Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

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They told him not to go up the mountain. They said not to even try—that it would be too dangerous even to send a rescue party after him—and Barret had actually gotten angry at him for it. Zack had only known the man for a day; he’d been bewildered by the way Barret had shouted, The Planet’s given you the greatest gift any one of us is ever going to see, and you’re just gonna throw it back in her face like yesterday’s trash? Zack could gather enough to know that the anger stemmed from something beyond Zack entirely, but he didn’t stick around long enough to find out whatever it was. Three days after crawling out of the grave, he hitched a ride on a freighter to the Northern Continent, then hiked his way to Bone Village, where he got another earful of warnings about what awaited him up in the mountains. He didn’t listen; he couldn’t wait.

Since he’d woken up—thrumming with a pulse that had been missing for seven years—he’d been restless. Impatient. Chomping at the bit. There was someone he had been missing, someone he’d been kept from for far too long, and they were years overdue for a meeting.

If only he weren’t so goddamn hard to get to.

From Bone Village he paid someone with a little, two-person bush plane to take him to the outskirts of the tiny town of Hearth, with all of its twenty-one inhabitants, nestled in the crook of two spiny ridges. The pilot would fly no further, not with how the plane had shook and trembled on the approach, snowflakes seeping in through gaps in the cloth.

From there, he’d been told that it was a two day’s hike to the cabin, all uphill. In summer, Tifa said, they would jump from the Highwind down to a small clearing by the cabin, and they could take their time climbing their way back down to get picked up, pitching a tent overnight and batting off mosquitoes.

But in wintertime the snow cut visibility until it was impossible to tell where lay craggy rock and where would be safe to jump; camping overnight came at risk of freezing to death; and the constant wind and sleet rushing through the narrow, icy passes made for a treacherous journey on foot. People who tried had been blown over the edge—slipped—fell—gotten hurt and couldn’t go on. Their bodies could only be uncovered after the thaw.

“Don’t do this,” Tifa had said, quietly, her hand on Zack’s forearm, as he’d been on his way out. There was something pained and sharp in her voice, something that—like Barret—belied something heavier than just concern for his well-being. “He’ll be so happy to see you. In the spring.”

“I’ll be fine,” Zack had said, warmly, and thanked her, and left with a duffel bag packed with belongings that they had all generously loaned him because he didn’t own a thing of his own, not anymore.

In Hearth he’d had to barter to get gear for the climb, since paying the pilot had taken up every last bit of the gil from Tifa’s loan. Luckily there wasn’t a shortage of snow that the villagers needed shovelled or heavy equipment they could use moved, but Zack still rested fitfully those two days he spent sleeping in a villager’s guest room, anxious to depart. When he was finally ready to be on his way, the older woman who’d taken him in packed him three enormous flasks of tea and another of hot cocoa. She once again asked him not to go; he once again promised that he’d see her soon.

As he left, people watched from between gaps in their curtains, shaking their heads.

The first few hours of the ascent were bitterly cold but not as brutal as he expected. His snowshoes did their job, keeping him from getting mired down in the waist-deep snow. When the wind picked up, beating snowflakes and then sleet against his face, he fastened a pair of snow goggles over top of his balaclava. When he would stop for just a moment, taking a sip of tea and savouring a wisp of warmth, the steam from the thermos would fog up the lenses, and he’d have to rub it away before moving on.

He had a compass and a barely-marked path to go by. By nightfall, he had no idea how far he’d walked; how close he might be; how far was left to go.

It was a good thing that he had been a First. His core temperature had already fallen dangerously low, and his was inhumanly high to start with. The cold had made his joints jerky and stiff, and his fingertips were sore inside his gloves. Picking up his boots to take the next step was becoming a heavy task; ahead of him, the darkness and sleet swallowed up his sight, until he was hardly sure of where he was going.

But it wouldn’t do to stop. If he stopped, he would fall asleep; if he fell asleep, he would die. He had known this before he left that morning, so there was no use being upset over it now. Zack drew his arms tighter around himself and raised his knees higher, stamping against the snow and ice.

“Hey-a!” he called into the darkness. He wasn’t scared of any monsters lying in wait in the dark; the cry was for him. “Here I come!” he called, no one in particular within hearing distance, but he had someone in particular in mind all the same.

The seething, restless anticipation of that reunion kept him moving through the night. The wind beat him back but he pushed against it, indomitable: the Lifestream itself couldn’t keep him down. Zack had been through worse, for less.

It was in the darkest point of the night that he finally stumbled, and truly fell—the ice on the path was so thick, and the slope was so great, and it was a sheer drop, with the mountain face on one side and a ravine on the other. He went down, scrabbling, clutching for purchase, head slamming against rock, and finally he came to rest in a sharp, little hollow. His breathing came to him heavily; he looked up, and the moon was looking back in its same familiar way, no better company than it ever had been.

He groaned so that he wouldn’t shout, and then he took stock of himself. With a healing materia he put himself back together, in the dark, to the best of his ability, and he still ached but that was just in his mind. Probably. It was so cold. He wanted to rest—he wanted to curl up, to sleep and try again in the morning—but he couldn’t. There would be no morning for him, if he gave up here. Zack got onto his knees and then, craning his neck up, he started to climb back up.

He made it, because of course he did. He had to. And, with one notable exception, he always had.

The path led him into a forest, which he noticed first by the fresh smell of greenery and only later by the dark shapes surrounding him. Daybreak soaked the mountain in dim greys and smudgy charcoals before the darkness finally started to lift. By then Zack’s breath was laboured, rising in steam before his face. He had no more tea left, no hot cocoa. He caught himself before he stumbled on a root, and pressed on through the pine trees surrounding him, heart pounding as they began to thin. A light but constant sheet of snowflakes filtered down to him through the sparse tree branches. He took off his goggles and let them dangle around his neck. If he wasn’t mistaken, he could spy a clearing ahead.

He sped up. If he wasn’t so weighed down with exhaustion, he would have sprinted.

The trees broke free and a cabin rose before him, small and sturdily built. Its green eaves were laden with snow. Smoke spiralled gently from its chimney.

A covered porch wrapped around the cabin’s front, and on that porch stood a man in a dark jacket and a blue scarf. Steam rose from a mug in his hands; at his feet, wrapped snugly around his ankles, was the largest dog Zack had ever seen.

Zack froze at the clearing’s edge. Something in him that he thought was a sure thing, something stable and vital, gave out.

It’s you.

Then Cloud’s eyes fell on him, and there was no more waiting. Zack felt the snow give way underneath him as he crossed the space left between them. He couldn’t have stopped his feet from moving if he had tried.

He stopped with one boot on the bottom most step. The dull thunk of his sole against the wood felt almost like violence, snapping the silence.

Cloud’s eyes were so much greener, up close.

Zack could do nothing to stop his smile, could only surrender his face to it. He had missed Cloud so much more than he ever even realized.

“Hey,” he said.

Cloud stared.

The great dog at his feet—a wolf, really—raised its head, lips curling away to bare curved teeth. A growl ran through him, unmistakable, so deep and low that it set the hairs on the back of Zack’s neck on end.

“Sh,” Cloud said, absently, placing a hand on the wolf-dog’s head. It quieted, but still glared at Zack, yellowed eyes narrowed in a searching, evaluating gaze.

Cloud had missed a button on his jacket. His hair was messy, even under his hat, spilling into his eyes, and snowflakes hung on his eyelashes. The mug in his hands was chipped. After all this time, he was still the most beautiful thing Zack had ever seen.

“…You’re alive.”

Cloud’s voice was so familiar it felt holy. Zack’s joy so bright it could have outshone the sun. “Sure am,” Zack said.

He jammed his hands safely in his pockets, where he couldn’t reach out and pull Cloud to him, couldn’t throw his arms around him and draw their foreheads together, or console himself with Cloud’s overfamiliar body in his arms. The rising flush in Cloud’s cheeks would have to satisfy him. It would. It very nearly did.

Neither of them moved. The silence between them felt frozen, and for a moment it seemed nearly impenetrable.

Then Cloud said, hoarsely, “I’ll make more coffee.” Abruptly, he turned and went inside the house, the wolf following at his heels. The screen door slammed shut behind him with a bang.

Zack didn’t even consider being offended: Spike was here. Spike was alive, and in one piece, just like everyone had promised.

Heart soaring, he stepped onto the porch and joined Cloud inside.

Zack found himself inside a dimly lit hallway, the sounds of a gas stovetop flickering to light coming from its other end. The walls were panelled with rich oak and the floor was covered in a round, colourful handmade rug. It was incredibly, wonderfully warm, and Zack carefully took off his snowshoes, leaving them out on the porch before padding after Cloud.

The hall opened out onto a modest living space, a seating area on one side and a kitchen on the other. Big picture windows overlooked a view of first the backyard and then the sheer drop off the side of the mountain, exposing their perch over what felt like the entire continent. Snow-capped mountains and minuscule, far-off, swaying pine trees sprawled below. But none of that could quite hold his attention when Cloud was standing at the stove in striped socks, his heavy coat discarded somewhere, brow furrowed as shook out a match.

Zack stood somewhat sheepishly at the edge of the room, bag slung over his shoulder and coat dripping melting snow into the ground. The exhaustion that had dragged on his bones like brickwork was suddenly so irrelevant that Zack could hardly feel it there at all.

Snow fell softly against the window panes.

“Can I help?” Zack asked.

Cloud gave him a look so bewildered that Zack felt cowed, although he had no idea what he’d done to deserve it.

“You can, uh,” said Cloud. He really wasn’t blinking much. “You can put your bag on that mat over there.”

“Thanks!” He crossed to the spot and dropped the loaded duffel, and Zack felt his spine groan in gratitude as he straightened back up. When he turned around, he found Cloud had come with him and was now standing close. Zack’s stomach fluttered, low in his belly, with a gentle pang of awe.

“I can take your coat,” Cloud muttered.

“You sure?” Zack said. He undid the zippers and shrugged it off, the heavy down catching on the inside of his elbows. Without it, the heated air rushed at him, pressing in at his sides. Zack almost shivered. “I can take care of it, just point me where.”

Cloud refused, lips pressed together, so Zack handed it over. Cloud went away down the hallway, disappearing with the click of a closet door and a rustle of hangers.

In the kitchen, the wolf was staring Zack down once again. It stood completely still, hackles raised. It was easily over half the size of the stove, and nearly as tall.

“Hey, pup,” Zack said, carefully.

The wolf let out a very, very quiet growl: as if it knew exactly how much it could get away with before alerting Cloud.

Dogs had always liked Zack, by and large. At least, that was true the last time he had been alive. Zack pouted at this one now, extending his hand in greeting, all the way at the other side of the room. “You don’t want to be friends?”

Cloud came back, stocking feet silent on the hall runner. “Fenrir,” he said, sharply, when he saw how the dog was braced. He went to him and rested a hand on his neck. The wolf tilted its head back and nearly closed its eyes as it pressed into Cloud’s hand. “Sorry,” Cloud added, in Zack’s direction. “He’s not used to other people.”

“That’s alright,” Zack said, jamming his hands back into his pockets. “He’s a real beautiful dog.”

“If you’re going to ask me if he’s half wolf, I have no idea,” Cloud said, as if he’d been asked a hundred times before. He scratched Fenrir’s nape; Fenrir leaned into it happily. “I found him out here. He just followed me home one day.”

Zack didn’t comment on the wisdom of letting an enormous beast wander in out of the Northern wilds and curl up in your home. He figured Cloud must have a pretty good handle on it, whatever the dog might be.

Silence fell between them again. The kettle started to rattle, back and forth, on its burner. The space between the back door and Cloud by the stove seemed to stretch on into infinity, so Zack boldly crossed it. He stood with his hands in his pockets, toes of his socks just skimming the rug of Cloud’s kitchen.

Cloud’s kitchen.

Cloud’s home, Cloud’s dog, Cloud’s cupboards stacked with mugs. Zack had seen all these things—or at least, older versions of them, aching and rare glimpses into Cloud’s life through the flickering veil of the Lifestream—but he had never stood among them. Zack had never breathed the same air that was starting to shimmer over top of Cloud’s kettle. Zack was supposed to be gone; he was supposed to never have this again.

It didn’t feel real.

“I’m real,” he said, instead.

Cloud flinched so harshly that Zack flushed a little. Zack rubbed the back of his neck, wondering if he’d misspoken. “Tifa told me to say that.”

Cloud’s face hardened. “Got it.” He turned away.

Zack didn’t dig, same as he hadn’t when Tifa had brought it up. He had his guesses, but he didn’t think now was the time to be asking them. He hoped he was wrong through.

Cloud cleared his throat. “How…?”

He didn’t finish his sentence. Zack couldn’t blame him; he also couldn’t answer him.

Zack had no idea how he was here. None at all. Even when he’d been in the Lifestream and conscious, Aerith guiding him by the hand, he’d been lost in its will, its breadth, its unthinkable power. And eventually, like everyone else, he had relinquished himself to it; had no other recourse.

It hadn’t been unpleasant, really, but just the thought of how Cloud had experienced it—of how Cloud was forced into it, his head held under until he was choking down mako, until his waking self and his dreams were both buried in a place only the dead should ever go—still made him burn with an old and familiar fury. He drew his arms against his chest. “I wish I knew.”

“And Aerith?”

Zack looked up at him. He felt that flush of cold come over him, same as the first time someone asked him those words, that name, in that tone of voice. Cloud was looking at him with a dreadful, measured blankness, but the edge of his voice was lean as it desperately strangled down his hope.

Zack still felt the guilt like a wound. “I don’t know. I really don’t have a clue…”

Cloud inhaled sharply. “I thought she was with you?”

Zack shrugged, uselessly. “I haven’t been anywhere, Cloud. I—do you remember that day at the church?”

The disbelief written across Cloud’s face was as loud as a scream—but Cloud only nodded his head, once, silent and staring.

“That really was goodbye,” Zack said, smiling halfway. He paid careful attention as he ran a thumb down the counter. “I haven’t seen you, or Aerith, or anyone else, since then. I wasn’t anything at all.”

Zack had not felt happy, the day that he waved goodbye to Cloud. It hadn’t been his choice; he hadn’t had a say. Aerith’s hand on his back had helped him through the doorway when all he wanted to do was turn around and walk straight into that water.

Instead he’d been swallowed up. Dragged under and held.

Until, suddenly, he’d been returned. No warning and no explanation.

Now, Cloud was looking at him, pale-faced and mute with an aura of forced calm.

“Don’t worry!” said Zack. “Being dead isn’t so bad.”

It didn’t seem to land; Cloud’s face stayed frozen in its fear.

Zack frowned. He felt something twist in his chest—that wasn’t right. Upsetting Cloud was all wrong.

At that moment, the kettle chose to finally begin to skitter and scream.

Quickly, Cloud reached over and shut the burner off, the boiling pitch dying away with a low whimper. He busied himself with cleaning out a French press, then grabbing coffee from a tin in an overhead cabinet. Zack watched him work, and didn’t realize until Cloud was fitting the lid back on the press and turning away that he’d been holding his breath the entire time. Like he couldn’t quite believe, even now, that this was all something Cloud could do.

It was different, to see it in person.

Zack wished he could reach out and hold Cloud’s warm, living, nimble fingers between his own, but instead he jammed his hands deeper into his pockets, desperate to hold himself together. Everything up until this point had been clear. He’d known exactly who he needed to find, what he needed to do to see him. Now, intruding on Cloud’s home, Zack felt suddenly thrown off balance by indecision. Frayed, and confused, with a vague, insistent wanting.

Being alive was strange.

They waited, both looking at the coffee press. Steam rose off of it, smelling delicious. The promise alone of a hot drink had Zack’s frozen bones starting to go molten in his sockets. Everything about the tableau in front of him seemed idyllic, but at the same time he felt like he was on the verge of splitting at the seams.

Zack cleared his throat. The floorboards felt uneasy under his feet. “So…how have you been?”

Either Cloud had forgotten how to school his expressions in the years since Zack had last seen him, or the shock of Zack’s reappearance had shaken him enough that he’d temporarily lost the ability. Zack would understand that. When Cloud looked at him now, his eyes were stretched wide with undisguised alarm. It made Zack want to hold him and drag him into safety into his arms so very badly that he actually took a step forward.

“Fine,” said Cloud, in a deeply unaffected voice that did not match the emotion fast fading from his expression.

“Yeah?” said Zack, gently.

“Mm,” said Cloud, considering the handle of the coffee pot. “It’s been good.”

Zack propped his elbows up on his side of the island countertop. Cloud braced himself against the other side, still several paces away from Zack; he looked blankly into the distance.

He might not be how you remember, Tifa had said.

Zack was alright with that. He had been away for a long time; he didn’t expect things to be as he’d left them. He wasn’t sure if he’d really expected wailing or crying, but he had no problem with this version of things. Easier to deal with. To Cloud, Zack must be a spectre, long-dead—a memory that had been laid to rest, and now was uncomfortably being fished to the surface.

He’s…withdrawn, Tifa had said, as if Zack hadn’t been made explicitly aware of Cloud’s hermit ways.

He’s hurting, is one of the last things Aerith had said to him on the subject of Cloud.

Barret had said, He’s a right surly son of a bitch, and Marlene had joined in with a hearty, twelve-year-old Yeah!

Down the counter, Cloud—lips pressed together in a thin line, hair a little haphazard from the way he’d tugged his beanie off his head, thinner and wearier than Zack remembered but somehow just as beautiful as ever—was more than just a sight for sore eyes. Standing here, across from him, the only thing more Zack could ask for would be to press their foreheads together and finally cut the last thread of resistance drawing them together.

Cloud seemed to shake himself awake: he checked on the coffee and then got out a spare mug.

Fenrir’s claws tapped along the floor as he circled the island to stare Zack down with greater conviction.

Zack tilted his head and smiled at him, invitingly. They’d be friends yet, he was sure of it.

Fenrir stayed where he was, tail unwagging, gaze hard.

“Do you want any sugar, or…” Cloud looked at the two fresh cups of coffee in front of him with a wrinkle between his brow, as if he’d gotten lost halfway through a thought.

“However you do it,” Zack said, right away. As a teenager he’d been all about sweet, caffeinated drinks; later, he’d had his taste buds disintegrated by hunger and thirst. This time around, he hadn’t had time to figure out what he liked yet.

Cloud gave him a bit of a ghostly, strange look, but got a jar from the fridge and poured a splash of cream into each cup. The metal of the spoon rang against the sides of the mug before Cloud made to push it across the counter to him.

The cabin really was so quiet. No traffic, no neighbours—just them, looking at each other. Somewhere, a clock ticked.

“Um,” Cloud said. “Want the tour?”

Zack perked up. “Yeah!”

They took their coffee and Cloud led them through the cabin. The place was built with solid, thick planks for the floors and split logs for the exterior walls. It was outfitted cozily, with heavy rugs and heavier curtains to keep out the chill. There was a big fireplace and a coffee table made out of a slab of petrified wood, which Zack had died too young to truly appreciate but he could still garner was impressive. There wasn’t a lot of extra stuff lying around, but the place didn’t feel sparse—between a knit blanket laid out on the back of the sofa, pieces of some project spread over the round dining table, preserved flowers and bits of monster bones on the mantelpiece, there was a lived-in warmth that said Cloud’s place writ large.

Other than the main room, the first floor also had a bathroom, a small study-slash-guest room, and a walk-in pantry. Cloud opened a door off of the hallway and turned on the stairwell light so that Zack could crane his neck and take a look, from up on the landing, of the rows of canned goods and paper towels stashed away in the basement.

By the front door there was a staircase, going up, and Cloud led Zack only halfway up it, letting Zack get a quick glance of the bedroom set up in the loft—a big wooden bed, a downy comforter with a clear Fenrir-sized indentation at the foot, and dazzlingly large skylights in the roof overhead—and it looked so cozy, so inviting and warm that Zack almost let his feet lead him to the bedside…but then Cloud turned away as if embarrassed, and Zack followed him back downstairs.

Fenrir followed alongside Cloud wherever they went, nails clacking against the hardwood and dull on the carpeting, never allowing Zack to quite walk step in step with Cloud. It nearly made Cloud trip, and he scolded Fenrir more than once. The defensiveness amused Zack more than anything.

They ended up on the back porch, coats back on, looking out over Cloud’s yard and the abrupt end of the tree line at the edge of the mountain. Fenrir, eager, had leapt down the stairs and run off into the distance. Cloud didn’t seem concerned.

“Those are the planters,” Cloud said, gesturing to the wooden boxes near the house, barely visible underneath the snow. “I grow a few things in the summer, not a lot…peppers and stuff. Lettuce. There’re a few pear trees behind the woodshed but they haven’t had any fruit for a few years, I dunno why…There’s a few hiking trails but I don’t really maintain them in the winter. Depends on how long you’re staying, I guess, but I could—”

Cloud stopped mid-sentence, frowning suddenly, and after a second he seemed to frown twice as hard, as if some math was at last coming together in his head. The knuckles of his free hand went white where he clutched the bannister.

“Zack,” he said. “Why are you here?”

Zack laughed, softly, somewhat sheepishly, but still with a joy he couldn’t possibly hide away. “I wanted to?”

“Zack.” It was deadly serious. A shove to the chest, really.

“Everyone told me you were alive, that you were holding up alright, but,” Zack shrugged. His neck felt a little hot, so he scratched it, “I had to see with my own two eyes, didn’t I?”

He didn’t mention the careful, guarded way everyone had spoken about Cloud—nor the caution in their tones that set Zack’s hair on end.

“How did you get up here?” Cloud leaned further into Zack’s space than he had all morning. Zack briefly lost his breath. “Did Cid bring you? Did you jump?”

“No!” Zack promised, raising his hands, even the one holding the coffee mug. “No, they said that was suicide, don’t worry. I didn’t try.”

Cloud wouldn’t look away. “Then how?”

Zack took a sip of his now-lukewarm coffee. “I walked.”

As soon as he said it he wished the wind would batter through the trees, or the snow would pick up in a howl. Nothing such came to save him.

“You walked,” Cloud repeated. There was something abjectly terrible in his voice that Zack’s heart instinctively scurried away from.

“Mm-hm.” Looking at Cloud, for some reason, in that moment, felt like looking down the barrel of a loaded gun. He sipped his coffee again. “How’d you find this place, anyway? Seems like, you know—a really out-of-the-way piece of real estate.”

“How the fuck did you walk here? Where did you start from?”

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Zack said, smiling, and before he could think better of it, he gently elbowed Cloud in the arm. “Nothing compared to SOLDIER boot camp.” But talking about it drew attention to it, and suddenly Zack could feel the exhaustion, the untended aches nibbling at the edges of his alertness again, gnawing and hungry. He leaned his hip casually against the porch railing to account for it.

“You…”

“And I’m glad I’m here,” Zack said, breezily, raising his mug towards Cloud. “It’s good to see you.” The understatement throbbed like a pulse under his rib cage. “You look good. I mean—you’ve grown up.”

Cloud’s eyes dragged down his body. Something like a razor blade of heat travelled with them. “So did you.”

Zack fought back the urge to hide his face behind his mug; he felt the back of his neck flush. Yeah, he had grown up—it was impossible to tell exactly what age he was meant to be, but the difference showed clearly enough on his face. He could even feel it the way his body moved. If the Lifestream had any sense of justice it couldn’t have—he hoped—made him any older than what he would have been, had he never died. And what a strange experience: to lie down one day, twenty-three, and to rise again as thirty-ish. It wasn’t as if he could be ungrateful about it: he had, miraculously, a life to live, and little things like the condition of his body couldn’t take away the joy of that. Still—in some, small, insignificant way, it felt like a betrayal. Another thing taken from him.

In comparison, Cloud’s age felt like a celebration. Something that both he and Zack had fought for, down to their lifeblood, and Zack knew better than to credit himself for most of it when Cloud had been the one to pick up all his slack, but it still filled him with a lambasting, brutal pride to see Cloud like this—lean and strong underneath his thermals, features even carved more handsome by time. A dog and a French press and a beautiful home. (Even if it was ludicrously, unbelievably isolated).

“Weird, huh?” Zack said.

“Yeah,” said Cloud, his voice strangely soft, and Zack let him have his moment, eyes unfocused, gaze resting right above Zack’s chin.

The moment went on, and on.

“Hey,” said Zack. He stepped forward, closing the space between them just slightly. Instead of grabbing Cloud’s hand, he slid his own along the railing. “Are you really alright? With, you know.” He waved at himself abstractly. “All of this?”

Cloud’s gaze floated up his face. Hoarsely, he said, “It’s still hitting me.”

Zack admitted, “Me too.”

Cloud inhaled shakily and turned his head away. Something like a tremor ran through his shoulders, and his mug trembled in white-fingered hands.

“You cold?” Zack said. He frowned at Cloud’s glovelessness. “Let’s go in.”

Cloud responded slowly. “Sure…” he said. Then, “Yeah…Fenrir. Come, boy.” He barely raised his voice at all and the wolf stuck its great head up from under a bank of snow. It came leaping up the steps, shaking snow everywhere, and he dutifully scraped his paws clean on the back mat before trotting inside.

The warmth of the indoors was again a startling and exuberantly welcome relief. They peeled themselves from their outerwear and stashed it all back away.

“I’d better show you where you’re sleeping,” Cloud said, awkwardly, after a stretch of them standing cluelessly in front of the hall closet.

“Oh, no, that’s alright. They told me how you feel about guests.”

Cloud stopped in the doorway to the study, hand on the doorknob. “What?”

Zack crossed his arms and laughed a little, feeling the lazy unease of a misstep. “No one said it like it was a bad thing! I just know that you’re not the biggest fan of having people stay with you—I’m guessing that’s the whole point of being this far out of the way, huh? Don’t worry, I’m not planning to hang around long.”

The look Cloud gave him was flat with shock. “Where else would you go?”

“Back down the mountain…? There was a woman who hosted me in Hearth, she said I’d be welcome back anytime. I cleared the ice off her steps. Theresa—do you know her? And then I guess I’ll start by tracking down K—”

“But you walked.”

“Yeah?” Zack rubbed his boot against his other ankle. He almost said It’s not a problem, but decided against it. He didn’t want Cloud to start thinking about it ever having been a problem.

He might as well have said anything he wanted, though, because Cloud went on, “Are you out of your mind? You can’t go back down there.”

Zack gave him a slightly wounded look. “I made it up here in one piece.” He pouted, lightheartedly. “Don’t worry about me.”

Cloud’s eyes were as wide as Tifa and Barret’s when he’d first announced his plan, maybe even wider. “No,” he said. “Zack—what the fuck, didn’t anyone in town tell you this? People don’t go up and down this mountain in the winter. The temperature alone—and the wind. Even if you could keep your footing on the ice…the weather must have gone easy last night. You must’ve gotten lucky.”

Zack bit his lip, considering. He hadn’t come back to life to be an inconvenience to Cloud. But if he was being honest—he wasn’t entirely, 100% sure he had it in him to do that hike again. Not without at least eight hour’s sleep.

“You really wouldn’t mind if I stayed the night?” Zack said, searching his face for any trace of a lie.

“I’m not kicking you out,” said Cloud, frowning more deeply. “You’ll have to stay—”

“Oh.” Zack felt suddenly warm, almost too warm. “Thanks, Cloud. You’re the best. I won’t bother you at all, I can be gone in the morning.”

“—until the snow melts.”

“What?”

“It’s going to be a while,” Cloud said, and he scowled, now, rubbing at the crease between his brows with his wrist. “Four months before anyone else could make it down…maybe three for you…depends how the season goes, it’s really anybody’s guess…”

“Hey,” said Zack, “hey, wait a minute.” He forgot himself for a moment and dragged Cloud’s wrist away from his face, cutting off the frustrated, anxious gesture. “I made it up here, didn’t I? I’ll make it down, just fine. Don’t worry. I’m not going to overstay my welcome.”

Cloud look stricken. Something genuinely haunted—an undisguised, plain fear—across his face. “But you can’t.”

Under that look, guilt wavered to life in Zack’s chest. It did something to him, reached something inside him, that neither Tifa’s dismayed unease nor Barret’s outraged concern had managed to.

Zack became aware that he hadn’t even been alive for a whole week yet, and he may have already monumentally fucked up

“What?” he laughed, uncomfortably. “You’d really rather have me bother you all winter? I’m a pretty sturdy guy, Spike, I can take care of myself. Promise.”

Cloud set his jaw. Something happened behind his eyes, invisible but very noticeable, and then he said, “Fine.” He crossed his arms. “But I’m going with you.”

“What! No you won’t.”

Immediately, Cloud crossed his arms. “Why not?”

“Because,” Zack spluttered. “It’s dangerous, obviously? You just said so?”

“Which is why I should keep you company. I know the mountain better, anyways.”

Zack’s heart raced. Absolutely not. His bones still ached from the fall; his skin now stung from the thaw. No way could he let Cloud risk himself like that—put him through that—and not because of Zack. Not because Zack had once again made a stupid choice.

“You’d have to hike back on your own,” he tried to reason.

Evenly, Cloud said, “Just like you did.”

Zack said, on the verge of desperate, “I can’t stay here. That’s—I can’t just put you out like that. That wasn’t what I came here for.”

“Well you can’t d—” Cloud cut off, strangely, and then ground his teeth together. “There’s worse things.”

“I…” Zack swallowed.

“So, you’ll stay.”

“…Well,” Zack said. He was so tired. His head throbbed. “I’ll figure it out, okay? I didn’t come all the way up here to give you any trouble.”

Cloud rubbed his face with his free hand and, somewhere behind his palm, let out a soft sound, very nearly a laugh. “You came all the way up here,” he said. He dropped his hand.

His eyes were bright and blue-green and wide-open, clearer even than a summer sky.

“Yeah,” Zack murmured, uselessly. “Of course I did.”

They stood there in the doorway, facing each other, one of Zack’s hands propped up on the frame and Cloud’s wrist hanging loosely in the other.

Suddenly aware of himself, the contact made Zack’s head spin, and he pulled away quickly, laughing to try to cover it up.

“You…” Cloud looked away, throat working. Then he frowned, as if coming back to the math problem from before and still finding himself bewildered by its shape. “You must be exhausted.” He looked back at Zack, at a loss to understand what Zack had done to get to him.

Good, Zack thought. He didn’t want Cloud knowing. He didn’t want him even guessing.

“Not too bad,” he said. “I could do with a nap, I guess.” He could have laid down in his old grave and slept comfortably for a week; if pressed, he could admit to himself that he was more tired out by the punch-gut relief of their reunion than anything to do with his short hike earlier.

“Sure,” Cloud said. “That sounds good. I have some errands to take care of…you should…I’ll get you a towel.”

They shuffled in the doorway, Zack stepping aside and Cloud’s shoulder brushing his chest on the way out. Behind him, the guest room was filled with bright light, cold sunshine pouring in from a window over a desk.

There was a twin bed with a quilt, a bulletin board covered in papers, and bookshelves crammed against every wall. Zack wandered inside, letting a hand brush across one of the shelves. He hadn’t realized Cloud liked to read that much.

At closer look, Zack could see the shelves were stuffed with more than just paperbacks: DVDs and CDs also filled the shelves, stacked on top of each other in places. There were games Zack didn’t recognize, and heaps of magazines for things like snowmobiles and home maintenance and cooking. Zack was crouched down, flipping through one of them, when Cloud came back, and Zack looked up guiltily, slipping the magazine back amongst its peers.

“Here,” Cloud said, putting a folded towel down on top of a dresser. “You already know where the shower is, so…”

He met Zack’s eyes. There was a pause during which Zack could only stare back, uselessly, his tongue thick in his mouth. Somehow, he could still see the twenty-one-year-old in Cloud’s face; still remember exactly how that fractured recognition had looked in his long-forgotten eyes. “Make yourself at home.”

Zack got ungainly to his feet, suddenly feeling his tiredness in a dizzying wave, but he gripped the back of the desk chair to hide it. “Hey,” he said. “Is this really okay?”

“…Which part?”

“Well…me staying here. For starters.”

Cloud sighed, but it didn’t sound necessarily unhappy. Maybe just tired. “Of course.”

“Alright,” said Zack, gently. Weariness and fondness mixed together into an indistinguishable, inevitable slurry in his voice. “And you? Are you really okay?”

After only the smallest pause. Cloud said. “Yeah. Yeah—I’m good, Zack.” And then, head cocking almost imperceptibly to the left. “Are you?”

Zack felt as if his smile could have raised the dead. He’d have to try sometime. “Yeah,” he breathed. “I’m great.”

“Good,” Cloud said, and lingered, for which Zack was grateful, until Fenrir thumped his tail against the floor a couple times and they were both pulled back into the present. “Sleep well.”

When Cloud was gone, Zack fell back onto the mattress, covering his eyes. The clock on the desk next to him read 10:12 am. In a minute, Zack told himself, he’d get up and rinse himself off. He’d peel himself out of his clothes and get under the covers.

In a minute.

Cloud pulled the study door shut behind him with a click. Right away, Fenrir was squirming around his feet, jamming his shoulders between Cloud’s legs, and Cloud had to grab onto the staircase bannister to keep himself from toppling over.

“Fenrir!” he snapped, in a whisper. The dog wound itself in a circle and then politely leaned his head against the lower rungs of the staircase, innocent as a lamb. “What’s with you?”

Fenrir offered his lolling tongue as answer. Wearily, Cloud headed up the stairs, Fenrir following right behind him.

“That’s Zack,” he said. “Don’t you want to behave?”

Fenrir tilted his head at him and looked back at the study door, tail and ears raising, as if to say, That's Zack?

Cloud’s face burned. He too turned and looked down the stairs—wondering, horrified, if he’d spoken quietly enough that Zack could have plausibly not overheard him talking to his dog as if Fenrir already knew who Zack was.

Which of course, Fenrir did.

Cloud’s entire face pinched together in a grimace.

He really did have chores to get done, and it would be better if he took care of them before Zack woke up, but Cloud couldn’t so much as think about that right now. He trudged the rest of the way up to his loft. For the first time, he wished he had a bedroom door. Something to put between him and the life-changing truth downstairs.

Instead he stumbled, numb, to sit at the edge of his bed. Quiet as possible, so as not to disturb his guest. He stared down at his hands, clasped between his knees, and did not see them.

Fenrir bumped his head into Cloud’s, not entirely gently. He must have jumped on the bed; it would have shaken the mattress, hard, but Cloud hadn’t felt it at all.

Pressing a hand over his mouth, he breathed in harshly, and pet Fenrir as Fenrir nuzzled closer to him. Fenrir always seemed to know when to surround him, when to blanket him in darkness and even sit on his chest if it came to it: how to draw him back from the edge.

Cloud finally drew his hand away and sunk his fingers fully into Fenrir’s fur. “What do I do?” he whispered. “What the hell are we going to do?”

Fenrir licked his face. Cloud groaned, letting his forehead fall against Fenrir’s back.

He had only managed to stave off his panic at Zack’s unthinkable arrival by the sheer effort it took to remember how to act in front of another human. Living as a hermit, that was a part of him that had largely become dormant. Just remembering how to speak out loud to someone else, to offer to take their jacket, and something to drink, and—fuck, he hadn’t even offered Zack a place to sit down. You were supposed to offer people a place to sit down! These things had all fallen by the wayside long ago. Dragging them out of cold storage took all the space at the front of his mind.

Now, sitting on his bed, a flight of stairs between him and his guest, his dog a warm leaden weight across his legs—now, at last, he allowed the dam to burst in his chest. Felt it all, everything since that morning, since seeing that long-lost face appear, floating, pale, between the trees at the edge of the forest. Like something from a dream. Like something from a nightmare.

He mouthed his name silently, at first, into Fenrir’s skin, over and over, until he grew bold enough to whisper aloud: “Zack. Zack.”

He wasn’t allowed to speak that name. He wasn’t allowed to think about it. In the basement, there were carefully taped-up boxes of memorabilia—press photos, newspaper articles, smudged magazine spreads, fan club zines, a mall photo booth strip, a plush cactuar toy that flooded his mouth with sour guilt—that Cloud wasn’t allowed to look at.

And when he closed his eyes now, he saw the very thing he wasn’t allowed to remember, and what he infallibly thought of whenever he got drunk or stirred half-awake at four in the morning, blinking away loss: Zack, seventeen years old and grinning, uncomplicated, holding his hand out for Cloud to take (Heya!)—elbowing him in the hallway as he passed him by (Hang in there!)—crouched over him in Modeoheim, shaking his shoulder, his open concern (You doing okay?)—that yellow truck (We’re friends, right?)—his turned back as he walked away into the blinding light…

But Zack was here, now. In his home, in the flesh. Sleeping in his guest bed.

Cloud covered his face. Fenrir pawed as him, but it was too much to soothe, too much to comprehend. There was joy in his chest, of course, enormous and incandescent; the voice of disbelief screaming to be heard, but overpowered by the chorus of his vast and deafening relief, so sweet that it nearly burned. But even so—even so—

It might have been easier, if Cloud hadn’t wronged Zack so many times over.

It happened like this: at fourteen years old, Cloud had looked up to Zack Fair. He had fostered a silly, embarrassing little crush on his handsome, friendly superior, so kind to him when no one else had ever given him the time of day. When he was sixteen, Cloud had watched Zack’s broken body topple down the steps of the Nibelheim reactor, knocked down by the monster that had destroyed Cloud’s home. At seventeen, Cloud could remember spending his last waking moments blinking sleepily through the mako, pressing his hand to the wall of the tank, murmuring It’s fine, it’s fine…and hearing the sick crack as Zack broke his elbow, again, against the glass.

At twenty-one years old, Cloud forgot.

Not long after, sick with guilt and grief and fury, he’d thrown himself into remembering Zack: remembering him so well and so thoroughly that perhaps all his other crimes might be forgotten. He’d tracked down old SOLDIER recruits, bullied the Turks, raided the shell of Shinra tower and every inch of the manor basement. He cobbled together a rough route of where Zack must have taken them during their year on the run and retraced every step himself, combing futilely through his thinned recollections. He’d visited Zack’s parents. He’d kept Zack’s photo on his desk. He’d compiled every fact, every anecdote left on the planet, every shred of Zack left and legacy, so that he could honour it as much as Zack deserved.

By twenty-three, Cloud was in love with Zack.

By twenty-four he’d been inconsolable.

He could know no rest, not when every time he tried to shut his eyes he knew, with all the fullness of grief in his breast, that he’d never see Zack again. That he’d loved him, and cost him his life, and now could only sit in the immensity of his loss, could only curl up around the emptiness Zack had left him with. There was no thought to whether or not Zack would have returned his feelings—that possibility was long gone. He’d never have the chance to say the words aloud to him, much less hope for them to be returned. He would never speak to Zack again, never see the kind curve of his smile. Zack’s rough hands would never touch him again.

Back then, if Zack had appeared before him, a younger Cloud would not have wasted any time—would have scrambled to his knees and begged forgiveness for his failures. Pressed his head into Zack’s palms and offered his thanks, wretched and inadequate, for the life Zack had given him. Would have touched every bit of Zack’s skin, not just because he wanted it so badly it hurt some nights, but to prove to himself that what he was seeing was real.

But Zack had not come back to life, then. Cloud had been heartsick. Cloud had been emptied, shelled, with more tragedy than he could handle. Cloud could have tried to cling to life, but he didn’t want to. It didn’t interest him.

His friends had been the ones to drag him out. Slowly, painstakingly. They’d pushed aside his curtains. Aired out his room. Pulled him from his bike when, hounded out of the safety of his dark little room, he instead threw himself into endless deliveries, back to back to back, across the continent, sagging with exhaustion and chasing—sometimes running from—the spectre of Zack’s memory.

They had unfurled him. They’d brought him into the present, tried to feed him warmth, and somewhere along the way, Cloud had realized—with the slow, heart-pounding dread of turning to face an executioner—that he’d never even really known Zack.

That he was mourning an idea more than a person.

It hurt to discover. He’d lashed out at himself, at his friends by extension, but it hadn’t been any worse than he’d been lashing out at his loved ones for years. It shook him. It dragged him back to earth with lodestones around his ankles.

He’d slunk back, harrowed, apologetic, and scoured raw by the realization that everything he had done to try to redeem himself had not only been useless, but had perhaps been a worse transgression than his first. That instead of preserving and honouring Zack’s legacy, he’d contaminated it with yearning. Had put Zack’s remains on a pedestal, built something grotesque around it. Took his own guilt and shame and longing and called it love.

Made a mockery of Zack’s memory.

At twenty-five, Cloud had done his best to put down his obsession. Buried it deep, shrouded it with as many and as strong of locks as he could. Excised it, sometimes, when it would not go cleanly.

Not long after, he had scaled the unnamed mountain that rose sharpest and highest out of the Northern range, and there he’d remained. But that was a different story.

“Fenrir,” Cloud whispered, head bowed between his knees, “I don’t think I can do this.”

How could he face Zack? How much did Zack already know, how much had he guessed? How could he sit down and eat a meal with Zack, after every rotten thing Cloud had done to Zack’s name? Cloud owed him so many apologies. So many he hardly knew where to start.

And he hadn’t even tried, had he? Cloud had stood at his kitchen counter and made Zack coffee. He hadn’t said, Thank you for saving me. He hadn’t said, I’m sorry for forgetting you, or I loved you. I loved you once, so much that I thought I’d die from it.

He hadn’t said, Fuck you.

After every day and every night that Cloud had spent, painstakingly, sometimes with patience and sometimes in anger, easing Zack from his heart. Thanklessly, joylessly—learning to lay him to rest. All that—for nothing.

Standing in the kitchen, he had thought about it. Had imagined saying, to that smiling, gentle, carefree face: Fuck you. You have no idea, do you?

Fenrir pressed his cold nose to Cloud’s cheek. Cloud made a hurt, low noise, and forced himself to think. “I know,” he said. “Fuck, I know.”

Downstairs there was a living man—with thoughts never found in Shinra records, with feelings Cloud never would have been privy to anyhow—with long, untamed hair that suited him better than Cloud could stand to think about—and it was a miracle. It was the best thing he could have asked for. It was something he had sobbed and begged for, when he was out of his mind; it was something he would never have dared hoped for when he was in his right mind.

But Zack was there. Cloud couldn’t ignore it—even though part of him wondered, desperately, if he could get away with ignoring it, somehow. Couldn’t he?—No. They would be together all winter. All winter.

There was no getting out of it. Zack was a fucking miracle, real and in the flesh, and Cloud couldn’t send him out to die just because Cloud had ruined himself on his memory. And Cloud himself wouldn’t survive, if he had to watch Zack walk away from him (again), and hold out until spring to get news of whether or not Zack had made it down alive.

All winter—four months. Cloud wanted to shrivel up just thinking about it. He was alone for a reason. He couldn’t imagine a worse person to intrude on that. It was almost funny—nearly made him laugh aloud—that Zack had haunted him for so long, as a nothing, as less than a ghost, and now Zack was finally there to follow through. To haunt him in person, unavoidable and concrete.

Perhaps it was only fair.

But this Zack wasn't the same Zack that lived behind his eyelids, in fractured clips of sunshine and boyish concern. Cloud barely recognized the man downstairs. It wasn’t just Zack’s age—it was the way he held himself, the way he spoke. Even only an hour together was enough reminder that Cloud had never spent much time with him when they were alive, that he’d never really known him—that his memories of Zack were disfigured in more than one way—and that, perhaps, time and life and death had changed them both.

It had been, after all, eleven years.

Their conversation on the cliff didn’t count.

Gritting his teeth, Cloud wrapped his arms around Fenrir’s neck and pressed his face into his collar. Felt, more acutely than he had in years, the pathetic, confused, gaping wound of his mourning, suddenly torn open raw by the bewildering meaninglessness of it all. Years of hurt. Years of carefully tiptoeing around the wound that never seemed to heal…all for Zack to stumble in out of the wild and track mud all over it.

“He’s alive,” Cloud said, to the both of them. As if it could make everything alright. “He’s okay.”

But if Zack didn’t know of Cloud’s sins yet, he would soon. Even if Cloud never found the courage to tell him, he’d robbed Zack’s very grave, and those kinds of things couldn’t stay hidden. There’d be proof enough of that in the yard, come spring.

He’d have to fix it, somehow. Find his words—or bury everything even deeper. Cloud held Fenrir tight, and Fenrir licked his face in return. He stayed there for a while, willing his heart to slow down. Willing himself to be grateful. He had the impossible: a second chance. The opportunity to set things right.

Right now, he wasn’t sure he even wanted it.

Chapter Text

Zack woke to crusted drool on his chin and a hot spill of sunlight burning through his eyelids. He rubbed at his eyes, groaning at the soreness that had worked its way down into his bones, and when he sat up, his head swam with the dizziness of deep sleep.

The clock on the desk read 7:03 am.

Zack blinked. Then he groaned again, covering his face. He’d slept the entire day and through the night.

He got unsteadily to his feet, and grimaced at his condition. His mouth was dry and he felt stale with sweat. He was still in his hiking clothes from before; the neatly folded bath towel lying on the dresser seemed to mock him. His bag was in the corner of the room, the zipper a little loose—Cloud must have kindly moved it for him as he slept. Zack grabbed something clean to wear before sticking his head out into the hall and, coast clear, ducked into the bathroom.

The water was a fresh, boiling relief. Shamelessly, he stole some of Cloud’s shampoo and worked it into a confused lather down his hair; the length of it still mystified him, the ends reaching more than halfway down his back. Seemed like a lot of growth for a dead man.

Clean, he wiped steam from the mirror and ruffled his hair, watching how it spilled here and there. He peeked into Cloud’s medicine cabinet, but ended up deciding not to steal any more products. He’d spent his youth perfecting how to work piles of mousse through his hair to create something tousled and roguish, but whatever was on his head now was entirely beyond him. He let it lie and, ignoring the dampness still on his skin, got dressed.

From down the hall he could hear the sound of a fridge door opening, of dishes being moved around. There was an arrhythmic thumping sound that, as Zack rounded the corner, he discovered to be Fenrir’s tail hitting the cabinets as he followed Cloud around the kitchen. Cloud was wearing sweatpants, a red sweater, and socks with a tiny chocobo embroidered on the ankle.

Once again, Zack was slammed with the feeling that he wasn’t supposed to be here. That it was impossible—a dream he’d let go of, just like all the others—and now, faced dead in front of it, he couldn’t quite find a way to chew and swallow it down. It was too large, too bright, for the whittled size of his hope.

He held himself together, like he always had, and placed a hand up on the archway into the great room. “Morning,” he said.

Cloud set down a ceramic bowl so suddenly that it made a clatter. His lips parted. There was a delay before he said, “Morning.”

Fenrir, too, had turned his head. He regarded Zack with contemptuous, beady eyes; although he didn’t make a sound, Cloud still placed a hand on Fenrir’s head in warning.

“Sorry that I…y’know.” Zack rubbed the side of his face. “Has it really been a day?”

Cloud nodded, turning and busying himself with dishware. “Yeah. I checked on you a few times. Out like a light.”

Zack scratched the back of his neck. “Oh…”

“You must be starving.”

Zack found that, yes, maybe that knot of pain radiating out of his stomach was something like old hunger pangs. “I could eat. Don’t go out of your way though.”

“No, it’s fine, I’ve got this. What do you want? I’ve got oatmeal, smoked meat, potatoes, I can do apple fritters…”

Zack raised his eyebrows. “You can cook?”

Cloud huffed out a laugh—tiny and brief—but it nearly buoyed Zack up into the rafters all the same. He threw Zack a wry look. “Yeah, a little.”

“Then…apple fritters, please.”

Cloud nodded, turning away from him again. “’K. Go sit down. There’s coffee if you want.”

“Nah, c’mon. Let me help.”

“I—uh.” Cloud unhooked an enormous cast iron skillet from a rack over the stove. “Want to chop apples?”

Zack drank coffee and carefully peeled the apples, muscle memory for the task returning slowly. The peels fell into a small heap, thin ribbons with squiggly edges, and even that alone managed to besiege him with nostalgia. Impulsively, he took a bite out of one of the apples—it crunched, satisfyingly, between his teeth—and could have laughed as the brightness burst on his tongue. The real thing was so much better than a memory.

If Cloud saw him acting foolish, he didn’t comment. Moving evenly around the kitchen, Cloud pulled things from the cabinets, made a batter, and heated a shimmering panful of oil. When Zack had finished chopping the apples into very fine slices, Cloud appeared at his side and held out his bowl for Zack to dump it all into.

Everything smelled so good. Cinnamon and sourdough, and something Zack had never been in a kitchen long enough to learn the name of. He watched over Cloud’s shoulder, warm and mesmerized, as Cloud eased dollops of dough into the pan. The oil hissed gently.

Cloud got out a second pan, then reached for a large jar on the top shelf. He could have made it, probably, but it looked like an uncomfortable stretch—his fingertips just brushing the rounded sides—so Zack helpfully reached around him to pluck the jar down himself.

“What are they?” he said, peering into the jar’s murky, white depths. Strange, pale shapes floated in the opaque broth. It honestly did not look appetizing.

“Uh.” Cloud rubbed the back of his neck, throwing him a look somewhere between bewildered and scowling. “Eggs. In lime.”

“Lime?”

“They’re alright,” said Cloud. “Not the same as fresh. But they can last for years.”

“Huh.” For the first time, Zack slowly flipped over the concept of remote mountainside cabin and considered the underbelly of no grocery stores in reach. He reeled; even in Gongaga, he could have run down to the general store and bought fresh milk and conchas most any day of the week.

Unbothered, Cloud fished the eggs out, rinsed them, then cracked them into the second pan. Zack hovered as Cloud manned both burners until Cloud relented and gave him a spatula. Poking at the edges of the fritters was fun, and watching them turn golden in the oil was better.

They brought the food out to the round dining table in the corner, windows on both walls overlooking the view. Cloud moved aside nuts and bolts and stacks of papers so they could set their plates down, and Fenrir sprawled out on his side underneath the table. Zack peeked under and saw Cloud put his feet on Fenrir’s stomach to give a brisk rub; the dog flopped his head back and forth in bliss.

Zack had about a million questions, but he was wary of overwhelming Cloud, having already intruded upon what was probably meant to be a very quiet morning. Instead they ate in silence, forks and knives scraping against the dishes. Each bite was hot and wonderful, even if Cloud was right about the eggs. There was something slightly stuffy about them—like maybe they’d been in a jar for a year.

“I don’t have a lot of plans for the day,” Cloud muttered, as he dropped butter onto his third fritter. “Some chores, and then Fenrir and I usually go out and clear the paths from monsters a few times a week.”

“I can help with all of that,” Zack said.

“You just came back to life. I think you get a free pass from dealing with my shed roof.”

“I just came back to life,” Zack agreed, “so I’m really well rested. Just point me in the right direction.”

Cloud huffed, quietly, a corner of his mouth jumping.

“Oh! I completely forgot,” said Zack, when he’d swallowed and even chewed, and left this whole plate clear. “Tifa gave me some gifts for you.”

“Oh.” Cloud’s brow furrowed. He looked down at his plate. “Of course she did.”

Zack ducked into the guest room. Really, there were more gifts in the duffel bag than belongings, so he fished out his small pile of clothes and brought everything else to the main room.

Cloud looked at the bag as if it might bite when Zack brought it to him—but then he carefully reached inside. First there was a stack of newspapers, and Cloud frowned as he flipped through the headlines before pushing them aside. Next were some tins of coffee beans and a few blank notebooks, which made Cloud hum. Then there was a box full of carefully wrapped peaches. Not wrapped carefully enough, though.

