WARNING: Parody, some mature themes, creepy!Rufus and a little canon-bending. Read at your own risk! :)
This is nominally set in the same universe as Pain Indexing (.net/s/7584003/1/Pain_Indexing), but you can have one without the other, I think.
It had all started innocently enough. Out drinking until two am and watching Tifa's boobs as they went back and forth above the bar, Reno mentioned to Zack that he had never, ever slept with Sephiroth. For someone who had slept with almost everyone in Midgar and absolutely everyone in Shinra (except the fatties), this was fairly extraordinary.
"I think he's like, represhed, or something," Reno said. "I wash all like, 'Do me, General Sephiroth!' for like a week, but then I got bored and fucked that chick in resheption. And her sister. And their brother."
Zack was sad. He didn't like to hear about other people's pain. Maybe, he thought, he could help Sephiroth overcome his repression. He had noticed Sephiroth did seem kind of tense – he had nearly torn Zack's head off that one time when he'd accidentally shredded Sephiroth's very detailed four-months-in-the-writing field reports instead of the obsolete weapons specs he was supposed to be destroying – and he felt bad for him. How could anyone relax if they weren't getting laid? Also, Zack thought, he could make a bet out of it with Reno.
"I bet," he said, lifting his head off the bar, peanut shells sticking to his face, "I bet, that I can get General Shephirosh to shleep with me in one month," he finished.
Reno looked highly sceptical. "What doesh the winner get?" he asked.
Zack thought about it for a few minutes. "The loser," he said, "Hash to spend, like, a month's worth of pay on drinksh for the other person." At that moment, Tifa bent over to retrieve something from beneath the bar. "Alsho, alsho," Zack continued, "The loser isn't allowed to look at Tifa's boobies for a month."
Reno considered. "That's like, pretty high stakes," he said. "I don't know if not looking at Tifa's bazoongas is an option. I mean, you may as well say, don't look at the Planet."
"Well, it would be a boring bet if it was easy," said Zack.
Reno thought about it for a minute. Then he went to sleep. When he woke up, he said: "Okay! That shounds pretty good. Hope you're ready to kiss a month's pay and Tifa's boobs goodbye for a month."
"No, I think it is you who ish not going to be not looked at Tifa'sh boobs," said Zack, falling off his barstool and smacking his head against the floor.
Zack's campaign got off to a bad start. Subtle hints such as 'Can I offer you a backrub, Sir?' were responded to with suspicion and questions such as 'Don't you have any work to be getting on with?' which was usually followed by, 'Because if not, I can give you some.' Sexy replies of 'What kind of work would you like to give me, Sir?' only ever ended up landing Zack with a thousand piles of hardware requisition files, all of which needed 'signed by proxy for General Sephiroth' written on them and his signature. Clearly, a new approach was needed.
"Uh oh," Zack said, wandering into Sephiroth's office.
"Zack, my door was shut. Can you please knock in future?" Sephiroth said, not looking up from his paperwork.
"Why, what are you doing in here?" Zack asked seductively.
"Work," Sephiroth said, ticking some boxes. Zack was not discouraged.
"I spilled some coffee on my pants," he offered.
Sephiroth still didn't look up. "Well, go down to the store and ask the quartermaster for some new ones," he said. Zack wondered what was wrong with Sephiroth. Had he never seen porn? Did he not know what spilling coffee on your pants and then loudly drawing attention to this fact meant? Actually, Zack thought, probably not. He stared thoughtfully at Sephiroth, and wondered what his reaction would be if he just turned up at his house with a porn film and some lube and…
"What?" Sephiroth asked irritably, finally looking up from his paperwork.
"Your hair looks nice today," Zack said lamely. Well, it worked with girls. A tiny crease appeared between Sephiroth's eyes. Zack could have sworn he saw his mouth twitch a little.
"It looks the same as it always does," Sephiroth muttered, returning to his work. Zack, however, was not fooled. He happened to know Sephiroth was incredibly vain about his hair. He had seen him arranging it whilst looking at his reflection in his office window when he thought no one was looking. He had put 'compliments about hair' on his list of 'Ways To Get Into Sephiroth's Pants', right after 'sword double entendres'.
"Are you going to get some new pants or what?" Sephiroth asked. Baby steps, baby steps, Zack thought.
"Yes, Sir. I'll go right now," Zack paused in the doorway. "Maybe you could help me take these ones off?" he asked.
"What?" Sephiroth looked up. "Zack, I'm very busy, and I'm not your mother." Zack admitted defeat and headed out the door, when Sephiroth called him back. "Actually, Zack, come back here for a moment." Hopefully, Zack swung back around. Sephiroth finished filling out a report about recent terrorist activities and passed it to him. "Take that to Tseng on your way down to the store, please? Make sure you get him to sign it, then bring it back here." Zack mutely took the piece of paper and wandered out.
