fic: gnashville snippets (ff7, zack/cloud)

[jukeboxhound_backup]

Okay, so, like, have some fic, or rather some scenes from a real-world AU fic I started but haven't finished yet.  Also Gongaga is in India because of reasons, well, specifically the Bengali region, namely because of stopthatgirl7's overanalyzing of linguistics and geography, to which chofi originally introduced me.  I can't find the relevant post but have all of them instead.  Title from WHY?'s song of the same name, idk.

Gnashville (snippets)
FF7 || PG-13 (language, suggestiveness) || Zack/Cloud || ~960 words
Zack's a world-class hacker, Cloud is the capable mechanic he gets to molest on a regular basis, and Sephiroth is the harried FBI agent trying to track them down before the ShinRa mob family does.

Scene 1

Cloud was a goddamn wizard, Zack decided.  His baby was running smooth as cherry lube and purring in a sexy whisper.

“You better not replace me with your computer,” Cloud called from the kitchen, which was eerie, because he was totally out of the kid’s line of sight and how could he know Zack was all but molesting the laptop?  And no one could really blame Zack for that because, holy crap, Cloud could work magic with wires and a couple hairpins.  Goddamn MacGuyver.  Whatever Cloud had done to the hardware had increased the computer’s processing to the point that Zack was sliding like an eel through firewalls in such a way that Sephiroth was going to think he was chasing a ghost.  Or someone from The Matrix.  Zack spent a pleasant moment dreaming of flying like Superman and kicking ass like he was fucking Bruce Lee or something.  He didn’t think Cloud was ever gonna go for a leather catsuit, but that was what jerk-off fantasies were for.

“Earth to Superman,” said Cloud wryly, setting two beers and a bowl of what looked like Kraft Mac & Cheese on the coffee table before flumping down onto the couch beside Zack.  The movement bounced them closer and left their thighs pressed together hip to knee, and yeah, this was turning out to be a sweet day.

Zack made grabby hands for the pasta.  Cloud patiently passed it over, taking one of the forks stuck unceremoniously in the middle, and said, “I hope you appreciate this.  I’m only making things with colors actually found in nature for the next week.”

“Cloud, if food isn’t at least ninety-nine percent preservatives and doesn’t look like something that came out of Chernobyl, then it isn’t American.   Are you anti-American, Cloud?  Are you the reason for Palin’s inexplicable rise to fame?”

“Yes.”

Zack blinked a few times.  Cloud took the chance to knock the pasta off Zack’s fork and steal some for himself, and then Zack said, “You little punk,” and dumped a forkful of Mac & Cheese into Cloud’s bright yellow hair.  “You can’t even tell the difference,” Zack crowed, and he ended up on the narrow strip of floor between the couch and the coffee table with beer soaking into his jeans, macaroni being ground in an indelible orange stain into the carpet under his back, and Cloud sprawled on top of him.

“Come here often,” he wheezed, and for the second time that day found himself with a hand down his jeans and a hot guy doing his best to demonstrate why homophobes were just jealous.

Scene 2

When he found a townhouse he liked, Cloud called Zack from a payphone.

“County Crematorium – you kill ‘em, we grill ‘em!”

“…Zack, how did you know it was me?”

“I didn’t.”

“I worry about you sometimes.”

“And yet you love me.  What does that say about you?”

“That my mother dropped me on my head a few too many times as a child.”

Zack’s pout was nearly audible.  Cloud said, “How does Castro sound?”

A long pause.  “Are you talking the Castro District?”

“Yes.”

“The gayest community in the States?”

“Uh,” said Cloud.

“I’ll make sure to grab a flag on the way home, pumpkin.”

Cloud sighed and gave him the address.

“I’ll see you soon, honeybunch sugar-pie.”

Moving to San Francisco had a few advantages: one, the traffic was so bad that it’d take squad cars an hour just to cross an intersection, which would give Cloud and Zack enough warning to jump the fence, so to speak.  Two, the crowds were easy to get lost in and Cloud’s hair was about as distinctive in this area as a sailor on the Village People lineup, making it that much more difficult for anyone to track them down by description alone.  Three (and more for themselves than anything else), unlike in the Midwest, being in a gay relationship here was pretty much the new heterosexual.

“Hell,” Zack commented, thinking of long silver hair and too much black and leather, “even Sephiroth could manage here.  They’d just think he was a drag queen in the bondage scene.”

Cloud hated himself for blushing.