“Sorry,” Zack said, scratching the back of his neck. “I should’ve been gentler with them.”

“What?” Cloud seemed genuinely nonplussed. “’Cause they’re a little bruised? Shit, I don’t care. I haven’t had anything this fresh in months.” He traced a fingertip down one of the fuzzy sides. “Will have to eat them fast, before they go bad.”

Mystifyingly, most of the gifts seemed to be seasonings and little foodstuffs: cinnamon, sesame oil, sweetened condensed milk, hot sauces, vinegar chips, and some lime-green jars of chutney. Underneath it all was a box set of DVDs, and when Cloud saw the title, his face split with the widest smile Zack had seen on him yet.

“Good series?” Zack guessed.

“Pretty good,” Cloud said. “This is the new season…I thought I’d have to wait until next year to see it.” He put it down, and Zack grabbed it, flipping it over to look at the back.

“We’ll have to watch it together.”

“You have to start at the beginning,” Cloud said firmly. “I have all the other seasons.”

“If you insist,” said Zack, who would have watched paint dry as long as Cloud was there too.

There were a few more strangely mundane items—toothbrushes, tissues—then from the bottom of the bag, Cloud pulled out a colourful bundle of what seemed to be emergency flares, and finally a letter. Cloud frowned; he quickly tucked the letter, unopened, underneath everything else. Zack couldn’t be sure which of them he was hiding it from.

Zack looked at it all, spread across the table, and a sinking feeling came over his chest. “This…none of this is because of me, right?”

“The flares are in case I need anything,” Cloud said, shrugging, and standing up to take his plate. “Someone in the village calls it in and the Turks say they can fly low enough to drop a shipment. Tifa probably sent these ‘cause she was worried we’d run out of food.” At Zack’s look of alarm, he said, “I have enough in the cellar to keep me and Fenrir going for years. Don’t worry. ”

Zack still had to bite back a curse. Inconveniencing Cloud for even a day felt too far out of line; whittling down his survival rations was ridiculous.

He hadn’t meant for any of this.

“Turk grocery deliveries, huh?” he said instead, crossing his arms and putting on a smile. “They do that for everyone?”

“They owe me,” said Cloud, mildly. Zack followed him as Cloud dropped their plates off in the sink.

“Pretty crazy though…”

Cloud didn’t look at him. “What?”

Zack shrugged. “I mean, doesn’t it freak you out ever? Being so far away from everything?” From help? Already he could feel a slightly sour taste in his mouth, working over the sweetness of breakfast.

Cloud said, a little flatly, “I’ve lived here a long time. It’s fine.” He turned on the tap.

It really didn’t surprise Zack to learn that Cloud’s walk-in closet was jam-packed with weapons, armour, and salvaged materia; the only surprise was how sweet the gear was. Cloud told him to grab whatever he wanted and then wandered off to presumably also get ready to go out. Zack was all too eager to try a few swings with the well-polished swords gleaming in their racks.

His left arm had other ideas.

With an emphatic lurch, he managed to control the plummet of the sword in his grip and make it land in the snow in such a way that Cloud, upstairs, hopefully, couldn’t have seen how he’d just lost control. Dazed with the sharp burst of pain, Zack stared down at his arm. He turned it; he winced. Alright.

It hadn’t bothered him this morning, so after trying a few more times and gritting his teeth against the feeling, it seemed to be the weight of the sword that was the problem. Zack went back inside, dug out his healing materia, and cast it on himself. He tried again.

His arm was still fucked.

Well. Zack shifted his weight back and forth. Casting Cura was the sum total of his healing experience; if that hadn’t worked, he was completely out of ideas. He glanced upstairs. Embarrassment kept him from rapping on the wall and asking, like a little kid, if maybe Cloud had any idea why Zack was hurting? So, reluctantly, Zack instead went back to the closet and found something he could use one handed and a materia gauntlet for his offhand. It was not his preference. He actually couldn’t remember the last time he’d had to do it.

Cloud came downstairs with dark, tactical clothes, in stark contrast to the soft, cozy outfit from that morning. He had a saber lashed across his back, fully packed with no less than eight gleaming materia. He looked deadly.

“All set?” Cloud asked, wrapping a black scarf around the lower half of his face.

Zack nodded, mouth dry.

Fenrir, it seemed, was coming along too. He trotted to Cloud’s side and went with them as they went out the back door, and then, seemingly at random, dashed across Zack’s path right as Zack was walking down the porch steps.

“Woah!” Zack stumbled and went, hopping on one foot, into the snow to avoid crushing Fenrir’s legs.

“Fenrir!” Cloud called. “Not okay!”

But the dog did not look particularly remorseful. He rubbed cozily along Cloud’s side as they walked, big and tall enough that he rose above the snow and made just as good time as them in their heavy boots. Cloud led them through the trees, working downhill for a while before curving with the mountainside as the path started to climb. The day was clear but the boughs above sometimes trembled with wind or as a bird took flight, and the heavy snow piled on top would shake down onto them.

Cloud went ahead, Zack following carefully behind, watching Cloud’s shoulders in his big coat and the practiced ease with which Cloud navigated the completely unmarked terrain. Eventually the trees fell away and they were travelling through a cut in the mountain proper, nothing but snow and rock and ice to be seen. The silence felt nearly as cold as the air, something muffled about its edges with the mountain pressing in on either side.

Suddenly Cloud threw his arm out in front of him. Zack froze, chest hitting Cloud’s arm. On Cloud’s other side, Fenrir had gone as still as the rock beside them, his lips curled away from his fangs but obediently silent.

“Above us. On the right.”

Zack slowly raised his gaze. There, perched nearly hidden from view on a ledge, was a cuahl. It was sat on its haunches, paws hanging down over the edge, its whiskers floating in the breeze and its lazy, predatory, cat-like eyes affixed on their approach.

“It definitely knows we’re here,” Zack whispered, out of the corner of his mouth.

“It won’t bother us, if we don’t startle it,” Cloud said. “Just…gotta be careful.”

“I thought we were out here to kill monsters?”

Cloud’s mouth twisted, wryly. “I prefer to save my energy for the marlboros.”

“Oh, god,” Zack said, sensory memory hitting him like a blow. “You didn’t say anything about marlboros.”

In the end they didn’t run into a marlboro, which was a relief, but a short while later a shadow passed over them and a great blue dragon landed on the path.

In his prime, Zack could have taken down the beast on his own, but now—out of practice, wielding an unfamiliar body, down a limb—he was deeply grateful for the absolute legend that Cloud had grown into. He’d seen it from the Lifestream, countless times, but it was something else in person: the way he moved, liquid and effortless, snapping to where he needed to be and sidestepping danger like he’d already played this fight through a dozen times before. Cloud leapt, as if defying gravity was simple; the swing of his sword was precise and calculated. Amusingly, Fenrir seemed eager to join his master, but Cloud snapped at Fenrir when he got close, the dog fell back, head cowed.

Zack suspected that Cloud paused politely to let Zack get in the few hits that he did. He certainly had kept looking back at Zack, constantly, like he was afraid Zack might run away or disappear on him or simply lie down dead at any point.

Not that Zack minded. Watching Cloud in motion—vital, living, flesh and blood—was already so much on its own.

Afterwards, Cloud called Fenrir back out and dropped to one knee to scratch his head. “Good boy,” he murmured. Zack came up beside him and held out his healing materia; Cloud nodded, and closed his eyes as the magic washed over him.

The dragon had fallen in a messy heap, blocking the pass. Together they dragged it out of the way, and then Cloud crouched down at the dragon’s side, using a dull utility knife to pry off some of the scales of its underbelly, lustrous and dark as sapphires. Zack helped him load up a bag with them and when Cloud finally stood up, satisfied, Zack swung the bag over his shoulder without question. Cloud made a small noise of protest but Zack batted it away, more interested in what was next on the schedule.

They hiked a little while longer before Cloud came to the decision that they’d gone far enough to the day and turned them around, heading home through a different pass, one that led them out into a wide-open slope that was terrifying to descend, even as Zack was ordered to follow exactly in Cloud’s steps to find the careful path cut underneath the snow. By the time they made it back to the cabin even Fenrir seemed a bit tired, leaping up the front steps with less vigour than when they’d started, and as Cloud shut the door behind them, Zack moaned gratefully at the warmth. His fingertips had been numb for an unpleasantly long time.

“This mountain is brutal, huh?”

Cloud hummed, noncommittally. “She’s…not welcoming to strangers.”

They unpeeled their multitude of layers and Cloud cleared some space for Zack on the rod in the hall closet, which made something unnameable stir in the bottom of Zack’s stomach. “Be right back,” Cloud said, before disappearing up the stairs into the loft. Unsurprisingly, Fenrir followed.

Zack wandered out into the main room, slightly at a loss. For lack of anything better to do, he got himself a glass of water from the tap.

There was a wide window seat in the alcove near the kitchen. Zack put his knee up on it, leaning forward to watch a small bird peck at a feeder hung from the porch roof. The bird was brown with a white stripe down its forehead. Zack had never given a second thought to things like that but now, standing there quietly with really, truly, nothing else in the whole wide world to do—nothing he was responsible for, nowhere he needed to be—he found himself wondering what kind of bird it was. Maybe Cloud had a book he could check.

After a minute the bird flew off. Cloud still hadn’t come downstairs, so Zack picked up one of the magazines on the dining table and laid down on the window seat, head comfortably propped up against a throw pillow. His legs didn’t fit in the alcove, but he left them hanging off the side and that wasn’t bad.

It was warm, even right beside the window, and the daylight was still bright in a way that almost made him tired, burning as he tried to focus on the text in front of him. The shower and the morning hike had worked some of the soreness out of his body, but now it started to come back with a vengeance, making him sink back into the cushions and close his eyes for a brief moment of respite. Before long, he forgot to open his eyes at all.

He woke up to the sound of something being fried on the stove top and the smell of dog close at hand. When he opened his eyes, he was met with a pair of unblinking, yellow ones.

“Uh,” said Zack. He blinked a few times, then propped himself up on his forearms.

Fenrir, head resting on Zack’s belly, barely shifted. He didn’t look away.

“Hi to you too.”

Fenrir let out a small sound, almost like a sneeze, and licked his teeth.

Slowly, curious of what would happen, Zack tried to pet his head.

The dog squinted at him, but after a moment, he closed his eyes.

Well-awed, Zack scritched the crown of his head. “Like that?” Fenrir leaned in enough that Zack garnered he did, in fact, like it.

From the sounds of it, Cloud was stirring something in a saucepan. When Zack turned his head to check, Cloud was already looking at him.

Cloud turned—slightly—pink.

“He never does that, you know,” Cloud said, looking determinedly down into the pot. “He doesn’t like strangers.”

“Well, maybe he still doesn’t like me,” Zack said. “Maybe I just pet real good.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I’m warm,” said Zack. “Really warm. Bet he likes that.” He pet him again, lightly, unwilling to press his luck. “Hey, but,” he added, refocusing on Cloud, “sorry for falling asleep again. Tell me you aren’t cooking for us both.”

“It’s nearly done.”

Slowly, Zack extracted himself from underneath Fenrir. The wolf did open one yellow eye, halfway, to blink at him dispassionately, but then just quietly hopped up into the vacated seat and curled up for a nap.

Zack stepped behind Cloud at the stove, peering close over his shoulder. “Let me do that.”

Cloud dropped his spoon and he turned his head so fast that Zack winced, and, worried about whiplash, moved his hand instead to press against the side of Cloud’s neck. “You alright?”

Cloud stared at him.

Zack blinked back. Hastily pulled his hand back.

“I…” Cloud looked down at the stove. Rubbed over the exact spot Zack had just touched. “Ah…you can flip the sandwiches.”

“Yessir.”

There were grilled cheese sandwiches, golden and toasty, and the soup was a garlicky tomato that had clearly been cooked from scratch. They ate the first round at the table, mostly in silence, but Cloud offered to make more, so Zack jumped up and took care of frying the seconds. They ate those at the counter; then they made thirds, not bothering to even serve anything on dishes, and instead dipping the piping hot sandwiches into the pot on the stove.

Zack licked his fingers free of toasted breadcrumbs and groaned. Beside him, Cloud dusted off the cutting board and tossed the heel of the bread loaf. With a pang of guilt, Zack realized that Cloud must make the bread himself, from scratch, and Zack had gone ahead and chewed through it like it was nothing. He made a mental note to learn how Cloud baked it, and to take over the chore.

At the thought, he realized that he’d already started to assume he would, in fact, be staying for the entire winter: that what Cloud said was true, and he’d both be welcome to stay and very foolish to try otherwise.

Three or four months. Zack could smack himself. Cloud, so uninterested in company that he hid away from civilization and built a house in one of the most remote places in the world, and Zack had forced his way inside and made a nuisance of himself.

Fenrir jostled his leg, running past him as Cloud held out a treat and murmured something. Looking at the scene, Zack felt sore and somewhat pathetic. As if he was yet another stray that Cloud had kindly let inside and allowed to tramp all over his house.

At that moment Cloud looked up. He flushed, to Zack’s surprise, even though Zack had been the one caught staring this time. Cloud stuck the bag of treats out to him.

Zack took one of the little biscuits and held it out to Fenrir. “Are we good, wolfie?”

Fenrir shot him a narrowed, considering glance, then dove for Zack’s fingers, covering Zack’s fingers in slobber before horking the treat down. He then trotted immediately back to Cloud’s side.

Zack grinned. “Can’t fault him for being loyal.”

He washed the dishes by hand, and Cloud eventually gave up on trying to bully him into stopping, instead silently settling in to dry each dish by hand. Afterwards, Cloud hovered, somewhat awkwardly, while Zack calmly leaned back against the counter, hands folded behind himself.

“Uh, I have a few projects going—fixing up some beehives, organizing the shed—nothing you’d find interesting…I’ve got plenty of DVDs you could watch, and a few board games…” Cloud said. He winced. “Sorry. It’s really quiet around here.”

“You don’t have to entertain me!” Zack said, quickly. It was enough he was imposing on Cloud’s space and resources; he didn’t have to take his time, too. “You can do your thing. Point me towards a chore or two I can get done for you?”

“No, it’s—”

“C’mon,” Zack said, smiling. “I’ll get bored if you don’t.”

Cloud scowled at him, but it wasn’t very dark. It was almost an afterthought. “Alright. Come with me.”

There was a ladder to grab from one of the sheds, and a wide push broom with an enormous handle. Together they cleared away enough snow to set the ladder down by the side of the cabin, and Zack held the base steady while Cloud showed him how to sweep thick sheets of snow off the solar panels buried underneath, dragging piles of the stuff to the edge and letting them fall in a heap at the eaves. “Let me have a turn!” Zack called, so Cloud climbed back down, Zack putting a hand to his lower back for balance on the last few steps.

Cloud set his foot down on the ground and tottered to the side. “Zack.”

“What?”

Cloud did not explain himself.

Together they finished clearing one side of the cabin, then hiked around and did the other. That done, Zack looked at Cloud pleadingly for more, so Cloud let out one of his little sighs that was more of a laugh, and took Zack down to the edge of the property.

Zack didn’t know the names of any of the trees clustered there, curving with the mountainside, only that they were tall and impressive and that, as a child, he’d had a small platform up in a kapok tree that he’d always wished he could turn into a real tree house. He craned his neck, peering up into the branches. Wondered if that was something Cloud had ever wanted, too. Then Cloud called him over, and showed him how to cut down a tree.

His arm still grated when he tried to put pressure on it.

Zack tried to fake it, to use the strength of one arm to pretend he was swinging the axe with the full effort of both, but he didn’t think he succeeded; strangely—but to his great relief—Cloud didn’t comment on it. By the time Zack’s fingertips were once again freezing, they’d managed to fell two full trees between the two of them and haul the pieces into the woodshed. Inside the shed there were stacks upon stacks of equipment, a splitting stand, and a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. When Cloud finally called it quits, Zack made him promise to teach him how to split logs later.

Back in the cabin, they threw more wood on the fire. Cloud’s cheeks were flushed pink from the cold, and Fenrir came bounding down the staircase and skidding around the corner to greet Cloud, stepping all over their feet and barking twice in hello. Cloud looked so chilly that Zack wanted to grab Cloud’s hands and cup them between his own, but instead Zack put on the kettle and found a stash of herbal tea. He made his way back to the couch with two steaming mugs and found Cloud comfortably slumped in his seat, one knee drawn into his chest, soaking up the warmth of the hearth.

Cloud looked up at him.

Those eyes, the flickering light of the fire. The thick sweater, Fenrir’s head resting on his thigh. This home.

Zack worked through a lump in his throat and held Cloud’s mug out to him. “You mentioned board games?”

It turned out that Cloud’s description had been a bit overgenerous. He did have a “few” board games: two and a half, and that was adding up fractions.

“How can you be missing this many pieces,” Zack muttered, looking from the instructions and back to the box in front of him.

“I got them second hand,” Cloud said into his mug.

“You’ve never noticed they’re half missing?”

“It’s not like I play them on my own.”

That was depressing. Zack looked at the depleted, rag-tag jumble and drummed his fingers against the coffee table. “Alright,” he said. “I can make this work.”

With Cloud’s permission he riffled through the kitchen drawers and came back with a wine cork, a piece of rotelle, and a binder clip. They fit more-or-less on one of the boards as pawns; then he took some paper from the desk in his room and carefully traced the shape of one of the cards.

“Don’t get a lot of visitors then?” he said, lightly, as he cut out the first fake card. Even the snnic-snnic-snic sound of the scissors brought him a small thrill, something long-lost and delightful.

Cloud shook his head.

“No neighbours?”

“Up here?” Cloud said, with a slight laugh. “No.”

“Huh,” said Zack. He started crumpling up aluminum foil, experimentally. “Really? No one else braving it up here?”

Cloud said, “There’s Hearth,” but he scuffed his socked toe against the carpet, as if he knew that didn’t mean much.

Zack rolled the aluminum into a marble-sized ball against the table, working it smooth. He couldn’t imagine it. He could barely picture it, even though it was right in front of him. No groceries, no deliveries, no signal. No one to come around, even just to drink coffee or swap DVDs with once in a while. “Damn, Spike,” he said. “That’s…you really like your privacy, huh?”

“I like the quiet.”

And there Zack was, intruding on it. He frowned at the ball of metal, pinching it with his fingers and exerting a little more force than he’d usually allow. “What if you got in trouble?”

Cloud trailed a hand down Fenrir’s back. His voice was slightly terse as he said, “What about it?”

“How long would the Turks take to get here? Can they really reach this place?”

“I’ve managed,” Cloud said. “What’re you doing?”

Zack finished pinching the aluminum marble. It now had six flat sides that he evened out against the table. With the tip of a pencil, he drilled a hole in one side, then two in another, and so on. “There,” he said, dropping it in Cloud’s palm. “Your missing die.”

Cloud blinked at it. He tossed it on the coffee table, and it toppled around with much less weight than a normal die, but it still rolled on Zack’s dense, even edges. “Oh. Nice.”

“So there’s really no one?” Zack said.

Cloud had a little less patience this time. “I have Fenrir. I have emergency flares. I know what I’m doing.”

Zack didn’t doubt it. The whole house was set up thoughtfully and well, perfectly suited to comfortably seeing its inhabitants through a long winter. Cloud must have taken great pains to build and furnish it—but it didn’t mean that there was anything less dismaying about the thought of Cloud, alone and endangered, days away from any help.

Unhelpfully, and by force of habit, Zack’s mind began to conjure up pictures: clear, devastating pictures of worst-case scenarios. Pictures that demanded problem solving—Zack’s problem solving.

Urgently, Zack slammed a mental door shut on them. The doorknob turned red.

When he looked back up, Cloud looked away from him quickly, as if caught doing something shameful.

“Well,” said Zack breezily. “How long have you had Fenrir for? He’s really well trained.”

Fenrir lifted his head from where it had been laying on his paws; Cloud regarded the dog with light amusement. “Didn’t train him at all,” Cloud said. “And it’s been…since the first winter I was here. Two and a half years, then.”

Zack started setting up the board. “That’s good. Guess you’re tougher than me, but I know I’d start to go crazy, all cooped up on my own.”

“Me and Fenrir do alright,” Cloud said, wryly. “…A little cabin fever never hurt anyone.”

Zack looked up. “Cabin fever?”

Cloud shrugged, but declined to answer.

Zack bit his lip. Carefully, he shuffled the deck; the fake cards didn’t move like the rest of them, so he had to shuffle them untidily, in a pile, on the table.

Silence stretched on between them. Long, and then longer.

Zack had the unsettling feeling of being off balance. Part of him light as air, part of him still stuck underground. So much had happened to them—their shared history was so dense and dark—and neither of them had said a word to it. Cloud had not asked him, So, about that trip we took to Midgar, and Zack hadn’t had the guts to say, Did you ever get back your memories of the basement?

In fact, Cloud had been treating him so normally that Zack hardly knew whether it stung or felt sweet: there was a relief to being allowed to slip so effortlessly back into ordinary life, to be treated like a civilian, and not like a religious miracle or a tragic survivor; but he couldn’t forget what had come before. It was as if here, by the fireside, was safe and warm, but outside the past had them surrounded—pressing in against the window panes, blotting out the sun.

Nibelheim.

Sephiroth.

Hojo.

Cloud on his knees. Zack’s blood on his face. The promise Zack had forced on him; hadn’t even asked if Cloud was willing.

Now, Cloud was still looking away from Zack, one flushed cheek visible.

Alright. If Cloud needed space, that was fine. If Cloud wanted to pretend none of it ever happened—Zack could do that too.

It wasn’t as if Zack wanted to revisit those memories, either.

“Here we go,” he said, spinning the board towards Cloud. “Want to play?”

Cloud curled up with a book once the game was over, and Zack picked up the magazine he’d been flipping through earlier, settling himself on the floor. The sky darkened outside the windows. Cloud sank further into the couch cushions, and then further still—until there was a soft thump sound and Zack looked over to find Cloud asleep, the book open and lying flat on Cloud’s chin.

Zack grinned. After a moment to make sure he was really asleep, Zack gently reached over to take the book and placed it on the coffee table. On the armchair, Fenrir eyed him mistrustfully.

“I’m not doing anything,” Zack said, raising his hands.

He got to his feet; the magazine hadn’t drawn his interest anyhow. It was very quiet. Outside, snowflakes had again begun to fall.

Zack looked down at the couch. Cloud’s hair was messed up in the back, and one knee was sticking out from where he’d slumped. His chest was softly rising and falling with slow, deep breaths of the steadily asleep.

The sight inundated Zack’s heart: drowned it, slow and soft and syrupy, in a dismayed serenity he still didn’t really know how to handle with bare hands.

“Fuck,” he said, hoarsely. This couldn’t keep happening to him.

Certainly not if they were going to be living together for the entire winter.

He breathed out, closing his eyes. When he opened them, he cocked his head over at where Fenrir was still paying careful, unflattering attention to him. Keeping his voice low, he said, “Guess I could get started on dinner, right?”

Silently, he padded around to the kitchen and opened up the cabinets, Fenrir following at a short distance. “Just checking what he’s got.” He moved aside jars and cans, peeking into unlabelled containers to find stores of rice and pasta. Behind a huge jar of salt, he found a box of simple golden curry sauce, and cheered internally. He’d never cooked much—never had a chance to in the Shinra barracks—but box curry, he could handle.

He stuck his head in the fridge, moving things around slowly so that nothing would jostle or knock together. In the freezer, he found neat stacks of different cuts of meat and pulled out what looked like cubes of beef. “Think Spike would mind if I used this?” Zack whispered. Fenrir didn’t answer, so Zack went ahead with the plan.

Next he washed some rice and was about to turn on the rice cooker before he paused. He exchanged a look with Fenrir; Fenrir shifted on his paws, looking uneasy. “Yeah, let’s not do this here,” Zack agreed.

He took the machine into the guest room, which seemed like the most sane option, all things considered. Fenrir followed him, so Zack patiently waited until Fenrir was inside before closing the door. He set the rice cooker on the desk, plugged it in, and started it.

Dun-dun-da-da-do-da-dee, the rice cooker sang, loudly and clearly.

Fenrir thumped his tail on the floor. Once, twice. Zack would have liked to think it was in approval.

The last thing to settle was the vegetables. Zack swore he’d seen a bin of potatoes downstairs, and he bet he could track down some carrots, too. At the top of the basement stairs, Zack flicked on the light; unsure if Fenrir was allowed down there, he shut the door behind him before going down.

The basement was tidy and well-kept, the shelves laden high with what Zack now knew would be the only food they saw until spring. It smelled dusty, but not in a particularly bad way, and a few pipes criss-crossed overhead, creaking every so slightly . The cement floor was cool under Zack’s socks.

Potatoes were easy to find, right near the foot of the stairs, and Zack piled a few handfuls in the hem of his shirt. For carrots he had to search down the aisles—narrow, and somewhat dimly lit, their shadows overlapping as he walked them up and down. Something about sound, down here, travelled differently than it did above ground. Even in the silence pressed down on him differently. Baking soda, dried apricots, cured meats—

Something prickled at the back of his neck.

Zack stood still. On instinct, he slid a foot behind himself to bolster his stance, then slowly looked over his shoulder.

Nothing.

Of course there wasn’t anything—he was alone down here.

Zack shook it off. He went back to work looking for a flash of the colour orange among everything else. There was some organization to the layout, as far as he could tell, but the exact logic wasn’t clear to him. Soap was stacked next to apple sauce, apple sauce next to lighter fluid. Zack would have to learn the order, he decided, so he didn’t end up messing with Cloud’s system.

Then he rounded the corner and for a moment, Zack couldn’t breathe.

It was as if one of the long shadows of the shelves had crawled into his mouth and stuffed its way down into his lungs, smothering him where he stood. The darkness at the hems of the basement pressed in. His eyes watered. He felt, obviously phantom and yet just as obviously real, something close around his throat.

He gasped but no sound escaped him. Dropping the hem of his shirt, he touched his chest, then his throat, and the potatoes he had been carrying dropped to the floor, spilling around him in all directions.

Zack dug his fingers under the nothing. He spun in place, trying to find the source.

There was a charged feeling, hotter than fire, that started in the soles of his feet and, travelling up, started to branch, to fray—

Just as quickly, it passed.

Air flowed neatly in and out of his chest, just as it was supposed to. The fraying sensation disappeared.

Zack stood there—not even winded, but entirely at a loss.

Everything looked crisp and clear. Yes, there was darkness, but it clung only to the deepest corners of the basement, where it would be expected to. He rubbed the base of his throat, found it unconstricted and unbruised.

Slowly, he crouched down and started picking up potatoes.

It took a few minutes to find them all; some had rolled underneath the shelves, and one got stuck, jammed between the floor and bottom shelf. Zack had to get down on his knees and shove his arm all the way underneath to reach, his fingers coming back dusty and a cobweb clinging to the folded sleeves of his shirt.

He brushed it all away. Stacked the potatoes back in his improvised apron skirt.

Down the next aisle, he found a bin of carrots; he grabbed a handful and booked it back up the stairs. Halfway up, he saw Fenrir standing on the landing, peering down at him.

“I’m not stealing,” Zack promised. And then his gaze fell on the door. The open door, the one that he was certain he’d pulled shut behind him. “…Don’t tell me you know how to turn doorknobs.”

Fenrir blinked unnervingly intelligent eyes at him. He didn’t move, so Zack carefully, slowly brushed past him back into the hallway, and only then did Fenrir turn around and follow him—followed so closely at Zack’s ankles that it was as if he was herded back into the light and warmth and safety of the kitchen.

It had been a long time since Zack had been left to his own devices in a kitchen, but even he could follow directions on a box. More or less. By the time the rice cooker went off—again, safety muffled behind the guest room door—Zack had managed to get the curry simmering on the stove, meat and potatoes fork-tender. The smell made his mouth water.

He wiped his hands off with a dish towel and checked the clock. It had been a little over an hour since he’d started; the sun had set entirely, and Zack exchanged a look with Fenrir from where he had curled up on the window seat to keep a close eye on him.

“Think I should try to wake him up?” Zack mouthed. Fenrir didn’t answer.

Zack slid silently over to the other side of the room, socks slippery against the hardwood, and peered over the side of the couch.

Cloud was still asleep. He’d curled a little onto his side, his mouth slightly open, and the hem of his t-shirt had ridden up slightly over one hip. Zack lost the battle he’d been fighting since he showed up: he reached out and brushed Cloud’s hair out of his eyes.

It was soft as silk, just like he remembered.

Then Cloud’s eyelashes fluttered and Zack pulled his hand back, breathless, holding the hand incriminatingly to his chest. Cloud stirred, shifted, and finally opened his eyes.

Cloud’s reaction to seeing Zack standing there wasn’t flattering, exactly. For a moment something sharp passed over his face, painful and drawn-in; and then, after a moment, it softened into nothing more than tired and confused.

“Hey,” Zack said, unable to keep the fondness from bleeding out into his voice. “Sorry if I woke you up.”

“No, it’s good,” Cloud said, groggily, sitting up and raking back his hair. “I’m…I shouldn’t…ugh, what time is it?”

“Six thirty.”

“Augh.” Cloud rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms, nodding. Then, “You cooked?”

“Does it smell that bad?”

“No…”

Zack leaned into the couch back, arms crossed, grin stupidly wide. “Come and try it.”

They ate on the couch, bowls nearly overfull, watching a two-year-old recorded blitzball game on Cloud’s tiny television screen—Cloud, because he claimed he didn’t care how old the game was; Zack, because it was all new to him anyways. The fire had been kicked back to life at Cloud’s prodding. The snow had stopped, but was piled high on the windowsills.

It was warm; the curry was good, if Zack did say so himself; and he sat cross-legged with his socks tucked under his thighs, Fenrir spread like a fur blanket on the rug, and Cloud on the couch beside him, transfixed by the last ninth of the game, spoon ringing against the bottom of his bowl.

It was almost too much. Somehow, the absent way Cloud brought his last spoonful to his mouth, almost missing, as he watched the Junon Jokers score their way into a tie breaker, was nearly beyond Zack’s capacity to handle. Too much good fortune, too many miracles—even a tenth of this happiness could have sustained Zack through his entire afterlife, and here he was, sitting still, as each minute came and delivered unto him more.

The game ended, sixteen to fourteen in favour of Junon, and Cloud sighed. He reached for the remote, turning off the television set, and put his bowl aside.

“Thank you,” Cloud said. It was dim; they’d turned off the lights to see the screen. “It’s been a long time since anyone cooked for me.”

That was just wrong. “Get ready for more of it,” Zack said. “I’ll cook every day I’m here.”

Cloud hummed. He tipped his head back against the couch and folded his arms, loosely over his chest; his knees spread farther apart. Zack thought Fenrir was kind of silly, not choosing to curl up in that lap.

“What do you think you’ll do, after?” Cloud said, into the quiet.

“After?” Zack’s shifted on the couch. “Like, when I go back down the mountain?”

“Mm.”

A chill flirted its way down his spine. Life after winter. Life when he had to leave this place—leave Cloud behind. “No idea,” he said, honestly.

Cloud turned his head to look at him, head still cushioned on the back of the couch. His eyes glowed faintly in the dark, that mako shine that would never leave them, no matter how hard Zack tried to forget the past. “Really?” he said. “Wasn’t there anything you wanted to do, before?”

Oh, he’d wanted to do so many things once. Heroics, stories. Wartime dreams. Later it had become simpler: finding a roof to spend the night under, pulling off a warm dinner, seeing the blue of Cloud’s eyes one more time. He’d simplified and simplified, until even a thimbleful was enough to make him happy.

How could he explain to Cloud that this, here, was everything? That in this room, Zack had been lucky enough to have everything that mattered?

How was he supposed to picture another life, after this?

Well—he supposed he would have to picture something. Come springtime he’d be climbing down the mountain, out of Cloud’s hair, and he’d have to find a place to stay, a way to spend his time. Once upon a time, he could have thought of at least a couple places, but Aerith was dead…and Tifa had told him about his parents. And Zack didn’t think he was ready to go back to Gongaga. Not if they weren’t there.

“You can help me think of things to do,” Zack said.

“Ah.” Cloud smiled ruefully, and mostly to himself. “I might not be the best for that.” But he didn’t elaborate. Instead, he rose to his feet and brought their dishes to the sink. Zack grabbed their glasses and followed, stepping over Fenrir’s snoozing form.

When Zack tried to snatch the sponge, Cloud elbowed him away with a fast, SOLDIER-reflex move that felt a little unfair, so Zack stood there and made the pleading kind of face that had worked so well for him in the past.

Cloud flinched, visibly, and Zack was a little embarrassed.

Maybe it didn’t work the same, now that he was in his thirties.

“Have you made up your mind, yet?” Cloud said, starting to fill up the basin.

“About…”

“If you’re staying here.”

Zack swallowed. He picked up a dishtowel, wrapped it around his hand and shook it out. The answer was that he wanted to stay. Just one day here and he knew that with all his heart.

But he wanted to inconvenience Cloud less.

“I’ll head back whenever the weather’s best.” Zack said.

“So, when the ice is melted.”

Zack rubbed the back of his neck. Picked up the glass Cloud handed him and started to dry it. “That’s not fair to you.”

“Then I’m hiking down with you.”

Zack’s jaw worked. He wanted that least of all. “It’s your call.”

For a moment, Cloud looked over at him. His eyes reflected a bit of the moon, creeping in through the open curtains. He said, “Stay.”

It was suddenly very easy to say: “Okay.”

The dishes clinked in the sink. Something small hit the side of the house, battered by the wind. All at once Zack felt heavy—both from guilt, and from a certain sense of peace that had been missing up until that point. Something about knowing he’d have a place to stay tomorrow, and that Cloud would be there, too. Even if it was only temporary.

Cloud said, a little thickly, “You want ice cream?”

Zack had not had ice cream since he’d died. “Yes.”

“Third freezer on the right, in the basement.”

Which was not a problem, because there was nothing in the basement.

“What flavour?” Zack asked.

“Any.”

“Nah, tell me your favourite.” He wasn’t sure if Cloud was still a lemon guy.

“I live on my own, Zack. Everything I buy is my favourite.”

That was a good point.

Putting down the dish towel, Zack rolled up his sleeves; then, noticing what should have been obvious to him since that morning, he rolled them back down a few inches. “Be right back,” he said, heading for the hall. He’d be in and out; nothing to be scared of in the dark.

He heard the sound of dog nails clip-clopping on the floor behind him, and turned his head.

Fenrir was standing there. He blinked at Zack; his enormous frame shifted with each breath.

Zack’s eyes trailed over to Cloud. Cloud was looking at Fenrir, somewhat nonplussed.

So Zack kept walking, up the basement door, and when he swung it open, Fenrir head-butted his way between his legs and trotted out in front of him on the stairs.

“Hey!”

Fenrir stamped his paws impatiently.

“Alright…” Zack said. “You and me then, huh?”

They went, together, down into the basement. The lights were the same, the shelves all in the same place, but with Fenrir walking alongside him, close, fur brushing his leg with every step, none of it threatened to close in. Fenrir against him was like a heat lamp, cutting the chill of the basement air. No darkness encroached as he found the right freezer and pried it open; nothing throttled him as he dug through the tubs of coffee and yube ice cream.

Back on the landing, Zack paused and considered Fenrir again. Fenrir paused with him, not drawing away even for a second, although he did look up at Zack with an indolent gaze that seemed to say, What’s the hold up?

“Nothing,” Zack said aloud, then went to have his first ice cream in eleven years.

Long after—when he’d heard for certain that Cloud was finished in the bathroom and had climbed into his loft—when he’d waited, lying on his back in the twin bed, for Cloud to fall asleep—only then, surrounded by shelves of Cloud’s books and DVDs and memorabilia, curtains thrown open to let in the moonlight—sanded down by the joys of the day—did Zack let himself crack.

He covered his face with his hands. He cried.

It had been a long, long time since he had cried. Tears spilled, hot and instantaneous, down his cheeks—around the palms of his hands and into his hairline. He swallowed; he pressed his lips shut. He was perfectly silent.

He was silent, but his body shook, uncontrollable trembles that made the entire bed shudder beneath him. Once he had started, it was impossible to stop. The headboard clattered, very quietly, against the wall, and the mattress creaked below him. He wrapped his arms around himself.

He was happy. He was so, so happy.

It shouldn’t have been possible to feel this happy—crying felt like the only way he could realistically survive it, his body either too new or too old to contain the acute frequency in his heart. The sobs hurt, almost, but that in its own way was cleansing. Something to hold onto amidst all this unfamiliar joy.

The door clicked open

Zack sat up, wiping his face with a military urgency.

A shadow appeared in the door, only filling it by half, and then Fenrir padded into the room.

“Uh,” Zack whispered, voice hoarse. “Hey.”

Fenrir came up to the bedside. He was tall enough that he could rest his head on the mattress, and he did so, peering up at Zack with golden, unblinking eyes that shone in the wet light of the moon.

“Does Cloud know you’re here?”

Fenrir put his paws up on the bed. It creaked under the weight. His tongue hung slightly out of his mouth as he looked at Zack, warm doggy breath panting all over Zack’s face.

“What’re you—? Ah.” Zack shook his head. “You heard me.”

Fenrir breathed in and out, staring unforgivingly.

“That’s….kind of embarrassing honestly.”

He got a smack near his groin with a paw for that, but it couldn’t have meant anything. This was a dog.

Still whispering, Zack asked, “Are you going to tattle on me?”

Predictably he got no answer.

“Well, I’m not done,” he said, a little primly. And it was true—now that he wasn’t straight-jacketed by mortification, he could already feel the pressure behind his eye sockets again, making him blink and his chest clench.

“You have no idea how lucky you are, Fenrir,” Zack said in a murmur. He sat back on the bed, tried to breathe in deep. “You know, Cloud almost didn’t make it. Did he tell you that?”

Fenrir patted his paws on the bed, again.

“He almost died,” Zack said. “You would’ve never met him.”

In the dark it felt like a confession.

“So many times, Fenrir. All my fault.”

Fenrir let out a low noise—something close to a growl, but a little bit softer.

“And he was so sick…”

Zack knotted his hand in the sheets. Fenrir licked over his knuckles.

“And he wasn’t supposed to get better,” Zack continued, in a rush now, words flooding out of him. “I hoped he would get better, but the chances were bad, right? I spent so much time trying to…think positive, you know? Like, if I could just get him to wake up, and keep him alive, then I could figure everything out after that. Like there was no point in worrying. ‘Cause he—” His voice caught, raw still with aborted tears, and Fenrir crawled all the way onto the bed, right on top of him, knocking him onto his back and piling onto his chest.

“Fenrir—” Zack wheezed, but Fenrir only settled in.

Cautiously, Zack ran a hand through Fenrir’s fur. The dog’s eyes fell halfway shut, and he let out a sigh.

“He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t walk,” Zack said, raking handfuls of fur and feeling the solid weight across his ribs, grounding and inescapable. “He couldn’t move on his own. Hojo gave up on him. It wasn’t just the sleeping…they didn’t think he was ever gonna be able to write his name again. He wasn’t supposed to be able to hold a sword, or understand anyone, or…oh, fuck Fenrir. He does everything now, doesn’t he?” He was crying, by then. Fenrir nuzzled into the side of his neck and Zack gasped, pressing a fist to his mouth to try to muffle the noise. “He wakes up, and he can move his legs and all his fingers, and he talks, and he just does it, he’s okay—”

He spoke to Fenrir as if he could get answers. “Right? He’s alright? Even though he’s not?” His breath came in great shaky lungfuls. “I can’t have fucked up that bad, can I? Fenrir?” A headbutt. “I couldn’t save him but he’s not gone, right? He’s in one piece?”

He could have heaved. “He can take care of you,” he told Fenrir. “I didn’t save him, but he can take care of a dog, and that’s—that’s so much more than—”

Fenrir leaned more heavily against him, and Zack wrapped his arms around him, burrowing into his fur. “He’s okay,” Zack repeated, to them both. “He’s safe. He’s okay.”

Maybe not okay, but it could have been worse. So, so, so much worse.

Tears wet his hair and the pillow beneath him. “He’s safe.” It flooded him, taking him whole. Relief and gratitude paled in comparison to the brutality of his happiness—unexpected, unasked for, unplanned. So great, it could have killed him for a second time.

He fell asleep with Fenrir still sprawled across his chest.

In the night he woke to an empty bed, a closed door, and a shout from high above.

He launched himself out of bed without so much as a thought, skidding into the hallway and calling up the stairs to the loft. “Cloud?”

No one answered him, not even Fenrir. Zack lifted his foot, about to charge up the steps, and then he froze, fear for Cloud slamming up against the repulsive idea of transgressing on Cloud’s privacy.

“Cloud!” he called, a little louder.

Stillness, then shuffling. A thump as Fenrir’s paws hit the floor. A small lamp flickered on, warmth suffusing the landing. Cloud appeared at the top of the stairs.

He was dressed in a dark sweatshirt and flannel pants. His hair was messy, but that came as no surprise. If there was something off about his eyes, Zack couldn’t glean it across the distance, through the dim.

“What?” said Cloud.

Zack faltered. “I thought I heard something.”

Fenrir joined Cloud, looking like little more than a large, black shadow at his side.

“I’m fine,” Cloud said.

“Did you shout?”

The house was cold. Zack clung to the banister.

“Yeah,” said Cloud. “Nightmare.”

The distance between them—one short flight of steps away—stretched impossibly further. It felt as if Zack was once again peering at him through the Lifestream. From behind the uncrossable border of death.

“It’s fine,” Cloud said. “Go back to sleep.”

There was no waver in his tone, no warmth. Nothing for Zack to cling to.

“Alright,” Zack said, quietly. “Alright.” He took one step backward. It felt like twisting a knife. “Sleep well, Cloud.”

Cloud was already stepping away. “Goodnight, Zack,” he heard, and then he was gone. The light flicked off, and Zack was alone.

Chapter Text

The sound of an axe striking home rang out through the clearing, bouncing back sharp from the raw rock-face on one side and the treeline along the other. Wiping at his brow with the thick sleeve of his coat, Cloud cleared away the split log and added a fresh one to the block.

Up in the cabin, smoke rose cheerfully from the chimney. It was early morning, bright and sunny even through the patchy cloud cover. Not so much as a squirrel perched nearby in watch of Cloud’s work—not this deep into the winter, not with how much noise he was making. A stack of firewood had accumulated beside him with more than enough to last them a couple nights and the wood shed behind him was full to the roof, but he made no motion to stop.

From the corner of his eye he saw the back door swing open. Fenrir came bounding down the porch steps and across snow that nearly swallowed him to the chest, entirely ignoring Cloud’s neatly-cleared path.

“Alright,” Cloud said, as the wolf pawed at him. He pet Fenrir with his free hand, gently putting his axe aside. “It’s been twenty minutes. You’re ridiculous.”

Fenrir’s eyes rolled happily and his tail struck the snow.

Cloud sighed. “So, I guess food’s ready?”

Up on the porch, Zack was leaning in the open doorway with crossed arms and a grin. He wore a borrowed flannel button-down. On Cloud, it had fit comfortably, if a bit loosely; on Zack, its rolled-up cuffs strained around his forearms, nearly at their limit. His hair was loose around his shoulders and there was a smudge of something on his cheek, probably jam or pancake batter—he had been picking up cooking fairly fast for someone who’d been raised in the barracks, but sometimes it seemed like he was more a danger to himself than the food.

To be polite, Cloud raised a hand. Then, turning his head into Fenrir’s fur, he cursed unintelligibly.

Zack Fair.

For the past week, Cloud had spent his first waking moments staring up at his snow-laden skylights, doing his damn best to untangle reality from stale, unattainable dreams. Then he would walk down the stairs and put on the kettle and the unattainable dream would wander right into his kitchen—bleary-eyed, bed-headed, sweatpants low on his hips. It would say hi to his dog and rub its belly and ask how he could help with breakfast.

Goddamn Zack.

Cloud rubbed his nose. Fenrir gently nudged his knees in encouragement. “Here we go,” he said, and took just one more bracing breath before heading back inside.

In the afternoon, when all the chores were done early—as they always were, these days, with the extra pair of hands helping out around the place—and the weather was still beautifully calm, Cloud rooted around in the storage shed until he unearthed his extra snowboard. When Cloud passed it over to him, Zack’s eyes gleamed. Cloud felt his throat work; he stepped away quickly.

They hiked up to Cloud’s second-favourite slope, wrapped so tightly in scarves and gloves and hats that they could barely see each other but for their eyes, still mako-weird and matching after all these years. The path he took them on was ragged, steep, and led them up to a place kennelled in between two walls of rock. Zack claimed he’d only been snowboarding once before, but Cloud knew from the way that Zack grinned and strapped himself in that there would be no caution, no apprehension, to how Zack would approach the mountain.

Cloud snapped his snow goggles into place. “Follow me,” he said, even though he wasn’t sure Zack heard it through his balaclava, and kicked off.

The slope was gentle at first, but tipped off dramatically. Cloud adjusted his weight slightly as the hill began to slip away underneath this board, faster and faster now, snow slicing away in a fine mist around him. He heard a whoop, loud and clear, bouncing off the walls of the cut, and when he turned to look over his shoulder he saw Zack fifty metres behind him, scarf already blown away from his face and smile bright enough to melt the snow out from under them. Zack held his arms out and crowed.

Cloud snapped his eyes back forward, heart hammering in his chest. He curved his way around a boulder and slid narrowly between two trees as the forest came climbing up the mountain towards them.

The path he’d picked was only wide enough for one, and more than once he had to dodge a stick or a branch. The wind whipped past him, cutting against the slivers of exposed skin on his face. Zack had gone quiet behind him as he focused on not toppling over, and Cloud grinned, underneath his coverings, to have given him a challenge.

They came hurtling out of the trees, the path spitting them back out onto the open mountainside. Cloud, rash with cold air and speed, jumped: grabbed the back of his board and soared, just for a second, lungs floating in his chest, before landing, gracefully, in a crouch, his trajectory uninterrupted.

Zack shouted after him, a celebration that echoed off the rock. Despite how cold it was, Cloud somehow still managed to flush.

“Oh yeah?” Zack called to him, which did not bode well. Zack came soaring past, and Cloud wanted to shout at him for being stupid, but then Zack was jumping—high, SOLDIER First high—and rotating mid-air, board spinning three-sixty, and whooping as he did so.

He landed on his feet, basically, but with an ungainly crash, spraying snow everywhere. He turned so that for a second he crossed Cloud’s path, and Cloud could see a full smirk on his face, sunny and kind and smug as get out. Like he always had been—because Zack was always good—because everything, after all, had always come so easily to Zack.

Cloud felt something sting him, somewhere low, behind his ribs.

He chased the feeling away by overtaking Zack, throwing himself bodily into the fastest descent he could. Up ahead was rockier than at the start and he concentrated, swerving and weaving with sharp, practised precision, giving his mind over to the mountain and the body language needed to negotiate his survival.

When the end of the slope was in sight, tableauing before it was cut off by insurmountable boulders, Cloud eased his way down, coasting slowly before finally grinding to that last halt. He turned and caught the last few seconds of Zack in flight, hands in his pockets and wind whipping through the ends of his ponytail, before he skidded to a stop at Cloud’s side.

“Nice spot,” Zack said, winded. The arm of his puffer jacket brushed along Cloud’s.

“Want to go again?”

They did, and then again, as many times as they could manage the hike to the top and the hurtle back down. Zack’s enthusiasm and Cloud’s unsubtle, reawakened competitive side made them more careless each time, launching themselves into tricks that sometimes sent them rolling and spitting out snow in the aftermath, even though Zack would always laugh and throw out a hand to either offer help or ask for it, so it never hurt, not even when it bruised.

By the time they had tired themselves out, it was early evening and Cloud’s body was buzzing between the hot, cozy burnout of the adrenaline and the minor injuries that were already healing underneath his clothes. Zack shook his head, sending snow flying in every direction, before fishing his beanie out of his pocket and jamming it back on his head.

“You’re really good,” Zack said, on the trek back down to the cabin. From the corner of his eye Cloud knew Zack to be smiling at him, unmitigated and bright as the sun reflecting off the snow, so Cloud focused his gaze forwards. “That spin? Holy shit.”

Cloud shrugged. “Had a lot of time to practice.”

Zack hummed, nodding. “You have any other routes you take?”

“Yeah. Most are shorter though.” A long pause. “We can go sometime.”

“You have to show me how you did that last jump. Have any more tricks like that up your sleeve?”

“Not really.”

Zack asked him another question; Cloud answered, rote. Zack tried again, polite and undeterred, but—it was weird. Cloud knew it was weird. He felt wooden. Out of practice. It was as if he was manually assembling his sentences, searching blankly through empty cupboards to find a meagre handful of words that barely conveyed anything.

It had been so long since he had to talk to someone. Been so long, ages, since he spent this much time with anyone, and much less someone who…

Who…

What was the word for it, when you looked over at someone and they felt so familiar it was almost like looking into a mirror, and yet it was all you could do to remind yourself that you didn’t know anything about them at all? They overlapped in his mind: Zack, the stranger, standing breathing at his side, the one person who could either curse or finally forgive Cloud with a mercy he’d been hunting down as long as he could remember; Zack, the forgery, that Cloud had futilely tried to assemble out of half-stolen anecdotes and pocket-lint, and for so long had loved like an idol, worshipped like a lover.

He once thought he knew Zack so well that to speak of him was to speak of a favourite book, read cover-to-cover and dog-eared with love; he’d been wrong. He would need to get to know Zack, again. To get to know Zack for the first time?

He’d been quiet for too long—when he looked to the side, Zack was no longer smiling at him but taking in the scenery. It made Cloud prickle, made something unwelcome gather at the base of his throat.

“Do you…”

Zack looked back over immediately. “Hm?”

He’d spoken just to speak. There were so many questions he wanted answers to; so many things he didn’t dare say aloud; and in their place, he couldn’t think straight. How’ve things been? Seen any good movies recently? Do you blame anyone for Aerith’s death? Nothing about this was normal. He had no blueprint to follow. The patient, uncomplicated curiosity in Zack’s gaze only made it infinitely more impossible to think of something to fill the silence.

Cloud looked at the ground. Dug his hands deeper in his pockets. “Never mind.”

Zack (not an idol, not a lover, not Cloud’s, not d—) nodded calmly in understanding. Very softly, it started to snow.

It had only been eight days. Cloud didn’t know how he was going to make it through the winter.

Another day they went ice fishing.

There was a river not far from the cabin, the one that Cloud pumped all his water from despite that it was an ordeal and a half to keep his pipes from freezing over same as the surface of the river. This far into the winter, the ice was thick and solid, plenty safe to trek over. He’d never bothered to set up a fishing shack, so instead one morning they brought out folding chairs and drilled a hole using a hand auger and, to Zack’s delight, an old-fashioned punch. Together they set up camp on either side of it—Cloud, demonstrating to Zack how to bait a hook—and then sat back, taking turns passing back and forth an enormous flask of hot coffee.

Zack tipped his head back, covering a yawn with one hand. His coat swamped him; his legs were spread wide and careless. Bared back like that, a little of his throat showed overtop his scarf, and Cloud watched it work.

