A/N: Hey there. I know it's been a while, but here's another long one. x_x

Just to let you know, I've been reading The Catcher in the Rye, so if my writing was in stream-of-consciousness mode before, I think it has now entered stream-of-consciousness to the EXTREME. So I'm sorry if Cloud's rambling in his thoughts and recollections of memories bother you. If it's really annoying you can let me know, and I'll do my best to stop doing that in the next update, whenever I get around to that.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this update, despite the fact that it involves yet another depressing conversation. It's amazing, the things about Final Fantasy that they don't mention in the games that you can find out about with a little research - like the SOLDIER screening process. Thank you to everyone for reading and supporting. All your reviews make me smile like a kid eating double chocolate ice cream in the summer. Speaking of reviews, I see there's a nice new review button. It's trying to tell you something. What's that, review button? It wants you to click it.

I'm sorry. I'm sick and I think I might be a little woozy on cold medicine. I'll be quiet now.

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy and its characters belong to Square Enix, not me.

Chapter 9: Time

Cloud

Wasting time with Zack drove me crazy.

I guess that's what I was doing - wasting time. I wasn't supposed to be lying on my stomach on the beige carpet of our room reading the same page in some combat manual over and over again 'cause I was busy stealing glances at Zack as he sat on the floor, leaning back against the side of his bed. He chewed on his pen and narrowed his eyes at another report. There was a whole stack of Shinra paperwork sitting next to him that he had to go through in one day; he'd been putting it off for months until someone finally called him and told him that he wouldn't be seeing any action anytime soon if he didn't get it done immediately. I remember I laughed when he got that call. He begged like a little kid, and when he realized it wasn't getting him anywhere he looked so pouty that it was impossible not to laugh at him.

I called in sick for the day. I wasn't sick. I told Zack that I just didn't have anything to do. Really I just wanted to be with him, but no one had to know that.

In the morning he'd found a cheap old radio under a pile of dirty laundry. I don't know why we had it. It was this tiny boxy thing with an antenna and everything. He'd set it on the floor and switched it on to a low volume, thinking it might keep us a little entertained, but I'm pretty sure it only picked up one station and it was a news station and there was so much static that sometimes you couldn't make out what they were saying. I didn't mind, though. All I needed was Zack sitting there to keep me so distracted that I couldn't even read a damn page.

All I read was the heading. I didn't even absorb it either - it had something to do with defensive maneuvers, I think. I just kept glancing up at him again and again until I was staring at him. Both of us were out of uniform and that was weird for me 'cause it wasn't often that I saw him wearing a t-shirt and jeans like a normal person. There was a loose strand in the hem of his jeans and it was right in front of me so I kept idly twisting and untwisting it around my finger as I pretended to read. When I wasn't pretending to read I found myself looking at his neck a lot, I guess because it was hidden when he was in uniform. I watched the way it stretched when he angled his head to the side, how his hair feathered at the nape, how the afternoon light cast a shadow on the hollow right above his collarbone.

After a few more papers he groaned and tipped his head back against the bed, shut his eyes. I smiled.

"Having fun?" I asked him. He opened his eyes to glare up at the ceiling.

"Tons," he stated dryly. "You know how much I love paperwork. That's the whole reason I wanted to join SOLDIER. So I could do paperwork."

"Right," I said, still smiling as I looked back down at the book so I wouldn't start staring at him again. I heard the rustle of papers as he picked up another sheet. Then I suddenly felt like his mood changed. The only sound was the faint murmur of the radio, and when I looked up at him he was just staring at the sheet with this distant look in his eyes.

"You okay?" I asked. He blinked and looked down at me, half-smiled in a failure of an attempt to tell me he was okay, and looked back at the paper.

"Yeah. It's just...statistics," he answered vaguely. He stared at the sheet a moment more. Then he sighed and ran a hand down his face.

"Four hundred and twenty-six people in Shinra's military forces got killed last year," he said. He was trying to sound casual but I could tell that it hit him as hard as it hit me. I mean, the number probably included both SOLDIER members and infantrymen, but I still didn't think it'd be that big. And it seemed almost wrong for it to be so specific - four hundred and twenty-six people killed, just like that. Hundreds of names and lives and hopes and dreams smothered by a three-digit number printed in black ink on an annual status report. One of those people could have been me. Maybe even Zack. It was just so cold.

"What's really weird," he went on, "is that almost thirty of them were in the screening process for SOLDIER. They weren't even on the battlefield or anything. They got sick from mako exposure or committed suicide during the screening process."

He didn't say anything for a second. I sat up and silently watched him as he raked his fingers through his hair and gazed at the list of statistics.

Then he murmured, "Most of those guys are about as old as you, aren't they? Damn it...not even sixteen."

He lowered the paper and leaned his head back against the bed again. I looked at the floor and picked at the carpet. I remembered that screening process. I remembered that it was hard and I remembered feeling like I was gonna die after the mako tests, but I guess I was so focused on getting into SOLDIER that it never crossed my mind that I really could die. I had no idea people were dying. A couple guys disappeared, but everyone thought they'd just given up and gone home.

