Work Text:
Most of the clientele that comes into Seventh Heaven sucks. Cloud assumes that’s probably the case for most bars. It’s alright, though. He can deal. The money is good, enough to pay the rent and leave him with the ability to buy himself some takeout or something every once in a while, the hours aren't too terrible, and he gets to work a fair amount of his shifts with Tifa. All in all, it’s a fine job to work while he’s in school, and he won’t complain about it. Too much.
Besides, there are a few notable exceptions to the whole ‘shitty customers’ thing. There’s one in particular that’s especially notable. Cloud’s favorite customer is tall and tan and intimidatingly beautiful, with a chiseled profile, a mane of inky black hair that trails down the back of his neck and onto his shoulders, and startlingly bright blue eyes. He could be on the cover of a magazine. He’s always smiling, and it’s a grin that warms Cloud as if it’s the glow of the sun even in the dark of night.
He comes in every single night that Cloud works, walking through the door at 7:03 pm like clockwork and hanging out until at least midnight. He always takes the same seat at the bar, and he always makes light and playful conversation with Cloud throughout his shift. He orders a few of the same beer and he tips generously, and something warm always flutters in Cloud’s chest when he sees him walking in.
His presence makes Cloud's job a lot better.
Cloud looks forward to seeing him, probably more than he should.
“Y’know, it’s crazy that I see you every day and I don’t even know your name,” Cloud’s favorite customer says to him one night, a few months into him working there. It’s something that has crossed Cloud’s mind before. He would love to get to know him better, but he doesn’t want to push, and the guy never volunteers too much about himself. Until now, it seems. “I’m Zack.”
Zack.
It settles comfortably within him, like it’s intimately familiar in a way that he can’t explain.
It just feels. Right.
That’s sort of silly, though, and a bit unreasonable. Cloud doesn’t linger on it.
“Now share,” Zack snaps him out of his pondering, and he’s grinning wide and sharp. It’s beautiful. He’s so charming, and it doesn’t even seem like he’s trying to be. It’s just natural. Cloud envies the fact that he isn’t the only recipient of this behavior, he’s sure. “It’s only fair.”
Cloud smiles back, despite himself. He can’t help it. It’s infectious.
“Cloud,” he answers.
“Cloud,” Zack echoes, confidently. It flows out of his mouth.
Like he had already known.
Cloud tries to pick at him occasionally, tries to gather more information from the man about himself. He doesn’t know much beyond his name, after all.
“Surely you have better things to do than to come here every day,” he’ll say every so often.
Zack always just laughs, loud and boisterous, and teases, “Are you trying to get rid of me?”
Cloud really isn’t.
He likes him, much much more than he should to be someone he’s only ever met at work.
Of all the people that come in here, Zack is the one that he’s trying to get rid of the least.
Cloud always gives him a cheeky grin and says, “Of course I’m not. You tip too well.”
Zack will put a hand dramatically to his heart and say something along the lines of, “You wound me.”
Then he’ll give him a wink and order another beer, and it’s horribly charming.
Cloud learns over time that Zack is twenty-four and he works some boring nine-to-five somewhere in Sector Eight. He wasn’t born in the city, but he’s been here for a few years now, and he likes it so far.
Cloud never gets any further, though.
Never far enough to… to get his number, or anything like that.
For all his endless outgoing behavior, the other man seems to be quite reserved in regards to his personal life.
Zack probably isn’t even into guys, anyway.
One evening in late September, Tifa’s girlfriend, Aerith, stops by the bar. Cloud gives her a wave when he spots her, takes a glance at the digital screen that informs him of the time, and then blinks at the woman before him.
Aerith is not only a florist but also the proud owner of her own shop where she makes bouquets and arrangements for all sorts of occasions. For the most part, she makes her own hours. Sometimes, she’ll stop by on her way home - especially when Tifa is working, because she’s a hopeless romantic and she always wants to take a few minutes to see her, and it's not like the bar is really out of the way. She's never shown up this late before, though, and Cloud doesn't fail to notice that.
“Long day?” He asks as Aerith settles onto a barstool, pushing long strands of curly brown hair over her shoulders to rest against her back.
She gives him a tired look, one that’s quickly replaced with a playful grin as she pulls her fingers free of the pockets of her thick red coat and starts drumming them on the countertop of the bar.
“You have no idea,” she tells him happily. “There’s a wedding this weekend. It’s very big and they want a lot of flowers.”
“I’m sure you’ll do great,” Cloud assures her.
