hi guys!! my last couple of posts on this blog have been ooc but i’m still alive!! i’m gonna do a major overhaul to this blog over the next couple of days actually so... YEAH. I RETURN.

[ @climhazzards | x ]

Ever since he’d been young, Zack was taught that the mark on his wrist would indicate the one person he was meant to be with. The lifestream dictated the best cycle of life – and the best cycle of life was predetermined the instant someone was born. It’d been two years before he earned his mark, but once he did, he had admired how it’d look, and he’d been so busy doing that that he paid scarce attention to the deep words passed onto him by his mother and father. Telling him what he was supposed to do, where he was supposed to go, who he might be with. They’d told him to check the mark with anyone he met, but for the most part, he decided not to. After all, it was just a mark, right? Not something to think about so seriously, and even the few people who did manage to convince him, he never matched.

It’d been like that throughout his life… Throughout his life until he met Cloud. There was just something about him that drew him, sucked upon his life force, and he needed to know more about the boy. That spurred him on to draw closer and closer, until eventually they came to this point with the two of them sitting down on a bedside, comparing wrists.

And the marks had been exactly the same.

The thought…scared him. If it had been with a girl, he probably would’ve shrugged it off as superstition, but with Cloud it was different. He didn’t know how exactly, and that just made it even more nervewracking. So he said what he did. He apologized for it turning out this way. That he was bad at soulmates, bad at keeping with people; he’d kissed girls, he’d run around on adventures, and yet…

… When he saw those marks, it’d been like something clicked into place. Like suddenly, the world made sense, and questions he didn’t realize he’d asked had been answered. And Cloud, well… The thought of Cloud being his soulmate wasn’t that bad, if he really thought about it. He kind of wanted to see where this led. What the lifestream destined for them.

His heart, then, got stuck in his throat when Cloud sniffled, coughed, and absolved him of any need to do anything for him. To love him, to stay committed to him, to be his soulmate… And ironically, seeing the suffering that Cloud endured, seeing how horribly he hurt himself over this, made up Zack’s mind for him.

He reached out, gently brushing his thumb over that mark, a mark that Cloud obviously tried so hard to rub out, a mark that he wanted to soothe with his own fingers and bring to life like it was supposed to. Like they were supposed to.

“Cloud… That’s not what I meant when I said that,” he murmured. “I never said I didn’t wanna be. I just said I’m not good at it.” Because it was fair to give a warning, right? If this would be their fate, then he should know about all this in advance. He should know about him. He should allow those secrets to lay bare for Cloud to see. “I…do wanna be. I wanna love you. I wanna be your soulmate. I wanna be committed to you.”

“Nope. Been too busy to get one. An’… Well, y’don’t really think much about Christmas when you have to spend it alone.” Oh. That turned out more somber than Zack had thought it would when it left his lips. He kept his smile broad – he didn’t want Cloud to feel bad for him. After all, he was going to be spending this holiday season with him anyway, right?

“Let’s do that, then! Right now. You ready to go?” Well, if they were going to talk about it, they might as well go through with it, right?

Well, that was certainly true… They couldn’t just walk up to the doors of the SOLDIERs. Zack would, but he wasn’t about to drag Cloud into trouble for a prank. If he was going to do something like that, he was better off going about it entirely by himself, rather than having Cloud take any brunt of the blame. Sure, it was just caroling, nothing that serious, but still…

“Singin’ indoors sounds fun! We could put on some Christmas tunes… Maybe we could get some sweets, too. Whaddaya say? We can go out to the store just to buy a whole bunch. I wonder if I could fit a small Christmas tree in my flat…” Yep, Zack was coming up with other plans now. Cloud kickstarted it for him.

Why would he want to spend time with Cloud? Well – for one thing, Cloud was overthinking it. For another, Zack had already been nice and cozy with the boy before then. Why wouldn’t he want to spend time with Cloud would be a better question to ask, because the former just seemed so obvious.

“Carollin’, huh…” Zack certainly grinned at that idea. “Where would we go for that? An’ I totally wanna be in costume. It’s not festive enough without it!” He nudged Cloud. “You should be, too.”

With the sweet face that Cloud gave him, how could Zack ever say no? Not that he would have intended to – as soon as it was suggested, Zack didn’t want anything more than that.

“I’d love to!” He reached out, taking the boy’s hands. “I mean, I kinda thought that was what we were gonna do anyway… But thanks for confirming you’re up for it for me.” He rubbed his thumbs into his knuckles. “What would you like to do, man? I mean, I mentioned the costumes, but we could do anything.”

“Well… I can’t, really.” That took a somber tone. “I gotta be here in case they call me out for missions. An’ Gongaga’s pretty far away, so it’d take me a while to get there. I’d have to plan a whole week ahead.” Zack smiled again. “But hey, I got my family here, right? Like you!”

continued from x | @firstclassheroism​

Hey guys! I’m testing the waters with roleplaying Squall over here! So if you want to follow and interact with me there, i’d really appreciate it!

I'm thinking of changing this blog into a selective/private blog that's single ship and single verse too. I guess I just kind of prefer the exclusivity and I miss it, and I miss having an order in which things happen on this blog because right now I feel like this Cloud is just a huge hot mess of different plots and characterisations.