It’s a spiral; they keep going around and around, Zack’s arm around his waist the entire way. Maybe they’re climbing into the sky and they can stand on the moon when they get to the top. Or are they supposed to ever get there? No sooner then he thinks this, they stop and he cannot believe it. There is fresh air against his face and it feels as sweet and restoring as the green energy of a restore spell.

Zack has said nothing at all. Or maybe he has and Cloud hasn’t heard him; he did notice that things aren’t quite right and it’s quite possible that he’s missed something along the way.

When air stirs against his face again, he is hardly surprised to find them now somewhere else and himself able to see again. It would be strange if they hadn’t gone elsewhere.

Different stuff under his boots now, grass and rocks and hard-packed dirt. It’s nice to stand still and not climb anymore. When he looks down, he realizes that they’re a lot higher up than he thought; maybe they climbed to the end of the world after all. Everything is an endless stretch of sky and wind and clouds beneath them.

“You shouldn’t worry, you know?” Zack sounds the same as always, a little out of breath, but still himself. It’s good to hear him talk.

“I don’t,” he replies and is mildly surprised by how his voice is able to work now. He hasn’t tried to speak before though, and perhaps he has been able to all along. Possible, anyway.

Zack looks mildly affronted. “You’re lying. I can always tell.” He lays a finger on Cloud’s lips and silences him before he can make an indignant reply. “Don’t you like the view?”

He does, so he nods reluctantly. Having his sight back is somewhat of a mixed blessing; it is beautiful but it is, after all, very high, and the edge of the cliff is very close…

But Zack doesn’t seem to care, Zack is at home on the uncertain footing as a mountain creature while Cloud carefully checks each step before he undertakes it. Funny that it should be that way, his home is in the mountains, Zack’s is in Gongaga, it should be the other way around… He doesn’t begrudge him the ability to dance so lightly on the edge but it makes him nervous and his hands want to snatch Zack back and hold as tight as they can until he’s positive no one is going anywhere.

Above him the clouds are blowing in, like dark, tattered shrouds of more solemn things and the motion of the sky begins to swirl. Zack’s hands are on his, Zack’s grip pulls him closer and they begin to turn as well, in deepening circles and spirals although he stumbles all the way.

“You shouldn’t worry so much.”

“I don’t.”

It’s all he can repeat. I don’t want to worry, I don’t want to do anything that makes you fall. I don’t want to fall.

“You’re not telling me the truth.”

 I don’t want, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t, I just want you and I think, the edge, the edge, where is it….?

“You shouldn’t worry about it.”

The motion is going too fast and he feels dizzy now, clinging on for dear life with no time to worry about where the edge is. And the rain he sensed earlier is finally coming down from the sky and taking his breath away, hot beneath his hands. But rain isn’t hot, rain is cold and rain is not red and rain may patter but it doesn’t carry that sharp report or stink of gunpowder… The sky is crying, someone is crying, he’s so confused and he can’t hear Zack anymore, the dance is over and the motion of the body close to his is just a jittering reaction to impact of something else---

And then he wakes up.

Tangled in sheets, he stays utterly still, his heart banging beneath his ribcage, so hard that he thinks it will shatter or break free or just seize up and cease to work. He hears something loud and thinks it might be himself breaking but it is only thunder, probably what woke him in the first place.

Outside, it is raining, but this is just rain, nothing else. Like his dream, it doesn’t hold any hint of being special. He tells himself that, over and over. If there is a keening, a stutter of gunfire, a whisper of something hot and red swirling away under the streaming on the window and roof and streets outside, they are overruled and born away by the scream of wind and water long before they reach Cloud’s ears.

Just a dream. Nothing special.

All he sees is the quiet glow of the alarm clock’s numbers and one of Zack’s arms, draped over his waist. They are familiar things, things that have no place in or relation to night-fear. His dream begins to fade soon enough, as he concentrates very hard on forgetting.

Take it simple. Easy does it. Finally, everything he dreamed is tiny now, like images from the wrong end of a telescope. Zack’s breath whistles in his ears the way it didn’t in the dream. But that part of the dream fades too, after a while.

The rain makes the room humid and their skin unpleasantly clinging and sticky but he pushes closer to Zack anyway. He closes his eyes, afraid to measure his own sense of loss.

***

He doesn’t know her name and he probably wouldn’t be able to recognize her on the street if he fell over her. For some reason, he imagines she looks a little like the flowers that used to sit on the windowsill. Fanciful, yes, but if someone is able to coax flowers out of the cement wasteland of Midgar, he can’t help but imagine that that person would also be able to take on the characteristics of what she tended. He isn’t sure if he could like her or not, or if he is almost-bitter over her.

Maybe he is overreacting. Maybe he’s reading into things that aren’t there.

But he’s seen the way the vase on the window still stays in the same place. The flowers died a long time ago and Zack had been the one who tossed them into the garbage can, sweeping up the wilted leaves with his hand, but the vase is still there, waiting to fill its purpose. It catches the light in the morning and sends a fragile spatter of reflections onto the opposite wall, dancing, elusive.

He wonders what her name was, how tall she was, the color of her eyes, if she ever held Zack’s hand, if she still looks for him automatically in the crowds. He wonders if she cried when the visits ceased. Probably not. To survive in Midgar you had to be able to hold yourself steady in its constant wash of humanity who didn’t give a damn about you.

Zack didn’t tell him when he had done the necessary and he hadn’t needed to ask. The flowers on the sill had just gotten older, becoming blowsy and dropping petals and then becoming completely bare. They had been early flowers, seasonal from the beginning of summer; he thinks they might have been roses but he’s not sure. When they were fresh, they were the color of the Nibelheim clouds in the rising dawn, all creamy white with a tinge of rose.

He has a vague suspicion that Zack might not have given her any definite closure by dint of simply not going back to see her at all. He can’t figure out whether this makes him feel better—Zack would rather be with him altogether--- or worse--- if he can stop seeing her so easily, will he be able to stop seeing Cloud so easily…?

