Brothers on a Hotel Bed
Warnings: Very mild swearing. Sort of slash.
Disclaimer: Cloud, Zack and Tifa all belong to Square Enix. The title comes from the song by Death Cab For Cutie.
Notes: Just a wee overgrown drabble about angsty Cloud.
Cloud curled up on the bed, the side of his face and hair pressed against the scratchy pillow, and remembered Zack.
He remembered when one night in a hotel room they'd lain a bit like this, their backs to the world, knees and foreheads touching. He still remembered the wallpaper – it had been yellow with little roses on it and it had peeled away in the corner, the plaster underneath showing, a bit like an open wound. Zack's eyes had been so blue, unrealistically blue, shadows in the room softening the atmosphere and his…friend's? features to something as unreal as his mako-enhanced irises.
Cloud still remembered the sleepy thoughts that had wound their way through his head that night, still remembered the vague fear of how close they were, still remembered dozily counting the streaks of luminescent green that shot out from Zack's pupils and then realizing how odd that was, remembered laughing at his own stupidity.
He closed his own mako-blue eyes, looked at the inside of his head for a moment, opened them.
"Hi," said Zack. "How's it going, Spikey?"
Cloud's bottom lip trembled and he felt like he was sixteen years old again – was that Zack's breath on his face? No, it wasn't, because Zack didn't breathe.
"Don't look so sad," Zack murmured.
Cloud tried to say something to his friend, his best friend, but it wouldn't come to his lips, it was all twisted up in his throat and his chest which wouldn't stop hurting, and no, that wasn't a rose on the wall, it was a scribble of Denzel's.
"Cloud," Zack said softly. "Why are you so sad?"
"Why do you think, asshole?" whispered Cloud brokenly, and reached out for him but there was nothing but air. So instead he grabbed a fistful of sheet and held it tight, because if he held on to something then he wouldn't fall apart and dissolve into little pieces.
He stared at Denzel's scribble on the wall, held on even though it hurt his fingers to grasp something so tightly.
Two hours later, Tifa came in to find him asleep with the light on, the spikes of his hair dented and the pattern of the pillow imprinted on his cheek.
She put a blanket over him, and Zack smiled.
"I always liked her," the SOLDIER said to no one in particular, and left them in peace.