"My type?" Vincent echoed gently, with a sardonic hint in his voice that Yuffie picked up on immediately.
"Sure," she replied, "everyone has a type."
A gentle inferno burnt on the sweet, soft curve of the Wutaian girl's face, while the other side was obscured in the enveloping darkness of the ShinRa mansion. Her knees were hugged to her chest as she sat by the dusty fireplace, soaking up the only warmth still existing in the horrors of the building. Her green eyes danced with faerie light, but dulled slightly as they swept across the floor to where Vincent was curled up on a dusty, cranberry coloured chair, nestled into the red velveteen material, reading a thick leather bound book which was balanced on his lap. He was wreathed in the shadows of the room, somehow escaping the warmth and light of the fire, managing to find a nice secluded spot in which to hide away and delve into the depths of his book. He closed the volume with a clap of noise, a cloud of dust rising from the old, yellowed pages, before he turned his elegant face towards Yuffie's expectant gaze.
"Well, what sort of thing do you mean?"
"I dunno. Looks, personality. What kinda qualities do you like in a lady?"
Unfurling his legs to stretch thoughtfully, Vincent seemed to seriously consider Yuffie's question, his eyes narrowed as he searched his mind. The Princess stood up, wrapping the thick black bathrobe that Vincent had given her tighter about her as she left the warmth of the fire. Dancing lightly over the cold wooden floorboards with her bare feet, she approached Vincent's chair and made to sit down on the floor beside it, but a tarnished golden hand caught her around the waist before her bottom could touch the freezing floor, and she was pulled onto the ex-Turk's lap with no protest. Wriggling into his chest, covered by burgundy cotton pyjamas, Yuffie made herself more comfortable, knocking the book to the floor with a thud that they both ignored, before she turned her head to look sweetly into Vincent's face a chime brightly but quietly:
"Hey, Monster Man."
"Hello Yuffie."
"Gonna answer my question, or are you just too shy?" she teased.
"I don't really know. I… like my girlfriends to be shorter than me," Vincent began with a little gleam in his eye.
"Well, they do say that good things come in small packages."
"And… brown hair," he continued, fondling and wrapping a lock of chocolate hair around one of his human digits.
"Go on," grinned Yuffie.
"Naturally," he persisted with a small, obscure smile, "I think that oriental girls are the most beautiful on the Planet."
"Well duh."
"And I like it when they have green eyes which rival an emerald's in beauty," he concluded with a simple shrug, trying to disregard his flattering comment with a little bit of embarrassment. "What about you, Yuffie. Do you have a type?"
"I used to. But it's changed."
"Oh yes?"
"Yeah. You wanna hear the first one?"
"Go for it."
"Well," she began, wrapping her arms around Vincent's waist, "I was always told when I was younger that I should go for a certain type of guy, particularly because I'm a Princess. I always had to keep that in mind when deciding on a suitor. So, with that in mind, I formed my idea of this perfect guy based on the stuff I was already told I need."
"And what did you finally come up with?"
"Naturally he had to be Wutaian. Didn't want any dirty stinking foreigners to steal their future queen."
"Thanks. That's special."
"And his hair was always cut short," she went on, ignoring Vincent's deadpan remark, "because he fought a lot, being a fierce cool ninja type. Long hair was just impractical."
"I hope you're going somewhere with this."
"Not too tall, just tall enough to be bigger than me."
"This isn't looking good for me Yuffie."
"And he always wore bright Yukatas and smiled all the time and had a great tan, because he was a bright and cheerful person, kinda like me, but less annoying."
Vincent was smiling wryly, cupping the back of Yuffie's head with his cold, bronzed claw, absently pulling her towards himself in a tender embrace. She rose and fell on his chest as he breathed, inattentively squeezing him marginally tighter to the beat of his heart, a rhythm of squeezes created around his thin waist. He sighed and asked her carefully:
"And what now Yuffie? What do you go for now?"
"My perfect man has gone into disarray. He hasn't eaten as much lately, because he went through a bit of a rough patch a little while back. He was heartbroken, and his perfect character became flawed. He's gotten lean, and because he's gotten so much taller than me, he almost seems frail, but he isn't. He's stronger than he knows. His hair's grown too. He got lovely hair, reaches down in thick black locks to the middle of his back, and I love to plait it when he's reading, because he's normally so involved in his book that he doesn't realise I'm trying to give him little cornrows. Sometimes I wish I could swap hair with him, but then I'm glad I don't, because I love seeing him bowing his head to look at something and seeing his long hair fall in front of his face. Even though it annoys the hell out of him, I wouldn't change it for the world."
"Yuffie…" Vincent began softly, but Yuffie continued.
"He's really pale, but not in a bad way. He's got such clear skin too, he looks like he's made of porcelain. He wears a lot of black and red, but I wouldn't dare call him Dennis the Menace, 'cause, y'know, he'd eat me. He's got a lot of hidden secrets, many of which he hates talking about, but not to me. He'd tell me anything in his own quiet, unassuming little way, and I'd be cool with it, because it doesn't change who he is. He has red eyes too. Not dark, wine brown like Tifa, but crimson like fire, and even though he thinks they make him look like a monster, I think they're the most attractive eyes I've ever seen. As for Wutaian? Screw that. No one in Wutai could rule a country half as well as he could, albeit, if it ever came to that, he wouldn't wanna do it, but I know I could talk him round. My perfect man is the love of my life, and nothing can ever change that."
As soon as Yuffie had stopped speaking, Vincent had caught her mouth with his own, and he fought against her lips fiercely, pulling her body tightly into himself as he tightened his embrace. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and held tightly to him as his kisses travelled down her slender neck, nipping her gently every now and again to send ripples of electricity through her body, the contact exhilarating. She breathed throatily as he stopped kissing her to say in her ear:
"Dennis the Menace, Yuffie? Bad move."
The nipping and kissing intensified long into the dark, dusty night of the Nibelheim mansion, and once Yuffie had regained the ability to think straight once more, she made a mental note to buy Vincent a red and white stripy jumper and see where that would lead them…
---
So sue me. I was feeling a little bit fluffy, and to be fair it was done in a couple of hours late last night until early this morning. May I just say how liberating it is to have GCSEs over. Now I have about ten weeks worth of sitting around and doing nothing, and I fully intend to spend that time bumming around, though I do quite fancy getting a summer job. Anyway, I hope you liked my silly little one-shot, because I enjoyed writing it, so, thanks! Please R&R