Thorne., FFVII Ordinary Life, and Utena

"Fuck," he said again, and stared at the ceiling. No stains in here to look at and talk about. He didn't think he'd be able to manage much besides a few variations on what he'd already said anyway. Mmm. Mmm.

Cloud laughed above him, looking upside down like a reflection through water. Beautiful.

Sephiroth mouthed the head of his cock once more, flicked his tongue, and then moved away. Zack reached down, not sure exactly of what he planned to grab, but willing to make an effort all the same. Before he could get fist his fingers around his cock, Sephiroth grabbed his wrist and moved his hand away.

"Don't do that."

"Then don't leave me hanging." He made another grab and Sephiroth twisted his wrist a little harder than necessary. "Ow, dammit."

"Learn patience."

He put his hand down reluctantly. "Screw that."

Cloud laughed again and Sephiroth laughed a little as well, low in his throat, and that was more of a turn on than anything. It was so fucking hard to either of them to laugh sometimes, they were such still people. Sephiroth dipped his head down and breathed around him, open mouthed, before starting again.

He carefully raised his hand from his side and laid it on the crown of Sephiroth's head. When Sephiroth didn't do anything but a mild hum of approval that made his hand tremble briefly, he began stroking carefully.

Cloud's fingers combed through his hair, mimicking Zack's touches to Sephiroth. Zack reached up and found the curving slant of one collarbone. He followed it with one fingertip, tracing it all the way to the hollow of one shoulder and then returning to the base of his throat. His skin was so soft there, it felt thin, stretched.

When Sephiroth worked too hard, he blinked a lot less but had no other visible change. Nothing could be too hard after Wutai, he hadn't seen shadows under Sephiroth's eyes since. When Cloud worked too hard, he went fucking translucent or something like that, threadbare along the edges like the clothes he brought from home.

He stroked a little harder, collarbone to throat to collarbone again. Whenever Cloud blushed, it always started there and worked its way up. But he wasn't blushing now. Yet.

It was impossible to make Sephiroth blush; any attempts were always met with a deadpan expression and the silent treatment for however long Sephiroth deemed fit. The best Zack had ever managed was a repeated twitch in Sephiroth's left eye and two small patches of red high on his cheekbones, and that probably had more to do with a poorly-repressed desire for homicide. That was the underwear and desk incident; he hadn't stuck around long enough to find out if his efforts came to more fruition.

God, all of them were too pale. He wanted to just get all three of them off to a beach for a year, forget it all so they could lie on the sand and soak up the sun. Maybe after a few months they would even swim a little.

***

And then, Mikage being confused, and Mamiya just being creepy and underaged and Anthy. All for you, Flidget.

***

Today is not the worst or best day of his life. It simply is, exists as another span of time made remarkable only by the divisions that mark it as a single measure.

He dreamed of Tokiko last night. It was night but the sky was lit up anyway; it was a cool night but heat flushed his face. Tokiko was crying and there were deep shadows under her eyes, bruises on her face. But no, they’re not bruises, they’re smudges of… dirt? Ash? In the dream, he reached towards her to see, comfort her maybe, but she would not let him touch her. She falls to her knees and stares at the fire.

In the dream, he remembers being unhappy with her, unhappy for her, because he can’t tell her what she needs to know. She won’t listen to him, she doesn’t understand the words he says to her. Why can’t she just try a little harder? It’s for Mamiya’s sake, and therefore her sake that he does all this—whatever he is doing. But when he tried to tell her that, she cried harder, and ran and ran and ran away.

Mamiya stood quietly in his sister’s storm and fury, his expression serene, as his sister’s was wild. He understood why it had to be done. When Tokiko was nothing but an echo of steps, he did not try to follow her. And then Mamiya walked away from the direction she disappeared in, and put his hand in Mikage’s.

And then he woke up. Mamiya was holding his hand still, and smiling all the while.

Now he is in the bathroom, surrounded by the ordinary sensations of steam, hot water, soap, a washcloth. It does wonders to simply give his body over to these simple pleasures, he can feel the unpleasantness of the dream slipping away like smoke. The shower water swirls grey into the drain; how in the world did he get so filthy?

The door creaks on its hinges; Mamiya speaks through the steam and heat. “Sempai, I’ve left your towel on the sink for when you are finished.”

“Thank you,” he replies, a trifle uncomfortably, but it is only to the closing door. No reason to be uncomfortable. Surely the steam and shower curtain hinder visibility and it was only for a few seconds, anyway. Surely he does not feel vulnerable unclothed, surely the chill is only the result of the door opening and cool air slipping in. No reason to be uncomfortable, no reason at all.

“You are a fool,” he says out loud to himself. The sound of his voice is the same as always. He turns the water off, steps onto the bathmat. The white towel is folded neatly on the sink ledge, just about an arm’s length from the door. It smells fresh, as though it has been washed and dried in the open air—a small miracle for Mamiya to produce; he can’t actually remember the last time he did laundry. He dries himself quickly, not lingering on sensation anymore. It is just a towel, after all, and he is dallying too long.

Why is Mamiya in his home? He will need his medicine. Has he been here all night? Why does he have difficulty remembering?

Wrapping the towel around his waist, he ventures out into the bedroom. His clothes are laid out on the bed as well, folded as neatly as the towel was. They consist of his undergarments, socks, trousers, a shirt, and a belt. The trousers are white and neatly creased. The shirt is a dark blue trimmed with red, and has a high collar and cuffs. Both collar and cuffs are stiff and edged in red and white. There are gold buttons on the cuffs and a gold buckle on the white belt.

He picks up the shirt—more of a jacket, really—and holds it to himself, bemused. They seem unfamiliar, but they must be his clothes. They are his size, after all, and they are in his room. They must be his clothes.

His glasses are missing. Mamiya must know where they are, though. No need to worry.

"Sempai," a voice speaks gently from the corner, and Mikage starts guiltily, drops and picks the clothing up again.

"Sempai," Mamiya says again, and Mikage doesn't know why he expected otherwise. He can hear the soft sound of bare feet walking on thick carpet. They seem oddly heavy for someone as slight as Mamiya who has moved so quietly before, a slow and deliberate advancement that stops directly behind him.

Tokiko would not like Mamiya to be without his slippers, he thinks, and turns around.

"Yes," Mikage says. At first he doesn't know where to put his hands and then he settles for resting one on Mamiya's hip and the other on his shoulder, not-quite an embrace but still holding onto him. Mamiya stands between his hands, leaning neither away nor towards him, and smiling very slightly all the while.

He supposes it is lucky that Mamiya has removed his clothes, it spares Mikage the trouble of puzzling out the intricacies of buttons and what is the proper order for removing which articles of clothing. And yet he wishes for buttons and zippers all the same. They would be familiar things for his hands in all this unfamiliarity, even if he would not be used to undoing them on another's clothing.

"Yes," he says again. Mamiya is small and smooth, and Mikage is not used to such things. He is not used to many things. If he tried, he thinks he could free Mamiya from gravity, spreading his hands in the hollows of Mamiya's hips and simply pressing gently and lifting slightly upwards to set him hovering in the air. It is foolish. Of course, it is also foolish to feel as though he expected to be held, expected a body the same size or bigger than his own to lean against.

He thinks of instruments waiting to respond to the slightest touch of a hand, he thinks of vessels waiting to sweat condensation as they fill to the brink with water. When Mamiya finally moves, it is with his mouth, a bare tremble of lips as he wets them. It is without guile or nervous intent but Mikage cannot do anything until they close again and Mamiya's eyes are closed as well.

When he finally allows himself to and no one but himself is looking, Mikage moves in stilted instinct, carefully fitting his mouth against Mamiya's, closed lips to closed lips. Smooth. He lets one hand drift up and the other down and they meet in the middle, settling on the either side of Mamiya's chest where he can just feel the smooth curve of ribs. When he has runs his fingers over Mamiya's arms and lets Mamiya touch his arms as well. They mirror each other, one going first and then the other. No one is teaching and no one is learning.

Mamiya's lips move slightly apart against his mouth and Mikage sighs; Mamiya slides his hips against Mikage's and sighs as well, a breath without inflection of either satisfaction or exasperation. Everyone breathes except for the dead.

Somehow, the bed sheets have been turned down. There is no need to lift Mamiya after all, he simply leans backwards and Mikage leans forwards. Mamiya turns his head so that one cheek rests against the blanket and opens his eyes.

"What color roses do you like, really?"

"I don't know," Mikage says. "I never thought about it."

He is glad for the first time that he does not know where his glasses are. He is not sure if wearing them would be appropriate or not in such a situation.

***

And then even more sex, but I'm not pushing my luck with God today.

bang bang bang @ 03:46 a.m., Wednesday, February 25, 2004.

Thorne Shiva drabble, FF7

It does not please her to be here.