So the two of them moved into one of the small Victorian houses that’d been divided into two separate homes.  Cloud was pleased to find a small attached garage, and Zack was pleased to discover the family next door – mother, father, two kids, and a dog, all they needed was a goddamn white fence – was Indian.  Their first night there, sitting on bare hardwood floor with their few boxes of crap stacked against the bare white wall, Zack came back from the neighbor’s with a huge pot of fish curry under a smaller bowl of rice.

“What’s this?” Cloud asked warily, and Zack declared, “Macher jhol!  Eat it.”

Cloud did, and afterwards, sprawled over the floor beside the empty pot and his belly achingly full, he declared his love for the neighbors and decided he needed to take over a Nibelheim pie sometime.

“Good lord spare them from such a fate!” Zack wailed to the ceiling.  As it turned out, the Banerjee family did like the Nibelheim pie, and it didn’t take long for Sunday evenings to turn into a friendly competition of cuisine.  At one point Zack tried to play Chairman Kaga for his two favorite Iron Chefs, but when his flamboyant gesturing nearly knocked over a simmering pot Mrs Banerjee set her two young children on him.

“Cloud!” Zack cried as he crumpled to the kitchen floor under the weight of shrieking kids and a dog that came running over and started barking at the commotion.  Cloud, obediently following Mrs Banerjee’s directions in preparing the rice for aaloo bhaate, neatly sidestepped one of Zack’s flailing limbs and said, “Please don’t scratch their floor, Zack.”

…

THEN THERE WERE MORE SHENANIGANS in which there was SNARK and BIKE!SEX and SEPHIROTH'S EXASPERATION but certainly nothing about being Batman.

Comments

[razziecat.livejournal.com]

Oh gods and little green apples....I love uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

I love Zack...."Come here often" :))

More?

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

...Little green apples?

Yessss, there is more, there will be more, eventually. I won't start actually posting anything - except for stand-alone scenes like these, I suppose - until it's done, I've learned my lesson.

[zeffy-amethyst.livejournal.com]

Ah Zack, though the world may change, you never will XD

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

:D

[chofi.livejournal.com]

The thread in question.

And now that that is out of the way...

At one point Zack tried to play Chairman Kaga for his two favorite Iron Chefs, but when his flamboyant gesturing nearly knocked over a simmering pot Mrs Banerjee set her two young children on him.

You do realize that this needs to be some sort of short story or something, right? If only for the music from Backdraft and Zack being in a swishy cape and taking a bite out of something in a flamboyant fashion.

Anyway, A++, would lol again.

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU, I'll link to it when I'm feeling less lazy.

I think we should do meta!fic first. :DDD

[history13041985.livejournal.com]

I love it !" Sephiroth could manage here. They’d just think he was a drag queen in the bondage scene": lol, seriously it was so funny ( i wonder why cloud blushed, does he like sephiroth). I love too Zack ( zack as nero in matrick ( well i think it will be a lot of sex).
I like their relationship. I wonder about several thing : living cost money so how does they find money ? Zack is a hacker but does he have a rang int the world of hacker? How can the live without job and nobody find it strange ?
And i really wonder how will be sephiroth ?

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

<3

The story will probably end up Sephiroth/Zack/Cloud at the end, but at this point, no, the blushing is just Cloud reacting to Zack's blunt attitude.

Well, see, Zack might have once been on the side of the law but then gone rogue, Robin Hood-style, in stealing from mob bosses and crimelords and giving to widows and orphans. He skims just enough off the top of their bank accounts to keep his tech up to date and make sure Cloud has enough power tools and gears to be happy.

I figure a family with two kids, a dog, and two working parents probably won't be worrying about the daytime activities of the sweet adorable boys next door, and it's not unusual to work from home nowadays anyway. Google and Facebook and the like are all headquartered near San Francisco or in the slightly-farther-but-still-reasonable Silicon Valley, so Zack can be all I'M A WEB DESIGNER NO REALLY :DDD AND CLOUD'S TOTALLY A MECHANIC AND POSSIBLY AN AMBASSADOR TO JAPANTOWN I SWEAR. Or something.

What about Sephiroth?

[history13041985.livejournal.com]

I wonder how he will be (will he cold , friendly , will he know Hojo ).

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

Not sure yet, since I've mostly focused on Cloud and Zack thus far.

[locknkey.livejournal.com]

“Hell,” Zack commented, thinking of long silver hair and too much black and leather, “even Sephiroth could manage here. They’d just think he was a drag queen in the bondage scene.” LOL!

Very cute and I love the neighbors. :)

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

Hee, thanks.

[frooit.livejournal.com]

The 'ef? Where's the rest!

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

Unwritten. These were just snippet scenes that could largely stand alone as they were.