Then I remembered something that made my skin crawl. There was this one kid who sort of reminded me of myself - he was quiet and didn't do that great in the training exercises and I don't think anyone really knew his name. But I remember one time, we had to train right after mako testing. When it was over and we were all leaving the locker room, I caught a glimpse of him lying curled up on the dirty floor, and his face was all pale and sweaty and his arms were wrapped around himself and his teeth kept clenching like he was in serious pain. I didn't go back to check on him. I knew that training after exposure to mako was hard on all of us and I figured he just needed a minute to pull himself together.

But he was gone the next day. Everybody thought he went home. Now I knew what really happened.

"Cloud?"

I looked up and Zack was looking at me in a kind of worried way.

"What?"

"I said you shouldn't be so hard on yourself," he said, smiling a little. I must've spaced out so bad that I missed it the first time he said it. I tilted my head at him, confused. He laughed.

"I was saying that you shouldn't be so hard on yourself for not getting into SOLDIER," he clarified. Then his smile faded slightly and he looked at the floor as he added, "'Cause at least you weren't one of the ones who didn't get out."

I thought about it for a second. He had a point. But then all I could think of was that boy lying on the dirty locker room floor and hugging his torso like it might explode. I remember thinking he was really young; he could've been one of those kids who lied about his age to get into the training program. Maybe he was only thirteen.

I sighed and lay back on the carpet, stretched my arms and stared up at a small crack in the plain white ceiling.

"It seems like there's never enough time," I murmured after a moment. I wasn't exactly sure what I meant by it; it just came out. Zack didn't say anything and I thought my voice got lost in the broken murmuring of the radio. But then I suddenly felt extremely aware that his eyes were on me. I turned my head to the side, the soft carpet tickling my cheek, and looked up at him. That tightening feeling in my gut came back full-force when I saw that he was staring down at me, his mouth parted a little as his eyes lingered on my stomach, my chest, my neck. He saw that I noticed him and looked away, shook his head.

"Time to do what?" he asked, his voice rough. He picked up another sheet of paper and focused on it. I turned my gaze back up to the ceiling and tried to think of what I'd been trying to say but my thoughts were all scrambled up like one of those stupid jigsaw puzzles with a thousand pieces and I didn't even have a picture of what it was all supposed to look like because the only picture in my head was the way Zack was just looking at me.

"I don't know," I mumbled, biting my lip. "To live, I guess." I think that was what I meant. I had been thinking about the guy on the locker room floor and how he was only a kid like me and how he deserved to have so much more time than he got. I felt Zack's eyes turn to me again.

"Hey, don't say stuff like that. Neither of us will be one of those people. I mean, when you think about it, there's a hell of a lot more than four hundred and twenty-six people in Shinra's military forces."

He paused, then said carefully, "But I'm starting to wonder. You know, if it's worth it - doing what we do. If it's right."

That surprised me, coming from Zack. He was always so sure about everything. And I felt like we weren't supposed to question Shinra like that. I gazed at the ceiling and considered his words before replying.

"I think it's right, in the end. People die sometimes. But we're not doing anything wrong."

Zack didn't say anything again and I knew his eyes were on me, but I didn't turn to look at him this time. The radio kept quietly droning on in bursts of static and fuzzy voices. Then I heard papers rustling and a soft shuffling against the carpet and then he was leaning over me, his hands resting on the floor on either side of me, looking down at me with eyes set in a serious expression. I drew in a breath and forgot how to begin the process of exhaling until he spoke.

"I've killed a lot of people," was all he said, his voice hushed and level. As though those words should mean something to me.

"I know," I answered. He narrowed his eyes at me like he didn't think I was getting it. But even though it was weird to think of Zack killing people, I knew that he'd probably killed hundreds of people to get where he was. That didn't make him any less Zack.

"Don't you think that's wrong?" he asked, more urgently, like he was begging me to say yes. His hands clenched into fists on the floor and I could feel the tenseness of his body above me. "I'm not a good person. Everyone says I am, and I'm not. Not when people are lying in graves because of me."

"It's just what you have to do," I said, as calmly as I could when he was staring down at me with those bright blue-green eyes and that Zack cinnamon-and-copper-and-my-shampoo smell was making me kind of dizzy and I was very conscious of the feel of his knee pressing against my leg. "The people you kill are bad. I know that you'd never do anything you knew was wrong. It's like you're programmed to do the right thing."

A smirk tugged at the corner of his lips and I could've sworn that for a split second he glanced at my mouth. There was something different about him. Something grim and selfish. Like he was about to do something that he fully knew wasn't a good idea.

"Maybe you're right," he muttered. "Maybe they are bad. But sometimes I think I am, too. I don't always do the right thing."

I could feel my heart beating in my throat. I opened my mouth a little to make sure I was breathing and his eyes stared at it without looking away.