This place is far from where she used to be, and the air is too warm against her skin. The water here--- too much of it for her at once, water is a part of her art but this is not to her taste. Water has such sameness to it. It should be given contrast, given unique patterns like the crystals from her fingertips, it should broken by ice and so turned to beauty. She longs for her mountains and the purity of white snow, the light footsteps of priestesses and the ringing of the gold disks on their anklets as they walked quickly over cold stone floors.

For all she knows, her mountains are ground to sand, and the chanting words of her rituals are dusty relics among languages. For all she knows, her world is dead.

She came over the sea years ago in a sailor's pocket, clinking gently against a seashell and two golden coins. This galls her still. She came to the man-boy as the prize of a mere card game, as some vulgar trinket. As if he knew what he held, as if a goddess could be won, like some cheap amulet. She is more precious than silver or gold, rubies and diamonds are as common as sand next to her.

Luck against drowning, the man who lost her said as he pressed her into the boy's hand, luck for life.

Luck. She knew and still knows that fate is much more than that, and death is never the end. She had not intended to grant him any such gift.

Voices spoke to her when she first walked through her stone-crystal halls, bewildered as a fly finding itself caught in sap, sealed in amber. Some voices still speak to her on occasion, they tell her that mako bleeds from the veins of the Planet. Blood and stone are joined in her memory, the wet smears pooling on her altars from sacrifices. She herself does not recall ever bleeding but nor does she recall becoming stone. She knows this is not her world that she looks out upon through her red window, she is aware that somehow she travels between two worlds and somehow the stone is responsible for it.

The first boy, her sailor boy--- he called her only once.

She had not intended to grant him any such gift as life or luck. But she was lonely and centuries had passed since the Defilement when her world was destroyed. The entire sky was on fire, and her priestesses bled their lives out on the floor in mute supplication, dead from rubble, dead from panicking invaders, some choosing to end their own lives with the ritual silver knives in sacrifice for the world's salvation.

All for nothing. She remembers red swallowing the world and swallowing her, and then she awoke in this strange neither here-nor-there place. There is nothing here but a long passageway she continually walks down, because there is nowhere else to go. At one end of the passageway is a blank wall, at the other end of the passageway is a window that she may look out of.

She was lonely. His worship came to please her, and she grew accustomed to his murmured litany for protection. She began to watch him from her window, and she began to wonder at this new world she could not seem to enter. Perhaps he felt her watching, because he grew into the habit of caressing his lucky piece when his hands were idle, or before any dangerous task. She watched him in long windless calms, in storms, and climbing in the rigging of his ship, and she could almost feel his hands.

She watched. Time passed and the ocean passed as well. The day he called her, the winds were strong and the waves were high as his ship rose and fell on the crests of waves, trying to come into harbor. It was the worst storm of all so far, and the boy's panic tasted like blood and stone. He dropped from his high perch on the rigging like a falling, flailing star, and as he fell, he called and his hand clenched around her and---

The window became a door and she was free, free, tumbling outwards into the world she'd watched for so long and never touched. She tasted salt briefly as she leaped outwards and he fell inwards, and then the world was nothing but the terrified faces of sailors below, a mingling of white and blue, and the terrible beauty of ice and snow under the benediction of her hand---

No one speaks of the day the ocean froze over, least of all the young man who landed on ice instead of sinking beneath waves.

Time passes for her, perhaps more slowly than it does for the world she used to watch, perhaps more quickly. It has been long enough for her to grow into legend again, but she is tired of legend when she is so far from where she used to be. It has almost been long enough for her to forget what the outside world was like, but she clings to her memories as she walks and looks. Her boy has grown old and gone over the sea and she cannot follow him.

These days, she walks down her passageway that seems duller each time and looks out her window, but there is nothing to see. The window is getting clouded over, the sights and sounds are getting dimmer as each day goes by. One day, she's afraid that her window will be gone and there will be nothing but a blank wall there as well. Sometimes she breathes ice on the blank wall and draws pictures of her old world on the blank wall, watches them melt away, and feels her own cold tears tumble down her cheeks like diamonds, until they too are nothing.

She is lonely again.

The voices have begun to speak again, but they no longer speak to her. They say the end is coming for this world as well, and someone is coming who will play a part in this. They say he will be legend and yet not, walking in another's footsteps and other worlds. They say the time has come.

She is waiting for her next boy. She dreams of blue eyes and going home.

bang bang bang @ 08:55 a.m., Wednesday, February 11, 2004.

Thorne, FFVII, Ordinary Life chunk

">“You make things unnecessarily difficult,” Sephiroth said. He looked thoughtful. “But not entirely unpleasant. Cloud, take your pants off.”

“What?” he said—squawked—and it was gratifying at least to hear Cloud doing the same thing, if not very comforting.

“He’s not the only one,” Sephiroth said implacably, and started working on the fly of his pants. “You too. Pants are necessary, although I imagine you should also probably remove your shirt and other clothing at this time, as long as you won’t be cold.” He paused, most of the buttons free. “Laundry isn’t until Friday. You don’t have many shirts left. I would remove it now so you don’t mess it.”

Zack felt his jaw drop, managed to force it shut again, and chalked it up as a victorious accomplishment so far in an evening of victories and setbacks. For his next trick, he would master coherent speech.

“I don’t think this is going to work,” he managed.

“I do.” Sephiroth had managed to get his boots off. He almost never went barefoot in the house. "And you’re the one who usually advocates this sort of behavior, " Sephiroth added.

Cloud furrowed his brow. "Is there a different way to deal with it?"

Sephiroth left off his pants and pulled his shirt over his head. “No.”

"Oh. Okay," Cloud said, and started trying to undo the triple-knots on his own sweatpants, lips pursed in concentration.

Zack decided that he really sort of hated both of them sometimes.

Sephiroth began to clear the coffee table off, stacking all papers and books on the floor. His pants sagged slightly around the hips; Zack found himself watching the pale inch of skin over the hipbone in spite of himself. He twisted to watch Cloud, who had managed to remove his shirt but was still fiddling with his waistband, sucking air over his teeth in irritation and shivering.

He hated using the word, but—beautiful man, beautiful boy, and both of them wielding it like a weapon. Conniving fuckers, the both of them. He sighed, stood, and took his pants and boxers off.

Once cleared, Sephiroth motioned him to the coffee table. “We’re going to do this by process of elimination,” he said. “Sit down.”

“It’s dusty,” he said, and sat. “It’s cold.”

“You complain a lot for someone who’s about to receive oral sex,” Sephiroth replied flatly, before planting one hand flat on his breastbone and shoving hard.

Caught off balance, Zack leaned backwards onto the table, keeping his weight on his elbows, and looked up into Cloud’s upside down face. “Hi.”

“Hi.” Cloud smiled, shifted his weight, and sat cross-legged at the end of the table. “Here, why don’t you—Yeah, like that.”

He pulled until Zack’s head was resting in his lap, he didn’t seem to have gotten his pants off after all. Zack let the rest of his body rest on the table, knees bent and spread apart, feet planted flat on the ground. Sephiroth stood over them with a considering look on his face, before crouching at the foot of the table. His hands were warmer than usual.

“That’s going to be hell on your neck,” Zack commented, craning his neck to try and look down. “Not to mention your jaw.”

"I won't be long enough for that," Sephiroth said. "It's not the sole procedure."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Zack asked suspiciously.

Cloud jogged one knee against the side of his cheek. “Be quiet.”

“I'm just being thoughtful." He settled his head more comfortably in Cloud's lap and tapped one foot against the carpet. Sephiroth's breath was quite warm as well. "Don't need him keeling over.”

“As I recall,” Sephiroth said, raising one eyebrow, “the underwater training maneuvers showed that I was capable of holding my breath for a minute and forty two seconds longer than you. I don’t think I’m the one who needs to worry.”

"Did you take sessions on dislocating your-- oh fuck—"

Sephiroth lifted his mouth away. "Yes."

Quite a lot of Sephiroth was surprisingly warm.

(sex that I'm not in the mood yet to write)

Cloud's fingers combed through his hair, mimicking Zack's touches to Sephiroth. Zack reached up and found the curving slant of one collarbone. He followed it with one fingertip, tracing it all the way to the hollow of one shoulder and then returning to the base of his throat. His skin was so soft there, it felt thin, stretched.

When Sephiroth worked too hard, he blinked a lot less but had no other visible change. Nothing could be too hard after Wutai, he hadn't seen shadows under Sephiroth's eyes since. When Cloud worked too hard, his skin always seemed to go translucent with the effort, his whole demeanor slightly threadbare along the edges like the clothes he brought from home.

He stroked a little harder, collarbone to throat to collarbone again. Whenever Cloud blushed, it always started there and worked its way up. But he wasn't blushing now. It was difficult to make Sephiroth blush; the best Zack had ever managed were two patches of red high on Sephiroth's cheekbones, and that probably had more to do with a poorly-repressed desire for homicide. That was the underwear and desk incident; he hadn't stuck around long enough to find out if his efforts came to more fruition.

