Title: Arty-farty
Author: Enide Dear
Rating: Cute
Author's note: The limerick is not mine! It belongs, in its original form, to padawan-san Erfan and she has kindly agreed to lend it to me for this fic. Cid's glasses belongs to Hiita and I frankly stole them…
I know very little about art, so all those things I made up. The might make no sense whatsoever to anyone with any kind of art education. Also, it was very hard for me to find the correct English expressions. *bows in apologise*
Summary: I might not know much about art, but I know what I like…
Reeve bit his nails, nervously. The huge gallery was packed with people in suits and evening dresses, mingling and talking softly, Champaign glasses ringing like little bells as they touched, light sparkling off tasteful jewellery. The re-opening of the Midgard Art Gallery was the event of the year for the cities high-class and cultural elite and the exhibition was exquisite. But even an event like this could be made to rise from a pleasant night to spectacular success by that tried and trusted method of inviting celebrities. So Reeve had been asked, very persuasively, if he could bring in Midgard's latest heroes – Avalanche.
He'd had been on the verge of throwing up all night.
Of course he loved his teammates; they were his family by now. Yuffie was the annoying but adorable little sister, and she had shown up in a lovely yellow evening dress, with deep hidden pockets and adorned with glittering, sharp things that might not be mistaken for jewellery on a distance. Cloud might not be too amused by an evening of paintings and sculptures, but at least he knew how to dress up in a suit and if he was wearing lingerie underneath it, well, then none was the wiser. Tifa clung to his arm, throwing deadly gazes at any woman who dared approach him. Reeve weren't too worried about them, not as long as nobody with white hair and pale complexion showed up, and the guards outside had strict orders to force-dye anyone with such hair before letting them in. Barret was standing in a corner with Nanaki, both looking pretty amused, talking to a very enthusiastic reporter from some magazine. They weren't likely to cause any scandal, apart from perhaps shattering a few crystal glasses in Barret's bionic hand, and that could be dealt with.
No, it was the last two to arrive that had caused Reeve sleepless nights ever since he'd agreed to invite Avalanche. That was the problem – he couldn't just invite the people he knew could behave in furnished rooms, he had to invite them all, or none. That was how Avalanche worked after all, and it wasn't as if he was embarrassed over them or something. It was just that he'd thought – hoped – prayed – begged to Gaia - that the Valenwind couple would decline…
Vincent was no problem, of course. The man was quiet and old-fashioned polite and civilised, and by the Gods, the man could carry a suit. On his own, he would be the perfect guest on a classy thing like this. He might even enjoy it, although this was modern art, and Vincent's view probably was that Monet and Botticelli was too modern…
But then there were Cid. If Yuffie was like a little sister and Cloud and Tifa like older siblings, Barret and Nanaki like cousins and Vincent like the prim old aunt, then Cid Highwind was the embarrassing uncle that was so amusing in private and a total catastrophe amongst other people.
Reeve bit his nails harder. He still remembered when they'd all been invited to Midgard's ballet set of *Chocobo Lake* where Cid had fallen asleep after ten minutes and snored – very loudly – through out the entire first act. Vincent, who could generally be counted on to keep his lover in some kind of leech, had been to engrossed with the show to notice anything, until Cid's cigarette fell out of the pilots mouth, on to his shirt, and set it on fire. The swearing the followed the panicky attempts to smother the fire had made several distinguished old ladies faint. In the end, Cid had had to tear off the shirt and step on it, and through the next act no one had been watching the ballet as the sight of a shirtless Cid Highwind proved a lot more distracting. Especially, Reeve had noted sourly, to the same old ladies who'd been fainting just minutes before.
And then, oh Gods, there were the poetry reading. In which Cid insisted on partaking, reading up his own 'poetry', a truly jaw-dropping collection of very dirty limericks. Reeve had had no idea one could rhyme that much on 'ass', and he'd been quite happy without that knowledge.
'The pilot's luminous lights
Where set on a delightful sight
As Vampie's moonpale buttocks
Were spread by ropes to the futtocks
All the captain had to do
To get in a position to screw
Was to move forwards to fuck-up'
Reeve still blushed at memory that one and Vincent had been livid, resulting in a shouting contest that somehow ended up with the both of them being very loud in a surprisingly small closet.
With these disasters in mind and knowing Cid's general disinterest in the finer arts, Reeve had been quite sure that Cid, at least, would not accept the invitation. When Cid had answered with a happy 'Count on us, pal!' Reeve felt as if Cait had got his tongue.
Now his fingers were bleeding from biting too much.
He'd even harboured thoughts of sabotaging the Highwind so that Cid would be too occupied to show, but that would have been equivalently to someone deliberately harming his Cait Sith, and in the end Reeve couldn't bring himself to do that.
