Title: Driving Lessons
Summary: Angeal tries to teach Zack how to drive. Cloud comes along for the ride.
A/N: I know that canonically speaking, Zack didn't meet Cloud until Tseng crashes the helicopter into the mountain (how the hell do you not notice a mountain?), so this is AU, but not by much. And it's total crack, and it sucks.
"Take your foot off the gas," amazingly, Angeal's voice was calm, Cloud realized. "Gently apply pressure to the brake," then again, Cloud reflected with a grimace, a SOLDIER with mako running through their veins could probably heal from any injuries involving being turned into a pretzel around a building. The trooper wasn't sure he'd be so lucky.
"I said the brake, not the gas," Angeal said, still shockingly calm, as Cloud idly watched any Midgar citizens unlucky enough to be caught in the headlight of the truck dive out of the way.
"Sir?" he asked, his voice cracking slightly, Zack turned to give him a big smile.
"Spiky," he said in a lighthearted voice. "You don't need to call Angeal 'sir'. 'Geal is fine with being called Angeal, isn't he?" Cloud felt his heart drop a few more feet when the SOLDIER, already ignoring the road, took both hands off the wheel. One hand went to his own spikes, which he ruffled a hand through, and the other hand clapped Cloud on the shoulder.
"Uh, Angeal?" Cloud asked, sure that using the SOLDIER First Class' real name was the only way to get Zack to pay attention to the road. Angeal was definitely looking paler now. "I don't think the Public Relations Department will be pleased if Zack accidently kills someone. That would be bad publicity for ShinRa."
Angeal was getting whiter, and Cloud realized he wasn't the only one… alarmed, by Zack's enthusiastic, though not skilled, driving.
"I won't hit anyone!" Zack laughed cheerfully. "After all, I'm SOLDIER Second Class, on the job!" he jabbed his thumb at his own chest.
"Zack, sir, um," Cloud fumbled for the right title, then corrected himself, "Zack," he knew how the laidback SOLDIER disliked being called 'sir'. "How do you not know how to drive?"
"I can drive! Look at me, I'm driving, aren't I? You two just don't know what evasion tactics are, do you?" Zack's voice nearly gave Cloud a heart attack, simply because he seemed to have deluded himself that- "I'm perfectly in control," Zack added, and Cloud gulped.
"You know," Angeal mused thoughtfully, watching the speedometer. "I didn't know these things went over 100 miles-per-hour, but you're nearly at one-seventy."
"Shit," Zack said suddenly, and both Angeal and Cloud's heads snapped around to face him, as if they hadn't already been doing exactly that. "How do you stop again?"
That was it.
Cloud swore his heart stopped.
"I told you, gently apply pressure to the brake-" Angeal was never able to finish his sentence, because Zack instantly slammed his foot on the brakes, nearly sending Cloud flying from the truck bed. He had been sitting there the last half-hour, as Zack attempted to drive, and had been conversing through the glassless window. It seemed like ShinRa knew how SOLDIER's were about driving, because this was the designated 'student-driver' truck. Or it could be that Zack had sent someone flying through the window at his last lesson, and they decided that it wouldn't be productive to replace it. Either way, Cloud nearly found himself taking flying lessons.
"Ow," Cloud muttered as he slammed into the metal. Zack turned and gave Cloud an once-over.
"Spike!" he said, "I forgot you were in there. You okay?" he asked, grinning cheerfully. Cloud nodded, not bothering to speak. "What hurts?"
Cloud straightened with a grunt, "Back," he snapped, and Zack stared at him.
"Sorry!" he squeaked out, "Here's a Hi-Potion, Spike," he tossed the potion back to Cloud who fumbled and nearly dropped it. He quickly drank it, and felt the restoration of his energy as the pain abated. "Well, here goes nothing!" Zack told them cheerfully, and before either of them could lunge and stop him, he slammed on the gas (nearly sending Cloud flying, again) and was flying through the road. "This is how we drive in Gongaga!" Zack winked at Angeal, grinning all the while.
"How is there a town left?" Angeal muttered, than took over the look of a nonpanicked, cool, totally in control mentor. "Zack, stop the car," he commanded, watching a solid line of stopped SHINRA cars and other civilian trucks appear in the distance.
"Okay Angeal!" Zack chirped, still cheerfully and utterly unphased, then a slight look of confusion crossed his face.
"Stop the car," Angeal repeated, watching the car begin to speed up more. "Zack, stop the car!" Angeal snapped, and Zack turned to him.
"I'm trying!" his voice held a hint of surprise in it.
"Just put your foot on the brake!" Angeal practically snarled, his earlier calm composure obviously gone. If a SOLDIER First was panicking, Cloud mused, than a trooper had every right to have a mental breakdown. "How hard can it be?"
Shockingly enough, Cloud didn't break down, not even when the line of vehicles began to loom closer. Instead, he watched with a morbid fascination as they began heading closer to certain doom.
"Zack," Cloud told his SOLDIER friend. Zack turn to stare at Cloud. He had every reason to- the trooper had spoken in a deathly calm voice. "Why aren't you stopping the car?"
"The brake's broken!" Zack stared sheepishly at Cloud and Angeal. Both of them were wearing identical looks of horror, and Zack gulped. To demonstrate how broken the brake was, Zack began thumping his foot against the petal, slamming it down to no avail. "Stupid piece of ShinRa junk," Zack told them cheerfully.
Cloud resisted the urge to shoot Zack. It wasn't his fault that Angeal's "puppy" didn't have a brain in his head.
"Zack!" Angeal hissed suddenly, and both Cloud and Zack glanced at him. Angeal was glaring fiercely at Zack. "That's not the brake! You're hitting the gas!"
Zack blinked sheepishly at them both, found the right petal, and slammed his foot down, sending the car to a screeching halt with just inches to spare.
"Right," he told the two of them decisively, "You were saying, Angeal? I can drive perfectly fine." If the last sentence wasn't defensive, Cloud wasn't sure what was.
Cloud was positive that he heard Angeal's sarcastic response. It sounded along the lines of, "And Genesis hasn't run naked through the entire ShinRa building."
Now that would be a great story to hear, but Cloud had a feeling it would leave his sanity less then slightly intact.
It was better that he kept his mouth shut.
Even if he did wish that he had been there to witness that occurrence.
A/N-2: Unedited. Unbetaed. Cloud/Genesis that I was blindsided by (don't even like that pairing, let alone yaoi), and complete and utter crap, as well as crack.
Please review. :D Also, I have a few other FFVII stories that are waaaay better then this.