Us and Sephiroth

Strangely enough, Genesis was the first among the three of us to really make sense of what was happening between us. He had a new girlfriend every week, but he never even once lost sight of his two best friends. Which included even Sephiroth at this point, although he had never stopped his rivalry with him, until the fateful day of his desertion. Sephiroth never talked about such things as love, and I had no idea he was at all interested in that. I, myself was kind of a late bloomer who had no idea for the longest time that two men could be in love with each other, or that what I was feeling for him was, in fact, a crush, and had been for several years.

It was one of those nights before deployment, which we often spent at Sephiroth's place. The same place he would continue to inhabit until I, too, left. He had the best accommodation among the three of us, a small apartment with a bedroom, bathroom, a living area and even a small kitchen as a part of it. He did not use the kitchen at all. I would cook for the three of us most of the time, because he did not like going to the public cafeteria at the Shinra Headquarters. He could tolerate going to the mass hall at the SOLDIER headquarters, where it was just us SOLDIERs among ourselves (although he would eventually stop doing that as well), but he almost never went anywhere else to eat, unless he put on his disguise first. It is hard to comprehend what a star he was, and he did not like it. Perhaps it was because deep down he loathed his work, and being idolized for it just worsened his misery.

So it was one of those nights; we were eating dinner at Sephiroth's place, sitting around his coffee table, Genesis and I on the couch, and Sephiroth on the floor as usual. We felt it was strange at first to prefer sitting on the floor, but it began to make sense, as soon as we understood that he had spent some time in Wutai as a child, where he had found a home and comradeship for the very first time in his life, and some of the habits and routines he had learned there stuck with him. It was a fact that was kept a secret by the company, in fear that it would hurt Sephiroth's standing as the hero of the Wutai war, and, as a consequence, Shinra's own position in the war in the mind of the public. The war was still in full swing, and a long time and many peoples' lives away from the stalemate Zack would get to experience during his time at SOLDIER. We were not too anxious about our mission the next day, because our experience had taught us that we were relatively safe and none of us ever got injured to the point it would be a serious threat to our lives. But still, pre-deployment nights always made me a little antsy because the success of the mission was far from granted. Fighting skill, unfortunately, was not all that was required to achieve the strategic goals that we chased. Life would have been easier if that all that was necessary.

Genesis, somehow, never had any doubts that he would succeed, although his success rate was not significantly higher than mine. His level of confidence was just different. Sephiroth's success rate was over ninety five percent, but his approach had other problems, most notably, that his compatriots were not safe near him, and his destructive power caused a lot of collateral damage. Naturally, the terror the appearance of the Silver SOLDIER on the battlefield struck into the hearts of Shinra's opponents, simply because of the destruction he left in his wake, sometimes was the goal of a mission. His modus operandi, cutting through masses of people, buildings and machines, and setting everything around him on fire was infamous, and his signature that would always give away who was responsible for the destruction in the aftermath. One might think that we would prepare ourselves for the mission by watching the SNN news channel that, around this time, was constantly broadcasting the progress and happenings of the war front to the public. But by this time, we had already realized that this channel reported a very biased view of the war and there was basically no point in watching it for us, who were actively involved in it. Besides, we were looking for some distraction to put our minds off the bloodshed, explosions, roaring fires, and sound of bodies being crushed under heavy machinery that would inevitably embrace us again on the following day. I believe on this particular day, we were watching a game show. One of those really ridiculous shows, whose main point was to humiliate the players for the sake of entertainment. There was not much else to watch. Our favorite drama series used to air on Wednesdays, and this was a Tuesday.

I was barely paying attention to the TV because I was busy watching Sephiroth from the corners of my eyes, while pretending to be invested in the spectacle on the screen. I thought he did not notice it, because his eyes appeared to be glued to the screen and he did not look at me even a single time. All of a sudden, Genesis got up and excused himself for the night, claiming he had forgotten to finish packing for the mission the next day and that he was tired and would not return after finishing packing his equipment, but go straight to bed. This was unusual for him, because he had never even once forgotten to pack his things because he was usually so excited to go on missions and could not wait to be off to the battlefield. I thought at the time that this never-ending war had begun to wear down even him to the point, where he would put off his packing until the very last minute just like the rest of us did.

I learned that this was not the case at all only two hours later when Genesis knocked at my door. I let him in, wondering what was wrong, but he only asked me full of excitement: "Well? How did it go?" Full of confusion, I answered: "What do you mean?", because Genesis never really cared about game shows and I could not imagine that he cared who had won. I would not have had an answer for him anyway because I had not followed the TV program at all. He threw himself on the bed next to me, which was another habit he never dropped ever since we were kids. Supporting his head on his hand, he went on: "What did you do?" I opened my mouth to say: "We watched TV", when suddenly, it occurred to me that he was thinking of something else entirely. My face had never felt so hot in my life, and I turned away from him in hopes to hide my embarrassment. I had no idea how he knew, but during this hour that I spent alone with Sephiroth, so close that I would only need to reach out my arm to touch him, my mind wandered off several times and I came very close to either actually doing it or at least saying something to him. But at the time, I had no idea if he was interested in other boys, or romance at all, because I had never noticed him showing interest in anyone in that way. It was not a topic he or I ever brought up to our friends. He could just as well have been asexual as he could have been anything else.

But Genesis' reaction to my futile attempt at containing my emotional outburst, which consisted of him yelling "Ooooh! I was right!", and throwing my own pillow at me, told me that perhaps I was the only one who was so naïve and innocent. I kept my eyes averted and, folding my arms, said: "It's nothing!", as I had told myself many times. I considered myself lucky to be Sephiroth's friend at all and did not want to do anything to put at risk what we had, and I was almost certain that me revealing my feelings to him would almost certainly destroy the bond that we had forged over the years. I thought it was okay the way it was, and that my feelings would go away eventually, as long as I did not entertain them. "Wait, you didn't tell him?", Genesis cried out in astonishment, to which I shrugged, trying desperately to fight back the tears that were burning in my eyes, hoping he would not notice, all the while telling myself that it was okay. That I was okay, and that it did not matter.

Genesis sighed and turned on his back to stare at the ceiling. After some time, he continued: "So what's your plan?" Again, I said nothing. I never intended to do anything about it, or tell anyone, but my oldest friend knew me too well. After a while of silence, Genesis sat up and put his hand on my shoulder. "Aren't you usually the guy who always knows what to do when someone else has a problem? If I had a crush on my friend, what advice would you give me?" These words, coming from Genesis, sounded ridiculous to me. Genesis had never held back even once, but as far as I knew, he had never had an actual crush on anyone before. He had a new girl every week, but he was not really interested in any of them. None of my friends had ever come to me for love advice. How was I supposed to know what to tell them?

When I gave no answer, Genesis squeezed my shoulder and stood up. "Sorry, I didn't want to put you into a tight spot. I was just trying to help." I shook my head and responded: "It's okay. I had no idea you knew." Still, I was glad that Genesis did not hate me. Once I realized that I was attracted to men, I had begun to worry that he would be disgusted or see our time together at kids in a different light. "I wasn't sure", he explained. "But the way you look at him, it's hard not to notice." This actually made me wonder if Sephiroth had perhaps noticed as well. I did not want things to be awkward between us, but an infatuation like this was not that simple. The more I tried to forget about it, the more irresistible he became to me. I knew there would be no easy way out of this predicament. And so, I went to bed that night with my head full of worries and doubts. Doubts about my feelings toward him, doubts about whether our three-way friendship could weather such a storm, and doubts about what I actually wanted in my life.