Title: Flower Power
Author: Enide Dear
Pairing: Valenwind
Rating: Cute
Of all the Gods-damned stupid ideas he'd ever had – and Cid was the first to admit there had been a few – this was the worse. And by far the most embarrassing one. He could only pray no one would ever find out.
"Sir? Do you want some help?" The flower girl gave him a nice smile.
"Um, yeah. I wanna buy a flower. Um. How about that one?" He pointed at a big, red flower, its petals black from the middle out.
"Here you go." She wrapped it up for him in paper. "One gil, please."
He paid her and hurried away, the flower carefully hidden under his jacket.
Finding a calm and above all empty place in Midgard wasn't easy, but finally Cid found a spot in the sun behind a warehouse where he could sit down on a crate. The noise of traffic and people wasn't so loud here and the sky was blue far overhead.
Cid took out the flower, unwrapped it and scowled at it.
This was so stupid. Why was he doing this? He prided himself in being a logical, rational man. He'd taken a scientific and mechanical approach to all aspects in his life before and they had served him just fine – wasn't he considered the best pilot in the world after all?
But science could only take a man so far and after that there were the risky, unstable, chartless sea of emotions and feelings and even worse, other peoples emotions and feelings which were even harder to understand than his own.
He stared at the flower. The petals moved gently in the calm breeze, fluttering like a certain cape. What did flowers know about love anyway? They just took care of all of that via bees, didn't they? Lucky bastards.
He still had his working gloves on and between the coarse brown leather the flower stem looked so very delicate. He could have crushed it with a single careless motion. Instead he twirled it carefully between his fingers, making it dance.
His heart beat faster. As gently as he could, he plucked one red petal.
"He loves me," he mumbled under his breath, and then immediately threw a suspicious glance over his shoulder. No one was around and he breathed a sigh of relief. He was captain Cid Highwind and it would not do to be seen acting like some air-headed, love sick teenager, damn it!
The plucked petal bruised under his finger. The next one would be 'he loves me not', right? It wasn't as if it was a very complicated game. He could be rational about this and just count the petals and if it was an even number it would mean love and an uneven…
But he has a feeling that would destroy whatever point there was to this.
Why would a flower know about this, anyway? Screw the flowers, how did *people* know about love? He should just throw away the flower and go back to Avalanche and find Vincent and throw his arms around him and kiss him right there, and then perhaps Vincent would kiss him back or maybe shoot him in the guts, but at least he'd know, damn it!
How many petals did a flower have, anyway? Did you count the little ones at the centre?
"There you are, chief. We've been looking all over for you. The Highwind is fuelled up and ready to go when you are."
Cid almost jumped out of his skin at the sudden voice and he came to his feet, clasping the flower as if it was a sword. Red eyes stared at the suddenly blushing pilot.
"I, um, I was jest gonna…here!" His mind froze over as he realised he was holding out the flower to the dark gunman.
A small blush crept over Vincent's cheek.
"For me? A flower?"
"U-hu." The sad part was, it was the most romantic thing he could think of saying right then.
"I…thank you." Vincent gently took the flower. And then, impulsively, he leaned forward and put a small kiss on Cid's cheek, before hurrying away, metal shoes clanging.
Stunned Cid was left alone. He looked down on his hand where he still held the single petal. *He loves me.*
"Yeah!" Clutching the petal he jumped, punching air.
Maybe flowers did know something anyway.