A/N: Well, this only took forever. x( I wrote half of it a long time ago and then the rest sort of got done in increments whenever I had the time and the inspiration to work on it. It's a little lengthier compared to the others and I hope it's not too boring. I just love walking downtown at night, and I guess this sprang out of that love.
I'm not sure if I'll be able to write fanfiction for a while...lately I feel like I'm kinda being pulled in different directions by all different things and whenever I do get the inspiration to write, all of my ideas are for original fiction, and I don't even have time for that. D: I don't know how much sense that made, but basically I don't think I could give you very good writing if I'm forcing it.
Ugh, sorry for rambling and making excuses. Again. I hope you enjoy, and thank you so much to everyone who's read/reviewed/favorited/etc. :)
Disclaimer: Final Fantasy and its characters are property of Square Enix, not me.
Chapter 8: City
Zack
Walking in the city with Cloud drove me crazy.
It wasn't like it was something we never did; you couldn't live caged up in an apartment in a big city like Midgar and just never go out anywhere. Well I sure as hell couldn't, anyway, so Cloud didn't really have a choice. Some nights when we hadn't worked too much, we'd grab a bite to eat at one of the diners that were popular with SOLDIER members and the infantry - the kinds of places that have their names written in cheap flickering neon lights above the door and ketchup bottles at every table and huge dusty plexiglass windows plastered with everything from advertisements for drink brands to recruitment posters for the militia.
They were always pretty packed and loud but I didn't mind, and I think after a while Cloud didn't mind much, either. Sometimes we went with a few other people but usually it was only me and him. I never said it but I liked that a lot better. When it was just me and him, he went into one of his silences every now and then, those short silences that were so much more than just silence. He'd rest his chin on his hand and stare out of the window, and for those few seconds I'd watch the headlights of passing cars move across his face and try to pick up on all those feelings being channeled over the salt and pepper shakers.
It was just us this time, but I knew there was something different about him as soon as we left the apartment. Like there was something he was mulling over in his head again and again. I started leading the way to a diner, but then he stopped walking and when I turned around to look at him he was just staring at the ground, chewing his lip and kind of shuffling his feet against the gray concrete. Then he looked up at me and said he wasn't really hungry and could we just walk around, just for a little while, if that was okay? I was kinda confused since he'd never asked anything like that before but I said sure.
I followed a few steps behind him, which was new 'cause usually he was following me, so I figured he must be taking me somewhere. It was cold out; our breaths misted in the air and we kept our hands shoved in the pockets of our jackets. I tipped my head back to look up at the night sky and asked him if he thought it'd snow soon. He shrugged, said he didn't know. I knew it probably wouldn't - Midgar never got much snow. We were quiet for a while, him focused on wherever he was taking me and me focused on the way he passed under the glow of the street lamps, how they illuminated him in yellow light for moments at a time before he stepped into darkness again.
He led me to the entrance to a tiny coffee shop that didn't even have its name in lights - just painted letters that were so worn out I couldn't even read them. Bells chimed as he opened the door and we stepped in, wooden floorboards creaking under our feet. The first thing I thought about the place was that it was warm. The air was warm and that coffee smell was warm and the middle-aged woman at the counter had warm green eyes and a voice like warm honey when she greeted Cloud by name, and her smile was warm, too. It was like the whole place was happy it finally had visitors. Some old jazz song was playing but it was so quiet it just sort of faded into the background.
"The usual?" the woman asked, and she was already heading to the coffee machines. Cloud smiled and started looking at some of the stuff on the shelves along the walls.
"Yes, please."
"And how about you, Zack?"
I told her I'd have the same as him, even though I had no idea what it was. Then I realized I'd never told her my name. I tried to remember if I'd ever been here before but I was pretty sure I hadn't. I glanced at Cloud as he scanned a shelf lined with brown paper packages of coffee beans and tea leaves and cocoa mixes and I realized he must've talked about me, and for some reason that made me really, really happy. It wasn't until the woman said our coffees were ready that I noticed I was grinning like an idiot at a rack of ceramic mugs.
Cloud went up to the counter and took the two styrofoam cups with a soft thank you. We sat down by the window and he slid one of the cups to me across the scratched dark wood of the tabletop.
"Hope you like black coffee," he said with a sheepish smile. The words sounded more like an apology than a hope.
"Sure," I said. Which was a lie. But if he liked it then I'd like it too, just this once. We both took a sip at the same time and I eyed him over the rim, taking in the way the fingers of both his hands wrapped around the cup to soak up the heat and the way his eyes cast down so all I could see was slits of blue. Then they flickered up to me and I looked out the window as fast as I could, put the cup down and leaned forward on my elbows and scratched at the back of my neck in what I hoped was a casual way and hoped he hadn't noticed I was staring at him even though I knew he had. He always caught me.
But I could see out of the corner of my eye that he was smiling a little at me, so I guess it didn't matter.
"I come here a lot," he admitted after a brief silence, setting the cup down but keeping his hands wrapped around it, his eyes focusing on it. "To think about stuff."
"Yeah," I said. "Coffee shops are good for that." I imagined him slipping into this empty place with its warmth and its creaking floorboards and its quiet jazz and sitting alone with his hands around a steaming styrofoam cup of black coffee, staring out at the street, thinking. I wondered what he thought about. Work? Home? The future? I hoped I was in there somewhere. I shook my head a little like I could get the hope out but I couldn't.
"Sometimes," he went on even more softly, hesitating, picking at the cardboard sleeve around the cup. "To try to forget about stuff, too."
I grinned. "Bars are better for that."
He smiled back but it was sad.
