.
It was his first time ever saying it aloud. He had let Tifa and Barret assume the end of the story from his own pained silence.
“I did.” Zack was suddenly serious. “Cloud—” Zack reached for him again. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Cloud answered harshly. “Are you staying, this time?” Are you real?
“Yeah,” breathed Zack, running a hand through his hair. Droplets of water shook look. “I think so. I don’t get it, but, I’m here now. And I don’t wanna leave.”
There was a lump in Cloud’s throat, choking down anything he needed to say. It was as if the surge of emotions in him had thrown him too high, dizzied him too much to form words. I missed you so much it broke me. I love you so much I split into a whole new person just to hide from the pain. Aerith is gone.
“Good,” he said.
Cloud took him back to the bar. There wasn’t anything else to it. On the ride there, Zack clung to him as Fenrir swerved between the ruins of Sector 5. His body curved around Cloud’s, as grounding as it was distracting. Even the shape of him felt long-familiar, as if the haptic memory was never erased.
He didn’t waste any time once he was through Seventh Heaven’s front door.
“Can you see him too?” he demanded of Barret, busy mixing a drink for a mid-afternoon customer.
“And just where have you been?” demanded Barret right back, setting the shaker down with enough force that Cloud knew he was in trouble.
“Can you see him?” Cloud insisted.
“Sure I can. Hello yourself. Is this one of your old SOLDIER buddies? This why you up and disappeared for another week? Tifa’s been sick over you. You said you wouldn’t do this again.”
Cloud furrowed his brow. “A week? What do you...I don’t know anything about that. I just woke up, and.” He stopped, helpless to explain. Behind him, Zack placed a comforting hand on the back of his neck. The heat was unbelievable: even as he was still on the knife-edge of panic, Cloud felt his shoulders relax and his jaw unclench.
At that moment, Tifa came in from the back room, saw them, and dropped the pitcher she was carrying. Her eyes darted back and forth between Zack and Cloud, heedless to the spreading puddle of beer.
“Tifa,” Cloud said, nearly begging. “That’s—This is—Isn’t he?”
“Zack Fair,” she said, nodding as if through a daze.
Zack shot her a friendly grin, the kind that left you breathless. He didn’t have another kind. “Hey there, Tifa.”
Tifa nodded back to him, and blindly reached for some rags to mop the floor.
“Zack?” Barret repeated. “Not your Zack?”
Cloud swallowed. “Yeah. My Zack.”
The smile that Zack gave him nearly knocked him out.
In the end, who was he to turn down a gift from the Lifestream? Maybe he had spent so much time inside it, overwhelmed in his misery, that it had finally taken pity on him and spat pack out what it had taken so cruelly.
(That didn’t explain why Zack was there, and Aerith was not. Guilt gnawed at him.)
But Zack was alive. Zack was there: living in the bar, chatting to Tifa over the dishes, teasing Denzel and Merlene before helping them out with their homework, patently diffusing Barret’s antagonizing overtures until it was now a common sight to catch the two of them talking loudly and enthusiastically over a drink in one of the booths. Zack, sleeping sprawled on the couch while they figured out his living arrangements; Zack, cracking his spine and grinning brightly at Cloud while wishing him a good morning; Zack, revived from the dead, vibrant and alive and whole, even after Shrinra, the labs, and Cloud’s own efforts to scrub him from living memory. It was disorienting. Like walking the deck of a ship at sea, never quite able to take a stable step.
It was made so much worse because Zack kept blinking at him, a little awed, and if pressed, would look aside, sheepish, and say, “You’ve just grown up a lot, Spike.”
Cloud knew he was different. Knew that he had changed. The trooper that Zack knew was frail, sick, virtually comatose; even before that, he was small and weak, starry-eyed and eager, too inexperienced for SOLDIER. Now, Cloud had hardened. It wasn’t just the mako, though that had helped of course—he could swing the Buster sword without breaking a sweat, jump meters into the air, save the whole damn world. He had fought tonberries and Weapons, traveled from pole to pole and around the planet more times than he cared to count. He had saved lives, they said. Everyone in Edge knew his name, and more beyond that, besides.
And for all that his wildest dream at sixteen years old might have been to impress Zack Fair (well, and Sephiroth too, of course), the feeling of Zack nodding along in awe, slapping Cloud’s back with pride as others recounted tales of Cloud’s accomplishments...it didn’t feel good. It gathered, sour and strong in the low of his stomach, built up in the infinite tension he carried in his shoulders.
Oh, the compliments Zack gave him felt sweet, at first. A rush of heat had prickled through him, full-body, hair-raising, when Zack had whistled low, leaned back in his chair once he’d heard the full story of Sephiroth’s defeat, and said, “Damn, Spike, you grew up into a real hero, didn’t you?”
Nothing Cloud said could dissuade him, not reminders of how Cloud had been the one to hand over the Black Materia in the first place, nor how Cloud had languished uselessly in Mideel while Sephiroth raced to destroy all life on the planet, not even how Aerith’s blood was as good as on his hands. Cloud was a hero, and he’d heard it before, but from Zack’s lips it felt reforged. Unbearably valuable, and punishingly undeserved.
Zack was no wallflower, but he held back a little, now, when people came to Cloud to with their problems. People in Edge and its surroundings deferred to Cloud on matters of security and somewhere, of course, Zack had stopped being Cloud’s superior officer. It felt foreign and disorienting to sense Zack at his back, quiet and respectful, as Cloud took point on matters that by all rights, were of course Cloud’s to deal with.
Zack had died, and Cloud had inherited. Ungratefully, he might add. Did Zack think he was doing Cloud a favour by not taking his seniority back?
