Author's Note: I really loved writing this one. These two are just so much fun! The only problem is the way they talk, really. I should do another piece like this sometime.

Fine-Tuning
Barret and Cid.

Barret was startled by a sudden tug on his gun arm that jerked his arm away from the table it had been resting on. Reacting purely on instinct, he tried to jerk his hand away and brain the perpetrator with the metal limb before he realized who had done it, and that it wasn't an attack. "What th' hell?" he growled, turning to see his mechanical arm being closely scrutinized by one Cid Highwind. "Cid, what the hell you doin'?" he asked irritably. The man had just grabbed at him without so much as a by-your-leave. It was confusing, and when faced with something Barret usually slipped into his default mood, irritation Cid could have given him some warning, at least.

"Shuddap, I'm workin'," came the drawled reply. Cid was running his fingers over the metal plating of the arm, frowning in concentration as he stared at the piece of machinery. He shifted his cigarette (unlit so far) to clench it with his teeth as he examined Barret's arm. Then, from one of the pockets of his pants, he pulled a screwdriver, and started dismantling Barret's forearm.

The man immediately tried again to jerk his arm away, but failed. Cid's grip on his wrist was strong enough that he would probably end up hurting the shorter man in an attempt to make him let go, and Barret didn't want to hert the man. Yet. "What you doin', foo'!?" He demanded. "Stop screwing around with my arm! It's complicated, you're gonna mess it up!" He said angrily, and accompanied his words with another attempt to get away. "Now get off, dammit!"

"I ain't messing up shit." Cid replied, continuing to focus on his work. he was systematically detaching parts and laying them out on the table, occasionally pausing to look intensely at the inner workings of the arm. "If I can take somethin' apart, I can damn well put it back together," the pilot put one more piece down on the table before looking up at Barret to give the man a dark look. "Besides, it was fucked up anyway." He said. "It's been messed up for about a week now, an' you know it. I didn't see you doin' shit about it, so I might as well take a crack at it."

And the thing was, the blond was right. The arm had not been working smoothly ever since a battle about a week ago, where Barret had ended up accidentally slamming his arm into a boulder. It worried him, especially since the problem came up most often when his arm was transforming into a gun, but he couldn't do anything about it. He didn't know much about the workings of his arm, and even if he had he doubted he would have been able to repair it himself. It just wasn't one of those things you could do with one hand. So Barret had simply been ignoring the problem as best he could and hoping it would go away.

The two men sat in silence while Cid dismantled a large portion of the forearm. Barret watched the man work, occasionally taking a sip of his beer. It was a bit odd, seeing the gun-arm that he relied on so much being turned into little strangely-shaped pieces of metal. It brought home to him just how complicated the limb was. Cid was completely absorbed by the work, occasionally cursing under his breath at a component. Cid finally found the problem, because he grinned ruthlessly as he took out one piece. "Gotcha, little fucker," he growled as he dug around in his pocket and drew out another part, apparently a replacement. "Figured out the problem." He elaborated for Barret's benefit. "Screw got broken, so a bunch of shit came loose. It'll work now."

"Hey, man... thanks for the fine-tuning," the gun-armed man said as Cid started reassembling his weapon. "I can't take care of it well using only one arm." He didn't want to admit that he couldn't take care of it at all, if only to save some of his ego.

"I've been wanting to get a look at this thing anyway." Cid muttered, grinning at Barret's humor, which was obviously an attempt to distract from his embarrassment at the assistance. The pilot waved his hand in the air for a moment as a dismissal. "'Sides, I don't want to end up all fucked up because you couldn't get your damn arm to work." He finished fixing the arm and lit up a cigarette, watching as Barret tested the repairs.

"Problem's gone," Barret reported, looking pleased. It was nice having his arm working properly again. He would have to find somewhere outside the inn to practice shooting with it to see if the switch between the "arm" and "gun" settings was corrected as well.

"Yeah, whatever. Just don't mess it up again," Cid told him as he stood, sounding irritated. "I got better things to do."