This Is My Sin

by iPrinceRoxas

Rating: PG

Pairing: Cid x Vincent

Boredom struck, I wearily fought off sleep with the entertainment only FFVII could provide. And then it hit me (Rocked me like a hurricaine, actually).

"FLUFF!" I exclaimed, breaking the silence of the early morning (Bleach was already over by then...).

"Shut up!" came my mother's voice from the dark recluses of the house, a fury awakened by spawn's stupidity (She doesn't remember telling me to STFU).

I obeyed the command of my parental unit, but a sly smirk slowly sppeared upon my face as the gears in my devious fangirl mind began to work in overdrive (As they always do).

(And despite the word "Sin" in the title, this fic is not explicit. Nor is it about Jecht...)

Vincent gave himself a moment to catch his breath before taking another swig from his bottle of gin. It made his throat burn and his head spin, but it was all he could do to stop thinking about Lucrecia.

"Slow down, Vamp Boy!" Cid commented before gulping down some of his own liquor. "You're not quite as tolerant as I am."

Vincent gave a grunt of disapproval to being criticized. "I'll stop if you can give me another way to drown out my dreadful memories."

Cid plopped his feet up on the table before him, leaning back on the comfy couch and stretching his arms. Cid and Vincent were forced to share a room, considering they were the newest additions to the Geek Squad. That and Cloud didn't feel comfortable sharing a room with two (almost) complete strangers, but how was spending the night with a red dog and a heavily-armed lunatic any better? Naturally, Tifa, Aerith, and Yuffie were all shoved into a single room in this spooky hotel as well. Cid had counted himself lucky, seeing as how he was squished into a small space with one person instead of two.

"...urts..." Vincent murmered.

"What was that?" Cid sighed.

"I said my head hurts..." the ebony-haired man responded. His hand, the one not holding the whiskey bottle, shot up to massage his heated forehead. "Too much gin..."

"What'd I tell yah?" Cid smirked. He retrieved a pack of cigarettes from his discarded jacket on the table, placing it softly between his lips. He reached into the other pocket and pulled out a lighter, which he used to light the cigarette hanging from his mouth. Before Cid had an oppurtunity to toss the cigarette pack onto the table, the younger man snatched both the pack and the lighter from his grasp. "The hell are you doing?" Cid asked rather casually for a man who had just been robbed by a vampire. He looked on, slightly amused, as Vincent placed a cigarette in his own mouth and clumsily tried again and again to light it, but his fine motor skills (or lack therof) seemed to prevent him from accomplishing this basic task.

Using his free hand to support him, Vincent closed the small space between himself and Cid, pressing the end of his cigarette against the lit end end of Cid's. Vincent stayed this way for a couple of seconds, giving his cig a moment to light, before resuming his previous position a foot and a half away from the pilot. Cid's only response was to shoot the kid a disapproving stare.

"Sorry..." Vincent muttered. "Couldn't light it..." He took a long drag of his cigarette before grabing it away from his mouth and coughing into his fist. He tried to inhale some more from his cancer stick, but ended up wheezing violently.

Cid snatched the cigarette away from Vincent while he was in the midst of a coughing fit, putting it out with the heel of his boot and flicking the extinguished remnant away from himself and Vincent. "Are you crazy?" he shouted at the man wheezing into his fists. Cid gave Vincent a couple of moments to sieze his coughing before slapping him on the back of the head. "Have you ever even smoked a damn day in your life?"

Vincent glanced up at him through ebony strands of hair before shaking his head wearily. "...I've never drank gin...never drank anything before..."

"The hell's wrong with you...?" Cid grumbled, leaning his head back and letting his eyes slip shut.

Vincent forced himself to stand, staggering a bit. He grabbed his bottle of gin, made his way toward the nearest bed, slammed the alcohol onto the bedside table and flopped face-down onto the matress, not letting the lumpiness and metal springs keep him from his comfort.

"Stupid kid..." was all Vincent heard before the sound of another body hitting the matress. Vincent turned his head just enough to look at the blond man sitting next to him. Cid took one last drag from his cigarette before smothering the lit end in an ashtray next to Vincen'ts bottle on the bedside table. "You okay, kid?" Cid asked, breaking the silence. "You better not get sick on me..."

"I'm fine." Vincent responded almost soundlessly. A sharp intake of breath escaped his lips when he felt the other man's hand gently rub against his jet black hair.

Vincent's hand moved in a way that threatened to slap Cid's hand away, but Cid whispered, "I'm not gonna hurt you, kid." After stroking Vincent's hair for a while, Cid stood. He stretched his arms a bit and steadily proceeded to remove his white undershirt in preperation for sleep, before falling back onto the bed next to the one on which Vincent lie. The loud Fwap! that resulted from Cid's bare back hitting the comforter caused Vincent to lift his head and stare at him.

Vincent was immediately awestruck by the picture before him. Before tonight, he had never seen Cid without his trademark blue leather jacket, much less without the shirt underneath, so needless to say that the very idea that Cid had exposed himself in such a way was the first thing to hit Vincent. The next thing was the sheer number of battle scars that the other man bore. As Cid allowed his eyes to slip shut, Vincent pulled himself up from his uncomfortable lying position and made his way toward the blond pilot. Vincent let his gaze trace over the intricate and inconsistent scars on Cid's chest and arms. They weren't many, but just looking at them made Vincent's chest hurt. He reached forward with a steady, unsure hand and gently touched the outline of what looked like an ancient scar on Cid's shoulder. He left his hand run the full length of the scar before pulling back, realizing what exactly it was he was doing.

"Another sin..." he murmered before going back to his own bed, making no effort to find a comfortable position to lie in. "How many sins have I commited...?"

were the last words to escape Vincent's lips that night as he drifted off into his nightmare world from which there seemed to be no waking.

Well, this story had absolutely no prior planning, and the majority was written in the wee hours of the morning. The original idea I had was a lot more...CidxVincent-y, but I decided against it at the last moments. Another one of the outcomes I came up with was a psycho-Vincent, but the ensuing violence wouldn't match up with Final Fantasy VII's story very well. Now, if you couldn't figure out from the term "spooky hotel," this takes place in Cid and Vincent's room at the Ghost Hotel in Gold Saucer. I got the idea for this when my fangirl mind translated Vincent's line "Cid, let's go back to our rooms" into the worst. Also, a line that Vincent never actually said had been buzzing around in my head for a while. "I dreamt of Cid Highwind last night, and this I can add to my list of sins." Well, that's pretty much all I got. This is Sephyrawr, and I approve this message!

Note: If my fangirlishness offended any haters out there, please stop clicking on links you shouldn't!