Shinra had fallen, and SOLIDER with it, but surely Zack was still just as competent, just as sharp and primed for the kind of heart-thumping decisions being left up to Cloud every day now. His sword—well, the temporary one Cloud had scrounged up for him, the Buster sword long since rusted past use at its lonesome memorial—was Cloud’s, Zack had made this clear, and even so, Cloud felt himself wanting more. He’d been stumbling so long through the grueling weight of his responsibilities that it startled him: the plaintiveness, the clarity with which he found himself wishing he could turn to Zack and say, Help me.
Cloud had recoiled from that want like an animal scrounging back into its den, blinded by the desert sun. It made sense—Zack had always been larger than life, making everything look effortless while Cloud had struggled just to stay above water—but things were different now. Cloud had grown strong, in more ways than one. What had seemed impossible, before, was now second nature. He could do almost anything, if he was being honest.
Just because Zack had returned didn’t mean Cloud could be allowed to shrink away now. It didn’t mean anything. That Zack still wanted to stay by his side...well, that was enough. He just really didn’t know what he’d do if Zack decided to leave.
“I’ve been thinking,” Zack said one night over dinner, leg crossed over one knee and working lazily through a killer stew Barret had whipped up out of pigeon meat and pure effort, “I want to head back to Gongaga.”
Cloud’s head spun. He put his fork down quickly, before he could drop it on accident.
“Oh?” said Tifa, looking between the two of them. Cloud’s reaction did not go unnoticed. “To visit your family, or to stay?”
“Just to say hi to my folks,” Zack said, scratching the side of his neck. “See what they’re up to.” The silent if they’re still alive was heard by everyone at the table.
Cloud’s heart started to pin itself back together. He cursed himself for its fragility.
“That sounds good,” he managed to say.
“What do you say?” Zack cocked his head at him. “Think you could take any time off from your busy deliveries to make a trip of it with me?”
Cloud hadn’t considered that. His heart had been too fast to pitch itself cliff-side, terrified of any change to their unprecedented balance. It was embarrassing. “Yeah,” he said, trying to sound unaffected. “I could manage.”
“Great!” Death and resurrection had done nothing to dim Zack’s bountiful energy. He beamed like the kind of bulbs no one on earth had the watts left to keep powered anymore. Cloud felt like a plant, his own personal revival feeding off that light of Zack’s.
That was how he found himself back on Fenrir, Zack at his back once more and arms snug around his waist, Zack’s heat heavy and solid behind him. Cloud held onto the handlebar tightly, so tight that if the bike had not been built with mako enhancements in mind it surely would have dented with each imprint of his fingers.
That was another thing which was disorientingly different between he and Zack, now: the Zack Cloud remembered was straight-up handsy. Always there to put a balancing hand in the middle of Cloud’s back when he stumbled, or tugging Cloud eagerly along by the hand; casually directing him with a touch on the waist, squeezing his shoulder when Cloud began to tense, knocking their sides together when Zack could feel Cloud’s anxiety starting to spike. And always, always stepping in front of Cloud in battle, unerringly protective.
Sixteen year old Cloud had been a mess over it: half humiliated that Zack was always giving him help and half ravenous for every overheated touch, mako-hot blood distracting through the skin of Zack’s palms.
Now...what Cloud would have done to have that casual physicality back. It wasn’t as if Zack was avoiding him, per say—lingering closer to his side than ever, actually, which pleased Cloud just fine—but Cloud no longer stumbled, so there was no need to catch him. He no longer flinched at loud noises or panicked when put in the spotlight, so there was no need to soothe him. The only touch Zack shared with him now was to roughhouse, tussle his hair playfully, and kick his shins under the table. What friends do.
It should have been enough for him. But it wasn’t.
They set out early and made it to Junon by sunset. Cloud made the mistake of looking back at Zack as they approached the little town, and caught sight of Zack’s face flooded with golden light, handsome and beloved and sometimes so startling, after all that mourning, that it made Cloud feel sick. Zack smiled back at him.
The part of his heart that had been carved out and crushed by Zack’s death, so slowly healing with time and now his miraculous return, throbbed horribly in Cloud’s chest. He looked back at the empty road quickly, feeling like he couldn’t breathe.
They crashed at a motel for the night and took a ship out at first light. Tickets were ten times what they’d cost before the Crisis, but that was true of many things. Cloud paid for them before Zack could notice.
Cloud’s motion sickness was one thing that hadn’t improved much, and he spent most of the voyage alternating between clinging to the railings as he gulped in the fresh air above decks, and curling miserably in his bunk below. Zack stayed with him the whole way, distracting him with antics that made Cloud laugh hard enough to momentarily forget his discomfort .
But Zack stayed in his own bunk, in the chair across from Cloud, or by his side at the railing, shoulders only just brushing. Cloud found himself restless, kicking the blankets to the foot of his bunk in impatience while Zack would leave to fetch them food. What had happened to Zack? Did he not like Cloud as much, anymore? Did heaven breed toxic masculinity? The Zack he’d known would have had his hands in Cloud’s hair by now, Cloud’s head in his lap as Zack tried to goad Cloud into voicing the complaints plain on Cloud’s face. It was embarrassing, how much Cloud wanted to plead with Zack to just please get in bed with him, and not even to sleep with him.
They landed in a tiny port town in the north, barely a day out from Gongaga. Cloud was exhausted and shaky from his ordeal at sea, but he was nothing if not exceedingly adept at covering up how he was feeling. When Zack offered to stay the night in town to rest up before the final leg of their journey, Cloud waved him off. He could see how eager Zack was to get home: nearly a decade and a half since last he’d stepped foot there. Zack considered him dubiously, but finally agreed under the condition Zack would drive. Cloud rolled his eyes, but got on behind Zack on the bike.