[kel-fish.livejournal.com]

Yay! Got to read this in the library because my computer's on the fritz at home, and I am so happy I did! Although, I read "you kill 'em--we grill 'em!" and had to bite down on my pencil to keep from scaring everyone around me with my loud laughter. I'm really excited to see where this goes, especially with the promise of FBI Sephiroth in leather, and Cloud doing things to bikes and then doing things to Zack on the bikes.

Yay again!

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

Writing this version of Zack is a blast. :D

Note to self: more suits and leather.

[fateofshadow.livejournal.com]

I was trying to keep a list of particularly good lines in my head to quote back with appropriate squeeage but I'm afraid that the awesome made my brain implode.

I really want to know where Aeris is in all of this... and how Sephiroth can dress the way he does in canon and not know he looks like a drag queen into bondage. >_>

Does this world have chocobos? (I wish this world had chocobos)

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

Aeris is mostly off-screen, but she still manages to meddle in Zack's shenanigans and Cloud's sanity.

Why not, it can have chocobos.

[fateofshadow.livejournal.com]

*Glee* \o/

[megpie71.livejournal.com]

Okay, this one is going into my "keep an eye on the radar" list (along with everything else you're working on). Even in these two snippets, it's clear you're using a more assertive and active Cloud than a lot of fanwriters do, and that's always a plus. (Personal preference - I tend to figure that Cloud's been acting as a full adult in society for at least two years before the Nibelheim incident occurs in canon, therefore he isn't going to be acting like a whiny USAlien suburbanite of the same age).

I do like Cloud being wary about what Zack's brought home from the neighbour's house on their first night (I can tell he's had far too much exposure to Zack's sense of humour, as well as Zack's collection of ideas on what constitutes "edible" to simply take things on spec).

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

While Cloud's shy and kinda quiet and generally adorable in CC canon, he still had his moments of dry humor, and I just can't ever be convinced by the...ah, more stereotypically 'uke' version I often see, whether in canonfic or AU. His relative maturity in this fic has background - young lone kid taking care of an ill single mother, working at age sixteen, etc - so I think it works? Well, I'll figure it out.

Of course, Zack would ensure anyone else in close proximity matured, if only in self-defense. :D

[rosethornli.livejournal.com]

This, this is shiny and amazing *A*. You are a wonder, Hades-san! All of the banter was wonderful.

I am curious about these other hijinks. Do they steal the batcar too?

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

Zack would've liked to try, but unfortunately he fell through Aeris' roof and got chased off by her irate mother. It's okay, though, Aeris was more than willing to play a Poison Ivy that was less genocidal and more 'lol I'm going to braid flowers in your hair while you sleep.'

Zack never did get over his ambition to be a superhero, but he learned early on that Spandex was less conducive to this lifestyle than hacking the bank accounts of criminals and donating anonymously to charities (and very occasionally to his Discover All Of Cloud's Sexual Kinks Fund).

[sanctumsfw.livejournal.com]

The last time I tried to walk across the street in front of the Castro Theatre, I nearly got run over three times in a row. Good luck trying to apprehend the boys, Agent Sephiroth.

These two should hang out at the STUD Bar in SOMA; none of the patrons would stand for any authorities come sniffing around the place! Now if only Zack could dance without tripping over his own left foot...

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

I'm less familiar with the city than I really should be, considering my proximity, so I probably won't be able to do all the little call-outs to native SFers that I otherwise could.

On the other hand, research trips. For science.

[sanctumsfw.livejournal.com]

I would gladly offer my services for research trips for science, indeed!

This is the most widely distributed service directory in the Financial District that I've seen. And hopefully this might help too?

[athinana.livejournal.com]

As usual, your stories are pure gold! Though, I have to say, just the thought of Seph being the good guy and Zack the bad guy kinda makes my head spin. Not something you see too often. And Seph in an FBI suit...that I have to see!

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

Zack's a bad guy the same way Robin Hood was, so take that as you will. :D

[athinana.livejournal.com]

Oh, should've thought! Zack's too good a guy to turn over completely...
...
Oh perfect, now I have a plot bunny to keep me awake at nights for a week and keep me from studying for two. Again.

( I don't mean any offence with this. I'm just being sarcastic 'cause it's true. )

[tee2.livejournal.com]

I love this so far! Zack being a goofy genius hacker-- I can almost just imagine him cackling evilly while mashing away at the keyboard-- and Cloud being able to pretty much read his mind. Their interaction was really entertaining. And to imagine Sephiroth, having to chase after these two maniacs. This is brilliant. Thanks for writing and sharing! I hope you write more~!