Sitting around under the white sky, waiting for something to bite, the silence settled in next to the cold. Equally inevitable.

Cloud had never had very much luck getting the fish out here to bite, but it was a way to spend an evening. Not that he’d ever done it that many times: his routine was typically to find a task or a chore to keep himself busy from sun-up until late afternoon, and afterwards he’d keep rooting around for another task or chore until all the light was gone and his eyes were watering with exhaustion. Zack’s presence had thrown a wrench in the rhythm, partially because any work went twice as fast with him around—he insisted on helping, every time, without fail—and partially because Cloud was even less interested in being lectured than when anyone else was in his home, scrutinizing whether or not he was responsible enough to be left out here on his own. These days he’d found himself dropping tasks or reluctantly sitting down in front of his television, shoulders prickling with anticipation of getting heckled for working too much or taking too few breaks or avoiding people or whatever and gods knows what.

Having someone else around was also throwing a few aspects of his lifestyle into sharper relief than even, and Cloud didn’t appreciate that either. He knew his life was slow. He knew his life was boring. There was nothing wrong with those things. In fact, he’d deliberately gone through a great deal of effort just to make his life this slow, this boring. He liked it this way.

But his life was, undoubtedly, small: just him, his dog, his little plot of land. Up on the mountain, Cloud helped no one and contributed to nothing. Zack had never pointed out as much, but Cloud could still feel it—a warm, flush piece of shame, slotted behind a rib—when the quiet settled in around them and the world was still, safe between the four walls of the cabin. Cloud had been supposed to carry on Zack’s legacy, and instead Zack found him hiding in the mountains, watching DVR and going to bed early.

The frigid morning air eventually helped bring Cloud back from the ungrateful paranoia of his thoughts, once he bothered to notice how much it stung. His rod hung loosely in his hand; he tried to let the still of the ice lull him into a sense of peace.

Across from him, Zack's knee jiggled. It had been jiggling for a while, and as Cloud watched, Zack switched knees.

“We can head back.”

“You cold?”

Cloud shook his head.

“I’m fine, too,” Zack said.

Cloud liked the peace and emptiness of sitting at the edge of the ice, waiting for a bite, but Zack had been restless and fidgety for the better part of an hour, and fishing wasn’t bound to get any more exciting than this. It was almost endearing: if he let himself, Cloud could start to remember the times they’d had at Shinra, Zack mechanically doing squats while waiting on helipads and while en route in armoured trucks, sometimes when the queue for the pani puri cart was especially long.

It made him, briefly, relieved, to think that his memories of Zack were not so hopelessly corrupted as to be completely unrecognizable. That for all of Cloud’s dishonour to Zack’s memory, at least he’d saved a piece here and there.

It was a laughably pitiful thing to congratulate himself on. It embarrassed him to have even thought it.

Under the icy cold water, their hooks bobbed and swayed. Nothing was biting; sometimes it could take an hour for something to show up and show interest. Cloud took another sip of coffee; Zack, visibly working hard to stay still and seated, looked determinedly into the distance above Cloud’s shoulder and repositioned his grip on his fishing pole once more.

Talking, of course, would help pass the time, but Cloud couldn’t bring himself to do it. Not with the unanswered questions lying between them, ominous as open graves. Cloud had had this man in his house for twelve days now and had managed to avoid asking him almost anything of consequence. It wasn’t that he was ignoring Zack. He did want to fix it. Wanted to talk to Zack; to finally know, for real, the man that he owed everything to. To get it right this time. And yet, in the back of his mind, he couldn’t beat the feeling that he no longer even had the right to that. Not after what he’d done.

The unasked questions—and their insistent, built-up pressure in his throat—hurt less than their potential answers.

Zack’s knee had started to bounce again.

“Let’s go,” Cloud said, reeling in his line.

“What, really?”

“Fingers are getting cold.”

Zack politely didn’t call him out on that, looking slightly relieved.

Life out here wasn’t bound to get anymore exciting than this. Cloud was already dreading just how the hell he’d keep Zack entertained all winter. Wondering how soon and how hard cabin fever would creep up on Zack—if Cloud was miserable sharing his space right now, that was going to be a new calibre of hell. Not to mention that Cloud wouldn’t be able to cope with his own cabin fever the way that he usually did. Not if Zack was in the house with him.

They packed everything away, Zack throwing the folded chairs over his shoulder, and while Cloud trudged his way back to the bank, Zack sped ahead, gliding across the ice in his boots and laughing as he worked for his balance. One foot, then the other—Zack swirled, wobbled, and flailed in place, then gracefully slipped back into his rhythm and kept going.

Zack looked back at Cloud, grinning. Look at me!

The smile was all simple happiness, and he shone it at Cloud like an offering, like Cloud could cross a bridge and easily join him in that happiness—but it pulled at a string tied somewhere deep in Cloud’s stomach, and more than anything it felt like goading. Like showing off. Like Zack hadn’t yet realized that the bridge wouldn’t hold Cloud’s weight.

At times he would wake in the middle of the night with something hammering away in his chest, relentless in its trapped fury. He would swing his legs out of bed, breathing hard for a moment before he could draw himself together enough to turn on the light, Fenrir stirring awake beside him. In the soft glow of his bedside lamp, he would tumble over familiar feelings—loss; fright; guilt, enormous and all-encompassing—but the difference now was that he could do more than just lie there, helpless and heavy with them. Now, he could get to his feet and cross to the foot of the stairs. He never dared go down, but if he listened hard enough, he’d swear he could hear the low, slow sound of Zack’s breath from behind the guest room door.

Cloud had no frame of reference with which to understand this kind of relief: Zack, in his home, safe in one of his beds; Zack, his beating heart and easygoing smile, filling in a hole that was supposed to remain empty until the end of the universe.

He’s here, he’d tell himself, rote, disappointed in himself. Zack’s fine. We’re fine.

The solace had an edge. There was something very wrong with him, that a miracle could hurt this badly.

And he wouldn’t know whether he wanted to throw himself into Zack’s arms or simply down the stairs, so instead he would turn off the light and crawl back into bed. Fenrir’s pressed along his side would hold him steady through the night, same as ever, and that was something, at least.

There was no avoiding him. Zack was everywhere: in his kitchen, on his couch, playing with Fenrir out in his yard. Evidence of Zack began to pile up around the house—somehow, even though he’d brought virtually no belongings with him—such that Cloud could no longer so much as walk into an empty room without being reminded of who he was hosting: magazines, left open to their last read page; stacks of books that Zack would flip through for barely half an hour before picking up the next, restless and too impatient by far; bits of paper, with sketches of a tree house seated unreasonably high up in a pine tree, that had been accumulating ever since that day when Cloud had taken him for a walk through the woods and Zack had become strangely enamoured by the view from one of the tree-choked cliffs.

One day Zack— perhaps, embarrassingly, catching wind of Cloud’s suffocation—offered to stay back and fold some laundry while Cloud took care of chores outside. It was a lifeline, a generous and much-needed one, and Cloud hadn’t taken it. As they dug out rotted fence posts and tamped in gravel around the new ones, Cloud cursed at himself for being the kind of idiot that would take the hurt of having Zack close over the hurt of him not being there at all. It would probably always be that way, and the worst part was, it wasn’t always going to be his choice.

They spent the entire morning fixing the fences all along the east of the property and came inside sweaty and tired and ready to eat. At the kitchen counter, Zack and Cloud moved around each other, getting out the things to make sandwiches. Zack could find most anything in his cabinets now, and Cloud no longer jumped when Zack would pass behind him, just barely brushing a hand across Cloud’s hip to let him know he was there, even though, regardless, it always made his heart leap up his throat and hide underneath his tongue. Today Zack tossed him a red onion from the basket; Cloud slid him the serrated knife for the bread; Zack lit the burner underneath the cast iron skillet and Cloud plopped butter into it, watching it sizzle.

He could admit that this part was nice, at least. He’d forgotten how much he could enjoy it, eating a meal with someone. Sharing a kitchen. Having company, even through the boring things.

Bread placed carefully in the pan, Zack now leaned against the counter by the stove, waiting for the perfect moment to flip the toast over. He was wearing an old, enormous, ugly, cable-knit cardigan that Cloud had managed to unearth from the attic, and underneath, a sky-blue t-shirt that was at least two sizes too small for him. When Zack had hiked up the mountain—like a suicidal goddamn idiot—he hadn’t thought to pack for a week, much less a season, which meant that Cloud’s wardrobe was now, effectively, Zack’s. It was fine.

The butter popped. The toast turned golden and was flipped. Cloud said nothing.

Zack still cheerfully tried to fill the silence every so often; stagnant words still remained stuck in Cloud’s throat. It wasn’t getting better. No matter how nice it was to chop vegetables quietly at Zack’s side, he was starting to feel the presence of all the unspoken things like a physical threat, braced on his shoulders, lurking in on every moment he and Zack spent together.

If only there was some kind of middle ground.

From down the hall and behind a door, the dryer let out a shrill tune to announce its success. “Mm!” Zack said, mouth full of a piece of cheese he’d swiped from Cloud’s cutting board. “I’ll take care of it!” He slid the toast out of the pan and ducked off to the laundry. Cloud turned off the flame and put his own sandwich together, carefully balancing the roast beef and trimmings.

It seemed to take Zack a long time to switch the clothes out. Cloud was just weighing whether or not it would be silly of him to give a shout when Zack finally came back, big smile on his face and a guitar in hand. Dust clung to its body; Zack must have spied the neck from behind the stacked boxes in the corner of the closet.

Zack said, “Hey, I didn’t know you played.”

Cloud laughed, a low puff of breath. “I don’t,” he said. “Didn’t have the patience to learn.” He’d bought it in preparation for his first long winter all alone, and spent all of two evenings on it before giving up.

“Ah.” Zack frowned. Then, “Do you mind if I try it out?”

Cloud shrugged.

Zack—sandwich, apparently, forgotten—pulled out a chair and set the guitar in his lap. He tried to find the right hand position, apparently on intuition alone, and then grimaced. He straightened his left arm, shifted the guitar around, and tried again, this time with a strange, tilted angle.

Another thing Cloud didn’t have the guts to bring up: Zack’s arm. It was impossible to ignore outright. Anything they did, he had to take into account that Zack’s arm did not bend or take weight as it should. But he couldn’t bring himself to ask about it: he knew that hearing, aloud, confirmed, how Zack’s elbow had broken and stayed broken, would make it worse than just remembering it. And remembering it was horror enough.

Cloud stood at the counter and shoved his sandwich into his mouth, jaw working hard as he tried to forget. Because he was a coward, apparently.

A casual strum, and then three more in sequence. Zack grinned in delight at the sound he’d produced, and then wiggled his fingers around and managed to make a different one.

Cloud forced his bite down. “You used to play?”

“Never,” Zack said. One-two-three—all different notes, now. They swam together prettily. It was all too natural. “I thought about it sometimes but…I mean, you know.” He looked up at Cloud and gave a lopsided smile. “Did you know anyone who managed to sneak an instrument into the barracks? Other than the trumpet guys. I did ask Angeal if I could do the trumpet once.”

Cloud snorted, imagining it. “He didn’t let you?”

Zack’s face shifted. Cloud could’ve sworn he knew that look—Zack, carefully holding back something crestfallen, with all one or two of his acting skills—but he didn’t trust his memory.

“Nah,” Zack said. “Would’ve taken time away from training.”

Bitterness soured in Cloud’s mouth, so he took another bite of sandwich. Zack had deserved to learn how to fucking play the trumpet, the guitar, anything he wanted as a teenager. He’d deserved to go to school and skive off and a hundred other things.

And then he hadn’t even had the chance to do anything at all, as an adult.

His anger must have projected across the room, because Zack stopped playing around with the strings. “It was cool,” he said. “Being in SOLDIER was the most important thing, anyway. I would’ve done anything.”

Cloud knew the feeling. He knew it too well.

“There’re probably other SOLDIERs still out there,” Cloud said, after a long time chewing. He fiddled with the edge of his plate. “You could track them down, probably.”

“Why?”

“To…reunite them?” Cloud said. “To rebuild?” It was Zack’s dream. Something like the end of the world and the overbearing shadow of the corporation that had betrayed them couldn’t stop Zack Fair if he set his mind to it, Cloud was certain.

“Oh. No.” Zack shook his head, strumming on the guitar one more time. “Nah, I’m good. Happy to stay far, far away from SOLDIER.”

Cloud felt some corner of his world crumble. “What?”

Somehow, Zack played a chord. Cloud watched his fingers dance across the strings. “I never told you about it, did I? Guess there was never time.” Zack pursed his lips. Concentrated, and the notes shifted. “SOLDIER…wasn’t all it was chalked up to be. It destroyed my friends. It…” He shook his head. Thumped the body of the guitar, ringing out a sweet dull noise. “There’s no saving it. I wouldn’t wanna.” He looked at Cloud as he said it, easygoing and plain with kindness, and Cloud had to turn away, knuckles going white on his grip on the counter.

“So…think you’ll join up with a different part of the military? The WRO…”

Zack shook his head again. “Won’t make the same mistake twice.” He plucked out a little tune that sounded a lot like Happy Birthday.

And that was just so unfair, wasn’t it?

Cloud tried. He really tried not to let it bother him, but it did: as he jammed the last of sandwich into his mouth in three enormous bites, as he washed and dried his plate, as he finished making Zack’s sandwich for him and dropped it before him on the table because Zack was still plucking away haphazardly and single-mindedly at the guitar—he kept thinking about how fucking unfair it was, that Zack could let his dream go so easily—the same dream that Cloud had coveted and fought for and failed at, and still held onto, for years, in resentment and ill-repressed shame.

Of course Zack could move on, effortless, as if reorienting his life despite obstacles was as easy as breathing. Of course Zack would just know how to do that. All the work Cloud had put in, just to try not to think about the past in every waking moment, just to distract himself from the sting of his failures and the constant disappointment of who he was versus who he had wanted to be—all this, and all Zack had to do was say, Nah, I’m good. Won’t make the same mistake twice.

Cloud actually felt himself burn, cheeks heating, seething with an agitation that made him slam a cabinet door shut too hard. Zack looked his way, but Cloud ignored him—he had to. Zack had done nothing to deserve Cloud’s pitiful anger, his impotent jealousy. And most of all Cloud couldn’t bear to have Zack notice it—not the weakness, not the cowardice. Not any of the gross soft matter inside him that never seemed to quit.

He willed himself to breathe, to pack it all away. It wasn’t Zack’s fault that things were so easy for him. Zack was talented, driven, charismatic—the world had always bent to him. It was as pointless to be jealous of Zack as it was to be jealous of the sun. In a few months, Zack would go back to the real world. Even without SOLDIER, he would find something new to excel at. He’d steal new hearts and stun new fans. He would find his place, and he would do well for himself.

It was Cloud who still had no idea how to live, even after years, after everything. After so many, many helping hands. This, here, was his best attempt, and he knew it was a poor showing.

Cloud grabbed for his coat. “I’m going to check the drain pipe at the river,” he said. “Think something might have gotten stuck again.” Zack startled, made as if to get up, but Cloud said, “You can stay here, if you want,” and left before Zack could say anything more.

Being rude didn’t make him feel any better, and hiding even less so, but what he could do was tire himself out, and that’s what he did, all afternoon—keeping himself as busy as possible, with Zack shut up in the cabin with Fenrir and Cloud far out in the mountain, inspecting every inch of the river drainage and then hiking out, further and further, as if he could simply leave and not ever come back.

By the time he turned around it was getting dark and his fingers were numb inside his gloves, but like it always was these days—a push, a pull, one foot in the doorway and one still out in the cold—he felt rush of warmth in his chest when he trudged out of the trees and saw the lights on in his home up ahead: the lamps, glowing with low radiance, and the faint smudge of Zack’s shadow behind the curtains. It had been a long time since he’d had someone to come home to.

That’s the point, he reminded himself, and it didn’t console him as well as it used to.

Zack had moved to the couch but was still playing the guitar when Cloud let himself in the back door. Fenrir was curled up on the cushion next to him, studiously still, as if listening intently to the slightly shaky but hauntingly lovely tune Zack was plucking out—inexpert but clear, the song came winding out of the strings and greeted Cloud at the door in soft, sad supplication. If Cloud had not marched through thigh-high snow for hours with the express intent of exhausting himself, he might have had it in him to be further pissed off that Zack had found yet another thing he was, apparently, intrinsically good at.

As it was, when Zack turned his whole body around to greet him, Cloud just gave him a small, wan smile.

“Hey!!” There was something about Zack’s posture, startled and alert, that felt familiar, and when Cloud looked behind him, to Fenrir, who had also shot up to greet him, Cloud could have laughed at the similarities.

He hid his grin as he unspooled his scarf. “Sounding good,” he said, voice hoarse from the cold.

“Thanks! You think so?” Zack held the guitar against himself protectively, smiling down at her. “Was trying to remember old songs.”

“I have some sheet music, somewhere.” Cloud crouched down to unlace his boots. “You were sounding fine without it though.”

“You got a favourite song? I could learn it.”

Cloud fumbled one of his laces. “Not really.”

When he stood up, Zack was looking at him with something on his face that Cloud didn’t understand and desperately didn’t want to, so instead—with a flash of sudden courage—thank god it had decided to finally come crawling back out of its hidey-hole—Cloud jerked his chin towards Zack’s grip on the guitar and said, “Your arm not bothering you?”

A look of guilt passed over Zack’s face. “Ah, no,” he said, shifting a little. “It’s been fine. I look a little stupid though, huh?”

He definitely wasn’t holding the guitar in any ordinary way Cloud had ever seen, but Cloud didn’t think it mattered, as long as the angle didn’t hurt him. “You got it to work,” he shrugged. He hovered, uncertain, on his own welcome mat, and then, reluctantly, stepped in to stand at Zack’s side by the couch. “I…guess potions haven’t helped any?”

It was a stupid question; Cloud knew the answer already.

Zack nodded. As if talking about it was causing a kind of phantom pain, he let go of the guitar and shook out the limb.

Cloud knew what caused that kind of injury. The fix was not something he ever wanted to do himself, not if he could help it. He bit back his revulsion and said, “Do you want me to try to…” He raised a hand, and then realized he actually couldn’t stand to mime the motion.

Zack stared up at him with wide eyes, as if he hadn’t even considered that. “No! No, that’s okay. I’d have done it myself if I thought…you know.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t think it’ll help.”

Of course. Cloud remembered the way his elbow had shattered on contact—it wouldn’t be a matter of one broken bone. There had to be shards upon shards, mislayered, some floating loose, that had never been set in place properly enough for even the mako healing factor to reassemble smoothly. It wasn’t something he could just—that either of them—

It made Cloud sick, to think of how long Zack had been bearing the injury. It made Cloud sick, to think of ever hurting him deliberately.

“I know people at the WRO,” Cloud muttered, feeling a bit like an asshole. “They’ll have specialists, or know the best ones, anyway. In the spring, I’ll…we can hike down together and I’ll make a call.”

“Listen to you. ‘Make a call,’” Zack repeated, grinning. “You say when and they say ‘Yessir’ huh?” Then he looked down, and toyed with the edge of the guitar. “Thanks, though. You don’t have to do that.”

“What?” And then, “Why not?”

Zack scratched his neck again. He smiled, sheepishly. “Umm.”

Cloud didn’t understand, and stood there bewildered for a few moments before stumbling into a reason. “Is this about money?”

The way Zack’s sheepish smile became wider and more crooked told him everything he needed to know.

Cloud gestured at the four walls around them. “Do you see me working a job?” he said. “I’m loaded.”

Zack blinked at him. Then he laughed, ducking his head.

With a surge of something that felt instinctual—overly familiar, in a way that he’d been trying so hard to avoid—Cloud gave him a small punch in the shoulder. “I’m paying for your arm, shut up,” he said, and then, matching Zack in embarrassment, turned around and crossed to the kitchen to make coffee.

He had the kettle on to boil and was measuring out grounds when Zack said, “You know, knowing that makes me feel a little better actually.” He turned his head to look; Zack was twisted around, arms folded on the back of the couch.

“You know,” Zack said. “About you taking care of my parents and all.”

Cloud very nearly spilled the entire container across the counter, and only by sheer grace of many years of violating medical experimentation did he manage to keep it to a minimum. Thanks, Hojo.

His heart hammered behind his breast; he should have realized that Zack would know, would have sought out his parents first thing, but it still inundated him in guilt. He chewed at his lip as he went to get a rag to wipe up the mess.

“I don’t think I ever said thank you for that, did I,” Zack went on. Cloud stayed silent, focused on the counter top. “Cloud.”

He couldn’t resist that tone of voice. Still couldn’t believe he got to hear his name, said like that, said by him, and it wasn’t even in a dream. He schooled his expression as he lifted his head up to meet Zack’s eyes.

Zack’s voice was very hoarse. The look in his eyes nearly made Cloud lose all his composure at the tenderness there, focused and devastatingly sincere. “Thank you,” Zack said. “For being there for them.”

It didn’t make sense. Cloud’s heart was pounding so loudly it was distracting, a rushing clamour in his eardrums. How could Zack say that? What he’d done—when Mrs. Fair had fallen ill, and Cloud had found and paid for her treatment at the cutting-edge facility in Edge, and had hosted them in a guest house alongside Seventh Heaven while she went through hospice, and then kept Mr. Fair company three months more before he had followed her with geostigma—was beyond charity. It had been proprietary. As if the Fairs were his family, his responsibility. For fuck’s sake—he had acted as if he were Zack’s widow.

Didn’t Zack see that for the overstep it was?

The unending warmth in Zack’s gaze told Cloud otherwise.

The kindness of it all only made Cloud feel, suddenly and deafeningly, worse. Zack deserved better than this. No parents—no family—no home—no Aerith. If Cloud had known Zack was going to come back, he would have fought a little harder to make sure Zack had something worth coming back to.

As it was, Cloud had offered him absolutely nothing, not even that which was freely available to him: no warmth, no friendship. Barely even conversation. This fresh guilt, on top of everything else, was too much, Zack as witness be damned: Cloud put his elbows on the counter and shielded his face from view.

“Hey,” said Zack. His voice was gentle, and coming closer. “Hey, it’s not so bad. I’m okay, Cloud. I got to say goodbye to them in the Lifestream. Not everyone gets to say that, right?”

Cloud willed himself not to shake. He ground his palms harder against his eyes, tried to make his breaths even. Finally, he took in one last deep breath and stood up, jaw clenched. “Good,” he said, instead of How the fuck can you stand to look at me, when I’m the reason you have nothing left? “I’m glad…”

Zack was looking at him, and Cloud didn’t want to see the concern or the pity there, didn’t want to think about how inadequate his own answers were—so he went back to measuring coffee into the French press, hands steady, lips sealed shut.

The kettle screamed its notice, and Cloud poured it out. Zack still stood by him, intent, a warm presence along his side. The silence around them felt more pronounced than ever, charged and sickly, Cloud helpless and long past the point of giving up.

“Can I ask you something?” Zack’s voice was tentative. Gentle.

“Okay.”

“Why didn’t you keep Buster?”

The question cut the silence like a knife and arrived just as welcome on Cloud’s ears.

“I saw it,” Zack said, as if in explanation, “when I woke up.”

“When you woke up,” Cloud repeated, his mouth full of lead. “You woke up in the church?” Of course he did—Aerith—her presence—her power—of course she was behind this. And here Cloud was, stealing him away already. Again.

“No, no,” Zack said. “I woke up on a cliff outside of the city.”

A cliff.

Jesus fucking Christ, Zack.

“I didn’t notice at first, because of all the flowers, but there’s a scar in the dirt, right? I never put it there.”

The flowers. Zack had seen them. Cloud wanted to re-bury his head in his hands.

“Tifa told me you put it in the church, and I was going to visit her anyway…But that’s not the point. I know you used it for a little bit—it was a good sword, right?”

“Yeah,” said Cloud, thickly. “The best.”

“Aw, I mean, you don’t have to say that,” said Zack. “I saw that multi-sword set up you had when you fought the remnants. That was pretty sick, too.”

Cloud flushed. He’d known Zack must have seen that—he’d spoken to Zack through the Lifestream, it’d been hard to miss—but still it stunned him, uncomfortable and relieved and awed beyond measure, to think that Zack had been a witness to that particular, desperate battle. What else had he seen?

“I still have the fusion sword around here somewhere. You’re welcome to use it.” But he fought with a simpler sword these days, a saber that was basic and utilitarian, maybe a bit low in stats but making up for it in materia slots. It was meaningless, and that’s what mattered.

“I kinda wanted to take Buster with me, to be honest,” Zack said. “It felt right.”

“It’s yours,” Cloud said, right away. “You can have it. Sorry that it’s so…” Rusted. Neglected. Unloved. He had barely been able to look at it, after he got his memories back.

“I gave it to you,” Zack said, shrugging. “You can do whatever you want with it. Why the church, though?”

Cloud willed the coffee to brew faster. “It was your grave marker, for a while,” he said. “And then I thought I’d bring it to Aerith, so that you…”

He heard Zack’s soft exhale and felt ashamed, again. “But you’re here,” Cloud said, “so you should take it back, now.”

“Hey, if it means something to you, I don’t mind at all. I can get another sword.”

“No,” said Cloud, and the ragged edge of his voice made Zack startle but Cloud barely even noticed. “You should take it. It’s not a grave anymore. Since you’re not d—”

There was a silence in the room where the word should have fallen.

“Since you’re alive,” Cloud finished.

It was not a smart thing to do, but he did it anyways: he peeked to the side, and found Zack looking back at him.

He could tell, from what he saw in Zack’s eyes, that he'd noticed.

The sham copy of Zack that lived in his memories would have pushed back immediately. Would have gone, Hey, hey, hey now, and asked what the hell had just happened? Would have insisted, even as Cloud tried to crawl into his shell for safety, and Cloud would have given in, eventually, more for the pleasure of giving into Zack than anything else.

But this Zack didn’t push. And maybe it was the sick feeling in his stomach at having been so mistaken about Zack, again—or the unease at that quiet (unnatural) way that Zack was clearly planning to just leave him alone after that—which made Cloud try again. Barrel on, even though he was only drawing the spotlight in closer and closer, a place he never wanted to be. Here, in this little room, the spotlight was practically nothing more than the ring light on a microscope.

He choked. “Not de—”

It didn’t work. He lost his breath from embarrassment, face flooding with heat, eyes fixing in on a spot above Zack’s shoulder.

“You’re not—” Cloud kept trying to force it, staring determinedly into the distance, gripping the edge of the counter on either side of him, and Zack sat leaned in, brow furrowing sharply.

“Spike.”

“D—de—”

Zack’s hand landed on his shoulder, close to his neck.

“D—” Cloud focused. “You’re not d—”

Zack, eyes wide. “You don’t have to say it.”

It couldn’t get worse than it already was. The least he could do was see it through to the end. He forced himself to take deep breath.

“Since,” he said, militant. “You’re. Not. Dead.”

He had to grit his teeth together as he finished, locking his jaw so that a humiliating sound wouldn’t break free. He slammed his eyes shut and he bowed his head, shielding what dignity he had left.

Zack gently turned Cloud to face him. Cloud should have resisted, but he didn’t. “Spike, hey.”

“I’m fine,” Cloud grit out. “I’m just—ignore me for a second. Please.”

“No,” Zack said, voice soft in a way that was familiar, but only distantly, as if he’d only ever used the tone while Cloud was obscured beneath layers of sleep. “Can’t.”

Cloud was out of practice at managing his anger at other people, so all he could do was keep his jaw locked shut and rub at the bridge of his nose, head still bowed and face still turned away from Zack’s searching gaze. “Zack. Give me a fucking moment.”

Zack’s version of giving him a moment was staying very quiet but not giving him a slip of space. He propelled Cloud backwards, across the room, until the back of Cloud’s knees hit the couch and Zack was pushing him gently down onto the seat. Zack knelt on the carpet before him, his thumb rubbing circles into the inner joint of Cloud’s knee. Cloud found himself unable to focus on anything else.

After some time, Zack said, “What was that about?”

Cloud grimaced and tried to stand. “Nothing. I’ll be be f—”

Zack pushed him back down with a hand to his chest. He hardly pushed hard at all, but Cloud was so startled by it that he felt as if he’d been slammed back into the cushion, and in his shock he finally met Zack’s eyes.

“I died,” Zack said, voice as soft as snow.

“I know,” Cloud said, and he did. Truly.

Zack tilted his head to the side. Just slightly. “Did you miss me?”

He curled in on himself. The cushion beside him dipped as he felt Zack climb up beside him; Cloud trembled, exactly twice, and Zack held him close, Cloud’s forehead bumping against Zack’s chest.

“Yes,” Cloud whispered. “Yes. Yes.”

He felt something inside him spill, quick and complete but practically soundless—a tap left shut for too long, breaking with a snap, flooding the floorboards on and on, with no recourse to stop it. Zack didn’t seem to mind: he pet his hand down the back of Cloud’s head, impossibly gentle, as Cloud twisted up his face and fought back tears and went unglued at it—remembering how it had felt to miss Zack, and feeling the harrowing salve of having Zack back, warm and real underneath his forehead, Zack’s rising and falling chest flush against him.

“Zack,” Cloud said, stupidly, because he could not help himself.

“Sunshine,” said Zack, tracing his fingers across Cloud’s scalp. He sounded a little frightened. “I missed you too.”

Unbelievable. “I can’t forget.”

Zack stilled his hand, but cupped Cloud’s head firmly. “I’m sorry.”

It was like there was something inside him, dragging its talons through what remained of Cloud’s chest. Just to have some minute relief, Cloud grabbed hold of Zack’s shirt, twisting it in his grip.

Zack was warm. Solid beneath him, arms strong around him. It was familiar, but only in a sense of dejá vu—familiar through a looking glass and on the opposite bank of a mako-mist shrouded riverbank.

It had been so long since someone touched him. Fenrir, yes—but not a person. His pulse thudded thickly in his throat. This wasn’t the same, not at all.

“It’s all okay,” said Zack, too patient for what Cloud deserved. “I’m alive, right? I have no idea what I did to deserve it, but I made it, and I’m here.” He twisted a lock of Cloud’s hair around his finger. “We’re okay.”

Cloud could have barked out a laugh. Zack had no idea. Zack had no fucking idea, did he, what Cloud had gone through? What Zack had done to him, what Cloud had done back? He couldn’t come back from that. The pain of having lost Zack was a broken bone, and Cloud had fucked around with it so badly that it never properly set. It’d never even had the chance.

“Can’t miss me if I’m here,” Zack said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

As if. If it was bad right now, having Zack close, Cloud wanted to split at the seams thinking about how in a few short months he would have to say goodbye to Zack again. It wasn’t something Cloud could begrudge him. It had been Cloud’s choice to exile himself to the most remote corner of the world he could find, and he was lucky Zack had braved it all to visit him the once. Zack was barely hanging on through the boredom as it was, and it’s not as if Cloud was anyone to him, really—it wasn’t as if Zack was going to stay. In the bright light of spring, Cloud would have to watch Zack’s turned back as he trudged away back down the mountainside.

Cloud would spend the rest of his life missing Zack, and he wasn’t sure if it was even remotely better, missing someone because they were no longer part of your life, instead of missing them because they weren’t alive at all.

He turned his head, pressing the side of his face into Zack’s chest now and his anger fading away to helplessness. He let the hurt slide over him—surrendering to the feeling, hoping, maybe, that if he sunk in deep enough, stopped resisting enough, he could somehow reach the happiness he knew to be lying underneath: the unadulterated comfort of having Zack close, the long-sought-after dream of of having Zack underneath his cheek. Zack, Zack. Here. What he’d always wanted.

Something inside him shuddered and rolled over.

For one wonderful moment, he reached it. He breathed in, ragged, and nearly sobbed at having found it at last. It reverberated inside him, a dull painless ache, nothing but solace and joy, bliss and uncomplicated gratitude. Almost religious in his fervour. The rain and the mud, the hairline fracture—they didn’t matter. Not anymore. They had given Zack back to him.

He made a noise, not a sob, but perhaps half a prayer. Reverence. Disbelief.

“I’m alright, I’m alright,” Zack said, like he was soothing a child, and he gently pushed Cloud away so that he could cup Cloud’s jaw in both hands. “See?”

Zack tipped Cloud’s face up and drew their gazes together. His eyes were soft, long-lost blue behind long dark lashes, and the expression in them so tender Cloud that felt his lips go numb, his mind go stupid with shock. Zack’s thumbs traced over his cheeks, feather-light.

From a dark, deep, watery grave, Cloud’s broken heart stirred. It had been asleep a long time, pinned down and drowned for longer. He did not expect it, the urgency with which it suddenly started to warm with life. Zack’s fingertips scorched; Cloud swayed forward into the touch, flooded with it, mesmerized past the point of reason.

He felt it in his chest, a pressure and a light. Neglected love unfurled, stretched out. It had old pathways through every line of his being, forged deep enough that disuse had not worn them down in the least. Love reached out its feelers. It eased its way down his spine.

And then Cloud froze in place, realizing what was happening.

He couldn’t do this to Zack.

Not again. For god’s sake, not again—it would be worse, so much worse, to have not learned his lesson. To sin the same way twice.

He couldn’t. He couldn’t let himself, and Zack—

Cloud jerked out of Zack’s touch.“You can’t touch me like that,” he rasped.

In an instant, Zack’s hands dropped away. Cloud couldn’t look at him.

“Sorry,” Zack said. “Sorry.”

Cloud’s chest burned. His fingers twitched, grasping at his own knees.

“No, I’m sorry,” he said instead, getting abruptly to his feet. “You didn’t—you’re fine.” But he left anyway, because he couldn’t be trusted there anymore. Not when he could still feel Zack’s phantom touch, and he wanted to scream for having lost it, and now, worse even, was the knowledge Zack would give it back, if only Cloud was weak enough to ask for it.

Cloud walked away as fast as his legs would carry him, down the hall, up the stairs, cursing—not for the first time that winter—that his bedroom didn’t have a door he could shut between him and Zack. He wanted to hit something, but he would be overheard. He wanted to yell at himself, but he’d be overheard. He paced, back and forth, in his loft, and a minute later Fenrir was bounding up the steps, joining him at his side, but this was not something Fenrir could fix—this was Cloud, as broken as ever, unable to love people properly.

“I’m not in love with him,” Cloud reminded himself, under his breath. He had to remember that. “You never were.”

You couldn’t be in love with someone you’d never known.

“Cloud?”

It was Zack, calling up the stairs, his voice strained and cautious. Because Cloud had run away, and Cloud had made him feel as if he was in the wrong.

“Yeah?” Cloud called back, feeling thin and brittle. “I’ll be down in a few. I can make dinner.”

“No, don’t worry about that,” Zack said. “Are you… can I do anything?”

“I’m fine.”

A stretch of silence. Cloud had always been told he was bad at acting.

“I won’t,” Zack said, a little more quietly, but still audible all the same. “Touch you, again, I mean. I am sorry. I didn’t think.”

Cloud did him the courtesy of at least going out to stand on the landing, so that they could look at each other as they spoke. Zack was sorrowful at the foot of his stairs. Pitiable, even, in his borrowed clothes and crossed arms and searching, apologetic gaze. Cloud had done that. Cloud had done that and worse.

Zack had never been anything other than wonderful to him, and here Cloud was: pining after a counterfeit, deifying something sick and false and that Zack didn’t even know existed. It was almost funny, how fucking easy Cloud was for him—how just Zack’s mere innocent comfort could make Cloud fall back into old delusions—and now it was worse, infinitely more depraved, when Zack was here, in person, to suffer it. Zack, downstairs, good and kind, keeping his distance, blaming himself, with no idea what Cloud had just almost done.

What he was definitely not going to let himself do.

“Sorry,” Cloud repeated. He willed himself to take a few steps down the staircase, to at least get closer to Zack to offer him reassurance. But he couldn’t; he didn’t dare; his filthy, traitor heart wanted to go to Zack, so he could not give in to it. “You’re fine, Zack. I’m just not used to being around people.”

“Sure,” Zack said. “Of course. I’ll be better about it. Let me know anytime, yeah? I know I’m in the way a lot. I don’t want to cross any more lines than I already have.”

Cloud wanted to cry. “It’s not a problem,” he said, a liar and worse. “Don’t worry about it.”

Chapter Text

“Down, boy.”

Zack’s eyes flew open at Cloud’s tone. The basement door was open. He leapt off the couch and hurtled himself down the steps, socks skidding against the floorboards. At the bottom of the stairs Fenrir was snarling at something across the room, Cloud holding the dog back by the scruff of his neck, and it seemed to actually be costing Cloud some effort to rein him in.

“What’s—”

“Squirrel.”

Zack’s pulse adjusted. Shadows pooled around the narrow rows of unlit shelves, and Zack went still as he tried to listen carefully; then Fenrir barked.

Zack craned his neck to look further down the steps. “How the hell did a squirrel get in here? Would’ve had to slip by Fenrir somehow.”

“He figured it out once,” Cloud said, voice tight, “and now he keeps. Coming. Back.”

“He?”

“It’s the same one.”

Uh. “How can you tell?”

“Zack I swear to god it’s the same fucking squirrel.”

Zack threw his hands up. “Okay! Why’s Fenrir on a leash?”

“Because he’s dumb, and he’ll run through here knocking everything over if I let him.” Fenrir growled into the dark, and Cloud tightened his grip. “Stay.”

“Alright.” Zack narrowed his eyes in thought. “So I’ll go down there and grab it while you hold Fenrir back.”

“Think you can do that without breaking half the jars in this place?”

“Uh. Maybe?” So he wasn’t great at stealth. Never had been. Zack folded one of his legs and grabbed his ankle to stretch out his quad.

“Fenrir calm down,” Cloud barked again. He pointed. “Go. Upstairs.”

Fenrir finally seemed to respond—namely, by making a hurt little whimpering sound, as if he was wounded by Cloud’s lack of faith in him.

“Once he’s out we’ll close the door, and then we’ll set up a trap with some buckets,” Cloud said. “And in the morning I’ll lock Fenrir in your room so we can che—"

Something darted across the darkness, Fenrir lurched out of Cloud’s grasp, and on sheer instinct Zack ran down the steps after him, hollering with hands outstretched.

Zack dashed down an aisle of rice and beans, following the flicker of Fenrir’s tail. The dog scrambled around the corner, nails scratching at the floor but not loudly enough to cover up the sound of another, tinier creature, getting away ahead.

“Fenrir! Za—for fuck’s sake.”

“Got him!” Zack bellowed, optimistically, as Fenrir skid down a second aisle and Zack nearly barrelled into a freezer bin. Fenrir howled after the squirrel; the squirrel jumped onto a shelf; Zack lunged for Fenrir and could only manage to yell “Cloud!” before Fenrir was leaping, body crashing into the shelves as he pawed for the squirrel.

By some miracle, or, more likely, very well trained reflexes, Cloud made it to the other side and caught the shelves before they toppled over, grunting under the weight as Fenrir went sprawling and glass shattered and Zack ate dirt—thankfully, Zack with a firm grip on Fenrir’s neck. A puddle started to creep across the floor from between pieces of broken glass, cold and briny. Fenrir growled at Zack, trying to yank out of his grip as the squirrel went dashing by his nose; it tried to make a break in the opposite direction by darting through Cloud’s ankles. Sighing, Cloud shoved the shelf upright, crouched down, and caught the squirrel in his free hand.

Later, after they’d hiked (far) into the wilderness to release the squirrel—Cloud, with a deadly glower the entire trek—Zack almost expected him to start back-talking the squirrel’s frantic squeaks—Zack retreated for a shower. When he finally felt free of the last traces of pickle juice, he climbed out, rubbed the fog off the bathroom mirror, and frowned at what he found.

Long strands of hair were strewn around the bowl of the sink; behind him, the shower drain was his second-worst new enemy, always trying to swallow down more. He was woefully unpractised at chasing his hair down before it tangled inside the pipes. His hair had never been this long before—not even half as long—and he felt completely out of his depth.

He cracked the door and stuck his head out. “Cloud,” he called. “Do you have scissors?”

Cloud stopped in his tracks on the way to the kitchen. His gaze flickered from Zack’s face down to where his wet hair stuck to his chest, and then back up—his expression impassive, but Zack still felt himself colour slightly under the regard.

“…For hair?”

“Yeah.”

Cloud didn’t answer for a second, frowning.

“It’s strange, right?” said Zack, twirling a few of the strands and watching it wrap around his fingers. “I’ve never seen it this long.” He let go; a small wave bounced to life at the ends. “Huh. See? That’s new.”

Cloud seemed to work something in his mouth and then looked aside. “Looks good,” he said, a bit gruffly, but it was, after all, nine at night and they’d just taken a six-hour round-trip hike because of his least favourite wildlife critter.

Zack tried not to sound too pleased. “Think so?”

Cloud shrugged. “I’ve got some stylist scissors under the sink.”

“Would you help me?”

“Do what?”

“Cut it.”

Cloud shifted his weight, scrutinizing the doorknob. “I don’t really know how.”

“Do you cut your own?”

“Yeah, but.” Cloud ruffled the spiky back of his hair with a short laugh. “Not the same.”

“You’ll do great!” Zack said. “And even if you fuck it up, doesn’t matter. Who else will see it?”

“Well…”

Zack jogged over to the main room and grabbed one of the dining chairs, setting it up in front of the bathroom sink. Then he flung himself down, letting his knees drop open.

Cloud met his eyes in the mirror, grimacing. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah! Go for it!”

Cloud hovered for a minute, squinting at the back of Zack’s head as if it were made of glass, or perhaps poisoned spines. But then he ran his fingers through it—very lightly, lifting up some parts, watching how they fell. “I guess I should probably comb it first?”

That made sense. Zack passed him the comb he’d been trying to use earlier.

He got to watch in the mirror as Cloud’s face set into something hard and determined, not unlike the look he wore when they were about to take on a monster. Zack wanted to laugh, but it didn’t seem very nice when Cloud was doing him a favour and all. Then Cloud was combing his hair and Zack didn’t feel like laughing any more.

Cloud was very gentle about it. He went in sections, starting at the ends and getting the small snarls out before working his way up, a technique that Zack had never considered but that made perfect sense once he realized that’s what he was doing. Unlike him, Cloud never yanked at the knots, never tried to hurry them along. Instead he just would gesture at Zack to lean forward, then stick parts under the faucet to get them drenched before he carefully teased them apart.

The bathroom was quiet. His shower had been very hot, and even now the steam had only barely started to dissipate. Zack felt a sluggish pounding in his chest as he watched Cloud’s bowed head in the mirror, his fingers moving carefully in deep concentration.

He missed you.

He missed you to the point of tears.

It was a strange thing to hold onto, maybe—unkind, even—but Zack hadn’t been able to let it go. It sat in the fold of his heart like a lit candle, steady and aglow.

Zack had told himself he could handle it if Cloud didn’t want to talk, if he didn’t want Zack in his guest room, if he didn’t want Zack’s hands on his face. That seeing Cloud was enough. (Would have to be enough.) This past month had felt as if he’d been gorging himself full on stolen moments: Cloud chopping wood, Cloud washing dishes, Cloud falling asleep during a movie with Fenrir on his chest. When the snow melted and Zack was obliged to leave, he would have a treasure trove to last him through next winter—and next, and next.

But Cloud had missed him. Missed him.

He had mattered enough to be missed.

Ever since that day on the couch, when Zack had held Cloud close for the first time in years (and had, almost instantly, ruined it all with his greed for touch), Zack had had trouble disguising his newfound pride. The person who was most important to him, thought that he was pretty important, too. How many people could say that? How lucky he was, to be able to go to bed at night and to greet a sleep-stuffy Cloud in the morning, knowing all that while that Cloud cared.

They cared about each other. The both of us.

It felt like a weight off his chest, to know he wasn’t carrying all of this on his own. Nothing could keep him down, if he had that to hold onto.

“Lean to the right,” Cloud said.

Zack leaned to the right. Cloud’s hands swept his hair in one direction. There was a familiar, practiced motion to it all, one that didn’t add up for someone who, as far as Zack knew, had always kept his hair short.

He hesitated a moment. But newfound confidence curled at the tip of his tongue, loosening it. “Did you learn this from Tifa?”

Cloud startled. After a moment: “Yeah.”

He raked the comb through the section of hair he’d just finished detangling, and Zack closed his eyes at how good the tines felt, tracing across his scalp.“You guys were together, right?”

“Um. Yeah, for a little while.” Cloud started on a new section. Zack couldn’t see his face clearly. “Not that long.”

Zack had only seen bits and parts from the Lifestream, all years in the past now: the rebuilt Seventh Heaven, kids in one bedroom and Cloud in an office by the garage. A kiss before Cloud left on delivery. Kids clinging to Cloud’s waist to welcome him home, Tifa relieved to see him on one piece.

“Was it serious?”

He waited, watching Cloud’s face carefully. Cloud, in turn, seemed to be carefully keeping it expressionless.

Cloud shrugged. “When you’ve known each other a long time and you already live together, isn’t it always serious?”

Zack let himself slouch a little more to get comfortable, knees spreading further apart. He thought about the bag full of gifts, the unread letter. Cloud’s remote, hostile home. “Are you not friends anymore?”

More hair brushing. Zack bit his lip as the silence stretched on.

Belatedly: “We are.”

Zack grimaced. “Bad breakup?”

Cloud shook his head, and a better person would have left it to rest, but Zack couldn’t imagine why anyone would let Cloud go. Couldn’t imagine why Cloud would be out here, alone, unless something had driven him up here with no other recourse.

“Really?”

He saw Cloud’s eyes duck down. “Yeah.” Cloud cleared his throat. “Really. She’s, um, amazing. And I didn’t have my shit together.” He laughed, a little dryly. “So we’re better as friends.”

“You still in love with her?”

Cloud paused his combing. Zack felt Cloud slip a hand under his hair, run fingers along his scalp. He ran his fingers over such a specific spot that Zack could almost imagine he was looking for something; but it was an idle thought, subsumed by the pleasure of the rare touch. He felt his eyelids fight to stay open.

“No,” Cloud said.

He lifted Zack’s hair up with the next stroke: pulled it, higher and higher, and they both watched it stretch out, beautiful and gleaming under the comb, until Cloud let it drop back down. Zack started to have second thoughts.

“How short do you want me to cut it?”

Zack swallowed. In his reflection, his Adam’s apple bobbed. “Whatever you think is best.”

Cloud raked his fingernails over Zack’s scalp, this time with both hands, gathering his hair in the back. “Maybe I should start with a trim,” he said, halfway to a mumble. “Just in case I fuck up.”

“Sure,” said Zack. The steam was getting to him. He felt the damp heat crawling down his lungs. “That’s a good idea.”

The scissors made a soft, clean, violent sound as they snipped shut. Dark hair fanned around the two of them on the floor in little heaps, and Cloud’s brow went furrowed with concentration. Cloud was silent, like he was most of the time, which meant Zack was left alone with his thoughts. Replaying, mainly, what he’d seen from the Lifestream all those years ago; what he’d seen in Edge, most recently, for those few days after he’d woken up.

“Do you go back to visit them?” he asked. “Tifa and Barret, and everyone else?”

“Zack.” Cloud brought the scissors down.

Zack didn’t understand. There seemed to be bruises under the surface, invisible, and he kept stumbling over them whenever he tried to talk about anything that mattered.

“Why?” Cloud asked, finally, voice slightly harsh, as he went back to trimming. “Does it matter?”

“Well, sure,” he said, trying to be gentle. “They’re your closest friends, right?”

They’re your family, right?

He didn’t say it aloud because that wound, he knew about. That wound was as good as his fault.

Cloud let out a soft sound. It was a little like a laugh. He raised up a strip of hair and cut it mid-air, where Zack could watch the pieces fall. “Guess so,” he said. “We did try to raise kids together.” Another piece of hair, another snick of the blades. “Twice.”

Zack’s stomach dropped, a little; but his chest also felt sort of warm, and he had to clench his fists at the picture in his mind’s eye of Cloud as a father. He’d known it, sort of, but not really; not in so many words. He’d never known what to think about it, and now his voice seemed clumsy and deep to his own ears when he said, desperate to know more, “Yeah?”

Cloud nodded. He kept his eyes on his work. “Did you meet Marlene and Denzel?”

“Marlene, for a second. She’s cute as hell with Barret.”

He saw Cloud grin in the mirror, maybe the most unreserved that he’d ever seen. “They are.”

“And Denzel was in trouble for something so they had him doing dishes in the back, I didn’t really get to say hi. Didn’t ask what that was about.”

Maybe that was the wrong thing to say, because Cloud’s face screwed up in concern at that.

“Them?” Zack realized. “They’re yours?”

Cloud shook his head.

Most of the steam had evaporated by now, but Zack could still feel it clinging to his collarbones, dampening his brow. It was hard to think quickly in this kind of warmth.

“Why?”

“Couldn’t handle it,” Cloud said. And after a beat, he said, almost like a punchline that he wanted Zack to laugh along with, “Like a lot of things.”

Zack didn’t laugh.

“It’s okay,” Cloud murmured. He was really close now, leaning in to get at the pieces on the side. “It’s not like someone had to take them away from me, or anything. Marlene’s Barret’s daughter and Tifa and I were only looking after her for a bit. I took in Denzel because…We took him in around the same time.” Fingers, against his scalp again. Zack pressed his lips together to seal back a noise. “Like I said. Didn’t have my shit together. It was too much to put on Tifa, and we were both still really young…” Cloud brushed away some hairs that must have gotten stuck to his sweaty temple. “Barret takes care of them both now. And Tifa’s like their aunt, of course. Tilt your head back.”

Zack’s thoughts had taken on a syrupy edge. He tilted his head, and found himself looking up into Cloud’s face. Every instinct in him told him not to push any further, but he felt too safe to listen to those. He wanted Cloud to talk. He wanted to hear everything.

“And the second time?”

Cloud’s hands very slowly raked his hair back.

Each second that passed felt charged, as if Zack could already sense the weight of this making itself known, hanging in the air alongside the heat and mist.

Finally, Cloud said, “Some asshole walked out on Tifa.” His voice was steady. “She wanted to keep the kid, but didn’t want to do it alone. So.” He moved out of view. Zack heard the scissors slide open.

“She asked you?”

Just barely, he saw the spikes at the top of Cloud’s head move in nod.

Zack hadn’t seen any baby at Seventh Heaven. He wished he could reach back, hold Cloud’s hand. That would probably make the haircut harder. And Cloud had asked not to be touched. “What happened?”

He could hear the whisper of each hair hitting the floor.

“She lost it. Fourth month.”

Zack really did reach back for him then. There was no stopping himself. He had to at least offer it.

Cloud brushed his hand away, but not unkindly. “It was a long time ago,” he said, face still far out of view.

Zack’s mouth felt like it was full of cotton. Words rolled clumsily to mind and back out again. He didn’t know a thing about children. At Shinra, he’d never had a vision for the future other than making First and saving people; his life was going to be battlefields and accolades and people holding their babies out to him to be kissed on the forehead. He couldn’t fathom having a kid of his own. He couldn’t imagine losing one.

He wondered if Cloud had been excited, or nervous, or having second thoughts. If they’d picked out names, if they were planning to move to a bigger place. He could picture Cloud in the semi-dark of the bar after closing, a lamp on and a frown on his face as he tried to look through a parenting book. He wondered if he’d asked Barret’s advice.

