Character/s: Auron, Vincent, Cid
Word Count: 602
Warning/s: Think about it. Yuffie and Rikku, together at last. It can only end in tears. (Vincent's.)
Summary: Traverse Town is a breeding ground for commiseration.
Notes: Completely and unabashedly AU OOC ridiculousness. And I guess, technically, a crossover with FF7.
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They were gathered around a table, the three of them. Gathered.
Loosely gathered, if he was going to be honest about it, because he was keeping a careful eye on the kettle, and Auron was running a whetstone along his sword's edge, and Vincent was standing at the window, staring out at the courtyard. They were very loosely gathered.
They sure as hell weren't huddling, if that's what you were thinkin'. Men like they were didn't huddle. Why, he'd faced a hundred Heartless, a hundred thousand, even - men like him, men like Vince and Auron, they didn't huddle.
"'s a fuckin' scary thought, those two out there, somewhere, on their own," he muttered, reaching for a long metal hook as the beaten vessel he liked to pretend was still a kettle began to let out a feeble whooshing sound. He fished it out of the flames and grabbed Auron's loose sleeve to wrap around the handle so he could fill the tea pot. Don't you give him shit about the tea pot. He doesn't care if there are roses on it. What the hell are you, some kinda heathen? Everybody's gotta have a tea pot. Stands to reason, everyone's gotta have a tea pot, doesn't it?
It's probably a mark of how fuckin' scary the thought really is that Auron doesn't threaten to cut off his hand for using the sleeve like that. He just keeps right on with the whetstone, shenk, shenk, and now that he thinks about it, that noise is really grating on him. It's the last sound he wants to hear when they have so much else to--
--to not think about. Yeah. Because they were just gathered here, loosely. And they sure as hell weren't huddling.
Vincent looked pretty stiff, over there by the window sill. Like he'd been strapped to a backboard. Or had the Venus Gospel shoved up his ass, either way. Wasn't an unusual look for Vincent, but it meant they were all pretty worried about the consequences of the fateful meeting.
Not that it was bothering him or anything. Y'know. Not-huddled as he was.
Auron's whetstone went shenk, shenk, a dense, moist sound, and Cid said, "Would you cut that the fuck out and drink yer goddamn tea?"
Auron cut that the fuck out and picked up his goddamn tea, at least. Vincent barely twitched. Cid threw the salt shaker at him.
Vincent turned around to catch it, looking grim. "I can't see them anywhere."
Cid swore. So much for not-huddling. "They'll come back eventually, right? When they're hungry. They'll come back when they're hungry."
Auron snorted into his teacup. "You are dreadfully naive, for a person your age," he observed, and Cid picked up the pepper shaker, and tossed that a couple of times to get the weight of it.
"You wanna lose an eye?"
Vincent stared at him, unnervingly. "They cannot cook, but they can steal."
Cid threw the shaker at Vincent instead. "Stop talkin' like that! They wouldn't steal anything in this town, not anything important. It's a fuckin' crossroads. It's like a truce."
That stare was really beginning to piss him off, too. "I suppose you have forgotten the last truce she made?"
Auron straightened suddenly, and frowned. "...do you feel that?"
Cid hesitated. If he concentrated, he could maybe feel a bit of a vibration running along the floor. He looked at his teacup, at the concentric circles rippling its surface, and he looked at Vincent in horror, straw falling from his lip.
"She wouldn't."
"You did tell her gummi blocks were like materia for airships."
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