It felt good to be the one clinging on, Zack’s body lean and powerful in his arms. Cloud pressed his cheek against Zack’s back and closed his eyes. Even though Zack drove like an ex-SOLDIER—with reckless, dangerous abandon that only having bones strong as steel could ever remotely justify—Cloud drifted off slightly, and didn’t startle until Zack pulled to a stop on a hill overlooking Gongaga and her jungle.
Zack was very still. Cloud swallowed.
Zack had seen the effects of the reactor before, years ago, Cloud knew. But of course it was different to see what time and degradation had done. He brought his arms more snuggly around Zack’s waist, knowing it to be little comfort in comparison to such destruction.
After a moment, Zack kicked them back up and started off again. “Alrighty,” he said, like the dork Cloud knew and loved. “Let’s do this.” If the desolation had affected him, he had swallowed it down deep and thorough in the same way Cloud had always watched him deal with terrible, terrible things.
It was dark when they finally reached the village, having fended off a couple Horns easily, but messily, in the surrounding jungle. The place was dim indeed, lit only by the occasional candle from inside a window and one humming generator at what seemed to be the general store. Out of respect for the residents, they clambered off the bike and rolled it beside them down the narrow dirt paths.
Cloud had only been there once, years ago, and everything Zack would have remembered was now rubble. In the dark, it was impossible to try to discern the differences between the small wooden houses and Cloud was beginning to get nervous, when suddenly Zack jolted and hurried forward.
“I think that might have been her,” Zack said, his eyes enormous on the window of a nearby home. Cloud followed quickly behind, Zack wasting no time to charge up the front steps and pound at the door heavily.
There was a long silence, and Cloud could only imagine what the people inside must be thinking.
“Who is it?” called a voice from inside, strong despite age and evident fear. No one came to the door.
“Er, well,” said Zack. Cloud’s heart pounded for him. “It’s...Zack.”
Another pause, and then a shuffle, the lock being thrown back. A man’s voice was admonishing somewhere inside, but the door flew open nevertheless.
“Who?” demanded a woman, barely lit by the candlelight behind her.
Zack’s voice warbled. “Oh, dammit,” he croaked. “Mom?”
Cloud watched her take in the grizzled SOLDIER in front of her, the unfamiliar eyes, the old scars, and then recognition transform her face when she saw her little boy in the sheepish grin across Zack’s face. Within a blink they were clutching each other, a harsh cry escaping his mother. Soon his father joined in the doorway, incredulous and then faltering. They clung together, the three of them. Zack’s mom’s sobs flooded the night, delirious and joyous, and Zack was talking helplessly over her, laughter and tears choking him in equal measure.
Cloud watched all of this, feeling a dull but not unpleasant ache at the sight. He drank it in, a voyeur at this family reunion, so rare and precious: no one else he knew had family left to reunite with. He waited patiently, hardly minding. Zack’s bewildered happiness was everything.
When everyone was consoled enough to move indoors, Zack turned around, without once leaving his mom’s arms, and called him in. “Do you remember Cloud Strife?” he asked his parents, shuffling them inside. “He saved my life.”
Cloud didn’t understand the lie, not one bit.
Of course, Zack’s parents didn’t want him to leave.
Thirteen years, thirteen long years, barely one letter, and although Zack kept most of the details from them, they could tell he had suffered greatly during his absence. So no—his parents didn’t want to let him go again.
Cloud expected him to stay. There was nothing really keeping Zack in Edge, just a borrowed couch and a temporary job. Maybe once he would have stayed for Cloud, a guy he’d spent his life to save, but that same intensity of commitment didn’t seem to have carried with him to his new life. It was nothing Cloud could hold against him; Zack had paid every price and then some for Cloud. There was nothing left that Zack could possibly owe him, in any ledger.
So it shook him—from his ever-darkening mood—when Zack calmly suggested they “get a move on” after about ten days in Gongaga, instead of politely letting Cloud know he was free to go home, alone.
His mother begged and his father was silent with a kind of preemptive grief, but Zack promised to write regularly and come back to visit with the year. Cloud felt great and painful sympathy for them as they stood in the doorway, his mother clutching her shawls and tears streaming down her face as she watched them go. He was certain they didn’t expect to ever see him again; one visit from their long-lost son could not heal over that horrific wound of loss. Cloud didn’t know what he would have done in their place.
With Zack’s arms at his hips again as they took east to the port, Cloud didn’t know how to ask what was on his mind. Why? seemed too direct. What’s in Edge that’s worth it? He knew Zack to be loyal, to martyrdom and back, but there was no Shinra to defend anyone from anymore. If it was friendship tying Zack to him, why had things changed between them?
Stop being childish, Cloud ordered himself. There was nothing for him to complain about. By Bahamut’s fucking tits, Zack was back from the dead: how could he still find something to be ungrateful about?
Zack still stepped away quickly when they dismounted Fenrir and only ruffled Cloud’s hair for a moment, never slung his arm around his shoulders or knocked their hips together. When the ticket seller at the docks lowered her lashes at Cloud and spoke to him too solicitously to be strictly professional, Zack didn’t intervene loudly, like he used to: catching him around the waist and distracting everyone with his gorgeous eyes and matching smile. A potent, delirious protectiveness that had only fed and fed and fed Cloud’s want.