“Cloud,” he said, voice coming out as thick-sounding as he’d feared.

“’S fine,” Cloud said. “It happens.”

“But.” Zack felt his pulse beating in his throat. “Cloud. Are you fine?”

This time, he hears the shaky breath. It seems to come up from the bottom of Cloud’s lungs. “Wasn’t for a while. Time helps. Can you lean forward?”

Zack did, blearily, his hair falling forward like a curtain. “I’m sorry.” He felt more useless than his deformed arm.

“I feel worse for Tifa.”

He could see Cloud’s fingers moving through his hair, the flash of silver in their wake, but Cloud was still mostly hidden, movement more than shape through the strands of his hair.

“Is that why you guys aren’t as close?”

A pause. Zack wondered if he’d finally crossed the line.

“I think it made us closer, actually,” Cloud said, slowly. “Yeah…I think it did.”

Zack waited for more. Hair in his eyes, palms on the towel spread out over his thighs.

He saw Cloud move out of sight. “You can sit up.”

Zack righted himself, letting his hair slide back into place. Cloud smoothed it down and squinted, frowning at their reflection.

“Sorry. I got distracted,” Cloud murmured. “Didn’t end up cutting very much, did I.”

Zack’s hair was still long, but it rested a little below his shoulders instead of mid-spine. Dark and voluminous, nearly dry, Zack thought it looked pretty cool; some parts were sort of choppy, sure, but it was miles better than what Zack had expected, given the last time he’d seen a guy give a trooper a haircut in the barracks with nothing but craft scissors and a six-pack.

“It looks awesome!” Piles of hair lay in a ring of carnage around them. “And you said you don’t know how to cut hair? ”

Cloud’s hands left him Zack felt the moment disappear like a drop of water rolling down his back—the humidity and the heat, the gentle occupation of the scissors. Cloud opening up and closing again.

“Could be better,” Cloud mumbled. “I can still try to fix it.”

“Nah,” Zack said. He really didn’t give a shit. “I like it. Thank you.”

In the mirror, he watched Cloud lean around and rinse the hair off the blades. There were no more words from Cloud as he finished cleaning the scissors, as he dried and put them away and started shaking out the towel around Zack’s shoulders. Already the bricks were falling back into place in the divide between them. Zack could nearly hear the sound of them raining down.

He veered wildly, desperate to keep the space open between them. Hanging on to any single thing Cloud might still tell him.

“Do I look that different?” he blurted.

“Uh.” Cloud squinted at him.

“I mean, I know I look older. I’m still not really used to that. And the hair’s different. But…”

Cloud didn’t touch him again, but he did lean in closer. Zack swallowed, watching himself be watched in the mirror. He shifted in his seat.

“I was kind of surprised you don’t still have the earring,” Cloud said.

“Yeah. It does feel pretty weird.” Zack tugged his earlobe and forced a rueful grin. “I miss it. Guess that’ll be the first thing that I buy, after this.”

Cloud frowned, strangely, and dug his thumb into the back of the chair. “Want to borrow one of mine?”

“Really?”

Cloud rubbed the back of his neck. “I only have a few pairs. Might not be your style.”

Zack sat up straight. “No, I’d love it.” He was absolutely sure of that.

“Alright. I’ll just go…” Cloud saw himself out, and could be heard softly padding up to his loft. Zack, filled with new energy, figured it was high time he got out of his towel. He slipped on a pair of (Cloud’s) sweatpants and was rummaging through his drawers in his room for a shirt, door wide open, when Cloud came back down.

Cloud held out his palm to him. “Like I said, I don’t have that many.”

There were three pairs of earrings in his hand—small silver hoops, tiny black squares, round green studs—and one, wolf-shaped, imposing, that was a partner to the one Cloud wore daily.

Without hesitating, Zack reached for the wolf. His fingertips brushed it; it felt warm and promising under his touch, like a missing piece. At the last moment, he looked up into Cloud’s eyes; tried to read them.

They were already shuttered. Impossible to find anything in them.

“Thanks,” Zack said, cheerfully as he could, and grabbed a hoop. He snapped it open and slid it into his ear without preamble. Pushing his hair out of the way, he turned his cheek to Cloud. “How’s it look?”

Zack only ever had one dream anymore. He didn’t like it much. One night he escaped it early by waking up while the sun was still buried, the night dark and dead silent outside the cabin. Not eager to return to where he’d been, Zack slipped out of bed and pulled on a sweater.

He’d gotten a little more comfortable moving around Cloud’s place on his own. It was still unnerving knowing that even the tiniest noise could float up into the loft above and startle Cloud’s sleep, but by now he’d learned the creaky floorboards and could slide, relatively soundlessly, over to the kitchen and carefully pour himself a glass of water. He was so intent on controlling his movements and keeping the quiet that it was only as he was taking his first gulp of water that he finally noticed the colours outside.

He floated over to the windows, breath stuck in his throat. An aurora was writ wide across the sky—ribbons of bright pinks and flickering greens, curling and concaving in an unhurried flow.

Zack’s jaw dropped.

He’d never seen anything like it. He’d never expected to. Somewhere inside him, something stirred—the part of him that still couldn’t believe he was alive at all to see things like this. To have the goddamn privilege.

He slipped out onto the back porch, shoeless, closing the door behind him as gently as possible. He stood out on the steps, nearly breathless, tipping his head back to see as much as he could. If  he froze out here, it would be with a smile on his face. The colours shifted above him in some soundless rhythm that seemed, to him, akin to a pulse—maybe not a human’s, but someone’s all the same.

Zack had only been outside for a few minutes before he heard the door creak. The snow crunched under Cloud’s boots as he came down to stand next to Zack, an unbuttoned jacket overtop his pajamas. The sound of Fenrir’s paws stopped behind him.

Cloud’s voice was husky with sleep. “Beautiful, huh?”

When Zack turned to look at him, the lights had caught in the blond of Cloud’s hair. They spilled across his pale face, glanced off the bright silver of his earring. It made him look outlandish; stunning. Zack could have made the stupidest of noises.

He rasped back, overwhelmed, “Yeah.”

“We get them all the time up here,” Cloud murmured, quiet, to match the stillness of the night. Zack had only absently noticed the cold, but now he noted it in the faint pinkness of Cloud’s cheeks. “That’s why I put skylights in my room. The view is incredible. You can lie back and just…take it all in. For hours, if you want.”

“Yeah?”

Quickly, Cloud said, “This isn’t their best night.” He crossed his arms and scratched his ear. “When they’re really good, we can go out and watch them on the lake, if you want. You can see a ton of open sky from there.”

Zack smiled at Cloud across the distance. “That sounds amazing.” It really did.

“Cool,” said Cloud. He looked back up, hands in his pockets. “We’ll do it.”

Zack couldn’t say how long they stood there for. They didn’t speak, but he didn’t feel the need to. Cloud and Fenrir kept him quiet company as the lights meandered on across the sky.

“We’re playing a game tonight,” Zack announced as Cloud packed away the night’s leftovers.

“Okay,” Cloud said, with zero enthusiasm.

Once Cloud had settled on the couch and Fenrir was watching lazily from the armchair, Zack sat down cross-legged on the carpet and proudly spread his hands to show off the goods. “I made it up myself.”

With the air of someone being asked to admire a piece of unidentifiable macaroni art, Cloud politely leaned in closer to see.

Zack had spent the better part of the last week meticulously painting a piece of scrap cardboard to make a playing board, mixing paints on the bottom of an old jam lid and cursing when he fucked up the straight lines he’d bothered to sketch out with a ruler and pencil. He’d made notched sticks out of a set of worn chopsticks, and some neat rocks he’d found on a walk with Fenrir would serve as markers. It was kind of random but Zack didn’t see any reason why it would need to be perfect.

He launched into an explanation of the rules and watched Cloud’s eyes widen, then narrow, as it became clear how stupidly competitive the whole thing was set up to be. They managed to play half a round before running into an insurmountable road block and had to hash out two new rules on the fly, and then again on the second and fourth attempt, but eventually they found rhythm. Sticks rattled in their cup and Zack shouted obnoxiously every time he raced ahead of Cloud—only half as obnoxious as the self-satisfied and completely disproportionate smirk Cloud would adopt when he took the lead.

After the first fully successful game Cloud got up to make popcorn. They put more logs on the fire, and then they played two more times.

After a catastrophic victory, Cloud leaned back against the couch—he’d migrated to the floor some time after round one, to lean in closer to the board—and admitted, “That was actually fun.” He had a knee pulled into his chest. Today, his socks had a napping moogle embroidered on the side.

If they were still in the barracks, Zack would have kicked him in the ankle. “’Actually’, huh?”

“I mean,” said Cloud. “I don’t usually like board games that much.”

“You’ve probably been playing the wrong ones.”

“Probably.”

“And,” said Zack, “not much point in playing alone. Half the fun is winning.”

That itty-bitty, attention-grabbing smirk again. Cloud had won two out of three. “Guess so.”

Zack carefully folded up the board and started tying up the sticks in a ribbon for safekeeping. “I’ve got more. For solstice, I’ll make you one with dice that’ll…” Zack stopped in his tracks. His brow furrowed. “What day is it?”

“January…eighteenth, I think.”

 Zack stared. “We missed the solstice.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. I don’t really do anything for it.”

Which was. Well. There were people who didn’t celebrate the solstice. Not typically people from Midgar, though. Nor from Nibelheim or Gongaga, either—if anything, the traditions were stronger there, tied down by the roots. Zack remembered the parcels Cloud would get around December, tied carefully and tightly with twine by someone who couldn’t regularly afford the postage to send things across the ocean. Zack couldn’t fathom it. “Why not?”

Cloud shrugged. “What would I do?”

Cook food. Light candles. Exchange gifts—but no. Solstice was a time for friends and family, and Cloud was all alone up here. It would be a meal at an empty table, candle flame watched over far into the night by Cloud and Fenrir alone. Zack’s mood darkened as he pictured it. He swept the last pieces of the game away, forcing his jaw shut against the comments he wanted to make.

“Well, I’m still going to get you a gift,” Zack said, somewhat mutinously.

“It’s not like I have anything for you either.”

A log in the fireplace collapsed—they both stopped to watch the spray of orange sparks it let off, the flames licking into the newly emptied space.

Cloud asked, “If you could get any gift, for the solstice, what would you want?”

Zack laughed. When he saw Cloud was serious, he shrugged, grinning. “Nothing.”

Cloud made a face.

“No, really.” Zack leaned back on the palms of his hands. He was, against all odds, alive and well and basking in food, warmth, and Cloud’s company. Wanting anything beyond this kind of happiness—priceless, unadulterated, unearned—seemed pointless. His cup was already overflowing, and overflowing, and overflowing again.

“You’ve got to want something.”

“Why?” Zack crossed his ankles. “Can’t I just be happy?”

“Everybody wants things.” Cloud said it in such a way that Zack sensed he meant in general: people wanted stuff, they wanted other people. They wanted change or freedom or regard. Implicitly, he’d understood that Zack had already rejected all of that.

Zack sighed. He pressed his lips together, smiling with one corner of his mouth. “Someday I’ll want something, probably. And then I’ll want it a lot, just to make up for lost time. How about that?”

Cloud looked at him with a small wrinkle between his eyebrows. Zack wished he could smooth it out with his fingertip; failing that, he wished he could give an answer that would please him. I want this winter to last forever wasn’t one of them.

“I think I’m going to travel around a bit, after this,” Zack said, clearing his throat and looking away. “See the world. Maybe I’ll find something then.”

Cloud reached a hand up to Fenrir and got his fingers licked for his trouble. “Sounds fun.”

“Yeah.” Zack tried to focus on the warmth of the fireside, instead of the encroaching uncertainty of the future. “No clue where to go, though. Maybe I’ll go through your atlas, pick a place at random. Start from there and just keep going.”

“Gongaga’s really nice now,” Cloud said. Fenrir dipped his head down over the side of the chair to get pets. “They’ve recovered a lot. Cissnei’s there—did you know that?”

“Cissnei? No, shit, I didn’t.”

“She runs the local guard. Uh, last I heard. Bet she’d be happy to see you.”

Zack couldn’t picture a Turk settling down in Gongaga, running around the jungle in her suit. He couldn’t fathom if he had anything to do with it—surely not. “I’ll have to visit,” he said, ignoring the way that the prospect of returning to an empty home made him feel: like he was lowering himself into a yawning abyss, blindly reaching for the next foothold in absolute darkness. Instead, “Hey.” He turned his head to Cloud, grinning. “Would you come with?”

“To Gongaga?”

“Yeah! I guess you’ve been, but not with me, right? I could show you around!” He’d had all kinds of secrets spots as a kid, places he’d jealousy and happily kept to himself, but now he could show them off to Cloud: the best boulders to climb, the prettiest waterfall, the fattest mushrooms to bounce off of. The hidden grotto with sunshine-warm water where it was always silent and still. Surely those places all still existed, even if the people didn’t. A decade didn’t matter to the jungle.

“I…” Zack watched Cloud trace a path down Fenrir’s spine, watched Fenrir’s eyes fall shut in contentment. “Thanks, Zack. But I don’t really travel anymore.”

Zack waited for more, but that was it. Cloud had said his piece, soft-spoken and final as it was.

“Oh. Yeah, I should’ve guessed that.” He looked down and rubbed his knuckles against the carpet.

Cloud made a small nonchalant noise, something between a hum and a grunt. He didn’t look Zack’s way; Fenrir seemed much more absorbing than him.

“But…I mean, you do visit Edge, sometimes, right?” Zack checked.

“Yeah.”

Something flipped, uneasily, in the back of Zack’s brain. “When’s the last time you left the mountain?”

Cloud tilted his head back against the couch. “A while, I guess.”

“Over a year?”

Cloud shrugged.

“Two years?” Zack said.

Cloud got to his feet, taking the empty popcorn bowl. “Leave it alone.”

“But you’ve had people over, right? Tifa, and everyone?”

“Yeah,” Cloud said, rounding the couch to put the bowl in the sink. Fenrir got up slowly to follow him, as thought he really would’ve rather stayed sitting. “In the summer. They bring the kids, usually. We take them swimming in the lake, let them camp out in the backyard. Stuff like that.” He rustled around in the cabinet for Fenrir’s treats.

“That sounds really nice.” It did; and it didn’t settle him.

Cloud did something that made Fenrir bark, loudly, even though normally he was very well behaved inside the house.

Zack got up too. He followed the thread of his dread up to the island counter, crossed his arms and leaned against it. “When’s the last time they were over?”

Cloud scowled at him, sideways, as Fenrir leapt up—paws reaching all the way to his chest—to take the treat offered to him. He didn’t answer.

“Spike.”

“Leave it alone.” Cloud washed his hands under the tap, dried them off on a dish rag with little pumpkins on the border. “I’m going to bed.”

“Cloud, seriously.”

Cloud turned away.

“So you don’t leave,” Zack said, breath catching. “And you don’t let anyone visit you.”

“Stop.”

Zack gripped the edge of the counter like a lifeline. He forced his voice to sound light and carefree. “Before I showed up, how long had it been, since you’d seen another human being?”

“A while, alright?”

Cloud turned his back to him, and Zack reached, fingertips ghosting over his forearm. It was a bad move: Cloud flinched, tore his arm away.

“Sorry.” Zack stepped back, guilt like burnt flesh on his palm. “Sorry. But…” His heart hurt; his happiness, propped up at all four corners by Cloud’s happiness, felt like it was teetering off a cliff and sliding towards the rocks.

Cloud rubbed his face.

“Years, Cloud?” Zack said. “Why?”

“Why does it matter?” Cloud said, eyes closed, face covered.

Zack’s volume control broke. “Because it’s not okay! Because—” He threw his arms out wide, encompassing the entire beautiful mountainside and the lovely cabin and the vast, lonely emptiness “—you can’t live like this!”

Cloud dropped his hand and scowled at him. “Of course I can,” he said. “I am.”

Zack stared.

He’d stopped pressing, since the first day, had accepted Cloud’s solitary nature as just something that was part of him. He hadn’t understood it—hadn’t seen it for what it was. Hadn’t dug and found the roots, stretching far and lonely under the surface.

Zack shook his head, slowly. “Not like this,” he said. “This isn’t living.”

“Maybe not, but what the fuck would you know about living?”

The vitriol behind it shocked him. It sprung on him, swinging; Zack blinked back with stupid, heavy eyelids. Only belatedly did he notice his heart pounding like a canon had gone off in his chest.

Cloud looked down. Fenrir pressed close to his side, rubbing his head against his leg and giving somewhere for Cloud’s shaking hand to rest.

Zack said, slowly, “Are you mad at me?”

Cloud didn’t answer. He left, and Zack didn’t follow. Instead Zack sat down, heavily, on the window seat. A pressure seemed to be encroaching from all sides, dark and filmy. Cloud’s undefined, glaring anger at him gnawed its way up one of his arms, while his horror at Cloud’s long isolation crawled up the other.

He sat perfectly still in place, unable to move between the two.

Thud, thud. Cloud’s hard steps coming down the stairs. Zack stood up to meet him at the foot of the steps, but when he got there Cloud was already jamming his feet into boots and yanking his coat haphazardly over his arms.

“Don’t leave. It’s dark.” Zack wasn’t able to keep the desperation out of his voice. Cloud threw a scarf around his neck; Zack wanted to grab him and hold him, but he’d already fucked that up. “Shit, let me go, then.”

“I’m just going to the shed,” Cloud mumbled. There wasn’t any heat behind it—just a face turned away from Zack and tense shoulders and quick fumbling as Cloud finished tugging on a hat and headed for the back door.

Fenrir followed, like he always did, but: “No,” Cloud said. “Stay.” And shut the door on the both of them.

Zack stood there in the quiet.

Fenrir turned and looked at him with an unreadable dog expression that nevertheless was vehemently projected, This is your fault.

Zack covered his face and groaned.

He went to the window and pushed the curtain aside, just slightly. The dark concealed most of the world, but the moonlight reflected off the snow and Zack could see Cloud’s deep footsteps leading up to the shed. The bare bulb inside was turned on, leaking light through the thin curtains of the small window and through the cracks of the ill-fitting door. It had to be freezing in there.

Zack sat down on the couch with a sigh. “Guess we better wait.”

Fenrir stared him down with reproach.

“Not too long,” Zack agreed. “Thirty minutes, maybe.”

He waited with Fenrir’s head in his lap, gently petting down his skull. He didn’t look at a clock; when he couldn’t bear it anymore, he waited a little while longer, and then he went and put water on to boil. He got his coat, made two flasks of hot black tea with a spoonful of sugar each and tucked them in his pockets, then said a guilty goodbye to Fenrir and ducked outside.

It had started to snow again, very softly—just enough for Zack to have snowflakes in his eyelashes by the time he made it to the shed and knocked on the front door.

From inside there was the recognizable sound of an axe meeting wood. Then it went silent.

Zack knocked again.

After another pause, Cloud opened the door for him.

He looked tired. A little sweaty, but also with the familiar flush of the cold. He let Zack inside without a word, then put another piece of wood on the chopping block.

Zack pulled up one of the old stumps and sat down in the corner. It was short; his legs were long. He propped his arms up on his knees.

There wasn’t a lot of space in the shed. There was equipment of all different kinds stacked at one end, jumbled with boxes and lumps with blankets thrown over them. Hoses and all kinds of cables hung from hooks on the walls. A workbench made it out of the clutter, along with the little bit of floor space that Cloud was using to chop wood.

The single light bulb cast a weak, warm circle of light over the two of them.

Cloud hacked away at the log in front of him until it split in two. At least he couldn’t be furious—he wasn’t using his whole strength. If anything, he seemed weary. Each swing landed heavily, and he seemed to need twice as many as usual to rend the log apart.

Zack held out one of the flasks. Cloud paused, glanced up at him for a brief and world-tilting moment of uncertainty, then took it.

Zack opened his own flask and blew steam off the stop. Cloud did the same.

“So,” Zack said, nerves humming. “You’re mad at me?”

Cloud looked down into his tea. “No. Of course not.” His voice came out even more hoarse than before, ragged in a way that almost seemed wet, and Zack looked at him carefully. He tried to, but couldn’t, tell if he’d been crying. “I just…”

Zack waited. When nothing came, he said—trying not to be too soft, not like he was coddling—just in his best, most encouraging tone: “You just…?”

Cloud took a tiny sip of his tea. The steam dampened his blond eyelashes, moistened his mouth. He put the flask down on a nearby shelf and sighed deeply. “I’m not mad, but what if I was?” He looked down at Zack, something like a challenge in the set of his mouth, as if he expected Zack to fight back. “How am I supposed to do this?”

Zack wanted to reach out and take his hands. He held himself together. “Do what?”

Cloud rubbed the bridge of his nose, like it was crazy Zack didn’t already know. “You. You, being back.”

“Me?”

Cloud muttered, pinching his eyes shut, “Who else?”

Familiar, sore guilt kicked at Zack’s ribs. Coming back to life hadn’t been his decision. It still felt horribly wrong to be the only one. If he knew how to change it, he would do it now. Without any awareness he was doing it, he started rubbing a palm over his heart.

“Do you wish I was Aerith?”

Cloud’s eyes snapped up to his. “Don’t say that.”

“I’m sorry,” said Zack. “I wish I knew how to bring her back.”

“That’s—” Cloud grit his teeth and brought a hand up to the side of his head. “That’s not the point. I don’t wish you were her. I wish I had you both. I…wish I had all of you.”

Zack fell quiet. The bleakness of loss haunted the room, stretching out from the corners where it always seemed to lie in wait.

“I’m sorry,” Zack said, again, because what else could he offer? His hands dangled uselessly in front of him.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” Cloud snapped. Then he breathed hard, looking down at the floor. “You’re not the problem.”

“Okay.” Since he couldn’t touch, Zack leaned forward. In the small building, it brought them closer: him, on his short seat, knees drawn up; Cloud, in his red coat, eyes glossy and wide with something Zack hadn’t figured out yet. “Tell me about it? Maybe I can help.”

It was a weak thing to say—wishful thinking, that there was anything in his power to fix. His teenage self had learned the hard way that most things wouldn’t ever be; that very little ever had been.

Cloud sighed. He leaned back against a set of shelves, folding his arms behind him. “It’s that,” he said. “I’m—” He swore. He strode two paces across the room; Zack could almost swear he heard his pulse thundering as he passed. Cloud’s hands clenched and unclenched as he fought against something inside him, and Zack held his breath, felt some tide drawing back—far, far back, scoring out space for a tsunami.

It happened quickly, and Zack was braced for it.

“I’m supposed to be happy!”

It came in a shout. Zack could hear his heavy breathing; back partially turned, Zack watched as Cloud pushed his hair back from his forehead. When he turned to look Zack in the eyes, Cloud’s pupils were dark and wide.

“You’re alive,” said Cloud. “And it’s a miracle. And it shouldn’t be possible. And the best thing I could have asked for, it’s better than I ever let myself hope.” Zack’s heart thundered. “All I want is to be happy. There’s—there’s no one on the planet who should be happier than me right now. Things like this don’t just happen."

Zack felt his insides rioting like a ship pitched by a storm. He finished for him, quietly, “But you’re not happy,”

Cloud gestured, wildly, with his hands. He roared, “I had to figure out how to live without you!”

Zack couldn’t look away. Cloud’s chest was heaving.

“Do you have any idea what your death did to me?” Cloud said. Zack was silent, he was stupid. “I—I had to figure it all out, from scratch. I had to” —Cloud made as if to grab soil from the earth, trying to twist moisture out of it— “learn, how to deal, with the fucking fact—the fact, Zack!—that you were never, ever, ever coming back.” A fleck of spit flew from his mouth. It hit Zack’s cheek; he didn’t even flinch.

“And it killed me,” Cloud said, pacing still, hands waving, heat in his face; something frantic about the edge of his movements, absolutely raw in his voice. “I’m no good at it. I don’t know why, but I keep fucking it up. I got stuck on you.”

Zack’s words got stuck in his throat, and it was probably for the better. The realization was burrowing its way home, hot as a branding iron, that he was responsible for whatever this was; he had made Cloud hurt. He wanted to ask, Why me? Cloud had lost so many people. His only family, his whole village, his friends—why Zack? What had Zack done to be special? What had Zack done to cause him more suffering than anyone else?

Cloud’s voice cracked, and he said, “What was I supposed to do, Zack? You died because of me. You died in front of me.”

Ah.

He remembered easing Cloud onto the ground, behind that sandy rock. Remembered rustling his hair and walking away, back straight, refusing to look back despite how much he wanted to. Even when he knew, maybe, a little bit, that he was reaching the end of the line.

He remembered how happy he’d been, later—flat on his back and bleeding out into the dust—to open his eyes and see Cloud’s green ones looking down at him. If he had to swear to it, he would have said that his death—while not his favourite experience—had been happier than any of the nine months preceding it. Cloud’s open eyes outweighed the blood pooling around his body by a measure he didn’t dare quantify.

“I’m sorry,” said Zack, feeling more useless with each repetition. This time he did reach out and grab Cloud’s hand, driven forward by the enormity of his helplessness. “I’m sorry.”

Cloud made as if to wrench his hand out of Zack’s grip, and then seemed to give up, going slack. He looked down at their joined hands. “Were you watching, by then?” he said, voice a little dull. “Do you know that I tried to lie down and die beside you?”

Zack’s bare heart went on pumping even as it felt like his ribs were being pulled away.

“You closed your eyes, and everything was so cold from the rain, and then the sun came out and it got baking hot. You’d put Buster in my hands, but I was so weak I could barely stand.” Cloud’s voice came out strange and distant, like he’d fallen into the past, and Zack could hardly blame him. Could taste the salt of blood and tears on his tongue, could remember the rocks digging into his back and the uncomfortable cling of his wet gloves on his hands. He remembered the bloodstain he left on Cloud’s cheek. For some reason that detail made him feel guiltiest of all.

“I screamed.” Cloud’s voice grew faint. “Did you hear me?”

Zack whispered, “No.”

Cloud hissed, “I can’t forget.” He wouldn’t look away, so Zack could only look back, head tilted back helplessly to see every taut line of pain in his face. “You know that I forgot you, right? You know I thought I was you?” Zack nodded. “Sometimes I wish I could forget you again,” Cloud said, voice low and harrowed, but not necessarily unkind, “so that I can forget how you died.”

His voice came out of his mouth like someone shredding metal. “Cloud.”

“I don’t know why I remember half of what I do,” said Cloud, sounding just as helpless. “I could barely talk when Tifa found me. I couldn’t explain why I was covered in blood but not hurt. But I remember when you closed your eyes for the last time. I remember lying down next to you, and how you were still warm.”

“Cloud.” Zack took his other hand, too. He didn’t know if he wanted to stop Cloud from talking, or to bow his head to receive each blow in penitence.

Cloud didn’t reply. He looked down at their joined hands and then clutched them back, so hard Zack’s knuckles ground together, making something like relief spark in Zack’s chest. “I was tired,” Cloud said. His voice was small.

“You were so strong, to get back up,” Zack breathed. “That whole long walk to Midgar, carrying Buster, and after everything—I’m sorry you had to do it alone. Thank you. Thank you for getting back up.” He said it with his entire heart, the horrified whole of it.

When Cloud looked up, his eyes were distant. He tugged a hand free to card it through Zack’s hair. He found the place on Zack’s skull immediately, without having to look, just like when he’d been cutting Zack’s hair. Zack felt him trace the thin, cool ridge there with the point of his finger.

“It was here,” Cloud said, through nearly-clenched teeth, voice thick. “Right?”

Tears burned in the corner of Zack’s eyes. He remembered blood running in a thick line down his forehead, down the side of his nose, warm and pointless. “Yeah,” he said. “Probably.”

“Fuck,” said Cloud. “I thought so.” He traced his fingers along it again, the ridge probably no thicker or more obvious than a strand of hair. “Fuck!”

Cloud wrenched himself away, grinding the meat of his hand against his eyes. Zack stood up but then didn’t know what to do with himself, ripped open by seeing Cloud’s suffering.

“Why didn’t you run?” Cloud demanded, with fresh outrage. Zack felt himself falter under the heat. “Why didn’t you save yourself?”

“I wasn’t gonna leave you.”

“Why not?”

Furious. Accusatory.

The mere idea made bile rise in his throat. Zack finally raised his voice, matched him halfway. “I wouldn’t do that!”

“You should’ve,” Cloud yelled. “Was it fucking worth it, dying for some stupid SOLDIER motto?”

Zack went still. Too much happening inside him at once, paralyzing him in the centre. “I didn’t do it for honour,” he said. “You think I did it for honour?”

He froze, and then he laughed. Breathless and incredulous, he took in Cloud’s bewildered look and had to laugh again, or else he’d do something worse, like cry. It had been eight years.

“Wow, okay,” said Zack. “You think you’re bad? You think you’re the only one who’s messed up? I remember waking up for the first time in Hojo’s shitty lab, and seeing you on the table next to me, and thinking, At least he’s here with me. Isn’t that fucked?”

“I…” Cloud’s face flickered. “No. Shut up.”

“’S the truth,” Zack said, feeling strangely vicious. “I care about you. I took you with me when I broke out because I was selfish. I didn’t even try to save any of the others. You’re what mattered to me.”

“No.” Cloud yelled it so loudly Zack’s heart skipped a beat. “You don’t get to say that,” he breathed, face gone from flushed to pale in an instant. “Fuck you. You…you…you didn’t even hold my hand.”

Zack didn’t know what Cloud was talking about, but he should have held Cloud’s hand through anything. “When?”

“On…” Cloud dragged his hands down his face. He groaned, very loudly. “This is so stupid. None of it matters.” But Zack could feel the heat boiling off him, the shame and the anger and the hand Zack hadn’t held.

“When?” Zack repeated.

Muffled through his hands: “The reactor. After I killed Sephiroth.” He took a deep, shaky breath. “You’d probably passed out by then, I don’t know why I even fucking said it. The things I remember are so fuck—”

Zack stood up. “I reached for you. You didn’t know that?”

He saw Cloud look up at him through the slits between his fingers.

“Cloud,” Zack said. Horrified. (Sixteen year old Cloud, finishing the job Zack couldn’t. Infantry armour banging against every step on his way down, skull slamming against the metal grating. Blood from his stomach wound dripping down the incline. Zack, barely able to move, but still trying to—) 

(Thirteen years, he thought.)

Zack took him by the arms. “Of course I tried to.” He stared at Cloud, begging him to believe him.

From the look on Cloud’s face, he did. “Oh.”

“It’s my fault all of this happened. You had to clean up my mess.” Each word thorned, cutting his lips on their way out. “You think I didn’t care?”

Cloud said, voice suddenly soft, “You didn’t know me.”

Zack had to tilt his head. “What? Of course I knew you.”

Cloud went quiet. Zack watched his chest rise and fall, breath ragged and slowing.

In almost a whisper: “I don’t know.” Cloud bunched up a fistful of his own sweater. One of his hands curled against his own thigh. “Zack, I—there’s so much I don’t remember.”

“Yeah?” said Zack, unsteadily. He rubbed his thumbs over Cloud’s arms. “I’m here now. I’ll tell you anything you want.”

Cloud shook his head. “You don’t get it. I didn’t just forget. I—I fucked up. You. My memories, yours. It’s why I fucked up so bad.” He looked up at Zack, imploring him to understand, and—Zack didn’t, really. Not at all, actually. He had nothing to go on; Cloud had given him nothing. It must have shown on his face.

Cloud groaned, then laughed, then frantically turned out of Zack’s grip and took a gulp of his rapidly cooling tea. He wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. “Guess I never had a chance, huh?” he said. “I tried to do better. I tried to move on.” Zack would rather drag himself over cut glass than see Cloud hurt on his behalf, but the idea of Cloud moving on from him hurt almost nearly as bad. “My brain was fucking rotten, and everything I did after, once I realized, I did to…make peace with you, to forget about you, to give you a legacy but not to cling to you, to try to be alive and well and not stuck in the past…but I guess I did it fucking wrong!” Cloud said, his voice pitching wildly. “Because you’re here, and I’m not happy!”

 Zack said, desperately, “Can I hug you?”

Cloud shook his head, staring at Zack with horror and a mute, overwhelming kind of anger that Zack felt helpless to console. “You don’t get it,” he repeated. “You should be angry at me.”

Zack reached for him.

“I should be thanking you!” Cloud said, voice shaking. “I should be begging at your feet for forgiveness!”

“Please let me hug you.”

Cloud made a crazed sound, incredulous and lost. He curled in on himself, then he crossed to the opposite side of the room, and then he turned around and walked straight into Zack—arms folded against himself, face burrowed in Zack’s neck, and Zack wasted no time. He wrapped his arms around Cloud and pulled him in close, fingers digging into his back, nose pressed into his sweet-smelling hair.

Someone was making a sound of hurt, like limping on a wound, but it was as impossible to tell which of them made the sound as it was irrelevant. The bitter cold and the sawdust smell of the shed faded away, nothing but Cloud warm and firm against him, their coats squashy and soft around them both. He pet a hand through the back of Cloud’s hair.

Cloud reached up and shoved a hand against Zack’s throat, a little uncomfortably, but Zack didn’t question it. Cloud scrabbled around until he got two fingers jammed under Zack’s jaw, right over the jugular, and then Cloud held perfectly still, panting steam into the cold air. Zack stayed frozen in place for him, lips pressed shut, pulse throbbing against Cloud’s chilly fingertips.

“Fuck,” Cloud said again. He pushed a little deeper, and Zack held back a wince.

“I’m alive,” Zack said.

“I don’t understand,” said Cloud. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m right here.” Beneath his palm, he could feel Cloud shaking. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Cloud shoved him. Zack backed into the wall, and Cloud fell back against him.

Not meeting his eyes, voice hoarse from shouting, Cloud said, “You’d better not.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

They stood there for a long while. Zack soothed his hands up and down Cloud’s back. Cloud pressed his ear against Zack’s chest and breathed, first fitfully, and then more slowly, in tune with Zack’s breaths. Cloud’s shivering had surpassed his anger, and Zack could feel every tremor in his embrace.

“They were right,” Zack said, finally. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

Cloud’s head snapped up.

Regret felt heavy as a yoke. “Everyone warned me, but I didn’t listen. They told me you didn’t want to see people, and I still…I thought I’d be special, or something. It was fucked up of me. And instead, I’m putting you through…” Zack splayed his hand wider over Cloud’s back, as if he could push them still closer together.

He felt Cloud lie his head back down on his shoulder, defeated. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” he said. “It hurts if you’re here. It hurts if you’re not here.”

It would’ve been kinder of Cloud to simply cut him right open, but at least he finally had his honesty. Zack breathed out, shakily.

“Okay,” he said. “Fuck. I’m sorry.” Useless, always useless.” At least don’t worry about the rest of it, though, yeah?”

Dully, Cloud said into his jacket, “What would that be?”

“Not being happy to see me—don’t feel bad. I don’t mind, okay?…Honestly, I could kinda tell.”

He felt the frustrated tension rise in Cloud’s body, flush against his chest. “I am happy,” Cloud said. “I want you here. I’m so glad you’re here, but…”

“It’s okay,” Zack soothed. Cloud was warm. The soft spot underneath his jaw smelled really good. “I get it. It’s not that simple.”

Cloud exhaled, and Zack felt it travel through his lungs. He mumbled, somewhat sullen, “It’s not very grateful of me.”

Zack laughed. “I don’t think the Lifestream was expecting a thank-you card or anything. She’ll be fine.”

It didn’t earn him a laugh in return. In fact Cloud was very quiet.

“Cloud?”

Whisper soft. So low, Zack could barely believe he heard it: “What if she takes you back?”

“What?”

Cloud swallowed. “What if she takes you back,” he said, “if I’m not grateful enough?”

Zack felt himself go warm, in that soft, lazy, sleepy way that only happens when you’ve fallen asleep outside in the summer and woken to the smell of green and earth. He waved off the impulse to cup Cloud’s face, and instead gathered Cloud’s chilled hands between his own again.

“She won’t,” he said. “I believe she won’t.”

Cloud finally looked back up at him, eyes red-rimmed, but dry. He was very beautiful. The world was a little emptier, just by having all that beauty locked away on a mountaintop where no one else ever got to see it.

“And,” Zack said, feeling like his lungs had given out, “if anything happens, I’ll just come back another way, okay? I can figure it out again.”

Cloud  laughed—not really a happy laugh. Something nervous, tired. He put a little space between their bodies, crossing his arms. “I don’t deserve you.”

Zack scoffed.

“No,” Cloud said. “You don’t even know the half of it.” A muscle in his jaw twitched. “You’d hate me.”

“No I wouldn’t.”

“You have no fucking idea—”

“Don’t need to.” It was ridiculous. Zack didn’t know how to put it in words, how certain he was that he’d forgive Cloud anything. That Cloud wasn’t capable of doing anything he’d need to stretch himself to forgive.

“You don’t know me,” Cloud insisted. “You don’t know what I’m like anymore.”

Zack brushed Cloud’s elbow. Leaned in until Cloud would look at him. “So tell me,” he said. “Please? I want to know you.” He wanted it so badly he could feel it in his bones. “Doesn’t have to be right now…Tell me, and I’ll listen. You can find out for yourself, that I’m not going anywhere.”

It probably said something about his mental state that Zack didn’t think to look away once while Cloud, hesitant, licked his lips, as he stared right back at him.

“Okay,” Cloud murmured, finally.

Zack felt a smile break across his face, sore from frowning. “Yeah?”

Cloud shrugged. “Yeah. Sometime.”

They stood there, something hovering just out of reach. The distance between them felt insurmountable as a chasm; as insignificant as a gust of air. Zack wanted to reach out and hold and hold and hold, but he had already crossed the line too many times tonight. He would wait for Cloud to show him what he wanted.

Cloud stepped back. Cold rushed in between them, and Cloud rummaged on the shelves, gathering hat and tea and scarf. “Let’s go inside.”

“Spike,” said Zack, warily. Anxious that, once again, Cloud was trying to run away—from him, from them. From everything.

“Let’s go inside,” Cloud said, again. “It’s too cold here.”

So Zack followed, like he always would. In the cabin, the fire had fallen low. Fenrir was napping, but he lifted his head to stare at them as they came inside and started knocking the snow off their boots. He jogged across the hardwood to greet Cloud, nuzzling at his knees, and Cloud stood on one foot and pet him while he tried to unlace his other boot.

“I’m fine,” he told the dog. “Yeah. See? Fine.” Fenrir licked his palms and jumped up to put his paws on Cloud’s chest, peering up at Cloud’s face. “Zack helped.”

Fenrir looked at Zack with such scrutiny that it was unsettling.

Cloud corralled Fenrir away from the door so that Zack could get his own gear off. They didn’t bother turning on any of the lights. Instead Cloud went to the sink for a glass of water, and Zack drifted with him. Both of them stood there, unthawing slowly, looking out the window at the snow and the impermeable dark. Something raw and wounded lay between them, bleeding sluggishly, but it was alive.

“I am grateful,” Cloud said, finally, and still just as hoarse. “I need you to know that.”

Zack could  have burst into bloom. “Yeah?”

Cloud swallowed. “I missed you.”

Hearing it twice didn’t make it any less sweet. Against his best judgment, Zack stroked a thumb behind Cloud’s ear, just once. Through a throat that didn’t want to let him speak, he said, “You too.” And, “All the time, sunshine.”

Cloud had put down his glass and was hugging him so suddenly that Zack didn’t see it coming at all. He was strong; Cloud held him tight. Zack stood there, stunned, before hurrying to wrap him up in his arms like he’d already started to miss.

“It’s all over,” Zack said, committing every part of Cloud to memory. “I lived, didn’t I?”

“You really, really didn’t.”

But Zack felt the smile pressed against his chest all the same.

Chapter Text

According to all known science the days should have been getting shorter. Somehow, they felt longer than ever.

Cloud would find himself in the centre of the house, half asleep, with no idea what time of day it was and no real interest in checking the clock ticking away in the hallway. Often Zack would be there in a similar state. Finally the mountain seemed to be catching up with him: padding around in navy sweatpants and a knit sweater, dark hair pulled back into a messy bun, Cloud would find him making a bacon sandwich, or feeding his most recent attempt at a sourdough starter, or watching the toaster with a mild, exhausted interest. From beside the curve of Zack’s neck, Cloud’s silver hoop very nearly seemed to tease him, winking in the light, and—in a twist that made Cloud feel the need to bite his tongue to bleeding—Zack’s jaw now wore a permanent shade of stubble.

On one such day—it might have been a Tuesday, or maybe a Thursday—Cloud wandered out of bed while it was still (already?) dark, followed the wag of Fenrir’s tail to the kitchen, and laid his head down on the cool stone of the counter.

From the table, Zack grunted a cheerful greeting through his mouthful of—breakfast? Lunch? He was stretched out in his chair just about as far as one could go, ankles crossed in front of him, and his borrowed henley had popped its first two buttons. As Cloud watched, Zack absently scratched at his chest.

Despite the grounding chill of the countertop, Cloud’s heart rate did an unhelpful little flutter.

“Get yourself together,” he muttered to himself.

He’d become accustomed to a vague, nauseating bitterness following him any time he was in Zack’s presence this winter. Entirely novel, these days, was the way he was now also being waylaid by nothing less than the jittery nerves of running into an ill-advised one night stand.

The new facial hair wasn’t helping.

“Why do you still shave at all?” Cloud said, head still down. The cool countertop was doing little to invigorate him, but at least it calmed the throbbing in his left temple. Fenrir, at his feet, started to lick his toes, and Cloud did not have the energy to stop him.

Zack swallowed his bite of toast. “Hm?”

Cloud waved at his own face in example, and Zack brushed at his cheeks as if trying to beat out crumbs.“Just let it grow out.”

Zack leaned back in his chair and ran a thumb down the growth on his chin—dark and promisingly prickly, right on the cusp of what could be called a beard. He laughed. “And look like a lumberjack?”

Cloud shrugged. He tried to picture it. Then he had to stop.

“Why don’t you?” Zack countered.

“What?”

“Never seen you grow a beard”

“Can’t.” Ducking his head, he poked Fenrir in the head and finally scolded him for being gross.

“Really?”

Cloud’s interest in discussing his pretty, girly face was at an all-time low, a place which it had occupied for years. “This is as long as it gets,” he said of the pale shadow on his face.

“Huh.”

He shrugged. “It works out. I hate shaving, anyway.”

“Really? Why?”

“I don’t know. Pain in the ass, I guess.”

“You could let me do it for you.”

Cloud blinked at him. Across the room, Zack innocently looked back. Zack licked a bit of jam off his finger.

No matter how nice he was to look at, looking at him still hurt.

Saying those things aloud, face-to-face—to Zack’s face—had felt as sweet a relief as ripping off a bandage; it had felt about as nice as slowly easing himself back onto Masamune’s sliver of a blade. If he were less of a masochist maybe that would have been enough for him. As it was, Cloud kept feeling the tug of more. Wanted to worry at the muddled pain; wanted to dig his thumbnail into it and feel it flare.

In comparison it was almost a welcome distraction, this newfound, earnest embarrassment at the fringes of their every interaction. Through three layers of sweaters and thermals, Cloud vividly remembered what it was like to feel bare before Zack: guards down, frantic, exposed, and raw. He’d been so out of control. Zack had been so understanding.

Sex would have felt less intimate.

“You cut my hair for me,” said Zack, finishing off his last bit of crust. He brushed his hands off over his plate. “So, seems fair to me that I be your barber. You ever been to one?”

Cloud slowly shook his head.

“It’s nice. Really relaxing. You won’t have to do a thing.”

He didn’t know what to say. When he started to imagine Zack holding his face and soothing shaving cream across it, it did the opposite of helping him find words.

“Are you that bored?” he said, too late by far.

Zack laughed. “Yeah, a little,” he admitted. “But I think it could be fun.”

“Guess so…Uh, I was going to check on the power system today, though.”

“Nice.” Zack jammed the last bite of toast into his mouth and stood up, chair squeaking against the floor. “Can you wait an hour? I was gonna start a marinade.”

“You don’t have to come with me.”

Carefully, Zack said, “I could hand you things?” And then, into the slight pause, Zack laughed. “But I guess I still mix things up a lot, huh? I wouldn’t wanna slow you down.”

It was as if he was inching out of Cloud space before Cloud even thought to flinch. Cloud had done that—had made Zack feel unwanted.

Unwelcome, maybe; unwanted, never.

“No, it’s good,” Cloud said, quickly. “Uh, yeah. If you want to help. We can do it whenever.” He still wasn’t sure if it was morning or afternoon.

Zack smiled. Cloud thought about looking away—heart twisting with guilt and something worse—but he forced himself not to. Stared into the full force of Zack’s happiness, and the strange sway Cloud could have over it.

Zack’s smile was uncomplicated. Bright as the sun glancing off fresh snow.

Cloud felt about as fragile as the snow, too. He turned away. “Fenrir,” he said gruffly, who was calmly sniffing his leg. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Pass me the blue crimpers.”

“These?”

Not those. Cloud pointed, and Zack shuffled around a bit before plucking the right pair from the toolbox. Cloud grunted in thanks.

Snowflakes peppered down on them, a few sneaking in beneath Cloud’s scarf as he bent his head over the junction box. The cabin’s power system was a delicate one, hinging on backups, batteries, daylight hours, and a little home-made jury-rigging courtesy of Barret and Cid standing on his roof for four hours and yelling at each other. That would have been just over three years ago now. Cloud, hardly an electrician, had so far managed to muddle his way through the necessary maintenance on pure stubbornness of will, and the occasional light fuck-up.

“How’s it look?” Zack, hovering over his shoulder, peered cluelessly into the depths of the box.

“Fine.”

He could hear Zack’s pout. “Can’t you teach me some?”

“Uh.” Cloud squinted. Tried to imagine how he’d explain. “No.”

Zack spluttered in protest and, despite himself, the corners of Cloud’s lips twitched.

Cloud plucked on a loose wire, drawing it taut. At his side, Zack tipped his head back and looked up into the big bright sky. He was boring Zack, he could tell, but there was only so much to do up here.

“That’s it. I know why you’re up here,” Zack said.

“Mm.”

“Closest place you could get to your kind.”

Lost, Cloud looked over; Zack pointed up. Above, the snow clouds were low and sprawling, flowing from one to the other.

“Ha, ha,” Cloud said.

Zack grinned, all pleased with himself. “I’m intruding on important cloud business, aren’t I?” he said. “If I wasn’t here, you’d all be talking about your secrets…Rainfall. The view from up high. Being all silent and mysterious.”

Cloud grunted. “Don’t think so.”

“Bet they like you. Bet you’re secretly everyone’s favourite.”

Cloud felt a frustrated little flush travel through him and he had to press his lips together, blinking down into the box, to wait it out. For fuck’s sake.

“Invite me to a meeting sometime?” Zack said. Cloud didn’t have to turn around to know the playful smile that would be on his face. “One of these days. I’ll be quiet as a mouse, you won’t notice me at all.”

“Doubt that,” Cloud said. And then, reluctantly charmed, he played along. “I’ll think about it.”

Zack did a little fist pump. “Alright!”

A freeze frame. A shutter click. Alright.

Alright alright alright.

Cloud’s hand spasmed. With a flinch, he dropped the crimper and it hit the junction box on its way down.

“Cloud?”

For a moment Cloud considered trying to recoup and move on. Pick up the tool and keep going, just like he had all winter. He could feel the It’s nothing curling on the tip of his tongue.

Suddenly Cloud was sick of it all. Sick and fucking tired. Guilt had made an old man of him—down in Edge, across the planet, up here on the mountain—everywhere he went, it weighed on him until all he could do was crawl. When would it be enough? He never should have let it set its roots down in him in the first place. Revulsion at his own helplessness overtook him, livid in its restoration, and if he had been alone, he would have walked out into the wilderness, like he often did, alone and unprepared. Just walking in a straight line until he could go no further.

But—Zack.

Always Zack, it seemed. Even when he wasn’t.

He asked, hoarsely, “You used to do that?”

“What?” Zack tilted his head. “The cheering?”

A nod.

“Yeah.” Zack laughed. “Usually with a hip thrust too.”

Cloud took off his work glove and rubbed at his face. Air felt scratchy in his lungs, and not from the cold. At this, Zack’s voice got small. “Sorry. Not a good memory?”

Cloud shook his head. He wasn’t sure what he meant by it. Yes. No. All of the above. He had memories of Zack being happy. Had images in his head of Zack cheering from it—were any of them real? A story he’d heard second hand? Something that Cloud had overwritten as his own? All he really knew was that they were each divorced from all reality. Adrift, he could only guess at why Zack might have been happy at all.

“Zack…” He didn’t know how to go on. He stared blankly at the wires in front of him.

Beside him, Zack went quiet. He stood there without moving, for long minutes, as Cloud struggled through the weeds of his thoughts.

He’d have to start from the top.

“When I forgot you,” he said, finally, digging his fingers under the wrist of his other work glove, “I used to call myself a SOLDIER.”

He heard Zack suddenly shift his weight, but Cloud adamantly kept his gaze strictly ahead. “A SOLDIER First.”

A pause while Zack caught up with the sudden turn in the conversation. Then Zack cleared his throat. “Makes sense,” he said, still behind him. “I put you in the uniform, didn’t I?”

“Sure.” Cloud tried to keep his voice even. “But I pretended to be you.”

“Me?”

Cloud’s hands were trembling, strangely, so he made fists of them and crossed his arms tight.

He wanted it done. He wanted it over with. He’d been a coward, before, and, just like back when he was on the road with Barret and Aerith and them all, he had been better for finding himself; why had it taken him so long to remember that this time?

“I copied you,” he said, now, without pause. “I remembered just enough about you to call everything you ever worked for my own. I even stood like you. Moved like you.”

Zack laughed. “Did you do the squats?”

“It was weird, Zack.” Cloud grit it out, and he felt it down into his core, into the cold place behind his heart, the same place where he’d felt it that first time that he understood what Jenova had done to him. “I didn’t know I was doing it.”

“Wish I could’ve seen you,” Zack mused.

He could hear Zack’s grin.

Zack said, “Bet you were cute.”

Cloud just barely managed not to break the door as he slammed the junction box shut. “It wasn’t cute. It was insulting. You were four weeks dead and I was out with Aerith shopping for dresses in Wall Market with no clue I owed my life to anyone.”

It took a long moment for Zack to react, and Cloud stood motionless, everything in him dulling down to nothing but a faint grey of shame as he waited for it to arrive, whatever it was going to be. He could feel Zack’s gaze heavy on the back of his neck.

Then a very light hand came to rest on his arm. Given all the shit Cloud had put him through, dead and alive, Cloud did Zack the painful bare minimum of turning around to look him in the eyes.

Zack's gaze was bewildered. It held enough concern to last until the end of the world and then some.

“Come with me?”

As if anything Zack had to show him could fix this. Still, Cloud went.

He was led into the woodshed. It smelled like snow, even inside, and like fresh sawdust from when they’d been cutting wood for Cloud’s first beehives yesterday. They’d gotten a start on the bottom floor of one of the hives, and now Zack brought over the stack of pieces for the frames. He rolled out the plans on the big work table.

“Can you set up the—the thingy for notches?” Zack said. “I think it’s supposed to be a straight bit.”