God, all of them were too pale. He wanted to just spirit all three of them off to a beach for a year, forget it all so they could lie on the sand and soak up the sun. Maybe after a few months they would even swim a little.

bang bang bang @ 03:15 p.m., Sunday, January 4, 2004.

Thorne, FFVIII, Betting on Trains

This is the way you leave me: without warmth in your hands, without much ceremony, and without promises of writing, for you will not be gone long enough for the letters to reach me before you return.

As most travelers do, you have forgotten some small yet indispensable article—this time your gloves, last time your favorite pen to mark passages in the book you would read---and so I put mine into your protesting hands and tuck them more firmly into your pockets. Perhaps it is not entirely appropriate to say you have forgotten them, because you do not tend to make these sort of mistakes; no doubt the blame should lay with the weather, for it has grown cold since last night. Still, you have made this trip often enough to know better, and so that is what I will not tell you, because it sounds pedantic and awkward. Instead, I covertly hold your hand and pretend that it wasn’t my purpose all along.

Just a week, you tell me with your chin tucked against the upturned collar of your coat. Because this is a personal leave, you are allowed to wear civilian clothing, a new privilege gained from the past year. Practical always, you chose something that goes with your Garden clothing anyway, navy blue but with gilt buttons to soothe the severity. I was with you when you bought it, I am with you in most cases but never when you wear this coat. The thick wool does not seem right for Balamb. Your Deling coat, I call it, put your Deling coat on, and you never know if I am joking or not.

I don’t know either.

Your privilege in dressing is not the only gain; these two years past I have been allowed to accompany you unsupervised to the Balamb train station. There is not much extraordinary to this, nothing that will cause a stir when I file the memo on return: SeeD (Xu’s last name here) leaves Garden at 0500 hours with SeeD Trepe for destination of Balamb train station in Garden rental vehicle #5, returns without SeeD Trepe at 0730 hours.

This year you are SeeD and officially able to travel alone on the train. This will be mentioned on the memo. I will not mention that I know from your increasing silence when to put my request for a vehicle in, and to set my alarm early so we may drive down in the grey hours of pre-dawn, your head sleeping against the window and I steering carefully to avoid the bumps.

Just a week. Who are these people to you, this man and woman who can claim one out of the fifty-two weeks in a year of your time? You came to Garden at the age of ten and never went home for anything but this, not birthday or holiday or your one bout with pneumonia.

It didn’t work out, you have said. They’re not really my family, you have said. You are not the only one in such a situation and you will not be the last. You have told me how you dislike these visits to a place that is not home, said it in the twist of your hands and the worry of teeth on your lower lip. If anything, I can tell it from the fact you lean against me, already tired from the ride you have not yet taken.

This knowledge hangs between us like the cloud of our breath in the cold air. It makes things awkward. We are obliged to try and appreciate these moments alone from everyone but the sleepy trainmaster; instead, we wait guiltily with our awareness of each other’s discomfort and because we do not know how to solve it, we secretly want this wait to be over. Even if that takes you sooner from me… well, you will be back in a week.

What do you do when you travel alone on the train? How do you pass your time? You have your book and pen, your sheaf of papers to study. Did you ever bring your recent tests home to these people, did you show them your instructors’ approving comments on the margins, preserved bits of praise in regulation red ink? Surprisingly you did not pack your new SeeD uniform, perhaps you don’t wish to show them how far you have gone beyond them. Do you have your own room? Do you find it strange to wake in the morning without someone else breathing in the bed, without me?

There are so many things I mean to ask you but I never dare, and then I never remember them until we are here again, waiting on the train station platform.

But maybe I will never ask you these questions and they are simply never meant to be. More optimistically, maybe this will be the trip that makes you decide not to take any more trips, and we will not wait here any more. I am inclined to doubt this though.

I have never traveled with you all the way to your destination, although last year I could have, should have. They know that you were one of the ones who did not need a chaperone and they winked this exception by. I know that you have never needed a chaperone, but I am in love enough with you to think that perhaps you need me.

You might laugh at my foolishness, but it and my gloves are all I have to offer for you to carry away.

Listen to me, I want to say to you. Listen. This is what we are going to do.

This is what we are going to do. Things will begin as they usually do, for we are SeeD and we live by regulation and rule. As much as they fight it, children depend on routine. Perhaps Garden knew this from the beginning, because from the moment we pledge our lives they steep us in at as long as we are learning and growing in those gilt hallways, only to expect us to adapt and respond to any possible situation once they have turned us loose on the world. Perhaps they are even right.

Things will begin as they usually do. We will wake early and fumble into preparation without bothering with much conversation. You will have packed your suitcase the night before and left it by the door; your clothes are draped neatly over a chair while your coat hangs more neatly yet in the closet. While you are forcing tangles out of your hair and sleep out of your eyes in the bathroom, I will be pouring tea into two (regulation) thermoses that was made on a (quite against regulation) hotplate for the drive down and for you to drink on the train.

The car will probably be cold. All the heaters in the cars make clicking noises as they begin to work, and you will fall asleep in stages all over again while we drive. It is not too far and you always tell me not to let you do this, that it’s worse having to wake again just as you truly fall asleep and we arrive, but I never wake you up and you always make faces when you yawn.

Things will remain as usual as we lock and leave the car, walking to the train station and chased by the rattle of your suitcase wheels on the cobblestones. It is at the ticket booth that things will begin to change.

It will be early yet before you have to go, for we are always punctual about such things, much as the wait is never pleasant. The old man will barely glance at my uniform or the denomination of your bills when you hand them over, but you will turn to me and wait with one hand holding them. Your head will tilt down, the corner of your mouth will tilt up and you will say, “Come with me this time.”

I will have no civilian clothes with me. The car will be due back at Garden in two hours. I will have a desk covered with paperwork stacked a foot high and all of it needed yesterday. I will technically be considered away without leave, deserting my post, committing a crime that will take me down at least ten SeeD levels.

And I will say in reply, “Of course.”

bang bang bang @ 04:30 a.m., Sunday, December 7, 2003.

Catt, FFVII, Blue Daze

(Work in progress. Beware the cuteness. The drink is actually based on my own--very recent--first.)

“It… It’s blue.”

Said blue object sat in front of him, on the polished wooden tabletop, with a couple beads of condensation rolling down its chilled sides. Cloud glanced up nervously at Zack and then back down again, poking the cool glass with a finger. He glanced up again and saw Zack grinning, waiting, arms crossed on the table and leaning forward in expectation.

“Well, go on. You said you would.”

“But…”

“No but’s about it now, Cloud.” Zack grinned, raised his own drink to his lips and took a sip. Cloud watched his friend with every ounce of “pathetic” that he could muster—out of everything Zack had to order for him, he had to choose something blue. Why couldn’t it have been something like what Zack was having now? Something that was a nice, regular shade of amber. Something normal. Something not blue.

“Very cute, kiddo. But that’s not going to work tonight.”

His face fell. “But why not?”

“Because you said you would, and I ordered and paid for that, and it’s really cute to watch you make a fuss over it.”

“I think you’ve had too much already.”

“I think you protest a little too much. Now c’mon. It’s your sixteenth, and you’re not getting any younger.” Zack paused, taking another sip as he leaned back in the seat. The amusement never left his eyes. “Or any older.”

“Hey!” Cloud looked back at the drink apprehensively, at blue-colored crystals that covered the rim of the glass. “You got it ‘cause you knew it looked funny, didn’t you.”

“Did I?”

He was highly tempted to stick his tongue out at Zack, but thought better of it and grasped the handle of the glass. He took a deep breath, raised the glass, and took a quick sip. He quickly put the glass down, eyes widening as his tastebuds announced—loudly!—that they were confused.

Zack’s grin had changed somehow, but Cloud wasn’t certain. He just knew that the drink—whatever it was—did not taste how he had imagined blue should taste.

“So, how is it? What do you think?”

“It’s… weird.”

His friend laughed, and Cloud scowled at him until he noticed the shadow looming over the table that hadn’t been there a few seconds ago.

“I’m sorry I’m late. There was a problem in the weapons development center that I had to attend to.”

“No prob, Seph, just glad you were able to make it.”

Cloud felt a nudge on his leg, but was still staring up at Sephiroth, only distantly aware that he was staring in a very unprofessional and impolite way, until suddenly the nudge became a soft kick on the shin. With a yelp he looked back at Zack, who was resting his chin on his hand and grinning at Cloud too knowingly.

“Did you already order something?” Zack asked, though he was still grinning at Cloud. Worse, Cloud thought Zack’s grin was slowly slipping into a smirk.

“Yes. They should be finished mixing it soon.” A hand descended upon his head and Cloud was distracted yet again, looking up to see Sephiroth smiling at him, one of his small smiles. “Happy birthday,” Sephiroth said, and then looked to Zack. “I’m assuming it wouldn’t be fair if I sat on his side, would it?”

“Sure wouldn’t,” Zack said, scooting over reluctantly. “I don’t think we could fit all three of us on his side of the booth, either.”