…And, well, some of it is guilt. He can afford to feel sorry for her when he has what he has and what she used to have. And he has Zack, now. And she does not. He thinks so.

It doesn’t matter, all these tentative cobweb stories and things he doesn’t know for sure. Time’s wasting on his day-leave and he wouldn’t want to make his way back to the base on these streets alone and after dark.

Two rights, a left, another right, down one more street…The difficulty didn’t lie in finding a place where they sell his goal, or even finding a way to get there. Saving the gil for the object of his excursion was the worst part. He thinks uncomfortably of his mother, far away in Nibelheim getting by on what she can. Hopefully, his being out of the house has lowered the problems but he would’ve liked to send her more than he can.

At any rate, the gil lies in his pocket as a single slip of paper, an entire paycheck’s worth and barely enough for the cost of what he’s looking for. A familiar street name leaps out at him from a sign; the store should be at the end. He starts to run, arms tucked against his side to slip in and out of the people, avoiding who he can and muttering apologies to those who he jars. The mingled queries and curses and admonitions fall behind in the slipstream of his passing wake; he knows what to ignore.

Brick wall directly ahead, he skids to a stop and looks up. The shop isn’t where it should be.

He stands there, not feeling afraid or lost yet, more like irritated. He went to all this damn trouble to save the gil and get a day off, both without Zack knowing of them, and the least fate could do would be to make the stupid shop be where it’s supposed to.

Fine. Should he head toward the center of the city or away…? He wishes he had remembered to bring the map that he looked this place up on in the first place. He remembers from one trip here before that the closest reactor to here is the fifth one and if you stood with your back to the fifth reactor, you could see the center office building of Midgar and that was facing east… So if he walks that way… No, that won’t work. Holy, he hates directions.

As he goes down the street, the panic that feels like shivering bird-wings begins to stir in his stomach. He wraps his arms around his midsection and keeps walking, feeling like he stands out for miles in his civilian clothes, some rustic hick wandering in by mistake. Crowds, especially those in which he catches glimpses of Shinra uniforms, always make him uneasy. It feels like someone standing behind him pressing unrelenting on his shoulders and neck and head, harder and harder like a gravity spell until he finally wants to just lie on the ground with his hands pressed over the back of his neck, trying to breath in quick, shallow pants.

And then, just like that, the sign with a faded, painted bouquet on it appears and he nearly sags in relief. He hurries up and Planet be praised, the sign is turned to “OPEN” and he can dimly see someone tending the counter through the dirty glass doors.

Finally here. He closes his eyes for a moment and leans against the building. Not too long, people have to keep moving in Midgar or they get noticed, but it gives him enough time to force his anxiety to some small corner of his mind where it can be dealt with later. The brick feels cool against his heated forehead.

Opening his eyes, he touches the paper slip in his pocket one more time for reassurance and then pushes the door open.

The smell of green and growing things hits him immediately in the face and for a moment, it is early spring again and he is still leaving Nibelheim and he can taste the dust of the road that he waited beside, looking for a ride. This is like some bit of an outside world--- exotic, alien, not belonging in Midgar in the least.

As his eyes adjust to the dimness of the shop, he can take in other details, like the cracked tiles on the floor and the dusty shelves and the carelessly swept-aside trimmings of leaves and wilted blossoms and cut stems. This is not some hidden Elysium; this is only a tiny florist’s shop and a poorly maintained one, at that.

The old man who is tending shop gives him a flat, disinterested gaze and goes back to his perusal of a magazine that has the word “Honeybee” as part of it, the rest is covered by the man’s hand. The girl on the cover is winking salaciously over her shoulder with one leg on a chair as she adjusts her garters with an already short skirt hiked high. The same issue is in the lounge of the trooper barracks, only considerably more rumpled, along with scrawled commentary, frequently lewd, on the margins of the pages.

His heart begins to sink as he scans the vases and bouquets; not only is everything much more expensive than he expected, they don’t look right. Cold, stiff, and impersonal, nothing like the flowers that used to decorate the windowsill. He can’t help but bite back a wince when he fishes the gil from his pocket and does some calculations.

“Not much call for flowers these days, boy.”

The voice sounds rusty, like a door that hasn’t been used for a long time. He almost jumps and steels himself when a hand rests on his shoulder, less out of surprise than out of squeamish wondering as to where the hand’s been. The magazine’s clue enough.

A dry chuckle. “Going to impress your sweetheart? Let me see what you’re in the market range for.” Fingers tweeze the gil from his hand with an expert flick and he has to bite back a swift retort and a hurried snatch; bad for Shinra PR to be found accosting elderly florists in broad daylight. The old man’s eyes narrow and he starts to laugh, wheezing and then degenerating into a sort of gasping inhale-exhale. “With this?”

Fuck it, he doesn’t need this. The whole plan was doomed from the beginning, anyway. But before he can snatch his pay back and stalk out with as much dignity as he can retain with burning ears and cheeks, the man’s hand clamps on his wrist. “No, no, not so fast. There’s something for everyone, just let me see what I can set you up with…”

Unsure of just how he gets himself pulled through a curtain covering a backroom, he stumbles along after the man who seems to be getting into the stride of talking, like a dammed-up river finally let loose. “…Haven’t seen a customer in days, no appreciation for finer parts of life, I tell you. I’ve been here over fifty years since I came from Mideel and I’m waiting to move back. They say the springs’ll take at least twenty years off your bones, now I could use that…”

The hand lets go briefly as the old man stoops and drags him into a room flooded with light and the air is so damp and heavy, it feels like he’s underwater, the tinted-green translucence of the walls adding to the illusion. The old man grabs his shoulder, tugging him down with a surprising amount of strength. “See here…!”

Color, riotous splashes of red, white, bronze and yellow-gold is his first impression and the second is that these flowers are oddly… flat.

