Note: Please don't waste your time googling the translations for the foreign words in this - it'll all become clear by the end of the fic :) Title refers to the amount of languages there are on Earth (according to Google. Where would I be without you, Google?)
Disclaimer: Final Fantasy 7 and its characters are nothing to do with me, this fanfic is merely for my own (and maybe other people's) entertainment, and I'm not profiting from this.
Cloud had had a horrible day. He had to get up at 6am (which wasn't terribly early, but Cloud wasn't really a morning person) to start his classes, which had lasted until midday. He'd had five minutes to quickly eat a sandwich and drink an entire bottle of coke in two gulps, before running off to training. For some absurd reason his sergeant was making him and his comrades practice sparring through lunch, insisting that they were "all a bunch of pansies" and that they "needed all the practice they could get". Grudgingly, Cloud and co. continued throwing fake punches and kicks at each other until 4pm, and then sat, covered in sweat, through more classes.
By 6pm, the end of the working day, Cloud was thoroughly exhausted, miserable, and smelled disgusting. Before showering, however, he headed back to his shared dorm to grab his cell phone (strictly forbidden while working) to call Zack, who picked up on the second ring.
"Hey, chocobohead!"
Cloud laughed softly at the greeting. "Is that an affectionate nickname or a thinly-veiled insult?" Zack merely returned a laugh in response, assuming that Cloud already knew the answer to this question, so the blonde continued. "I- I'm really sorry, but I don't think I'll be able to make it over tonight," he was supposed to be going over Zack's apartment for a Wutainese take-out and a movie, "I'm... well, I smell disgusting, and I feel awful. Today's been rough."
"Yeah, I understand. I figured it would be a bad day when you said you had to skip lunch..."
Cloud's heart broke slightly at his boyfriend's tone of voice. "I'm really sorry, Zack. I just feel awful and all of my muscles ache. If I came over I would just be sat complaining and muttering insults directed at Sergeant. I'm sorry, I know you love Wutainese food."
"Y-yeah. It's okay though, I mean... maybe tomorrow?"
"Of course! Seven?"
"Seven! My apartment."
"I'll see you there, I promise."
"Even if you lose an appendage sparring tomorrow?"
Cloud laughed, "even if I lose two appendages."
"Three?
"Hey, now, let's not get carried away..." They both laughed, sitting in silence for a few seconds before Cloud spoke again. "I really have to go shower, Zack. The smell of my BO is making me vomit a little."
Zack laughed loudly, "Attractive. Go on then, Spike. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Yeah..." The pair sat in their respective rooms, in a I-don't-want-to-hang-up-but-I-really-should limbo for a while, before Cloud interrupted their comfortable silence.
"Bye."
"Bye, blondie."
"...Bye"
Zack laughed again, bid his boyfriend a farewell with "Cloud, go shower. I can smell you from here", and then hung up.
Cloud returned from his shower to find Zack stood outside his dorm holding a piece of paper. The black-haired man smiled, uncharacteristically bashfully, and waved at the blonde, who waved back in complete befuddlement.
"What are you doing here?"
"It's nice to see you, too." Zack laughed softly. "Listen, you don't know any other languages, do you?"
Cloud frowned at the randomness of this question, but the puppy look on Zack's face was silently begging him not to ask. And no one can resist the puppy face. "No, I don't. Well, I know how to say hello in, like, French and German, but that's about it. Nibelheim was pretty isolated."
Zack smiled, looking relieved. "That's, er, a shame..." the SOLDIER looked down at the piece of paper in his hands for a few seconds, before holding it out to Cloud, face down. Cloud went to take it, but Zack held onto it lightly. "If I give you this, do you promise that you won't try and find out what it means or show it to anyone? It's really important to me."
Cloud looked at his boyfriend skeptically "I.. don't really understand why you're asking me to do this."
"Do you trust me?"
The blonde blushed "O-of course, it's just-"
"Then please don't ask questions. I promise I'll tell you soon."
Cloud looked into the glowing, mako blue eyes of the taller man before him for a few seconds, before nodding certainly. "I promise I won't find out what it means." he said, before taking the piece of paper from his boyfriend's hand.
The raven-haired man smiled brightly, causing Cloud to blink and smile reflexively. "Great!" the taller man reached down and brushed the blonde's damp hair out of his face, before leaning in to kiss his forehead softly, instantly causing the blonde's cheeks to colour themselves in a light shade of pink. "I'll see you tomorrow, then, Spike." He said casually as he walked away.
Cloud glanced at the note, and then frowned at it. "How do you even pronounce that?"
