I admit I was at first -very- skeptical of this pairing, but I decided to give it a shot for LJ's springkink challenge, and it rather wrote itself. Cid is a very malleable character to work with.

Note: This has Dirge of Cerberus spoilers. References are not necessary to understand fic.

Rising

It was the monster in him, rising. Like an earthquake that shook him from the dark recesses of his heart, it spread until his body was at its mercy, peeling away at the layers of his mind until the animal came out, clawing and roaring…

And then it was gone, leaving him growling rough gasps as his claws dug under the metal varnish of Shera's floor, the screeching sound jarring him out of the fog his mind scrambled in. He found he was on his hands and knees on the ship's floor, unable to do more than balance himself precariously there, trembling, trembling, pushing the animalistic instincts aside with a dogged determination that fought to focus on the one word that repressed the monster in him and kept his human side afloat –Lucrecia.

He managed to sit back against the wall, his pulse still throbbing with something inhuman and bestial, his mind spinning as he felt the pieces of him coming together slowly, as if a child was slowly rebuilding the puzzle that was his mind. One more piece connected, and his fingers loosened a fraction of an inch where they clutched at his heart.

"Oi, the hell's wrong with you?"

The face was just suddenly there, and Vincent's arm shot out without warning to violently snap at the presumed threat in front of him, his body leaning tautly forward with his teeth bared and gleaming dangerously. Cid said nothing, letting Vincent's harsh panting fill the silence.

It was a tricky situation, if only because of the gunner's penchant for either closing in on himself or disappearing, especially when caught in such a compromising— weak— position. There was also the slight issue of having his throat squeezed until it burst if Cid made a wrong move.

He slowly reached up to grasp at the metal-encased wrist of the claws wrapped, rather painfully, around his neck. The effect was immediate. Vincent's crimson eyes widened and he let go as if burned, cradling the hand against his body as his eyes sought to catch up with his body's actions and scrambled through the available courses of action. Cid solved the problem for him.

He simply left.

"Come see me at the captain's quarters."

His tone left no room for argument but clearly said I'll let you fight your battles, but I'm here to lick your wounds.

o0o

Everything was… different, but same all at once. Though the ship was different, Vincent found the gentle tilt of the air vessel familiar, welcomed the constant hum of the engines, though this one had a deeper frequency than that of the Highwind's. The smell of oil and the tang of metal prodded at his nose, but they weren't unbearable smells. He had never been in the ship before, and had rarely found himself in Cid's company on his own like this, but the man's manner had not changed from that of three years ago, and it was something that Vincent found he'd fastened himself on. It was the normalcy amid the strangeness of the last couple days, during which new enemies had appeared to confront, and resurfacing memories of his life before the experiments that had mutated him into the monster he was now haunted him. The world was now at stake once again, and though that in itself was nothing to raise an eyebrow at, he had an internal war to contend with that he wasn't sure he could win. Chaos had been set loose inside him, quite literally, his mind supplied sardonically, and it was no longer possible to ignore the murderous desires of the beast. This had not been the first of the attacks of the beast inside his mind, and it was becoming disturbingly obvious that it would not be the last. If anything though, the biggest surprise of his current predicament was the faint gratitude, though apprehensive at best, he felt at Cid's intervention.

So there he was, sitting at the small round table, a metal varnish to match that of the ship's shining underneath the shadows his body caused against the lighting behind him. He was considerably calmer now, though he could feel a periodic rush of blood pounding in his head, and controlled that sliver of apprehension. His body ached, however, and his insides still resonated with some unheard rumbling that made him feel like his stomach was a child's play-dough.

Which was why he eyed the food in front of him with something closer to queasiness than he would have liked. It appeared to be leftover rice and meat, which in itself was hardly appetizing to him, more for the leftover factor, and that Cid had cooked it. Cid's specialty was mechanics, not edible matter.

"It's not gonna kill ya, ya know," Cid grunted, polishing some object from the couch across from him. Vincent shook his head, not caring whether Cid took that as agreement or denial.

"You should find yourself some nice coffin to lie in. Got a closet for ya to hang upside down in also, if you'd prefer that."

Vincent was hard pressed not to laugh. Sarcastically. He grunted a noncommittal response, and Cid gave one of his hearty laughs and pulled out his cigarettes to point at Vincent with it as if it was some sort of mystical object of wisdom.

"I mean it. Ya didn't even look half as much like a damn vamp last time I saw ya," the pilot continued, eyeing him. Vincent didn't know what to think about the roving gaze dragged along him.

"I appreciate the concern," he managed to grind out, pushing the food away pointedly.

There was another moment of stretched out silence, where Cid puffed out a couple rings of smoke from the cigar and swore once or twice at some bit of displeasing machinery or something similar. Vincent wasn't particularly keen on paying attention at what, his head still foggy and out of sorts, and it was Cid. The man made a vocation of pointing at everything and cursing it to an early grave.