Cloud looks closer and understands, not really flowers, rather, the stripped-away petals of them, no steams, sometimes without centers, all lying in tumbled heaps. With slow fascination, he touches one and then another and then lets his hands swim through the warm, damp-velvet softness of them.

Above him, the old man chatters on with no real stop for punctuation or breath in his words. “And I can take the day’s sweeping and put ‘em in here. I always go out for at least one excursion into the flatlands and get a few of the wilder ones, not too many requests for ‘em but we can always dry ‘em for potpourri or decoration. Easier to bring back these than the whole plant, they don’t take too well to transplanting, apparently…”

Soft, so soft and they leave little streaks of pollen on his skin when he brings his hands up, as well as slight color-smears from the leaking pigments when he accidentally crushes a few. There isn’t as much scent as there would be for the whole flower but there’s enough and they’re all tangled up in each other, ghosts of scents.

“…Dianthus and dendranthema. Then we got the trichomanes and a bit of ‘sythia. I always liked the way it comes out in fall, because you can fool ‘em into thinking it’s any season as long as you’ve got the right conditions…”

The feeling of rightness as much as the lowered price is what seals it. The wooden flat is long and shallow and light when he hoists it up and walks back through the room to the cash register and main shop. The old man follows, still jabbering on cheerfully, more so now that he knows he has a sale. “I knew you were a smart boy, I could see it right off the bat. This should make her heart swoon, eh? I like you, son, so few boys around here that know what romance is. Let me see, let’s tote up the bill here…”

Cloud notes that the old man apparently doesn’t like him enough to discount his sale; all the gil goes into the cash register and none comes back in change. Doesn’t matter, he has something to show for it, even if it’s not at all what he expected.

The florist tilts the petals into a paper bag and they fall in a flame-colored tumble. When Cloud peers inside he sees that they only fill up about half the bag, will they be enough? He takes it and prepares to go but feels the hand on his shoulder once more. “Wait, boy.”

He goes back into the other room and Cloud can hear him rummaging. When he comes back, he has a small pot in his hands and the plant’s tiny flowers are bright blue, as pure and cool a shade as the sky outside the city and away from the reactors is. He thrusts it at Cloud and gives him a surprisingly genuine gap-toothed smile. “It’s an extra. Blooms in spring but this one was a surprise. Can’t sell it, you might as well take it.”

Before he can say “Thank you, “ the old man retreats behind the counter and picks up the magazine in a clear dismissal. “Hnn… giving away things for free…”

Thinking it better not to push his luck, he backs carefully out the door with the pot tucked securely in the crook of his arm. He makes his way back quickly, surprised at how little time has really passed.

The trip back to the base is shorter, most likely because he’s too busy concentrating on not dropping the pot or the bag to pay attention to the street signs. And while it makes no sense, for some reason, letting his feet carry him to where he needs to go without his mind interfering works far better than he would have thought.

…And now, as he sits nervously in the chair across from the bed, he wonders if it is not too late to get a garbage bag and call the whole thing off.

The heap looks so much smaller, sifted out on the bedspread, and nearly all of them are beginning to wilt and crumple, not quite as brilliant as they looked in the greenhouse sunlight. It’s not romantic or meaningful or even just interesting. It looks like… trash, discarded clippings that weren’t good enough to go into the arrangements. Stupid idea, fucking ridiculous more like it and there goes his month’s pay that he could have sent home and if Zack saw it, he probably would have just laughed anyway---

There is a key turning in the lock. Zack is home; the mission must be over and the more palpable signs of anxiety kick in, as his mouth is flooded with the almost-bitter taste and his palms dampen. He jumps to his feet, indecisively looking from the door to the flowers to under the bed where he might be able to hide if he’s quick enough and stops standing here, thinking about it and---

Too late.

“Hey, Cloud…” His face shifts from surprise to something unreadable as he stands in the doorway of the bedroom, keys still dangling from one hand.

He can hear everything very clearly, from the clink of the keys as Zack’s grip shifts slightly to the gasping rattle of the just-recently working heater to the beating of his own heart. He is surprised Zack can’t hear that, it seems to be so loud. And now, he can hear Zack’s footsteps as he walks across the room, his eyes flicking from Cloud to the bed. “You…?”

He nods, his heart in his throat, wondering what question he’s answering and if he even knows the answer.

“That’s…” Zack’s eyes don’t seem to be able to rest, moving from bed to Cloud to the small pot of flowers on the table, since he didn’t dare move the vase, and back to Cloud. “This what you were doing today?”

Another nod, at least he knows this question’s answer, even he didn’t--- still doesn’t--- know why he did it at all. Trying to fix things that probably aren’t even wrong, or at least, don’t want his touch. Jumping at shadows… not very smart at all.

Zack’s advance is something that frightens him, bringing greater anxiety than the idea of standing before any of the mutated creatures the textbooks illustrate, but he thinks that he would fear Zack’s retreat even more. So he stands his ground and concentrates very intently on the carpet.

“I think this one is chrysanthemum. And this looks a little like marigold.” The bed dips under Zack’s weight and a hand tugs him down to the bed as well. “The one’s in the pot… I don’t know their real name. But they’re called forget-me-nots most of the time.”

He starts to sweep them aside to clear a place for him beside Zack. The first ones in his fingers are bright yellow and almost bell-shaped, ragged and gay. They look like tiny crosses and he drops them in Zack’s hair, where they stand out as vividly as stars against the black. “He said this was sythia.”

“Forsythia,” Zack corrects, stretching out and eyeing the flowers in his hair with some bemusement.

“Forsythia,” he agrees, and solemnly kisses Zack’s shoulder simply because it is the most convenient thing at hand.

Zack pauses and then sits up to remove his shirt before lying down again. The next ones Cloud stops to look at while clearing have a strong smell still clinging to them, almost pungent, and they look like little crinkled bits of flame. The fan-shapes come in every shade of orange and red and gold around the edge and some of them still have black seeds clinging to the root of the petal. They go in a little trail down Zack’s chest before he decides they don’t like right and brushes them all off again in a flurry like sparks. There are a few petals that form faces, broad velvety ones and they go fluttering down as well.

