6)Rain

The rain falls on Vincent, as he stands overlooking Rocket Town, acid rain from a sky as blue as the one he lost and he can not help but think as he wipes his ebony hair from his face, that even the sky cries bitter tears for the one who was meant to soar it.

7)Chocolate

Cid once remembered, when he was a little bastard, his father, who was a big bastard, telling him that the more your wife was pissed at you the more chocolate you brought her, and so, Cid finds himself, at three in the morning, begging a weired guy with a funny hat to build him a life size chocolate Dracula, and as his phone rings and his baby's voice screams out at him he thinks that maybe he shouldn't have told Vincent the chocolate story the first time he brought him chocolate after a fight.

8)Happiness

Vincent never cared for happiness too much: it made you stupid, made you slow, made you weak, but looking into Cid's shinning blue eyes he can't seem to bring himself to care.

9)Telephone

It never occurred to Cid just how much Vincent cared until he realised that, no matter what, Vincent always picked up the phone when he called.

10)Ears

There was something that Cid had learned about Vincent when he finally got him naked: when you licked the back of his left knee he giggled and turned completely red, except for his ears.

11)Name

It had been three-hundred forty seven years since Vincent had last spoken, except for one word, that he called in his sleep before he would wake with tears streaming from his eyes and a bitter sweet smile on his face, because always, always, when he slept he called in a voice so broken, Cid.

12)Death

Cid Highwind was never afraid of anything, but looking down the barrel of Cerberus he found something that scared him half to death: a pissed off, pregnant, undead gunslinger that he had just maybe, might have insinuated was, ugh... kinda round?

13)Sex

For twelve years they lived together and it never even crossed their minds until one night, frustrated by their dancing around each other, Shera final locked them in a room with a bottle of lube and told not to come out until one of them had been fucked and she didn't care who.

14)Touch

Fingers caress Vincent's skin with the ethereal quality of a half forgotten memory, one buried in the pain of loss and centuries of wandering alone, of a smile and touch that knew everything about him, every little quirk and imperfection and accepted, adored it; it was, Vincent thinks, the last time anyone looked and saw more than an immortal beast, a monster to be used and discarded but never touched, never loved, never held.

15)Weakness

There had always been something weak about Cid Highwind, his father was sure of it, and when he saw what he a had become, a worthless fag, taking it up the ass from some weak, pretty little whore, he made his feelings clear, at least until he was introduced to the pretty little things pretty little gun and big shiny claws, then he wasn't saying much of anything, kind of hard to, six feet down, because no one, no one messes with Vincent's bitch.

16)Tears

The sky was crying, deep, heart-wrenching acid tears that Cid couldn't, because Vincent wasn't supposed to die, he just wasn't alright, and it didn't matter what no quack doctor said, Vincent was not dead, he couldn't be dead (Vincent, oh god baby please wake up!), because he's Vincent and and he would never go down that easy... Right?

17)Speed

Cid found that as Chaos, Vincent was really fast, and latched around Chaos's neck, the wind almost ripping the skin from his face, Cid finds he doesn't mind the ripped furniture or the dead animals or the wet fur on every god damned thing in the fuckin house, because like this, like this he can almost fly.

18) Wind

It was cold, and wet and Cid finds he can't remember a time when it wasn't, not since he found Vin, here, with Luceria, and he swore to watch over them until he died and that should have been long ago except that he hasn't aged a day, it should terrify him, this looming immortality, but all he can feel is gratitude that he will remain to protect Vincent and his Lady, (and he uses that term very loosely), so he closes his eyes and dreams of the sky and the wind in his face and of Vincent beside him with that sad little half smile and he waits for his sleeping god to wake.

19)Freedom

When Cid was fifteen he found what he thought was true freedom: zero gravity; when Vincent was fifteen he thought that the only freedom came with sleep; when they were twenty they both learned that the things they thought would free them could trap them as surely as anything else, and so Vincent slept and Cid flew and neither were free; when Cid was forty-two and Vincent was in his late sixties, but not looking a day past twenty they found true freedom, and so, with Vincent's blood still on his hands from the Nibel wolves Cid picks up Cerberus and kisses Vincent goodbye, their first and last kiss, before he pulls the trigger and finds true freedom.

20)Life

Vincent Valentine was finding out that life, as his husband so aptly dreamed it, was a vicious, backstabbing, manipulative, evil bitch; and so three years after the whole silver haired trio thing he found himself sitting on the sink in a wall-market bathroom, in drag, holding a little stick covered in piss and wondering why the hell it gave you a pink smiley face when it ruined your life, shouldn't it be like the four horsemen signalling the apocalypse, because that was what this was; Vincent Valentine was pregnant, and the world was going to face a hell even the Catholics couldn't be a happy foretelling.

21)Jealousy

As Cid polished his spear and worked out the dents and scratches accumulated in the weapon from their travels, his strong, calloused hands working the hot metal Vincent Valentine had the most curious sensation of being jealous of a damn spear.

22)Hands

Cid always believed you could find the measure of a man by the callouses on his hands, and when he met Vincent Valentine he knew right away that this was some pansy ass upper class boy, slumming out of boredom, but he hired him anyway, because, well he may have been a pansy, but he was a pretty pansy, and he believed that until one of his men tried to get a little too close to and he found himself on the business end of one of the biggest guns Cid had ever seen, and pansy or not, Cid had to admire someone who could make an ex-SOLIDER shit himself with a raised eyebrow and a cocked hammer.

23)Taste

Cid ran his tongue over Vincent's throat and down to dip into his belly button, along his hot cock and down to swirl around his balls, he sucked and licked and bit and kissed and he still could not figure it out, it wasn't until Vincent came and he swallowed the almost sweet come that he got it: Vincent tasted like gun smoke and blood covered peaches.

25)Home

It wasn't until Vincent tripped over a half completed engine in the living room and landed in something that could have been pizza, maybe, a while ago, before it became sentient and started moving, that he realized that he had finally found his place, grease bunnies and plane parts and foul mouthed redneck pilot and all.