He didn’t know what to think, now. He watched Zack’s back, bare as he washed up for the night in the little corner sink of their berth, and could count the bullet holes scarred white across bronze skin. Zack’s heroism, the price of Cloud’s life, written there plain as day.
He didn’t know how to ask about their new distance when their proximity was never something he had the right to.
At home—at Seventh Heaven—Tifa was relieved to see them back safe, and the kids delighted to have Cloud back so soon. It pained him, that he had made himself so untrustworthy in their minds. With Zack home, it was no longer hard to return. He dreaded the day that changed.
Still, Zack made no moves toward finding his own place, and Cloud set about to enjoy it while it lasted.
With Zack at the bar, life was brighter. Whereas Cloud used to struggle through meals with everyone, feeling discordant and unsettled at the family table—a puzzle piece, all sharp edges, with no place to fit—Zack’s buoyant presence ground him. Zack didn’t even have to try very hard: he led Cloud gently into the circle and Cloud only followed. He joined Cloud, too, in more solitary moments—taking out the trash, sorting supplies, mending the roof. For all his energy and bluster, Zack made just as good silent company. With him nearby, it was as if it somehow became harder to get lost in the tangle of his deeper thoughts, those painful, raw ones that could capture and keep him for days. Zack was a lighthouse at his side, a beam that gave him somewhere to look forward to.
And that would have to be enough. Zack helped so much. It was stupid, so stupid, that Cloud was still hung up on wanting more. As if he was entitled to it. As if Zack was supposed to be coddling and caring for him, even though he should be overjoyed to at last not need to rely on Zack anymore. Surprise: he would never be strong enough, it seemed, to not want to lean on Zack.
And in more ways than one.
Cloud coughed awake one night, rattled by familiar nightmares even Aerith’s healing water couldn’t shake. After a minute of heaving and another couple to catch his breath, he threw off the covers and quickly got dressed. He’d long since learned not to bother going back to sleep after dreams like those. At best he would lie blankly and dully awake until dawn; at worst, he’d fall right back into a replay of the same nightmares, ratcheted up in their intensity for the encore.
He crept carefully down the hall, each squeaky floorboard long since committed to memory. Barret would be dead to the world, but Tifa was a light sleeper. And Zack with his SOLDIER senses—
“Going somewhere, Spike?”
Cloud winced, invisible in the darkness. Zack poked his head up from the couch.
“Can’t sleep. Going for a drive. Go back to sleep,” he whispered back.
Zack’s voice was hoarse across the room. “Mind if I join you?”
Cloud blinked, then shrugged. He wanted it very badly. “I don’t mind.”
Silently, Zack slid from the couch and found a shirt and shoes. Together they padded softly down the stairs. Zack walked very close to him; Cloud could feel his body heat, intensified by sleep, radiating against Cloud’s back. It made his gut clench with want.
In the kitchen, they took a moment to lace up their boots. Cloud got himself a glass of water, and Zack watched.
Cloud drank. Glass empty, Zack was still watching. When Cloud stared back, Zack’s eyes slid away guiltily.
“Are you doing alright?” Zack asked.
Cloud didn’t bother to think before answering, rote: “I’m fine.” He spun the keys to Fenrir between his fingers and jerked his head towards the back door. “Ready?”
The look Zack gave him was odd. Cloud couldn’t place it, not in the dim kitchen, lit only by moonlight.
They got on the bike without further words. Zack held him loosely when Cloud kicked off, rolling as quietly as he could through the sleepy streets. At the edge of Edge, however, he let the engine roar, speeding out into the night.
The desert around the old city was already plenty dangerous, but in the dark of night it was another kind of peril altogether. Monsters roamed free and unseen; nearly as invisible as the road, treading away softly under Fenrir’s headlights.
It was enough of a rush to clear Cloud’s head. Between the bite of the cold night air, the challenge of staying on the road, and the threat of danger, his mind had no choice but to pull itself back to the present. If Zack’s wild whoop and subsequent content silence behind him were any indicator, Zack might have felt the same way.
When the light finally broke over the horizon, Cloud turned back, swerving Fenrir in a tight U-turn that made Zack laugh and clutch Cloud tightly enough that he felt his nails through his leathers.
When, in the new light of day, they were able to see the Buster sword on a faraway cliff’s edge, solemn and imposing in memorial, neither of them said a word. And if Zack’s hand curled tighter at Cloud’s waist, Cloud could pretend it was for the both of them.
Cloud was groggy with exhaustion by the time they made it back to Seventh Heaven’s backyard. His vision swam slightly as he slung his leg over the chassis, and as he got to his feet, for a brief moment he swayed in place.
“Woah!” Zack said. Did Cloud imagine it? How Zack had reached out both hands as if to steady him, but then pulled them back? He couldn’t say—his vision only cleared once Zack was peering down at him in concern, hands still at his own sides.
“Tired,” Cloud grunted, frustrated at his moment of weakness, and stomped back inside. Tifa was already up, chatting with the kids while wiping down tables. Barret was manning the stove, the smell of bacon filling the air.
“Smells good!” Zack called brightly from behind him, clapping Barret on the shoulder.
“It’s bacon, it had better smell good,” Barret huffed back. “But it needs a plate. You volunteering?”
“I’m on it, boss.”
As Zack stepped by him towards the cabinets, he wrapped his hand around Cloud’s wrist, just for a moment, and squeezed. It was gone within the space of a breath, almost enough to make him doubt it, but, not—Zack had touched him, that time. Zack had anchored him.
Cloud blinked after him as Zack darted back and forth taking down plates, setting the table, bantering with Barret. Finally, caught between fatigue and a thumping, weary heart, he gave up on understanding, and went to put out the silverware.