Cloud opened his mouth and shut it, and opened it again when Sephiroth said, “Not unless we were to sit him on our laps.” After Sephiroth had shifted and become comfortable, the tallest man looked at Cloud and joined in Zack’s knowing grin. “All right. I can see you’ve already had one taste.”

“Only one, fortunately. You haven’t missed the real fun.”

“Excellent. Trooper, continue the operation.”

Cloud knew better than to argue, and looked back down at his drink.

It must’ve been stronger than he realized, because he could have sworn the damn thing was grinning at him.

***

Sometime and the rest of his drink later—except for the very “dregs” so to speak, which left an intriguing blue speck that rolled around the bottom of the glass—Cloud wasn’t sure if he was intoxicated or merely very content. Sephiroth had gotten his drink—something that Cloud could have sworn was Mako, it was so green compared to his blue drink—and it was almost gone; Zack had long since finished his first glass—his was shorter than Cloud’s, and Cloud had no idea but he had the suspicion that Zack’s drink was stronger than his had been—and had since had one—two?—refills.

In any case, Cloud had begun to find it much too easy to simply stare at the other two men. They had engaged in some conversation, and while Cloud was more engaged toward the beginning, he found himself slipping out of it and not really caring, because… well… He had Sephiroth and Zack sitting right across from him. In plain view. And… they were just there. And he was there.

“Cloud?”

He blinked, and realized Sephiroth had been saying his name. Zack was trying to hide his smile behind the rim of his glass. Sephiroth himself appeared amused, and said, “Are you all right?”

“I think we might want to try to get him home.”

“But I’m fine—“ Cloud started to protest, only to watch as Sephiroth and then Zack slid out of the booth. He only reluctantly allowed Zack to pull him out of the booth and onto his feet, and even then he collided gently against the warmth of Zack’s jacket. He tried to stammer an apology but decided he liked the smell of Zack’s jacket—or just plain Zack, really, with or without the jacket—and would rather trade an apology for a short opportunity to enjoy Zack instead.

Zack’s arm came around him and it took him a moment to realize that they were moving, his feet moving—even if awkwardly—on their own, and he stumbled once or twice but they made it out onto the streets of Midgar. None of them felt like taking one of the trains and Sephiroth expressly denied Zack the option of trying to stop a taxi, but they all decided they liked the evening chill. The streets weren’t so packed that they were having too much of a problem; actually, Cloud noted that Zack had somehow managed to steer them into the back streets of Midgar, and the apartments weren’t that far away.

But then they went straight past the Soldiers’ private apartments, and Cloud was surprised when he found them going straight on to the campus and the campus barracks.

bang bang bang @ 12:33 a.m., Saturday, December 6, 2003.

Thorne, FF7 drabble and RP historical slash

He wasn’t sure what to make of the whole process, really. They treated it with such importance.

“It won’t hurt,” Zack told him in a comforting tone.

“It will hurt,” Sephiroth said in a decideably less comforting tone.

Zack gave Cloud an (entirely untrustworthy) look of intense sincerity and charm and managed to simultaneously glare at Sephiroth, although it did send him slightly cross-eyed. “It won’t hurt much. I’ll be quick.”

Sephiroth was unaffected. “You wouldn’t have used anything in preparation if I hadn’t asked, would you have?”

That was worrisome. Cloud edged slightly away from Zack. It didn’t do much good, as Sephiroth was on his other side and made a fairly immovable obstacle, but it did make him feel as though he were taking a slightly more active role in what was going to occur. “I, um. Don’t. Preparation?”

“Less painful that way,” Sephiroth said as sanguinely as any man would who wasn’t about to have things put into him. “Stop calculating all the potential escape routes. You wouldn’t make it in time, anyway before either of us caught you.”

“I don’t recall you giving me any special preparation,” Zack muttered, and then focused on Cloud again. “Seph did mine, even if he was a bastard about it. And it’ll be really cool, when I’m done with you,” he coaxed. “Just sit down and let Seph grope you or something and I’ll do it when you’re distracted.”

Sephiroth patted his back consolingly. Cloud breathed out, took one last reluctant look towards the door, and gave up. “Okay. Just... be careful. I don’t want you to miss or something.”

“Excellent!” Zack grinned. “You won’t regret it, kiddo.”

Between his gesturing fingers, the earring twinkled disarmingly, but the needle and icecube were another story altogether.

***And now, for something completely different-- Dead Poet Slash.***

Owen has (had) eyes and a voice like the deepest parts of night, the smooth velvety darkness between the stars. Not empty space, either, but a deep and deceiving richness that is more there than anything else in the sky can be.

When he says it—writes it like that—it sounds quite foolish. It is true, though.

He knew it first in Craiglockhart when he was hunched over a sheet of paper, crossing and substituting words when he realized he was choosing his corrections on the basis of how they would sound when Owen would read them aloud. His pen had stilled upon the knowledge and as the seconds ticked on, Owen finally asked him (deferentially and two shades away from timid, of course, and sounding as though he expected to be smartly clipped on the ear for insolence) if something was the matter.

Outside his window, the sky went on and on in a vastness that was suddenly both difficult and simple to accept. It was not unlike his sudden comprehension of Owen, and not unlike his sudden comprehension of himself.

It’s just true. It’s something he’s seen not just then, but again. In the park, he looked up at the sky between the branches of a tree and it was Owen, it was Owen looking down like the sky and reading corrections in poetry like the sky, and god, god, god. Healthy young men strolled past him on the path, and he neither knew nor cared who they were or what they could give the world, only that he would have wished any of them dead in an instant and Owen walking beside him in their stead. He wondered if that was that kind of thought that sent a person to hell.

It probably couldn’t be any worse than deliberately going out to kill men solely on the qualification of where they were born.

Probably.

bang bang bang @ 04:34 a.m., Friday, December 5, 2003.

Thorne, FF7, more table sex

“You, you’re hunching again. Want me to---“ He made rolling motions with his hands towards his shoulders. “It might make you feel better?”

“No.”

“He’s sulking,” Sephiroth advised from across the room. “Do it anyway.”

“I am not sulking.”

“You’re sulking.”

“If I am, it’s because I’m allowed to do so in my own damn house.”

Sephiroth gave that some thought. “I suppose that’s true. Most everything here in the room does belong to you.” He looked around. “Except the carpet, that came with the apartment, didn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And the window blinds, I think they were here first too.”

“I wish you’d shut up.”

Cloud made a short dismayed noise. Sephiroth ignored both of them and nodded. “But everything else is yours.”

“Yes! They’re mine! And it’s my fucking table!” Gesturing helplessly, Zack finally grabbed the closest thing at hand and threw it at the wall as hard as he could. Cloud ducked.

For a moment, there was nothing but silence. Vanilla ice cream soaked into the carpet and dripped off the wall. Zack stared at the mess he made, and realized that while he was still quite irritated, it had been enormously satisfying all the same.

"That was kinda neat," Cloud finally ventured, and scooted closer again. He didn't look too put out that it had been his ice cream.

"Mm," he said. "I could've done better. More noise. Maybe something that shatters." He looked around, considering. "Do you like that vase a lot?"

Sephiroth got out of the chair to move the vase firmly aside.

Cloud visibly steeled himself and put both hands on Zack’s shoulders in the same way he would have handled a grenade with a pulled pin. “I think you should say what’s making you upset.”

“Nothing.” He slouched and gazed balefully at the empty armchair.

“Zack.”

“Forget it, okay? I’m sorry. I’m just having an off-day.”

Sephiroth signaled. Cloud put some muscle into it. Zack knew when he was being outmaneuvered.

“Fine,” he said. “I’m upset you had sex on my coffee table. There. Are we all clear on this? I would have liked to be there.” He glared at his own feet, having run out of things to imagine bursting into flame. “You don’t have to stop rubbing,” he added grumpily.

“You did it on the kitchen table and I wasn’t there for that,” Sephiroth pointed out with irritating logic.

“But it’s my table. And I told you about that one right afterwards.” A thought struck him. “Is that where you got the idea from?”

Cloud coughed slightly, as though gauging how much trouble it was worth to draw attention back to himself again. “Um. I asked him to. So.”

Zack turned his head and stared until Cloud went red again. “Table fetish. I have a roommate who has a table fetish. Keep rubbing.”

“So, you’re upset for one or more of several reasons.” Sephiroth held up one hand and ticked off each point as he spoke. “First, there’s the hypothesis that you have a strong attachment to the table and don’t want it used for recreation of such sort. I think I can eliminate that because of your previous experience on the kitchen table, which is a place actually used for eating and must be regarded as even less suited. As well, you never use the coffee table except to pile your paperwork on, which, I might add, is late again.

“The other is the possibility that you feel abandoned and perhaps jealous for not having been present at the time of coitus. This one is the most likely, but it has the corollary of the fact I don’t know if you wanted to be fucked on the coffee table or to fuck one of us on the coffee table. Or, it could be a combination of these two.”

