Outside he walked at a rapid pace swearing wildly to himself. What is wrong with you? Why can't you stand to be alone with her?? He mentally kicked himself. 24 years old, he thought, and still he couldn't figure out the adult thing to do.

Whenever he looked at her these days, he was caught in a web of admiration and even lust, as so demonstrated by his dreams last night. He couldn't bring himself, however, to admit even one fraction of that to her or even to himself. He was so afraid of getting close to her in any possible way imaginable, and his brain played through again and again every word he had said to her that day to analyze where he might have goofed. Cloud imagined briefly what would have happened had he not broken away from that spark, from that instant, really, and kissed her.

He shook his head violently at the thought of it. He couldn't do it. He didn't know how to anything romantic, not even in his wildest dreams. His dreams of her were deeply, shamefully sexual in ways he didn't think he was capable. He was wrong to have had them. He was wrong to want his best friend in this sick, sick way.

It was probably just an extension of messed-up brain functions anyway, this feeling. He didn't know where his natural self finished and his cerebrally altered self began. Again his thoughts trailed off to a basement years in the past...

No, he thought. Not now. Not now. But it was useless.

Before his years-long detainment, he had been still just a kid. He had been a late bloomer in every sense. The first few days of his capture were still horrifically, terribly in his memory. The utter shock of what had been happening to him had affected him deeply.

The Cloud at present shivered, hot as it was, as his mind trespassed into this unwelcome, familiar territory. Even with the four glasses of wine still buzzing in his head, his recollections of those first few days were painful and close.

He punched himself in the arm, hard. Still the thoughts were there. He did it again, and again, until it was in time with his hasty footsteps. It wasn't working. The other people on the sidewalk were looking at him.

Breathing deeply and willing with all his might, he commanded his thoughts to go in a different direction. The hot sun beat down his his head and he was starting to sweat again. He felt nauseous. His mind, in reaction to his utter aversion, was proceeding to play back selective captured memories, mere split seconds, remembered images, from over a span of years. He grabbed the nearest wall for support and winced in the sunlight, looking to see where he was.

A diversion, luckily, was immediately in his path. A hand-lettered sign proclaiming "AIR CONDISTIONED" was hanging next to a shop door. Without looking to see just what kind of shop it was, Cloud turned inside just to welcome the distraction.

It turned out, after all, to not be air-conditioned. He blinked as his eyes adjusted from the bright sunlight outdoors to the darker office he had just entered. It was tiny, with barely enough room for the little furniture that it had. A woman wearing white was sitting at a desk.

"Half hour?" she asked Cloud.

"What?" He had no idea what she was talking about, his mind happily completely cleared of the thoughts from just beforehand.

"We have quarter-hour increments." She pointed over her shoulder to a sign, hand-lettered in the same fashion as the one outside, explaining the pricing system. Apparently, the sign told Cloud, he had walked into a massage parlor.

"Uh..." Cloud thought it over for a minute. Being as tense as he was at that particular moment, he could do with a massage. He was uncomfortable, however, with the thought of a perfect stranger touching him. Or of any person touching him in that way, a way that seemed so intimate, even if it was just the shoulders.

The woman (a girl, really) smiled at him sympathetically. "You must be new at this. Come on back, I'll give you five minutes of my time and we'll see if you like it." She stood and approached him. Because he was still a little bit drunk, he let her lead him into a room just behind the front office.

The atmosphere was surprisingly clinical. The only piece of furniture in the room was an off-white doctor's bed. The walls were white. There was a small white cabinet on one wall.

"You can undress," she suggested plainly.

Cloud only nodded; he had no idea what he was doing. He tugged at his collar and found the tag sticking out in front of him; in his hasty changing in the closet darkness, he had put his shirt on inside-out. He seemed to remember Tifa laughing at him, but it was hazy.

The girl regarded him with a curious look as he modestly took his shirt off, hugging it close to his bare chest. "Do I...what do I do?" he asked her.

"Well," she said, beginning to unbutton her own white blouse, "those prices out there are just the base price. It costs more to touch."

"Tou...what?" Cloud was at a loss for words as she took her shirt off entirely displaying small round breasts in a black brassiere and a tattoo on her stomach that was, from the looks of it, from Golden Saucer. "What the...I thought..." Cloud stammered, turning his head away, his face burning.

"Hah," she laughed. "Did you think this was a massage massage place?"

Cloud nodded grimly while averting his eyes, hating himself for his own stupidity. The wine's effects were nearly totally gone now, and he was petrified. What was this girl doing? Why did he come in here?

He could hear her laughing heartily. "Oh, wow. This is only the second time that this has ever happened. You're OK," she added hastily, seeing his woebegone expression. "It's OK, sugar. You're fine." By the time he cautiously lifted his eyes, her shirt was back on and an understanding, weary smile was on her face.

Walking outside, he realized that he had never been more mortified in his life. His previous thoughts regarding longing and Tifa and everything so muddled together were now more confusing than ever. He wondered idly, in the thoughts beside all of this anxiety, if that woman had known just how nerve-wracking that was for him.