"Hey, Reeve! There ya'are!" Waving widely, Cid cut through the thong of people, apparently oblivious to the whispers behind his back – quite a lot of these people had been there at both the ballet and the poetry. Vincent stalked his lover like a very dangerous shadow, throwing death-glares around at the mere mention of the naked chest incident. Reeve took a steadying breath. At least Vincent had crammed Cid into a suit, and a pretty expensive one too by the look of it, although the pilot had already managed to get a few burn holes on it, and there were something suspiciously like engine oil on a sleeve. Still, the two cut an impressive sight, one shining like the sun and the other dark as night.
"Hi Cid, hi Vincent." Reeve endured the rather brutal embrace from Cid and the potentially lethal handshake from Vincent. "Glad you could make it." He lied smootly.
"Sure thing, Reeve!" Cid smiled dazzlingly, making a few of the people who had been at the ballet sigh wistfully and Vincent's red eyes flare with jealously. "It wouldn't be the event of the year if we weren't here, right?" He punched Reeve playfully on the shoulder, almost knocking him over. "I'm gonna get us something to drink, a'right? Ya want one too?" He stomped of into the crowd as Reeve shook his head in regretful decline; he didn't dare drinking anything tonight.
"You look like you've seen a ghost, Reeve. Are you alright?" Vincent asked in his low, concerned voice.
"Yes, I'm just…" Reeve rubbed his temples. "Just please keep an eye on him tonight, will you?"
Vincent frowned.
"What do you mean?"
"It's just that this evening is important, for all of Midgard. I can't have Cid doing something foolish because he gets bored." Exasperated, Reeve blurted out the question that had been nagging him. "Why did he insist of coming along? I thought these things bored him."
Vincent's frown grew deeper.
"Actually, it was Cid who insisted we came here tonight. I'd rather just meet up with Avalanche later, not having to look on colourful doodles on canvas before. This –" he made a gesture with his metal claw to the room "- is not what I call art."
"But, what…" Reeve started confused, but was interrupted by a loud voice that carried over the room.
"What the fucking Hell?! Ya can't be serious! How can ya even begin ta compare the damn subtle colour schemes and fucking delicate pencil work of the new Hueron aquarelle with a Trueson coal drawing? Hueron is a fucking genius, whiles Truesons work has been shit ever since he left the Guggenheimer Academy. I mean, look at this…." The voice trailed off.
Reeve and Vincent exchanged stunned looks.
"Did you…um…did you teach him to say that?" Reeve gave Vincent a suspicious glance.
"Say what?" Vincent shrugged. "Did you understand what he said?"
"Well…some of it." Reeve squirmed.
"Hm." Vincent turned and started to push through the people who had all seemed to coagulate around a slowly moving person, who stopped in front of each painting, peering at it critically.
"Oh, hia Vince, here hold this, will ya?" Cid pushed the Champaign glasses to Vincent who took them surprised. "Can ya believe it? They didn't have any beer, just this sparkly stuff that makes me fucking sneeze…" His hands free, Cid reached into a suit pocket and extracted a pair of thick-glassed glasses. Putting them on, he glared at the painting, which to Vincent looked like a child's play with crayons, and stabbed triumphantly in the air with a finger stained with oil. "Aha! I thought so. Now, this is the work of a Gods-damned master, ya see? Its sudden play with light and fucking shade melts ta'gether ta create an illusion of naive expression that could make a grown man weep. If ya compare that to this piece of shit over here, where ya might as well have let a damned monkey loose on the palette – no structure, no sense of genuinely, no fucking life…." Cid continued his slow winding way down the gallery, dragging along a tail of gaping and after a particularly colourful description fiercely blushing spectators. Even the art critics' seemed in awe by the intelligent and educated (is somewhat less than eloquent) lesson. A few of them were franticly scratching notes.
Vincent was left standing, looking as if someone had hit him over the head with a poleaxe. Reeve stood next to him, his mouth hanging open. Finally, Vincent unfroze enough to gulp down the Champagne he had in one glass and hand the other over to Reeve, who gratefully did the same.
"I had no idea," Reeve confessed, his legs feeling wobbly.
Vincent only made a small, unintelligible noise. He was looking at Cid with a truly frightfully hungry gaze.
"Vincent…?"
"Want him. Now." Vincent almost growled.
*Get in line* Reeve thought, but of course couldn't say.
Shaking his head, Vincent seemed to get some kind of grip on himself.
"Have you any – any! – idea of how hard it is to try to get to be seme at least sometimes with the world's most masculine man? I've been searching for his soft side for years." Vincent's eyes glowed like embers, and he purred. "And now I found it."
Reeve gave the dark man a long, calculating glance, sighed and took up his cell phone. He'd better tell the attendants to put more pillows on the pilot's chair at dinner tonight; he very much doubted Cid would be able to sit otherwise.