Sephiroth, for his part, did not even know where to start comprehending what had gotten into Zack lately. At first, he had been pleased. Zack, for the first time, actually seemed to be offering to do work. However, at some point, Sephiroth had become aware of an ulterior motive. Possibly it was when he had asked Zack to bring in a file from the Turks, and Zack had made a great show of dropping it, then bending over and waving his butt in Sephiroth's direction for a good five minutes while he picked it up. Sephiroth perhaps would not have noticed anything amiss even then (he had been filling out spec sheets and hadn't even looked up for the first three minutes), except for the fact that that horrible Reno had also spent a good week and a half doing that to him whenever he had gone to see Tseng about anything, and Reno's motives were never ulterior (in this case, he seemed to have two – one, seduce Sephiroth, and two, drive Tseng into a barely concealed jealous rage).
Sephiroth was slightly baffled and more than a little annoyed. He had always had concerns about the amount of time Zack spent 'liaising' with Reno, and now whatever was wrong with that awful Turk seemed also to have infected Zack.
Sephiroth tapped his pencil against the sheet of paper he had been writing on and gazed out of his office window. What to do? He knew from experience that calling attention to any of Zack's ridiculous behaviours only seemed to encourage him. Shouting at him didn't seem to make any visible impact either, other than spurring him on to do even more idiotic things. Sephiroth had to confess himself at a loss, which was not something he had to do very often, and it irritated him no end. Starry-eyed cadets he could deal with – it was pretty much what he was there for. He was pretty sure it was the reason Shinra wouldn't let him cut his hair – so newly recruited country boys could comfort themselves with the idea that it was probably okay to get a crush on a guy, if the guy in question had long hair like a girl. His hair was something else Sephiroth fretted over. No matter what he did, it always looked perfect. He poked at it a little with his fingers, looking at his reflection in the window. He never even had to brush it. Zack never brushed his hair either, but his hair was a tangled mass of horror that Sephiroth doubted even Masamune cut through. It made Sephiroth consider the rumours that maybe, just maybe, he had been grown in a jar after all – hair this perfect was just unnatural.
Sephiroth sighed and returned to the problem at hand. After a moment or two's consideration, he decided to simply ignore it. With any luck, Zack would, like Reno, apparently become bored with the venture and leave him alone.
Sephiroth got on with his paperwork.
"I don't know, I think you're right, Reno," Zack said. He and Reno were hanging out by the pool of Rufus' flat, which he rented with company money and without his father's knowledge. It was conveniently located right next to the flat Shinra leased to whoever was the head of SOLDIER at the time, which Rufus had of course known – he had gotten Reno to hack into Reeve's computer to find out (he could have just gone to look it up or asked Reeve himself, but then his father might have come to hear of it and want to know why Rufus was sniffing around the property market there when he had just given him a perfectly good villa in Costa del Sol for his birthday). The first Sephiroth had known about it was when he had emerged onto his balcony one morning to do his exercises, only to be met by Rufus standing on the balcony next door, holding a martini, receiving a blow job from Reno and leering at him.
Reno strutted around the pool, shirtless and carrying a pair of hedgeclippers. He leaned over and waggled his butt at Rufus, who was sitting on the first floor balcony with a drink and a pair of binoculars. Reno stood up again and stretched conspicuously. Rufus lifted the binoculars.
"It's like I said, Zack. The guy didn't even want to sleep with me. I mean, have you ever heard of such a thing?" Reno asked, leaning over again and snipping at some of the poolside shrubbery. "There might be something wrong with him. I mean, really." Reno discarded the hedgeclippers. "Aw, man," he announced. "Now my pants are chafing me." He started unbuttoning them. Meanwhile, Rufus had had to put his drink down. Binoculars stayed up, though.
Zack kicked at a couple of the branches Reno had snipped off. "What do you mean, really something wrong with him?" he asked.
Reno kicked his pants into the pool and wandered around in his undies for a bit.
"I mean, you know, maybe he was born without bits," Reno said in a stage whisper. "You know, there's all those rumours that he wasn't born, he was grown. Maybe they grew him without bits."
"Gentlemen, I can assure that that isn't the case," Rufus said, suddenly appearing at the back door, re-buttoning his pants.
"How do you know?" Reno asked.
"Oh, please," Rufus said. "I have access to all the files in Shinra. I've seen Professor Hojo's lab reports on General Sephiroth. Naturally they include pictures."
Reno started to look interested. "You have nude photos of Sephiroth? And you never offered to show me any of them?" he asked. He sounded a bit peeved. Rufus chuckled. It was unpleasant.