Szeretlek
The next day, a Sunday (Cloud had had the morning off - though he'd had training for a few hours on the afternoon - and was feeling a lot less miserable), the two shared some quality time slurping noodles and laughing at stupid little things (like Cloud's terrible pronunciation of the name of his favourite Wutainese dish, which assured Zack that he was absolutely clueless when it came to languages), thoroughly enjoying each others company even though they weren't doing anything special. At the end of the night, Zack gave the chocobo-haired blonde another scrap of paper, kissed him on the cheek, and slapped is ass as he left his apartment, laughing before he shut the door. Cloud stood outside his boyfriend's apartment, trying to regain composure and restore his face to its normal colour. He looked down at the note in his hand, just as perplexed as he was last night.
Aku mencintaimu
Over the next four days, Cloud received a kiss on the cheek or forehead and a piece of paper with something foreign written in Zack's only-just-legible scrawl every day, becoming more and more confused as the week went on. When Friday rolled around, Cloud was highly aware that it was the day before their anniversary. He'd spent the last month begging Zack to give him some inkling of what to buy him, but he'd always insisted that he didn't want anything but to spend the day with Cloud, who had somehow managed to get the afternoon off (his sergeant refused outright to give him the morning off as well) for the occasion. Cloud was, of course, completely endeared yet completely distraught with this response, and had resorted to asking Kunsel for advice. The third class had initially laughed at Cloud's evident distress, but had then advised the younger man to buy him something, in his words "Cloud-y." Cloud had been even more distraught (and sufficiently mortified) with this response, but had eventually decided that it was probably the easiest solution. He had thus taken a quick trip to the market to buy two boxes (one for him, one for Zack) of his favourite chocolates from Nibelheim.
On Friday night, Cloud sat in his room staring absent-mindedly at said box of chocolates, before turning his attention to the notes that were strewn across his desk. He picked them all up and read them, wondering if some of them were even languages, and not just something Zack had thought of when he was drunk, or the result of some inane keyboard-mashing.
But then he looked at the latest one, which he recognised to be French, and a sudden sense of extremely uncertain understanding clicked within his mind, making him feel very slow indeed.
Je t'aime
A week before this, Zack had slid his tray of food down on a table in the cafeteria, taking a seat opposite Kunsel and sighing.
"Oh, hi Zack. Where's the wifey?" the 3rd class smirked as his friend glared back at him.
"Cloud has extra training today."
"They're not letting the kid have lunch?"
"Apparently not. You know what the sergeants are like, treating the infantrymen like machines..." the raven-haired First trailed off, looking a bit disinterested in what he was saying.
Kunsel stared at the man in front of him for a few seconds, reading his expression, before looking at him concernedly "Dude, what's eating you?"
"It's our anniversary next week, yeah? and I don't know what to do..."
"Take him out for a meal? To Golden Saucer?"
"Cloud gets motion sickness, idiot." Zack laughed affectionately at the memory of the one time Cloud foolishly accepted his invitation to Golden Saucer. He'd spent most of the night clutching his stomach and begging Zack not to make him go on any more rides. "No, I'd already thought of what to do, I'm going to cook dinner-"
"Poor Cloud doesn't stand a chance of surviving that-"
"Watch it, Kuns. Basically, we're having a night in. But I don't- I mean-" Zack looked at his comrade, visibly embarrassed but not blushing, "What I meant was... we've already been going out a year but neither of us have dropped the L bomb yet."
"the L bomb?" Kunsel was completely lost. Zack just looked at him pointedly while the gears in his mind turned slowly. "OH. Love. Right. Carry on."
Zack rolled his eyes and smiled before continuing. "See, I don't want to scare Cloud off. You know how he is, and I couldn't bear it if..." Zack trailed off again, shrugging his shoulders desperately. Kunsel understood what he meant, though.
"Well... how about you sort of ease him into it...?"
Zack looked at the 3rd class blankly, before an idea suddenly popped into his mind, replacing the blank stare with a smirk. "Say, Kunsel... you got any post-it notes?"
After lunch, Zack and Kunsel had gone back to Zack's apartment to look up ways of saying "I love you" in different languages. Kunsel had admitted that this eccentric plan wasn't entirely what he'd had in mind, but assured Zack that since Cloud, too, was a backwater boy, he wouldn't have any idea what the notes said, and that this probably wouldn't result in Cloud running for the hills.
Their anniversary rolled around, and Cloud turned up at Zack's apartment at 3pm, freshly showered after his classes that morning, holding his chocolates behind his back in a rather shaky hand.
Zack opened the door and pulled the blonde inside with a hug, which Cloud couldn't reciprocate because his hands were now pinned behind his back. Zack released the blonde, finally shutting the door, before turning back to Cloud.
