Title : Itch
Author : Dùlin
Pairing : Cid/Vincent
Fandom : Final Fantasy VII
Rating : PG-13
Warnings : Post-AC, attempted drunken-ness and a total absence of romance as far as I can tell
Disclaimer : Squeenix owns. I am not Squeenix. You do the math.
A/N : written for the lovely feypuck who wrote me a Valenwind because I asked. She gave me the first sentence as a prompt.
O.O.O.O
Vincent wasn't sure why it affected him the way it did, but the feeling was there and refusing to leave. A bit like that annoying itch that you sometimes got between your shoulder blades, the one that you had to ask someone to scratch for you because a human body just didn't bend that way. The problem was, he wasn't sure he'd asked the right person to scratch it. He wasn't sure he should have asked anyone.
No, to be more truthful, he was pretty sure that he hadn't asked, but someone had volunteered anyway.
In Vincent's opinion, it still didn't explain why he had let it happen, or why he was still here. Or why he'd felt the need to find Rocket Town's seediest bar in an attempt to get drunk that he knew would fail abysmally.
Vincent would have gladly killed Hojo a second time just for that. There were times in a man's life when he needed to get drunk. Now would have been such time. Vincent didn't know the name of the mixture he'd been knocking back for the last few hours, but from the look on the bartender's face, he felt confident that he should have been dead from alcohol poisoning after the second glass, and not well into his fourth bottle and contemplating asking for a fifth one.
He didn't know what to call it.
He'd been in love before. Never mind the fact that it had been unrequited and had ended in blood for everyone involved, he knew what it felt like. And it didn't feel like … this.
And it certainly shouldn't put him off his guard enough that he didn't notice it when someone invited themselves at his table and sprawled in a chair right in front of him with a grin.
"You know that thing fries your brain cells, right ?"
Cid caught the fourth bottle and took a whiff of it. His eyes watered and he coughed. He hurriedly put the bottle back down without even taking a swig like he usually did whenever he invited himself in Vincent's life.
"Damn, Vin ! Whatever you're tryin' to pull, I sure as hell hope it's working !"
Vincent looked into his glass with a frown. He could have been drinking water and achieved more of a buzz.
"Not exactly, no," he said evenly.
"So you're just wasting booze and gil and making me run around the town for the sheer hell of it ?"
The frown was still there as Vincent looked up.
"I'm not making you …" he started, but Cid interrupted him with a snort.
"Same difference, Vin. You gonna finish that ?" he added, pointing at the half-finished glass.
Vincent stared at the glass for a long moment.
"No," he eventually sighed.
"Great. I'd like to be able to light up without you literally breathin' fire down my neck," Cid said, shaking his pack out of his pocket. "By the way, I got a call for a drop-off in Junon. If you're not on deck in fifty minutes, we're leaving without you. See you then."
The squeeze of fingers around the claw-covered hand, the scrape of the wooden chair on the floor, and he was gone, just like that, leaving only the smell of oil and dirt and tobacco behind.
And he meant it, too. If Vincent wasn't on board before take-off, Cid would leave without him. He wouldn't worry about leaving Vincent behind. And he wouldn't care if Vincent just happened to be in his cabin, in his bunk, by the time the Sierra reached Junon.
He would just snort, and light up, and grin. And he'd take what was in front of him, no questions asked.