“You are,” Zack said, listening with fascinated horror, “a freak. Do you practice talking like that?”

Sephiroth held up a pacifying hand. “Are you more upset about the fact that it’s your table and you don’t wish it used for such purposes, or the fact that you yourself wanted to have sex on it?”

bang bang bang @ 02:04 a.m., Wednesday, November 12, 2003.

Thorne, FF8, XuQu, Betting on Trains

This is the way you leave me: without warmth in your hands, without much ceremony, and without promises of writing, for you will not be gone long enough for the letters to reach me before you return.

As most travelers do, you have forgotten some small yet indispensable article—this time your gloves, last time your favorite pen to mark passages in the book you would read---and so I put mine into your protesting hands and tuck them more firmly into your pockets. Perhaps it is not entirely appropriate to say you have forgotten them, because you do not tend to make these sort of mistakes; no doubt the blame should lay with the weather, for it has grown cold since last night. Still, you have made this trip often enough to know better, and so that is what I will not tell you, because it sounds pedantic and awkward. Instead, I covertly hold your hand and pretend that it wasn’t my purpose all along.

Just a week, you tell me with your chin tucked against the upturned collar of your coat. Because this is a personal leave, you are allowed to wear civilian clothing, a new privilege gained from the past year. Practical always, you chose something that goes with your Garden clothing anyway, navy blue and gilt buttons to soothe the severity. I was with you when you bought it, I am with you in most cases but never when you wear this coat. The thick wool does not seem right for Balamb. Your Deling coat, I call it, put your Deling coat on, and you never know if I am joking or not.

I don’t know either.

Your privilege in dressing is not the only gain; these two years past I have been allowed to accompany you unsupervised to the Balamb train station. There is not much extraordinary to this, nothing that will cause a stir when I file the memo on return: SeeD (Xu’s last name here) leaves Garden at 0500 hours with SeeD Trepe for destination of Balamb train station in Garden rental car #5, returns without SeeD Trepe at 0730 hours.

This year you are SeeD and officially able to travel alone on the train. This will be mentioned on the memo. I will not mention that I know from your increasing silence when to put my request for a vehicle in, and to set my alarm early so we may drive down in the grey hours of pre-dawn, your head sleeping against the window and I steering carefully to avoid the bumps.

Just a week. Who are these people to you, this man and woman who can claim one out of the fifty-two weeks in a year of your time? You came to Garden at the age of ten and never went home for anything but this, not birthday or holiday or your one bout with pneumonia.

It didn’t work out, you said. They’re not really my family, you said. You are not the only one in such a situation and you will not be the last. You have told me how you dislike these visits to a place that is not home, said it in the twist of your hands and the worry of teeth on your lower lip. If anything, I can tell it from the fact you lean against me as though already tired.

This knowledge hangs between us like the cloud of our breath in the cold air. It makes things awkward. We are obliged to try and appreciate these moments alone from everyone but the sleepy trainmaster; instead, we wait guiltily with our awareness of each other’s discomfort and because we do not know how to solve it, we secretly want this wait to be over. . Even if that takes you sooner from me... well, you will be back in a week.

What do you do when you travel alone on the train? How do you pass your time? You have your book and pen, your sheaf of papers to study. Did you ever bring your recent tests home to these people, did you show them your instructors’ approving comments on the margins, preserved bits of praise in regulation red ink? You did not pack your new SeeD uniform, perhaps you don’t wish to show them how far you have gone beyond them. Do you have your own room? Do you find it strange to wake in the morning without someone else breathing in the bed, without me?

There are so many things I mean to ask you but I never dare, and then I never remember them until we are here again, waiting on the train station platform.

I have never traveled with you all the way to your destination, although last year I could have, should have. They know that you were one of the ones who did not need a chaperone and they winked this exception by. I know that you have never needed a chaperone, but I am in love enough with you to think that perhaps you need me.

You might laugh at my foolishness, but it and my gloves are all I have to offer for you to carry away.

bang bang bang @ 02:58 a.m., Monday, November 10, 2003.

Thorne, FF7 Fear

This is situated directly after Cloud has just gone for his plunge in the lifestream after the black materia fiasco.

***

(drift)

(somewhere that is not where he can touch)

(light. sensation. heat-chill-roar-silence, color of his eyes and the lives of a thousand-thousand people. man-woman-boy-girl-child-infant dwindling down into seed and egg and then nothing but cells and particles and ether and then nothing nothing nothing at all until he is born again. he flexes against raw energy and changes so that he is the same. someone else’s hand in his.)

(please oh please and the sound of footsteps and rain. he is falling and)

(and)

(green light. flying falling the rush of no-wind against his no-face and this is. he is. falling. what surrounds is not earth rock metal water air but something that is all and he dreams that he landed and then fell and then walked to the edge of a cliff. there is a man and)

(he bleeds rain)

(water. a cloud is water and air. therefore he is both of things and yet neither because he falls not floats. gunfire stitching the air around him and a whistle of steel cutting air and cloudblood smears across the sky in red tracks red in warning red in morning sailor take warning but this is not the ocean breaking before him but a city. yes? no? maybe?)

(you will live again as a part of me)

(oh please. oh please.)

(black and white sors imanis ebony and ivory et inanis no one ever taught him how to play the piano)

(words. these are words. put them together. he is a word. he has a)

(he has a name, but no number)

(he dreams of a greenness, something blood-warm and blood-wet and all-encompassing that rocks him back and forth like a child in a womb. he can’t tell if his eyes are open or closed. it doesn’t really matter, the green is around him and inside him and when it all comes down to it, being able to see is overrated. he’s seen too much that he’s been sorry for later.)

(sound)

(there is a man who offers him his hand and)

(he lets go of identity, drifts in and out of other people’s lives. they are all here with him in this green place, he is them and they are him, it blurs in his head. he is vast, he is a slow roiling motion, he is floating, weightless, and spread-eagled. there is no direction here and he can let himself go anywhere, there is no time here and he stares-has-stared-will-stare down a tunnel that cuts through the universe, and he sees nothing and everything on the other side.)

(light)

(parts of him fall away painlessly into this wide plane of nothingness, skin-muscle-sinew-bone crumbling like dry earth smelling of dust, sunlight, sap, and he lets them go with no sense of loss. he dissolves, he is formless, and then he is born. someone touches him with gentle hands, holds him, keeps him safe from all harm.)

(sephiroth)

(this is)

(but now i’m here with you)

(this is probably love.)

(oh)

(oh yes)

Cloud knows he is dreaming of being dead. He is glad, because dreaming is the next closest thing to being.

***several scene sections later***

Midgar autumn is a long stretch of wet, grey silence, tinted black on the edges with smoke and leavened with occasional days of thin, trembling sunshine. When it rains—and it often rains--- Cloud can’t sit still. Ragged pieces of nursery rhymes and crooning-songs keep knocking together in his mind and he looks for superstitions out of the corner of his eye, sneaking up on him from behind. It’s stupid to do so, here in the city where they laugh at the old stories and he tries quite hard to keep his mountain accent from coloring his words—what few words he can afford to give away.

At night, Sephiroth’s eyes give nothing away and nothing back but the glow. They have always been that way; that’s the only thing he’s ever told Cloud. So he knows that Sephiroth has always been special. Sometimes late at night when he wakes up suddenly, he rubs his knuckles against his closed eyelids and tries to remember what the mako infusion process was like. Then he remembers that he hasn’t got mako eyes, and he doesn’t know why he thought he did in the first place. His dreams are funny like that.

There are no mirrors in the house. But he doesn’t need them. He sees himself reflected in Sephiroth’s eyes and that’s enough, even if it is like looking through a green filter. It’s enough. It has to be enough.

Sometimes he feels like he is turning invisible, because people don’t seem to see him at all. But that’s not something he’s unused to, so he just jumps aside from the people walking towards him, scoots his way into lines that don’t seem to want to open for him, tries to match everyone else during the exercises, even if he won’t get noticed for good or bad. He keeps his uniform clean and tries to remember to keep his hands out of his pockets—except, he doesn’t have pockets.

No-one looks Cloud in the eye these days, but that’s all right. He’s never been important enough for that. No one needs to see him except Sephiroth.

Sephiroth must be looking out for him. That’s good.

He wishes the rain would stop.

The room is dark, even though it is afternoon. The sky has eaten the sun. In a darkened room, things don't stay in place, they move under his hands as he toys with whatever he encounters. They shift in position when he doesn't look directly at them, but the shadows don't fool him. His hands itch, and he can't sit down. Can't sit still. Sixteen tiles to a row across the ceiling, thirty rows. Seven cracks. Four bruises on his arms and legs. Every time he steps over the threshold, he holds his breath and brushes his fingers on each side of the doorway, and doesn't like to think of what would happen if he didn't.

This is my routine, he thinks. Routines are good. These are the things he does.