He’s sure of it, too. Aerith loves what she does, and she's one of the most passionate people that he's ever met. It would be impossible for her to fail, even when she’s visibly exhausted.
Aerith’s grin dims into a smaller, more genuine smile.
"Thanks, Cloud," she says. Then, "You'll have to come help me sometime."
Cloud laughs.
"Maybe if you pay me enough."
Zack will be here soon, Cloud thinks absently as he makes her drink. They’ll probably get along quite well. They have similar personalities, both excitable and outgoing and deeply kind.
Aerith is, at least.
Cloud can't exactly vouch for Zack, but - he's pretty sure.
If only he could get to know him a little better.
He thinks about it again as the door opens and Zack strolls in - at 7:03 pm, perfectly, weirdly on time.
Cloud spares him a quick glance, nods his head in acknowledgement before he goes back to the tab that he was cashing out.
When he looks at Zack again…
The other man is wide-eyed and pale in a way that Cloud has never seen him before, and his expression is doing something that Cloud really doesn’t know how to interpret.
He’s staring straight at Aerith.
When she catches his eye and tilts her head to give him a smile around the rim of her drink, Zack gets up out of his chair as if the building has caught fire. It's graceless and a bit erratic and some of the beer bottles shake a little on the countertop.
He- .. flees?
Cloud stares after him, watches his broad shoulders and the line of his back, the stride of his long legs as he walks away.
Oh.
He’s going toward the restroom, it seems, down the long and dark hall at the back of the bar.
Not towards the exit.
Cloud stares after him until he disappears from sight, his head bowed and his movements stiff as he rounds the corner, and then looks to Aerith in question.
For her part, Aerith looks just as baffled as he does.
“Do you know him?” Cloud asks.
Aerith shakes her head, her eyes wide and brow furrowed.
“I…” a puzzled frown mars her pretty face, like she’s thinking deeply about it. “I don’t think so.”
Zack is gone for a long time. So long that Cloud is beginning to think he might have climbed out the window, or found a way to open the emergency exit door without it sounding the alarm.
But, no, he’s still there.
When he comes back, Zack still looks pale and sickly. The weak smile on his face appears more like a grimace of pain.
“Are you okay?” Cloud asks him, watching as he slides back into his seat.
Zack says, “Yeah,” and his smile does reach his eyes, Cloud notes, but it looks so hopelessly sad.
It’s jarring.
Cloud watches him as he downs the rest of his beer at once, turns to look directly at Aerith, and says, “I need to talk to you.”
Aerith blinks at him.
“Me?” she asks, poking a finger into her own chest, as if Zack was actually trying to talk to someone behind her, or something.
As if there’s anyone else that he could have been indicating.
Cloud kind of gets it, though. He’s just as confused, especially when Aerith said that she didn’t know him.
Cloud likes to think that he can trust Zack. He’s been working at Seventh Heaven for almost a year now, after all, and he’s known Zack the whole time. Tifa had told him once that Zack had become a regular right at the time that Cloud started working there.
Still- it’s an offputting request.
Cloud continues to stare blatantly, watching as Zack gives her a watery smile and says-
“Yeah. Hi, Aerith.”
What the fuck.
There's a moment of stunned silence as Cloud and Aerith both reel back in blatant shock.
“Do I know you?” Aerith asks finally.
Zack shakes his head. He's still smiling, small and sad.
“No,” he answers. Then, he makes another complicated sort of face and seems to ponder it for a moment before he adds, with some hesitance, "Well. Yes and no. It’s... really complicated.”
The whole interaction was odd from the beginning, but - it’s rapidly escalated into wildly unsettling.
Cloud’s mind is racing almost too quickly for him to keep up with.
Is Zack secretly some sort of creepy stalker?
Cloud had never really pegged him as the type, but-
Then again, what even is the type? A lot of creepy stalkers probably don't look the type. Besides, it's not like Cloud actually knows Zack, regardless of how much he wishes that he did. They have no connection outside of Zack getting drinks at the bar in which Cloud works.
“How do you know my name?” Aerith is asking, when Cloud pulls himself out of his thoughts well enough to listen.
She's eyeing Zack closely and she sounds skeptical, but nowhere near as concerned as Cloud thinks she probably should be.
Absently, he worries for her safety.
“I can explain,” Zack promises, eyes big and pleading. He throws his hands up in a dramatic gesture of surrender to accompany it, like he's trying extremely hard to be convincing. Then, “Please, let me.”
His voice cracks on the words.
There’s a long moment of scrutinizing silence, before something in Aerith's expression seems to go a little softer and she says, “Okay.”