"I have to have something for myself," he said. Then he looked thoughtful. "However, I will show them to you on one condition."
Reno's eyes narrowed. He knew all about Rufus' conditions. "Oh yes?" he said.
Rufus chuckled again. He pointed at Zack. "Make out with him for a while and you can look at them all you want," he said.
"Pppffft," went Reno. "I thought you meant something hard. We do that all the time!" he said. Then he turned and shouted up at the flat next door. "You hear that, Sephiroth? Rufus has naked pictures of you and he's going to let us look at them! Hey! Hey! HEY! SEPHIROTH! NAKED PICTURES! OF YOU! YOU MAY AS WELL SCREW ZACK NOW, HE'S SEEN YOU NAKED!"
The only thing that achieved was the slamming of the balcony door. Zack kind of wished he had known it was Sephiroth's flat before he had started discussing this topic with Reno. Oh well! He thought. What's done is done. At least he wouldn't need to pussyfoot around anymore, seeing as he was pretty sure even without Reno shouting at him, Sephiroth would have heard the entire conversation anyway. Then, a thought occurred to him.
"Reno, why did you just encourage Sephiroth to sleep with me?" he asked. "That would mean you lose the bet."
"Well my friend," Reno said, making pistol fingers at Zack, "if and when it happens, I'm expecting photos. That shit's hot."
Now that he no longer had to attempt subtlety, Zack felt like a much freer agent. Sadly, it didn't seem to make any difference at all. Turning up naked in Sephiroth's backyard and attempting to serenade him only got vases thrown at him, or, if Sephiroth was in a particularly bad mood, the building's security guards and their dogs. Zack was mildly insulted that Sephiroth didn't come down and try to kill him himself. At least then he would have been able to flex a little as he was running away and show Sephiroth what he was missing. The most maddening thing was that, no matter what Zack did, Sephiroth didn't treat him even slightly differently when they were at work. Well. Except for the fact that Zack often caught him staring murderously at him through the glass wall of his office, and had stopped asking him to bring him his coffee, after Zack had dropped hints that he had started making it with 'love'. Zack was, at last, beginning to feel a little discouraged. He made Sephiroth little cards, and later found them in the bin. He started signing his name with little 'x'es after it whenever he had to send any reports to Sephiroth. Sephiroth never commented. Once, he had spent a very embarrassing hour sitting on Sephiroth's lap as he completely ignored him and continued signing his paperwork, even after Zack removed his pants and wiggled suggestively. The worst thing of all was that at one point Heidegger had come in and Sephiroth stood up, causing Zack to fall on the floor and hurt his butt.
At last, it was day 30 of 31 of Reno and Zack's bet, and Zack was ready to admit defeat. Sephiroth was never going to sleep with him. Or probably anyone. Ever. Maybe Reno was right. Maybe he had been born without bits, despite Rufus' photos. Or maybe they didn't work, or something. To say goodbye to the last booze money he'd see in a very long time, Zack went out alone and got steaming drunk. Wandering back towards SOLDIER barracks, he happened to pass by Sephiroth's apartment complex. Well, Zack thought, the least he could do was apologise to Sephiroth for irritating the crap out of him for the past month – give credit where it was due, he hadn't flipped out and killed him. Zack swiped his forged security card (Reno, who knew a guy, had had it made), wandered down the corridor to Sephiroth's door, and knocked loudly. After a moment or two, Sephiroth's head appeared. He had on his usual poker face. Zack was pretty sure that meant he was very, very angry.
"Uhhh, like, hi," Zack said. "I jusht, I jusht wanted to apologise for like, being so rude over the pasht month, I was like, it was a bet and stuff," he said, teetering back and forth as spoke. His vision was getting pretty blurred, but he was fairly sure he could see Sephiroth's eyebrows drawing together. Uh-oh. That was a pretty bad sign. He had better finish up and go home. "Sho, uhh, sorry. You are like, a really good boss, and I'm like, really sorry I looked at pictures of your dick. Though congratulations on that, by the way," he said. Sephiroth's mouth was slightly open. Uhhhhhhh, thought Zack. "And sho, and sho, I'm going to leave you alone now, okay? Okay. Bye-bye," he finished, turning to go.
"OKAY, FINE," shouted Sephiroth, grabbing the back of his hair and dragging him backwards into the apartment. "IF IT WILL MAKE YOU LEAVE ME ALONE, I'LL FUCKING SLEEP WITH YOU, THEN."
"Are you happy now?" Sephiroth asked once everything was over and done with.
Zack scrunched his nose slightly. "Well, I've had better," he said.
Sephiroth's outward expression didn't change. "What?" he said. This was a new experience for him. He was used to being pretty much awesome at everything (and even if he wasn't, people were generally too frightened to tell him so), and being told for the first time ever that he wasn't the best at something was not sitting very well with him at all.
