Hi again!
Just how bad am I? Starting a new story when we've got exams galore! Plus, I haven't updated In Our Own World yet... Anyway, I've been sitting on this one for so long, I nearly forgot about it because of all my exams. Figured it wouldn't write itself unless I actually uploaded it. I was kinda hesitant to put this up, but my wonderful cousin who looks over my stuff liked the first chapter, so I figured, "why not?"
Anyway, this was inspired by A Fine Frenzy's Near to You... It's not a songfic, I just wanted to go into the whole CloudxTifaxZack love triangle, since the CloTi vs. Claerith was getting a little old (not that the masochistic part of me is willing to let it go, but I decided to give it a temporary rest)... Plus, I do adore writing smitten Cloud.
A few words of warning, though... some of the characters may be a little OOC here at first, but hopefully, it'll make more sense as the story unfolds. And I have a confession to make: I know next to nothing about football, so bear with me, please?
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Final Fantasy or any of its characters. Don't own A Fine Frenzy's Near to You, either. Or the Midgar SOLDIERs (the team name belongs to Valentine'sNinja, from the fic, Love Game, one of my favorite CloTis)
CHAPTER 1: Smitten
"WE WON!!!"
"WE WON!!!"
"Hot damn!" The football team's coach, Cid Highwind, threw his cigarette to the ground and stamped it out, a sure sign of his happiness. "Fair, you are a fuckin' hero!!! The scouts' jaws practically fell off!!! You are a damn HERO!!!"
Zack Fair grinned down at him from his position on his teammates' shoulders. "Nothing to it, Coach. All in a day's work!"
"ZACK!!! ZACK!!! ZACK!!! ZACK!!!"
People were thundering down the stands, each wanting to touch an arm, a shoulder guard, a part of the helmet, anything that belonged to the Edge High's football star and hero. "WE LOVE YOU, ZACK!!!""
"Marry me!" Scarlet, the captain of the cheer squad, screamed, waving her pompons in the air. Her fellow cheerleaders cartwheeled their agreement.
"ZACK!!! ZACK!!! ZACK!!! ZACK!!!"
One person, however, did not share their enthusiasm. Sitting with his shoulders hunched on one of the highest seats on the bleachers, Cloud Strife stared down at his cousin.
Zack was worshiped by practically every person who had a pulse in the campus. Girls threw themselves at his feet and the guys all wanted to be him (some of the guys actually threw themselves at his feet as well). If you didn't consider breathing the same air he breathed a privilege, you were branded a weirdo and people looked at you funny.
Cloud was officially one of the weirdos.
It wasn't that he disliked his cousin. They were family. Zack was his best friend and the closest thing to a brother Cloud could ever have. But sometimes... well, sometimes, he couldn't help but resent the guy. Zack had everything Cloud ever wanted: a father, football skills, an all-expense paid trip to Midgar University where he'd be playing for the Midgar SOLDIERs, charm, good looks... and Tifa.
Cloud watched balefully as a dark-haired girl threw her arms around Zack's neck. He felt a sharp stab of pain as he saw Zack's arms wind around the girl's slender waist. She looked up at him with sparkling crimson eyes. Her smile was dazzling as she congratulated him.
He sighed. He really had it bad... Tifa was way out of his league. She belonged to the school's hero, for frick's sake, and it would take some kind of miracle for her to notice geeky Cloud Strife. He wasn't her type.
Tifa belonged to the 'cool' crowd. She spent most of her time with her 'friends', a group of rich, snobby girls who did nothing but powder their noses and swap gossip on who was going out with whom all day long. Add the jocks who spent most of their time making fun of people who passed by, and the 'cool' crowd was complete.
Cloud most definitely was NOT part of the 'cool' crowd. He was never invited to parties, and even if he were, he would choose getting a root canal over going. He wasn't particularly sociable, and he spent most of his time in the garage, working on the motorbike his dad had left behind.
He also hung out with the school's biggest bunch of misfits: Aerith Gainsborough, who lived and breathed plants and protested against vegetarianism at the quad every Thursday, insisting that green things had feelings too (she survived mainly on fruits and dairy products)... Yuffie Kisaragi, the school's resident kleptomaniac and ninja-wannabe... Vincent Valentine, who walked around in black and red even though it was a hundred degrees outside... and Reeve Tuesti, the genius who won last year's inter-school science competition by stealing Aerith's stuffed cat and turning it into a fortune-telling robot (Aerith refused to take it back when it told her she would have ten children before the age of thirty and become a frizzy-haired housewife).
But that wasn't the main reason why Tifa wouldn't think to look twice at him. The fact of the matter was that Tifa was completely in love with Zack and had been so since the age of thirteen. In middle school, she had written her name with his in the back pages of her history notebook and outlined it with little hearts. She had even taped Zack's yearbook photo to her locker in eighth grade.