Zack is idly sifting through what Cloud fastidiously brushes aside, and he finds a few white ones, long and narrow. When he drops them they look like snow falling. They had some strange name, long and convoluted and it began with a “c” but Cloud wants to hurry on. He kisses the hand that held them and pushes them aside, too. The swatch of cleared blanket is widening and he could lie down now but he has the feeling that it needs to be done right.

Balance is important; balance needs to be maintained. Zack taught him that. He stops to tug his own shirt off as well. Of course, it still isn’t right and everything else has to come off as well but there must be order. Boots, socks, pants, boxers, first Zack’s and then his own, although he was barefoot in the first place. Everything is methodical, neat, and entirely unlike how they normally undress. Finding comfort in something alien should feel wrong or at least odd, but it does not. He thinks, perhaps, that this is why he can be comforted by it in the first place.

With clothes relegated to their own part of the floor and nakedness relegated to its own part of his awareness, he returns to clearing the last few stray petals from his place. The last ones he pauses with are more familiar. “Roses.” He picks up one pale gold petal--- this one is more like a shell or a cup, round top tapering gently to a soft point at the bottom. His thumb fits perfectly inside and it feels almost the way Zack’s nipple does before it tightens into an aroused point, pliable and somehow softer or smoother in a different way than the rest of the skin on his body.

He drops it again and the bed is almost completely clear. He lies down, flat on his back next to Zack and touches the corner of Zack’s mouth, picking the forsythia out of Zack’s hair. “I couldn’t find the right ones.” i couldn’t find the ones she gave you.

Zack has sat up as Cloud lies down, and he pauses to consider. “I like these.” If he was thinking of different hands tending the flowers while Cloud’s own hands brushed them from the bed, he hides it well and Cloud can’t tell.

The floral scent was faint before but now it seems cloying. He tugs at Zack to lie down again and edges under him, moving into the hollow on the bed that holds Zack's warmth. It feels good to lie that way for a while, with Zack's weight pressing him into the mattress and breathing in the smell of his skin and hair. Nothing fancy about it, just the clean simplicity of it pushing past the flowers.

He finally wiggles his way out, with Zack doing nothing to hinder or help the process. Shifting, he flips to his stomach, head resting on hands and decides he doesn’t like it enough to stay that way. He rolls up against Zack, who is still content in allowing Cloud to do all adjustments, so that his own back is against Zack's chest and he can still pull one of Zack's arms over him. The crook of elbow fits right over where his neck and shoulder join, and he places the hand he has hold of against his own throat. Tucked up in Zack’s armpit, he thinks about places on the body where they fit together.

Against the skin of his throat, Zack finally moves, uncurling his fingers and letting them stroke almost absently. He can't see Zack's face this way and he has no way of telling if his eyes are distantly stroking over memories of the past or dwelling in this moment.

Zack pulls him closer and he wonders if it matters.

It bothers him when he thinks of Sephiroth still, as though he’s being unfaithful, even just in his mind. He has so much already and he can’t let this one thing go and it’s fucking selfish, but he can’t help it. He knows, in a part of him that is unchangeable in all this adaptation to training and learning, that there’ll always be that unconditional love for the General, or at least for the image and idea of Sephiroth that he carries behind his eyes. So, if Zack does choose to carry her around behind his eyes, should he even care? He doesn't have a right to feel jealous at all.

Being newly sixteen is far too complicated for his taste. He thinks that this is the age they should legally allow people to get drunk at, just knock themselves out and not wake up until the world is a less puzzling thing.

Whatever. He turns to lie face to face with Zack, who has hold of his hands and who pulls them forwards, letting one rest at his waist and the other on his shoulder. But he doesn't demand anything, just lets them stay there while he dips his head and nuzzles at the side of Cloud's neck, where it always tickles and makes him squirm.

So, he starts to touch Zack's chest, letting his hands find the best spots. He stops when Zack makes a small sound in his throat, not quite a purr, not quite a gasp or a sigh; his hands poised. New places today; one hand is wrapped around the same shoulder he kissed with the thumb smoothing along the line of collarbone, and the other is flat against the area under breastbone and above where the center of gravity would be. He inquisitively moves one finger into the hollow of navel and gets another one of those small sounds, although this one was more like a laugh.

He explores both places thoroughly with his fingers as he watches and feels almost detached, as though they were someone else's hands on Zack, gestures that are not quite sexual yet. It's almost fascinating to trace the path of blood flushing just under the skin as he drags his fingers along, making faint trails that disappear almost immediately. The give and resistance of skin is something he's familiar with on himself but it's more interesting on Zack. When he kisses where each finger touched, the skin tastes the same as it always does.

Beside him, Zack is moving almost contemplatively, stroking and petting with the curious touch of someone experimenting on that particular body plane for the first time, even if this is something he’s done time and time again. It’s comforting to be touched that way, and he brushes one hand down Cloud's side. Before it can continue down to touch his hip and thigh, Cloud shifts deliberately so that it strays to the curve of backside. "Please…"

Too early? Zack's hand leaves for a minute and tilts Cloud's face up. This should be the time to ask if this was what Cloud wanted, what Zack wanted, whether it was all right or if something was wrong. He has always waited for Zack's inquiry before.

But Zack finds whatever he needs from Cloud’s face and nods, slowly, still wearing that considering look on his face. Zack sits up a little and leans back, pulling Cloud to lie on top of him, Cloud's back to his chest. But that isn't right, he needs to see Zack's face and he wants that familiar weight, so he resists and lies flat on his back, tugging Zack to lie over him instead and lifting his legs to make room, hooking them over the other man's shoulders and hitching closer.

There's a pillow that hasn't been knocked to the floor yet and Zack fits that under the small of Cloud's back so he's supported a little better. The cool dampness that eases inside him reminds him of dew, the wet that slides off all plants, not just flowers, in the morning. Or just like simple rain, like the type that falls at all times of the day. Or maybe just wetness, nothing special. Some things are just ordinary, after all.