“Somewhere private?” Zack asks.
Cloud can’t help it. He shoots Zack a suspicious glare at that.
“Just, outside,” Zack clarifies quickly.
There's a patio area offering outdoor seating at the back of the bar. It's a bit secluded, but it isn't off limits, and it's on the security cameras. There is occasional traffic back there.
Maybe he just wants to trust Zack too much, but Cloud likes to think that it's a safe enough pick.
“Okay,” Aerith says again. Then she adds, all too cheerfully, "I have a knife and I will kill you if you try anything."
It actually is a little comforting.
She turns to give Cloud a reassuring smile before she gets up, and Cloud watches uncomfortably as they round the corner to make for the backdoor.
They’re gone for a while.
It’s long enough for Cloud to become more than a little concerned about them - about Aerith, mostly - but it isn’t long enough that he has time to slip away from behind the bar to go check on them.
They do return, though.
And when they do, Aerith looks like she’s been crying.
Her eyes are red-rimmed and there’s a faint shimmer of wetness on her cheeks that shines in the light, and something clenches - pained and protective - in Cloud’s chest.
His eyes widen, startled and concerned, and he goes straight for her, slams his way through the half-door that swings open to let him out from behind the counter.
“Aerith?”
She whirls around on him, and Cloud watches as her expression goes from saddened to utterly anguished.
“Oh, Cloud,” she sobs.
“What happened?” Cloud demands. “What’s-”
Aerith throws herself into his arms with enough force that he stumbles, fisting her fingers into the material of his shirt and sobbing into his shoulder, and Cloud is so baffled and worried and he can’t imagine what could have possibly resulted in this.
“Cloud, oh, Cloud, I'm so sorry.”
What?
What is she sorry for?
Cloud wraps his arms around her, tries to pet soothingly at her hair, and looks at Zack for the first time over Aerith’s shoulder, where he’s been standing awkwardly behind her.
Cloud gives him a glare, bewildered and quickly growing increasingly angry, trying to figure out what could have possibly happened, what he might have said, how much Cloud needs to kick his ass-
“What the fuck did you-”
Zack is crying, too. There are tear tracks staining his face, and his eyes are big and watery, and Cloud watches in utter bewilderment as he raises one hand to wipe at them.
Cloud has never seen Zack look anything less than utterly, entirely happy.
It had almost felt like the man wasn't even capable of experiencing any other type of emotion.
“No, no, Cloud-” Aerith starts quickly, hurrying to interrupt him. She pulls back, fixing teary green eyes on Cloud. "Zack didn’t- It's not his fault."
Cloud wants to ask how it could possibly not be, but he doesn't want to argue with her, and-
“I'll tell you everything,” Zack is promising in a wavering voice. “As soon as the bar closes.”
"I really need to be getting home," Aerith says once she seems to have calmed down a bit, to the immediate protests of both Zack and Cloud.
“It’s okay,” Aerith promises, and her smile is still raw and sad but it's genuine, and she isn’t crying anymore. She waves their concerns away, but the look that she gives each of them betrays the dismissive gesture. “I need to talk to Tifa. We’ll catch up tomorrow, okay?”
She gives Cloud a hug before she leaves, and Cloud watches, baffled, as she does the same to Zack.
Like he’s someone that she knows so well.
What kind of relationship could they possibly have, if he's someone that she doesn't know?
Had she just been misremembering?
If so, it had to be about something pretty important, which - that's possible, but. It doesn't sound right.
Zack waves a hand and encourages him to sit at the barstool next to him, after Cloud has shooed everyone out and closed up the bar.
Cloud's need to know what in the fuck is going on is at war with the mounting fear of what ever is about to be uncovered, of what ever could possibly make Aerith start apologizing to him.
Zack asks, "Does the name Shinra mean anything to you?"
Cloud sees bright, sparkling blue eyes, and bullet holes, and blood. Pouring blood. So much of it.
Rain, and water, and a muddy, bloody mess.
It's like something that's been ingrained into his memory, all of a sudden. Something that's much more real than the world around him itself.
How could he ever have forgotten Zack?
Cloud's chest feels tight, and he struggles to swallow.
It’s overwhelming. It threatens to choke him.
“Zack,” he croaks.
The force of it all hits like a slap to the face.
Memories of Zack. His superior, his friend, the kindest and most genuine person that he had ever met. The man that Cloud had always loved-
The man who gave his life to save him, in the wastes just outside of Midgar, with a fucking smile.
“Zack,” Cloud tries again, and it sounds - and feels - just as ragged and pathetic. “Zack, I’m so-”
He can’t fucking breathe.