Ceramic clinked against metal as the pilot placed a cup of green tea in front of him, and Vincent gave it a tired glance but acquiesced to at least wrapping his hand around the cup. The pilot's glance was sharp and devious, but Vincent chalked it up to him trying to figure out how many ways he could make fun of him. He didn't often take Cid seriously, though it wasn't like he didn't respect him. The man was wise underneath the sailor talk, with a perceptive eye that often wasn't revealed because of his similarly concealed prudence. But usually, Vincent insisted, he was just an irritating old man with a penchant for talking loud and dirty and getting in your face. "Feels like old times, doesn't it?"

Vincent blinked once blearily before realizing what Cid was talking about. Yes, it somehow did. The fact that Cloud and Tifa were waiting down there for them, along with Barret. Sitting here mindlessly with food and tea as Cid rambled on. Yuffie's woeful, airsick yells which echoed periodically throughout the ship… the mild rush of anticipation of the upcoming battle. Yes, it was familiar, it was… strangely enough, normal. Except now he had a nineteen-year-old in a ten-year-old's body to think about, with her dying sister in a tube in one of the ship's inner chambers. And then there was the beast inside him to worry about, the one that had been set free to rear its dangerous head whenever it wanted…

"Quit your damn sulking and drink the damn tea."

Vincent snapped abruptly to attention as he noticed Cid's frown and returned it with a displeased glower. He wasn't sulking, damn it. He made a point of drinking his tea without changing his demeanor at all.

"You got too fuckin' much on your mind, ya know that? It ain't healthy, even for a guy who forsakes sleep for year-long intervals or whatever the hell's wrong with yer sleeping habits. That quite possibly might be the root of yer problems."

He looked up at Cid's immensely blue eyes, slightly surprised in some detached corner of his mind at how intense they were, and didn't know how to respond. To say he'd never wished for it? To ask him to make it all go away? That he hated every second of it?

He made to stand up, of mind to leave, but found that his legs weren't working properly. The sliver of panic that should have accompanied that fact didn't really register. That in itself should have warned Vincent, but instead he frowned at his legs and slowly realized that whatever was wrong with them was affecting his arms too, and he looked up just as the fog that had been encroaching the corner of his vision became an insidious cloud of darkness, and he distinctly felt his balance go askew. The floor rose up to attack him.

"Shit, I forgot the pillow!"

o0o

His hands braced themselves against Cid's shoulders, and he leaned into the solid, warm body with all the force that he could, letting guttural, animalistic sounds escape his throat when Cid's hands found their way through the folds of his cloak to stroke his abdomen. Those hands pressed against the flat expanse of Vincent's stomach, releasing more of those growled moans as they pushed continually harder against the contracted muscles there. When his thumbs sank against the dip of Vincent's bellybutton, there was nothing but a breathless gasp that broke the kiss, and Vincent pressed his face against Cid's neck, his panting breath warming the collar of Cid's shirt, bunched in Vincent's fists.

How they'd gotten to this point, Vincent wasn't quite sure. That it was mainly Cid's fault, that he was sure of. He remembered waking up in Cid's bed, tired and disoriented, and a cup of tea being shoved into his face when he'd emerged from the bedroom. The tilt of the airship, before familiar, screwed with his balance now, though he later realized it was just an effect of whatever drug Cid had put into the tea he'd given him before. Which, now that he reflected back on all that, may have had something do with how they had gotten here after all.

Cid was murmuring some nonsensical crap in his ear, as he always did, but there was something different about the tone, Vincent managed to pick up. There was an urgency, an earnestness in it that Vincent didn't like, didn't feel like it was appropriate here, against the wall of Cid's bedroom, with the door locked and the ship a mere hour from arriving at its destination, where another supposed epic battle was to take place. This was a time for urgent denial, urgent release, not sentimentality and emotional discussions. His fingers tightened with the slight inklings of apprehension against the sliver of skin showing on Cid's hips, and the other man took it as encouragement, tangling one hand further in Vincent's dark mass of hair as the other one skittered shocks of sensation along Vincent's pale arm. Their now bare chests pushed against each other with their forced breaths, back and forth, eliminating every molecule of air between them tenaciously. As red as the blood that had been spilled on it numerous times, the cloak was the only obstacle that kept their skin from touching, hot and sticky with the sweat, pushed down from Vincent's lower face by the force of Cid's mouth and making it so that Cid had to maneuver his hands underneath the folds to reach the other man's back, digging into the muscle with his fingernails. Vincent arched against him, pushing his mouth nearly to the point of bruising against Cid's own, making sure to catch his tongue with his sharp teeth and tasting the alkaline tang of blood that oozed out, felt the recoil of the body below him, the responding grip on his arm and shoulder blade. He enjoyed the moan that followed from deep in Cid's throat, dragging his hot breath down the man's chin, feeling the prickle of the stubble scratch against his face as he lowered his lips on Cid's Adam's apple, licking it languidly and catching every trickling groan that birthed there, feeling the bob of the mound at every swallow, every gasp.