A twinge of pain accompanies the first tentative probing. The first one is almost always the worst, provoking the opposite effect and making him want to clench down rather than loosen into acceptance. This is always the point where he has to measure his breathes and try to find a rhythm. Odd, how actually thinking about breathing or other natural motions causes him to lose the familiar pattern. Odd, how he can think about random things in the middle of this act.

But soon Zack's other hand goes just where he wants it to go, just where he needs it and that is enough distraction as his hips lift into a rocking. One hand is cool and the other hand is warm, both are finding a rhythm to suit. Balance. 

When Zack withdraws, it feels wrong and he frowns, biting down on his lip. Zack’s motions still completely and he realizes that the frown was being taken for one of negation in the different sense and he shakes his head. He reaches up and touches Zack’s hand before lying down and waiting expectantly.

It burns at first, no matter how slow and careful they go. But it yields slowly enough, the burn shifting into a different sort of warmth that makes his breath quicken and his body shudder. Zack leans over him, and the press of his chest and grip of his hand is welcome pressure.

His own hands slide over Zack's back and buttocks; this is always the moment of danger. Zack has to stop and breathe deeply a few times before continuing, careful not to lose control right there. Once Zack starts again, Cloud makes another pass with his hands over Zack's back, more to feel the working of muscle than to maintain balance or grip.

Zack stops again and carefully gathers Cloud up in one arm, leaning back a little so that Cloud can lean into him. It seems important to keep watching Zack, but maintaining eye contact seems a little odd and so he looks at everything on Zack’s face but his eyes, at first. Eventually, the temptation is too much and he does stare at the way the iris glows a deeper, hotter blue, like the area around the very center of a candle, with that same small inward blackness. But in Zack’s eyes, the black is dilating, swallowing up the color in its expansion.

Giving in to sensation is always easy and he can never quite pinpoint the passage. Everything becomes simple sensory information--- the sound of Zack’s breath and his own, the feel of Zack inside him, slow and hot and slick, the smell of Zack’s hair, the taste of his mouth…

Zack murmurs something indistinguishable. It might be a word of comfort, it might be simple pleasure. It might be a name.

That idea no sooner enters his mind than it gets under his skin, hot and almost itching, and he is suddenly impatient. Never mind pain, never mind subtlety, he needs to know. When he deliberately pushes back to Zack’s forward press, he is gratified by another hiss of breath but it is just breath, not a word, and it makes his own mind shaky and distracted by pleasure for a minute.

Reaching up, he locks his hands around Zack’s neck and buries his face there as well as he can, twisting his neck awkwardly, no longer wanting to see Zack’s eyes. Hair slides over his fingers and tickles; all he wants now is for things to be quiet and sweet again, the type of stillness where he can lie in the crook of Zack’s arm and not have to care about things. But he still feels that itch, hot and greedy, and confusion is seeping in to ruin the sensations. His legs ache from their position but that is only a small pain in the midst of greater pleasure.

Just don’t think.

When he raises his legs to invite a deeper contact, he realizes firstly that their breath is going in tandem and secondly, that they've reached the point where it's impossible to stop, with every thrust and stroke as completely irresistible as the next breath to a drowning man. This is where he always closes his eyes. He wonders, as he does so, if Zack closes his at the same time or right after or if they always stay open.

And then he has no room in his mind for anything other than every sensation pouring through his body, pushing for the climax in a long, shuddery ride upwards. Briefly, he can wonder if he is making noise or pulling Zack's hair where he's clutching Zack around the neck, but then everything is one long outpouring that is as natural and impossible to stop as steam rising or rain falling; everything is wet and warm in a soundless, sightless world, both inside and outside him.

He can’t help but lift his hips sharply and arch his back, giving in to pleasure but not quite giving in to writhing--- more because his position leaves him unable.

He does not think.

Above him, Zack is still moving, although his rhythm is erratic now, as is his breath. His hands shift from locked around Cloud’s back to grasp his hips. One thrust, two, shallow, then deep… and then---

The feelings slow down just long enough to let Cloud hear his own name being hissed out through Zack's teeth as he presses close for one last time, and startled delight pushes the incoherence aside, like the sun coming up and drying out the dew on the grass. He had feared it would be the name of someone who wasn't in this room.

Relaxation comes slowly; it’s always a surprise how taut he is--- they both are. Anyone would think, from their shaking breath, that they're tired past moving or caring. But it feels good to lie still now. It's one of the little things that he forgets every time, so it's good to rediscover it again and again.

He shifts away from the dampness and hopes he doesn’t have flower petals stuck to any especially embarrassing parts of his body. If he cranes his neck, he can just see a scatter of color on the floor where most of them reside. He hopes that they didn't crush any when removing them and if they did, he hopes that they are not staining the floor.

Zack pulls him back, not letting him off the bed and he bites back a wince as he maneuvers his way gingerly around the damp part of the mattress so they can both be reasonably comfortable. It's not quite successful, though. Sex is good and sex is wonderful but there aren't too many parts of it that can completely make up for a bed with clean, dry sheets. Of course, this is a post-coital reflection and thus open for value assessment at another time--- say, actually during the act.

Well, if love is anything, it might as well be this, being willing to completely embarrass himself for the one he does love, messily, terribly, wonderfully. So, love isn’t flowers and perfection and dreams; love is one big sprawling mess, full of complications and imperfections. But that's okay with him.

Maybe he did waste his gil on something that wasn't even needed. But he thinks of his conclusions gained and this… and they are both pretty good compensation.

"I'll have to get up eventually, you know." The statement is addressed to his hair, in which Zack's face is currently buried.

He shakes his head, reaches with his hand to hold Zack there, and grins, forgetting Zack can't see it. "No. You don’t have to."

