I started writing this one for Ayahalloway on Tumblr months and months ago. She is an unbelievably patient woman.

Cloud woke up under a warm duvet. He sighed, content. Happy, even.

Then he was suspicious.

He opened his eyes. It was a complicated process that involved gradually convincing himself that the muscles around his eyes still existed, and then cajoling them into a warm-up before finally heaving his lids apart. He was in a dark room, and a strange bed. Zack's bed.

He shifted up on his elbows and fumbled for the bedside table. Why hadn't his alarm gone off? His fingernails tinged against a half-empty glass of water, but he found nothing else. Nothing PHS-shaped. He turned over and blinked stupidly at the empty space on the other side of the bed, where Zack's feet had earlier been poking out by the headboard. He was alone.

Zack had been a godsend last night, at ridiculous o'clock in the morning when Cloud was pacing the halls of Shinra HQ for the third night in a row. He hadn't asked what was going on: hadn't demanded to know about the troopers shredding Cloud's clothes, or stealing his PHS and sending lewd messages to his mother, or putting that live, furious cactuar in his pillowcase.

He'd just looked at him, a quick glance to sum up Cloud's pathetic size and muscle mass, and his pale, exhausted face, and said, 'Want to crash on my couch for a while?'

Of course, the kind gesture had been somewhat ruined when Cloud got to Zack's apartment and realised he didn't actually have a couch.

'Oh,' Zack said, scratching the back of his neck, 'yeah. Reno kind of stayed a while ago and trashed, like, everything … look, it's not a problem. You can top-and-tail with me.'

What Zack lacked in living room furnishings he made up for in the size of his bed. The more-than-king-size, big-enough-for-three-Zacks, buried-under-a-million-pillows bed. Even sharing with Zack, who snored like a chainsaw and somehow managed to steal the blankets when the blankets were big enough to build a circus tent, it had been the best night's sleep Cloud had had in weeks. Maybe even since he came to Shinra.

And, apparently, it had also been the best morning's sleep. Cloud had set his PHS alarm to wake him, painfully, at 05:00 hours. He felt far too well-rested for only a few hours sleep.

His CO was going to kill him. It'd be laps, all day, and then he'd miss out on even more important training that the others would lord over him while they stuffed his mattress with chocobo shit and leered at him in the showers.

His sat up fully, clutching the duvet. 'Zack?'

The door opened and light spilled in. Cloud winced and then blinked at the tall silhouette that was Zack in the doorway, before he kicked the door shut and sauntered in.

He sprawled on the end of the bed, head at Cloud's feet. 'I'm here. You can start breathing normally again whenever you like.'

'Zack, I have drills! My alarm—'

Zack stuck his arm out and waved Cloud's PHS at him. 'Relax. I borrowed it to call your CO. You have the day off.'

Cloud took the PHS and held it in both hands. 'I do?'

'Yup.' Zack tucked his arms up under his head, mako-eyes glowing through the dark and spectacularly fucking up Cloud's readjusting eyesight. 'I told him you helped me out of a scrape and needed a day off to recover.'

'You can do that?'

'I'm a SOLDIER, First Class,' Zack waved one arm lazily in the air. 'I could make your CO parade through Sector Six with his pants down if I wanted.'

He dropped his arm and it landed on Cloud's leg, heavy through the blanket, just under his knee.

'Really?' Cloud said. Zack lifted his head to look at him, grinning.

'Why? Want revenge for something?'

Cloud realised he was smiling as he shook his head. 'Not on my CO.'

'Hey, give me names and I will give you results,' Zack said earnestly, and Cloud laughed.

'Isn't that an abuse of power? The director would be pissed.'

'Pfft. I go drinking with Turks; there's no kind of trouble I haven't already been in twice before. Lazard doesn't scare me.'

At the word 'trouble', Zack stretched his arm up, hand sliding over Cloud's knee and coming to rest on his thigh, palm-up, not groping but still very much there.

'Um,' Cloud said.

Zack was still smiling, but it wasn't as broad, and he was peering as if trying to gauge Cloud's reaction. Cloud's face was suddenly burning hot.

Zack rolled onto his side, flipping his hand over. He squeezed Cloud's leg. The blood not already in Cloud's cheeks rushed downwards.