“I’m so sorry.”
He remembers Zack’s face, remembers him taking on a - a whole fucking squadron, a whole army, by himself. Dying for him. While Cloud did nothing at all to help, utterly useless, comatose.
It's a crushing weight, a guilt that digs deep and heavy into his bones, something that he struggles to accommodate.
He’s never felt so bad before. Not in this lifetime.
And, then, Aerith-
He can't-
“Cloud.”
Cloud sobs into his hands, shakes his head, curls into himself in a desperate search for some kind of relief. He feels like he’s going to pass out.
“Cloud, baby.”
There are arms wrapping around him, tight and strong and muscular, half-dragging him out of his seat, and Zack is murmuring soothingly into his ear. There's a part of Cloud that revels in the feeling, fingers going to curl into the soft material of Zack's plain black shirt as he breathes in his scent. It's so familiar that it seeps into his bones, thick and woody.
“Cloud,” Zack coos. “Cloud, it’s okay. I would do it all again. Always. Every time.”
Cloud doesn’t know how to tell him that that doesn’t make it any better. If anything, it makes it much worse.
He doesn’t want Zack to suffer, ever. Let alone on his behalf.
He can’t believe that he already has, so much, but he knows wholeheartedly that everything that Zack has said is true.
He feels it, deep within himself, in a way that he can’t even begin to fathom.
“i don't want you to,” Cloud sobs, anguished.
“I’m sorry,” Zack responds, for some utterly baffling reason.
Cloud is dimly aware that Zack is nosing at his hair, pressing a kiss to the top of his head, murmuring more apologies in a soothing tone. Cloud relaxes into it as much as he can, seeking solace in the contact and the comfort that it provides.
Then Zack is tightening his grip, shifting to the edge of his barstool so that he can shift his position and pull, and he's lifting Cloud into his lap to share the seat that's much too small for the both of them.
Cloud couldn't care less about that. He goes easily, melts into him like the flow of water.
If absolutely nothing else, Zack is here now.
It's a long while before either of them move. Cloud's mind is reeling, his chest aching, thoughts and feelings all wildly, horribly lost. It's much easier, and frankly preferable, to tuck his face into the crook of Zack's neck and breathe in slow. To narrow his focus until the only thing that he can process is the glide of Zack's fingers, trailing up and down the bare skin of his back where they've slipped under his sweatshirt. It's an intimate gesture, one that should feel like too much. In this universe, in this version of reality, Zack is for all intents and purposes a stranger.
It isn't too much.
If anything, it isn't enough.
When Cloud finally, all too reluctantly, pulls away, he looks at the man before him and it feels as if he’s seeing him for the very first time.
And yet, he’s intimately familiar with him.
With the curve of his high cheekbones, his long nose, his straight eyebrows, his bright blue eyes, his-
That’s different.
Zack’s skin is utterly unflawed.
Cloud doesn’t process what his own hand is doing until his fingers press to Zack’s cheek. The texture of his skin isn’t what he expects, isn’t what he remembers on some subconscious level.
Zack is giving him an impossibly tender look.
“My scar,” he whispers, and Cloud blinks in shock.
Because- yeah.
That's it.
He remembers Zack with a deep scar, a crisply lined cross on the edge of his jaw. Never enough to detract from his handsome face. Nothing could be.
“That didn't happen here,” Zack tells him, and his smile is soft and sad.
It goes distant.
Cloud thinks of a tall frame, broad shoulders, bright blue eyes that match Zack’s own, and feels a whole new ache of loss and sadness.
There’s a whole life that he has barely even begun to remember.
A whole world that he’s never thought about before now.
A world he's never even known about. And Tifa was a part of it, as well as Aerith, as well as his favorite regular at the bar...
“Have you…” he starts. “Angeal?”
The name comes to him to his own surprise, entirely out of nowhere.
Who else does Cloud not even remember?
Zack shakes his head.
“I haven’t found him,” he admits.
There's a disappointed pause, the cloak of sad silence before Zack grins and adds, “But that doesn’t mean he isn’t out there! It took me way longer than I wanted to find you, after all.”
Cloud blinks.
How long has Zack known?
How long has Zack been living with this awareness?
How long has Zack been looking for him? For them?
“You-”
“I was looking for you,” Zack tells him. “I was always looking for you.”
Something goes warm in Cloud at the same time that something else goes cold.
The idea that Zack has been out here the whole time, his mind full of such awful memories. The idea that he's been looking for Cloud.