Zack makes that same little noise in the back of his throat and pulls him closer. "I didn’t think I’d forgotten anything. I mean, it’s not your birthday or mine or anything." He sounds slightly puzzled. "Was this---" one arm is freed to make a vague wave at the room, "---for something special?"

Doubts are stupid, most of the time. He forgets that even though they can do just as good a job of dreams and memories as looking real, they aren't always.

"Maybe." And he feels like laughing and crying at the same time and maybe they would both feel good. When he thinks about it, 'maybe' isn't always real, either, or something to be feared. It’s just a possibility.

"Then what?"

Instead if answering, he lifts his head and kisses Zack again, and on impulse he crushes a handful of petals against Zack’s chest, and they release an almost-bitter--- but not really bitter at all, after all, these are flowers--- autumnal smell.

He doesn't think he ever really hated her, whoever she was. He probably would've liked her.

Zack pulls the blankets up and they go to sleep on an early-autumn late afternoon, lazy gold light still coming in through the window to make the petals briefly beautiful, and then to wilt them away quietly into faded scraps of foliage.

The next day, Zack puts the vase away when he’s at drills, and the pot of flowers sits on the windowsill. He waters it every day.

***

Silence spells feel like drowning.

Literally, he isn’t too far from the truth. To work magic depends on several conditions, one of which is the audible activation spell. A voice is needed. Silence spells kill magic ability by going to the root of the problem and paralyzing the voice and thus, the necessary words. It feels like a sudden rush of warm water filling mouth and nose and lungs, it always makes him want to spit afterwards but nothing comes out.

Sometimes… sometimes he’s afraid that the same thing will happen to him in life and that they’ll run out of words, be paralyzed from completion. Everything that comes out of their mouths is stupid-simple, trying to fill a silence that shouldn’t be there, trying to spit out what won’t come. Would you bang on the pipes in the shower; they’ve been acting funny? Have you learned this pattern drill yet? Can you use an esuna on a hangover? No? You tried? Really? Oh.

Stupid. He doesn’t expect everything to be profound or anything but it’s odd and a little frightening to be talking back and forth and suddenly just peter out slowly, like a failed materia-casting. And then they’re left with nothing to do except smile back and forth uneasily and make a hasty departure to guard duty or a meeting or just the next room.

It follows them into the bedroom, though. And it wouldn’t be so bad if he could shake that feeling that he needs to be constantly reinforcing his presence here, to prove over and over again that there’s a reason Zack needs him or can use him.

He wouldn’t have thought before, that words played a role in bed. In bed, there are words, of course--- yes, don’t stop, right there, yes --- and not always particularly coherent ones. And there are slow, easy conversations in the late night afterwards and sometimes in the late morning, no luxury greater than getting to sleep late with a lover on an off-day.

It shouldn’t matter that much. It’s just that words have always been part of the Soldier duty: the casual inflected tone, the careful linger on a certain syllable, the glibness, the ability to rattle off strings of profanities that his mother would’ve slapped him for saying--- everything that manages to give the air of attitude to die for and worldliness that no one can touch.  Words mean a lot to him, they’ve never come easily and one of the first reasons he never ran from Zack was that they actually could talk. Conversation making has never been his strong point; no one was more surprised than he was when the formerly cautious replies started to come easily and as naturally as breathing.

And when there are no words, he is afraid that Zack has too much time to consider and weigh him and find the measure wanting.

It’s not just lack of words; it’s a silence that stills everything. Zack moves in his sleep. He tosses, turns, shifts, and finds just that right spot, a process which generally involves stealing a vast majority of the bed space, pillows, blankets, and eventually, Cloud’s mobility. It’s not bad to fall asleep pinned tight against the mattress or with arms slung heavy around his waist or with his face tucked up so he’s just on eye level with the hollow of Zack’s throat. Hot, a little cramped occasionally but most definitely not bad. There’s been a few times when the pins-and-needles sensation of blood-deprived limbs has woken him up; all that takes is a sleepy shove and a slight squirm to a more comfortable position.

So the worst nights are when Zack comes in late from a mission or some high-level meeting, slipping between the sheets still smelling of gun-smoke and raw steel. He never moves then, just falls into bed and stays on his side in a dead slumber, never turning or shifting until morning. Cloud has to make his own warmth on those nights; it doesn’t seem right to twine around him and steal his heat while he lies there so still and tired.

Sometimes, he can’t stop himself from wondering if that is what Zack would look like if he was dead.

Eventually though, he starts to move again and when Cloud wakes up in the middle of the night to feel a hand going low to places previously untraveled, clear intent in every gleeful finger, the shape of a smile pressed against his shoulder… he knows things are back to normal and it’s even better somehow. With the contrast of before, anyway.

It’s frightening to want to be with someone this much. It’s frightening to know how badly it will hurt if it ends. It’s frightening to give up this much for one person.

But he wonders if it frightens Zack more, if it scares the person who’s in control to know he has that much power over someone else. He wonders if Zack ever gets tired of being the stronger one and if that’s what his stillness is all about on those nights.

…He wonders if Zack is ever frightened. His hands, with their broken nails and larger knuckles never falter and they never shake, no matter what.

Saying the right things isn’t always simple. It isn’t even possible, sometimes. But the silences that come and go always depart eventually and if that creates pauses to consider and weigh things, well, then, sometimes you just need the time to think and find the right combinations of syllables and their meanings, implied or open.

And Zack stays and lets him stay and he thinks--- he knows that he will find the right things to say.

Some things just work out that way.

***

There is a brief moment of déjà vu when he moves into Zack’s arms on the dance floor, of the same motion into the same embrace and the memory of lists that has his name written in angry red ink on the wrong side of the column. But it passes and now… this. Everyone must be looking at them and he closes his eyes so he won’t see the wrong thing or expression and spoil this moment.

