Under
At Seventh Heaven, at three A.M., a scream rent the night.
Vincent sighed and began to count. One...Two...Three...Four...Five...S\ix...
When his count reached seven, the door creaked open, revealing a teary-eyed Yuffie.
"Vincent?" she asked, voice trembling.
"Yes Yuffie?" It was like a script now. Five months after Sephiroth's defeat, and they had acted out this scene every night, since her nightmares began. She woke up screaming, he waited seven seconds, she entered, seeking shelter.
In the first few weeks, he had always run to her, but when he left, she always followed him. Finally, they just got into the routine.
"Can I sleep here tonight?"
He sighed a little. As if she even had to ask. For some reason she seemed to feel that, despite five months' sharing of sleeping space, his permission was still in question.
"Of course, Yuffie."
This broke a little with the established script. Normally he just responded "yes" and left it at that.
"Of course?" she asked as she clambered awkwardly into his bed. "Why of course?"
He moved over a little, creating room for her next to him. Yuffie snuggled into the warm hollow left by his body and allowed him to put an arm around her. "Because you have been sleeping here for the last five months," Vincent responded. "You don't really need to ask anymore."
Yawning, she dug her head into his shoulder. "I guess that makes sense. I just feel like...like I'm imposing on you or something..."
"I have grown to expect your nightly intrusions. I doubt I would be able to sleep without them, at this point."
"Oh."
They lay in silence for a moment, Yuffie beginning to play with a lock of Vincent's hair.
"I don't mind if you simply wish to sleep here, instead of waking up every night," he told her cautiously.
Yuffie felt her lips twitch a little. "It's definitely a thought. I can see it turning into an idea, possibly a plan. Could we try making one of those in the morning?" She had been wanting to ask him for weeks, but asking Mr. Gentleman-McGentlemanly if you could sleep with him every night, as in, go to bed with him, was daunting.
He laughed at her foggy voice, and assented. She yawned again, then sighed a little, tucking her whole body against Vincent's. Her arms were around his torso, and his arms held her as well. He thought about how their intimacy was so tied to her nightmares. Somehow, his presence was the only thing that stopped her waking up in tears, throat raw from screaming.
It was just good luck that his bed was so narrow. That they had to curl to tightly against one another to stop from falling out of the bed. Vincent might have been old, going on sixty, but his body still relished the feeling of Yuffie's little frame against his. She didn't seem to mind either, and since that first morning, when they'd woken up in each others embrace, the physical closeness hadn't been an issue. To her, it even seemed like a comfort, something she relied upon, always crawling into his embrace.
Once Tifa had found them asleep together. Vincent's bare chest and Yuffie's scant clothing, only a camisole and shorts, had convinced her she was walking in on something. It had taken almost an hour to explain to her that there was nothing between them, and by the end of that time, somehow all of AVALANCHE thought they were sleeping together.
In a sense, this was true, so they simply sighed and ignored it. Well, Vincent sighed. Yuffie giggled a little uncomfortably and apologized, but woke up in tears that night and came to him anyway.
The continued evidence of their relationship, marked by several more incidents of the, "Hey Vincent, wake u—Oh my god!" variety, did nothing to convince the group that Yuffie and Vincent weren't moving in the same direction as Cloud and Tifa, but much more quickly.
Yuffie's nightmares persisted, and a certain few—Tifa, Shera, and oddly enough, Denzel—seemed to understand that only Vincent helped her sleep.
He sighed as he watched her breathing even out, felt her heartbeat slow. Her tiny little body was so warm, so fragile. It was like holding a delicate glass orb filled with sunshine. The warmth and comfort of her touch was starting to lull him to sleep as well, and he struggled to keep his eyelids from drooping.
Vincent had only enough time to press a light kiss to her forehead before he lost the battle against unconsciousness.
The pair lay, breathing almost in rhythm, as the sun filtered through Tifa's net curtains. The depth of their sleep was broken only when Tifa arrived to rouse them, finding Yuffie with her head comfortably cushioned on Vincent's chest.