Vincent felt a callused hand rise up underneath his cloak to his shoulder, gently, if insistently pushing the cloth away to reveal the smooth milky flesh underneath. Maybe it was a mark of the trust he felt for the pilot, or the heat of the moment, that he did not stop the action as soon as he realized what it was. But then Cid spoke, his throat rumbling beneath Vincent's lips, the panting breath warming his forehead with the pained, wistful, loving­ whisper he dared utter.

"Will you ever let her and this cloak go?"

Vincent froze for an infinitesimal second, then wrenched himself away abruptly, not caring that one of his claws had caught Cid's jaw, leaving an angry red scratch that could have been potentially dangerous, and hissed, "Bastard."

Cid's bright blue eyes narrowed, and he pursed his lips in an angry scowl. Their chests were still heaving, and Vincent could still feel the ghosting sensation of the bruising and tugging of the other man's lips on his. Cid was apparently having similar problems, because his hand lowered and rose multiple times as if fighting off the urge to touch his face, but he finally spat out, "What? I'm a bloody bastard because I'm trying to get us past more than just fuck-buddy status? Cause I'm trying my damnedest to fix the broken shit in ya? It's gonna take more than your damn internal moping and a hundred years of isolation to fix ya."

He took a dangerous step closer, regaining the space that Vincent had forced between them, and Vincent realized with an angry growl that not only was he already backed up against the wall, but Cid's shorter height had nothing to do with his menacing stance and the fire in his eyes. It was that fire that Vincent suddenly realized he yearned for, that passion and sincere concern for everything he was involved with, which Vincent had lost so long ago and now only associated with thoughts of Lucrecia.

To his dismay, Cid had breached the last step between them and now gazed evenly into his blood-red eyes, and Vincent growled warningly as Cid's hand pressed underneath his chin and gently tugged upwards, as if there wasn't already a difference enough in their heights. The pilot pointedly ignored the claw-encased hand that violently seized his wrist in a second warning, and Vincent silently damned the man for his audacity. And then further damned himself, for not being able to throw this man off of him, for wondering with something akin to awe what this man could find so interesting in him, what he saw in Vincent that made him worth telling him off and trying to 'fix'. For somehow enjoying the tensing of his body at that single fiery touch underneath his chin.

"It's gonna take a human touch," Cid whispered, with that hoarse, gruff voice he reserved for when he was being truly serious, like when Shera was ill, or when things had looked their bleakest back in that whole Sephiroth and Meteor mess, and Vincent had to wonder again— why me?

"It's gonna take time, but you're willing to wait, aren't ya? Because you don't want to forgive yer sins—you want them to be forgiven," Cid paused, and his eyes widened before narrowing again in an accusatory glare, as his voice rose, "No— in fact, it ain't even that. You don't want to be forgiven, because you think you're such a fucking worthless cause. You want to wallow in yer miseries and slowly waste to shit because you think that's what you deserve! Well, damn it, there's now way in hell I'm letting you do that, you bastard!"

And the man kissed him. Hard, and rough, but this time with an urgency, a message. Vincent would have seen it coming—would have responded quicker— if he hadn't been so dazed by the words that had been thrown at him. Even with the short time they'd known each other like this, Vincent had made sure­ that his past, his habits, his reasons —were his and his alone, for no one to meddle with, no one to attempt to correct, no one to label as 'martyrdom' or 'guilt', regardless or whether they were or not. Ah, but when had Cid's roving hands displayed respect for his wishes?

He let Cid do as he wished, let his mouth work whatever wonders it wanted, and felt it distantly, all the former heat in him replaced by a cold aloofness. There was only a cool acknowledgment of the heat of Cid's body, only a mild twitch of his tongue when Cid's wrapped around it. And when Cid broke away, breathing heavily and looking into his crimson as sin eyes with smoldering determination, Vincent adjusted his cloak, letting it fall with the finality of death back over his exposed chest.

"You're wasting your time," he heard himself say tonelessly, and did not understand the reluctance he felt at speaking those words, "I've been lost for a long time, and even you won't be able to save me."

He turned away to leave, his cloak a slap in the face laughing madly with the flick of its tip, but his eyes snapped wide when Cid's hand grabbed his shoulder harshly.

"Let me at least find you," the man spat fiercely, forcing his blue, blue eyes into Vincent's surprised ones, and making a wordless promise that Vincent heard all too clearly nonetheless.

Vincent wrenched himself away, let the mask take over his face again, and left with a hastiness he didn't understand, and it was all the tacit permission Cid needed.

Reviews appreciated. This is a fun dynamic to work with, isn't it?