--Not that Cloud had been spying on her or anything! Really, it wasn't like that! Her locker had been across the hallway from his then, and he had seen the Zack-picture when he had passed her on the way to class. As for the notebook, Aerith had been in Tifa's history class then and had borrowed her notes from Professor Hewley's lecture. She had shown Tifa's little scribbles to Cloud and--
Oh, hell, who was he kidding? He had been in love with Tifa from day one, since the first day of middle school when he had moved from Nibelheim with his mother after his dad had left them. From the first time he had seen Tifa Lockhart in that blue dress and she had smiled at him as Principal Crescent introduced him to the class, he had been hooked.
He noticed everything about her: the way she flipped her long hair when she bent down to write something in her notebook, the way her eyes lit up and sparkled whenever she smiled, even the slightly dreamy expression on her face whenever she looked at Zack.
All throughout middle school, he had tried to summon up the courage to go up to her and say something, anything. But he had been too much of a coward and she had been obsessed with Zack, who was the school heartthrob and even then already showing off the football moves his own dad had taught him.
In the end, middle school passed without a word being exchanged between him and Tifa, and when they had entered high school, she came back from her vacation in Costa Del Sol with a tan and a body that was every teenaged boy's fantasy. Zack had taken notice of her then, and whatever chance Cloud had had of getting Tifa's attention evaporated like water on a sizzling frying pan.
"Hiya, Cloud!"
A muffled voice brought him out of his reverie and he looked up to see a giant chocobo staggering toward him. Its wings were hanging limply at the sides, and its tail feathers were dragging behind it. The head was also swaying weirdly from side to side like a drunk at a bar. As he watched, the chocobo's head slowly separated from the rest of the body. Yuffie's face grinned at him from the crease in the school mascot costume as she struggled to lift the chocobo head that was twice her size.
"Whatcha doin'?"
"Leave him alone, Yuffie," a feminine giggle came from behind chocobo-Yuffie. Aerith appeared, dressed in her usual pink. Her little jacket was covered in dirt, indicating that she had been working in the school's greenhouse as usual. "He's obsessing about Tifa again."
Cloud sent her a small glare as two more people joined them on the stands. He raised a hand in greeting at Reeve, who was holding the stuffed cat, Cait Sith in one hand. To Vincent, he nodded. Through dark hair and red turtleneck, a slow eye blink acknowledged his greeting.
"You know, I've calculated it, and I've come to the conclusion that the odds of you and Tifa being together are 3452 to one." Reeve said by way of hello as they all looked down at the retreating crowd. "The only sensible way of altering those odds would be actually talking to her, instead of just watching her all the time like a stalker."
"Yeah, sure." Cloud muttered as he watched Zack and Tifa disappear with the rest of the crowd. "And what am I supposed to say to her? 'Hey there, Tifa. Did you know I've been in love with you for most of my teenage life...? Well, now that you do, how 'bout going out on a date with me? Friday night sound good to you?' "
Aerith giggled behind her palm. "That might work. An unexpected confession of secret love would definitely make any girl's day."
"Or have the confessor carted off to an asylum for the mentally unstable." Yuffie pointed out helpfully. Beside her, Vincent nodded. Well, it looked like he nodded. The red bandanna on his head moved up and down, anyway.
"That wasn't quite what I had in mind," Reeve remarked. "But at least you would be talking. Talking's better than just staring. Maybe if you talk to her, you could become friends."
Cloud rolled his eyes and snorted. "Friends? She doesn't even know I exist. Besides, why would she want to be friends with me? All her friends are rich and popular. I'm not. She wouldn't waste her time hanging out with me."
"You won't know unless you try." Reeve persisted.
"Talk to her."
The words came from behind the red collar covering half of Vincent's face. The four of them stared at him. Vincent never said anything unless the situation was life and death. Was it really that bad? Cloud slumped down on his seat in defeat. "I don't think I can. I've tried for years, you guys know that. I'm pathetic when it comes to girls."
"What are Aerith and I, chocobos?!" Yuffie asked indignantly.
Cloud grinned at her. "Well, technically, you are."
Aerith laughed as Yuffie attempted to hit Cloud with the chocobo head, toppling over with its weight in the process. "I know what you mean, Cloud. But look, Reeve's right. You won't know unless you try. Nothing will happen until you do. She'll just go on not noticing your existence, and you'll just go on stalking her... Why don't you think about it? And when the right opportunity comes, just... talk to her. The way you talk to us."
She made it sound so easy... Cloud sighed. "Fine. When the right opportunity comes."
The others nodded, satisfied. Cloud looked glumly down at the now empty field. When the right opportunity came, he would talk to Tifa and deal with the consequences... But he didn't have to be Reeve to know that the chances of that happening were probably a million to one, since they practically lived in different worlds.
And what were the odds of that one in a million chance coming true in the less than a year they had left of high school?
...
...
...
...
Tifa sighed as she stared at the flickering flames, wishing Zack were with her instead of hanging out with his friends by the parking lot on the other side of the beach. She and her girl friends were huddled around the bonfire, sharing stories of the past week. Elena was telling the girls stories of how she had gotten to second base with Rufus Shinra, and how she was fully expecting to get to third and probably all the way in two weeks' time when the group would go to his parents' ski cabin in Icicle Village.