Outside this building, autumn is finally properly here. The winds taste a little like the faded air from a long-shut spice cabinet, like someone crushed dry and crumbly handfuls of mint, nutmeg, cinnamon and something like woodsmoke onto the winds that blow into Midgar, shadowy and elusive undertones that lay buried under the smell of chemicals and mako. The same winds swirl madly in the streets, blowing all the garbage into scitterscatter patterns as they wage weatherwar. On these certain streets at night, he can almost imagine Midgar as it must seem to so many, the City of Lights, the World’s Center.

Inside this building, the heat is stifling because the pipes have broken and there’re too many people too close together. The only lights here flicker madly and in alarming color combinations, skirling red-blue-violet-yellow-green over his face and hands and Zack asks him to slow-dance, in front of the gods and everyone, for the first time ever. He could remember this building of brick and wild color and too-loud music for that alone.

This isn’t one of the places Zack normally brings him to and he can vaguely hear Zack telling him to get a good look as he tries to gape at everything with some semblance of intelligence. They simply call it ‘the Den’ and it’s not quite a brothel, not quite a club, but something infinitely more sordid and elegant somehow. The incongruous lights and music only make it more surreal.

There are high-ranking officials from both the Shinra military and government out slumming tonight and the bought women hanging on the arms of these men and sitting on their laps are sharp and glittering, with exquisite faces and jaded eyes, only the best for our boys, ha ha. The officials have their ties loosened, sleeves rolled up, and wallets out; the officers and Soldiers flaunt their scars, let their medals glint, and show pistol-holsters rather than sword handles tonight. Everyone gleams with double-meanings and perspiration.

He’s never asked after the origin of the name. He’s never really needed to, notorious as it is for officers’ only, admittance for guests depending on persuasiveness of accompanying officer and the amount of the bribery. But now… Well. He still isn’t sure how Zack pulled him past the bouncer with a grin and a wave, much less how Zack talked him into this.

Probably just because it was Zack and because it was what Zack wanted to do on a Saturday night, he admits to himself. Not much else involved, certainly not any expressed desire of his own.

The noise swells and the entire celebration presses close around him and Zack presses close to him. The air is thick with the smell of sweat and alcohol and cigarette smoke; it stings his eyes and he is fairly sure that it isn’t even necessary to light one, all that would be needed is to breathe deeply.

He can feel eyes on them, questioning, raking across his face and back like fingernails and he does not care.

He gives in to the temptation and glances upward out of curiosity on how they must look to others. Zack catches the glance and holds it for a heartbeat, smiling in a way that makes him need to close his eyes again so he won’t grin back like a fool and feel tempted to mimic on the dance floor what they only do in the privacy of the bedroom.

There is a flash, a remembrance of something that was almost but not a dance on an unknown cliff, a feeling of dreams deferred.

For some reason… somehow… this dance twinges at him just a little, the way it not-quite hurts when he bumps a bruise that hasn’t quite finished healing, although the discoloration is gone. Because he can never, ever see the General doing this, just like he can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like to stand by his side in battle or to receive his kiss. .

It all has to do with the reality of things, the dispelling of myths and waking up from dreams.

Maybe it was the desire of his that they come here, something picked up by Zack that he didn’t even know he was giving off, Zack quietly fixing something that Cloud didn’t even know was broken or wrong. This isn’t the same as dancing with Zack at some anonymous hole-in-the-wall where the faces have no names and no one really gives a damn about who’s holding who’s hand and the gender involved anyway. Here is different, here they can find half of Shinra on a slow night and almost all of it on the weekend.

…And all of it right now is looking at them.

And there’s a good chance that all those eyes moving across his back are taking consideration of the fact he’s obviously not a Soldier or officer or official or even female, noting it in their mental cache of news to pass on; First Class Soldier Zackary Donovan with a boy in his arms. Oh, not just any kid, didn’t you hear? He’s one of the batch that failed this year, he’s been living in Donovan’s apartments for…shit, it must be months now. I didn’t think it was true but, well, here they are.

Yes, so, here they are. Well, whatever. Let them talk. If Zack’s willing, then he’s willing. He can be passed on in rumors, stared at, and stare back at the insinuations and flat-out words that will be present, come Monday with the return to duty. It doesn’t matter, anyway.

He can be brave for this and for Zack. He can be… the way Zack is now, not minding, not caring, doing something simply because it’s the right thing to do and because he knows it will make Cloud feel better.

And in those first five minutes of dancing (simple, very simple because the music is slow and neither of them feels like doing more than holding on and moving very slightly side to side), nothing else matters. And he loves the world completely and wholly with no reservations simply because he has something of his own so fine, so wonderful, that he can only feel sorry for everyone else because they don’t have it. The world could end, the Plate could collapse and he wouldn’t care at all.

They both drink enough to feel like everything is worth laughing about and to make getting home slightly more challenging than usual, familiar streets curving left when he’s sure they went straight before, and signposts on the entirely wrong corners. Even getting lost and passing the same building three times isn’t so bad--- it’s downright funny when Zack is looking just as befuddled as he is and staring at the building as though he can force it to disappear with sheer mind power, while simultaneously threatening to do excruciatingly embarrassing things to one Cloud Strife if he won’t stop snickering and let him concentrate.

Eventually though, Zack finds the right street and they reach home with no more misadventures, tumbling in through the door to the blessedly stationary bed with barely a stop to strip off clothing and use the bathroom. And even though the night is finally over, glamour and atmosphere gone, the sky is tinged with dawn and the promise of being completely brain-dead tomorrow, he wouldn’t have any part of the night any other way. Or… any other person.

And he guesses that’s why he loves Zack. He always knows--- says--- does--- is the right thing.

***

Everything seems to be working out. He thinks.

Step, lunge, turn, thrust, parry.

This would be a lot easier if they actually taught the stupid drill in person instead of having a mat--a mat for god’s sake, with neat numbered black footprints painted on it in an incomprehensible puzzle of steps to follow. He can see it now, every trooper and Soldier in Shinra’s ranks having to pause in the heat of battle and stare at their tangled feet, trying to figure out which number they took a wrong turn on--- was it number 5 with the left-foot-square or number 9 with the reverse switch? Maybe Shinra will issue each of them a mini-mat to carry around for reference.