"Maybe. Probably. But, I dunno. I don't wanna forget completely or wash it away. That wouldn't be fair to them. I just want...to push it to the side. Forget a little for a little while."
He stopped picking at the cardboard and went silent. I took a sip of liquid black death but I kept my eyes on him, wondering if he'd say who 'them' was. I wasn't gonna push him to tell me but I really wished he would. Then he reached behind his chair for the plastic cup lids that were stacked on a table next to the baskets of sugar packets and coffee creamers.
"Do you mind if we start heading back?" he asked, fixing a lid onto his cup and sliding another lid towards me.
"What? Already?" I really didn't wanna go back out in the cold. But he was already getting up so I sighed and put the lid on the cup and followed him out, waving to the woman at the counter before we left with a chime of bells and a creak of floorboards. The quiet jazz cut off as the door closed and the city's night sounds of car horns and distant voices and tires on asphalt and wind gusting past my ears took its place. There wasn't many people outside. Most people who went out this late hit the clubs.
Cloud walked a little ahead of me again, with his head ducked down and a heaviness in his step that made it easy to see that there was something eating at him, but I forced myself not to say anything or ask anything 'cause I knew he'd just mutter a Nothing and hide it all under his silence again and all I'd get would be pieces of confused feelings.
We walked for a little while and got to a narrow street so quiet I could hear both of us breathing. He slowed his pace to a stop, slid his shoulder up against the brick wall of the building next to us and just stood there for a moment, staring at his feet on the gray concrete, leaning sideways against the wall with his hands in his pockets as our breaths fogged in the cold.
"I screwed up," he stated, his voice flat and tired.
That made zero sense to me so I asked "What do you mean?"
He didn't say anything. I walked around him to stand in front of him, leaning my shoulder against the wall the same way he did. I murmured his name once. He raised his head and then rested the side of it against the wall and just looked at me and I'd never seen someone look so damn emotionally tired. Now that I saw it, I felt like it had always been there and he just hid it all the time like he hid everything and now he was finally choosing to let me see it.
"I screwed up," he repeated weakly. "I messed everything up. I'm not supposed to be this. I'm not supposed to...to be some dog."
The hate in the last word made me stiffen up.
"What, you think what we do makes us dogs? Animals? You and me and -"
"No, Zack," he cut me off, shaking his head, shutting his eyes for a second and then opening them to gaze at some point near my shoulder. "Not you. You're not...you're everything I...I was supposed to be you."
The statement was so weird I couldn't think of anything to say for a moment and in the end I just came up with another blank "What?"
"I told them," he went on after a pause and a breath, still not looking at me. "I told them I'd make it. Into SOLDIER, I mean. My mom, and her, and a lot of people. Everyone in Nibelheim knew and they thought I couldn't do shit and I thought I was gonna prove them wrong and actually be someone. I was so sure. I was so stupid."
He grit his teeth as he said stupid and it made me wanna shake him or hit him or hold him or do something that would make him stop saying stupid things, but instead I just stepped a little closer to him and said, "You're not stupid."
He laughed but it was bitter and he still wouldn't look at me which was starting to get on my nerves. It was like he thought admitting how he felt about this stuff made him different. Made us different.
"Then how come I couldn't do it, Zack? How come I couldn't get in and got stuck joining the militia when I should've been you and I'm so below -"
"Below? Below me?" I shook my head and almost laughed too 'cause it was all just so, so ridiculous. "You're not below me. You're looking at it all wrong, I mean I'm not - I don't - damn it, Cloud, look at me."
I grabbed his chin and made him look at me. Those blue eyes stared into mine and his jaw was set like he was determined to keep looking at everything all wrong and there was nothing I could do about it. But I had to try anyway.
"Never think that," I said, my voice hard. "Never think you're below anybody, okay? Especially me. I'm not perfect, Spiky, you should know that better than anyone. I'm not perfect and being in SOLDIER definitely doesn't mean you're perfect. Hell, you're probably more perfect than I'll ever be."
I wasn't thinking about what I was saying. I wasn't sure if it made any sense. I didn't know if it sounded weird or if I'd said the wrong thing but in the end it didn't matter 'cause it was all exactly what was going through my head and I wanted him to hear it. He just gazed at me, his expression unreadable, but I felt him tremble as the tip of my thumb just barely skimmed over his lips when they parted a little. I let my hand drop to my side and for a moment it was just us and the mist from our mouths.
He stepped forward. My feet were frozen on the gray concrete. I felt his fingers touch my wrist and then his warm breath next to my ear - the shuffle of our jackets brushing, the tickle of his hair against my cheek, the press of his body against mine, the warmth of it. My eyes closed like maybe I could savor the feeling better that way.
"You're wrong," he murmured, and I could feel his lips move against my ear. Now I was the one who was shaking and I wasn't even that cold anymore. His breath blew warm air over my ear and my neck. I sighed before I could stop myself.
"Zack, you're wrong," he repeated very quietly. "You'll always be perfect to me and there's nothing you can do to change that."
And then the press of his body was gone and he put his hands in his pockets and started walking past me. I opened my eyes to stare out at the dimly-lit street in front of me. He said something behind me but it sounded far away, something like "Our coffees are probably cold now", and I must've stood like that for a while because then he asked "Are you coming?"
I turned around to face him. He smiled softly at me, breathing out puffs of vapor. It was silent as flakes of white started to fall from the black sky, drifting down over the buildings around us and the city lights and him. A few settled on his pale blond hair, on his shoulders. I said "Yeah". So we started our walk back in the city and the snow, and I watched him pass under the glow of the street lamps.
Walking in the city with Cloud really drove me crazy.