"I don't care," I said, which seemed like a simple and childish and brainless thing to say. But then his head dipped down and his mouth slid up against mine.

I don't know what I expected to feel. Maybe I hoped that I would either feel nothing or that the tightening feeling in my gut that had been haunting me for so long would disappear forever if I could just kiss him once - just for one brief moment - and then I could move on with my life and not worry about all those bizarre feelings ever again. But neither of those things happened. Instead I just wanted so much more from him that the sigh that left me as he started to pull away came out as a weak moan and my fingers curled in the threads of the carpet. Apparently that was all he needed, because I heard him inhale as he tilted his head to connect our mouths again.

I hadn't kissed that many people in my lifetime. Only one, actually - and it was some random girl in pigtails who kissed me behind a bush of azaleas during a game of hide-and-seek when I was about ten.

This was completely different. I was different. When I was ten, I was just a very surprised little boy crouched behind that azalea bush wondering when this dumb girl was gonna take her lips off mine. Now I felt like a man who had been walking through a desert his whole life on the verge of dying from thirst and the only water in the world was in Zack's mouth. I wanted to kiss him again and again until I wasn't thirsty anymore and I didn't give a damn if I never stopped being thirsty. I wanted him to taste guilt and greed and longing on my tongue and make him feel how much I didn't want any of it to go away. I wanted him to feel the useless fight for satisfaction in the way our teeth scraped when my mouth opened against his.

I was distantly aware of the static-choked radio sitting on the floor in the same place that it had been in the morning about a million years ago, faded voices talking about something dull and political while Zack was running his hand slowly down my side over the thin cotton of my t-shirt and my fingers were slipping through his hair. Everything seemed far away and hazy except him. I smirked when I felt him shiver as my fingertips skimmed over the tiny feathery hairs at the nape of his neck. I felt his fingers like they were electrically charged, even through the cotton, and when his thumb brushed against the sliver of bare skin between the waistband of my jeans and the hem of my shirt I sucked in a sharp breath and tightened my grip on his hair so much that I was sure I was hurting him. But he just smiled. His mouth drifted to the edge of my jaw, the tip of his nose momentarily gliding over my skin, his breath warm and familiar.

I felt so, so happy.

Then my eyes opened just a little and through my blurry vision I saw the small crack in the plain white ceiling. I suddenly remembered that reality still existed. That other things existed that weren't Zack's mouth and breath and teeth and the heat of his body centimeters above mine and the feel of his hands on me. That we were doing something incredibly, unthinkably, dangerously stupid.

I think he realized it at the same time I did. I could feel his smile disappear and his mouth hesitantly lifting from my jaw. Then he rested his forehead on the carpet beside my head for a moment, his hair brushing my cheek, his chest skimming against mine as both of us took in breath after ragged breath. When he raised his head to look down at me, the blue-green of his eyes was glassy, like unpolished jade.

"I think - I don't - sorry," he murmured, his voice husky, like he'd been screaming. He didn't look sorry and I was pretty sure he wasn't 'cause I sure as hell wasn't.

"You're not sorry," I stated firmly. I still didn't feel like myself. I felt like he'd devoured my mind while our mouths were connected; I hadn't thought about anything. I hadn't thought about what was right or what was wrong or about the boy dying from mako poisoning in the locker room or about what could happen if anyone found out what we were doing. But then I started to feel clarity coming back to me and a cold feeling close to horror settling in the pit of my stomach. I wondered if we could be kicked out for feeling this way about each other, for doing this. I realized that I probably could. But I wondered if even Zack would have to leave SOLDIER, lose everything that he'd worked so hard for, that he'd killed for.

He smiled wryly down at me and said, "No. No, I'm not."

He moved off of me, his knee sliding briefly against my jeans. The air above me was so empty without him. I stayed still and closed my eyes, swallowed hard. Tried not to think about the taste of him or how the ridges of his teeth felt against my tongue or the way his body felt as it shivered under my hands. I failed.

I listened to the sound of papers rustling and when it stopped I heard the creak of the mattress. I turned my head to look at Zack and he was sitting on the floor leaning sideways against the bed, the paperwork in his lap, his back to me. He raked his fingers through his hair again. I wished more than anything that those fingers were mine.

He sighed. "We...I mean, we really shouldn't..."

"Yeah," I whispered. He was right. He always ended up doing what was right. "We'll forget about it. We won't talk about it. I know."

He paused for a second and then stood up, the stack of papers tucked under his arm.

"I'll be in the library or something. I don't know yet. I'll call you," he said as he left the room. I knew he wouldn't call me. I didn't know how we could talk to each other anymore, at least for a while. I lay there on the floor until I heard the click of the front door closing and the muted thud of his feet descending the concrete steps of the apartment building. Then I sat up, stared hard at the floor for a few moments, and kicked over the radio. It filled the air with static as I drew my knees up to my chest and buried my face in my arms.

Wasting time with Zack just drove me crazy.