It makes him feel loved as much as it makes him feel a sense of aching guilt, of loss, of even more time that has been ripped away from them.
“Since- but- .. how long?”
Zack laughs at that, and Cloud stomach twists in dread. He isn't sure he really wants to know.
“Since I was thirteen, Cloud.”
It’s so long.
It’s such an unbelievably long, unfathomable amount of time. It tears at something in Cloud’s chest, warm and cold, sad and happy, raw and heavy and thick with emotion, and he doesn’t know how to process it.
That means, this whole time-
“You knew me,” Cloud whispers. “This whole time.”
“This whole time,” Zack confirms. He's smiling warmly at him, as if it doesn't hurt.
As long as he's been coming to Seventh Heaven. As long as Cloud has been working there, and he was always none the wiser.
It twists something inside him. It hurts him, even though Cloud tries not to take it as a betrayal.
He didn’t even know Zack at all, after all. If anyone has let the other down... it would be Cloud himself.
But, still.
The time that they could have had together.
Now that Cloud knows, he can't comprehend the idea of Zack not being the most important person in his life.
“Why didn’t you-”
Why didn't Zack tell him?
Why didn't Zack seem to want to be closer to him, to get to know him better, to integrate into his life this whole time?
Something sad flickers across Zack’s face.
“I wanted to see if you’d remember me, on your own," he says, in a careful and measured tone. "I didn't want to.. I thought it might be better, sometimes, if you didn't know."
The idea of not knowing feels like an icepick to the chest, despite the fact that Cloud had just found out
It’s anguish, another hit of that same, soul-crushing guilt, and Cloud almost can't take it. He looks away.
He can't imagine not knowing.
He can't accept that he didn't, for so long. That he's spent so much time so blissfully unaware of how much the people around him really mean. Of how much has happened, and how much they deserve.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers again.
Zack is shaking his head, looking apologetic, reaching out to squeeze his hand.
“No, I’m sorry,” he counters. “I shouldn’t have.. I should have told you, anyway."
"I'm glad you did," Cloud murmurs.
Zack squeezes his hand again at that. Something light flashes across his face, a twitch of his lips, a small and grateful smile at the reassuring words. Cloud hopes desperately that he takes them to heart.
"When I saw Aerith.." Zack says. "It was like I didn't have a choice. I… I couldn’t wait anymore. It was too much.”
Cloud thinks about Aerith, about everything that had happened, and he would be lying if he said that no part of him understood how Zack had felt. The idea of Aerith's death, something that he could have prevented, something that ripped her from the world in which they had lived much too young, too soon, just like had happened to Zack-
And to be the only one that remembered it, while sitting right next to her...
What had been the cause of it all, though?
Who had the murderer been?
So many pieces of the puzzle still feel like they're missing.
Cloud thinks of long silver hair and the color green, and his head hurts.
It's easier to let the thoughts slip away for now, even more so when he's in Zack's solid, steady, and comforting presence.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t remember you,” Cloud whispers later, as they step outside into the cold night air and he fumbles with the keys to lock the bar’s front door behind them.
“Don’t be,” Zack tells him, and his voice is firm and warm and kind. Cloud marvels at it, in spite of all the pain that he feels, all the pain and anguish that he knows Zack had to have felt for so long.
Then Zack adds, “I would wait forever for you.”
He says it like it's a blatant fact. Like he's saying that the sky is blue, or that grass in green.
Cloud's heartbeat stutters in his chest.
He turns away from the door to look up and meet Zack's eyes, shoving his keys away into his coat pocket in the process.
Zack's expression is warm, soft. He's smiling at him, his eyes bright. There's something adoring in the way that he looks at him, Cloud realizes. Like there's a part of him that's awestruck by- by Cloud. By Cloud being there.
Even after everything.
It tugs at Cloud's heart, tightens his throat, makes him sort of want to cry.
He reaches up instead, cups Zack's face in his shaky - for more than just the cold - hands and pulls him down.
Zack goes all too willingly, raising his hands to grab at Cloud's sides and dig his fingertips in, tight and purposeful and intent. Secure. Real.
Cloud isn't sure which one of them presses their lips together, Zack's warm mouth moving against his own, his larger frame enveloping him. He only knows that it's the best feeling he's ever felt.
“You’ll stay with me, right?" Cloud croaks even later.
Zack just laughs, winding an arm around Cloud's shoulders and pulling him in close so that he can press a kiss to the top of his head as they make their way down the sidewalk.
“Cloud,” he says, “I think you'd have to kill me to get me to leave.”
It's more comforting than it should be, because that will never happen.