"Happy anniversary, Cloudy!"
"Ha-happy anniversary, Zack..." the blonde held the chocolates out in front of him, arms still shaking, and looked off to the side in embarrassment. Zack looked between the Nibelheimian chocolates in front of him and his boyfriend's adorable expression, torn between pulling him into another hug and scolding him for buying a present. Eventually, he settled for the latter, starting with an over-dramatic, fake angry sigh.
"Clooooooooud. I told you not to get me anything!"
"I know, but... everyone knows that no one really means it when they say that. So I asked Kunsel and he told me to get you something... um-"
Zack raised an eyebrow, urging the blonde to continue with a wave of his hand.
"Something... me-y."
"You-y?"
"Me-y."
"So you got me chocolate?"
Cloud blushed "I-is it an inadequate present? too cliche? they've always been my favourites, s-so, I though-"
Zack couldn't handle the blonde's adorable expressions anymore, so he pulled him into a chaste kiss on the lips before taking the chocolates from his hands.
"Thank you, Cloud." he said as he opened the box enthusiastically - who doesn't love chocolate, honestly? "Which are your favourites?" Cloud pointed at one of the smaller ones at the edge, and Zack picked one out, popping it into his mouth, before picking up another one of the same kind and offering it to Cloud
"They're yours, Zack. I bought a box for myself and I've already finished it, so I probably shouldn't-" at this point, the blonde had to stop talking because his mouth was suddenly filled with one of his favourite chocolates. He pouted around it, but then bit it in half and savoured the taste. Zack watched the younger man for a moment before finally doing the same, mumbling appreciatively as the taste hit his tongue.
"You've got good taste, kid." he concluded, ruffling the other man's blond spikes. Cloud blushed in response, looking downwards.
After a few minutes of (somewhat tense; neither of them really knew how to handle anniversaries) idle chatter about their respective days, Zack informed Cloud that he was making lasagna. Cloud beamed at this; he'd sampled Zack's cooking only twice before, the first time being lasagna and the second time... well, Cloud could never tell what it was; it was too burned. Regardless, the lasagna had been the best thing to hit his tastebuds, and he swore to Zack that it was the best lasagna he'd ever had. Which was completely true, since it was also the first lasagna he'd ever had.
The pair wandered into Zack's relatively small kitchen, Cloud taking a seat on the worktop next to where Zack was preparing the different layers that would make up the lasagna. The two of them talked constantly - easily, while Zack prepared the food, and Cloud watched with anticipation. He really loved food.
After Zack put the prepared layers into the oven to cook, he turned to the blonde, who was swinging his feet childishly from his seat on the counter. Zack smiled and made his way over to him, the blonde only looking up as his boyfriend stood between his legs, pulling him into a hug, their heights reversed due to Cloud's seating. The blonde wrapped his arms around Zack's shoulders, and kissed him softly on the forehead, the touch of his lips so light that Zack barely felt it. The raven-haired soldier smiled into the nape of Cloud's neck, pulling his head back and loosening the grip of his hug slightly in order to look at the blonde.
"Cloud." he said, not seeming to have anything to add to this.
"...Zack?"
"I- you-" Cloud looked down into those entrancing blue eyes, unsure what kind of expression he was pulling because he wasn't sure how he felt. Whatever expression it was, though, seemed to affect whatever it was Zack was trying to iterate. "Damn it, don't look at me like that." The older man looked at the floor, at a loss. "Why is this so hard?" he stepped back ever so slightly, unconsciously, giving Cloud just enough room to hop down off the counter and stand before him.
The blonde sighed, reluctantly. "Zack," he began, fumbling around in his pocket, looking just as embarrassed as Zack did, if not more. "do you know what this says?" he said, pulling out a piece of paper. Zack squinted at it, tilting his head in all directions before deciding that it wasn't supposed to resemble any form of readable language.
"Um, no... I don't speak... is that Thai, or something?"
"Korean." Cloud said factually. "It says 'saranghae'" Cloud put an unnecessary amount of effort into trying to pronounce it right in an attempt to make it sound nice, kicking himself when it came out sounding awful.
"Cool." Zack responded, as if he'd completely understood what the blonde was saying. "You know I have no idea what that means, right?"
The blonde smiled, and then frowned. "I was kind of hoping you did, to be honest. It saves me a lot of..." the blonde searched for a word, realising that he wasn't really in a position to think, since his brain was in a nervous shut down.
