Title: Because the World Shall End with You
Dedication: For hirotanik; Happy Birthday, Twin!Snake
Fandom: FFVII
Genre(s): Comedy/Romance/Drama
Rating/Warning(s): PG-13 with alcohol use and sexuality
Pairing(s): Cid Highwind/Vincent with mention of Rufus/Tseng
Summary: Cid Highwind has a super secret brown paper bag from the Happy Turtle. Vincent Valentine, in the slew of events that occurs between Cid's acquisition and the annual AVALANCHE Halloween party, foolishly forgets about it.

Because the World Shall End with You
there would be a beautiful sunset, too

On the eve of their first Halloween together, Cid Highwind went out to the Happy Turtle around five in the afternoon and came back exactly twenty-eight minutes later with a brown bag and a grin on his lips that would have made Cait Sith glow with pride. He wouldn't tell Vincent what the bag contained. Vincent didn't really think much on it at the time: after all, bedroom activities have the tendency to be quite distracting of trivial curiosities.

By Halloween evening, Vincent Valentine had quite forgotten about the mysterious brown bag sitting on the floor next to the dining table. He was too busy with the uncooperative punch bowl and the equally uncooperative Barrett standing between the bowl and Vincent. So what if Yuffie had done something funny to the red punch to make it turn bright pink? Vincent was not a man concerned with such idiocy as masculine colours and was quite willing to be seen--if he absolutely had to be--with a bright pink glass of punch.

Plus, Vincent was quite a fan of pink champagne punch, and he was very intent on expressing this to Barrett if the machine gunner would just stop moving so damn much.

"You would," Barrett was telling him, "be a lot more convincing if you weren't wearing a turban of toilet paper on your head."

Barrett, as usual, had totally missed Vincent's point, but the smaller gunner wasn't in the mood to push it. It was, quite obviously, not the most optimal of Halloween costumes. But Tifa had insisted Vincent wear something to the party. But, by the time said voluptuous fighter had insisted that, Vincent had already arrived with Cid to the party itself and had had to improvise. Yuffie had offered him underwear. Vincent was quite convinced that toilet paper was a great improvement.

He did not, due to the fact the toilet paper kept falling into his eyes even more than his long bangs, see Cid slip into their shared inn room with a brown paper bag in hand.

--

The brown paper bag, it turned out, was not the only thing had had forgotten about and/or missed Cid sneaking around their house and the inn. But it was the brown paper bag that really mattered.

"Open it."

The last time Cid gave him a gift, Vincent had ended up with a blooded nose and a black eye. Non-mechanical cats were not entirely fond of the gunner or any of the insane counterparts stored inside of his body. It hadn't helped that Cid had forgotten to feed the cat before tying it into the Easter basket the day before. Hungry animals, as Rufus Shinra had explained over an aromatic tea prepared by a secretively smirking Tseng, are often quite crabby and rarely of a conductive disposition to be offered as gifts let alone pets. Rufus, who Tseng would refer to as much like a pharaoh hound, had great knowledge of such things: after all, the man had been managing his motley Turkish pets since he was a young boy.

So, naturally, Vincent was cautious about the bag as much as he was curious. It wasn't moving (a good sign) but smelled like smoke (a bad sign). He knew that Cid would not intentionally saddle him with something dangerous. It would make bedroom activities rather sparse and unpleasant for a while, which neither of them wanted.

"I promise it's not like the Easter basket."

Cid's tone was quite plaintive. Vincent had no desire to make his man beg; that was a power he liked to use for more satisfying purposes. So, the brown paper bag was uncrumpled and the top unrolled, Vincent bracing himself. The extraordinary explosion occurred by the following procedure:

Vincent looked in the bag.

He perceived the contents of the bag.

And then, blood rushing in the opposite direction of his face, he turns his gaze to a strangely shy Cid.

The explosion itself occurred thus as Vincent answered, "Yes."

Eloping suited the pair perfectly. After all, the gunner and the pilot lived in the fast lane, marriage, sex, and all.