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“First Class Zackary Fair, you are to report to the sofa at once.”
“Wait, wait, wait!” his friend pleaded from the kitchen, scrambling to finish up whatever in Gaia’s name he was doing before the title card dropped. “I’ll be there in a sec…!” Some cabinets flung open, slammed shut, plates and tupperware rattling from the impact. “Count to five!”
“One, two, three, four—“
“Count with Gagighandis!”
“What are you making?” Sephiroth asked instead, then opted to answer his own question with a quick sniff of the air—burnt, warm, vaguely vanilla. An unholy ratio of milk and sugar. “Are you brewing coffee?”
Just then, Zack appeared from the kitchen, thin ribbons of steam dancing in the air as he made his way over to the couch. “Yep!” he chirped, grabbing a coaster and setting a mug down on the aptly named coffee table. “A full cup.”
Sephiroth studied his friend, feigning disapproval. “Don’t you think it’s a bit late for coffee?”
“It’s only 2200!”
“Yes, it was… fifty minutes ago.”
“Eh! Good enough for me,” Zack chirped, plopping down on the sofa as he added, persuasively, “And, besides, I need to stay up. Doesn’t a good SOLDIER stay alert during late-night missions?”
Sephiroth tilted his head, unconvinced, a faint smirk finally budding on his lips. “Mmmn. I wasn’t aware that watching a movie fell under the umbrella of ‘mission’.”
“It does when I always fall asleep during it!” Zack asserted, referring to the last handful of movie nights wherein he fell asleep before the one-hour mark, if not the forty-minute. And it wasn’t as if he was bored, either, considering he was usually the one who picked the flicks in the first place (bright and vigorous ones, too), meaning there was no logical reason as to why he should be falling asleep—especially when he used to do the night patrols as a cadet, then continued to do so up until Second Class….!
So, yeah. Anyway.
Caffeine it was.
Sephiroth continued to study him, his soft expression aglow with blue light from the TV. “And you think that will do the trick?”
“Yeah, I do,” Zack said, and he emphasized his point with a generous sip as the opening score came to a crescendo. “Now, shh! Pay attention!”
It was about the fifty-minute mark, Sephiroth figured. Only one person had died; the plot was still unraveling; the main characters hadn’t broken up only to reunite six minutes later, maybe seven.
Zack’s coffee mug had been drained.
"Mmmnnm..."
As was his energy, Sephiroth noted, as Zack shifted his cheek against his best friend's shoulder, conquered once more by insurmountable comfort.