For troopers, life consists of routine, and more routine. Someone in upper administration obviously believes that time and repetition will solve all problems, like water shaping and smoothing the rocks on a riverbed. Maybe they’re even right. Certainly he is improving in the drills, although he likes them less than ever. They march and march and they don’t go anywhere, ever. It’s sort of funny.

Despite the fact he is mastering the fine art of walking, his shooting skills remain just a shade above terrible; he’s just not good at fighting from a distance. Today, he went out to the firing range and when they gave him a gun, he was startled and had to hold it for several long minutes before knowing what to do. It felt as though he was expecting to be given something else. But this is not so surprising; everyone wants to use the swords, but that’s not until later, of course. It is like him, that he would get lost in a fantasy of wanting what the Soldiers carry.

When he finally was able to shoot, he didn’t even bother to aim, just pulled the trigger as quickly as he could and braced against the kick-back. There is a bruise currently developing on his ribs where he braced the butt of the gun and it slammed back and hit him. There’s definitely a shooting test for part of the Soldier Entrance Examination---no one knows why, since most Soldiers go hand to hand with swords, but that’s administration for you--- and he doesn’t know how he’ll pass it.

For some reason, he can’t panic about this anymore. All he can feel is a sense of mingled weariness and resignation, one more setback on a life that’s been nothing but a long series of difficult setbacks. But it’s just one part of the test. He can still do this.

It feels like the worst has already happened. That this knowledge would provoke relief is something he doesn’t understand but doesn’t really care to.

Tomorrow, he will attend a drill session where they will walk and salute to the uniforms of men who have the power to make grown men and half-grown boys do such foolish things. There will be five rows and six men to a row. Cloud will walk at the end of the last row, as he has always done and will always do.

Perhaps Sephiroth will watch him tomorrow.

He has been standing at the window for such a long time, that he doesn’t realize at first that there is warmth all along his back, a hand touching his hair, and someone is standing behind him. When he looks in the window, he realizes that it is Sephiroth, of course. There is probably no one else that it could ever be.

“Tell me what you’re thinking about,” the ghost of Sephiroth in the window says, and it sends a little shiver down the back of his neck. But that could just be from Sephiroth’s breath on his ear and Sephiroth’s hand scratching gently down his nape.

“I was thinking of you,” Cloud says. “I’m always thinking of you.”

And when he examines what he just said, he is surprised and a little pleased to realize this is quite true.

bang bang bang @ 04:00 a.m., Sunday, November 9, 2003.

Thorne, Utena drabble, Ruka/Mikage. 485 words

“Do you want tea?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

These are the three reasons Mikage stays with Ruka. That Ruka is the only one who knows what Mikage is talking about and does not think him insane, that Ruka seems himself reasonably sane and not inclined to cut Mikage’s throat in the night, and that Ruka is neat, almost to the point of sterility.

This last reason is important. Ruka tells him that it’s easy because he has spent so much time in a hospital, he became used to not having much and to keeping his few personal effects close by and in good order.

Mikage did not own much before and still does not own much (to say, anything), and he is not used to clutter. To have one more different thing to cope with would surely drive him over an edge he is already quite close to.

That Ruka is the only person in the world who Mikage knows even slightly does not seem like a fair reason for Mikage’s list. After all, he didn’t know Ruka back at the academy. But there is nowhere else for either of them to go, not much to do but wait for everyone else and assure each other of their sanity and existence. This is something that simply needs to be done, the same way they must eat and drink and breathe and keep lists.

They sleep in the same bed, and they touch each other at night, at first for comfort and the reassurance that someone was there, and now because they are getting used to it. Sometimes they even do this during the day. Both of them are always careful at first, not quite used to having different shapes under their hands than they are used to. Receiving pleasure without incurring any more consequence than something that can be easily washed away is also a surprise.

“I used to have glasses,” he says suddenly to Ruka.

Ruka looks up, hands curled around his cup of tea. “Yeah?”

“Yes.” This too, is a difference, but not a new one.

When Ruka puts both hands on either side of Mikage’s face, they are quite warm. This is probably from holding the tea, although perhaps Ruka’s hands are always this way. Mamiya’s hands were always quite cool. Mikage is almost certain that this never changed.

Ruka touches his thumbs and index fingers together to make two circles that he places in front of Mikage’s eyes, makeshift spectacles. Ruka peers at his work, lifts his hands away and looks again, smiling a little, but completely serious at the same time. “You know, I think you look better without them.”

“Oh,” he says, oddly pleased.

When Ruka leans back, Mikage leans forward. Ruka’s mouth is also quite warm. This sort of thing is different, but he will get over it. The only thing worse than too much change is not enough.

bang bang bang @ 04:22 a.m., Saturday, November 8, 2003.

Thorne, FF7 Ordinary Life

More with the table nookie and Zack sulking over missed opportunities.

***

He raised an eyebrow. “You seem to have a suspicious amount of knowledge about the advantages of the conference table.”

“It’s better than the coffee table.”

Zack looked over to Sephiroth and frowned. “What?”

“The coffee table.”

The coffee table. He looked over at it, with its haphazard piles of books, papers, and files. There was less dust than usual, he supposed that was the most confirming sign. "The coffee table?" he asked again, just to make sure.

He frowned at Cloud. Cloud had taken a sudden interest in the water pitcher and mumbled something monosyllabic and incomprehensible. Sephiroth calmly took the last piece of garlic bread and bit into it. “Yes.”

“You had sex on my coffee table?” He tried frowning at both of them. There was no discernible effect on Sephiroth. “When was this?”

“Mm.” Sephiroth closed his eyes. “Two weeks ago. Wednesday evening.”

“Oh.” A memory seized him. “Hey. You’re not thinking of the kitchen table, are you? Because I know I remember that one, with the jam and being late and all.”

Sephiroth opened his eyes again and frowned as well. “No, it was the coffee table.”

“Okay. Well…” he trailed off and stared unseeing at the bead of condensation slipping down the side of his beer. “Why would you do that?”

“He wanted me to.” Sephiroth used the remaining crust of bread to point at Cloud.

“You wanted Seph to fuck you on the coffee table?” he asked Cloud incredulously, switching gazes. “Why would you want that? It’s...” He gestured in a few different directions before dropping his hands back in time to avoid knocking over his beer. “Messy.”

Cloud traced a circle in the leftover sauce on his plate and then licked his finger and shrugged.

“I cleared it off first,” Sephiroth offered mildly.

There were crumbs on his lap. He brushed them off irritably. “You cleared it off before you had sex on it. That was nice of you.”

“There would have been no room otherwise,” Sephiroth said, and got up to look in the freezer. “Is there dessert?”

“In the back. Vanilla. Then what did you do?”

The slam of the freezer door and the heavy thud of the container of ice cream on the table made Cloud start. Sephiroth started scooping ice cream with mechanical precision, uniform mounds of creamy white in each bowl. There was a sexual metaphor here and he was missing it. Or a simile, he could never remember the damn difference. “I cleared the table, put him on the table, and then we had the carnal relations that you seem so agitated over.”

Cloud accepted his bowl still wordlessly, and nudged another one down to him while Sephiroth kept one for himself. When nothing more than ice cream seemed to be forthcoming, he flipped his spoon at Sephiroth. “That’s it?”

“Afterwards, I put the things back on the table.” Sephiroth kept the spoon that had been flipped at him. “It doesn’t seem very strong,” he added thoughtfully. “It creaked the whole time.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to put too much weight on it.” He looked at it again, and wondered if he should move some of the piles to the bookcase and if they had wiped the table off afterwards. “I guess.”

His coffee table. So. Okay. He wondered if it was simply more convenient or whether there really was some appeal involved, some kink he wasn’t seeing. Anyone lying on it would probably get a crick in the neck. But Cloud was shorter than he was and the table was about five feet long, so even if he was completely on top of it and not just from the waist up… He supposed it would work.

Creaking. Load bearing structures, though. Maybe he should put a warning sign there for the future, give the room a museum sort of air. Fornicate on Furniture at Own Risk. Men at Work.

After a few minutes, Sephiroth looked up. “You had sex on the kitchen table?”

“What?” He regrouped his thoughts. “Oh. Yeah.”

Folding his napkin, Sephiroth looked down. “This table?”

“Yeah.”

Sephiroth was not a breakfast person, or indeed, an any meal sort of person, especially when he was working. Otherwise, maybe he would have been there. It had been a rare sunny day in December, pale golden slants of light all over the place and he hadn’t bothered to clear it off. It had meant more laundry when he had accidentally put his elbow squarely in the raspberry jam, but Cloud hadn't been too upset about licking off most of it. He supposed he could have aimed for worse things.

They all looked down at the table. There was a long silence.

“I think I’ll eat this in the other room,” Cloud said. He picked up his bowl carefully and headed for the living room.

After another few moments, they both followed him.

The problem with having a small apartment, Zack thought with more crossness than the situation probably warranted, was that when you were having an argument, there were only so many places to argue in. Especially if you had to argue in the area that you were arguing about in the first place. Except, of course, they weren’t having an argument; they were discussing a propriety issue about personal possessions and communication issues and gross unfairness.

