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It was rare indeed to see their commander in casual clothes. Normally dressed in the fatigues of a SOLDIER 1st but with the stripes of rank on the collar, Cloud seemed to exist only in that outfit. However, a night out with his two friends at a bar picked at random below the plate showed Angeal and his companions a sight that they wouldn’t forget for its rarity more than its shock value.
The three had just rounded the corner, Genesis eagerly telling the pair of them about the theatre on Loveless Avenue that he was probably going to be spending all of his money in from that day forward when ahead of them they laid eyes on their commander. Not one of them would have believed that Cloud actually left HQ for personal time, not when if he wasn’t on base, he was out on some mission somewhere if he wasn’t training them. So to see him below plate and not dressed in his usual attire was enough to give them pause.
The blond was clothed simply in a pair of jeans that were wearing thin at the knees and a plain black tank top with his normal boots on his feet. Where he normally had his arms covered one way or another even while in uniform, now they were bare and the trio could pick out the shape of a silhouetted wolf’s head tattoo on his arm and on the other arm which was harder to see being further away and further in shadow, what looked to be the tattoo of a chain wrapped around his upper arm.
While they watched, Cloud crouched and held out his hand to something out of their sight and moments later a rather thin and slightly scruffy dog tentatively emerged from the direction the blond was looking in. A second, smaller dog joined the first and when they were close enough to take the food that Cloud held out to them, the pair of them let the crouched blond pet them for a minute. Once the food was gone, so too were the dogs and after brushing his hands off and rising, Cloud turned and disappeared into the nearby bar, the one the trio were just on their way to.
For a minute, the three friends just stood there, looking in the direction that Cloud had left in.
“I thought he lived in his uniform,” Genesis announced flippantly, prompting Angeal to give him a light shove.
“We all see him for the first time in casual clothes and that’s the first thing you say? How about something like-“
“He’s hot,” Sephiroth interrupted, cutting off the raven who had no doubt been about to say something along similar lines but probably not quite as bluntly.
“Eloquently put,” Genesis replied, rolling his eyes in exasperation over the absolute lack of vocabulary between the two of them.
Angeal laughed lightly and began heading towards the same bar that Cloud had disappeared into, fully intending on joining their mentor for a drink or several before a hand on his shoulder held him back and he turned, frowning a little in confusion. “Aren’t we going to go get a drink with him? Zack invites us out for drinks at every opportunity. What’s the problem?”
Sephiroth, though just as tempted by the idea as the raven clearly was, shook his head. “If he wanted to drink with us, he would have invited us. We shouldn’t disturb him.”
“Of course we shouldn’t. Why would we want to spend the rest of our evening with that workaholic anyway? He’d probably only talk about training the entire time we were there,” Genesis piped up in support of the idea, oblivious to the way Angeal’s enthusiasm was deflating before his eyes. “I know a lovely place above the plate anyway. Far better than this du- uh, quaint… little bar.”
Sephiroth, a little more attuned to the subtleties of his friend’s behaviour having trained with him much more often than Genesis had, gave a slight tilt of his head away from the bar. “He’s not ready,” he murmured in reference to their commander and their company.
It was reluctantly that Angeal agreed but after sparing another last look at the entrance to the bar their commander had stepped within, the raven turned away and together he and Sephiroth caught up to Genesis who was already walking away, still glorifying the upmarket bar that he was going to take them to with lines of poetry.
For Sephiroth though, it wasn’t hard to see the longing in the raven’s eyes for the company of their superior and honestly, the silveret wasn’t entirely sure that he didn’t feel something similar himself.