"Zack, u-um," the blonde was turning redder with every syllable he managed to stutter out, causing the older man to frown at him concernedly at his beetroot-tinted features. The blonde noticed this and tried to regain his senses, succeeding slightly. "I read your notes and I didn't understand them at all except for the French one but even then I didn't really understand it I don't think but I'm going to say this anyway" the blonde slurred out in a single breath. He looked up at Zack, trying to read his expression, laughing nervously when he saw his boyfriend's eyebrows completely knitted together, trying to understand what the hell Cloud had just said. "Never mind..." Cloud sighed, feeling like he just lost all of his pride. "A-anyway, um... 'sa-... saranghae' means..." the blonde looked down, willing himself to continue. "It means 'I love you'" he mumbled to the floor, Zack just barely catching what he said.
"W- say- what?"
"i-it means-"
"No, Cloud," the taller man grabbed the embarrassed blonde's chin, gently raising it so that he was forced to look at him - though, of course, he averted his gaze, looking at the oven. "Look at me. Look at me and just tell me what it means. Please."
Cloud looked straight into Zack's eyes, his own filled with tears of embarrassment, making Zack's breath catch in his throat a little. "It means I love you." the blonde paused, biting his lip and looking down, before looking back up at Zack, his tears finally spilling over, convinced that he was making a complete idiot out of himself. "I love you, Zack."
With this, Zack grabbed Cloud rather swiftly, earning a soft squeak from the blonde as he was pulled into a hug filled with more affection than he'd ever felt in his life. He reciprocated, wrapping his arms tightly around his taller boyfriend's stomach.
"I love you, too, Cloud." Zack pressed his cheek against Cloud's teary one, before pulling back for a quick kiss.
They continued the embrace for several minutes, sniffing their few, happy tears back at alternate intervals, before Zack pulled back and looked at Cloud skeptically.
"Did you translate my notes?"
"No, that's what I said... I- I vaguely understood the French one, and I just- I decided that..." Cloud bit his lip shyly before continuing, "that I couldn't just let you make that kind of effort while I do nothing."
"But I did it because-"
"I know why you did it, Zack. You did it for the same reason I decided that I had to do something in return; because I- I-" Cloud suddenly seemed a lot less verbally adept. Zack smiled affectionately, and Cloud pulled him in for a kiss instead, hoping that it would somehow convey what he wanted to say.
It apparently worked, judging by the way Zack only broke the kiss in order to mutter a quiet "I love you, too" against the other's lips. Cloud blushed again, squeaking as Zack put the pressure back on his lips, before redirecting his attention to the blonde's neck. "So much," he continued, mumbling against Cloud's skin, making him shudder slightly, which caused Zack to smile as he continued kissing his neck. He quickly made his way back up to the blonde's mouth, kissing him softly before prying his mouth open by running his tongue along his lips. Cloud obliged happily, gently brushing his tongue against Zack's. The raven-haired man hummed his approval, causing Cloud to smile gently into the kiss as he reached his hands up to wrap them around Zack's neck, slowly moving them up to latch his fingers into the crazy black spikes at the back of his head. After a few more minutes of this, the pair broke the kiss in favour for a few short-but-sweet ones, before staring at each other endlessly.
Or, seemingly so; the oven began to beep wildly, informing the pair that their lasagna was overcooked. Zack opened the drawer of the oven, wailing sadly at his slightly-blackened lasagna. He looked up at the equally distressed blonde apologetically.
"Should we order pizza instead?" Zack offered, setting the lasagna down on the counter.
Cloud looked at the dish, realising that he'd kind of- okay, really been looking forward to it. He looked wistfully back at his boyfriend. "I'd still rather have the lasagna, if that's okay with you..."
Zack smiled brightly, ruffling the blonde's unruly spikes before going to get some plates so he could split the smokey pasta dish between the two of them.
A/N: So, it should be apparent by now that all of those little snippets meant "I love you". While I know how to say it in a few languages, they're all more commonly-known ones, so I opted for using google translate to find out how to say it in a few of the less-known languages, just for kicks. So, um, if you speak Hungarian (Szeretlek) or Slovak (Aku mencintaimu) and I just butchered it, I'm sorry! Please feel free to correct me! Same goes for the French and Korean, but they're two more widely-known ones and I'm more positive that they're correct...
Anyway, how was it? Too cheesy? I was going for fluffy and then it just ended up going down the cheesy route. This is the first fic I've posted in about two years (I deleted all my old ones earlier this year because they weren't all that good), so I'm feeling kind of nervous about posting it.
I look forward to hearing how I did! Thank you all for reading :) *gives everyone a bit of Zack's lasagna* (I don't really recommend eating it, though, even if Cloud says it's good... you might be better off keeping it as a memento, or a pet). If you review, then you can have one of Cloud's chocolates, too :D you're actually safe to eat those.
I'll shut up now. Thank you!
~ Strawberry Nixx