"Yeah, well, you didn't really do very much, did you? Except make my ass hurt," Zack said helpfully. "I mean, even Reno was much more considerate –"
"Wait, you've slept with Reno?" Sephiroth asked, a glimmer of horror appearing in his eyes. Oh God. He wracked his brains for any information he could remember from the briefings about sexually transmitted diseases they gave all new SOLDIERs before deploying them anywhere. Unfortunately, thought Sephiroth, they really only covered what to do if you thought you had contracted one STD, there was really no help for you in case you suspected you had contracted all STDs known to humanity. Sephiroth wondered, if he scrubbed really hard, with dishwashing detergent or something –
"… I mean, it was nice and all, but I couldn't breathe for some of it because your quilt kept getting in my mouth…"
It suddenly came to Sephiroth that Zack was still talking.
"… and also, I mean, foreplay is not going to kill you, seriously! Lube might have been a nice touch, too…"
Sephiroth stood up. Zack took the opportunity to lean over and cop a feel.
"Stop that!" Sephiroth said, slapping his hand.
"Aw, man," Zack said, sitting up and scratching his head. Sephiroth threw his boots at him.
"Get out," he said.
Zack frowned. "Look, there's no need to be so touchy, I was just offering constructive criticism," he said. "Geeze, if I'd known you were going to get all sensitive about it, I would have just –"
Sephiroth pinched the bridge of his nose between this thumb and forefinger. He was really not in the mood for this. Now, because of Zack, he would have to go and see Hojo, which was already one of his least favourite things to do, let alone when he'd have to explain it was because he needed to be retroactively inoculated against at least sixty-three varieties of herpes and who knew what else besides. It would probably have been cleaner to have sex with a public toilet than somewhere Reno had previously been, Sephiroth thought, scowling. Which, come to think of it, was 99% of all public toilets in Midgar anyway. Reno used them as alternatives to hotels (also gutters, nature strips, other people's houses. Shinra owned the apartment complex he lived in so he couldn't be evicted, but sometimes the walk home was just too much to be bothered with). Putting on a dishwashing glove, he picked up Zack's pants between a thumb and forefinger, transported them across the room, opened his door and dropped them in the hallway.
"I suggest you follow them," he said to Zack.
Zack, predictably, got the huffs. "Fine, I'm going," he said, stalking out the door, clutching his boots. "God, you're so rude," he continued from outside. "Just because you're the General you think you can tell everyone what to do, but perhaps if you just took that pole out of your butt for one second –" Sephiroth shut the door in his face. He exhaled mightily, then looked down. Well, it hadn't turned black or dropped off yet, so that was something to be thankful for.
Zack stared pissily at the door for a good three minutes. He considered shouting 'Fine then, General Fuckface!' through the door. However, he decided, just as two elderly ladies walked by, he had his dignity to consider. He was just about to put his pants on and go home, when Reno wandered up the hallway, talking on his mobile phone.
"My undies are really constricting," he was saying. "Yeah, I'm taking them off right now. Oh, hang on, I have someone on the other line. Hello? Oh, it's you. What's that? Your hand is where?" Then he noticed Zack. "Oh, wait a moment, I'll call you back… yeah, I know you're really close, but I'll call you right back, okay? Byeeee!" Reno hung up, and raised one eyebrow at Zack. "Still no luck then, Romeo?" he asked.
"Yes, actually," Zack said as haughtily as he could. "I just had tons of hot sex with Sephiroth." So, it had actually been less hot and more hurty, but Zack didn't see the point in telling Reno that. Reno looked sceptical.
"Hmm," he said. "Did you get any photos?"
"No," said Zack. "I was too busy having hot sex. You know. With Sephiroth. That means you owe me a month's pay worth of drinks at Seventh Heaven, and ogling rights to Tifa's tits."
Reno was unruffled. "I'm afraid unless you can give me some kind of hard evidence –" Reno really wanted to make some kind of smutty pun here, but couldn't think of one in time "—then the bet is still on."
"No no, I assure you he's telling the truth," said Rufus, appearing in his doorway and looking suave, despite the fact his pants were undone. "I had the builders come in the other week and thin the wall from my side," he said. "You can hear everything," he added. He meant it, too. If he hadn't already known it because he bribed the building manager to show him the pay-per-view bill from Sephiroth's room every month, he would have been surprised by how many weepy romance films he watched on cable.
At that moment, Sephiroth's door opened again. Sephiroth leaned out, still starkers, and holding Zack's boxer shorts. He got as far as "Oh, and you forgot the –" before noticing Reno and Rufus.
"Oh, my," said Reno.
The end.