Cloud wasn’t sure where this was going, but work was work. He hauled the plunge router over to the table and then fiddled around with the case, looking for the right bit. Across from him, Zack was slowly reading back over the plans with a pencil in his hand, tip of his tongue trapped between his teeth.

Zack drew one careful mark on one of the planks. “How long did you forget us for?”

Cloud took in a shallow breath. He would do this once and then it would be over. He’d never have to do it again.

“Almost three months.”

Zack frowned. “How long did it take you to recover?”

Cloud smacked the bit into place with the palm of his hand. “Does it matter?”

“So, it was a while.” Mechanically, Zack started clamping down the edge guide. And then, like he was commenting on the weather. “Doesn’t bother me, you know. That you thought you were me.”

It was crazy how much Zack could simply not think about things.

“I didn’t know you were dead,” Cloud said. “No one did.”

Zack nodded, as if that were reasonable.

“No one was sad,” Cloud grit out.

Zack gave a soft grunt of acknowledgement.

“Aerith died without knowing what had happened to you.” —why was he saying this? Why was he saying any of this? No one was making him say this. It’d be easier if he didn’t, yet— “She asked me and I lied.”

At that, Zack did pause. Vindictively, Cloud tightened the bit in place.

“That’s okay,” Zack said, a little more slowly. Cloud had to bite his lip to stop himself from looking up at him. “You couldn’t help it.”

“She missed you.” Cloud’s voice was thin. He felt thin, stretched out over bones with not enough give. “You’d disappeared without a word but she never said a bad word about you, ever. She just wanted to know what had happened to you, and I,” He laughed, and it hurt to do so. “I didn’t tell her a thing. Actually, no—I called you a loser to her face, once.”

Zack sounded unreasonably amused when he said, “Did you really?”

“Yeah, right before nearly blacking out.” Cloud jammed a clamp in place. He heard Zack’s mouth pop open to ask, but Cloud didn’t want to talk about that, either. This wasn’t story time. “She loved you. I should have found a way to tell her.”

As the words rolled off his tongue it felt almost as if they lost their power when they made contact with the open air. It was terrible of him, but it actually started to feel good: painful but sweet, like blinking into the glare of the sun after having been hidden down in the dark.

“You didn’t know,” said Zack, stubbornly. He had stopped moving around, and Cloud still refused to look at him. “It’s not your fault you didn’t know.”

“I did it with your parents, too. They were so worried about what had happened to you that they were asking every stranger who came through town. And I told them I’d never even heard of you.”

“Alright. So what? If you’re saying you should’ve when you couldn’t’ve—that’s not fair to you at all.” Zack said. His voice grew kind in a way that felt like condemnation. “You did your best. I know that.”

Cloud shuddered. He rounded the table, grabbing his single pair of earmuffs off the shelf, and shoved them into Zack’s hands.

“Would you listen to me?” he said, staring hard at where he was lining up the rotor. “I’m telling you why I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for.”

Whether Zack was really that obtuse or he’d caught on that the best way to get Cloud to talk was to goddamn infuriate him, Cloud would never know, but either way it worked.

Cloud turned on the rotor and the whine of the motor screamed through the air, so sharp it felt like it was piercing his jaw. Across from him Zack flinched in pain, not quick enough to have covered his ears.

Ears ringing in the quiet after the first pass, Cloud said, “I forgot about you,” and then started the rotor back up. “I impersonated you.” Again, down the straight edge, with a metallic screech. “I didn’t go back for your body. I didn’t mourn you. I lied to everyone who mattered to you.” Sawdust sprayed. “And I had no goddamn idea the price you’d paid for my life—” the bit squealed as it shredded its way “—so I wasn’t even grateful for it!”

Cloud eased back, a neat little groove revealed, scored along wood.

Zack didn’t think for so much as two seconds. “I don’t care,” he said.

“You should care.”

“Well, I don’t.”

The words reached Cloud through the soft white-out fallout of running the rotor without ear protection. In his periphery, he saw Zack leaning in towards him and wanted to look up, to see the look on Zack’s face; but then maybe he didn’t, after all. There was a sick feeling in his stomach. The relief he’d been enjoying, heady as adrenaline, had gotten itself lost.

Silently, Zack passed Cloud another plank, and together they clamped it down on either end. He turned on the router again. Drilled another gouge. This time he let the wood do its screaming and did not try to interrupt it.

Zack was the first to speak again, and when he did, his voice sounded thick. “Spike, I really don’t care. How could I have cared?”

Cloud wrenched the clamp free. He wished there was more plank to carve, because he would have sorely liked to cut Zack off.

Zack said, “You really thought I’d be angry?”

It was unfair, the way that Cloud had started this so that he could scrape the guilt out of his soul, but now Zack could return it so easily, with so few words.

“Cloud. C’mon. You lived! Isn’t that what mattered? You know, I killed a lot of good guys ‘cause I thought you were worth it.”

Cloud finally snapped his head up to look at Zack, his mouth sour with anger. “You’re missing the point.”

“What point?” Zack said. Strange, hurt bewilderment punctured his tone. “You’re telling me you were sick, and fucked up, and maybe out of your mind, too, and—what, you want me to hold that against you?”

Cloud stared at him. It wasn’t complicated.

Chest tight, Cloud asked, “Why don’t you give a shit about yourself?”

“What?”

Cloud couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I erased you.”

Zack tilted his head to the side. “Sounds kinda like you kept me alive, actually.”

A chill seeped in from outside. It was as if nothing he was saying was sticking; bouncing off of Zack, as solemn as a sunbeam. Any last bit of kind release he’d felt building inside him, crashed. “Don’t make excuses for me,” Cloud said. “It was still wrong.”

“So what if you forgot about me?” Zack said. “You remembered later, didn’t you? So what if you tried to be me? It’d be a damn honour.”

Zack’s expression couldn’t be described as anything other than dismay. The eyes had the depth of still water, and peering back at Cloud from the bottom of them was his own sadness.

“I,” said Cloud.

“And even if I was angry,” Zack pressed on, “god, Spike. It’s looking like you’ve already gone ahead of me and beat yourself half to death for it.”

Cloud’s mouth shut with a click.

Zack reached for him and Cloud wanted, very badly, to lean into the hand that was on course to slip around the back of his neck, the one that would pull him in against Zack’s warmth. (Always with the comforting.)

Instead Cloud flinched away, flexing one hand at his side.

He was so surprised that he could actually feel the odd, empty absence where his anger still hadn’t fully caught up. He’d hoped for forgiveness, prepared for fury, but—Zack brushing him off? He had imagined this conversation a hundred times over, and never did it go like this: never did he think he might have to stand up like he’d been called to court, jury in the stands and evidence in hand, charged with proving his own betrayal.

Cloud exhaled. His hands felt empty. Staring hard at the workbench, he grabbed the next piece of wood from the stack beside Zack.

I don’t care, I’m not mad, I don’t care—were those supposed to soothe him? They could hardly count as real forgiveness. And they didn’t count at all if their voicer didn’t even understand that they’d been wronged.

The two of them carved through the rest of the planks with no other contributions other than the scream of the rotor’s effort. He couldn’t gauge Zack’s mood from the other side of the table and he didn’t ask. When they’d finished with each piece, they moved onto joining them together. The work was steady.

Zack held the wood together for a while before Cloud gave him a turn with the drill, and then Cloud corrected him, too, in silence, adjusting the angle, dully watching the sawdust fly and the beehives come together, one more small part of the larger whole, and it was almost fascinating to Cloud that for years to come he would be looking at these structures in his yard and remember how Zack had helped him build them, but Zack himself would never see one humming with bees or taste any of the honey he would harvest, because by the time it would be warm enough for any of that, Zack would be gone, and Cloud’s every chance of miraculously finding some closure along with him.

Really, it was kind of fucking ridiculous that Cloud had put himself out there like this, at Zack’s request—digging up the past, exhuming it by hand, dirt on his fingernails to show for it—and Zack didn’t even believe him.

“Hey,” Zack said. Cloud blinked, and at last noticed he’d lost time. There was a streak of glue up his forearm and he didn’t know when he’d strapped on some protective goggles, much less pushed them onto his forehead.

“Um,” said Cloud. He didn’t want to be angry anymore, but now that he’d dragged his courage out of the well, it wasn’t exactly as if he could put it back. Indignation raged next to his resolve raged next to the bone-deep weariness that lined his every rib. This wouldn’t stand. He looked over at their handiwork, the tidy stacked trays on the floor. “Nice job.”

Zack smiled, gently punched him in the arm. “We’re good, yeah?” he said, as if nothing at all had passed between them.

It almost felt like a challenge. All this, and still: Spike can do no wrong.

Well.

Cloud wondered if Zack remembered that Cloud could be kind of a sore loser. And he hadn’t told Zack everything, yet.

Devouring a rack of Zack’s short ribs put a welcome pause on Cloud’s thoughts that evening. The ribs were spicy and sweet, lovingly seared to a crisp, and he watched with a kind of sacrilegious wonder as Zack spackled his first with homemade ketchup and then with spoonfuls of garlic-ginger chutney that Tifa had gifted them with so many months ago now. Cloud was reminded that he had a hand-labelled bottle of undisclosed condiment in the basement, mostly gone grey now, that Yuffie had gifted him a while back and that he’d never had any interest in braving for himself. Maybe Zack would get a kick out of it.

After, Cloud cleared away the dishes and screwed the lid back on the lurid green jar of chutney. Fenrir eagerly played the new game that Cloud had assigned to him, the one where he stood guard at the perimeter for the kitchen and blocked Zack from getting close enough to help.

“Woww, look at all these nice rib bones,” Cloud overheard Zack say. “Don’t those look tasty? Don’t ya want one? C’mon. Work with me, Fenrir.”

Cloud put the last plate away and stepped away, clearing his throat. “I’m going to head upstairs.”

Zack looked up from his bribing attempt, and Fenrir looked up, too, looking suspiciously like he’d actually been considering it.

“Just to work on some stuff at my desk,” Cloud said. He scratched his arm. “Garden plans. For the spring.”

He was regarded with that unbearably familiar emotion—concern, concern, concern—and it made him sigh. Cloud willed Zack to understand that it wasn’t a punishment; he just couldn’t handle a single more second of company.

“Sure, of course,” Zack said. “Good luck with the plants?”

Cloud nodded in acknowledgement, and made it about halfway down the hall before he turned back around.

An unsatisfied knot clenched in his gut. He had the odd urge to stay and try again. To continue what he’d started: to purge himself of all of it—to keep going, until the thing was done—confessing and confessing, spilling all over Zack’s feet until the room was full of his guilt, and everything was finally bared. How ugly it would look; how light he would feel.

It didn’t even matter if Zack would absolve him or not. He’d still have his punctuation mark, his final stitch, to end the seemingly infinite sprawl of his mourning.

“Spike?”

Cloud rubbed at his face.

He was exhausted. He just couldn’t.

Zack was still waiting for Cloud to say something, so he racked his brains and came up with, “If you want to practice guitar, you know you can, right? I don’t mind.”

“What? No, your room isn’t closed off, you’d hear everything. Wouldn’t wanna bother you.”

“It’s fine.” Cloud turned to leave again. Behind him, he heard the heavy thump of Fenrir jumping off his chair.

“Fenrir, stay,” he ordered.

Fenrir blinked at him owlishly. Beside him, twisted around to look, Zack wore almost the same expression.

Cloud said, feeling a little funny at being stared at like that by the both of them. “No reason he can’t stay down here,” he said. “You’re fine with that, right, Zack?”

“Yeah…’course,” Zack said, with too much suspicion for Cloud’s liking. “Fenrir and I get along great. Don’t we, buddy?”

Fenrir cast a dismissive look in Zack’s direction and then hopped up onto the armchair, as if everyone didn’t know he’d been burrowed under the table during dinner, head in Zack’s lap and waiting for scraps.

Cloud snorted; his dog was ridiculous. “Send him up if he’s being a bully.”

“He doesn’t bully me,” Zack lied, affronted.

Up in the loft, Cloud turned on the lamps and couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief at the stillness, at the familiar roof closing to a vee above him, and nothing but him and his bed and the dark night sky through the skylights for company. He was drained in a way that only solitude could replenish.

He shuffled around in his drawers for the plans he’d started on and spread them out over his desk, careful to prop Tifa’s letter up against his desk lamp where it wouldn’t get lost before he could open it. Downstairs there was the soft sound of Zack murmuring to Fenrir. Uh-huh and You sure about that? and That’s what I mean. You get it. Anyone might have mistaken them for good friends.

Cloud opened up the magazine he’d been using as reference, settled down with a pencil. Balancing the extremes of a disappointing harvest versus one that burdened him with more fresh vegetables than any human being could reasonably consume was a challenge he was still figuring out how to best.

From the main room there was a faint strum. Two, three. Some kind of warm up followed, a scale or something—Cloud had never gotten far with learning music himself, hadn’t cared enough—but under Zack’s fingers it sounded pretty, even sensible. A brook over pebbles, or a goldfish turning a loop.

Cloud scanned down the list of perennials in front of him and wrote down a couple names to look up.

The notes went silent. Cloud imagined Zack resettling on the couch, crossing his legs and tucking his feet under. A little thump, like Zack was patting the wood, knock knock, and a murmur that sounded like So, what’ll it be, Fenrir?

Cloud flipped a page on the magazine and squinted at his old notes, trying to parse the handwriting. Something about the summer squash growing wild.

When the song finally came, it was low and careful, as if Zack was taking pains not to jar the air with a missed note. Then it warmed, unfolding as Zack found his rhythm. The sound floated up into the loft, seemed to skim the back of Cloud’s neck where he was bent over his desk. He’d overheard Zack practice, in bits and pieces over the past few weeks, but always filtered through the glass of the windows as Cloud had been outside, chasing Fenrir or chopping wood. Zack had already improved so much; it was haunting, in fact, to hear the slow, faint progression always in passing and never in full.

Now he sat still and listened to each note. There was a sound like a vibration, too, almost too quiet to miss, and he realized that Zack was humming. The guitar and Zack, in sync, threading their way through the melody—sometimes creaking, sometimes stumbling, but always unhurried. Zack’s meandering, easygoing content, made into music.

As Cloud listened, he swore he almost could catch a word or two, murmured so hoarsely and quietly that even he couldn’t parse them. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever heard Zack sing before. If that was his voice, it was deep—scratchy, but promising. For a moment Cloud thought about going to the landing and leaning over, asking Zack to sing louder, but of course he didn’t, and stayed where he was, enjoying what it was while it still lasted.

He’d woken up full of spite and gone down into the basement on hell-bent on a mission; but by the time he emerged, Fenrir weaving anxiously around his ankles, his resolve had thinned considerably, and he no longer remembered why he’d thought this was a good idea at all.

The house was still. Though Zack mess was everywhere—four dog-eared cookbooks open on the counter, a basket of half-folded laundry spilled on his bed, a carton of game cartridges in the middle of being ransacked or organized, who knew—the man himself was missing. Cloud knew Zack couldn’t have gone far because, as far as he could tell, Zack never went out alone.

He put on his things and went out, and from there had only to follow the low sound of murmuring to one end of the porch. Looking down, he could see Zack crouched and nearly halfway underneath the deck.

“This seems too cold for anyone to handle. Guess you’re used to it though. I’d bring you inside with me if I could, but I bet Spike wouldn’t like that.”

Leaning over the railing, Cloud caught a glimpse of a tawny brown rabbit huddling close to Zack’s boot; another, pure white, was nestled in Zack’s arms. Its ears lay calm and flat. For a wild animal it was startlingly docile.

“It’s real nice you have each other, though. Can keep each other warm.”

As he watched, Zack fed the tawny rabbit a little piece of celery. It nibbled at his gloved fingers in quick, eager bites.

Cloud waited longer than he really needed to before making himself known.

“Hey,” he called.

Zack looked up, startled. Then he smiled. Always with a smile.

“Hey there,” Zack said. He lifted the white rabbit up some. “Have you met these guys?”

“Mm. I have to keep Fenrir from chasing them off.” He didn’t bother to mention that he was only waiting until spring to let Fenrir do the eviction; his garden couldn’t survive a litter or three of baby bunnies running around the place. What Zack didn’t know couldn’t hurt him.

Zack said, voice awed, “They’re so sweet.” He pet the one in his arms again and offered it a bit of celery as well. “Must be hard, toughing out the winter up here.”

“Probably. Um, do you have a minute?”

Zack looked right up again, as if Cloud’s tone had let something slip. “Sure, what is it?”

He was wearing one of Cloud’s beanies, a red one, and his hair was slightly haphazard beneath it, loose over the shoulders of his coat, which lay undone over a plaid shirt and what must have been another one of Cloud’s t-shirts. There was a snowflake on the tip of his nose.

The bunny in his arms has its eyes closed, as if it had found the warmest place to snuggle up in the world.

Cloud shifted his grip on the cardboard box. Come on.

With skill born of long practice, he wrestled down the embarrassment with a bit of shame, and wrestled down the shame with a touch more anger. There. Now it was manageable.

“Need to show you something,” Cloud said.

Gently, Zack eased the rabbit down to the ground and gave each a parting pet. He left his handful of celery pieces in the snow and came around the porch, taking the steps two at a time.

Cloud found himself motionless as Zack joined him, looking with curiosity at the box in his hands. Finally, wordless, he simply held it out.

Zack took it from him carefully. The weight of it was meaningless to them, but Cloud still felt the difference once it was gone.

“…Should I open it?”

Cloud shrugged. Zack set it down on the railing and flipped back the flaps. There were layers of shiny brown packing tape on each one, cut through and taped-over many times.

“Oh, wow, is this an original?” Zack drew out a magazine with some long-dead SOLDIERs’ faces on the cover, and as his face split into a sun-bright grin, Cloud abruptly found the limit of his courage.

“I’ll just be…” He jammed his thumb in the direction of the woods. “Yeah.” And turned and walked away down the steps.

Snow crunched as Fenrir bounded to his side. The dog trotted along with him, keeping pace with the long strides that carried him around the planters and out past the chopping block, into the cover of the forest.

Under the boughs of the trees it was quiet. The noise of his boots always felt like an intrusion of sorts, and he tried to walk lightly despite his overwhelming urge to stomp. Silence covered him like a blanket.

He made to break away from the somewhat-maintained path he would normally take and instead hiked through wild wood. Focusing on the ground in front of him, of not tripping on any rocks or roots or felled branches, was a small distraction and welcome relief from the feeling that was thudding through his veins, like a dread that was all too eager to meet its maker.

“Worst case, we’ve only got two months,” Cloud said to Fenrir.

In truth he never bothered to brave the pass himself until April, but Zack could probably handle March if really wanted a quick escape.

“Only two,” he repeated, as if he might convince himself that it was an unremarkable period of time to live with someone who—hated him? Was creeped out by him? Disappointed in him? Cloud wasn’t sure which reaction he feared more. All three made him regret, bitterly, having jumped the gun.

He should have waited. He should have continued to bear it, in silence, until spring. What he’d invited upon himself by unearthing that box seemed—on this side of the decision—far worse than a few stilted conversations and a tension that permeated the very floorboards. At least that he knew he could survive.

Fenrir sidled up alongside him to rub his head against Cloud’s outer thigh then ran away into the woods. He came back with an enormous stick.

Fondly, Cloud pressed his lips together. At least he had this. He took the stick from the dog and launched it out ahead of them.

How Fenrir knew which stick to look for among all the rest, Cloud was never sure, but the dog barked loudly and sprinted away with full confidence, darting between the trees. Cloud grinned despite himself and ambled forward more slowly to give Fenrir time.

Fenrir dashed back, prize between his teeth, and got a Good boy for his efforts before Cloud pitched it back. Back and forth, they played catch, Fenrir showing no signs of tiring, until at last they wandered across the main path again and followed that down to the frozen river bank.

It would have been safe to cross the blue ice on foot, but instead Cloud clambered up a nearby boulder and kicked some snow off of it. With no one to see him, Cloud drew his knees into his chest and wrapped his arms around himself, pressing his chilled face against his kneecaps. His own breath rose around him in plumes of steam. Fenrir plopped down too, draping the whole of his side against him, and Cloud scratched his neck in thanks.

The crispness of the air nearly made up for the way it bit at his cheeks, so fresh he could almost taste it on every breath. Nothing shuffled in the trees; wind barely stirred their tops branches. Always with the blessed quiet of the forest.

“You like Zack.”

Fenrir’s eye twitched.

“You do,” Cloud said. “I heard you guys. You stayed and listened to him play all last night. You were even nice about it.”

Fenrir turned his head away and made a sound like a scoff or, more realistically, a sneeze.

Cloud pet down his back, slowly and methodologically. He wasn’t quite pathetic enough to voice, aloud, his image of a future where Zack got along better with his dog than him, but he allowed himself to wallow, just a little.

Fenrir nudged him with his wet, cold nose after a while. Cloud made a face at him, which made Fenrir’s tail thump proudly.

“Guess we should head back,” he mumbled, reluctantly. He was only making it weirder the longer he stayed away. He wanted to groan, loud enough to shake the very trees, but it felt like he’d indulged himself enough already.

He stood and shook his limbs, regretting his semi-frozen ass. Fenrir jumped off the rock behind him and they headed up the path, Cloud’s hands deep in his coat pockets, marching more slowly than before.

They’d only been walking for a few minutes before they ran into Zack.

Zack, face slightly flushed, eyes bright under the same red cap, perked up when he saw them at the bend in the path. He sped up to meet them. Cloud’s throat went tight, as if someone had drawn a length of string around it and was now tightening it into a garrote.

“Thought you might be here,” Zack said, nearly colliding with him, before spinning on his heel to match their direction. His height felt all the more pronounced for the way that he hunched slightly, leaning down to look at Cloud and not the path. “Uh—hope you don’t mind.”

Cloud shrugged. He managed a grunt.

Something twitched in a tree up above them, probably a squirrel. The movement dashed a sprinkle of snow onto the ground. Everything lay on the edge of a knife, trembling, but at balance. Waiting.

Inevitably Zack was the one to crack. He crossed his arms and pulled them in. “That’s some collection you have there,” he said, smiling in a kind of lopsided way.

Cloud said nothing. He felt his jaw clench tighter somehow.

“I never even had copies of half of those news releases, you must have had to really dig to find those,” Zack went on. “And those photos with Kunsel—I forgot those even existed! Man, I bet he looks so different now.”

Cloud’s vision went a little spotty. He shook his head to clear it away.

“It’s really impressive. It must have taken you ages. If it didn’t make me sound so full of myself I’d offer to sign one of the posters or something.”

The path curved and wound, becoming too narrow for all three of them. Cloud cut ahead and left Fenrir for Zack.

“Are you—I mean.” Zack seemed to struggle behind him. “I feel like you were trying to tell me something. But—ah.” A sheepish laugh. “Don’t think I’m bright enough to catch up.”

“Never mind,” Cloud said.

“No, hey.” Zack brushed ahead of him, turning around so he was walking backwards and facing Cloud at the same time. “Sorry I don’t get it. Please tell me.”

Sorry. Each time Zack apologized, Cloud felt guilty for it; then angry for Zack, for daring to apologize; then guilty, again, for being angry at all.

“Zack,” was all Cloud could manage, pained.

“It’s really nice to see it all in one place, you know. I thought all that stuff got lost, for sure.”

“Zack,” Cloud said, biting, this time. Zack went quiet. “You should burn all of it.”

“Why would I wanna do that?”

Cloud felt heat burning in his chest, waking up. “Did any of that, honestly, seem sane to you?”

“Well. I mean.” Zack angled away from him, crossing his arms tighter. “There’s a lot of it, yeah. A lot of…attention to detail.”

If Cloud just focused on putting one foot in front of the other, he would make it home. At home, perhaps, all of this would be easier. Except, of course, the box was still there, and all her contents out in the open. Fuck.

“I went crazy,” Cloud said, bluntly.

“Okay.”

Cloud scowled at him. Zack didn’t smile back, and his brow was only wrinkled with a heavy kind of concern. His eyes searched Cloud’s face, back and forth, like he was listening attentively, like he knew Cloud had hidden something and was ready to receive it.

Cloud cleared his throat. “Tifa says I was overcorrecting.” At Zack’s look of benign cluelessness, he said, “For forgetting you.”

“Ah.”

Zack tilted his head to the side. His eyes sparkled with warmth. “So, you started collecting my fan club letters?”

Cloud wouldn’t run, because there was nowhere to go to. Zack at his back, their cabin up ahead. In between—himself. God, to have the power to outrun that.

Fenrir brushed by on Cloud’s right, nuzzling the side of his hand.

Cloud’s voice broke. “I couldn’t let go.”

If he looked to the side, he could imagine the expression on Zack’s face. The kindness there; the pity.

Cloud said, “It’s not just stuff. Don’t you get that? The stuff is just what’s left.”

The chimney poked out of the horizon, and Fenrir bounded forward to win first place at reaching the door. Neither Cloud nor Zack competed with him.

Inside, the contents of the box were spread out all over the rug, the couch, the coffee table. Shrapnel, the physical proof of Cloud’s offences: the opened letters, the dead PHS, the glossy prints and the faded feeble ones, newspaper clippings, an ancient scrapbook. Zack may as well have upended an ossuary.

Cloud sighed.

On the dining table, a map was spread out, the paper fragile after years in storage. Despite himself, Cloud trailed a finger down one heavily pencilled route.

“What was up with this one?” Zack asked, peering from over his shoulder. “Did you take a big trip or something?”

“It was us,” Cloud said, and then pulled his hand away.

He kicked off his boots and waded into the epicentre of the explosion, took in what he hadn’t looked at in years: photo booth strips, a teenaged Zack and friends grinning back at him from their innocent confines; folders stamped with the Shinra seal; a track jacket. At the time, he’d never noticed how eerie all these relics were. He’d been too focused, too blinded by his own mistakes: it had been as if there was only so much of Zack left, and he was racing against the clock to chase down every scrap before they, too, were all lost to time.

Now the full force of it came back to him slowly, rising above his ankles.

Behind him Zack was still bent over the table, looking at the map.“You remembered all of this?”

Cloud shook his head. Almost wanted to ask Zack to check his work. Had his research been good? Had he managed to make note every step of that long, arduous escape—the one that he’d slept peacefully through?

Zack exhaled, putting the map down. “That’s a lot of work.”

Cloud shrugged. His humiliation was too acute to do more than that. “You don’t talk about it much.”

“Being on the run?”

“Yeah.”

Zack looked back to the map, his face unusually blank. Then he folded the map up and gently pushed it to the side. “And the rest?”

The rest…

Cloud picked up the closest piece of newspaper: A January spread, covering the newest reactors. Zack’s mission in Junon had earned a small column on the front page

He stared into the fire and tore the paper into scraps, slowly. Childishly, even. Pitching each little curl into the flames. “You know, you freaked me out so bad, coming in here and calling me sunshine? I thought that one was just in my imagination.”

Seemingly at a loss, it took a moment for Zack to answer. His voice was scratchy when he did. “Cloud—yeah, of course. I’ve called you that forever.”

Cloud nodded mutely. Forever seemed like an unkind word to use, but it figured that Zack didn’t see it that way.

He didn’t know how to explain. Suddenly, fervently, it came to him all over again that he wanted to explain, more than anything—down to the marrow, down to every last filthy insult—not because he felt compelled to prove his guilt, not because he selfishly needed to prove to himself that he could, but because Zack deserved to know—and he floundered, at a loss of how to do it.

“You didn’t get all of your memories back?” Zack sounded worried.

Cloud wanted to laugh. “I did. Tifa helped me get them all back,” he said, and dropped what was left of the paper into the fire. “I had a second chance, and I screwed that up, too.”

Listlessly, he turned to pick up the next thing, and Zack said, “Hey, wait,” so Cloud looked up at him, braced for ugliness. Almost hoping for it, he realized—a quiet part of his heart was racing, heady in anticipation, that this might be it. The day that he earned his penance, no matter what it turned out to be.

“Don’t,” Zack said, stepping to take it—a handful of worn postcards—away from him. “Please?”

“I shouldn’t have this stuff,” Cloud said

“Why not?” said Zack, blithely—if only Cloud could have remembered this side of him, because maybe it could’ve deterred him from the whole mess that was falling in love with him.

“It’s…too much.” Admitting it stung. It wasn’t his place, no matter how badly he’d wanted it to be.

It wasn’t his place to go through Kunsel’s old text messages; and it wasn’t his place to read through Zack’s personnel file, fantasizing about if he’d made SOLDIER and fought alongside Zack on every mission; he was wrong to have stolen Zack’s alleged favourite stuffed animal from his childhood bed; and he was all the more so in the wrong for having dug so deep into Zack’s personal life that he’d stumbled into Zack’s PTSD evaluations, Zack’s evidently undiagnosed dyslexia, Zack’s past relationships and, by extension, his interest in men.

“You missed me,” said Zack, like that was explanation enough.

Cloud’s face burned, and he stared resolutely back into the fireplace. “Um, I idolized you, kind of, as a kid. And I started tracking down all this to remember you by, after, I guess. So I could know more about you.” His eyes burned. “But this stuff isn’t you, right? You’re you. You were gone. Everything else was—”

He felt the melted snow in the creases of his coat beginning to drip onto the carpet around him. He crouched down before the fireplace. “None of this is you. Not even a little bit. I knew that, but…I don’t know…”

He didn’t know how to impress upon Zack the enormity of it: how he had used toothpicks and scotch tape and anything at all, no second thoughts, just desperation to have everything, anything, as if he could possibly reassemble Zack in front of him with just the strength of memory alone, as if the failure of his memory the first time around had been what killed him. For all that greed and that haste, he had nothing to show for it but a parody so vulgar that its original was indiscernible from shadow.

Clearing his throat, it hurt all the same: “It’s my own fault I don’t remember you. Okay?”

“Cloud…” He felt Zack’s coat brush against his as he crouched down beside him at the fireside.

“I thought, hey, I know who’ll be able to set the record straight,” Cloud said. His throat grew tight again. “I’ll go see your parents.”

Zack’s silence felt damning.

“I think they liked having someone to talk to about you, but…no. I should’ve let them grieve.” Cloud muttered. “I’m sorry that I bothered them.”

“I’m sure they didn’t mind.”

Zack still didn’t get it. Maybe he never would. Between Zack’s thickheadedness and Cloud’s futile attempts at communication, it felt impossible to cross the murky canyon that lay between them, the seven years of separation where Zack lay sleeping in the Lifestream and Cloud, dragged down by profane grief, had been busy turning Zack’s legacy to slush.

“I’m sorry,” Cloud said, stomach heavy as lead. “That’s all I meant. I’m sorry.”

Predictably, unbearably, Zack said: “What for?”

“Forgetting you.”

Zack looked around the mess of the living room. He said, wryly, in such a way that Cloud could nearly feel his smile at his shoulder, “I think you get points for effort, Spike.”

Christ. He didn’t want to hear excuses. “I didn’t keep my promise.” Cloud couldn’t bear to look at him. “Don’t you get that? You weren’t even a person to me anymore. It was just grief.”

Zack leaned back.

He was getting tired, Cloud realized. It had crept up on him, over the shoulders and settling around his throat. So tired he felt like he was getting dragged down into the earth.

“You can keep all of it, if you want,” he said. “I just don’t want to see it.” He got to his feet, brushing off his hands on his thighs, and made to move towards the stairs.

Zack did not get up; Zack was still crouched on the floor. When he tipped his face up, Cloud saw that it was pale. There was a tension in his shoulders that Cloud had learned meant Zack wanted to hug him.

But Cloud couldn’t accept that, and it was fucking insufferable, in fact, how Zack’s first thought was always to comfort him, and never to take care or himself.

“I’m sorry,” Zack said. He rubbed his hands on his knees. “I don’t get it, but I get that it was awful for you. I wish I had—that I could’ve—” And then, worse than anything he’d ever said, or possibly anyone ever had said: “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

“What,” Cloud said, “are you apologizing for dying?”

“Guess so,” Zack said, and then said the very words: “Sorry I died.”

Who said that? Who said that? Cloud looked down at Zack and felt sick. Zack, kneeling, remorseful, when it was Cloud who needed to apologize.

He’d known he was doing this badly, but never had he imagined he would screw it up so deeply that Zack would try to turn the apology around on him.

“Aren’t you mad?” A faint edge of desperation to his voice. “Even a little?”

The deep blue of Zack’s eyes were pitiful. He stared at Cloud as if the question hurt him, but Cloud didn’t take it back.

Finally Zack said, “Well…”

Good. At last.

“When I was alive, people used to tell me I was pretty nice, y’know,” Zack said, throat working, “Kinda sucks, if you thought that I was the kind of guy who’d hold any of this against you.”

“I’m sorry,” Cloud said, feeling as if his every repetition degraded the word. He had asked for it, and still he found himself unprepared for how much it stung.

His hands suddenly felt stupid, clenched up at his sides. He looked down, fumbling to take off his gloves. He shoved them in his coat pocket. When he looked up, Zack had finally unfolded onto his feet.

Voice on the disingenuous side of calm, Zack said, “All good.”

Cloud made a croaking sound of disbelief.

Zack shrugged. “I mean, like you said, it’s not like you remember me that well. And, anyways—can’t really get mad that you don’t consider me a saint, right?”

Cloud could have burned up. “What about everything else?”

“What about, what about everything else?”

“I.” Cloud flickered like the flames beside him in the fireplace. He felt about as thin and see-through as one of them. “Do you think you could.”

Zack tilted his head.

Throat tight, Cloud said, “Forgive me.”

“What?” Not even a moment’s hesitation. “No.” Zack scowled. Cloud flinched, heart leaping. “That’s what I was trying to say. This isn’t stuff you apologize for. Forget it.”

Cloud stared. He nearly snarled.

“Forget it,” Zack repeated, more gently. He stepped into Cloud’s space. The warmth of the fire and Zack both were nearly overwhelming. “So you spiralled. That sucks. It doesn’t make you a bad person.”

Feeling more than a little adrift, and so furious it wrapped around to make him feel small, Cloud said, faintly, almost on the verge of feverish, “But I’m really sorry.”

“Gonna hug you now,” Zack announced, and did.

Just how much he’d been chasing Zack’s anger, he hadn’t even realized, not until now—almost as much as he needed Zack’s forgiveness—needed it like a forest fire, to scorch him through and leave him emptied, punished. As if, if he could just convince Zack to hurt him enough, Cloud could somehow earn back his innocence.

He needed it so acutely it hurt. And only Zack could give it to him, no substitute. For so long, that meant it was unreachable to him.

But now Zack was here, and could give it to him, so—

Zack ran a soothing hand up and down his back.

Please, Cloud wanted to beg.

Instead, Zack pulled away. He started picking up the mess strewn around them, gathering it in a heap. Snow had fallen off the both of them, melted in dirty puddles at their feet. Zack’s hair was crushed from taking off his beanie and never bothering to ruffle it back into shape.

This was all he was going to get, Cloud realized: a vague reassurance. A hand wave. No absolution; no open rebuke.

This was it.

It was as if Zack wasn’t even there.

Slowly, Cloud joined him in cleaning up. Papers rustled as they were tapped into stacks.

“I’ll get rid of it all,” Zack said, head bent over the work, “if it bothers you that much.”

Cloud scowled, but was too lost to be irate. “Why would you want to keep it?”

Zack’s eyebrows drew together. “Cloud.” Slowly, he straightened up, and then looked around the room—the stacks. The tidy packages. The vestiges of life. Zack looked at it all with faint, mesmerized awe; as if he saw something in these relics other than a desecration. “The only thing this makes me feel is loved.”

All in all he should have expected the nightmare that met him later that night. He shook loose from it trembling, Fenrir pawing at his chest, eyes damp and blinking very hard. It was not comfortable practice but, with Zack in the house, he had again become familiar with the habit he’d perfected at Seventh Heaven, of staying perfectly silent through his panic.

To his dismay, Fenrir didn’t immediately jump on top of him and weigh him down like he normally did—solid, warm, and real—to keep a vigilant watch until he was deemed well enough to go free. Instead, abandoning him entirely, Fenrir bounded off the bed and straight down the stairs.

Cloud swallowed back a pang of frustration and gripped at the sheets beside him, twisting them in his fist. A bead of sweat rolled down the bridge of his nose, and the knot in his stomach was cold as ice. Of all the times of Fenrir to take off.

Then, from the bottom of the stairs, floated the unmistakable click of a doorknob.

Cloud sat up, heart still racing uncontrollably in what felt like an attempt to batter out of his chest on a diagonal. “Fenrir,” he hissed, into the dark. He heard the creak of springs, and then the telltale Hmphmn? of a man being woken out of deep slumber.

Oh, that was inexcusable. Cloud got to his feet and went down the steps by twos, staggering only once in his disorientation, and stumbled into Zack’s doorway. “Fenrir!”

Zack was already climbing out of bed, rubbing sleep from his eyes. One leg of his sweatpants were caught halfway up his calf. “Alright, hey,” he said to the dog that was insistently scrabbling at his—bare—chest. “Oh,” he said, noticing Cloud. “Morning? Maybe?”

“Sorry, I have no idea what his problem is,” Cloud said. “Fenrir, what the fuck?”

Fenrir dropped down, but then circled around behind Zack and actually butt him forward with the top of his head.

“Woah, alright!” Zack stumbled. “What’s the emergency, bud?”

Cloud sighed and leaned his head against the door frame, skull still humming with residual sorrow. The distraction hadn’t dulled it, only made him feel even less tethered to reality. He was clinging to the conversation by his fingertips; everything else, afloat on the rushing tide of a void.

“Hey…are you okay?”

Again—the serrated knife-edge of that concern. Cloud’s stomach clenched in protest at Zack’s tone.

“Fine,” Cloud muttered, forcing himself upright.

Fenrir kept headbutting the back of Zack’s thighs, nudging him out of the room none too patiently, and Zack went along with it, only leaning aside to grab a sweater from his bedside. Too weary to fight it, Cloud followed.

Fenrir took them to the living room. The house was soft around them; silky with night. Darkness felt as synonymous as silence as they padded across the floor, two pairs of socks and two pairs of tip-tappy paws. At the sofa, Fenrir kicked the backs of Zack’s thighs until he took a seat, and then jumped onto the cushions himself. Leaving one space empty between them.

The dog looked expectantly at Cloud.

Fine. Cloud dropped down into the free space and groaned. He covered his face. Immediately, Fenrir climbed over him, dropping his full body weight into Cloud’s lap.

Fenrir licked the side of Cloud’s neck and sneezed. He turned a baleful gaze on Zack.

“Cloud,” said Zack, tentatively. He turned towards them. In the night sounds seemed more muffled, somehow, when instead the silence should have been magnifying each scratch of his pyjama pants against the couch cushions.

The fire had burnt down, casting no light, and the fireplace was swept clear. It was still relatively warm inside, only a few degrees cooler than where Cloud kept it during the day, boiler chugging away in the basement beneath their feet, but goosebumps broke out on Cloud’s arms all the same. He rubbed at them and then—as Zack leaned forward as if to rekindle the fire—Cloud got up to take care of it himself.

He could feel Zack’s eyes on his back.

“Had a nightmare,” Cloud grunted, in explanation.

Zack said nothing, but gave a low hum of sympathy.

Crouched down on the rug, Cloud methodically stacked pieces of kindling on top of new logs. Behind him heard Fenrir paw the cushions in mild impatience, as if unimpressed at having been unseated from Cloud. Cloud struck a match and watched it catch.

“I have them too,” said Zack, then.

Cloud looked over his shoulder. Zack’s bedhead was messy, his sweater a deeper blue than his eyes, and in the dark he seemed to melt into the couch. He was barefoot and subdued, blurry around the edges in the same way that Cloud felt.

Slowly, Cloud got to his feet and slunk down onto the couch again. Fenrir crawled back into his lap. Consciously or not, Zack leaned closer to him as well, and then Cloud was sheltered on all four sides: the back of the sofa, the fire, his dog, his…friend.

Cloud looked at the floor. “What do you dream about?” he murmured.

Something in the fire crackled as it caught alight. Zack beside him was still; he wasn’t touching Cloud at all, but still the curve of his body, threateningly close, gave off a radiant warmth that felt like a foreign territory unto itself.

“…Have you ever had to chain Fenrir up?”

It was enough of a non sequitur that Cloud glanced over at him out of the corner of his eye. Zack’s forehead wore deep creases.

“No.” Protectively, he placed a hand over Fenrir’s neck. “Never would.”

Zack nodded at that, then nodded again. As Cloud watched, Zack flexed one of his hands and then curled it in on itself, tightening his other hand around his wrist like a cuff.

“What about you?” Zack asked. “What do you dream about?”

Since Zack hadn’t answered him, Cloud didn’t see any reason to answer either. He looked back at the fire.

Its warmth was only beginning to build. Alert and surrounded by the living, the sheer disorienting misery of his nightmare had begun to unhook its teeth from him, one by one. Cloud focused on his breathing, on the heartbeat of the animal across his thighs, warm and living. If he leaned to the side, he could lay against a heartbeat he had been missing for years.

Maybe it was the cover of night that provoked him to confession again, as if its moonless dark was a safe bower for stripping down to his pathetic underbelly. Maybe it was the exhaustion of the day plus its sour chaser of the nightmare, driving him on to unearth the one thing left that might finally, finally, stir the anger he’d been so desperately searching for in Zack.

Or maybe it was Zack’s breath on the back of Cloud’s neck; the heat of Zack’s thigh, a centimetre away from his own.

Cloud said, to the flames, “You know, I used to think I was in love with you.”

The razor-sharpness of Zack’s inhale brought Cloud only grim satisfaction.

“Yeah.” Cloud laughed without humour. He had never, not once, planned on telling Zack this; he was surprising himself, and it was almost delightful, watching himself go rogue as if from apart, the wheel spinning gleefully out of his hands. He dragged a careless hand down Fenrir’s back; the other, he tucked underneath his knee, holding onto the edge of the couch with a death grip. “After you died.”

“You…” Strangled. “What?”

“Told you: I forgot you.”

He could practically hear Zack’s thoughts painstakingly coming together. “Then…how?”

“I was your legacy, wasn’t I?” Cloud’s voice cracked. “I had to remember you, even if I did a bad job. Spent a lot of time trying to do a good job.” He shrugged. If he didn’t blink, the fire started burning his eyes, so that’s what he did.

Zack hadn’t moved away, not even slightly. He still didn’t close the gap between them.

“It was never you, I know that now.” Cloud’s voice grew husky. “Don’t worry.”

“Cloud—”

“And, anyways, it’s been a long time.”

One of the logs cracked down the middle—a sharp, splitting noise—but did not fall. He gave Zack time to think.

When it finally came, Zack’s voice was wary. “Why are you telling me this like you’re trying to apologize for it, too?”

Cloud rubbed the knuckles of one hand against his palm. Fenrir bumped his forehead against Cloud’s to remind him of his presence, and Cloud apologetically petted his flank.

“Cloud.”

Zack said his name like they were in a house of worship and they were forbidden to raise their voices any louder than a whisper—as if Cloud, childlike, was running away from him down the aisles.

Then, in a murmur, almost pleading: “It wouldn’t have been a bad thing.”

Cloud ducked his head, too tired to be angry, too long-familiar with anger to do anything but stand in its footsteps. “It wasn’t you. It wasn’t real,” he repeated. “It was just…disrespectful.” Demeaning, he might have said, if he had the vitriol to spit it with. A goddamn disgrace.

Zack made a small, short grunt of frustration, then, as if after a struggle with himself, raised his hand. “Can I…?”

Cloud nodded, not sure but not really caring what he was asking for. Oh-so-lightly, Zack lowered his hand to wrap around the back of Cloud’s neck. Cloud’s scalp prickled; it ran down his spine, like a zipper sparking.

“Why would I give a shit about respect? Wasn’t like I was ever your mentor or anything,” Zack said, voice still low and sort of clumsy. His thumb rubbed back and forth, gently, once. “Just wanted to be your friend.”

“Yeah, well.” To his horror, his voice sounded a little wet. He cleared his throat. “Was a pretty bad one of those, too.”

Zack laughed, a frantic edge to it that negated any of the joy. “Well, maybe I get to decide that, huh?”

“Just thought you should know,” he mumbled. “That’s all.”

A short silence. A gust slammed against the far wall of the cabin.

“Thanks,” Zack said, finally, and Cloud couldn’t doubt that he was sincere about it. “It’s cool you told me. Um, for what it’s worth—thank you.”

“Why?”

“I dunno.” The hand left his neck, and Cloud knew Zack was using it to scratch his own. “Kind of flattering, isn’t it?”

Trust Zack to miss the point. Cloud looked at the carpet. “I’ve gotta give you better compliments, then.”

Another laugh, but this time it had some sweetness. Thank god. “Wouldn’t complain.”

In the aftermath of exposing his most humiliating secret, Cloud felt tacky, a bit strung-out, but at least he was grounded—the uncertainty and debilitating emptiness of the nightmare had been adeptly cleared out by his own emotional shelling.

He’d really said it.

Huh.

Zack cleared his throat. “So…you don’t feel that way? Anymore?”

“No,” Cloud said quickly, reassuring. “No.”

“Hey, I didn’t mean it like it was a problem—”

Cloud laughed, short and harsh. “It was.” His scalp prickled, and his own reaction embarrassed him. “Not the best period of my life.”

“No?”

He glanced over and saw Zack’s anxiously drawn brows, Zack’s deep, concerned eyes. Zack had no idea; he still, after all this, didn’t get it.

Cloud turned away. The fire was healthy now, polite and snapping.

Propping his elbows on his knees, he lowered his head into his hands. “Yeah,” Cloud said wearily. “It really sucks, being in love with a dead guy.”

A long, heavy silence.

Fenrir placed a protective paw over Cloud’s knee.

“I’m so sorry,” Zack said, and it sounded frayed—like Cloud could reach out and break it as easily as cobweb.

Cloud laughed, half-hearted, and scrubbed at his face, then his hair. “Not your fault.”

“Kind of my fault.”

“No,” Cloud said, and looked him in the face. “Zack, I promise. It had nothing to do with you.”

Zack withdrew at that. Soundlessly, he leaned back against the cushions. No more questions.

His acceptance was so quiet, and yet it meant so much to Cloud.

Cloud looked back into the fire, blinking. Fenrir put his head back in his lap and immediately got a pet for his troubles.

“I’m gonna stay up,” Cloud said, feeling a rasp in his throat. “Watch the fire burn down…You can go back to sleep.”

Zack lingered, but even he couldn’t ignore it for the dismissal that it was, because after a while he got to his feet. He hovered in the space before Cloud—looming, really, with the firelight outlining him, dark eyes shining—so much of him and still, somehow, more heart than man.

When Zack said, “You gonna be ok?” Cloud, for once, didn’t feel like he was lying when he answered, softer than intended, “Yeah.”

With a grunt and crunch, they dropped the fallen log and watched it roll, just twice, before crashing into a tree a few paces away. Zack, grinning, put his hands on his hips to admire their work, but Cloud had already moved on ahead, taking a hatchet to some low-hanging branches that encroached onto the trail.

The chore was arduous, and Cloud had sounded about as excited to tackle it as he had about darning socks, but when they’d crossed paths in the kitchen earlier that morning Cloud had told him—in his most overslept gravel-tones yet—that he had his work cut out for him enough without leaving everything on the path to pile up until spring. He hadn’t asked for Zack’s help but Zack couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

Log moved out of the way, Zack should have gone over to join Cloud in his crusade against the trees but instead he stood there a moment longer, just watching Cloud where he was half bent over, hacking away at the overgrowth with that profoundly grumpy look on his face that was so endearing. Cloud hadn’t bothered to do anything with his hair, so it lay all flat in the back, and he wielded the hatchet easily, all understated strength and practiced precision. Nothing about him betrayed that three nights ago he’d apologized for amnesia and two nights ago he’d passed along the most whiplash-inducing confession-and-retraction that Zack had ever heard, personally or in hearsay.

It was a lot to take in, but Zack had had some time to think on it and now, Zack figured, for all intents and purposes, he had to be something like Cloud’s ex.

Of course they’d never been together, but the rest of it was still there: Cloud’s feelings; Zack’s different ones; a betrayal and a heartbreak. A long absence. It was strange, definitely unexpected, to have such a sudden perspective adjustment, but it was also its own kind of pleasant surprise. Zack didn’t realize how good it would feel, to know Cloud ever felt that kind of way about any part of him. Made him grateful. Proud, too, in a way that he probably shouldn’t particularly indulge in.

And it explained so much. Suddenly Cloud’s cool distance and excruciatingly conflicted feelings felt less bewilderingly impersonal and more like a very natural logical consequence. Cloud—skittish, secretive, flinching away from touch just as fast as he’d melt into it—needed to be given the gentle patience and firm friendliness of any other ex that Zack desperately wanted to get back to good terms with. He needed to stand by and let Cloud know that Cloud was both welcome and wanted, in whatever capacity Cloud was good with.

Zack would be the best ex ever. The kind of ex you introduced to your new partners, the kind you invited around for solstice brunch. Zack could do that.

Yeah.

It was with that fresh clarity of purpose and peaceful plan of attack that Zack had bundled up for the day and gone out with Cloud to do some light trail maintenance. He hadn’t realized it would be the trail: the same path he had taken nearly two months ago now, the same he shouldn’t have taken in the first place. Trekking it now in the opposite direction left Zack with a sour taste in his mouth and small, flighty pounding underneath his heart, even though he knew they would be turning around come sunset.

He’d hiked this section of the trail in the dark hours before dawn, and so he hadn’t noticed the careful fluorescent pink tape around some of the trees, marking the way—or, he’d simply been so off-route that he’d had no hope of catching sight of one. Here and there, as they walked, now, Cloud would stop to pick up the ragged remains of an old loop of tape, or move one that had become too hidden from the route. All along, they cleared underbrush, pruned back branches, and kicked away rocks. Fenrir mainly lazed on stumps and sneezed, bored, from the cold.

It was hard work, and Zack tugged his coat open halfway despite the freezing cold, his breath and Cloud’s rising in chilled steam around them both. He’d gotten pretty good at knowing what would put pressure on his arm in the wrong way, and agile at working around it: when Cloud had offered him the chainsaw, Zack had taken it eagerly out of his hands and adeptly balanced it under Cloud’s suddenly skeptical eye.

Zack was about to turn the chainsaw on again to attack a particularly gnarly branch when he thought he heard something faintly like an echoing huff in the distance.

“Did you hear—?” he started to say, but Cloud had already straightened up, turning sharply in the noise’s direction.

“Sh.”

Zack went still. In the new silence, they heard a faint grumble, and then another huff, quiet but somehow heavy.

Cloud’s brows were drawn. “Shouldn’t be…Here?” he muttered to himself. He reached for the sword lashed to his back, which made Zack’s heart go calm and still on instinct. He eased the chainsaw to the ground to free up his hands.

Slowly, the noises subsided, travelling further away.

“Did you see it?” Zack murmured.

“Two headed dragon.” Cloud was still frowning, tensed. “They don’t usually come down this far.”

“Huh. ’S that a bad sign?”

“Don’t know…” Cloud unsheathed his sword. “I’m going after it.”

Zack, who had learned to very much appreciate any fights that passed him by, said, “What? Why?”

“Can’t leave it to someone else, right?” Cloud said, and marched on through the trees in pursuit.

Which was either overly perfectionist or sweetly protective of a guy who wasn’t expecting any visitors in the next year, and Zack followed behind him fondly, Fenrir leaping from his spot to catch up with Cloud’s heels.

