Disclaimer: Final Fantasy belongs to Squaresoft and various other interested parties, not me. I'm not making any money from this, and no infringement of copyright is intended. This is a work of fandom, intended as appreciation of the original work.

Omake!

"Wait, so, let me get this straight," Zack said, looking back and forth between Cloud and Tifa with a raised eyebrow.

"Tifa, did you have to tell him this story?" Cloud groaned, hiding his eyes with his hand and wishing he dared to drown himself somehow in the half empty beer he still held.

"Corneo wouldn't let anyone in but pretty girls," Zack continued right over top of Cloud, sounding incredulous, "So Aerith convinced him to put on a dress?"

The bar had been repaired in record time, and looked better than ever. Cloud and Zack, of course, had done the lion's share of the work, but all the former members of AVALANCHE had pitched in to help. Even Cait and Nanaki had carried buckets of nails and other supplies, doing their own part in their own ways. They were celebrating the end of the work with a private party; tomorrow Tifa would open for business to the general public again, but tonight was just for them.

"Why haven't we ever heard this story before?" Yuffie demanded, clearly delighted at Cloud's embarrassment. She and Zack had taken to each other like long-lost siblings, and she had been positively gleeful to see how easily Zack could fluster Cloud. Not to mention being astonished at how often the blond smiled now.

It was a lot easier to smile now, Cloud reflected. Just having Zack had been enough to do it, but with the added relief of Sephiroth's destruction... well, what the hell did he have left to brood about? He still felt an ache in his chest sometimes when he stood in the garden and automatically listened for Aerith, but he didn't begrudge her the rest she'd earned.

At least, it was a lot easier to smile when Zack wasn't thoroughly embarrassing him. With Tifa's help, of course. How on earth had this topic come up, anyway?

"I want to see the pictures," Zack demanded, his eyes glowing with mirth more than mako.

"There aren't any pictures," Cloud informed him, grateful for that much at least.

"Yeah, right," Zack replied, obviously sceptical. "You're telling me Aerith managed to get you into a dress, and didn't find some way of recording it for posterity? I don't believe it."

"She didn't exactly have a camera on her!" Cloud protested, uncovering his face to glare at his lover as half the occupants of the bar snickered. "There are no pictures!"

"Well, actually..." Tifa trailed off, failing to hide a grin behind the hand she tried to cover it with.

"There are pictures?" Cloud turned on her, horrified. "Where? How?"

"From Don Corneo's security cameras," she informed him, trying hard not to laugh at the look of utter dismay on his face but not having much success.

"I want to see!" Yuffie and Zack chorused, and grinned at each other.

"I think I wanna see this, too," Barrett rumbled, laughing. "Always did feel cheated that I was the only one who wasn't there."

"Oh, gods," Cloud moaned, and buried his face in his arms as he blushed so hard even his ears and the back of his neck were red. "Odin, just strike me down where I stand."

"I'll get them," Tifa said, and turned to run up the stairs before Cloud could lunge across the bar and stop her. Odin didn't seem inclined to make an appearance, unfortunately. Briefly Cloud wondered if there was any way he could cast Stop on all of them, steal the pictures and destroy them before Tifa got back with them.

Too late. "Here they are!" she carolled as she came back into the room, waving a handful of glossy photos over her head. Zack snatched them out of her hand just a split second before Cloud would have gotten them, and deftly managed to keep them out of his lover's reach.

"That's my girl! I knew she wouldn't let me down," the former SOLDIER crowed, and whistled appreciatively as he got a look at the first photo. "Damn, Tifa! Nice legs!"

She flushed, pleased by the compliment, and giggled at the expression of mortification Cloud was wearing as Zack passed half the photos to Yuffie and started looking through the rest. "Wow, Aerith looks even better in a sexy dress than she did when I was dating her," the brunet chuckled, and paused as he got to one that showed Cloud clearly. "Holy fuck, kid, you worked that dress!"

"He did, didn't he?" Tifa giggled. Cloud gave up on trying to get the photos before anybody else got a good look at him; the others had crowded around Yuffie and Zack, and it was hopeless at this point.

"I am going to kill you," he growled, more embarrassed than he'd even been in his life. Even more than when he'd worn the damn dress in the first place.

Worse, Zack was giving him a speculative look. "Hmm. I don't suppose..."

Cloud didn't have a Haste materia with him, but desperation gave him a speed even he didn't normally possess. He managed to catch Zack by surprise and grappled his best friend and lover into a painful headlock. "Don't even think about it," he warned. Not even for Zack was he ever dressing up like that again!

"Aww, but you were so sexy," Zack chuckled, his voice breathless from the position Cloud held him in but otherwise not dismayed in the least. "That colour really brought out the blue in your eyes..."

"Absolutely not!" Cloud all but howled, and Zack laughed and managed to break free. Cloud lunged for him again, but Tifa got a hand on each of their shoulders and forced them apart.

"If you two break my lovely new bar again, you are fixing the damage by yourselves!" she declared, and that was enough to get them to settle down. Mostly.

"I'm still going to kill you both," Cloud insisted, and coughed as Barrett thumped him solidly in the shoulder with his good hand.

"Just think of it this way," the black man advised him with a laugh. "Least, since she's got the pictures, you ain't in danger of us gettin' you drunk and convincing you to let us see for ourselves, right?"

Blanching at the very idea, Cloud just groaned. He'd liked to have been able to say that he would never have gone along with an idea like that, no matter how drunk he was... but Tifa knew how to mix drinks that were strong enough to hit even a SOLDIER hard, and Zack was far too good at dragging him into somehow doing things he was certain he'd never actually agreed to do.

Leaning in so he could wrap an arm around his humiliated lover's shoulders, Zack just chuckled. He knew Cloud was probably going to make him pay for this tonight... but it wouldn't be by telling him to sleep on the non-existent couch, and Zack was so totally not complaining about any other kind of revenge the blond might extract on him in bed. After all, it would only give him a chance to retaliate later.

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