He slipped up.
It had been so long since Cloud got hit like this. He’d seen the Fang coming; he’d taken down dozens in the desert around Edge before, even mutated and enormous as they’d grown over the years. Maybe it was the weight of everything that had been haunting him; maybe the sleep deprivation was starting to affect him; maybe, just maybe, he had wanted to see what Zack would do if Cloud got cut open in front of him.
He didn’t mean to get clawed open like this, not from shoulder to hip.
It happened quickly, the white-hot tear of pain, the stumble. His hand went to his chest, immediately slippery with blood. There was a shout—a roar, really—and Zack was in front of him in an instant, cleaving off the Fang’s front paw and firing off a concentrated quake spell so hard, the wolf was thrown back thirty meters.
“Are you—” said Zack, breathless, spinning to clutch Cloud while the Fang recovered. Cloud didn’t need his grip, was managing to stay on his feet—barely—but he leaned his weight forward, gratefully, into Zack’s grasp.
Cloud had already grappled with his coat and uncorked a potion messily with his teeth. Zack watched him with wide eyes and a single-minded intensity as Cloud drank it down, eyes tracking the movement of his throat. At the last second, Zack twisted back around, one arm still around Cloud for support, and dragged them out of the way of the charging Fang, slicing upwards into its throat, and curling around Cloud to shield him from the blood splatter.
In the quiet after, they both heaved, Zack’s breath as erratic as if he, too, had been gored. He lowered Cloud to the ground. At that point, the potion had done its best—stitched him up, stopped the blood flow—and still, Cloud felt woozy, a little hot, under the focus Zack leveled on him, demanding and somewhat fearful.
“Was the potion enough?” Zack asked, already rustling through his own pockets one handed. He didn’t sound particularly calm. “I have a Cura I didn’t equip—” He crouched at Cloud’s side, dragged Cloud’s head into his lap.
Cloud coughed, feeling the new, raw skin heave over his ribs. “’m fine.” He felt dewy and weak from the pain, but the singular pleasure of being back where he wanted to be—his head on Zack’s thigh, his safety assured under Zack’s fervent protection—was like being made whole.
“How do you feel?” Zack demanded, still. “How much does it hurt? Don’t lie.” He traced a slightly-shaky hand down the side of Cloud’s face, and Cloud closed his eyes, trying to look merely tired, instead of preening, as he was, under the attention.
He exhaled hard, relished one more moment of it, and then forced himself upright. He could only indulge so much. He wouldn’t take advantage.
“I’ll live,” Cloud assured him. “I’ve had worse.”
Zack looked at him, and—oh. Cloud was not a good person. He had missed that look of absolutely desperate concern that now clouded Zack’s face. It felt good.
“Right,” said Zack, suddenly, ducking his head. “Sorry!” He scrubbed a hand—still coated with Cloud’s drying blood—through his hair sheepishly and grinned, lopsided. “Forgot myself. Didn’t mean to treat you like a cadet, but old habits die hard.”
“What?” said Cloud, blankly.
Zack got to his feet and smiled, beautifully, down at him. “You’re a real hero now. Better than any SOLIDER.” His grin was rueful, almost apologetic. “I know you don’t need my help.”
Ah.
There it was.
Cloud swallowed. His wound ached, and he stood up carefully, on his own two feet. “Right.”
It would be greedy, of course, to ask for help he didn't need.
It wasn’t just Zack—it was the endless threats across the world everyone seemed to need his consultation on, it was the constantly concerned people of Edge who kept thinking they saw Sephiroth’s remnants behind the deli, it was he way he still dreamed of the labs beneath Shinra manor, the phantom pain of the geostigma, the hole Aerith had left behind, his last words to his mother—
Once again he found himself at Aerith’s church, a bed set up in one of the pews. Ignored voicemails on his phone from Tifa, Barret, and this time Zack, too, as Cloud drifted across the days and avoided the bar.
When he was like this, Tifa and Barret had learned to leave him be. No one would come disturb him there unless it was an emergency, which was why he straightened up in concern when he heard the church front doors slam open only one week after he had left the bar and not returned.
Zack stood in the open doorway for a moment, blinking, before inviting himself inside. “Hey, Cloud.”
“Hey.”
It was hard to read his expression. Cloud stayed where he was, sat at the edge of the pool and polishing the Fusion swords, as Zack approached.
Zack towered over him for a moment, arms crossed, looking down at him with a furrow in his brow.
“Did something happen?” Cloud asked, after a long pause.
“You...didn’t answer my messages.”
Cloud looked away. The embarrassment burned. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”
Zack got down on he ground beside him and threw his arms around his knees. “Tifa and Barret told me you used to do this, sometimes,” he said. “Go off the map.”
“Mm.” Cloud didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to talk about this: his failure, writ large, to keep it together. Cloud, the hero, whose kids always worried he’d never come back for them, who made Tifa sick with stress. Who made Barret angry, which was how he showed his worry.
“Why?” Zack asked it kindly, patiently, the way only Zack—or maybe, Aerith, too—could manage to ask so blunt a question.
Cloud winced. His hands stilled on the hollow blade, and he looked far away, across the pool. “I just...need some space. To think, on my own.”
Zack nodded quietly, considering. “If having me at the bar is too much, Spike, you know you can tell me, right? I’ll be out of your hair. I wouldn’t be offended. You’ve already helped me out so much with getting settled at all. If I’ve intruded on your family enough...”
The frown that slashed across Cloud’s face came quickly and without his permission. “That’s not it,” he said. “Don’t leave—please.” The last word came out as a little bit of a cough, half-strangled in the back of his throat.