Cloud cast barrier on Zack and haste on himself while they were standing at a safe distance from the creature’s turned back, and Zack wanted to bully him into a defensive spell for himself but Cloud told him, “It absorbs fire,” and by then was already on the move.

By rights that first strike should have been the last one: Cloud attacked from behind and leapt clean into the air, impossibly high, landing on the dragon’s back and forcing his sword down between its shoulder blades with enough strength to cut clean through the ridges of the scales—but at the last second the dragon roared, swaying, and flinched so violently that the sword jostled free before it could stab more than a few centimetres deep, and Cloud was knocked off with a grunt. He hit the snow and rolled, practically silent with the impact, and Zack was already launching himself forward with a roar.

They made an awkward pair, the two of them, both trained as swordsmen meant to deflect a barrage of blows as their comrades chipped away at the flanks. Zack had acquiesced to carrying the restore materia, but was ill-suited for staying on the sidelines, even with a busted left arm, and even less for standing still the whole requisite two-three seconds that a good cura could take. In theory this double-headed dragon should have been the perfect thing to split fairly between them, but in practice everything fast became a roar of fire and a mess of limbs: the necks of the dragon would wind, snaring, dodging, spitting flame, and Zack and Cloud would have to scramble to roll aside without crashing into one another, even as the ground trembled and rocked beneath them with a blast of earth magic. At one point, Zack caught Cloud clear out of mid-air and they went tumbling over churned snow and choppy rocks, Zack frantically wrapping himself around Cloud’s back, before Zack’s own back slammed against a tree. Cloud scowled at him for that one, but still offered him a hasty hand up before returning to the fray.

It was as Cloud was severing the first head that he took the first grievous hit Zack had ever seen land on him: Cloud’s sword, slicing clean through its neck; Cloud landing hard in a crouch; and the second head diving in with a fury, blasting Cloud’s exposed side with a burst of electricity that sent the scent of cooked flesh in Zack’s direction to strongly that he gagged from it. He saw Cloud collapse. He saw Cloud’s palm hit the ground as he heaved, and he saw as Cloud did not immediately jump to his feet.

Zack was reaching into the air to cast cura before he had even registered he was shouting Cloud’s name. His mind had sharpened into an arrowhead, quiet and directed without consideration for anything else. The second head was rearing at him now, opening its fanged mouth in a cry, and Zack was aware but didn’t care in the slightest as it dove for him. He braced and focused on keeping himself grounded long enough to finish the spell even as jaws closed around him.

Had it worked? The only thing he was aware of was his tongue in his mouth, wet and heavy, an inconvenience to breathe around, and as he rolled his head to the side the snow was too high to let him see where Cloud had fallen. Then there was the clash of steel against scale, and Cloud’s yells, and Zack could have gasped in relief to hear him, except then blood was bubbling in his mouth and sliding down his throat, joining the rest of his struggle to breathe.

He needed to find his sword…

He rolled onto his forearm in the dirtied snow, and ignored the scream of old crooked bone. He hauled himself up onto one bent knee despite the immediate wave of dizziness that tried its best to keep him grounded. His right arm, he noted through the whittled-flint of immediacy, was down for the count.

There was an explosion, a bellow, a roar, and then a crash. The ground shook underneath his boots, more than just his own swaying, and Zack hustled forward, limping somewhat, to find Cloud.

Cloud came out from behind the dragon’s felled body with the seething fury of storm making landfall. His coat, singed to a crisp, lay strewn ahead of them in a crumpled heap; the rest of his clothes were burnt and smoking across one half of this body. There was a thin trail of blood dripping from beneath his cuff that drew Zack’s attention immediately, and as he watched, Cloud dropped his sword on the ground and cleared across the distance between them.

“You okay?” Zack said, mouth feeling clumsy.

Cloud said something that might have been What the fuck, but Zack couldn’t hear properly, and for a moment he thought Zack was reaching for him, except instead Cloud reached just right past him, which hurt.

Cloud ripped the healing materia free from Zack’s bracer and must have used it to cast, although it seemed to take a strangely long time, and Zack found himself blinking at the blood on Cloud’s eyelashes for several long, quiet moments, before suddenly he groaned as the feeling of regrowth—so much worse than flesh knitting together—and pressed a hand to the new side of his abdomen with a small, relieved sigh. All at once he was able to hear better.

Zack smiled apologetically. “Okay, that was kind of gross.” His words came out clearly now, and he swung his fresh arm around in a circle to get the blood flowing. “Shame it wasn’t my left.”

Cloud didn’t laugh. Cloud stared at him, his face frozen and unblinking; and then, slowly, all emotion left it.

“Hey,” he said, and tried to say, “Are you alright?” but Cloud was not there; Cloud was ten paces away, and still walking.

Zack called, “Hey, wait up!” because he still had to find his sword, but Cloud didn’t wait. By the time Zack had pulled the one-hander out of a churned snow bank and wiped the most unpleasant matter off of it, Cloud had disappeared into the trees and Fenrir along with him. Zack jogged back in the direction of the path and found that Cloud had already picked up their equipment; he could be seen, faintly, ahead and up-hill.

Catching up to him winded Zack slightly, healing still fresh. “Let me carry some of that,” he said, of the chainsaw and hatchet and pruning shears Cloud was carrying, but Cloud ignored him. He didn’t even turn his head.

Cowed, Zack fell back by one step, heart thudding a little uncomfortably under his breast.

He tried not to think too far ahead, get caught up in his own thoughts, even as Cloud gave him the cold shoulder the whole way back. Even Fenrir didn’t look his way.

At home, Cloud dropped the tools off in the shed, the door nearly slamming in Zack’s face as they left. Zack watched Cloud scrub his palms over his eyes, and Zack’s throat looped into a knot.

“Cloud,” Zack said, as Cloud got his first foot on the back steps. “C’mon. What did I do?”

Cloud met his eyes, and Zack watched as he tried to keep the fury off of his face. Zack expected to be yelled at; what didn’t expect was that way that Cloud stepped towards him and came at him, hands raised, to shove him in the chest.

The strength behind it stunned him; he fell back and hit the ground, hard, catching himself on his palms. When he looked up, Fenrir had braced himself, eyes bouncing between the two of them, and Cloud looked stricken.

Zack got to his feet, brushing his hands off on his thighs. “All good. Just wasn’t expecting it.” He gestured come here. “Hit me again.”

Cloud’s teeth ground together. To Zack’s horror, he saw Cloud’s eyes were wet.

“Spike—”

“Fuck you, Zack.”

“What did I do?”

The way Cloud seethed at him made it plain that it was the kind of thing that was worse if you had to have it explained to you, but Zack wasn’t Cloud. He couldn’t think like Cloud did.

“Didn’t you see it coming at you?”

“What, when I was casting cura?” He quailed under Cloud’s glare. “Hey, it turned out okay, didn’t it? I knew you could get back on your feet if I just finished the spell—”

Cloud interrupted, loud enough to fill the clearing. “Do you listen to me at all? Or are you just that fucking mean?”

Zack went quiet.

Cloud said, “Don’t die in front of me again.”

What?

Zack was fine. He’d done what he had to do to make sure Cloud was okay. There had been basically no risk in it—even if he’d been mauled to unconsciousness, he knew Cloud carried a small fortune of phoenix downs in the lining of his coat. The worst would have been some pain, which neither of them were strangers to. Frankly a little indignant, Zack said, “I wasn’t gonna die.”

Cloud didn’t answer him. His mouth dropped open at Zack’s words, cheeks blotchy with anger, and then he seemed to decide Zack wasn’t worth it, because instead he only turned around and stomped into the house.

Fenrir paused to give Zack an unimpressed glower before trotting after his master.

The door to the cabin fell shut.

The silence of the clearing was absolute, not even wind whistling through the trees.

Zack stood there for a minute, blinking, before slowly easing himself down onto the steps. He didn’t bother to brush away the snow that had accumulated there since last time they shovelled; he was slightly chilly, but instead of zipping up his coat or heading inside, he sat perfectly still.

The mountain range was a quiet, uncaring companion from the view off the cliff, and no sound escaped from inside the cabin.

It wasn’t fair, getting chewed out over what was the only right choice—what did Cloud expect him to do, ignore him when Cloud was on the ground?—and he didn’t know how to apologize for it. In fact, he found himself fundamentally opposed to it.

But.

In the heat of the moment, Zack had kinda forgotten some of the things Cloud had told him. Maybe most of it, actually Seeing harm come to Cloud took something away from Zack—made him vital, stripped him down—made him more like he’d been in the before, that old and harrowed place where the only things in the world were him and Cloud and Shinra, and what he needed to stop Shinra from doing to Cloud.

Cloud had made it perfectly clear that Zack’s death broke him down into something he clearly wasn’t finished healing from, and then Zack had gone and gotten injured right in front of him. No wonder Cloud was too pissed to even speak to him.

He’d hurt Cloud. Again.

Without meaning to, always without meaning to—but that didn’t matter. Cloud’s anger was just pain, and this time both had been extreme. Zack rubbed a hand over his heart, absently, where Cloud had pushed him.

So much for being the good ex.

How unfair, that in his first life, Zack had tried to his last breath to keep Cloud safe, and instead had only ever seen Cloud hurt; that in death, he’d hurt Cloud more; and that in his second life, he somehow still couldn’t goddamn hack it. He’d always put his whole heart into it, but he’d never done right—where was the justice in it?

What was he even supposed to do?

Fatalism was not in Zack’s nature, but sitting there, in the cold, the idea rose in him that there might truly be nothing he could do—that, for whatever reason, he’d always been wrong for Cloud. Something incompatible just about who they fundamentally were as people. Zack, the guy reassuring and encouraging and shushing him, even though, somehow, it was Zack who always acted out; somehow, it was Cloud who always bore the consequences.

He didn’t like that train of thought, not at all, and the sickliness of it stuck out all wrong in his mind, but in the spiral of his self-pity nothing else could surface around the shape of it.

If he couldn’t do better, maybe he should just do nothing at all.

The futility of it filled his throat like soft concrete, the heated sound of his own pulse in his ears nearly nauseating.

Inside, Cloud would be defrosting and undressing and furious, nursing the old wound that Zack had torn open for him, maybe cussing him out to Fenrir. The fire would have been roused to life. Without looking behind himself, Zack knew that the lights were on, and that their warmth would be bleeding out from under the hems of the curtains.

Zack shivered. His nose was cold and the winter air rushed down the front of his open coat. The yard was still, the forest even more so, and he was still trapped by the strange fearful, furious illness of wanting to be good but not having the option.

The chill crept up his cheeks, worked its way into ice. His chest ached. In concept, he knew he could get up and walk through the door; nod at Cloud, nurse his tumult in the guest room he’d graciously been appointed, soak up the heat of the boiler chugging through the house. He wouldn’t be turned out.

Instead he stripped off one glove and pressed his palm against the snow at his side. The slight pinch of cold made him sigh; his thoughts stuttered, just a moment, in their reel of doomed certainty. Encouraged, he took off his other glove and did the same. On second thought, he removed his scarf and hat too.

The air bit at his temples, and he breathed in deep, feeling its sting in his throat. It was a nice, harmonizing feeling, just shy of actual hurt.

In, out. He sat and waited for the cold to creep into his hands, to climb up under the cuffs of his coat, until it better resembled true pain. He sank into its keeping; its familiar touch. There was justice to it.

Nothing rustled in the trees. Nothing darted about through the gnarled roots.

Zack stayed pinned to the porch.

With time it dawned on him why this felt familiar, but by then it was too late. It was pushing on him, insistent and from all sides, darkness but twice as dense, and he had been sitting there for so long that he had lost sensation in his extremities. Getting to his feet was a struggle—the memory having toyed with him so harshly, and the numbness in his hands so complete, that he forgot, briefly, if or how to be bipedal—but then he was up, and his frozen fingers were wrapping loosely around the unlocked doorknob, and he was inside.

The lights inside made Zack’s eyes water, or maybe it was the heat. The rush of it greeted him all at once, almost like a wave of fire, so stark was it in contrast with the outside. His fingers burned uncomfortably, but he knew he was built to endure frostbite so there was nothing to worry about.

Cloud was at the counter, chopping up potatoes.

The sight of him did a number on Zack’s heart so thorough that even before Zack shut the door, the concerns of the outside disappeared, like a curtain being pulled across stage at the end of a performance. There was no true safety from the thing he feared, but in here was the best of all worlds. Cloud’s house wrapped him up like a warm coat.

“Hi,” said Zack. His throat felt a bit rough.

“Hey,” said Cloud.

Zack shifted his weight uneasily. Cloud was flushed, his jaw set, and he had frozen with his knife in the air, mid-chop. Behind him, something wonderful-smelling simmered on the stove, and from the window seat, Fenrir was laying still, but his eyes were beady.

Zack said, jerking his head towards the hallway and pacing towards his exit, stripping his things off. “I’ll just—”

“Wait.”

Cloud’s voice was raspy. It ran something like a thrill through Zack’s stomach—dread or anticipation or more, who knew. Zack paused, then cautiously took a step closer.

Cloud eyes were hard, his expression unnervingly blank.

“Yeah?” Zack said.

“Are you okay?”

Zack nodded. Cloud had cured him as well as anyone could. “One hundred percent.”

He expected that to be it, but then Cloud looked down just once—a brief, anxious gesture—and when he looked back up the resolve was back in his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

That was the last thing Zack expected to hear.

“What?”

The crisp sound of a blade meeting the chopping board, and the softer sound of potato falling into clean halves. Voice tight, Cloud said, “All I seem to do is get angry at you.”

“Well.”

Maybe so. He didn’t resent Cloud for it.

“You of all people should have a pass,” Cloud said, his laugh bitter. The dull edge of the knife scraped against the chopping block as diced pieces were pushed aside. “I owe you my life. Who am I to criticize you.”

“That’s not—” Zack said, alarmed.

“I’ve been treating you like shit. You’ve been nothing but nice to me, and I keep—just—”

“It’s fine.” Zack said it automatically.

“It’s not fine!” Cloud looked up sharply. “Have I even told you thank you? Once?”

“Why would you need to?”

Cloud dropped the knife so quickly that it clattered and Fenrir leapt to his feet. “Because you saved me from that place? Because you took care of me when I was goddamn useless? Because you never left me behind? Even when you got shot for the trouble? Man, Zack. I fucking wonder.”

Cloud’s knuckles were white where he gripped the counter; he stared at Zack, wildly, and Zack had the impression he was serious.

“You’ve got the same messed-up flashbacks that I do when we’re underground, and you were all on your own for almost a year, and Cissnei told me how many troopers would get sent out after you, week after week, and you fight one-handed because your elbow is fused together wrong from shattering it three times in a row ‘cause you refused to give up on getting us out of there.”

Zack opened his mouth.

“I know I won’t ever be able to make it up to you, but I’m going to at least try.” Cloud’s voice had grown fervent. “And I can do better than this. Better than—shutting you down—and—all the blame, and stuff—”

“Hey,” Zack said, wishing he were closer, wishing he could take him by the arms. “It’s fine. I don’t care.” When Zack had asked Cloud to talk to him about everything he’d missed when he was gone, he hadn’t realized how much they’d circle back to this point. As if Cloud had been waiting seven years just to get his input on things that felt kinda like they were his business in name only.

Cloud went on. “And at the very least, you know you don’t have to worry about anything after you leave, right? If you want to travel, or buy a house, or anything fucking else—I’m taking care of it.”

When Zack’s expression dropped, Cloud snapped, “Don’t get offended. It’s what’s fair.”

Zack crossed his arms, silently fuming, and kept his voice measured as he said, “You’re kinda getting mad again, here, Spike.”

That gave Cloud pause. After a moment, he sagged; slowly, he dropped his elbows onto the counter and his head down into his hands. The exhale he let out shook Zack’s lungs, too.

“Fuck,” Cloud mumbled.

“You’re fine,” Zack said, and meant it. “Just—drop it? Please? You don’t owe me anything.”

“I owe you everything.”

“That’s not true.”

“You died—”

“Yeah, whatever.” Zack wasn’t keen on being reminded right about now. “I’m back now, aren’t I?”

Cloud laughed, softly, a bit surprised, and this time when he looked up, what was in his eyes did not make Zack flinch. Zack stepped forward without noticing he was doing it.

“What if I want to?”

Zack shook his head. “I don’t want your money, Spike.”

Cloud insisted, “I want to thank you.”

Zack was up against the other side of the counter now. With Cloud hunched down, Zack was looking down at the top of his head, almost casting a shadow in the overhead light.

Those cute spikes. This hard, bitter, gentle man, that Zack had once dragged through mud and rain and desert on his back, had sung to on dark nights to make him feel less alone. Sometimes it felt like yesterday.

Zack said, “Didn’t do it for thanks.”

“Too bad.”

“Fine. Okay. Then, I dunno…buy me a drink sometime.”

“Buy you…a drink.”

“Yeah.” He’d said it just to say it, but the idea appealed to him immediately. Zack grinned. “And then I’ll buy you a drink to celebrate you saving the whole damn planet. I would’ve done that from the start, actually, if you’d given me the chance.”

Cloud’s face was hard in the face of Zack’s smile, brow furrowed with that strange combination of tempered rage and masked sorrow. Then he turned around and opened the fridge.

With a clink, Cloud set down a cluster of beer bottles on the island between them. He wrapped his hand around the necks of two of them and knocked them together at the right angle to pop one of the caps off; then he slid the open one across the counter.

Zack hurried to trap it before it fell.

Cloud’s voice was thick but it did not waver, when he said, “Thank you for saving my life.”

Zack was the one who felt fragile. The heat was getting to him. The sting of defrosting, the heady bloom of warmth reaching inside him. The darkness had been exorcised, and Cloud wanted to thank him.

He reached for the next bottle. The condensation was crisp under his fingertips, and held it out for Cloud to take. With full sincerity, he said, “Congrats on saving the world.”

Immediately, Cloud slid the last beer Zack’s way. “Congrats on the freedom.”

“Well,” Zack said, not quite managing a self-deprecating smile, “I didn’t really do anything special to get it, this time, so…”

“The first time mattered,” Cloud said, and when he looked at Zack like that maybe it was easy to believe.

“Alright, but then it goes both ways. Coming out of a coma that bad and surviving despite the odds deserves a fucking celebration.” He jerked his head towards the fridge, his smile returning carefully. “You got another?”

Cloud hesitated, but then he laughed, a scoff but not a scornful one. He grabbed a fourth beer and Zack watched his hands as he popped the last caps off.

They met eyes as they clinked their drinks together, and took their first sips in silence.

It tasted more refreshing than anything else had for a very long time.

“Actually though, we should celebrate for real,” Zack insisted, after. “Did you ever get to do that? After everything was over, just, let go and party?”

Cloud rolled the neck of his bottle between his hands. “There was a night after we got the new Seventh Heaven up. Everyone came back for that.” Zack waited, and after a beat Cloud said, looking down at the cutting board, “Kind of felt like a wake, though.”

“So you haven’t gotten to do it right,” Zack said. “We gotta fix that. You need celebrating.”

“You too,” Cloud shot back right away.

Zack said, “So, what’re we gonna do? You got music?”

Cloud made a face. “We’re not dancing.”

Zack had found his smile in full force again. He leaned against the counter, arms crossed. “Gotta do something, Spike.”

For a moment Zack thought Cloud was going to wave him off, to mumble an excuse or a rain check. Instead:

“I have some stuff growing in the closet upstairs,” Cloud said, pensively, “but it’s not going to be ready for a few weeks.”

“Some stuff?”

“Or we could make a bonfire. Can’t make it too huge, or someone will think we’re calling for help, but. Yeah. Could be fun.”

Zack jumped to attention. Fire would be perfect. “Now?”

Cloud laughed at his eagerness. “Why now?”

Zack locked his hands behind his head. “We’re kinda late, aren’t we?” he said. “Why wait any longer?”

They stacked wood high in the fire pit out back, as high as they dared and then some. Together they coaxed the flames to life, Cloud sweetly concentrated as Zack prodded at random, and when at last it came to a blaze, they settled around it with Cloud’s stew and the rest of their drinks.

Fenrir seemed to be able to feel the energy in the air because he would not stop pacing, going from one of them to the other, then rounding the fire, then resting his head back on Cloud’s knee.

The fire roared light and heat out into the night. It rose nearly to Cloud’s shoulders, reckless and hungry, and Zack was full-up on warmth, on soup, on being liked. He was bundled up tight and heady with affection, and he could not sit still.

He joined Fenrir’s pacing. “An alien from space,” he said. “Only the top SOLDIER ever made, trying to become god, with some freaky alien mother at his call, and you still stopped him.”

“I had help,” Cloud said. The fireside had made him flushed. “And you went up all alone against Shinra. And somehow kept me alive at the same time, too.”

“Kids are growing up, ‘cause of you,” Zack said, pointing with the neck of his bottle. The pride would not let him stay in one place; he had to keep moving, churning up the snow. “Jenova, the remnants, all of it.”

“You kept us hidden.” Cloud’s voice was thick. “You figured out how to live when you had literally nothing. You were basically still a kid.”

“You survived mako poisoning twice. After all that shit he said about your ‘tolerance.’”

Cloud took a swig of his beer. “You went up against guys you’d probably been in training with.”

“You woke up.”

Voice raspy, Cloud said. “You didn’t give up.”

A pause, and then Zack said, “You’re the top ranking champion chocobo racer at the Gold Saucer.”

Cloud sat upright, squinting. “Who told you that?”

Zack grinned. “Aren’t you?”

“Uh…” Cloud scratched at the lip of his beer with this thumb. “Well, yeah. Last I heard.”

“You’ll have to sign something for me.”

“Whatever you want.”

Zack threw another stick into the fire, watched sparks fly out in a rain. Fenrir stretched his back.

“We did it,” Zack said, because it felt right, and at long last, the words fell into place inside him: as if until now he’d been running on the fumes of their meaning, and finally understood what they actually meant. “We made it.”

Zack grinned at Cloud, amazed, over the fire, and after a moment Cloud smiled back at him too, eyes just as wide with the unexpected, uncomplicated surprise of having made it to the other side. Nothing could take them back to that time

From beside him, Fenrir let out a short howl.

In glee Zack barked back, teasing. After a suspicious pause, Fenrir howled again, louder. Not one to be bested, Zack cupped his hands around his mouth and tipped his head back to match him.

Cloud laughed at them. The firelight was in his hair, and his eyes were glossy. Zack’s chest burned, fierce and affectionate.

Zack howled again, giving it is all, and Fenrir joined him, until the noise echoed across the clearing.

Cloud watched them wordlessly, arms crossed, smiling his thin, half-pinched smile, the one he actually meant and Zack still couldn’t understand why he wanted to hide.

“Come on,” Zack said. “You too!”

He and Fenrir did it again, louder now, filling all the space, running into the sky—and then Cloud, rolling his eyes first, let out a howl: short and wild, crisp and free. The sound nearly tore Zack apart.

Zack felt his heart beating something crazy in his chest. Everything felt possible, in that moment, no matter how far out of reach. “I want to run.”

Cloud said, “Let’s run.”

He waited only long enough to kill the fire, flames hissing under handfuls of snow, and then Zack was off, racing across the yard; Cloud, lightning fast, followed him; and as he breached the forest, he heard Fenrir’s paws crashing through the undergrowth, kicking up snow as he sprinted to take the lead.

They ran through the woods, in the dark, in the cold. Zack could barely see but for the shadowed outline of branches, the dim blue of what little sky showed through the foliage. The moon flicked in and out. Fenrir leapt over obstacles, and Zack followed out of faith, never stumbling.

Cloud laughed from behind him, shocking in its breathlessness, and Zack laughed too, and howled, and went faster, heart working double time when Cloud caught up. Their elbows knocked together.

Zack could not say how long they ran for. His lungs burned, the back of his throat burned, his vision sometimes felt fuzzy, but he felt more alive than he ever had in either lifetime. There was no mission; there was no one giving chase.

Deep into the forest, then deeper. They hit the mountainside and curved along it, heading up at a slant. Once or twice he saw a pair of yellow eyes out in the night, squinted and watchful, but nothing gave them trouble; nothing would have dared.

Moonlight guided them. The rock face gleamed.

Fenrir scrambled over a log, and Zack vaulted it. Cloud was light on his feet at his side.

“Do you want to climb?” Cloud said, so close that it whispered across his ear, and suddenly Zack wanted nothing more than to be up high. He nodded, saying, “Yes, yeah, let’s do that. Absolutely.”

They couldn’t bring Fenrir with them, but Fenrir set himself up to pace protectively around the base of their tree and Zack felt good for knowing he was there to keep guard. Quickly, they scaled the tree: in the dark, he forgot about the danger, about anything other than reaching the sky. Needles smacked them in the face and through the euphoria Zack didn’t even mind the scratches nor the resin under his fingernails. Hand over hand they hauled themselves up the long length of the trunk, until—seventeen or eighteen storeys up—they broke above the treeline.

The mountainside spilled out in front of them, the whole treacherous, beautiful stretch of it. Crags and peaks, valleys and lows. Foliage, nearly blue in the dark, huddled against the mountain for strength. The air was crisp like ice chips and nearly as sharp on the tongue.

Leaves crunched as Cloud clambered up onto a branch opposite Zack’s.

Zack exhaled, heavy with awe. “This is crazy.”

Cloud shook his head. “Never seen it like this.”

“I can almost see why you like it here.”

Mutely, Cloud leaned his temple to rest against the very tip of the tree trunk. “Me too.”

Their feet dangled in the air. Zack's breath was coming too hard for him to even think of being cold. From down below, Fenrir let out one more howl, loud enough to shake the leaves around him, and Zack and Cloud answered him in kind, all in chorus, ’til Zack’s jaw ached from it.

They waited there until the sun rose.

Chapter Text

Cloud typically went insane around the eighth week of winter. This year, owing to his guest, he had found himself unusually distracted.

Still. There was only so much that could postpone the inevitable.

The days were short but interminable and the nights were dark as the inside of a grave. On his own, the only schedule he had to follow was feeding Fenrir and tending the fire. In the brighter months the forest around them seemed to keep a subtle rhythm, the birds rising here, the deer bunkering down there. In comparison, through the six months of the year that winter blotted out all else, the days would start to bleed, without a whisper of the outside world, into one indistinguishable, slow crawl; and, if he was lucky, might simultaneously make the world start to shrink—the sprawling wilderness growing more and more compact, until it seemed like the cabin was surrounded, boundaries so small as if to be confined inside nothing less than a snow globe, adrift, and severed from all else. Just him and his dog and the beasts on the mountain, trapped under the dark mantle of the sky.

For Cloud it always started with a lingering exhaustion and a desire to stay in bed longer, followed by a disinterest in leaving the house. The perimeter of the yard would seem to draw in, like a drawstring being pulled tight, and it would feel better, safer, to keep himself inside, where his condition would naturally only deteriorate faster.

January passed into February. The darkness persisted. It seeped through the windows and rustled on his pillow. Cloud’s thoughts dulled. The days slogged on, unchanging, the same walls, the same windows, the same mountain. He’d get tired. It was as if, with Zack’s presence no longer inspiring much guilt-fuelled terror in him, he no longer had anything left to keep him awake

In contrast, Zack only seemed to get wound up tighter. He was always awake first. He took Fenrir out on runs. After a few hours indoors he’d become frenetic, and he’d visibly try to keep himself from pacing, and then he’d pace anyway.

Cloud had wondered, earlier in the winter, and with a morbid curiosity, how long Zack’s energy and relentless cheer would hold off against the crushing weight of winter. But now, watching it erode away bit by bit, it only depressed him. Not even Zack could cling to sanity in these conditions.

One day Cloud was lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling—where he’d been, inert, for the past two hours—when Zack burst out of his room.

“It’s so quiet here,” he called. “Doesn’t the quiet ever get to you?”

Cloud grunted.

“You got a stereo around here or something? Anything that can play CDs?”

“Uh.” Cloud said. “Yeah, somewhere.”

A pause, and then Zack prompted, “Cool, you have any idea where?”

Cloud reluctantly rolled to his feet and blinked hard, eyes dry. “Maybe your room?”

“Already checked.”

“Uh, I’ll check the loft, then,” he said, trying not to sound too weary. It’s not that he minded getting up, it’s just that he’d only begun to blur out, and now coming back to himself was tricky. “You could look in the laundry room?”

Flashing a thumbs up, Zack bounced off, and Cloud climbed the steps to his room. He sincerely doubted he had anything like a stereo up here but it was only fair he check. Both sides of the loft were fitted with wall-to-wall closets, their space somewhat cramped underneath the eaves. Cloud crouched down and pushed aside boxes of spare socks, lightbulbs, sewing supplies, toys, and quilts but found nothing that would work. He was placing his grow tent back into place in the dark as Zack crowed from downstairs.

“Found it!”

He looked over the railing. Zack, grinning, was holding a boombox over his head. It was baby blue, the size and shape of his rice cooker, and its lid sported a very large, smiling daisy. It was covered in dust. He was relatively sure it had been a gift from Marlene, years ago now.

Zack skid off to grab CDs and Cloud considered just staying upstairs now that he was there. He could nap. But then Zack might think he was avoiding him, which Cloud wasn’t. He was just at the end of what hadn’t been a particularly long amount of rope to start with.

Descending, he found Zack back in the main room, stereo plugged in next to the window seat, and Zack popping open one out of a whole stack of jewel cases.

“You mind?” Zack asked, looking up at him.

Cloud shook his head. “Just not that one,” he said, of the CD in Zack’s hand.

Zack flipped the case over, read the handwritten tracklist. “What is it?”

“Yuffie,” Cloud said, and when it seemed like Zack wanted an explanation, said, “Kids covering chart toppers.” The eleventh track was Yuffie herself reading aloud some kind of visualization meditation with a very disturbing ending, but he didn’t want to rouse Zack’s curiosity.

“Huh!” Zack said. “What about this one?”

“Vincent’s. I think.”

The cover was something bleak, black and white, but when Zack dropped the disc in, the electric guitar riff that opened up the first song was anything but. The drums came in, then the first vocal howl, and then Cloud recognized the song. It was the album Vincent had played on the night before he left.

He didn’t particularly enjoy the reminder that it had been almost two years, now, since he’d last gotten laid.

Zack got to his feet, positively grinning. “I like this one.”

“Hm,” Cloud said, and watched without any surprise at all as Zack started to bop his head, then rock back and forth.

Zack cranked the volume, letting the guitar and the keyboard flood the room, a harsh wake-up call that Cloud found himself not entirely minding. Zack’s dancing was ridiculous—hopping around on one foot, moonwalking around the kitchen counter, a little shimmy of the shoulders—and Cloud laughed at him. He laughed less when Zack let the rhythm into his hips.

Cloud turned aside and picked up some used, empty mugs. By the time he’d dropped them in the sink, Zack had danced his way over to the couch and was bothering Fenrir.

“You gonna dance with me?” Zack said, leaning over the other side of the room and tickling Fenrir’s stomach so that the dog twitched. “Your dad definitely won’t.”

Fenrir let out a very low growl, but then, surprisingly, carefully got up and leapt over the cushions, nearly onto Zack’s feet. Looking up he thumped his tail against the wood, almost in heavy beat with the music. Zack grabbed his paws. He pulled Fenrir up onto his hindlegs. “Look at you!” he crowed. Cloud couldn’t exactly believe what he was seeing, but there it was: drumbeat rattling the windows, the two of them clumsily pattering around to keep balance, Vincent’s thirty-year-old rock barely keeping beat with them. Zack bumped into a chair—“Oops, sorry!”—and Fenrir jumped down from Zack’s hold on his paws, but didn’t stray far, circling Zack’s ankles, wiggling along to the music.

After that the house was almost always full of music. Cloud’s CD library consisted of a hundred well-meaning gifts plus a whole shelf of whatever was at the consignment store the day he was stocking up, and Zack would play anything: ska in the mornings, “to start the day right,” which made Cloud feel more alert if only because he was full of hatred; synthetic pop from their parents’ generation, blasting over the sound of the power tools as they worked in the woodshed; R&B when he baked, singing along passionately, day by day learning the actual lyrics; and every conceivable subgenre of rock music to power him through washing the dishes. Zack always asked Cloud before he put anything on, as if he’d yet to figure out that Cloud didn’t have it in him to deny him anything outright. And there was something to be said for having music under the floorboards, floating through the eaves; it chased the fugue off, ate away at the listlessness and the feeling of being buried alive, like he was some sort of little animal, captive to his own choices.

More pressing was the war they were waging to stay occupied. They sharpened every knife in the house, then Cloud went through the chests in the basement to find more. They shovelled snow even when it was patently pointless, sometimes after dinner and in the dark if they were restless enough. What furniture could be re-stained, they did, and when they ran out, they made a new bookcase and a side table and stained those too. These they barely fit in the cramped mess of the woodshed and Cloud wasn’t sure what the hell to do with them, other than maybe break them down for fuel later on, but in order not to disappoint Zack he’d wait until Zack was gone to do that.

Zack said nothing about it, but these days Cloud felt the pressure more than ever, to justify what he was doing here, with that costly life that Zack had given him. Cloud had been a hero once, almost. He’d made a life of helping people.

Now look at him.

They were heating up leftover lasagna for lunch and hadn’t spoken all day—Cloud out checking on the pipes from the lake, Zack doing laundry—and when Zack asked him how it was going, Cloud grunted something unintelligible in response.

Zack said, “Wow! Down from one word answers to zero!”

Cloud looked over at him, nonplussed.

Zack froze. Then he flushed. “Uh,” he said. “Sorry. I don’t know where that came from.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“No, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

Cloud sighed. “I know.” He flicked on the oven light and leaned down to check on it.“It happens.”

In practice he knew that crabbiness was par for the course with being cooped up in a small cabin with nowhere to go—and allegedly loneliness, too—but that wasn’t something he really thought about with only himself and a mute dog to talk to. He wondered if Fenrir had been taking the brunt of it for years and he’d never noticed.

“The mountain, you know.” Cloud waved a hand to gesture at all this. “It can get to you.”

Zack, if anything, looked even more upset.

“Damn, Cloud, this is nice. Who gave you these?”

Cloud reluctantly rolled out of the window seat and went over the open bathroom door. Inside, Zack had the cabinet under the sink open and was admiring a polished wooden box neatly packed with a straight razor and accessories. Cloud wasn’t even mad that Zack had been snooping; Cloud himself would have eagerly snooped through anything at all right now just for the novelty of something new to do.

“Barret,” Cloud said, leaning on the doorframe.

The straight razor had a bone handle and was slotted into place in the nearly velvet black lining of the box, next to brush, strop, soap, blade oil, aftershave, and porcelain bowl. Zack popped the razor out of place and flipped it open with the satisfying, whispered hiss of a blade, pressed the flat of it against his thumb. Cloud wondered if Zack would have been this excited about shaving tools earlier in the winter.

“Feel free to use it,” Cloud said.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Not like I am, anyway.”

Zack experimentally screwed the lid off the tin of soap and gave it a sniff. “Mm!” Cloud leaned forward a little, without even really meaning too, and Zack held it out for him to smell.

“What is that?”

“I dunno.” Zack gave it another appreciative sniff, then took out the brush and soaked it under the tap. “Sandalwood, right?” It was not sandalwood.

It was early afternoon sun was bright through the tiny bathroom window, lighting on the curve of Zack’s earring. Cloud watched him swirl the brush against the sides of the bowl until he had worked the soap from suds to cream. The scent of it started to fill the room. He could recognize cedar and grapefruit, something that could have been amber.

The sleeves of Cloud’s shirt were already short on Zack but Zack rolled them back anyways, almost to the elbow, before leaning down to splash his face with water. He tipped his chin back to spread the lather over his face, one cheek then the other, and Cloud didn’t even realize he was still standing there until Zack looked over at him, smile half-hidden under the foam, and crooked his finger under the tang of the blade. “Gonna watch?”

Cloud startled. “Sorry, yeah. I should get back to…”

Both of them knew he didn’t have anything to get back to.

“I don’t mind,” Zack said, and then, “But, really, it’s been a while since I did this, don’t make fun of me,” and squinted as he focused on dragging the blade across his cheek.

Cloud watched his reflection, the way the bare smooth skin was revealed in a strip, the way Zack’s mouth pinched with focus. A little of his own blond hair could be seen right on the edge of the frame.

“Did your dad teach you how to shave?”

Cloud was embarrassed by himself the moment he asked the question. Almost thirty, and still hung up on father figures.

If Zack noticed, he didn’t show it. “Nah, I was too young when I left. It was Angeal, actually. He was a good teacher. Even though I barely could grow a moustache back then.”

Cloud smiled a little, picturing that. The older SOLDIER did have some very well-kept facial hair. He could imagine how exacting he was in grooming as in training. “Do you miss him?”

And where did he find the balls to ask that? Cloud grimaced as soon as he’d spoken.

In the mirror, Zack met his eyes. Something wounded and confused in his expression melted away almost instantly into something worse, something tender.

“Yeah,” Zack said. “A lot.” Then he tugged his cheek to the side to tauten the skin and ran the razor up to his ear.

Watching Zack work was mesmerizing. His wrists had a sturdy elegance to them, a weightlessness behind the motions of the blade that felt capable and confident even if he claimed not to be in practice. It would’ve been so easy to make one wrong move and slice himself open, but he moved, as usual, like he need have no fear. His hair was bound back in a bun, a few pieces falling loose into his face. Cloud resisted the pull to ask if Zack needed a hand tucking it back.

“Tell me something about him?” Cloud said.

Zack met his eyes again, surprised, and smiled this time. He rinsed the blade off. “What do you want to know?”

Cloud wrapped a hand around the doorframe. “I dunno,” he said. “…I never got to meet him.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot that.” Zack tipped his head back. The blade travelled up his throat, careful and deliberate. Cloud felt his mouth grow dry just watching it, a wide swathe of Zack’s dark skin scraped bare. It looked naked, lying there in the midst of the snow-white shaving cream.

“He was a funny guy,” Zack said, as he wiped the blade clean again. “Started me doing squats to stay focused, tried to teach me how to play go…I think he didn’t really know what to do with me, honestly? Like, maybe I was the first kid he mentored. I guess that would have made sense.” He frowned down into the sink. “He was, um, what, twenty-six?”

“Twenty-five,” Cloud said.

“Oh,” said Zack. Cloud watched him blink, watched their gazes meet in the reflection of the mirror.

Zack tipped his head back again. Two more broad stripes of skin appeared under his blade, then he had to lean in, eyes narrowing, to carefully worry at the corner of his jaw.

“Gen used to come by while we were training, sometimes,” Zack said, a low murmur, maybe trying not to move his lips too much, “and half the stuff he said went right over my head, but I think a lot of the time he was there to talk about bets…Whether Lazard would blush if Genesis hit on him, how Sephiroth would react to a your-momma joke. Angeal always told him to leave, that we were busy—he always wanted to be all business with me, like I’d forget we were training for war or something—but I swear I saw him take out his wallet a couple of times.”

It was hard for Cloud to picture—two men whose faces he’d only ever known from the recruitment posters he’d worshipped for so long and from the far-off reaches of training gyms—and it tugged at a place behind his navel, to hear the tone in Zack’s voice as he described them. Gentle with a longing that Cloud was all too familiar with.

“I don’t plan to stop missing him anytime soon, you know,” Zack said, staring right into their shared reflection.

Cloud looked down.

Zack turned his head to the other side and placed his thumb by his chin. Pulling up the razor, it revealed the white cross-hairs of fading scar.

They went quiet as Zack worked his way across his upper lip, slow and thorough, brow furrowed: Zack, too occupied to speak; Cloud, stalled in fresh revelation. He leaned against the doorframe, the perfumed scent making everything heady, and watched almost without blinking as the ritual wound to its end.

Zack dunked his head right under the faucet and sprayed himself with what had to be ice-cold water straight from the pipes, and when he stood back up, loose hairs were clinging, wet, to his forehead. Cloud wordlessly handed him a clean towel. Zack buried his face in it like a dog for five long seconds before pulling it away.

“So?” Zack said. “What do you think?”

Zack Fair at thirty-one still had his strong brows; sharp cheeks; long, long lashes. The winter had begun to bestow upon him the weight of dark shadows beneath his eyes and his lips were chapped as hell. With the stubble, he looked like the kind of trouble Cloud didn’t mind inviting inside; without the stubble he was soft-looking and glowing, scraped smooth by the attentions. Cloud figured it earned a compliment, but he wasn’t sure how to give it.

Cloud swallowed. “Good.”

Forcing himself to add something else, he added, “You look younger.”

Zack laughed. “Thanks. I need it now, huh?”

When his face settled, after the laughing, Cloud noticed what was conspicuously absent: any sign of smile lines at all around Zack’s mouth. He suddenly missed the stubble greatly.

Zack held out the blade towards him, wiggled it solicitously. “Wanna let me?”

“I,” said Cloud. He rubbed a hand over his chin, which, admittedly, was probably at its scruffiest. “What, right now?”

Zack shrugged. “Anything else to do?”

There wasn’t.

“Okay,” said Cloud, feeling nothing but trepidation, and stepped into the bathroom.

A chair was brought in from the dining table and a sheet procured from the fresh laundry. Zack snapped it airborne with evident enthusiasm then tucked it in all along Cloud’s collar. “I haven’t done this before,” he said, with about as much anxiety as Cloud would have expected, which was virtually none. “You’ll need to stay still, okay?”

“Okay,” Cloud said.

More soap was lathered. With the door nearly closed, the fresh scent of cedar-citrus became denser, and by the time Zack was leaning over him, brush in hand, Cloud had surrendered to the fact that this would be taking him to a state of mindless discombobulation.

“Hope this doesn’t tickle,” Zack said, taking Cloud’s jaw in his hand, and swept the brush up Cloud’s cheek.

Cloud very nearly shivered. Somewhat cool, somewhat smooth, altogether strange. Belatedly he realized he should have shut his eyes; he was staring right up at Zack, straight into his eyes. Under the uncomplicated certainty of Zack’s gaze, it felt vaguely like being trapped somewhere safe.

Cloud squeezed his eyes shut.

Slowly, taking great pains, Zack painted his whole face. Cloud kept his breathing measured. “Tell me something else,” Cloud murmured, feeling his lips brush up against the side of the bristles.

“About Angeal?”

“Any of them,” Cloud said. “Angeal, Kunsel, your family. Aerith.”

The wooden clack of the brush being set down on the counter top. “Why Aerith?” Zack’s tone was indiscernible.

“Didn’t get to spend a lot of time with her.”

Zack was silent. Cloud heard the tap run. “I didn’t think about that,” Zack said, quietly. “Time runs all fuzzy in the Lifestream.”

“Yeah.” I know.

Imperceptibly, Cloud was aware of Zack crouching closer to him. A towel was wadded up and placed between his neck and the chair back, his head pushed back against the cushioning.

Zack cupped the side of his face very gently, laid the blade against his skin, and—Cloud heard him take a deep breath—quickly ran one short, even stroke down his cheek.

Cloud barely had time to inhale in anticipation before Zack was already exhaling, the stroke complete.

“Didn’t cut me,” Cloud noted, in a murmur.

“Wasn’t gonna,” said Zack, with the gall to sound offended about it.

It was dark and safe behind Cloud’s eyelids. Zack’s right hand had callouses from all the woodchopping and lumber hauling and free-hand scaling the rock face that they did, his left hand less so. Though he touched Cloud lightly at first, finding the right position, he had to grasp him firmly, to hold him securely in place, before each pass of the razor. He tipped Cloud’s jaw; he adjusted his grip on the handle; he braced a hand on the back of the chair. “Hold real still, please.”

 Cloud felt a thrum of something like tension in his body at the feeling of  Zack’s warm shadow overtop him growing even closer, the whisper of his breath louder, and then, in an instant, it was gone—something passed between them, an exchange with no negotiation—and he was boneless in the chair, no fight left in him.

Their silence was so gentle that Cloud didn’t notice it at all, not until Zack broke it.

“Once we spent an afternoon in this corner of sector five that had gone all marshy, digging through mud with our bare hands,” Zack said, his thumb on Cloud’s upper lip as he carefully shaved away that which was barely even there. “We found a bunch of trash and a bracelet and a few coins, but what she got most excited about were the hot wheels. I guess when they were building that area one of the early bridges of the pizza broke, and a few trucks crashed and spilled out on the slums underneath, and one of them was filled with these toy cars, literally a thousand different kinds and colours of ‘em. Kids had been finding them in the dirt for years.”

Cloud digested that, and then laughed, apparently so unexpectedly that Zack cried “Careful!” and Cloud’s eyes flew open and Zack diverted the blade at the last second from slicing him.

“I guess I’m not surprised,” Cloud said, as Zack repositioned his head. “She liked stuff like that, didn’t she? I remember how horrified Tifa was when she found out Aerith was going through lost-and-found boxes on the road and taking things she liked.”

“Oh, man. ‘Finders, keepers’, right?” Zack said, sing-songing the quote.

“Yeah.” Cloud smiled, and Zack had been about to shave something near the corner of his mouth but Cloud saw him change track.

In the mirror he watched Zack work. The rolled up sleeves, the bared forearms, the bowed head. The soft sound of the blade shirring its way across skin, the gentle pressure of the pads of Zack’s fingertips, and sight of Zack’s turned back when he went to rinse off the blade. Cloud looked at him and it was strange, to have Zack so focused on him but for once, not looking back.

Then Zack said, “Tilt your head back.”

A hand was laid very softly on the side of his throat; next, the razor. Cloud’s heartbeat slowed. The blade tickled.

Zack was staring, mouth one straight line, at that stretch of skin, and Cloud sort of wanted to stay like that for a moment longer—had always savoured, maybe a bit too much, the tip of surrender—but then the blade cut its agonizing, gentle course, and left his tingling skin in its wake.

When Zack turned to rinse the razor that time, Cloud had to wet his lips, gone dry as a sunburn.

There was too much to focus on with Zack at his pulse, Zack crouched low beneath him to get the angle, but when he was done and Zack was wiping off his face with a wet cloth, Cloud remembered what they had been talking about. “You must miss her,” Cloud said.

Zack froze for a second.

“Yeah,” Zack said , returning to himself. He wrung the cloth out over the sink. “Obviously.”

“Sorry.”

“What? Don’t be. Hey, take a look at yourself.”

Cloud did. His reflection looked clean, polished-up. Less like a rugged mountain man going mad in his shack.

“What do you think?”

Cloud rubbed his cheek, felt how smooth it was. “Not a scratch,” he said. “Impressive.”

“What, you didn’t trust me?” Zack said, wounded, and Cloud got out of the chair with a scoff, but smiling.

They ran out of chores, then they ran out of game tapes. They made their way down to three unwatched movies and Cloud refused to touch those, knowing they’d need something to get them through the last big storm or two at the end of the season.

Eventually Cloud had to concede there was nothing more he could do to keep Zack entertained. There was only so much to do, and only so much Cloud could stand; even if it pained him to admit it, and even if it made some small part of him bitter and ashamed that Zack would come away from this sojourn of his life remembering paramount to all else the long painful wait for spring, passing one minute by empty minute.

 Zack would just have to take care of himself. Which Zack did, in his own hectic, haphazard way: it was like watching a wind-up toy, the way that Zack could zip awake, make a racket in the kitchen so loud that you’d think they were being invaded by a militia, sing along to a very bad understanding of the one opera CD Cloud owned, and then do two hundred squats as a warmup before knocking clear a section of icicles from the eaves so he could do his pull-ups. Zack was industrious. More than that, he had a curiosity that had been burnt out of Cloud years ago, and Cloud experienced it with one part envy to two parts fascination, awed by the force of it.

 For a week Zack threw himself into learning how to make bagels, boiling up lumps of dough that got progressively more and more edible each time, until Cloud actually had to very quickly make himself choke on a mouthful so as to disguise an inadvertent moan. Zack watched six seasons of paranormal murder mysteries with the audio tracks switched to Costan and Cloud rewatched with dull disinterest from the armchair across, mostly nodding off. Zack tried to make a deck of cards from scratch on some loose paper, and clearly forgot a few key elements, because even after many attempts there was still something irrevocably off about all the games they tried to play with them. He demanded Cloud teach him how to make mayonnaise from scratch, which led to hours of them shoulder-to-shoulder, Cloud carefully drizzling a minute stream of oil into the mixing bowl while Zack whipped the eggs, his arm strength apparently and infuriatingly inexhaustible, but somehow never actually reaching emulsion. It was sort of fascinating to watch Zack fail at something for once.

The distractions kept Zack mobile, kept him focused. He only snapped at Cloud once more, but it seemed to embarrass him so much that he nearly stopped talking for a while. It was so unnerving that Cloud found himself to be the one starting conversations for once: coaxing Zack’s words back into the house, quietly desperate for his voice. It was his first winter with someone to talk to and, suddenly, he didn’t want to waste it.

Cloud woke up one day at sunrise, the imprint of Fenrir in the blankets gone cool. The cabin was silent, and when he peered through the window above his bed, it was to see Zack running suicide sprints in the backyard, Fenrir loping along at his side, the both of them furiously kicking up snow with their heels. This exhausted Cloud so much that he went right back to bed. A while later he heard Zack come back inside and start to make food, pans being shifted around and light humming and Zack holding a rolling one-sided conversation with Fenrir. The smell of cinnamon and apples rose up into the loft, and Cloud thought about joining them, but his blankets were warm and life was pointless, so he burrowed deeper and shut his eyes again.

The next time he gained consciousness his limbs were heavy and his eyes gritty, but he knew he couldn’t delay getting up any longer. Lurching to his feet, he swapped out his sleep-grimy flannel shirt for a new one then shuffled down to the great room.

Zack was on the sofa, elbows braced on his knees, staring into the lit hearth.

Cloud sat down on the cushion furthest from him. The fire crackled, content, and Cloud watched it quietly, the sparks flying here and there, the logs glowing with embers. The cabin constricted; the walls seemed to grow closer.

Zack’s voice was low when he finally spoke. “You’re made of stronger stuff than me.”

Cloud’s gaze slid over to him; Zack kept watching the fire, but he had a paperclip in his hand, Cloud realized, and he started toying with it, popping the latch open and shut with a flick of his thumb.

“My head, it’s just…”

Cloud swallowed. He felt nothing but sympathy.

“I could never do this on my own.” Zack let out a hoarse laugh. “And you do it every year. How do you stand it?”

“Well,” Cloud started, and the irreverent answer was on the tip of his tongue. Jerking off, mostly.

It wasn’t much of an exaggeration. The isolation of living here was matched only by its privacy, and by this time in the winter he would usually be taking advantage of it to fuck himself loose-limbed and dazed, wherever and whenever. Waking up hard and warm and alone under the covers, he’d muffle his moans into his pillow while he took himself in hand; lying on the couch, he might get bored and unzip, fucking into his fist with a forearm throw over his eyes as if for some last plausible deniability; starting to ruminate on things he rather wouldn’t, he could slap a toy to the headboard and take it on all fours, easing himself back slowly against the sharp stretch at first, and then frantic, chasing fullness and satisfaction until the bed was shaking, forehead beading with sweat and hands knotted in the sheets; and if he truly wanted to burn some time, he’d spread out on his big king bed and work in one finger after another, lube slick between his spread thighs, hour after hour, until at last—flushed and full, not even particularly turned on, but heady with a lonely sense of accomplishment—he might manage to fit his entire fist.