Cloud was sitting cross-legged on the sofa, and very carefully not looking at the coffee table in front of him. Sephiroth crossed the room to sit in one of the room’s two armchairs. Zack’s favorite armchair, to be precise. Maybe he hadn’t made this preference explicitly clear, and maybe it wasn’t that much different from the other armchair, but dammit he had to draw a line somewhere without having to resort to pissing in the corners.

“That’s my chair,” he said to Sephiroth.

Sephiroth looked down at the chair. “Yes.” He waited for a beat, then looked at Zack. “Did you want to sit in it?”

“No.” He glared in order to get his true meaning across. Sephiroth didn’t seem very perturbed by this.

“All right,” Sephiroth replied, and settled back. Zack continued to stand. An uncomfortable silence descended over the room.

After a moment, Cloud laid his spoon in the half-full bowl. The clink was loud in the silence and he squirmed under the scrutiny when Sephiroth and Zack swung their gazes apart from their staring contest to settle on him instead. “Do you. Um. Do you want to sit with me?” Cloud asked uncertainly and started edging off the couch. “Um. I can move. It’s your couch. I’ll sit on the floor.”

“No,” Zack said, in the tone he usually reserved for the squad after creating any incident in a mission that would require more paperwork than usual to explain it away. Cloud froze. “Yes. Yes, it’s my couch. You can sit there. I want you to sit there.

“Don’t move,” he added when that seemed insufficient to quail--- well, not Cloud, certainly, but Sephiroth was still looking unimpressed by the magnitude of his crime and by Zack in general. He sat down next to Cloud and tried to set the table on fire with the sheer force of his mind. Nothing happened. Typical. He switched over to staring at Sephiroth’s boots and tried the same thing.

Cloud nudged slightly closer to him and after an obvious battle of internal decisions, hesitantly poked his knee, inviting what usually turned at worst into a full out-pillow war or wrestling match and at best into.... well, a full out pillow war or wrestling match, just with less clothes. When he refused to give the normal retaliation, Cloud poked again. “You, you’re hunching again. Want me to---“ He made rolling motions with his hands towards his shoulders. “It might make you feel better?”

“No.”

“He’s sulking,” Sephiroth advised from across the room. “Do it anyway.”

“I am not sulking.”

“You’re dwelling.”

“If I am, it’s because I’m allowed to do so in my own damn house.”

Sephiroth gave that some thought. “I suppose that’s true. Most everything here in the room does belong to you.” He looked around. “Except the carpet, that came with the apartment, didn’t it?”

“Yes! And it’s my fucking table!” Gesturing helplessly, Zack finally grabbed the closest thing at hand and threw it at the wall as hard as he could.

For a moment, there was nothing but silence. Vanilla ice cream soaked into the carpet and dripped off the wall. Zack stared at the mess he made, and realized that while he was still quite irritated, it had been enormously satisfying all the same.

"That was kinda neat," Cloud finally ventured, and scooted closer. He didn't look too put out that it had been his ice cream.

"Mm," he said. "I could've done better. More noise. Maybe something that shatters." He looked around considering. "Do you like that vase a lot?"

Cloud moved the vase firmly aside.

bang bang bang @ 02:51 a.m., Tuesday, November 4, 2003.

Thorne, FFVII drabble

When he was fourteen, Cloud used to keep his secrets in a shoebox, the things that couldn’t be locked in his head, and he kept that box wedged behind a loose ceiling panel in the third floor bathroom, standing tiptoe on the sinks to reach. He knew what the other troopers would do if they found his box, thought he knew and that was good enough, bad enough, that he kept it hidden.

These were the things that Cloud had that no one else did. A discarded xerox form with a fragment of Sephiroth’s signature, a piece of green glass, a black pen that won’t write, a bottlecap, an artificial pearl earring--- things that were meaningless to everyone but Cloud, his secrets, his puzzle and no one else knew how to make the pieces fit. Or even if they fit together-- sometimes he realizes he is forgetting a little himself, but it used to make him feel better to have them anyway, solid objects to be held in the palm of his hand and carefully stroked with the pad of a finger.

It made Cloud feel better to have them, because they were solid. The first months for him were bad ones, and he drew his comfort from them. Change too often hurt him, and he liked that these secrets rarely did.

(Sephiroth and Cloud waff for Changeling, exactly 500 words.)

These are the things about Sephiroth that Cloud knows that no one else does. That he brushes his teeth with his left hand despite being right-handed, that he thinks many blankets on a bed is too indulgent but will allow Cloud to be a potential heat source. That his sheets are always black and very clean, that the size of the bed invites a sprawl but somehow they always end up tangled together...

That his eyes in the dark can still make Cloud startle, but there is never any real fear to be found in the bedroom. That his hands (fingertip to base of palm) can reach from Cloud’s forehead to the lower curve of his cheek and his hands, ungloved, have no scar but one. That his posture and the proud way he carries his height are too deeply ingrained to fall away even in the bedroom and that he bows his head only when he kisses and when his hair is being combed.

That he loves his hair being combed, almost (but not quite) more than kissing.

It makes Cloud feel even better to know these things, even if they aren’t solid objects, or perhaps because they are not. Somehow, not having to hold on to them makes all the difference. Or maybe it’s that they keep being replaced for him, given over and over. He is young enough to suppose they will never be taken away, young enough to live from day to day. And life is good.

Now he is sixteen, and he notices his box-secrets getting dustier. Cloud supposes that is all right, that this is a sort of change for the better.

bang bang bang @ 01:09 a.m., Friday, October 17, 2003.

Catt, FFVII drabble

(Zack x Cloud. Fluffy drabble. 189 words)

He turned a lock of black around his pale finger. He watched the way the dim yellow light from the bedside lamp gave the dark hair a soft sheen. Still damp, and so the hair was limp and heavier than normal.

“I dreamed about you last night.”

An idle finger turned a page; the book had nothing to do with war, or strategy. Instead, it had something to do with a story. Something fanciful. He had been surprised to see Zack with it. “Did you, now?”

“Yeah.”

“Was it a good dream?”

“Yeah.” He paused, thinking. “I don’t remember much. But your hair was wet.”

“Hmm?”

“Rain. And… and someone else was with us.” He did not say the name. He did not know if Zack would like it if he did. “We were happy.”

The book closed, and his friend tried unsuccessfully to hold back a yawn. “Think you might dream again tonight?”

He smiled as he was gathered up and held tightly, in arms that were thicker, stronger than his own. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Maybe. If you hold me just like this until I sleep.”

And Zack kissed him.

bang bang bang @ 10:53 a.m., Thursday, October 16, 2003.

Catt, Vagrant Story drabble

(Ashley x Sydney for Twig. Sorry not more cuddling, Twiggins... 379 words.)

Ashley looked up from tending the fire, brow furrowing in concern. “What…?”

Sydney remained sitting, metal arms draped across the knees. His grey eyes, normally hard as steel, seemed empty. They had been that way since Ashley had found Sydney lying alone on the cathedral’s floor. Looking back at the fire, Ashley tried not to think about the burn on his back, the Rood Inverse and the Dark itching across his skin. He thought he could feel the damned Dark writhing within his spine, so pleased to have a new vessel.

“I have to see Bardorba.”

Frustration caused the new Roodbearer’s face to harden. “I told you, Sydney. ‘Tis folly, and suicide, and I will not allow it.”

Sydney’s eyes flickered from the fire to his face, and then back again. “I see the Lady in the fire, Riot… And she bids me come.”

A twinge along his back and Ashley tried to hold back a shudder, shut his eyes, tried to ignore the sensation of nimble fingertips tapping rhythmically up his spine, along his shoulder. But when he opened his eyes again, the fire-quick fingers did not rest upon his skin, but the steel-cold edges of Sydney’s claw. He looked in surprise to see Sydney there, kneeling beside him, having moved so swiftly and silently… but even more surprising, the way the steel in the prophet’s eyes had become molten…

“Do not think I do this for my soul alone, Riot,” Sydney breathed. “If it were for mine alone, I would not go…”

“The Dark,” he said, and had to swallow to wet his parched throat, “has left your mind unbalanced, prophet…”

Sydney’s lips curled up into a smile, and it was the strangest thing Ashley had ever seen, that smile without sarcasm or sadism or anything but—-

“Perhaps, Ashley,” Sydney whispered, and it was so strange, to hear Sydney speak his name so, that he was so dumbfounded he did not realize Sydney’s lips had come against his until Sydney had bit his lower lip… and he came to find himself staring still in amazement, as Sydney stood, pulling his white cloak closer about him. His amused expression remained, and with a claw he beckoned. “Come, Riskbreaker. Do not allow me to part this world with regrets.”

bang bang bang @ 10:48 p.m., Monday, October 13, 2003.