Zack swallowed visibly. “Then of course, Cloud. I’ll stay as long as you want me. Nothin’ more I wanna do.”
And the thing was, Cloud was starting to believe him. Had seen him tearfully kiss his mother and father goodbye, then get back on a boat to Edge. To Cloud. It was incomprehensible, but these were the facts in front of him.
“But I don’t wanna stay in the church,” Zack said, then, smiling softly. “Perfectly lovely though it is, Aerith.” He put a hand, very lightly, on Cloud’s arm. “Come home, would you?”
Cloud had to look away, the look in Zack’s eyes too gentle to bear. It made a lonely, starved part of him roar with a very old hunger.
“Give me another day or two,” he said, hoarsely, to the wall behind Zack. “I’ll get my head screwed on right. Promise.”
Zack laughed quietly. “You lose track of your head somewhere, Spike?”
Cloud tried to laugh with him, but it came out sounding dry.
“C’mon. You can tell me about it. Is it Tifa?”
Cloud shook his head no. He started to put away the blades in silence, but there was a thought eating away at him, a desperate need to find out if he was alone in one regard.
He cleared his throat. “What was it like, being a First?”
Zack blinked at him, disarmed by the change in subject.
Cloud looked down at his scabbard and swallowed, sliding each blade in piece by piece. “You must have had a lot of pressure on you. Seen things that...affected you.” He trailed off.
Zack’s brow wrinkled again, but after a moment to think, he answered. “I was pretty naive, back then. Angeal, Sephiroth, Genisis—even the Seconds and Thirds beneath them—seemed to be crumbling under the weight of what Shinra was throwing onto us. For the longest time, I didn’t let it get to me, or I wouldn’t let it get to me. I kinda turned a blind eye to a lot of things, I think. It didn’t last, of course. By the time we were on the run, things were pretty different.” He laughed, a displaced, cheerful thing that Cloud had long ago recognized as a sign of Zack’s discomfort. “Then, I was pretty overwhelmed. Even if I didn’t let myself say so, even to myself.”
“Honestly?” Zack said, grin finally dimming somewhat. “I was scared all the time, then. Every day.”
Fresh guilt burst against the inside of Cloud’s ribs. It wouldn’t ever be enough, but he was compelled to say nevertheless: “I’m sorry.” His voice, rough and gravelly.
Zack gave him a light shove on the shoulder. “It was nothing. Don’t even sweat.”
It was such a dirty lie that Cloud couldn’t keep his voice from cracking as he said, “Zack, you died.”
Zack shrugged almost playfully. “Didn’t stick very well,” he said. But then his expression sobered, and his gaze felt somehow heavier. “We talked about this. You can’t blame yourself, not for any part of it.”
Cloud scowled and didn’t meet his eyes. Stared down into the pool—if it could wash away illness, maybe it could absolve his guilt? But no: he’d tried. They all had. “If you had been on your own, then—”
“Don’t,” Zack cut him off firmly. “Spike, c’mon. It was my choice, and I’d do it again.” Then he reached out and grabbed Cloud’s forearms. The steady touch startled Cloud, made his eyes go wide.
Zack said, “I wanted you with me. I wanted to protect you.”
“Is that still true?”
It was out of Cloud’s mouth before he could stop himself. He was mortified; he tugged away from Zack’s grip and quickly reached for the blades again.
Zack stared, of course. Dumbfounded. Then, suddenly, with urgency: “What does that mean? Cloud—did something happen? Are you in some kind of danger?”
“No more than usual.”
“Than usual?”
“You know how it is. What people expect of me. How nothing’s ever...safe.” His voice tore out of him, rough and low. He fumbled with the straps on the assembled blade, so fast he felt his fingers slip.
Zack let out a low sound. “You’ve done so much already.”
“Well, something always comes up.” He sounded terribly bitter, even to his own ears. He hiked the sword up over his shoulder.
“You don’t have to be alone. Whatever’s happened, let me help. Let us help.”
It was the offer Cloud had been waiting and waiting for, and now it just felt tainted. Something Zack lobbed out to appease him, when Cloud should have never let his underbelly show.
“It’s fine Zack, thanks,” he said, trying not to sound too flat. “I have everything under control.”
“Of course you do,” said Zack, sounding warm, sounding—affectionate. “I mean, the offer always stands, Spike, but I know you got this. Sorry. You know I’m not doubting you, right? I know you can take on this whole damn world.”
It was too much. Zack’s faith in him—in his so-called courage, his even less deserved heroism—had felt like a house propped up on a rotting frame from the beginning. Cloud wanted to bask in his admiration for as long as it lasted, but the awareness that someday it would all collapse around him was a low and constant threat, like the distant buzzing of a hornet’s nest. Better to kick it down himself, now, then be hit by surprise later.
He closed his eyes and balled his fists, still facing away from Zack.
“You’re the kind of hero I wished I could be, back at Shinra—”
“Zack,” Cloud interrupted. “I’m scared every single day.”
Zack went quiet at that. Good.
“I flake out on Tifa and Barret and the kids all the time. I still dream about Sephiroth, constantly. I’m scared of falling asleep and I’m scared any time a Turk shows up to chat and I’m scared when I see Marlene and Denzel playing and happy because I don’t know when their lives will be in danger next but I know it’s inevitable and I have to be ready for it. I can’t...” His voice started to shake, and he stopped, already lightheaded from mortification at the confession.
“Cloud,” Zack said, horrified, and Cloud felt so wretched that he didn’t push Zack’s hand off when it landed on the back of his neck, even though the pity almost hurt too much to bear.