Up here he’d discovered, too, that doing it outdoors really did it for him—but sitting on his own front steps, shivering in mid-winter and trying to jerk off on his own, had very little on being bent over the railing and moaning loud enough to scare off the birds courtesy of a special guest giving it to him hard.

Cloud snapped his jaw shut.

“Um,” he said, tugging at the buttons on his sleeve. “I like the quiet.”

When Zack looked over at him with wry disbelief, he added, “Fenrir helps.” A beat. “Screaming at the top of my lungs, too.”

“I can see that.”

“And psychedelics, sometimes.”

Zack raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

Cloud shrugged. Felt oddly defensive.

“Wouldn’t have expected that of you.”

Cloud, instead of snatching that thread and running with it as desperately as part of him wanted to—why wouldn’t you expect that of  me what DO you expect of me what do I look like in your mind’s eye—

“Yeah, well. My housewarming gift from Reno were these mushrooms—from the Gongaga region, actually? Guess he used to grow them under their bathroom sink at Healen.” He nudged the carpet with his foot. “Says Rude never found them ‘cause Reno told him it was storage for hair products.”

“Reno,” Zack muttered.

“It’s fine,” said Cloud, dismissively. “Drugs are the one thing I’d trust him on. Runs the Edge market better than they used to run the navy.”

“You grow them yourself?”

“Have some upstairs.”

Zack said, mildly outraged, “What, and you haven’t been sharing?”

“They’re not ready yet.” Cloud bit the inside of his cheek. “Didn’t know if you’d want to try any.”

“Yes,” said Zack, fervently. “Yeah, anything.”

Cloud looked down at the floor. For someone who had spent months complaining about Zack’s presence, it was starting to hurt an awful lot to be reminded that Zack would be sprinting out of here at top speed the moment that the icicles started to melt.

“Okay,” he said, “Sure, then,” and tried not to think about the consequences of that.

With each day the mountain dragged him under just a little deeper, like weights tied ‘round each ankle. He shuffled between rooms, read battered newspapers and the occasional boiler manual from beneath two sweaters and a blanket. Two naps per day crept up to three. It seemed like maybe Zack was finally feeling the draw of lethargy, too, because Cloud started seeing him less and less. Or maybe Zack was simply spending more time outside.

Their days scraped down into incomprehensible, meandering moments, further and further detached from rightside-up, until one day they were plating the last of a dozen different veggies and meats for hot pot, kitchen full of steam from a simmering pot of homemade stock, slightly sweaty for the effort of cooking for what they had thought was the better part of an afternoon, when they realized that the sun was rising.

For Cloud this wasn’t really surprising, or even noteworthy—it happened, and it’s not like they had anywhere to be or anywhere to go, so who cared if they had more in common with owls than people, this deep into the winter?—but Zack had said What!, emphatically, like it had awoken some drill-sergeant sleeper-agent discipline, and immediately applied himself to obeying a reasonable bedtime with as much vigour as he’d brought to all his other projects.

 Which was embarrassing, because it meant Cloud couldn’t just let himself slide, either.

The process wasn’t enjoyable. Cloud was already plenty tired and furthermore hated lying awake, restless, thoughts climbing up the walls of his mind, when he tried to go to bed at the behest of the clock; but Zack was both cheerful and doggedly persistent, just like with everything else he did, so somehow it didn’t feel as patronizing when Zack chided him into taking care of himself better, because at least he was holding them both accountable.

Those first evenings going to bed at ten o’clock, Cloud would toss and turn, wide awake, until he crept back downstairs and laid down on the couch in some desperate bid for sleep to find him, as if it had simply lost the address to his bedroom and might stumble across him more easily downstairs. After two mornings of catching Cloud there, tucked on his side and throw pillow across his face, Zack started joining him. In the dark quiet hours when nothing else was stirring, Zack would sit in the armchair next to the fire and close his eyes, long legs stretched out in front of him, and Cloud would calm himself by focusing on Zack’s breathing, more soothing than rain or thunder. Some nights Zack would also be unable to sleep—or maybe it’s just that his nightmares would wake him, Cloud was never sure—but several times Cloud found himself rolling onto his other side on the couch, a quilt tucked around him and the soft sound of Zack’s voice nearby, slow and rather inarticulate, and if Cloud opened his eyes a crack he would see Zack talking to Fenrir by the light of the small table side lamp, Fenrir sitting across his legs to keep them warm, and Zack would be telling some incomprehensible story, somewhere between fact and fiction, and Cloud would want to tell him that it was nice, that he liked the sound of it, that he did the character’s voices well, but it seemed private somehow, and so he’d enjoy it in silence.

Once they had figured out how to get to sleep before daybreak, they shifted back into their beds.  The next hurdle, then, was to actually get up on time. Alarms did not work on Cloud whatsoever anymore, so at eight o’clock sharp Zack would knock the side of his boot against the bottom step of the staircase and call, loudly, his good-morning greetings, which would wake Fenrir and send the dog eagerly sprinting to be let outside. If Cloud didn’t follow, Zack would start singing Alive! Awake! Alert! Enthusiastic! so that Cloud would be forced to follow him in his bleary haze, just to get him to shut up. The biting air out on the porch would shock him into three-quarters alertness, and if that wasn’t enough, he’d join Zack in his new wake-up ritual of throwing himself face-first into the snowy drifts.

Cloud was absently drawing a pattern into his boysenberry jam with the side of his butter knife one morning, melted snow damp at his hairline, when he leaned over to look at what Zack was reading at the table next to him. It was an old travel magazine, the kind you could clip up to make a collage. This one had a full spread of turquoise water and sandy beaches, all swaying palms and bright flowers of Costa del Sol. A turn of the page, and he was looking at the ruddy red rocks of Cosmo Canyon.

Cloud’s stomach flirted its way into a knot. “Decided where you’re going yet?”

“Not yet,” Zack said, flipping another page. He took a sip of his coffee. “Maybe everywhere. Why not, right?”

“Yeah,” said Cloud, whose tiny corner of the world had neither beaches nor red rock canyons nor cell service, restaurants, clubs, stores, museums, historical significance, or friends. “Sounds fun.”

In the end the mushrooms caused the closest thing to an argument they’d had since the night in the woodshed. Zack seemed hung up on, of all things, Cloud being small.

“I’m completely average size,” said Cloud, who couldn’t believe he had to be saying this aloud at all.

“You’re just a little bit small,” Zack insisted. “I’m not saying it’s bad, it’s really great actually. I’m just saying we should be careful.”

“I know what I can handle.”

“But you haven’t taken more than half a gram in ages, you said so!”

“I’ll be fine.”

Zack looked so woeful that Cloud almost relented, but then he remembered this was bullshit. Cloud pinched a wrinkled bit of purple fungi from the scale and placed it on his tongue.

“You’re not even gonna—that can’t taste good!”

Cloud shrugged. A temporary foulness made itself known in his mouth. He screwed up his courage and chewed.

“Alright,” Zack said, miffed in that mild way of his. He leaned against the counter, arms crossed.

 Cloud chewed more. He resolutely refrained from getting a glass of water or even looking in the direction of the sink.

Finally he swallowed, dry. Zack hadn’t moved. “You’re not taking yours?” he asked.

Zack shook his head. “I’ll wait.”

“What?”

“Better if we stagger it, right? What if one of us has a bad trip? I’ll keep watch for a bit.”

“What the hell is this, babysitting hour?”

“Exactly,” Zack said with a lazy smile, and, reaching for a glass from the cabinet, he said, “I carried you for nine months, now I’m your trip sitter for life. Water?”

Cloud drank, but glared at Zack over the rim of his glass, somewhere between indignant and bewildered. Since when were they talking about that?

Taking drugs with Zack was probably a bad idea right now, Cloud acknowledged, but also: they were really goddamn bored.

In the shower, Cloud closed his eyes and bowed his head under the spray, feeling the water trickle down his scalp. He’d started the day drowsy and hadn’t been able to wake from it fully; now, one palm up against the tile for balance, he breathed in the damp heat and stopped fighting it. He let his body hang heavy from his bones, like loose ballast, tension bleeding out and washing away down the drain.

The tile became fascinatingly smooth against his fingertips. He looked up, traced it again. The ceramic felt nearly silken, mesmerizing to the touch and hard as diamond—or at least it seemed like it was, to his nails, which he clacked over the surface just to hear. The surface rippled: like waves of pink phosphorus, oddly grainy, washing across the wall from Cloud’s one drop. It went on and on, spilling across the walls. Cloud stood there awed, a funny smile on his face, before finally registering that it was time to get out.

He wrapped himself in two towels, because the house was warm but not that warm, and he shuffled upstairs to get into something soft. By the time he made it back to the living room the floor felt firm but didn’t look it, checkered in a yellow that ebbed and flowed out of place.

Zack sat up right away from where he was waiting on the couch. “How’re you feeling?” Fenrir, too, leapt up and trotted over to greet him. The dog looked magnificent: his fur lustrous, his gait majestic. Cloud still didn’t know how he’d lucked out, getting a dog so good.

Cloud got down on his knees and pulled him into his arms right away. Fenrir slobbered at him in a way Cloud normally didn’t let him.

“Hi, baby,” said Cloud. “Oh, your breath is really bad.” It was hot and stinky and Cloud had to turn his head away, laughing, as he tried to pet him all the same.

When Cloud looked up, Zack was looking at him with wide eyes, hand braced on the couch back.

“What?” said Cloud.

Zack’s mouth opened and closed. “Nothing. Hey, your stomach feel alright?”

“Yeah?” He frowned slightly. “I guess I'm a little nauseous.”

“Alright. Ginger tea, coming right up.” Zack nodded firmly. “Fenrir, hey, c’mon, you can’t get him any cleaner.”

Fenrir turned a reproachful look at Zack, but calmed down a little. He nudged Cloud towards the couch.

Zack put the kettle on to boil while Cloud sank into the couch cushions and Fenrir knelt in front of him, placing his head on Cloud’s thighs to get scratches. Cloud gave them plentifully, feeling every flicker of warmth from the fireplace like a physical wave crashing to shore.

The living room started to pulse. In, out. The walls pinched in, distorting the windows, then went swollen, like lungs taking in air. The waves on the floor could only lap at the walls, trying to reach up higher, and as Cloud’s breath synced up with it he suddenly felt more alert than he had in days. It was as if someone had opened a window in the back of his mind, fresh air rushing in, old air floating out.

“Oh, thank god,” Cloud mumbled to himself, and with his newfound clarity decided he wanted to be on the floor. He climbed down off the couch and Fenrir, after a moment of confusion, came and nuzzled down by his side.

Everything felt good. Zack had been worried over nothing. Really, Cloud was great: rubbing his feet together to feel the soft knit of his socks, letting the side of his face press into the rug so he could feel the prickle of all the fibres, fingers tangling in Fenrir’s fur, humming under his breath to match the rhythm of the cabin walls. There was so much to watch, even just in the waving patterns of the rug, almost like wheat swaying in the wind. He wasn’t bored. He wasn’t even sad.

“I’m not even sad,” he said, aloud.

Zack’s voice was warm, from over in the kitchen. “Yeah?”

“Are you?”

“‘Course not.” Cloud lifted his head to look over and found Zack giving him a grin, but it felt kind of condescending. Cloud was familiar with what people looked like when they were busy calling him cute in their heads.

The minutes trickled by slowly. Time felt a bit like a day-old bruise, heavy with unknown heartbeat, off-kilter and sore to the touch. When the kettle whistle screamed at its boil, Cloud startled and Fenrir’s paw darted out right away, resting, comfortingly, on his upper arm.

Zack made his way back across the room. “Comfy down there?”

“Yes,” said Cloud, but sat up all the same, feeling silly under Zack’s watch. He had his hand pressed against his mouth, for some reason; he tugged it away, then took the mug of tea Zack was offering him. The smell of ginger was sharp and shocking.

He said, “There are flowers in your hair.”

It was a bit of an understatement: a whole meadow seemed to be sprouting from Zack’s shoulders, comically oversized, curling up towards the sky.

Zack seemed delighted by the news. “What colour?”

“All.” Cloud blew carefully across the hot surface of the tea. Pink, green, blue, orange, yellow—Zack was a riot of colour. There was a cartoonish aspect to them, overabundant, and they were swaying in front of Zack’s face, blocking Cloud’s view of his eyes and his smile. It made Cloud scowl.

He was tired of being the only fool in the building. “When are you taking yours?”

He sounded so petulant, even to his own ears. Suddenly he floundered under a surge of embarrassment;  he flushed, peering up at Zack, then quickly looking away.

His pointless embarrassment made him even more embarrassed. Where the fuck had that come from? He dug his fingers into the carpet and tugged.

Kindly, and ignoring his weird behaviour, Zack slowly peeled Cloud’s fingers away, then put the tea back in his hands.

“Gonna wait for you to peak,” Zack said.

“That’ll be hours.”

“It’ll be fun, don’t worry. Want to take a walk or something?”

Cloud blinked at him. What a strange question. “No,” he said slowly. “How would I do that?”

“One foot in front of the other…?”

“And leave the house all alone?”

“I,” said Zack. “Well, when you put it that way.”

Cloud threaded his fingers through the carpet again, pressed his fingertips against the house’s thudding pulse. It was a subtle thing, but if he thought about it, wasn’t it always there? Couldn’t he always feel it, just a little, in the margins? He wondered if it was possible for a home to love you back.

Zack climbed onto the couch, propping his head up one one hand, and Cloud looked up at him. Petals rained down, and Cloud caught one, yellow like death—it disappeared when he touched it—and god, Cloud was so lucky, wasn’t he? Look at Zack: big and brave and shockingly silly, even after everything. Patient and careful with him, irritatingly hopeful, so sweet Cloud would never be able to think back on this winter again without tasting sugar in his mouth.

The first time Cloud had tripped, he had hallucinated Zack in full. This was nothing like that.

He wanted to run his hands through Zack’s hair just to feel it; he wanted to touch the scar on Zack’s scalp again to console himself it had healed over for good; he wanted to sprawl over Zack, pin him down with his full weight, be held like he hadn’t been held in so long; and in a moment, the absurdity of holding himself back from that struck him clear as day. Why shouldn’t he touch? What harm did it do? What was he gaining, anyways, all the way on his own over here?

Distantly, he knew he was grinning foolishly as he climbed up onto the couch. Revelation made him light. Zack might have made some noise of surprise as he rolled onto one side, trying to make space, but Cloud crawled right over him, curling into his warmth, and he laid his head down in the juncture of Zack’s neck and his shoulder with a sigh.

He wrapped his arms around Zack’s waist. “Is this okay?”

“Uh,” said Zack.

Cloud turned his head, face pressed a little closer into the darkness where Zack’s skin eclipsed the lamplight. Somewhat giddily, he remembered that Zack liked touch. That Cloud was probably making him happy right now. There’s a thought.

“Yeah,” said Zack, sort of strangely. His hand lowered very lightly onto Cloud’s upper back. “‘Course it’s okay. You feeling alright?”

“I hate that question,” Cloud grumbled.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“The worst question…” Cloud sighed loudly into Zack’s throat, and then turned his head a little to breathe better.

Zack’s chest was firm beneath him, warm and steadying. He smelled like the basic bar soap Cloud still bought in bulk from military suppliers, but underneath was something familiar and lovely, and also, unexpectedly, a whiff of marshmallow. Cloud soaked it all in, every bit that he could, a cracked-open mesa underneath an onslaught of rain. It had been so long since he’d had another human being to touch, and who he got was Zack? The universe had an obscene sense of humour.

“Zack? Can I ask you something?”

“Um.” Zack drew a circle between his shoulder blades. “Yeah. Shoot.”

“What was it like, with Hojo?”

Zack went absolutely still. “What’d’you mean?”

Cloud let his eyes tip shut. “I was awake for some of it, right?”

“…Yeah,” said Zack, slowly. “For a little while.”

“Did we talk?”

“Not…much. Uh. We didn’t have…a whole lot of chances to.”

“Hmm.” Cloud shifted his weight, Zack inhaling sharply, and Cloud laid his head down on Zack’s other shoulder. Between the body heat and the hearth, Cloud knew he had to be flushing. Alas. “What about the other people?”

“Uh. What about them?”

“Were you alone?”

It seemed to take Zack a long time to answer.

“I don’t know.”

Cloud scowled in frustration. “Zack.”

“What?”

Cloud sat up some, propping himself up on one elbow and looking down at Zack. “What about after? When we were out?”

Zack’s expression was murky and unfamiliar. He didn’t answer.

“Were there people?”

“What kind of people?”

“People besides me and Cissnei?”

Zack didn’t say anything.

“Did you talk to me?”

“Sometimes,” Zack said. His voice sounded closed-up, tight.

A thought occurred to him, from nowhere, but crisp and clear as cold water. “We slept like this,” he said, curling even closer to Zack’s throat. “That’s why it’s familiar.”

“We didn’t,” Zack said, oddly urgent. “Well. I mean, sometimes.” That strain wouldn’t quit. “When it was cold.”

“Did you sleep okay? Did you have nightmares then, too?”

“…No.”

“Where were you going?” Cloud breathed. “Who were you gonna ask for help?”

“Cloud.”

“It was Aerith, right?”

Zack sat up a little, dislodging him. “Cloud, come on,” he said, voice hard.

“What?” Cloud

“What is this?”

Cloud titled his head to the side.

“Let’s make dinner,” Zack said, with a touch of vehemence. He wrapped a hand around Cloud’s upper arm, gently shifted him aside. “You want mac ’n cheese?”

Cloud said, “Everyone else gets to have a past,” and it started out bitter but fell flat. So plaintive, it made him want to sink into his sweatshirt like a turtle.

Zack looked at him so strangely, then. “You have a past,” he said. “You were just asleep for a while. That’s all.”

Ah. Cloud’s mistake. He’d screwed up again, and mistaken Zack’s past for his own.

Of course he didn’t have a right to it. How many times would it take for him to learn that?

Zack held out a hand to help Cloud up and Cloud, remorseful, took it. He followed to the kitchen, the floor feeling bouncy-thin beneath his feet. Zack gave him a pot and told him to fill it with water.

Eating was insane. He’d forgotten that side effect of a trip. The cheddar sharp, the milk a subtle sweetness. Red smoked paprika like what he imagined lined the inside of a dragons mouth.

He became aware that Zack was laughing at him, quietly.

“What?” he groused. Flowers no longer bedecked any part of anyone. In fact the world seemed unbearably still.

“Nothing,” Zack said, lightly, which Cloud allowed only because Zack had finally taken his dose, sprinkling a handful of purple flakes into his bowl of mac ’n cheese before scarfing it down beside him. Now they were just waiting for it to kick in.

Cloud became aware that Zack had put music on at some point. Dizzy, jazzy notes were spiralling among the rafters, curling their way up to the loft. When Cloud focused in on them, he could practically taste them on his tongue, something about them vibrating with colour, and he savoured the whole track like another bite of food, and then the next, and the next, slumping further down as he did so, until he was lying entirely on his back on the sofa.

Suddenly Zack sat upright, so fast that Fenrir startled, jumping off his lap with a bark.

“Chill,” Cloud said to Fenrir.

Zack said, “I’m definitely gay.”

Cloud hesitated.

“I know?”

“No,” said Zack, blinking three times in a row. His eyes were dark like the silky night outside. “I mean, like, actually gay.”

Cloud squinted. “Uh.” And then, “Oh. You don’t like women at all.”

“Yes. I mean, no. They’re fine. I mean, they’re great, just—not—you know.”

“Uh-huh,” said Cloud slowly. He was either too high or not high enough for this. “That’s cool, Zack.”

Zack’s brows pinched together. “Is it?”

“Yeah?” Cloud said. The universe swam around them. The winter cupped their home up in its closed palms. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

Zack stared at him. He swallowed.

“I don’t know,” he said, slowly. “It feels…”

Cloud waited, clueless.

“Kind of ungrateful, I guess.”

Cloud didn’t know about that, but he knew about being ungrateful. “That’s okay,” he said, carefully. Out of practice at comforting, and he’d never even been that good at it, anyways. “That’s what you told me, right?”

“I guess,” said Zack, brow still furrowed with thought, and got up, arms crossed. He walked to the far windows, looking out over the backyard and the cliff. Cloud let him have his time to think.

Microcosm. The word occurred to him. The beauty of the cabin was in the microcosm, he decided, as he got back onto the ground and examined the fireplace. The brick was solid but even the smoothest one had its fissures, its storied speckled pasts. Everything in this house had once lived far away from here, most of it whole continents apart, and Cloud had been the one to gather it all up and bundle them together, force them to play nice and get along. Together they had built a house. He still couldn’t quite believe he’d done it; with help, and a lot of money, and a whole lot of effort. Tifa had earnestly bought the idea that it could be a vacation home; Barret had cussed him out exactly twice before letting the subject go and helping him figure out the electrical plans, as if to say, Fine, have it your way, but don’t all act surprised when I get to say I-told-you-so. Cloud wondered what they were doing right now. He thought hard, trying to remember the time difference. Wondered if the kids were in lessons, and if the lessons were still held under that blue awning across from the marketplace or if the schoolhouse had finally been finished. Marlene used to come home dusty and cantankerous from those sessions, worn down from the heat and the noise from the open-air school, and the problem was that in her double-digits she now saved up her sweet disposition for her father and her father alone. Cloud had hated saying If you don’t stop, I’m going to call your dad, because it made him feel approximately a hundred years old, but he’d never been able to talk her out of a sulk or cajole her into doing her chores even half as reliably that Tifa could. Denzel, in contrast, had obeyed him on all things, and that had somehow been even more upsetting.

The fire was dying out. Cloud let it go. Worry seemed alien right then, as impractical and unfamiliar as weaving with glass. It felt like he could do anything he wanted, anything at all, and what he wanted was to sit quietly and be happy. It was sort of funny to imagine caring about anything else. He was a sort of funny guy.

Fenrir nudged him in the back with his wet nose, so he turned around to look. Zack was still at the window, staring out into the silent dark and rubbing the side of his throat. His profile was really elegant, Cloud noted, with a little sigh. If only he’d spent all those years of maladaptive pining learning how to commit Zack’s looks to paper, over and over, instead of the endless trail of research he’d followed. Then at least he’d have a useful skill to show for it.

It was as if they were adrift in the wide expanse of the night. The windows looked out into nothingness, and there was nothing underneath the foundations of the house, just the broad stretches of space. Like this it was lonely, but it was also safe. From attic to basement, the world was theirs.

Fenrir got to his feet and kicked his arm a few times.

“What,” Cloud said.

Fenrir peered at him meaningfully.

“Alright, alright. Sorry. You need to go?”

Fenrir huffed, nostrils flaring, as if Cloud was being slow on the uptake or something. Cloud went to the back door and opened it; Fenrir darted out into the yard, and Cloud shut the door behind him, making sure it was closed firmly.

Zack turned to stare at him, real horror in his voice as he said, “Why did you do that?”

“‘Cause he needed to go out?”

Zack’s lips thinned. He turned back to the window. His hands were braced on the sill; Cloud watched as his knuckles go white.

“What is it?” Cloud asked.

A quiet exhale and no answer. Cloud joined Zack at the window, peering over his shoulder. The dark outside was nearly absolute, but the snow gleamed white under the thin starlight. Fenrir could be seen as a racing strip of fur between the gentle slopes, far at the furthest end of the garden.

Zack placed his hand on the glass. “Will he be alright?”

“Fenrir?” Cloud said. “Yeah. He’ll come right back inside.”

Zack nodded, slowly. He was very still, almost as if he’d stopped breathing, and up close Cloud noticed how ashen he was, noticed the dent in his lower lip where Zack had been worrying it. There wasn’t the ghost of a smile on his face.

“Do you see something?” Cloud asked.

Zack shook his head silently. Reaching up, he rubbed at his throat again.

“Well, good,” Cloud said, feeling awkward. “There’s nothing out there. Promise.”

Zack breathed, “I know.”

The tone chilled Cloud faster than stepping outside. “Zack?” he said, but Zack paid no attention, and Cloud was starting to grow afraid for him, so he did the only thing he could think of and opened the door to call Fenrir back inside.

Fenrir came in running and shook himself well before coming back inside the house. Still, a few drops of snow hit the floor, melting instantly in the heat of the cabin. Cloud rubbed at one of the drops with his toe and was about to complain about it when Fenrir’s head sharply swivelled around.

Fenrir didn’t even lick Cloud’s hand in greeting; he bounded right over to Zack and leapt up, stretching onto his hind legs, paws landing squarely on Zack’s chest.

Zack was pushed away from the window with an Oof, Cloud watched as his gaze broke. Zack grabbed onto Fenrir’s legs, blinking away a haze. Fenrir barked exactly once, then pushed his head into the seam of Zack’s jeans with a piteous sounding whine.

Cloud’s mouth went dry. He had seen Fenrir react to another human being like that exactly once, and it had been on one of Barret’s early visits. Barret had wandered off to sit at a log at the end of the property, overlooking the steep drop of the view, and stayed there until dark. Later, Cloud had looked at a calendar and realized it was his and Myrna’s anniversary.

“Zack,” said Cloud, more softly.

Seeing Zack so affected felt like being doused in lake water, floating him back up to a clearer consciousness. His outsides crackled like flakes of ice were breaking off.

Fenrir pawed and pushed at Zack, then rubbed his head against Zack’s shins and whined again.

Cloud was suddenly angry at himself. He’d known how badly these trips could go, had experienced some of the worst of it for himself, and yet invited Zack to do this. It was his responsibility to fix.

If only he’d ever learned how to reassure someone.

“You okay?” he said.

Zack was petting Fenrir’s head to try to quiet him, looking numb.

“Want to sit down?”

“I…” Zack looked over at the window.

Cloud made the split-second decision to trust his gut. He yanked the curtains shut, sharply, and Zack blinked, stepping back.

“Hey.” Cloud’s throat felt scuffed. He stepped into Zack’s space. “You remember you took something, right?”

Zack looked at him, glassily, then nodded. “Yeah…”

Fenrir started pawing at Zack’s chest again.

“He wants you to get down.”

Slowly, Zack lowered himself to the floor. His throat was tensed, the tendons straining, and Cloud watched him clasp his hands between his knees, looking down at them. Fenrir wriggled around him, then ducked his head under Zack’s armpit and shoved his face against his chest.

“Are you breathing?” Cloud said, cautiously, and sitting down cross-legged across from him. “He can tell, usually, if. You know. You’re not breathing enough.”

Zack huffed out a laugh, then visibly took a huge, shaky inhale. It hurt to watch.

Cloud said, feeling more than useless, “It’s not real, okay? Whatever it is, it’s not real.”

Zack covered his face. His shoulders shook more, and at first Cloud thought he might have started crying, but then Zack got louder, so he could hear his laughter: harsh, pitching into hysterical.

“Zack.” He reached out to grab one of Zack’s wrists.

Zack let him pull one hand away. Beneath it, Zack’s eye was red. A tear track lay wet across his cheek.

“Hi,” Zack said.

Cloud’s thoughts felt hot between his ears. Behind Zack, the walls started to flex with colour again, but he had to focus. “What’s going on?” he said, near to a hiss. “What are you seeing?”

“Oh, sunshine,” Zack said, with a sigh, and then an even worse smile. He cupped Cloud’s cheek. “Nope. No way! Like I want to scare you.”

Cloud raised an eyebrow, but didn’t let go of Zack’s wrist. “You’re the one freaking out right now, you know.”

“Good,” said Zack, so sweetly, then he dropped his hand from Cloud’s face. He looked down into his lap, at Fenrir trying to crawl all up in it even though he was roughly the size of a stove. “Fenrir, I love you.”

Fenrir barked politely.

Abruptly Zack looked up at Cloud. His eyes were still glazed, and it made the light glance off the sharp blue of his irises strangely. “If I was a dog, would you still love me?”

Cloud froze. “What?”

“If I was a dog,” Zack repeated, words tripping over themselves. “Would that be okay?”

“I…yes?” Cloud’s heart hurt, like Zack had taken a swing at it. Zack was looking at him so earnestly, waiting for the answer. “Yeah, Zack.” What was this? “Of course.”

“Okay,” Zack whispered, and leaning down, curled over Fenrir. “Because…maybe I never stopped? I don’t know. I don’t know. I keep remembering.” He pushed his face into Fenrir’s fur and said, muffled, and in an unnervingly small voice, “I really don’t like this.”

Cloud’s hands formed fists against his thighs. He didn’t understand what was going on with Zack, but he understood the horror of memory plenty. “It won’t last long,” he lied, knowing that time could easily be stretching out like taffy for Zack right now. “Me and Fenrir, we’ve got you, okay?”

But Zack did not seem consoled. His breath was pained, and even holding Fenrir tight wasn’t bringing colour back to his face.

“Okay.” Cloud decided. He got up, held out a hand to Zack. “Come on.”

Zack looked up at him, tired, a weird forced smile on his lips. “Cloud.”

“Come on,” Cloud repeated, gesturing up. Slowly, Zack got to his feet. Fenrir jumped off his lap.

Before he could think better of it, Cloud led them both around the couch and down the hall. He didn’t bother to turn on any lights; he turned and headed up the staircase, motioning at them to follow. In the dark they ascended: man, dog, man. (Pecking order, Cloud thought, almost deliriously.)

At the landing, Zack hesitated, his foot hovering over the last step.

“It’s okay,” Cloud said, even as he felt Zack cross the invisible line as if it lay across his own chest. “You can come in.”

The v-shape of the roof joining above them forced the ceiling low, low enough that at the sides of the room even Cloud had to hunch. At Zack’s height, he could only stand up straight in the centremost stretch of the loft. It would almost have been funny— Zack curled in on himself on the landing, unsure and near-blind in the unfamiliar room—if Zack hadn’t been so unwell. Cloud unearthed pyjama pants and a wife beater for Zack to borrow, tossing them at his chest, and when Zack slowly began to strip down, Cloud turned his back, cheeks oddly hot, to change his own clothes. When he turned back around, Zack was hovering at the edge of the bed.

Cloud crawled under the quilts, tugged them aside on the other side in invitation. He felt the mattress dip as Zack, slowly, obediently, climbed in beside him. The bed was large, more than room enough for them both. Fenrir, with a flop that shook the frame, took up that margin between them.

Zack stared at him over Fenrir’s nose, eyes haunted and luminous in the dark.

“Look up,” Cloud said, voice more hushed than he intended. He got to watch as Zack’s gaze flickered upwards, finding the skylights there; and then, eyes widening, finding the view beyond them.

“Oh,” Zack breathed.

The windows stretched wide above them, thick sheets of insulated glass and through them the night sky was laid out, fiercely bright, wholly uninterrupted. A thousand, two thousand, ten thousand stars decorated the dark, clustered in freckles, in spirals, in dotted lines like a painter’s stroke. A planet winked pink from the right-hand corner. It was framed, not vast—couldn’t lend that falling-into-the-abyss sensation of taking in the entirety of the night sky—but here, inside, in Cloud’s bed, it was warm and it was comfortable and it dazzled.

“Cloud,” said Zack, awed. “It’s beautiful.”

“Right?” Cloud tucked a hand behind his head, taking it all in. It never grew old. “Sorry there are no auroras tonight.”

“There are,” said Zack. “See?” He pointed.

Cloud’s eyes blinked heavily up at the quiet night sky. “Tell me about it?”

“The stars, they’re giving off all these colours…” Zack breathed. “Like—feathers, or something…they’re pink, and blue. Purple where they overlap… Cloud, they’re moving.” He gestured in a swirl, as if the stars had gotten caught up in an eddy.

Cloud rolled over onto his side, face half hidden in the pillow. “Yeah?”

Zack was a sight. The starlight glossed over the strong arch of his eyebrows, the bridge of his nose. His eyes were bright and all pupil as he took in the scene above them, myriad and private. He reached out a hand; caught something out of mid-air that he did not explain, but Cloud liked to think might have been a falling star.

Then Cloud blinked; sat up on one elbow. “Zack.”

“Look at that one,” Zack gasped, at yet something else that Cloud could not see. Ignoring him, Cloud grabbed Zack’s arm and pulled it towards him.

He’d seen Zack’s bare arms this winter. He had to have. Even though they wore thermals and flannels and sweaters every day, Zack still rolled his sleeves up to work, and he’d wandered the house more than once in a towel, shower-fresh. But he never rolled his sleeves all the way, Cloud now remembered slowly, and after a shower…well, Cloud had been trying not to look, hadn’t he?

Under the starlight, Cloud looked at the smooth bronze skin of Zack’s left arm and the ugly, painful-looking jut of misplaced bone underneath it. Cloud touched the ridge, gently. Skimming his fingers up, he found Zack’s elbow—a full six centimetres up.

Perfectly intact.

“What happened to you?” Cloud said.

Unsmiling, Zack cocked his head to the side. “I was dead.”

Cloud stared across the divide. He stared for so long that Fenrir stretched out a paw and pushed on his chest until he remembered to breathe again.

“Zack…” He was heavy. Heavy with the tug of sleep; heavy with the weight of the past, neither forgiven nor unforgiven, just there, and apparently going nowhere. “What do you want?”

Was it cheap, to ask Zack when he was like this? He found himself not able to care. Cloud wanted the answer more than anything, then. He needed to give something back, anything. A raindrop to the ocean of his debt. There was no string he wouldn’t pull, no amount he wouldn’t pay—he just needed to know what.

Zack blinked at him. He rolled over onto his stomach, tucking his starlight beneath him. One blue eye gleamed over the pillow. He sighed, then shut his eyes. “I want to be home.”

Cloud’s stomach sank, like a shipwreck—down, down, down, onto the ocean floor.

Another thing he could never give Zack back.

He reached for Zack across the gap. Later he wouldn’t remember where he placed his hand, but he knew that Zack drew in closer, acquiescent, and sighed heavily into the pillow by Cloud’s mouth. Their arms brushed. A hand tangled its way into the back of Cloud’s hair. Cloud closed his eyes and let himself merely feel—to lose himself in the moment—this warmth, this touch.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured, pointlessly, but Zack made a sleepy, happy sound in return, and then he was falling, through the dark silt, towards sleep.

He woke up with sunlight mean and full across his face because of course he’d forgotten to pull the blinds shut. His mouth was dry; his thoughts felt congealed together, sticky with more than just sleep, and as the events of last night came to him he groaned, rubbing at his face before even opening his eyes.

He was warm, so warm, even though he’d forgotten to load up the furnace last night, too. That body up against his could not be Fenrir’s. The thigh slung over his—Zack’s, of course it could only be Zack’s—was strong and broad, and Cloud’s face was smushed against what felt like a neck. Long hair tickled the sides of his face.

Cloud gently shifted away from Zack’s grasp He sat up, quilts bunched around his waist, and Zack grunted unhappily but rolled onto his back, his eyes remaining peacefully shut. At some point during the  night, Zack’s ponytail tie had given up the ghost, and now his hair splayed, tangled, across two different pillows. The too-small shirt Cloud had lent him was rucked-up at the belly, exposing a flat stomach and an outie belly-button and a sparse but dark trail of hair leading down beneath his waistband. Zack exhaled—a little sigh of sleepy contentment—then let out half of a snore.

There was a hitch in Cloud’s heart

Zack’s slow breaths filled the room. Zack filled the room—warm and whole, living and free—lending with it an ease that Cloud had not felt in a decade.

When Cloud’s heart started up again, it was at a hammer.

Cloud startled out of bed, shedding blankets. That wasn’t good. He knew what that was, and it was not good. He stared for one more second—a guilty thing, but he needed it, this memory of what Zack looked like in his sheets, content and belonging—and then Cloud was slipping down the stairs, beating a hurried escape. Fenrir padded quickly behind him.

In the kitchen Cloud paced back and forth. The floorboards were like ice beneath his bare feet and the chill of it barely even registered. He ducked his head, locking his hands behind his neck. Even so his hands shook. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

He had to laugh, then, shocked, at how differently it felt than what he might have expected. Where was the guilt? He couldn’t find it. Here was his heart, here was the proof and metre of it, gone and done the thing he swore to himself he wouldn’t repeat, and now—why didn’t it make him feel sick?

Zack had held him with so much care. Zack had promised, so adamantly, that no feelings of Cloud’s were a burden. Zack had browbeat such kindness into him these past few weeks and months that Cloud found himself rummaging through his chest for those old convictions—the violence of love, the stain of it—and coming up empty handed. He hadn’t meant to take Zack to heart. But then again, he hadn’t meant to feel this way, either.

Tifa would be proud of him, Cloud thought, feeling a little bit like he’d woken up on the wrong side of the bed and perhaps onto a different planet entirely. Cloud Strife: in love and not scolding himself for it. Not even seeking out a punishment.

What was going to happen next would be punishment enough.

Cloud sobered, staring down at his feet. Fenrir nudged him, but Cloud barely felt it, standing there, still, before the window seat. It came to him in words all at once. He wanted to keep Zack. He wanted, furiously, with an intensity that awed him, to keep. Him.

For nearly one entire minute, Cloud contemplated a course of action where he tried to keep Zack.

The easiest and most natural thing would be to appeal to Zack’s sense of duty. Cloud’s loneliness. Cloud’s neediness. If Cloud asked, Zack would do it. Out of infallible loyalty and pity and what Cloud was beginning to sense was the possibility that Zack felt he had no choice at all—Zack would play the hero, and he would stay. The thought made Cloud sick to his stomach. Anything but that.

There was the other option. Zack liked men. Men, by and large, liked Cloud. They’d told him as much; he wasn’t starting from nothing. There was about a month left until the pass would be safe to traverse…He was out of practice at just about everything, but had never needed to try very hard to seduce anyone in the first place. Would that be enough time? Could he entice Zack enough to make staying worth it?

A picture sketched itself out in his mind’s eye—a world where he baited and trapped Zack here, pleased him, satisfied him, and held him fast—and then the thought boiled away like a kettle going dry. Cloud breathed out hard, rubbing at his face.

No. By no fucking means could he do that.

If his love wasn’t monstrously selfish, then keeping Zack here certainly would be. A few months on the mountain and Zack had already begun to fray. The isolation, the loneliness—Zack needed to live. God, Zack had only just started to live. Zack needed to be in the world, seeing things, meeting friends old and new. Enjoying what should have always been his, what he’d been so cruelly missing out on. What kind of person would he be, if he kept Zack from that?

He could no more keep Zack here than he could cage any other living thing. Cloud would have to let him go.

And he’d have to do it without ever letting Zack catch wind, even slightly, that Cloud wanted anything more. Lest he arouse Zack’s sense of obligation.

In a daze, Cloud shrugged his coat over his shoulders. He walked out onto the back porch, its thin film of snow melting wet and cold without his shoes on. The morning was dawning bright and clear, crisp like ice, and it was beautiful, just like every single day on this empty, lonely mountain was beautiful. Cloud breathed it in as if it could be a balm, soothing against a burn. His eyes stung.

And to think: he’d once been looking forward to having the house back to himself.

Fenrir looked up at him with nothing but wide-eyed alarm in those yellow canine eyes. His tail thwacked; he stamped his feet. He barked, quietly.

“It’s okay,” Cloud said, even though it hurt to speak. “At least this time it’s real.”

Chapter Text

Zack woke from the nap with his mouth hanging open and a puddle of drool on the pillow beneath him. He sat up, some latent instinct snapping him to immediate attention, and it took a breath or two before he could sag—relieved—back against the bed.

The sun was just about to set and a dusky dark pressed against the windows, fresh falling snow steadily stacking up in the sills. Slowly, Zack got to his feet. After the cocooned warmth between the blankets, the open air felt unwelcoming. He had to force himself up and out into the main room.

Fenrir greeted him with a lazy, friendly bark from the fireside.

Zack knelt down by his side. “Did Cloud go out?”

Since the dog was here, there wasn’t much chance that Cloud had gone down to the basement or was taking a nap in his loft. Zack frowned; he hoped Cloud hadn’t gone far. It was strange of him to leave Fenrir behind at all.

The fire was low, so Zack added a few more logs. He squinted out the windows again, and his bad arm twinged, an ache deep inside the old break. It felt like an omen.

He looked over at Fenrir. “If I practice a little, promise not to howl at me?”

Fenrir made no such promise, but Zack went and got Cloud’s guitar anyway. He settled cross-legged on the couch. Gave an experimental little strum, just to prep Fenrir for the noise, and then started on a few warm-up scales.

He had no sheet music, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have known how to read it, so he’d been spending all his time trying to reverse engineer what he could. He was lost in it—a lopsided approximation of an old favourite, belting out his best performance for Fenrir (‘Cause I never say never and I barely ever lie) and Fenrir’s tongue was hanging out while he watched, transfixed—when Zack heard stomping on the back steps. He finished out his verse, then laid his hand flat against the strings to mute them.

Cloud came inside already unwinding his scarf. Snowflakes had settled in his hair, dusting him like some kind of iced pastry. He frowned when he saw them there, sitting still and watching. “Don’t stop because of me.”

Zack gave a playful little strum in appeasement, but had no intention of actually bothering Cloud any further with off-key serenades. “How is it out there?”

“Bad.” Cloud’s expression went dour. “We’re going to have a storm. A big one.”

Zack sat up a little straighter. He’d seen a few snowstorms come and go this winter, but none of them had made Cloud sound like that. “How bad?”

“A few days at least,” said Cloud, grimly. “The last storm of the season is always the worst. It’s like the mountain likes to show off, or something. The good news is, if this one’s as bad as I think it is, then spring will be just on the other side.”

“Oh.” Spring. Zack’s stomach less plummeted and instead evaporated entirely. His knee started to bounce. “How soon?”

“We have a day, maybe less. I need to get the cabin ready.”

“Okay.” Zack put the guitar down, slapping his thighs, and got to his feet. “Show me what to do.”

Cloud didn’t move. He stood there, still in his coat, and gave Zack the strangest look. It wasn’t anger or impatience; it wasn’t even confusion. It might have been mistaken for a kind of sadness, but his eyes were too bright.

“What?” Zack asked.

“Nothing,” Cloud said, looking away. “You’re just a good guest.”

Zack was nonplussed. That seemed overly generous a statement, considering how not so long ago Cloud had quite literally cried in his arms about just how badly this particular visit was going.

Cloud tossed Zack a scarf and made for the door. “Come on. I’ll show you how to batten down the hatches.”

They worked quickly, carrying in firewood and banking snow up against the sides of the house. Between the two of them, they made good progress, and they woke early the next day to continue. By noon they were finished to Cloud’s tastes; by then, the sky had gone completely white. Snow was falling thicker, still only in soft flurries, but the wind was colder than ice, and Cloud said they’d better get inside. He let Fenrir out one more time before finally slamming the door shut.

Then it was just a matter of waiting.

Zack figured it was as good a time as any to make dumplings.

He mixed the dough together until shaggy, then upended it onto the butcher block to work it smooth. He’d never made a dough before this winter, much less kneaded one, but now he was intimately familiar with how it worked, how to get it to behave: he liked the way it sunk under his fingers, the way he could feel the texture give way under his palms. Dropping the finished ball in a bowl, he left it to rest.

He did a quick check of himself and ended up beating away some of the flour that had found its way onto his forearms, then took off his apron. When he looked up, Cloud was watching him from across the room.

 Zack raised a hand to touch his own face.“What, am I covered in it?”

Cloud said, a tad hoarsely, “Some in your hair.”

Zack took his bun down, shaking out his hair. A few strands fell into his mouth and he had to spit them out. It was really becoming ridiculous—he had no idea why he kept it, other than that every time they mentioned cutting it again, he and Cloud seemed to get distracted by something else. It was sort of a disappointment. He would’ve liked to have Cloud comb his hair again.

Now he joined Cloud at the windows, looking out over the yard and the cliff at its far edge. Zack held his wrists behind his back so that he wouldn’t accidentally lay a hand on Cloud’s back.

The snow was piling in thick and fast now. Their boot tracks from earlier were long gone and flurries pelted the windows, driven by a nameless rancour. The sound of the wind rattled the house, and even though Zack knew they’d done everything they needed to, it still sounded like a threat. Like the winter was trying to break inside and steal him back.

It shouldn’t have felt any different than any other evening inside the cabin, no one else to see and nowhere else to go—but now he well and truly had the feeling of being trapped. Every latch locked, every nook and cranny sealed. He stood at Cloud’s side and watched the snow rise and rise, swallowing up their field of view.

When Cloud turned to look at him, there was that tiniest bit of scrutiny in his expression—like he was checking Zack over. Like he thought Zack might fall apart, doing something as innocuous as staring out the window—which, embarrassingly, Cloud had cause to worry for. It made Zack want to duck his head and hide.

Instead of saying anything about it—for which Zack was, for once, grateful—Cloud asked, “Need any help with the dumplings?”

“Sure, c’mon. Let’s do the filling.”

Zack set a pot of water on the stove, then made a quick run to the cellar with Fenrir while Cloud went over the cookbook; the recipe he was working with called for bok choy, but all they had left now was cabbage. It wasn’t the only ingredient that they’d run out of.

“When you go down to Hearth, and get your very first groceries of the year,” Zack began, while he started to slice the cabbage very fine—outside the storm seemed to whirl around them as if they were in the eye, theirs the only piece of haven. “What’s the first thing you’ll get?”

Cloud thought about it for a moment. “Fresh eggs.”

“Really? I thought it’d be fruit or something.” Zack, personally, would have torn through a marlboro right about then to taste a strawberry that hadn’t been boiled down or dried up.

Cloud dumped a pile of minced onion into their mixing bowl. “The produce they fly up here isn’t that great. It’s why I started gardening at all.”

Zack had seen some of the plans for such in passing. It was sort of overwhelming, picturing Cloud in a sunhat and gardening gloves, kneeling in the dirt and cursing at weeds while Fenrir jumped after butterflies. In Zack’s mind’s eye, there was a strip of sunburn right at the base of Cloud’s neck, below the gap of his shirt collar.

Zack cleared his throat and forced his focus back to the dough he was supposed to be rolling out. “Don’t know how you do it. Angeal tried to teach me, a little, but I can kill anything, apparently. Had a whole row of dead cactuses up in my bunk at one point.”

Cloud snorted. “Yeah, it took me a while. I’m still not great.” He crushed a clove of garlic. “Aerith really made it look easy.”

Zack waited for the air between them to go cold, for the conversation to go lifeless and strained—but instead there was just a warm kind of silence. Like leaving her a space in the conversation.

“D’you ever grow flowers?” Zack asked, softly.

The bottle in Cloud’s hand shook, and cooking wine went splashing. “Not anymore,” he said, with a curse under his breath. Then, glancing over at the open cook book: “Zack. How big is this recipe?”

In the end it took them two hours and a whole pile of mangled sacrifice dumplings to learn how to fold them properly. Steam billowed through the kitchen as they scooped out the last of the dumplings, bowls overflowing on the counter with enough to feed a standing army. Zack, impatient, burned his tongue as he bit into one and ended up half-way spilling it into the sink. “But it’s good,” Zack assured Cloud, clumsily, before sticking his tongue beneath the tap. Zack swore he could hear Cloud rolling his eyes, it was that loud.

“Wanna watch a movie?” Cloud asked.

“Thought we didn’t have anything left to watch?” Cloud’s boredom with all things television had become palpable even before they both had their bout of insanity last month.

Cloud’s tiny smile, then, was the one Zack had come to associate with thrilled. “Figure we can break into the ones I’ve saved.” And that got Zack’s attention.

They bickered over how best to prioritize the three precious, unwatched films, then ended up choosing blind, Cloud’s hands over Zack’s eyes as he shuffled the cases. Together they turned off the lights; let the wind howl and batter at the walls as, safe and warm, they sat beside each other on the couch, fire crackling next to the TV set.

The dumplings were savoury, the filling dense with flavour even if the dough wasn’t very uniform, and there was enough to stuff themselves nearly into a state of coma. On screen, something stalked through the darkness, picking people off one by one to smothered screams. It was hard to feel scared when Cloud’s thigh was pressed against his and Fenrir perched, all that mass of him, on the armchair, but sometimes the sounds still made Zack’s breath startle.

Ever so slightly, Cloud leaned against his side.

Something soft and just a little bit painful loosened in Zack’s chest. Cloud’s taste for being touched was still an enigma, but it was stretching further these days—it was as fascinating to watch his boundaries flux as it was anxiety inducing. On rare occasion, Cloud had even initiated touch instead of just tolerating it, though there had never been a repeat of the couch incident—Cloud’s flushed and glossy-eyed inebriation as he’d laid across Zack’s chest and breathed in, deep and content like a cat, lived on in full colour in Zack’s memory—but that was probably for the best.

Zack could only imagine how touch-starved Cloud must be after this long in the middle of nowhere. Everyone needed to be held, sometimes. Zack was grateful Cloud let him; happy to help.

He tilted his shoulder away from Cloud to make some space for him, but the motion made Cloud retreat quickly, Cloud staring dead ahead at the screen like nothing else was happening.

“No, I didn’t mean that,” Zack rushed out. “Just, if you wanted to—like this?” He put his arm over the back of the couch, gently tugging Cloud back against him. This way, his arm was tucked under Cloud’s neck, cupping him close.

Cloud’s spine went stiff as a board against him and Zack wondered if this had been a mistake—but then Cloud breathed out, all the tension leaving him, and let his head fall back onto Zack’s shoulder.

It felt as good as if Zack had let the sigh out himself.

Zack closed his eyes. The weight of Cloud, the warmth of him, solid and certain against Zack—it was a relief. It was indescribably right. Zack took a firm grip of the back of the couch instead of grabbing onto some other part of Cloud, not in the least bit interested in scaring him away, and instead unobtrusively breathed in the smell of Cloud’s shampoo. On the TV, someone new died.

Fenrir, in the armchair, cast an inscrutable yellow eye over at them.

Cloud fell asleep almost adorably quickly, breath soft below Zack’s ear, and Zack could have cheered at the accomplishment if it wouldn’t have been so counterproductive. He followed very little of what happened next in the movie.

When the credits rolled, Cloud stirred slightly, then shot up with bleary dismay. There was a little wet spot on Zack’s shoulder that Zack found charming, and he didn’t say a word as Cloud quickly wiped a hand over his face.

“Ugh,” Cloud said, “Sorry.”

“No problem,” Zack said. “I think I fell asleep too. Hey—means we can both rewatch it again, right?”

“Yeah…" Cloud got to his feet. “Here, I’ve got that.” And left for the kitchen, taking both their dishes with him.

On the armchair, Fenrir lay still, head resting against his paws, but eyes relentlessly locked on Zack.

It occurred to Zack that Fenrir had been on that chair all evening. He hadn’t wiggled his way into Cloud’s lap, or between their thighs, or even under Cloud’s feet. Huh.

“Thanks for letting me take your spot, bud,” Zack said, reaching for him.

Fenrir let out a puttering little sigh before jumping out of the chair. He walked away without a backwards glance.

The next day dawned dark and dreary, and the storm did not let up for a moment. Zack was in the window seat, a book about post-Crisis economics lying untouched in his lap, and mesmerized in full by the way the wood shed had nearly disappeared through the sheets of flying snowflakes, when Cloud came downstairs wrapped in a blanket.

Zack had seen Cloud sleepy and rumpled all winter, but it still made him smile with strangled, overwhelming fondness to see Cloud’s bleary eyes, flattened hair, a pink mark on his cheek from the pillow and his face half-hidden in the blanket. There was something precious about Cloud in this transient state, something that deserved to be cherished while it lasted.

