Warning & Disclaimer: Yaoi, WAFF. All characters belong to Squaresoft.

When he was fourteen, Cloud used to keep his secrets in a shoebox, the things that couldn’t be locked in his head, and he kept that box wedged behind a loose ceiling panel in the third floor bathroom, standing tiptoe on the sinks to reach. He knew what the other troopers would do if they found his box, thought he knew and that was good enough, bad enough, that he kept it hidden.

These were the things that Cloud had that no one else did. A discarded xerox form with a fragment of Sephiroth’s signature, some clear green glass, a black pen that wouldn’t write, a bottlecap, an artificial pearl earring--- things that were meaningless to everyone but Cloud, his secrets, his puzzle, and no one else knew how to make the pieces fit. Or even if they fit together-- sometimes Cloud realizes he is forgetting a little himself, but it used to make him feel better to have them anyway, solid objects to be held in the palm of his hand and carefully stroked with the pad of a finger.

It made Cloud feel better to have them, because they were solid. The first months for him were bad ones, and he drew his comfort from his box. Change too often hurt him, and he liked that these secrets rarely changed.

These are the things about Sephiroth that Cloud knows that no one else does. That he brushes his teeth with his left hand despite being right-handed, that he thinks many blankets on a bed is too indulgent but will allow Cloud to be a potential heat source. That his sheets are always black and very clean, that the size of the bed invites a sprawl but somehow they always end up tangled together…

That his eyes in the dark can still make Cloud startle, but there is never any real fear to be found in the bedroom. That his hands (fingertip to palm base) can reach from Cloud’s forehead to the lower curve of his cheek and his hands, ungloved, have no scar but one. That his posture and the proud way he carries his height are too deeply ingrained to fall away even in the bedroom and that he bows his head only when he kisses and when his hair is being combed.

That Sephiroth loves his hair being combed, almost (but not quite) more than kissing.

It makes Cloud feel even better to know these things, even if they aren’t solid objects, or perhaps because they are not. Somehow, not having to hold on to them makes all the difference. Or maybe it’s that they keep being replaced for him, given over and over. He is young enough to suppose they will never be taken away, young enough to live from day to day. And life is good.

Now he is sixteen, and he notices his box-secrets are getting dustier. Cloud supposes that is all right, that this is a sort of change for the better.