“You can’t call me a hero, Zack, not when everyone around me gets hurt—”
Zack crushed Cloud against his shoulder, silencing him, and then curled around him in a hug. “Do not goddamn say that,” he said hoarsely. “Fuck, Spike. I didn’t realize—”
That it was like this. That you’re still a mess. That you’re nothing but a coward that got lucky, Cloud finished for him.
There was a dry kiss against his hair, so tender that Cloud instantly felt like a lit match had been dropped to the bottom of his stomach. Then he was squeezed within an inch of his life.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Why would I?”
Zack groaned. “So I could do something about it. So I could help.”
Cloud felt shy and sullen all at once. “You used to help me.” It wasn’t nice; he felt bad about it as soon as he said it.
Zack frowned down at him, releasing him a little from his embrace. A hand stayed on his shoulder. “I still can.”
“Why did you stop?”
Zack stared. “I haven’t stopped. I wouldn’t stop.”
Cloud’s stomach twisted, and he had reached the limit of his pettiness. He swallowed back what he might have said, and only mumbled, “It’s different, now...”
He wondered if Zack would even understand what he meant. Maybe Zack had forgotten; maybe it was so meaningless to Zack that he didn’t even remember the difference between how he used to treat Cloud and how it was between them now.
He felt, as much as heard, Zack’s breath hitch.
Shame was hot as a live wire inside him, now, burning away any shakiness or tearfulness. He dreaded Zack’s response.
Cloud felt Zack’s thumb rub carefully over his cheek and froze. His gaze was stuck on the grass at Zack’s knees, and the little clovers growing there.
“It is different,” Zack agreed, and Cloud startled, looking up at him without bothering to hide his reaction. Zack’s brow was furrowed, deeply, and an uncharacteristic frown tugged at his lips. He traced Cloud’s cheek again; the pad of his thumb was rough, but it made the drag against Cloud’s skin all the more electric.
“I thought—” Zack started to say, and then stopped, looking so concerned that Cloud wanted to apologize immediately. “I came back, and you’d grown up so much, Cloud,” he said softly. “You’ve done so much. Achieved such amazing things...you’re not the cadet I met in Modeoheim.”
Cloud swallowed against the bitterness in his mouth at hearing his praises from Zack once more. He opened his mouth to say as much, but Zack went on:
“I didn’t want to make you think that I still saw you as small, or weak, or beneath me at all—I wanted to make sure you knew how much I admire you and believe in you, and want to know you now, as you are, as the man you became when I wasn’t here. So, um, I thought you’d appreciate not having some big dead SOLDIER guy hanging around and holding your hand and everything I do...like maybe it was better if I started givin’ you a little more respect, and not treating you as if...”
Zack wouldn’t say it aloud.
“Like what?” Cloud said, so hoarse it was almost a whisper. “As if I needed your help? Because I do, I don’t care what it looks like to you. It’s all fake.” He clenched his fists. “Nothing’s changed.”
“That’s not true at all,” Zack said. Cloud scowled at him. “It’s not! Cloud—” Zack grabbed for Cloud’s hands this time, and Cloud felt the touch magnified, three times over. “You’re amazing. You’re strong and brave and an unbelievable expert on so many things. You’ve been through so much, and you’re still going. Fuck, when I was taking you to Midgar, I worried every day that even if you managed to wake up, you’d never...” He swallowed. “But instead you’ve outshone everyone.”
Cloud must have looked miserable, because Zack pushed on without pause. “And you can still want help. Of course you can. That doesn’t mean there’s anything less exceptional about you. I’m sorry I didn’t think of that.”
“Zack,” Cloud said, feeling exposed and pathetic. He wished he could tug himself away and leave, but Zack was touching him properly for the first time in years and he would never be able to pull himself away from that.
“Sunshine,” begged Zack, and oh, the old nickname woke something inside Cloud, something that left him disoriented and wide-eyed. “I want to take care of you, and if I’ve been doing it all wrong—tell me. Please.”
Zack’s eyes were big and bright as he pleaded, and Cloud couldn’t deny him even if he wanted to.
“When you came back, and things were different,” Cloud said, strangled, “I thought you might be done. With taking care of me.” He snapped his jaw shut, the guilt instant, like an open wound. He pried it back open with effort. “It’s not as if you hadn’t already taken care of me more than you ever had to...”
Zack’s hands moved up to clutch the sides of Cloud’s neck, staring at him wildly. “I’m not done. I’ll never be done with you. Not ‘til you ask me to leave.”
“Good,” said Cloud, sounding more than a little choked up. Zack’s touch on him was light, but he still felt fixed in place, nearly trembling from Zack’s eyes—words—touch—everything. He finally touched Zack back: let his hands land on Zack’s arms and hold on for strength.
“So you’ll,” he started, hardly believing Zack was saying exactly what Cloud wanted to hear. “You’ll...”
Protect him, even though Cloud could protect himself.
Take care of him, even though Cloud didn’t need taking care of.
Help him, even if Cloud had made it this far without him, and would have muddled through on his own if Zack had never made it back.
To make Cloud feel safe.
Maybe, above it all: to feel special, in Zack’s eyes.
“Anything,” Zack promised raggedly. He drew their heads together, pressed their foreheads to touch. “You get that, right? Haven’t I already proven I’ll do anything for you?”
And Cloud did start to understand: that there was a man in front of him, on his knees, promising Cloud whatever he needed, even when he’d by all rights given too much already. That Zack had come back to life and immediately gone to Cloud’s side, and hadn’t ever made to leave it. That he’d tried to hard to meet Cloud where he was, and fit into Cloud’s life, and be what Cloud needed—even if he was all wrong about it.