Step, lunge, turn, thrust, parry.

He packed his duffel several hours ago and he’s been in the gym since. Probably a bad move on his part; the showers are closed by now and by the time he finishes walking home to the apartment, he’ll be tired and sweat-drenched and in no way able to enjoy this last night on base.

Step, step, turn, leap, slash, stumble.

Going to Nibelheim. Going… home? He doesn’t think so; he’s been through that argument before.

Retreat, square away, slide into defensive stance.

The sword isn’t quite comfortable in his hands. There’s a small line of blisters cropping up on the ridge of his hands where the fingers meet the palm and the ones that have burst are stinging from the sweat. His gun is back at the apartment also, carefully cleaned, oiled, and ready to be loaded at a moment’s notice.

Assess the situation. Devise a strategy. Determine advantages of offense or defense.

All there is to do now is to wait.

Execute your action.

Step, lunge, turn, thrust, parry, aw, shit---

---The sword spins out of his hands and hits the wall in a discordant crash of steel.

He wishes he could laugh it off or hit something or just simply howl in frustration but he’s never been able to do things like that, or never been good at them, anyway. So he stands and stares at the wall without really seeing it, twisting his empty hands against each other and feeling the sting of broken blisters.

The door opens behind him and he can feel the situation being taken in with a long slow look; Zack’s sword lying on the ground, he himself hunched over, gasping for breath and rubbing his hands. Stupid. Just---stupid.

Zack acts as though nothing is unusual about this or wrong, walking in quietly and kicking the rumpled mat aside. He comes up behind him, taking care to pick up the pilfered sword first and prop it against the wall before he wraps his arms around Cloud’s waist and fits his chin just above Cloud’s head, ignoring his heavy breathing and his shaking. “Hey,” he says. “ Hey. Something wrong?”

Yes, he wants to say, of course there’s something wrong, because everything is too right. I fell in love with you and you actually went and chose me when you could have had anyone else and nothing is ever this good or this easy, ever. You’re the realest thing I’ve ever been near in my life, you stand out like a guidepost in all this strangeness of uniforms and weapons and life, you’re my reference point for every single thing and if I lost you, I don’t know how I’d find my bearings. And I don’t even know if you can fall in love when you’re sixteen and I’m afraid of your trust in me and I don’t know what to do.

He doesn’t say any of that, though.

“I’m going to mess up in front of everyone. Everyone’s going to see...” He trails off. Everyone from Nibelheim, everyone in Soldier… In front of Sephiroth. In front of Zack.

He can feel the shape Zack’s mouth makes against the back of his neck and he doesn’t know if it’s a smile or not; odd, he could always tell in bed. He doesn’t know if he wants it to be a smile or not either, for Zack to tell him it’s nothing, don’t worry, just empty fears--- or for him to offer real advice to combat a real problem.

“You will?” Zack sounds honestly curious, as though the thought has never occurred to him.

If only he wasn’t so kind all the time… it’s always harder. He shrugs. “I’m not a Soldier…” His hands hurt, reminding him of that fact.

Zack shrugs back in reply, he can feel the working of muscle. “No. You’re not.” He reaches forward and lifts one of Cloud’s hands with his own, examining it carefully. “Does it matter?”

He closes the fingers, carefully flexing and winces a little. Zack’s hand closes over his own, warm, he must have kept them in his pockets all the way over. He exhales a breath he doesn’t even know he has been holding, trying to make it clear, not just to Zack but for himself. “I told them… I told them I would.” Zack’s thumbnail is ragged as always; he chews it when he’s distracted and he can feel the edge scrape lightly on his skin as it moves back and forth, absently. Naturally. “I have to prove… I have to do something.”

It is a smile against his neck. And then, Zack swings him around so that they face each other and he can see the curve of lips, forehead to forehead as they are. “You do things with me.”

And the smile feels like sunshine against his face and everything is somehow… lighter. It’s okay to give a friendly shove at the arms wrapped around his waist and to lean into them at the same time, in the position where he fits and is at home. “Not like that, you idiot,” he mumbles but he can’t keep from smiling in return.

He can feel breath washing across his temple, Zack’s heartbeat against his cheek, and his own breath calming to match that tempo. Some nights in bed, he thinks they aren’t really separate people, some nights they are wrapped so close and holding so tight that they only seem one figure after all.

“You don’t need,” Zack says, tapping one finger against Cloud’s temple, “to do anything. To prove anything.” And then, as an afterthought, “To me, either.”

“That’s…” He trails off, still not being able to keep from smiling. “…Yeah. Thanks.”

And it makes him feel like--- for some reason, somehow, somewhere inside himself, he feels a little like--- dancing.

He is still talking, Zack is listening, and he had once thought how odd it was to know Zack was saying something and not know what he was saying, it’s odder still to hear something he himself has been trying to say all along and never heard. “I would. For you.”

Right before the kiss descends--- “Just me?”

One more smile. “Yeah.”

And he realizes, after he does it, finally… that the right thing is not so difficult after all.

~Owari~

***

End Notes:

Firstly, yes, you are correct in noticing that this bears several blatant similarities to “A Taste of Cinnamon” by Sora no Kumo, also known as Catt. Written roughly around the same time as her story as a sort of parallel, several sessions of idea swapping resulted in such.

Secondly… erh, flower symbolism? Sorry. Those florists are a crafty bunch. Just look at Weiss Kreuz.

Chrysanthemum, Dendranthema: Cheerfulness. Loveliness. White signifies Truth.

Roses: Yellow signifies Joy and Happiness but it can also mean Jealousy.

Forsythia: Anticipation

Forget-Me-Not, part of the trichomanes: Memories. True Love.

Pansy: Thoughtful reflection

Marigold, Dianthus: Grief. Sacred Affection. Marigolds are the flowers for the dead.