Thorne, drabble, Utena

(This is Utena, post-series, when the're all living happily, or one hopes. I love Wakaba, couldn't give her Saionji since Touga got there first, but I wanted to do something with her. Heavy spoilers for episode 18. 446 words)

They’d never spoken much, and met alone fewer times than that. When Touga dragged him to visit Tenjou and Himemiya she was there as well, Wakiko or Wakana or something like that. She brought him coffee in a whimsical mug that looked like a sheep.

She always seemed like a nice girl, if never extraordinary.

He returned to Tenjou’s one day to pick up a book Touga lent; she answered the door and apologized, Tenjou and Himemiya had gone to pick up lunch. Would he like to wait? The garden was very nice to see and everything was blooming. Not given a chance to say no, he found himself being brought to the garden and shown every variety of flower and fauna existing. Her voice chattered on unceasingly, but the day was clear and sunny and it was difficult, even for him, to be too upset. Her name is Wakaba.

“But I’m sure you’re bored with me,” she said. “I don’t even grow them. They’re Himemiya’s.” She smiled, and beneath the smile he could see anxiety and something that already seemed to expect dismissal.

He couldn’t figure out why he tried to think of something to reassure her. Any other day he might have thought of her as a silly little chit and said as much.

But her eyes pleaded with him and he couldn’t do it.

“It’s all right.” What would Touga say? “Pretty girls like you should wear the flowers anyway.”

She clapped her hands in delight. “Now you’re teasing me! I couldn’t!”

However did he get into this? “No, here. I’ll make you something in thanks for showing me.” He reached for the first flower he could see, but she caught his wrist with her small, cool hand.

“No roses, please,” she said, and her eyes were serious and grave while her voice was not. “I don’t really like them.” She let go, smiling a little.

He pulled his hand back. “No roses.”

So he made her a crown of the flowers that were growing free: dandelions and clover, daisies and honeysuckle. It was more a lopsided oval than a circle, and a sprig of honeysuckle fell rakishly over her left ear, but her face was rapturous when he awkwardly settled it on her head. “There. Now you look like a princess.” He felt like an idiot, but her eyes shone.

“Thank you,” she told him sincerely. “It’s perfect.”

He didn’t stay long after she found the book. When he left, she waved goodbye, crown carefully held in one hand and a stray leaf was still caught in her hair. It looked right somehow.

Saionji waved back. Oddly enough, he felt lighter inside.

bang bang bang @ 11:57 p.m., Sunday, October 12, 2003.

Thorne, drabble

(This is entirely inadequate both for her and next to Catt's. But here is a Zack/Cloud drabble, with a Seph/Cloud on the way. 409 words, pushing the envelope.)

This is what he has learned in his time at Midgar so far under Zack’s tutelage: the activities that Soldiers universally engage in are to destroy things, write obscenities on anything that is not moving, have intense, messy, and extraordinary sex all night long, the likes of which he had only thought could only be found in the paperbacks they sell under the counter, and to drink coffee.

Cloud is fairly sure that all of these things feed out of each other and fluctuate accordingly in precedence. So, it is with some surprise that he walks into the kitchen and Zack is not engaged in any of these things at the moment, although there are the remnants of an all-night paperwork fest on the table.

“Hi.”

“Nngh.”

Despite what he must have needed for the all-nighter, Zack is only speaking in pre-coffee morning language at this point in the morning. It appears to be one that is made up solely of grunts and pointing and the occasional eloquent stare. This isn’t the unusual thing.

There is a mug on the table with coffee in it. Next to it is a blue and white bowl of sugar, a spoon, and a milk carton.

The mug is untouched. This is the unusual thing.

“Zack?”

Zack focuses his eyes valiantly and manages to push the mug away. “Nn.” He tries again. “Nn. No. Milk.”

Cloud picks up the carton, shakes it. “I think there’s some.” He carefully doctors the coffee with sugar and turns back to the milk. He pours it out; only a dribble, just enough for one--- oh. The dose made properly, he waves it under Zack’s face. “C’mon.”

Zack makes a grab for Cloud’s wrist, misses by six inches, and then tries again more successfully. “No. Saved. Yours.” His message being delivered, he slides forward until his head rests against the table. “Fuckit. Bed.”

Cloud watches Zack go (and he only makes two wrong turns on his way back to the bedroom) before examining his gift. The coffee mug is warm in his hands, a good smell that he’s gotten used to. The milk tempers the bitterness and colors it so that it just the shade of the wood where Zack’s head was until recently resting. Very quietly, he puts it down and sets off determinedly towards the bedroom to exercise his knowldge in another universal activity.

He is fifteen and he knows true love's sacrifice when he sees it.

bang bang bang @ 03:14 a.m., Sunday, October 12, 2003.

Catt, drabble for Thorne, FFVII

(Because I promised. Because I wanted to try my hand at a drabble. Because a certain soulbond has been in the mood for kink. But mostly because it's for Thorne-sama. 138 words.)

The scarf slid easily over his skin. He thought it was silk, but he had never encountered much silk in Nibelheim, so he wasn’t certain. But it looked pretty, with all sorts of golden threads woven in a pattern of some sort. If he weren’t paying so much attention to the hands tying the scarf around his wrists, he’d probably be able to make out the pattern better.

“Your hands are cold.”

A kiss on his cheek, before he’s blinded by another scarf of silk. “They’ll be warmer soon.”

“How soon? And what are we doing?”

“This,” says Zack from behind him, “is what we call an exercise in sensory perception.”

“But I can’t really do much if my hands are tied up,” he says, and the oldest man laughs in response.

“That’s exactly how we want it.”

bang bang bang @ 01:21 a.m., Sunday, October 12, 2003.

Thorne, drabble

(Another drabble, this one for Twig. She wanted Mike and Gabe interaction, the angels form her original Corduroy Rose universe. I love all her angels, so I threw Raph and Cass in as well. 379 words)

“I don’t believe it.”

“Doesn’t matter. Pay up.”

Raphael was looking terribly put out, due mostly to the fact that the vast majority of his wallet’s content was now making a new home in Cassiel’s pocket. “I can’t believe it. How did you do it?”

Cassiel smiled. “Secret.”

“No, really.”

Cassiel sighed. “Fine. Ariel suggested it, actually. He said if I just set up the right circumstances, they would get along. And you must admit, they haven’t broken anything in the last six hours.”

“Except that table.”

“That was an accident. They got over-enthusiastic, and I never liked it anyway.”

“Well.” Raphael peered into the living room again. “Well, it’s also the whole... Michael. Doing that. With Gabriel.” His tone suggested that whatever Michael was doing, he could also do it. And better.

“Gabriel made more of a fuss about it. Felt it was beneath his dignity, but now he’s got the swing of it.”

Their wingtips brushed as they both watched the room’s other two occupants. In the room, the sound of heavy breathing, rhythmic thumping, and music continued.

“I thought Ariel and Begnini were the only ones who enjoyed this sort of thing.” Raphael stared upwards thoughtfully, noting the shirt that had been flung on the ceiling fan.

Cassiel shrugged. “Whatever does it for you. Ariel told me the other day that Yuri and Azrael even tried it once. But they thought it shouldn’t be a permanent thing.”

Raphael nodded absently. “They’re sweating quite a lot.”

“Yes.” Cassiel tapped his fingers against the doorjamb. “It’s got some appeal, burns calories like you wouldn’t believe.” He gave Raphael a speculative look. “When they’re done, do you think you’d…”

“Me?” Raphael crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re insane.”

“Suit yourself.” Inside the room, the music rose to a frenzied climax, as did the motion and breathing of the other two angels. Raphael looked tactfully away as they collapsed. Inside the room, an electronic voice spoke.

“Video unlocked. Save data?”

Raphael sighed. “Just once. And you’re not to tell anyone.”

Cassiel inspected his fingernails. “I really am going to be sorry when Ariel takes the dance dance revolution pads back. Perhaps I should just buy some of my own for when they visit.” He stretched. “Let’s go, then.”

bang bang bang @ 08:17 p.m., Friday, October 10, 2003.

Thorne, drabble for Changeling

"Changeling asked for Laguna and chocolate syrup. 163 words.)

“Kiros says there’ll be someone in tomorrow to paint over the ceiling.”

“You liked most of the dinner, right?”

“He also said this would cost two thousand five hundred gil to fix.”

“I thought the salad was good, maybe I could have given the steaks about a minute less.”

“He also told me your life is forfeit if you ever touch matches again.”

He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “Well, it didn’t look that flammable.”

The smell of scorched liquor and bananas was still thick in the air, despite the open window. Squall shook his head. “Laguna,” he said not unkindly, “next time when you’re doing a romantic dinner, you can just skip the bananas foster.” He relented a little. “I liked everything up until the point the room caught fire.”

“There’s still ice cream in the freezer,” Laguna said hopefully. “We can do sundaes.”

“Sugar junkie.” Squall tapped his lower lip thoughtfully. “All right. Get the chocolate syrup.”

bang bang bang @ 06:29 p.m., Friday, October 10, 2003.