Tifa supposed it was interesting, but she couldn't summon up the right enthusiasm for it. She made all the right responses, giggled whenever she was supposed to, squealed when the story required it. She did this everyday whenever the girls shared gossip. Truth be told, it could get a little old sometimes.
But it seemed she was the only one who thought so. All the other girls talked about was boys and makeup. Last week, Jessie had dissolved into tears when she found that the store had run out of her favorite brand of lipstick. Tifa had tried to console her by saying it was just lipstick, but Jessie and the other girls had all looked at her so strangely that she had refrained from making such comments ever since.
Maybe she wasn't a good enough friend. After all, Jessie had been feeling pretty bad then, even if it was over a small thing like lipstick. She probably should have been more supportive by... well, maybe crying along with her? It sounded silly, but if it made her friend feel better...
"Tifa?" A perfectly manicured hand was waving in front of her face. "Hello? Earth to Tifa?"
She looked up. Elena and the others were looking curiously at her. "You were spacing out. That's the second time you've done that today. Are you okay?"
Tifa smiled apologetically. "I'm sorry. I was just thinking--"
"About Zack?" Jessie asked eagerly.
"I can't blame you." Elena smirked, fanning her face with her hand. "I mean, if I had a boyfriend as hot as him, I would definitely be spacing out all the time thinking about him and his hotness."
"It's not that." Tifa shook her head. "It's nothing. I'm sorry. I didn't hear what you were asking me earlier."
"Oh, yeah. We were asking when you did it with Zack?"
"'It'?"
Elena rolled her eyes in exasperation and wiggled her eyebrows, grinning slyly at her. "You know, 'it'... when did you and Zack go all the way?"
"Oh!" Tifa's face flooded with heat that wasn't from the fire when she realized what Elena meant. Her hands fidgeted nervously in her lap. "W-We haven't... not yet."
All the other girls stared at her with their mouths open in shock. For a moment, none of them spoke. Tifa felt herself redden again, sure that she was missing out on something important. The other girls were still gaping at her as though she had admitted to being a terrorist during spring break.
"What?" she asked, somewhat self-consciously.
Jessie was the first to speak. "You... haven't slept with Zack yet?"
Tifa shook her head.
"Hold on." Elena was looking at her with something akin to alarm. "Tell me if I've got this right: you've been with Zack since practically freshman year--"
"Actually, it was sophomore year." Tifa corrected her.
"Whatever." Elena waved a dismissive hand. "That's not the point, Tifa. The point is, you've been with him for years, he's a football star and the hottest, yummiest guy in the campus... and you haven't slept with him? Not once?"
Tifa was still confused. "No."
"What about third base?" Elena pressed. "Did you at least get to third base?"
"N-no.."
The girls gasped. "Second base?"
Tifa shook her head slowly, feeling more than a little confused. The other girls exchanged meaningful glances and looked at her sympathetically. It was scaring her a little. "What?"
Elena shook her head. "Tifa... I don't know how to say this... I admire your restraint and your virtue and all that, but, girl, you are in some serious trouble."
"What are you talking about?"
"Look, Teef..." Elena sighed and spoke in a tone that indicated she thought Tifa was being incredibly dense. "Zack is a guy. You can't expect a guy to live without sex for an extended period of time. Especially not when he has a girlfriend who has half the male population of the school drooling after her... And since said girlfriend hasn't been sleeping with him, well, don't you think he's getting it from, I don't know, somewhere else?"
Tifa stared at her. "You mean, you think Zack is sleeping with another girl?"
"I'm almost positive. Tifa, he can't help it. It's just the way guys are made, you know?" Elena shrugged.
"Not Zack." Tifa shook her head firmly. No way, he wasn't like that, was he? Zack was sweet and nice, and he loved her, didn't he? Surely he wouldn't betray her like that, just because she hadn't been ready to sleep with him yet.
But now that she thought about it, they had never talked about sex before. All around them, their friends were doing it. But whenever Zack made an attempt to initiate any kind of physical contact with her beyond a kiss, she always stopped him, and he never pushed her further. He always responded with a shrug and his usual carefree smile, as if it didn't matter.
At the time, she thought it was because he wanted her company more than he wanted to feel her up. But now that Elena had mentioned it, maybe his response had been like that because there were other girls out there who were more willing to have sex with him than she was.
It was a depressing thought and she shook it away quickly. Zack wouldn't do that to her. He loved her, he said so himself. If he did love her, he would wait. She held her ground and shook her head again as she turned to the other girls.
"Not Zack."
A/N: So you survived the first chapter, huh? Good for you! Hope you liked it! Hope you stick around for the next one! Hope you don't skin me alive for this!
Please review! I really wanna know what you guys think about it! Though I already have a vague ending in mind, your comments, suggestions, and violent reactions may very well affect how this story goes. =3
See ya around!