It's 6.50pm on one of those rare evenings when Cloud chooses to return home from work earlier than usual.
He's slouching on the couch, one hand holding a half-eaten rice ball while the other's pressing on the buttons of a remote controller as he scans for a show to watch.
A towel hangs loosely around his neck, catching water dripping from the tips of his freshly washed blonde hair.
There's nothing particularly interesting on the TV, so he settles for a national broadcasting channel to wait for the 7pm news.
He takes a little more bite of his rice ball and barely listens to whatever's happening on the screen.
With Tifa out to get some grocery shopping done, the place feels unusually quiet and empty.
At 7pm on the dot, the evening news theme music plays and the screen pans to a female newscaster who's seated behind a desk, wearing a pastel pink blazer.
The woman's beige pink lips arch into a smile as she looks into the camera and greets the audience. "Hi and good evening! I'm Myrna Wallace for News at 7. We're now live in Midgar. Here are the headlines for the next hour: Hardy Daytona releases the world's first self-driving electric motorbikes-"
The front door unlocks. Cloud glances at it and waits for a figure to come in.
Tifa enters, bringing in four plastic bags and hangs her coat on a set of hooks near the door.
Surprise lifts her eyebrows when she sees him. "Oh. You're home."
As she drifts into the kitchen, he hears her plop the bags onto the island.
"I'll make something for dinner," she shouts, arranging some of the things that she just bought into the cabinets.
10 minutes must have passed and a whimsical tune suddenly rings in the kitchen – a cue that the washing machine that Cloud ran an hour ago has stopped spinning.
The noises he hears afterwards from the kitchen suggest that Tifa's putting her task on hold to deal with the laundry first.
He's finishing the rest of his rice ball as the news reclaims his attention.
A reporter's talking at length about some tourism MoU between Midgar and Wutai, and he listens casually.
"CLOUD! COME OVER HERE!"
Tifa's startling roar almost had him choking on his last morsels of rice, seaweed and spicy crab salad.
He dashes to the kitchen, still chewing on his food. "What's going on?"
Tifa's crouching near the washing machine, holding two different shirts in both of her hands. "Didn't I fucking tell you to separate the whites from the coloured ones?"
She glumly hauls out the rest of the laundry and shoves them into the drying machine. "You're lucky that none of our whites are ruined."
Cloud sighs, stroking the back of his neck with remorse. "Sorry. Won't happen again."
"Why can't you do anything right?"
Those words come out of her mouth in that almost soundless mumble that she always does whenever she's awfully upset.
But they punctured his head and chest like she just hammered nails into him.
Everything within him is screaming to retaliate but he bites it all down.
He has had enough of fighting. All they ever do now is fight.
The slightest mistake would set her off and nothing would be able to calm her down.
It frustrates him that he doesn't understand why she's behaving the way she is.
Sometimes, he thinks that she's doing it on purpose – the combative attitude.
Like she wants to fight because all the screaming and yelling gets her the relief that she so badly needed.
But he doesn't want any of this.
He just wants things to work again between them.
Even if he thinks that he doesn't deserve to want that for all the things he did behind her back.
At the wasteland outside Midgar, a woman in lingerie stands still, looking over her shoulder and smiling. The wind sweeps her hair gracefully, giving the frame of her face a dramatic flair.
Bright flashes of light emerge out of a camera as Zack takes several shots of her.
"Angle your hips slightly to the right," the man instructs, guiding her on how best to pose.
Cloud's watching them, holding a reflector and squinting through the morning brightness.
Today's photoshoot is done outdoors for a client who's an outdoor freak and wants her body to look like it's one with nature.
He manages not to grumble despite how simultaneously too cold and too bright the weather is to his liking.
He has to admit though that it's great to be out of the studio once in a while for a change in scenery.
He just wishes that this isn't happening while things aren't looking up for him.
He would have enjoyed the session to its fullest if he isn't constantly mulling over his endless problems.
A couple more shots of the woman are taken before Zack finally tells the crew, "Alright, let's take a 5 minute break."
He puts down the reflector onto a green tarp, alongside other equipment and heads towards the refreshment table.
As he's picking some light snacks to munch on, Zack joins his side.
The other man doesn't say a word but Cloud has a hunch that he's peering at him.
Cloud grabs a bottle of water, ignoring whatever he thinks that the other man is doing, then walks over to a nearby chair.
He sits, cracks his bottle open and gulps down more than a few litres of the cold liquid.
Zack joins his side again, carrying a chair that he drags from another spot.
He looks away, pretending not to take notice.
"So is this how things are going to be for us? Just ignoring each other like this?" Zack mutters, snapping open the cap of his own bottle.
They wouldn't have to in the first place if Zack took his concerns seriously.
"I don't want this, Cloud," the other man says again. "I want us back."
He continues to keep his mouth shut and Zack presses on, "Look. I'm sorry. I should've listened to what you had to say-"
"I don't want to talk about that now, Zack."
"So when exactly do you want to talk? You don't even answer my texts or calls."
It wouldn't have gone this bad if you had tried harder instead of just giving up after a week…
As much as he wants to, Cloud decides against telling Zack any of that.
Zack downs a quarter of his bottle, then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Fine. Maybe I'm rushing into this. Let's start from the beginning…" the other man says, resealing his bottle.
Cloud turns to him and finds that he's smiling. Not his usual cheery smile that makes his eyes shine like the stars… but he's smiling.
"I'll wait for you at Hardy Daytona's showroom," Zack says. When he frowns, the other man adds, "The new motorbikes. Didn't you hear?"
He still can't catch Zack's drift.
"What… do you need me there for?"
"What else? I need a new motorbike!"
"But I'm not exactly a motorbike expert…"
He knows that it's such a shit reason to give, considering how he helped Zack a ton of times in buying things, even if he wasn't interested in them and didn't have a clue about them.
He just needs a reason not to do things that might be unfair to Tifa again.
He just needs a reason not to do things that might hurt himself again.
"Doesn't matter. I still need your opinion," Zack insists.
Zack gets up from his chair and starts calling for the rest of the crew to resume the next photoshoot session.
Zack isn't really far from him when the other man suddenly turns and reiterates, "Hardy Daytona. I'll wait for you."
Cloud chugs the rest of his bottle.
He begs for the icy coldness of the water to cool him down and slow his beating heart.
A/N: Cloud? Not a motorbike guy? The guy who treats his Fenrir like his baby? 😂