Fenrir, who had been waiting at Cloud’s side, seemed to lose his patience with all their staring and jumped, bodily, onto Zack’s chest.

Fen-rir, Zack tried to say, wheezing without any air left in his lungs. Wolf weight plastered him to the window seat, and a cold nose tapped at his throat as if he could spell something out in Morse.

“Fenrir! Cut it out, you’ll break Zack’s ribs.”

The dog set his head down happily, settling into place, and Zack and Cloud made eye contact overtop.

Immobilized, Zack ran a hand down Fenrir’s spine and assumed a helpless expression. He said, “I think you’re gonna have to be the one to make breakfast.”

Cloud sighed. “You’re embarrassing,” he said, without any specificity, and when Zack pouted at him, wounded, Fenrir turned his head around to peer up at Cloud with an almost identical expression.

Pinned under two pairs of big, watery puppy eyes, they got to watch Cloud fray almost instantly.

“Wh—don’t do that,” Cloud said, alarmed.

Zack pouted harder.

“Christ alive, alright, I’ll make breakfast,” Cloud mumbled, shuffling away to the kitchen. “Enjoy.” When he peered back, Zack and Fenrir had not let up, and their combined plaintive faces made Cloud groan. “Puppies my ass…” Cloud muttered, under his breath. “Save my life once and they think they…deserve each other…”

Zack grinned and sank his fingers into Fenrir’s coat. “That was a little unfair of us,” he murmured to the dog. Fenrir placidly closed his eyes as he lay still for the petting he rightfully deserved. He radiated warmth up against Zack’s belly, and Zack could have lain there forever, weighed down by sleepy doggy and listening to Cloud moving around in the kitchen.

“He’s been spoiled, getting all this attention from the both of us,” Cloud called, over the clatter of a frying pan. “He’s going to be such a pain in the ass when you’re gone.”

All the warmth turned to slush.

“I was so disappointed. I think I cried.”

Cloud chucked a folded pair of socks into the rising pile. “You cared that much about your teeth?”

“What kid wouldn’t be?” Zack insisted. “Gold teeth!”

Cloud gave him a look that expressed that he, perhaps, was one among that number, but it was rife with amusement. Never mind that it was at Zack’s expense; Zack was still going to take pride in that, then.

Zack tried to tuck the sleeves in more elegantly to a flannel he’d just folded into thirds. “How was I supposed to know?” he said. “If the guy who cleans your teeth has a mouth full of gold ones, I think anyone woulda assumed that was the end goal of dentistry.” He nudged the collar straight. “Still think it’d be cool.”

Cloud picked up another sock and went rustling for its match. “It’s kind of shitty that even with all the mako, we still have to get fillings,” he mused.

Zack looked up. “We do?!”

“Yeah.” Cloud slapped a pair of pants into a neat folded square with practiced efficiency. “Cavity isn’t going to carve itself out, right?”

“Huh. No shit…Guess you better hope you don’t get a cavity while you’re up here then, uh?”

Cloud was silent.

Something stirred in Zack’s gut. He looked up from the shirt he still hadn’t figured out how to fold, and tried to read the expression on Cloud’s face—brows pinched together with focus, head bowed over the laundry.

Very curtly, Cloud said, “Yep.”

It had been months, and Zack still felt no closer to understanding why Cloud had chosen a life like this. Any time Zack pressed, he came up empty handed. Brushing across the raised hairs of Cloud’s anger.

Instead, Zack grabbed a pair of boxers that had once been Cloud’s but now were as good as his. (Anything loose enough to even sort-of fit his legs had been passed along to him, which left Cloud with only the kind of briefs that would have burst over Zack’s ass.) “Or a concussion. Or appendicitis,” he rambled. “Or wait—does Cure work on that?”

“It does,” Cloud grunted. Then, deliberately tugging the laundry basked towards him, said, “Not like bones that healed crooked.”

Zack slowly smoothed over the crease of the boxers.

Cloud said, with the tone of someone warming themselves up to an accusation, “The break was at your forearm. Not your elbow.”

“Uh,” Zack said. “Yes?” He carefully set the folded underwear down and didn’t look Cloud’s way. Resisted the urge to touch the spot where the mangled bone was obvious. “At least I think so.”

“So it’s not from trying to break out of the tanks?”

Ah. Zack felt a strong surge of guilt, for having let Cloud think that for so long, then a stronger surge still of embarrassment. He toyed with the idea of just going with that story. “Well,” he said. His mind churned as he tried to come up with something convincing enough that wouldn’t oblige him to lie right to Cloud’s face.

The light above them flickered. They looked up as one.

Without further warning, everything went dark.

“Goddammit.”

It was barely two o’clock, but the storm had all but blotted out the sun. In the light of the fireplace alone, the house around them became nothing but muted shadows.

“The backup generator—”

“Give it a second to kick in.”

They waited.

And waited.

Cloud sitting next to him suddenly seemed so much more intimate, a suggestion of him rather than the shape of him—so close and somehow so nebulous.

Fenrir stirred somewhere down by his feet and sighed so loudly that they both heard it.

Cloud cursed. “I knew the overflow would flip out. Shit.”

“You have a torch?”

Cloud got up, his form weaving away through the blurry silt of the cabin. Zack heard him rummaging in a drawer, and then a few seconds later, felt cold metal as a handle was pressed into his hand. Together they shuffled over to the fuse box just to check.

“Nothing we can do from here,” Cloud grumbled, swinging his own light down to the floor. “I need to check outside.”

The snow was still coming down, wind bitter as a scream. “Nope,” Zack said. “No way.  That’s a job for later. What do we need power for, anyway?” Zack just knew Cloud was scowling. He nudged him, gently, with the side of his arm. “You got candles?”

Voice heavy with reluctance, Cloud said, “Under the sink.”

They had to scrounge up saucers and old planters to hold them, but when they had worked their way around opposite ends of the cabin setting up fat, thick, white candles on the windowsills and the counters and the edges of the bookshelves, their light gave the place a glow like a halo, soft and welcoming.

“That’s nice, right?” Zack murmured, crossing his arms. “Not so bad.”

Mulishly, Cloud said, “Sorry about this.” Zack could hear the searing sting of embarrassment in his voice.

“Hey, it’s cool. What do I care?”

“I checked the circuits…”

“I know,” Zack said. “I was there! Sometimes shit just happens. Doesn’t matter, right? We got candles and a big fire. Sounds perfect to me.”

“Hm,” Cloud said. Zack could tell that his words had had no effect; Cloud would be hung up on this for a while yet.

“Pizza?” he offered, and he heard Cloud exhale before saying, voice a touch softer, “Yeah, alright.”

Zack made the dough while Cloud finished up the laundry from the windowseat. Cloud was silent; Zack wanted to try again—to find that magic combination of words that might get through to Cloud and soothe him—but when he looked to the side, Cloud bathed in candlelight was too much for him to handle.

Cloud laid a pair of pants down flat. “Edge used to have blackouts all the time,” he said.

Zack perked up. “Yeah?”

Cloud hummed. He folded a pant leg in half with surgical precision. “Yeah. First we just didn’t have power at all—no more mako—and then they started trying out new stuff. Took a long time before anything stuck, and even then it was a while before it worked.”

Zack hadn’t spent enough time in Edge to picture it well. The makeshift city had been easy to spot from that meadowed cliff where he’d found himself abruptly alive, and it had been the obvious place to head for answers, but it’s not as if he’d ever considered it his end goal. He remembered the crush of people in the market, bewilderingly loud, and all the twinkling string lights strewn between the rooftops in the district where he’d found Seventh Heaven. It had been a bit ramshackle and rough, but then again, so had the Midgar slums. Unlike the Midgar slums, he couldn’t imagine it possibly being home.

“So, this is all familiar to you, huh?” Zack asked, tucking the dough beneath itself. “How did you guys pass the time?”

Unexpectedly, Cloud went a little pink at that, and struggled to answer for a moment. “Uh, you know. Board games, drinks. Barret kind of got us hooked on Marlene’s bedtime stories. He spins a good yarn.”

“I believe it,” Zack said, remembering the guy’s deep, rich baritone—but couldn’t let it go. “What’s so embarrassing?”

Cloud scowled. “What?”

Zack reached to pinch his cheek; Cloud batted the hand away.

“Nothing.”And then, after the pause Zack gave him, “Reminded me of something Yuffie sent me. It’s not important.”

“Yeah?”

Cloud looked up from his work, then rubbed his nose, and looked back down with a sigh. “…Yuffie wasn’t very happy with me, after Tifa and I broke up,” he admitted. “She thought it was my fault” —Zack opened his mouth to protest— “and it’s not like she was wrong.

“And she was tied up with some problem in Wutai for months, so she couldn’t even chew me out like she really wanted to. For a while she’d send me these…passive aggressive newspaper clippings? Or, articles she tore out of magazines? ‘The Secret to Being Approachable.’ ‘Ideas for Spending Valentine’s Alone.’ ‘Toys So Good You Won’t Even Miss Her.’ One time it was, ‘10 Things to Do When the Power is Out Besides Have Sex.’”

Zack laughed. “Ouch, yeesh.” He’d like to meet this Yuffie.

Abruptly he set the dough down.

Cloud was saying something, a wry smile on his face, a muscle in his forearm jumping as he pinched and plucked some fold straight, but Zack didn’t hear him because suddenly he was burning up. Heat hooked his navel.

They could, couldn’t they?

Fuck, that is.

They were adults. Unattached. They had all the privacy in the world. They were both bored to tears and back, and it would certainly pass the time better than any tired old puzzle or half-hearted ghost story. Easily, it could fill a whole evening—or even more, if they wanted. Zack looked over at Cloud, swallowing the moisture in his mouth.

He imagined being the one to keep Cloud warm.

But Cloud wasn’t looking at him at all. Cloud pushed a strand of hair out of his eyes as he added the finished product to the basket, like nothing had happened. “…still, from time to time. Like I need the kick in the ass.”

“Oh,” said Zack, “yeah. That’s…” and felt warmer than before, in the worst way possible, because of course that’s not why Cloud had brought it up. Cloud was just remembering something funny. Cloud was sharing something about himself with Zack, a precious tidbit that he so rarely indulged Zack in. Cloud wasn’t saying that they should—

Zack was so dismally ashamed of himself that he didn’t hear much of what Cloud said for the next ten minutes.

The pizza made its way into the oven in a blur, the both of them grateful that the oven ran on gas. They bypassed table and couch alike to sit on the rug in front of the fire, eating the thick slices fast so that the melting cheese wouldn’t burn their fingers. Fenrir brought over one of his rope toys so they took turns playing with him, yanking it back and forth, measuring their strength against Fenrir’s snarling jaw. Between the candles and the howling storm outside and Cloud in the center of it all, warmth like a thudding heart, the night felt safer than a fortress.

After Cloud emptied his plate, he sighed and laid down for a moment on the floor, throwing an arm over his eyes, and Zack stayed quiet so that Cloud could have whatever moment he was having. By now Zack was used to these; knew better than to worry about it when that was just how Cloud was. Eventually Cloud got up, and when he came back he had a bottle of wine and a pair of mugs that he raised at Zack in invitation. Zack took one with a grin.

“What’re we drinking to?”

Cloud shrugged. “Surviving?”

He said it thoughtlessly, and Zack waited for Cloud to have some kind of delayed reaction; something sharp-edged and filled with regrets, eyes sore with remembering. But Cloud didn’t, so Zack smiled wider, and tipped their mugs together. “Hell yes, we have.”

“The winter,” Cloud said, wryly, but with a smile on his face all the same.

Zack nodded, feeling that in his gut. “The winter,” he agreed.

Not that Zack was about to admit it aloud, but he’d never actually had wine. His experience with drinking had been limited to cheap beers and moonshine, hidden in corners of the barracks with other recruits or bought in as high a volume as they could afford in slum bars with Thirds who still had something worth celebrating. When the taste hit his tongue now, he felt his mouth pucker up at the acrid sweetness, but by his fifth sip he’d adapted. Beside him, Cloud’s nose disappeared into his own mug as he idly ran a hand through Fenrir’s belly fur.

The fireside was warm and its light was radiant. It was so easy to sink back onto his palms and relax, letting all thought slip loose, and that ended up being a mistake. Zack found himself thinking again about how it would be so easy, really—so natural, in fact—to break up the monotony a little and make a nice night of it, if only Cloud wanted to lie back on the carpet and let Zack coax his knees apart.

Fuck. 

Zack set his drink down hard. “Can I put some music on?”

Cloud nodded his careless agreement, and Zack got up to find a disc. First, he put on something that opened with an electric guitar riff, raring to go, that made Cloud splutter and say, “Not that,” which was a disappointment, but not exactly a surprise.

“Okay,” Zack said, flipping through a stack. “You got a request?”

“Something quieter,” Cloud said, slumped against the side of the couch. “Everything’s so slow. It should be slow.”

“What, like classical?”

Cloud shrugged, which was a bit frustrating, but Zack shuffled things around until he found an album that looked like it would fit the bill. He popped it into the stereo and laughed when it turned out to be slow slow, a ballad crackling its way out of the speakers and starting to serenade them in its low, sweet tones.

Zack swayed in place, eyes closed, lips pressed together in a small smile. He spun around because he wanted to and because he was alive to do so, and when he opened his eyes, Fenrir and Cloud were both watching him, expressions equally inscrutable.

Zack raised his arms up. Cocked his head to the side. “Join me?”

He said it just to say it, knowing Cloud would never say yes. Instead, he watched Cloud hesitate, visibly conflicted, before slowly getting to his feet and rounding the couch.

Zack’s heart beat thickly. Sort of like his blood had turned to honey. Cloud walked right into his open arms.

He didn’t know where he was allowed to put his hands. After a pause, he let them fall, lightly, to rest on Cloud’s upper arms. “This good?”

“Mm.”

They were only about a forearm apart. Cloud looked up at him for a moment—clear-eyed, searching—the candlelight, flickering, in the dark of his pupils—before resting his own hands on Zack’s waist. The shape of them was warm even through Zack’s layers. “Like this?”

Zack said, a little hoarsely, “Perfect.”

They rocked side to side. Slowly, they travelled across the carpet, holding each other at a modest distance. The notes of the music rose sweetly over the sound of the storm outside.

“Do you even know how to dance to music like this?”

“Not really…Didn’t waltz a whole lot at Shinra, you know.” They were both speaking quietly, almost in whispers, as if something about this was not allowed.

“Don’t think this is a waltz.”

“What’d you call it?”

“Dunno.”

Zack slipped a hand off Cloud’s arm and caught one of Cloud’s hands in his own instead. Held it out at their sides, used it to lead them in a meandering path.

“Fancy,” Cloud said. He tugged the lead from Zack, and Zack followed easily.

Fenrir was watching them from the couch, head on the seat back as his eyes followed them around the room.

“Hey,” Zack smiled, all lopsided and encouraging. “Spin me.”

Cloud rolled his eyes, but then he held his arm out, bare minimum, and Zack ducked to fit underneath it. He spun back into Cloud’s arms, grinning, with enough momentum that their fronts knocked together. Zack stepped back, but Cloud didn’t.

The music crested, swooned.

Cloud shifted his grip on Zack’s hand and bowed his head. His hair brushed along Zack’s chin.

Zack breathed in deep. Alright. Alright.

He slipped his hand around to rest on Cloud’s upper back. For a microsecond, Cloud went tense. Then, instead of pulling back, Cloud let his forehead drop the last centimetre to rest against Zack’s shoulder, all the strain bleeding out of him.

Zack swallowed. His pulse was thudding in his throat, in his belly, in his fingertips.

They had almost stopped moving entirely, only swaying back and forth on the spot. There was a moment of silence at the end of the song, and into that silence, the rage of the storm flooded, the sound of the shaking house reverberating all around them like a mournful warning.

At last the next song started. A violin rang out.

Cloud’s hair smelled so nice. His fingers were so strong, clasped between Zack’s; his body was warm and always so surprisingly slight, against his own.

I’ll miss this.

It was the first time Zack allowed himself to think the words. He closed his eyes. It only made him more acutely aware of Cloud’s breath against his collarbone, of Cloud’s hips nearly knocking against his own.

I’ll miss this when I’m gone.

Gone almost beyond what he could conceive of. In a very literal sense, he’d spent this entire life in this place, now. This was all he knew: Cloud, and Cloud’s dog, and th—Cloud’s cabin.

Zack’s fingers clutched a little more tightly in the back of Cloud’s shirt. Cloud let out a sigh and Zack felt it, against his skin.

Then Cloud stepped away.

Cold air rushed into the space between them. Cloud jerked his head towards the darkened hallway. “Gonna get ready for bed, I think,” he said.

“Yeah.” Zack stood still, returning to himself. He tried not to let his next words sound too affected; he had no idea if he managed to succeed. “I’m getting sleepy, too.”

Cloud disappeared down the hall, and Zack turned around only to find Fenrir’s eyes trained on him, unblinking.

Already wrong-footed, Zack said, “What are you looking at?”

Fenrir’s eyes narrowed.

“It was just a dance.” And when Fenrir continued to glare—“It was!”

It had been—that’s all he’d meant by it—but now, guilt leaped back into Zack’s chest. Images of the fireside and how it might best be used returned to him.

Cloud—isolated, hermit Cloud—Cloud who flinched and then leaned into touch as if afraid it would be snatched away from him—Cloud who had once thought he loved Z—

He could still feel the proximity of Cloud’s body like a thrum through his own.

Fenrir glared hard enough to startle Zack out of his thoughts.

—Ifrit, what was he thinking?

Doing the math, Zack figured it must have been near about a decade since he’d had sex of any kind. That could’ve explained this suddenness. These things built up. Right? And, Zack supposed, he already had no real concept of limits when it came to Cloud. He wanted Cloud as close as possible, always, in whatever way he was allowed; it had never much bothered Zack what that looked like.

Zack?
I need you to turn around.

 Zack woke out of the nightmare on the third day and found that the storm had gone nearly silent, just a soft, sanding sound against the sides of the cabin—but through the windows it was plain to see how fiercely it still swirled. He lay in bed for a while, the cold of his memory easing away in only the smallest flecks, and by the time he had made his way up and out to the kitchen, Fenrir had trotted down from the loft and attached himself squarely to Zack’s side. Zack pet his head gratefully.

“If you thought I was a bad guy,” Zack said, “you wouldn’t let me anywhere near Cloud, right?”

Fenrir gazed at him solemnly.

Relieved, Zack said, “That’s what I thought.”

The power was still out, so they moved like that, in lockstep, as Zack lit candles and mixed together batter for waffles and toasted some pecans. Zack slipped Fenrir a bite of plain waffle; Fenrir licked every one of his fingers to get at it. The smell of cinnamon and butter brought Cloud staggering out of the loft, but he looked even less awake than yesterday, and when he ate beside Zack at the table he was silent, eyes looking off into the distance.

Zack nudged Cloud’s foot with his own. “Didn’t sleep well?”

Cloud nodded, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Gonna go back to sleep, I think.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” said Cloud, in a tone that left no room for discussion.

Zack’s throat felt tight. He wondered if he could get away with squeezing Cloud close, threading a hand through his hair and offering the comfort that had always come easiest to him—but Cloud was already on his feet and walking away.

Chewing his lip, Zack stacked up the dirty dishes. The wind whispered by, the glass holding against the weight. A little more sun was making its way inside now, lighting up the space by the window enough to read.

Dispassionately, he considered the stack of books he’d left out the night before—and the night before that, and the night before that. Their titles intimidated him: it was all shit that any other adult probably already knew. Shit he probably could no longer get away with not knowing.

He’d never been an adult before; not properly. Shinra had handled everything for him and he’d expected them to continue to handle everything in perpetuity. He’d never had to sign up for insurance, or open a bank account, or apply for a job, or…he had no idea what else people even did. Hell, did taxes exist anymore? Who would he even pay them to?

He had the nagging suspicion that Cloud—Cloud with his perfectly equipped hermit cabin, Cloud with the Turks on speed dial and his very own independent supply chain—probably knew the answer to every one of his questions and then some. Asking meant admitting that he would soon be building a life elsewhere, though, so Zack hadn’t had any interest in trying.

Zack pushed aside the books, getting to his feet and only returning when he’d rustled up a steno pad and a pen. He uncapped the pen, tapping it against the paper as he took his last swig of coffee, then he set to work. When Cloud came back down from his mid-morning nap—it could have been minutes or hours later, Zack had no idea—he was still writing.

“What’re you doing?” Cloud asked, from his shoulder. Fenrir, in the distance, crashed into something, but it didn’t sound important.

“Writing letters.” He tapped a stack of loose papers. “Got Cissnei’s right here. Still working on Kunsel’s.”

Cloud hummed. “Cool.” He wandered off. Out of the corner of his eye, Zack saw him settle down on the couch with a new cup of coffee. In Fenrir’s direction, Cloud murmured, “Hey, dummy, what are you doing?” and Zack turned back to his letter.

So far he had four pages down. First he hadn’t been able to think of anything to say, and then he couldn’t stop. He still intended to track Kunsel down in person, but it had been a long time, and getting the words out felt good. Zack found that he had a lot to say; a lot to ask about, too. He knew the world had changed more than he’d even gotten the chance to see yet. Where had Kunsel landed, among all this ruin?

“Hey, you got any envelopes?”

Cloud looked up from what looked like an impressively deep reverie. “Yeah,” he said. “Somewhere. One sec.” He got to his feet and disappeared down the hallway, reappearing a minute later with a blue carton that he slid towards Zack.

“Thanks!” Zack flipped it open and plucked one out. “I guess I didn’t expect you to have any.”

Zack slowed as he folded the letter into thirds, the weight of his words reaching him. There was a pregnant pause.

“I write to people,” Cloud said, stolidly.

“Yeah,” Zack said. “Of course.” A beat, and his curiosity got the better of him. “Do you ever call people?”

Dryly, Cloud said, “With what phone?”

“Down in the village?”

“Sometimes.”

Zack looked at him. Pleaded, silently, for more.

Cloud toed the ground. “I always give Tifa a call at the end of winter. Let her know I’m still alive, and all. I’m not that mean.”

Then he turned away. That was that.

Zack slipped his letter into the envelope, licked the open flap. He hadn’t had the chance to do that in ages; it tasted like nothing important, but it was fun all the same. He sealed it shut with his thumb and admired how tidily it all came together.

“Will you write to me?” he blurted.

Cloud looked back over at him.

“After I leave,” Zack said. He quirked one corner of his mouth up into a smile.“You’ll send letters, right?”

Cloud shifted on the sofa; his gaze fell behind Zack, out into the raging storm. “You’ve seen how quiet it is here,” he said. “Would be pretty boring letters.”

“No! I’ll love it. Tell me about Fenrir, about the garden…” Zack leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms behind his head. “I wanna hear it all.”

“Mm. Okay.”

“Really?” Zack said, letting the front legs of his chair rise up. He smiled over at Cloud, eyes wide.

“Sure.” Cloud picked at one of his callouses. “But you know I don’t make the trip to town all that much, right? So don’t expect much.”

Zack’s ribs hurt, heart straining against them. “But you will, sometimes,” he said, hating his own insistence, “right?”

Cloud did not look him in the eye. “Sure.”

“Cool.” Zack’s voice felt thick. “Thanks.”

He wasn’t sure what he had expected.

Cloud mumbled something, shoved off from the couch, and left. Zack heard his footfalls on the steps, up into the loft.

Zack dropped his head into his hands and sighed. So much for that.

Hours later, and Zack had finished letters to Kunsel, Tifa, and a very strange, tricky one to Tseng. His heart felt scrubbed raw from the effort, but there was a lightness to it, now, that getting the words down had helped. He sealed the letters up—it was a tricky business, getting them into perfect thirds—and then looked around. Fenrir was nowhere to be seen. Cloud had still not come downstairs.

Quietly, Zack cleared the table. It was getting dark again, so he lit a few more candles, and started thinking about another meal. Probably too late for lunch; too early for dinner. Not that it mattered—they just needed food. Everything in the fridge had been moved outside to preserve it, but it meant that everything was frozen, too.

He approached the bottom of Cloud’s stairs carefully, peering up. If Cloud had any candles lit up there, it was impossible to tell. The loft looked to be all in darkness.

“Cloud?” he called. “You good with pasta?”

A pause. Then Cloud appeared at the landing. “Yeah,” he said, fingers wrapping around the balustrade. His voice sounded thick. “That sounds great. I can take care of it, in a minute.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ve got it,” Zack said. “Spaghetti?”

“Yeah. I’ll help, just wait.” Cloud turned his head to call back into the loft. “Fenrir, go with Zack.”

Fenrir did not appear at the foot of the stairs. In fact, Zack heard no movement at all.

“Fenrir,” Cloud repeated. He pointed down the steps. A long pause. “Fuck’s sake.” He disappeared, presumably back to the bed. “Go, now. Up.”

Zack would have said It’s fine—a couple seconds alone in the basement to grab some onions and garlic wouldn’t kill him—but the interaction struck him as wrong, somehow. He took a step up the stairs.

“Cloud?” He walked slowly, making sure Cloud could hear his footsteps. He hovered before he reached the top. From his vantage point, he could see Cloud scowling down at Fenrir, Fenrir standing at his feet, face buried against Cloud’s thighs.

“Sorry,” Cloud said. “He’s being the worst. Aren’t you, Fenrir?”

The dog opened one yellow eye and looked at Zack.

Softly, Zack asked Cloud, “Are you okay?”

Cloud looked at him. Closer up, Zack could see that his eyes were red. His cheeks were blotchy.

“I’m fine,” Cloud grunted. “Need my dog to listen to me, though.” He nudged Fenrir’s leg.

Fenrir closed his eyes and did not budge, unrepentant.

Zack looked around the room: the unmade bed, the dark night sky through the skylights, the desk chair shoved back; and one lit lantern lying on the desk, beside a sealed letter and a blank piece of paper.

“You've been working on a letter.”

Cloud’s face went dark, and he ignored Zack entirely. “I’ll go get the things from the cellar, if Fenrir isn’t gonna cooperate.” He moved to leave, but Fenrir leapt up, putting his paws on Cloud’s chest. He didn’t wag his tail; he didn’t lick Cloud’s face.

“Dinner can wait,” Zack said, quietly. “I think he wants you to sit down, Cloud.”

“I’m fine.” Cloud’s tone betrayed him, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

For the second time, Zack crossed the invisible line at the top of the stairs, transgressing on Cloud’s space. Cloud looked between him and the dog, flushed, now irritated. “I’m—”

Fenrir pawed at him, and Cloud said, “Down,” so sharply that Fenrir dropped with a wounded-sounding whine. Cloud pushed past the both of them, thundering down the stairs.

Zack and Fenrir scrambled after him.

“Cloud!”

“How many onions do you need? Two?”

Zack grabbed his arm.

Cloud shook him off, fast, eyes sharp and furious. “Okay, I’m not fine,” he snapped. “Can you leave me alone for a minute?”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“No, I’m not leaving you alone,” Zack said. There was a wringing feeling, deep in his belly. “What’s going on?”

Cloud said, “Leave. Me. Alone.”

“You’ve been alone!”

Cloud froze. Zack’s stomach froze along with him.

Then Cloud turned, staring at Zack incredulously. “Are you seriously going to make me lock myself inside my own bathroom?”

“You were trying to write Tifa back,” Zack said, a whisper of dread mounting higher, “but you haven’t opened her letter. Why haven’t you opened Tifa’s letter?”

“That’s not your business.”

“Whose business is it? I don’t see anyone else here.”

It was harsh—too harsh, and Zack knew it—but it had been hanging over them since he’d first showed up. The Zack that had emerged from the forest that first day been bewildered and blinded by joy, too blissful with gratitude to read to what was going on right in front of him; or rather, too ignorant, too scared to push, to make waves; too cowardly and cowering to strike a match in the dark, even when it had always been obvious, right from the start.

“Is something wrong with Tifa?” Zack said, taking a step closer. “The kids?”

Cloud’s cheeks flushed angrily at the same time as the rest of his face paled. “Stay out of it.”

“I’ve been staying out of it,” Zack said. “I’ve been here all winter, and I’ve been watching how you live, and I’ve kept my mouth shut, but—Cloud. You know this is insane, don’t you? You don’t let anyone in.” He felt the impact in his chest. Saw it reflected in Cloud’s eyes. “You don’t travel, you don’t have guests, you don’t even write to anyone… If it wasn’t for me, you’d be all on your own up here. And I don’t understand why.”

A silence.

“Fenrir’s here,” said Cloud.

“He’s not a person and you know it.”

“I’m—” Cloud formed a fist at his side, then released it. Zack watched him take a deep breath. “I like my solitude, okay? This is what I want.”

“It’s not as if you don’t have people. Some people—some people are actually alone, Cloud.” Embarrassingly, Zack heard his voice strain. “You have a family out there.”

“Zack.” He turned his face away. “I’m not talking about this.”

Zack felt himself fray, then break. “I’m talking about it!” His concern sharpened, fuelling him forward. “You expect me to leave you like this? You think I can stand to leave you when I know you’re just gonna be alone again? There are people who love you, Cloud. Why are you running from them?” Zack’s heart slammed against his ribs. “Did something happen?”

Cloud recoiled from him. “Yeah, something happened: I’m tired!” His voice rose, pitched with something lesser to anger. “I saved the fucking world, aren’t I allowed to rest?”

Slowly, Zack said, “This isn’t rest. This is escaping. Fuck—Cloud, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were punishing yourself.”

A silence.

Cloud’s throat worked. “I’m not.”

“Keeping people trapped in tiny places and not letting them out—not letting them talk to anyone—not letting them see anyone—that’s what we do to criminals.”

“And I want to be here.” Zack heard him exhale through his nostrils. “I don’t have to argue about this with you. Don’t forget whose house you’re freeloading in.”

That stung, deep and to the point. Zack swallowed back the distraction.

“Cloud. This isn't living. This is hiding.”

“Fuck you.”

Cloud shoved past him, shoulders knocking, and charged back up the stairs to escape, but Zack followed as if magnetized, half a step behind.

“You really think you deserve this? To be alone? Away from your friends, from everyone who loves you?”

Cloud spun around and Zack reeled with his foot in the air, suddenly face to face with him.

“I don’t want to,” Cloud said. “I just…can’t, okay?”

“Why not?”

“I said, I just can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know!”

“What don’t you know?”

Cloud yelled, “I just don’t know how, okay?”

There it was. Zack swayed forward towards something that would doubtless hurt them both.

“It doesn’t work,” Cloud said. “It just doesn’t.” His voice went thin. “It’s not good for anyone, when I’m there.”

“Not good for who, Cloud?”

A shaky inhale.

Cloud said: “Everyone else figured out how to move on. And I just…never did. I can’t. I don’t know why. Maybe when my memories came back, something else got taken away? Whatever. It’s just how it is now.”

Cloud crossed his arms, but it only made him look smaller. Like he was trying to seem larger than he was. “They have their own lives. They figured shit out that works for them. And…this…this is what works for me.”

It was like sinking down to the ocean floor. Soft despite its heaviness.

Zack said, “You don’t even like it here.”

“I—”

“You like your house, and your privacy, and the mountains. The hell you like going out of your mind six months out of the year with only the sound of your own voice.”

That Cloud only looked away—that Cloud didn’t even scowl at him for that—scared Zack more than anything.

“You’re telling me this was the only place you could find, on the whole planet?” Zack pushed. “Like you couldn’t have had a whole lodge to yourself an hour or two out from Icicle Inn?”

Cloud took a step back. “It works for me.” 

“What do your friends do that’s so bad? What’d they do to make you shut them out like this?”

Cloud’s teeth ground together, clenching back a look of shame, but Zack had meant the words as they were, without complications: if Tifa and the rest had done anything to deserve this, he’d march down the mountain right then to make them sick with regret.

“They…” Cloud started.

The silence stretched, filling the night.

Zack began to think that maybe this was it, that Cloud would give no more, but then he sighed, painful, weary with years and years, and said, miserably, “They always want to take care of me.

“They try to take care of me…They try to help me figure my shit out…” He gestured like he was fighting with someone, talking to an angry audience, defending against unknown shapes. “They want me to feel happy…and I just want to…I don’t know how to handle…!”

Zack reached out and touched his back. To his relief, Cloud sagged against him.

“You’re okay,” Zack said, quietly.

Cloud shook his head, and without warning he sat down on the steps, elbows on his knees and forehead buried in his hands. Slowly, Zack sank down onto the step below, aching at the very sight of him.

“I can’t figure out my shit,” Cloud said. “They keep trying to help…and nothing ever works, but they still try…everyone’s always so goddamn worried about me. They feel like they’re not allowed to give up. And I can’t hide it. Do you get that? Whatever I do, I can’t make them stop.” His fingers threaded into his hair, grasped it tight. “They can always just tell.”

Good, Zack thought, even as Cloud’s pain cleaved him down to the bone. Good, that someone was always watching; that Cloud could not hide, even though Zack could imagine the effort Cloud must have spent trying. Good job, Tifa. Good job, Barret. Zack was so wicked grateful that they had not bought Cloud’s act; that Cloud’s suffering had never had the chance to lie invisible.

“I don’t want to be anyone’s responsibility!” Cloud sat upright now, eyes heated with familiar anger. “I can’t be fixed—I’m just work, and work, and more work. I can’t be anything but a problem.”

Zack couldn’t help but interrupt. “That’s not true.”

“I don’t pick up calls because I don’t have anything good to say,” Cloud said, staring straight ahead, gripping his knees. “I miss birthdays and graduations because I’m holed up forgetting what day it is. I get better for a little while and they make a huge deal out of it and get so goddamn hopeful and tell me how proud they are, and then I get bad again. I disappear for weeks at a time and they start thinking I’ve offed myself.”

Zack’s heart twisted in on itself, turning near to ash.

“S—”

His mouth couldn’t even form the word sunshine.

“I’m not that bad, anymore,” Cloud mumbled. “It’s easier when there’s no one…you know. Expecting anything.”

Zack’s eyes fell to the side, where Fenrir was standing still in the hallway, watching them in the dark. Those yellow, gleaming eyes. They blinked at him exactly once.

“Did you?” Zack croaked. “Try?”

In the dark it was hard to tell if Cloud was staring at him or through him.

“It’s so fucking exhausting,” Cloud said, “making other people sad.”

It was like the night had crawled inside through a crack under the door, and now surrounded them in its entirety, the drawstring purse drawn in all the way. No candles interrupted the slow, furious sound of Cloud’s breathing, of Zack poised a step below, tethered in heartbreak for Cloud—proud Cloud, lost Cloud, Cloud huddled in the dark in his own home, small and baring teeth. Like an animal in the jaws of a trap, wounded and confused.

“Cloud.”

Cloud shook his head, looking down at the floor. “I just don’t want to do it anymore.”

“You still are,” Zack said. “You’re just hiding where you can’t see it.”

That made Cloud quiet. Zack felt shitty, having served that to him as guilt.

“Hey.” Zack reached, and finally settled with a hand on Cloud’s ankle. “You’re okay, baby. You don’t need—”

“What did you just say?”

Zack froze.

“Baby? Baby?”

The word reached around them both and slapped Zack right in the face.

Cloud jerked his ankle out of Zack’s grasp. “Why the fuck would you say that?”

Zack said, honestly, “I don’t know.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“I’m sorry,” Zack mumbled, horrified.

 He reached out again, as if touching Cloud would fix it, but remembered in time to draw his hands back and instead lock them behind his neck as he ducked his head. “Sorry, Cloud.”

Cloud inhaled shakily, like Zack had just shoved him to an edge and watched him teeter. “You can’t just…”

“I know.” Zack swallowed. “My bad.”

Cloud rubbed his hands over his face. Even in the gloom, Zack could see them trembling.

“I just care about you,” Zack said, throat feeling swollen. “Cloud…if someone ever hurt you, I…If you hurt you…!”

Cloud didn’t answer, but turned his head aside, expression hidden in shadow.

Which felt like an answer unto itself. It was beyond him, then; he didn’t have a say in what he did next, and so he was not remorseful as he pulled Cloud in against his chest.

Cloud fell against him, heavily, and did not push away.

Zack held Cloud tightly, and he held Cloud for his own sanity as much as Cloud’s—to prove to himself that Cloud was there, and could be held at all, and had not crossed over to the place that Zack now dreaded more than he was willing to say. He breathed Cloud in and listened to his heartbeat, so loud, this close and in this ringing silence: like a peal of thunder, like a chorus of drums; like a benediction he had not earned.

“What’s so bad about it?” Zack croaked. “Being cared for?”

Cloud shuddered, then pulled away, but by the grace of every god he did not go far, but hovered, just breaths away, still leaning over him on that little step. He looked down at his hands. “I hate it. I just do.”

“Do you really?”

Cloud’s shoulders tensed. “Yes. It’s the worst.”

“Even when it’s me?”

Zack watched, with a tight, satisfied curl in his gut, as Cloud’s spine flinched straighter.

“Cloud?”

Cloud didn’t look at him. His hand curled so tight around his own thigh Zack wondered if his strength would split the cloth.

“Is it so bad?” Zack coaxed. “When I take care of you?”

“Would kind of love not to be having this conversation, yeah,” Cloud said, hoarsely.

Zack gave him a small, sad smile.

Cloud looked down at his nails, biting into his legs. “It’s not the same.”

“Why not?”

Cloud paused, and then said, his voice very low, “Selfishness, I guess.”

The curl in Zack’s gut blossomed with heat.

Selfish.

For him.

“Cool.”

Cloud’s head snapped up. “Cool? Zack, that’s shit.”

“Oh, no.” Zack shook his head, pointing a finger at Cloud. “We’re not doing this again.” Cloud looked at him, bemused, but Zack kept shaking. “No more guilt. Nope. No thank you.”

“Zack,” Cloud said, not as exasperated as he could be. “It’s wrong.”

Zack scoffed. “To like being taken care of?”

Cloud made a sound like a hiss and his grip became so tight Zack heard it score across the fabric of his jeans. “To take from people.”

How to put this. How to phrase this, so that Cloud might hear the words and trust them. Zack inhaled deeply, and steeled himself, and said, “If you love someone—if you’re worth anything and you love someone, it’s no burden to give ‘em a hand. That’s what I think anyway. And I might not know her too well, but Tifa seems like that kind of girl to me, too.”

Cloud grit his teeth. “That’s worse.”

“What’s worse?”

Venom in his voice, Cloud said, “Love that’s a job.”

The words hung heavily in the air between them.

Zack said, “Pretty good job. Best there is, maybe.”

Cloud rubbed his forehead and then laughed, something sad and weary to its ring. “Yeah, you would say that.” He finally looked back up at him. “All that good it’s done you, huh?”

It sort of bewildered him to be asked. “I don’t regret it.”

Cloud scowled at Zack so deeply it seemed to reach inside him and squeeze. “It cost too much.”

Maybe.

It had, maybe, cost Zack something—cost him more than he really realized it would—but it wasn’t anything he hadn’t been willing to part with.

“Wanna know a secret?” Zack said.

Cloud regarded him, as much as one could without candlelight.

Voice low, Zack said, into the quiet night that they shared with only one other: “I like it. Taking care of you. I like it so much.”

Cloud closed his eyes for a moment, those bright mako lights disappearing in the shadow of his face.

Then he said, voice broken, “Maybe try to stop.”

“Excuse me?”

“Stop it,” Cloud said. “I don’t need it.” He stood as if to leave again.

Zack sat still. He scratched at his cheek, feeling unable to speak. He blinked hard.

“Tough luck,” he said, huskily. “I’ve cared about you dead and alive. No end in sight.” I don’t know how to stop.

Under his breath, Cloud muttered, “Of course you’d be part of the problem.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Means you should turn around and go, Zack.”

Zack surged to his feet, feeling his heart ricochet with a kind of anger that was sick with longing. He swallowed it down in a way he was used to, in a way that burned and hurt and felt right all the same, like he was doing something good, turning the other cheek. And the other, and the other.

Cloud exhaled. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, turning facing away. “Just…” He shook his head. “It doesn’t turn out well. When people love me.”

Zack leaned in, wrapping a hand around the railing. “Cloud—”

“I make people feel bad if I’m there. I make people feel bad if I’m not.” He said it dully, as if resigned. “Best thing for everyone is to just forget.”

Zack shook his head, wordless. It felt like drowning, hearing these things. Like Cloud was dragging him down under the surface, lightless, with no air. Places that did not understand the love Cloud commanded.

“Forget? Cloud, trust me. I was only in Edge for two days, but it was obvious. No one’s forgotten you.”

Cloud looked away. “You don’t get it,” he said. “You weren’t around, before. It’s better this way.”

Zack bit his lip and struggled for the right words.

“See?” said Cloud, and his voice was so soft. “Now I’m doing it to you.”

Standing there in the dark, for a moment Zack felt almost as trapped as Cloud: stuck between a rock and a hard place, no space to breathe in sight.

Zack cleared his throat. “So that’s it?”

Cloud looked up, if only slightly.

“You’re just going to be here forever? Alone?”

“With—”

“With Fenrir and your bees. Until they die. Missing every one of your friends’ birthdays—until when? Until your friends start to die, too?”

Cloud flinched as if hit.

The storm rose in a bellow outside, and Zack felt it in his chest. “What’s the plan, Cloud? How long can you really hide for?”

“I’m not hid—”

“Sunshine.” Zack’s voice hurt with anguish. “How the hell are you going to get better if you’re here all alone?”

Cloud did not shout at him. Cloud looked down, and toed the wooden step. Zack wanted to hold him again.

“Maybe I’m not going to get better,” Cloud said.

“Yeah,” said Zack. “Maybe not.”

Cloud crossed his arms again, as if embarrassed. The house seemed to press in again, the walls narrowing around them.

“Not like this,” Zack added.

Cloud whispered, “I can’t go back.”

“You miss them,” Zack said, because it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Yeah,” Cloud said. His voice sounded broken. “A lot.”

“They miss you too.”

Cloud shook his head. He wouldn’t look at Zack.

Zack shook his head, insistently. “They just want to see you, they don’t care about any of this. They’d be so happy to hear from you.”

“No, are you kidding me?” Cloud laughed, actually, rubbing angrily at his eyes. “They’re furious with me. Tifa will pretend she’s not, but that means she’s even more angry than everyone else.”

That didn’t seem right at all. “I don’t think so,” Zack said. “Frustrated, maybe? They’re just worried about you, I’m sure they’d be—”

Cloud said, “Zack, I lied to them.”

Zack went quiet.

“They never would have left me here on my own, you know?” Old shame was writ in the wrinkles of Cloud’s scowl. “So I told them this was just a holiday home. That I’d only be here sometimes. ”

Fuck. “You didn’t tell them about how winter gets here.”

“They found out, from the villagers,” Cloud said. “But I told them I’d come back, before…before I got snowed in.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Tifa wanted to believe me,” Cloud muttered, to his hands, gripping the bannister as well. “Barret didn’t, not for a second.”

Zack sat there, imagining how that must have felt. Waiting for Cloud to come home.

“So that’s it, okay?” Cloud said, something oddly pleading at the edge. “It’s my fault.”

Zack took a moment to reorient himself. It was too much for anyone to think about, the lengths Cloud would go to to persecute himself.

“They still love you,” Zack said, finally. “I know that much. Maybe they’re gonna be angry for a while, but they miss you like hell, sunshine. They’re ready to forgive you.”

Cloud looked away, and Zack reached up, gently pried his fingers apart where the knuckles had gone white.

“Don’t you remember those gifts from Tifa? Do you really think she’d send all that if she hated you?”

“It was food,” Cloud said, “so that we didn’t starve.”

“And the DVDs, and a letter, and all your favourite snacks—?”

“That’s even worse. She has to be nice to me, even when I’m a fucking asshole. ‘Cause I’m so fragile.” Cloud filled the word with enough scorn to cut through metal.

“Cloud,” Zack said, and maybe he finally said it with enough anguish, because Cloud looked back at him, guilty in spades. “Come on,” Zack said, wheedling. “I’m not saying you leave everything and move back in with them. But fuck, it’s not all lost, is it?” The expression on Cloud’s face was too much. Zack hauled himself up onto the step beside Cloud, even if it barely was broad enough for the both of them. Squeezed together, shoulder to shoulder, Zack said, “They haven’t given up on you. I’m not giving up on you. Don’t give up on them.”

“I haven’t,” Cloud said, voice thin. “I just don’t know how.”

Zack dug his hands deep into his pockets. “Start small,” he suggested. “A letter. Even a postcard.”

“I can’t even do that!” Hopelessness cracked Cloud’s voice. “I’m trying, and I can’t—not even one fucking word.”

“Let me help you.”

Cloud cast a look on him somewhere between withering and exhausted.

“Let me help you,” Zack repeated. There was a flare of desperation behind his heart. “I can do it.”

“You can make me write a letter?” Cloud said, unimpressed and angry for it.

“Let me try.”

Cloud stared at him for a long time, long enough that Zack thought he might need to beg, and he had absolutely no reservations about it; but then Cloud grunted and said, “How?”

Zack grinned, so relieved that he nearly felt sick.

Downstairs they went, back to the dining table where two of the candles had burnt out and another was nearly melted down to nothing. He relit the ones that could be saved, then gently placed his hands on Cloud’s shoulders, pushing him down to sit, before drawing up a chair beside him. He pulled the steno pad from before towards them.

Zack noticed, belatedly, that Fenrir was curled on the armchair again and watching them, unblinking, eyes brighter even than mako through the dark. Something terrifying lay in his gaze that Zack hadn’t seen before; he would almost say it said, Ball’s in your court.

And, Don’t mess this up.

Zack breathed in deep, then clicked a pen open and handed it to Cloud. “Tifa first? Or, I guess, you wanna start with someone easier?”

Cloud shrugged. In the candlelight, he looked like Zack had beaten him down, not lifted him up.

“Okay,” Zack said, cheerfully, and wrote Dear Tifa at the top of the page.

“Zack,” Cloud sighed. He kneaded his forehead. “I’ve been trying—”

“Trying on your own,” Zack said. “Now you got me.”

Cloud said, deeply uninspired, “Thanks.”

“C’mon. What first comes to mind when you think of Tifa?”

Cloud stared at him, half pissed-off (beautiful) and half-despairing (beautiful).

“Well, you miss her, don’t you?” Zack said. “Start with that.”

“I’m not writing that.”

“Cloud. Just do it.”

Cloud gave him a look that said, Are you kidding me?

“It’s three words.”

Cloud set the pen down and rubbed at his face. He groaned.

Zack let his hand fan out over Cloud’s left forearm. Zack was surprised at how soft his voice had gotten, like it was cradling Cloud in whole. “Try?”

“For fuck’s—” Cloud finally raised the pen, and wrote, putting so much pressure on the nib that it nearly broke through the paper I miss you. He threw the pen down. “Happy?”

“Yeah,” said Zack, relentless. “Cool. What else?”

“I don’t know!” Cloud glared at him.

“Okay. Then write it again.”

“Write what?”

“That you miss her. Write it again.”

“Why?”

“Well, don’t you?”

They stared each other down, Zack’s hand still a warm pressure over Cloud’s arm, and the storm threw itself with some new, hysteric kind of vigour against the north wall, and Cloud groaned and wrote I miss you, right next to the first.

“Now what?” Cloud said, flushed and bitterly angry. “I still don’t have any fucking ideas.”

Zack shrugged. “If it’s still true, might as well write it again?”

“You’re so—” Cloud said, and then made a disgusted noise under his breath and leaned down, writing I miss you. I miss you. I miss you, dark and heavy, each stroke deforming the paper.  I miss you I miss all of you I don’t know what my fucking problem is. I miss you. Sorry.

Cloud was tense as a rock underneath Zack’s hand. Zack moved it to rest, carefully, on Cloud’s shoulder, where he was somehow even more tense, bearing down on the paper like he was trying to destroy it, barely breathing as the ink flowed out onto the page. Zack squeezed his shoulder and Cloud made a sound like—like maybe he wanted to bite Zack’s hand off but was too busy, or perhaps like he was dying—but he didn’t shake Zack off, so Zack stayed there, watching as the page really did tear under the fury of Cloud’s letters, and said, “Keep going,” but it wasn’t necessary, because Cloud was still writing, on and on, messy, scrambled words that barely seemed to squeeze together into sentences, dark ink and something more eking out. I miss the kids and I don’t know why you won’t leave me alone I hope you’re okay I— Zack stopped reading. Hair fell into Cloud’s face; he didn’t seem to notice it. Zack wanted to push it back for him, but instead he stepped back, watching Cloud turn the page and then keep going onto the next, like he could not stop, and Zack breathed out a sigh of relief that he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying.

It was not in Zack’s nature to be quiet but he knew when it mattered. Quietly, Zack put water on to boil. Quietly, he slipped in and out of the basement with Fenrir, who then lay comfortingly to rest at Cloud’s feet. Quietly, he made a mushroom sauce, looking over his shoulder every once in a while to check in on Cloud, and Cloud would still be writing, curled on himself, nearly stabbing the page, and Zack would turn back to the food, feeling a kind of melancholy that held hope in its spokes.

By the time he sat down with two steaming plates and pushed one towards Cloud, there was a pile of messy, wrinkled pages at Cloud’s side.

Cloud looked up, eyes watery. “Shit,” he said, hoarse. “Sorry. I didn’t realize…”

“Don’t be sorry,” Zack said. “Keep going. If you want.”

“I,” said Cloud, and then looked down, and then frowned. “I’ll just…finish up.”

“Act like I’m not even here,” Zack said, and picked up his plate to relocate to the couch.

An hour later—at least—Zack had to replace a few more candles—he was watching an old blitzball game on mute, head down on one of the arms of the sofa, when Cloud crossed in front of the television in order to rest one very neat, sealed envelope up against the mantlepiece. Then he came over and sat down at Zack’s side.

Zack turned over. “Hey.”

Cloud’s eyes looked tired, his lips chewed-up. “Thanks for cooking.”

“No problem.” Once again Zack hoped he could transmit every thread of gentleness he had within him. “Feel any better?”

Cloud crossed his arms, tucking his hands into his armpits, and pulled his feet up onto the couch. He leaned back into its embrace. “Yeah,” he said—one low, husky word that set Zack’s soul light and clear.

“Yeah?” Zack smiled at him, sideways.

“Yeah. Thank you.”

Zack hooked a foot around Cloud’s ankle. He felt giddy with it, the idea that he could help even the tiniest bit.

“You don’t ever have to be alone,” he said. “If you don’t want.” And was it too obvious? His entire self, on a platter?

Cloud hummed, which wasn’t an answer, but Zack drank down the pensive, studious look on his face all the same. Like Cloud was truly considering it. Like there was some kind of hope.

The next day the storm broke, and Fenrir was the first outside if only by a hair, followed closely behind by Zack. The sky was clear and cloudless, and the snow stretched out in unbroken waves on either side of the house, waist-high and pristine. Fenrir was almost swallowed up as he hit the drifts and sent flurries flying; Zack laughed so hard he nearly cried at the sight of it, nothing left to be seen of the dog but for his black button of a nose sticking out of the crisp snow.

Two days later, they finally finished digging a path from the back door to the woodshed.

Three days later, Zack woke to the sound—drip, drip, drip—of droplets falling outside his window. The icicles were melting.

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