Zack was his, Cloud realized. Zack had been Cloud’s for a long time.
He didn’t wait any longer: he closed the last little bit of space between them, and kissed Zack.
Zack made a sound beneath him, a sharp breath that turned into a moan, almost mournful—and then there were hands in Cloud’s hair, big and warm, tugging him closer. Cloud sank against his body, slack from a relief so sharp that is almost hurt, clanging through his body like church bells.
He couldn’t think. His mind was filled with nothing but Zack.
Cloud had no desire to stop and Zack didn’t seem about to make him, not from the way he clung to Cloud, urgent and with zero hesitation, as if he’d wanted something like this for a long time. He was unflinchingly solid as Cloud fell into him, warm and firm and so much bigger in a way that made Cloud curse, to finally have pressed all along his front. He chased down Zack’s mouth, over and over, and Zack kept opening for him, soft and just as hungry for it. Cloud’s head spun; his fingers dug into Zack tighter; he felt flushed, and dreamlike, and safe—so damn safe.
When they finally parted—slow and lingering—they only pulled away the slightest bit, just enough to be able to meet each other’s eyes. Cloud felt Zack’s breath heavy against his face, took in the wet and red swell of Zack’s lips.
“Gods, Cloud,” Zack swore. “You want this?”
“Yes,” Cloud said. “You too?”
“Yes.”
Gratitude lit up inside Cloud, like daybreak. He cradled Zack’s head and ran his fingers through Zack’s hair. “No more holding back. No more keeping your distance.”
Zack laughed, almost a choke. “It’s been killing me,” he confessed. “I won’t be able to leave you alone, now.”
“Good,” said Cloud.
Zack ran his hands up and down Cloud’s back, slow and heavy. “Do you still feel like you need more time to get your head on straight?” he asked. “I can stay here, with you, until you’re ready.”
“No,” said Cloud, reluctantly getting to his feet. Zack’s hands slipped from Cloud’s back and took hold of Cloud’s instead. “I’m ready to go home.”
Zack smiled up at him. Cloud didn’t know when Zack’s smiles would stop winding him so thoroughly: if anything it seemed to be getting worse. Meanwhile, Zack unfolded himself and stood up as well.
“Just,” said Cloud, suddenly brusque, “don’t sleep on the couch anymore.”
Zack’s eyes lit up even brighter and he swayed forward to palm Cloud’s jaw, to capture Cloud’s mouth in another kiss. It was an open-mouthed kiss, touchingly eager, and deeply promising. It was a clear enough answer.
If Tifa or Barret were surprised to see him back so soon, they didn’t say it out loud. It showed only in the twitch of Barret’s lips, the unrivaled warmth in Tifa’s welcome-home embrace, as if they didn’t want to embarrass him. The kids squeezed him extra-hard and shouted at him excitedly, though.
“Help me with the damn onions, would you,” said Barret, once they had settled, because Barret had a soft spot for cooking with family.
Cloud had no problem with joining him. He got out a knife and a cutting board. Before he could start on the job, though, Zack came up behind him and nudged him to the side, closer to the stove, then flicked on the range fan. Cloud blinked at him.
“It’ll make it hurt your eyes less,” Zack said, before putting his arms around Cloud’s waist and his chin on Cloud’s shoulder. He stood there, patiently, until Cloud unfroze himself and slowly started to chop. He felt the tops of his cheeks burn with the sudden, careless intimacy, but it was familiar nevertheless, like how a teenaged Zack would have draped himself around Cloud as if he owned him. It felt just as good as Cloud remembered. Maybe better.
Barret gave them an aggrieved look, and to Cloud’s surprise, didn’t demand Zack quit lazing about and start washing daikon or something. Cloud had the distinct impression this was a one-time act of clemency. He took it to mean Barret approved.
Dinner was happy, the easiest meal he’d even eaten with their ramshackle family. He didn’t feel like talking much, but Zack kept including him without Cloud ever needing to say a word; rubbing Cloud’s knee under the table; refilling Cloud’s glass even as he was teasing Tifa mercilessly and swapping insults with Barret. Once or twice, he caught Tifa’s eye across the table, and she was beaming. She would probably be too shy to ask him to his face, what had changed between the two of them, but he supposed it would be clear soon enough, if Zack really intended to spend the night in Cloud’s bed.
When they went upstairs for the night, Zack followed behind him on the steps. Silently, he settled one hand in the small of Cloud’s back. It didn’t matter that Cloud wouldn’t trip. What mattered was Zack was willing to catch him.
On the landing, in the dark, Cloud couldn’t wait the ten more paces to his room. He tugged Zack against him and kissed him, just for the space of a breath or two. Their bodies felt warm and nebulous, pressed together in the shadows
Zack laughed quietly and kissed Cloud’s cheek, then his ear. Cloud breathed in sharply, a little dizzy from being given everything he wanted.
“Was tonight alright?’ Zack asked. “I wasn’t too much?”
“No,” said Cloud quietly, and after a hesitation, confessed. “Zack, I missed you. I’ll never be able to have too much of you.”
Zack backed him up, down the hallway, hands on Cloud’s waist. Cloud felt the difference in their height more than ever as Zack loomed over him and his eyes shone with mako in the dark. Yes, he thought, breath catching. Yes, finally. Please.
But when Cloud’s back hit his bedroom door with a jolt that shook heat down his legs, Zack stopped, and only leaned down to press his face against Cloud’s hair.
“No more missing each other,” Zack croaked. “I’m here now. I’m taking care of you.”
Cloud believed him. He was safe.