'Only if you want to,' Zack said. 'You don't have to fuck to stay here. You can crash as long as you want.'

Cloud's brain missed a turn on Zack Logic Road and went swerving into a ditch. Zack Fair was propositioning him, and he thought he was going to say no? But Zack was already lifting his hand away.

Cloud jerked forwards to kiss him, missed, and barely stopped short of head butting him in the face. His mouth mashed against the corner of Zack's eyebrow. He took it, tried to make it as kiss-like as possible, and then said,

'Wait. Yes.'

Zack's grin was back, in full force, so fast Cloud expected it to send his facial muscles into spasm. He leaned over and kissed him again, actually on the mouth this time. Zack's lips were dry and soft, and Zack sat up, gently pushing Cloud down into the pillows. A calloused hand ran down the side of his face and cupped the back of his neck.

Zack's arms were warm, solid pillars to his either side. Cloud reached up and put a hand in the black tangles of Zack's hair, and Zack kissed him and then moaned against his lips when Cloud arched up to press up against him. Pulling back, Zack reached over his shoulder and yanked his shirt off, and then shucked his trousers down and kicked them away. Cloud reached out, almost reverently, and Zack caught his hands.

'Oh, no,' he said. 'You must be at least this naked to ride.'

Releasing Cloud's hands, he shifted back and whipped the duvet away. Cloud flinched at the sudden chill, but started fumbling at his shirt – the loose, oversized t-shirt Zack had lent him to sleep in – nonetheless. Zack's hands were suddenly there to help, not quite gentle anymore, but firm, practised. Cloud could feel his own pulse in the corners of his jaw.

He actually heard his boxers hit the wall when Zack threw them aside. Then Zack was over him again, head down to kiss his neck, hips pressing down. Cloud curled his fingers into the sheets and gripped. The chill was gone; he was warm.

'Fuck,' he whispered. 'Fuck.'

Twenty minutes later, cleaned up and sipping slightly too-sweet coffee in Zack's kitchen, Cloud said, 'I'm starting to think you had an ulterior motive in calling my CO, you know.'

'I had nothing but your health in mind,' Zack said, and grabbed Cloud's arse as he reached for more sugar.

'What a scandal.' Cloud leaned back against the counter. 'First Class SOLDIER abducts rookie trooper for sex.'

Zack was quiet for a moment, and then he said, 'How old are you?'

Cloud's hands tightened on the mug, and then reflexively loosened against the heat. 'Sixteen is legal in Nibelheim,' he said to his bare toes, curled against the cool kitchen tiles.

Again, Zack was quiet for too long. 'And you are sixteen?' He didn't sound angry, or even worried – just resigned, as if he'd spilled his drink and knew he'd have to clean it up.

Cloud didn't answer and Zack sighed,

'Sephiroth is gonna kill me.'

'Sorry,' Cloud said, for lack of anything better.

'S'all right,' Zack said, staring pensively into his coffee. 'I don't think Seph's ever yelled at me for jailbait before. He might actually use his full-level materia for this one. It'll be a new experience for both of us.'

Cloud cringed. So much for 'no kind of trouble I haven't already been in twice before'.

Zack was looking down at him with a calculating expression. 'Unless…'

'Unless?'

Zack grinned and sipped his coffee. 'Wanna sleep with my boss so he doesn't kill me for sleeping with you?'

'Oh.' Cloud looked away and shrugged, nonchalant. He face was scarlet. 'Yeah, sure.'

Zack nudged him and he almost tipped coffee down his shirt. 'Don't sound too eager there, kiddo. You might break my heart.'

'Hey, you suggested it.' The flush deepened to what was probably a plum-purple, but Cloud was smiling.

'Well,' Zack set his mug down on the side, all business. 'Let me tell you, Sephiroth is a scary bastard in battle. Doubly so in bed. If you're gonna screw him, you'll need some practise.'

As Zack put his hands on Cloud's shoulders and steered him back into the bedroom, Cloud said, 'How do you know what Sephiroth's like in bed?'

'All will be revealed in time, my pupil.'

Cloud managed to swig down the last of his coffee before Zack plucked the mug away and set it on the bedside table.