It took Cloud a moment to realize that something wasn't quite right. He unearthed his face from his pillow and rubbed his eyes, trying in sleep-fogged bewilderment to fathom what was different from usual. Still groggy and dazed, he hauled himself out of bed and trudged over to the window. When he lifted a couple slats on the blinds to peer outside, squinting against the bright sunlight that assaulted his eyes, he was surprised to note belatedly that it was light out. He'd slept in.

Well, shit.

With a stifled yawn, he turned and glanced around the inn room. The clock told him it was half past noon, and the general emptiness told him that his room mate was missing. Squall was not only long gone, presumably to work, but the gunblader had let him sleep in. Past noon! The kid was going to pay.

...Twelve fucking thirty.

Payment, Cloud decided, would be collected in the form of his sword impaling Squall, in which 'sword' was not a euphemism for anything. And in which 'impaling' did not imply anything more enjoyable than being stabbed repeatedly, and which quite possibly involved copious amounts of blood and the spilling of many organs across the floor.

Not ten minutes later, Cloud was out of the shower, sporting a flattering pair of chocobo-printed boxers and still plotting Squall's untimely demise. The front door swung abruptly open and the aforementioned brunet strolled casually into the inn room, unaware of the various gruesome fates being contemplated for him.

"Hey," he said simply, as he pulled the door closed behind him and set a styrofoam cup sporting an obnoxiously-colored straw on the dresser.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Squall raised an eyebrow, slowly, and took a long, contemplating sip of his drink before speaking at length. "Well, Strife. The numbers 'seven' and 'eight' just so happen to be subsequent, so we've been sharing a room for about a week now."

"Shut up," Cloud retorted with an exasperated sigh. "I know we're sharing a room. You think I haven't noticed your shit all over the floor? I meant why you aren't at work."

The eyebrow, which had briefly considered returning to its usual post, opted to stay up. "It's Sunday. We don't have work today."

"Bullshit," was Cloud's concise evaluation of this statement. "We don't have Sundays off."

"Did you read the contract?"

"No," the older man said curtly, unfazed. "But where I come from, you don't get days off from saving the world." Unless it was to inbreed giant chickens or to play arcade games, but that was beside the point.

Squall shrugged. "We don't on my world, either, but this place has all sorts of perks. You should really read the Fanservice Clause."

"…What kind of perks?"

"Hyne, Strife. You're kind of a brick, aren't you? We've got dressing rooms, vending machines, quicksaves, hoards of teenage girls to carry our equipment around… we even get to pick our own background music."

"You're kidding."

"No, I'm not. Look." Squall produced a large document and handed it over, waiting patiently for several moments as the older man scanned the fine print in silence. And then:

"…Mother… fucker. There's ice cream?"

Squall would have laughed, if not for the rather unfortunate fact that he was Squall Leonhart and thus incapable of expressing his amusement. "You didn't notice?"

"…Ice cream."

"Yes, Cloud. Bartz and I got some after work yesterday. We were going to ask if you wanted to come, but it looked like you were monologuing internally. Didn't want to interrupt."

The blond's eye twitched rather dangerously. "I've been living on field rations this entire time, and you've had ice cream?"

"I've been working with Zidane and Bartz," Squall said, as if this explained everything. "Of course I've had ice cream."

Cloud, still clad in nothing but his chocobo boxers and a very incredulous look, stared at him for a moment. Abruptly, he whirled around, and within five seconds was dressed and at the door. "Where's this ice cream place?"

"…Downstairs?"

--

Several minutes later found them seated on the terrace of a rather quaint little ice cream shop. The owners were twins with gravity-defying hair and a rather perplexing obsession with keys, if the store's décor was anything to go by. They had insisted that Cloud, being a first-time customer, try their trademark ice cream as a sort of initiation, and had sent him off with an innocuous-looking blue popsicle on the house.

Squall, seated across from the older man, watched closely as an inch of popsicle disappeared behind Cloud's lips.

A startled expression crossed the blond's face and he jerked the ice cream away, sputtering. "What the hell is this?"

"Zidane calls it a jizzsicle," Squall offered casually.

"…A what?"

"It's Sea Salt ice cream."

"Right." Cloud tentatively poked it with his tongue. "This is revolting."

"I like it."

"Queer."

"You wound me," Squall said sarcastically, rolling his eyes before he turned them on the other man quite pointedly. "At least I've never worn a dress in public—"

"You did not just go there."

"—or a tiara—"

"Shut up, Squall."

"—or gotten in a hot tub with guys in Speedos who called me 'Bubby'."

"Squall, I'm going to castrate you."

"I'd rather you didn't," the brunet said flippantly, before swiveling his gaze back on the older man. "It's an acquired taste."

"I don't plan on acquiring it," Cloud said, very decisively, with a stubborn scowl.

Squall rolled his eyes. "I didn't plan on it either."

"Queer."

"…Are we going to go through this again?"

--

A/N: I wasn't going to upload this, but ... what the hell. This IS my spam account and all.

I wrote this before my hiatus because my Euro teacher was like, "Men are irrelevant to society! We should get rid of them all and just keep a few vials of frozen ... stuff ... around!"

To which I responded, rather dumbfounded: "...did you just imply that we should make jizzsicles?" And the class was like, "LOL Kei made a funny."

And then while they were discussing how much it would suck / be cold to try and impregnate yourself with a jizzsicle, I shat out this fic. XD