A Sticky Situation – An FFVII Fanfiction
Disclaimer: The FF7 characters do not belong to me. But Tai-Chung and the hybrid monsters are mine. Steal and DDIIIIEEE. X.x
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The pair trawled the quiet forest until their limbs ache and their weapons were tired and overused. Still they found nothing unusual living within the expanse of the landscape, although Vincent had commented that they had barely covered one sixth of a portion of the land. They had a lot more ground to cover before they could safely return to the village from which they had departed, with the knowledge that the rumours of hybrids were not true. The gunman wanted to be sure that the monsters really did not exist before he would allow Cid to even look back – longingly – at his beloved Highwind. The pilot had called him sadistic, but had willingly taken back his comment after Vincent innocently flashed him his pack of lethal gun ammo.
By the time they retired, the sun was setting, and most of the Formulas were asleep, snug in their comfortable lair/den/nest/igloo/five-floor bungalow (delete where applicable). I said most. Not all.
Vincent was enjoying the torture session he was having with a couple of unfortunate Formulas who dared to make him their one last kill before they head back to their lair/den/nest/etc. etc. Cid bit his nails from afar with silent apprehension as he watched the actions of the homicidal (hey, what's new?) gunman.
The torture procedures are as follows. First, Vincent would give the Formula's wings a couple of shots to bring them down to the ground. Then he would step on the wounded limbs, and twist his foot around to squeeze the pained shrieks out of the little bastard. Then he would pick up a few pebbles, weigh them thoughtfully in his hand (still with his foot twisting on the wings) and pelt them at the beast's head until it dies the slow, painful death it deserves.
Cid turned away from the horror movie playing out in front of him and ventured deeper into the woods on his own. The snapping of the twigs under his feet reminded him of the days when he was in the army, when he trained and improved his skills of stealth and strength in forests similar to these, and the exhilaration, the adrenaline, the rush that he felt when he was on the battlefield, running around No Man's Land with his sharpened bayonet…
But then he suddenly remembered that he had never been a soldier, nor had he fought in the army in his life.
He's just a boring old engineer.
Cid sighed. "Life sucks."
And when he thought it couldn't get any worse than this, a pebble decided that it'd be fun to trip him up and make him plunge head-first into a puddle of brown… something.
The pilot brought his head up and uncharacteristically whined like a pig. "Vinceeeeeent!" He cried, close to tears. "Help pull me out of this really shallow puddle from which I should have no problem pulling myself out of with my own strength."
The red-eyed gunman fired one last shot at a fleeing Formula and calmly stepped over to his companion. He grabbed Cid's tight blue shirt and hauled the blond out of the mud-like substance, much to his relief. "Thanks, pal. You're a gem." The pilot tugged himself out of Vincent's grip and stood on his own two feet, wiping away smears of the substance from his clothes. He sniffed at it.
"Sweet."
Vincent raised an eyebrow.
Cid imitated the gesture. "No, Einstein, really. Have a snort yerself." He pushed his palm into the other's face, and Vincent avoided it, going straight for the puddle itself. He lowered his nose as far as his sense of dignity would allow him, before pulling back.
"Hmm."
"Told ya, didn't I?" Cid stared at the substance on his hand for a minute of two before his tongue darted out to lick a little bit of it, somewhat warily. Vincent scrunched up his eyebrows at the act and walked away, heading into a clearing not too far off. In the middle of the space he constructed a fire with a materia he had brought along with him and a lot of twigs and dead leaves. After snapping a few branches off of the surrounding trees (to make sure that there was an opening in the canopy of leaves overhead that would allow the smoke from the fire to escape) and throwing those into the fire too, he returned to find that Cid had already taken off his gloves and was dipping his hands luxuriously in the strange, sweet-smelling puddle.
"Cid."
"Yeah?"
"What are you doing?"
Cid grinned lop-sidedly, showing his teeth. "Enjoying my dinner."
"…"
"…"
"…"
"…" Cid challenged.
"…" Vincent countered.
"…"
"…"
"…Alright, quit it. You're creeping me out." Cid withdrew his hands from the little pool and licked his fingers, which were smothered with the mysterious substance. "Try it out, Vince. You'll see what I mean."
Vincent had no interest in tasting mud whatsoever. "No."
"Oh, come on." Cid scooped a little bit of the liquid and brought it close to Vincent's lips. The black-haired man pursed his lips and turned away to leave for the clearing he had prepared for their night in the woods. Before he could take any more than three steps away, however, Cid grabbed his waist from behind with his free arm and pulled him back. The gunman, taken by surprise, fumbled quickly for his gun, but Cid managed to slap the substance onto his face before he could whip out the gun from its holster and pull the trigger.
The pilot smeared Vincent's mouth with the sweet liquid. The long-haired man, not wanting to breathe through his nose for fear of breathing in some of the liquid in the process, finally gave in and opened his mouth to inhale some air. Taking up the opportunity, Cid slipped in his fingers and Vincent sucked on them, his mind whirling at the sensation of tasting another person's skin in his mouth.
Cid flinched. Damn, why did the guy had to look so sexy while doing it? The pilot found his fingers involuntarily moving inside Vincent's warm mouth. He brushed the tips of his fingers along the other man's teeth, marvelling at their sharpness, before moving his fingers to lightly touch the gunman's soft tongue, which welcomed the contact with gentle swipes and licks. Cid suppressed a groan. How could a gesture so simple turn into something incredibly erotic? The pilot left his fingers under the caresses of Vincent's tongue before he dared to stretch them and touch the man's throat.
"Nnnh!" Vincent moaned, wanting to gag but couldn't with Cid's fingers in his mouth and his other arm wrapped tightly around his abdomen. If Cid thought that the face expression the man had when he sucked on his fingers were sexy, then this is verging on the edges of porno. The pilot pulled out his fingers to let Vincent breathe properly. The gunman coughed, involuntarily leaning backwards against the other man's chest as he regained the feeling of having his mouth devoid of any alien parts wriggling inside it.
"So…" Cid started, trying to keep his voice sounding as normal as it was before. Vincent, realizing quickly that he was wholly depending on the pilot to keep himself from falling to the ground, pulled away roughly from Cid's arm, previously wounded tightly around his small waist. The red-eyed man successfully hid away his blush by burying his face in his collar.
"So what?" He snapped gruffly, his tongue lingering on the places where Cid had touched him. Neither of them moved. Vincent had his back towards the pilot, and Cid was staring at the man's long, black hair.
"So…" He cleared his throat, scratching his head. " So, um… what do you think?"
Vincent pondered over this broad, ambiguous question. What did he think of what? Of them wandering around lost in an area they've never been in before? Of the Formulas? Of the substance he'd tasted? Or of Cid's arousing techniques with his fingers? Vincent blushed as he planned the answer to the very last possibility in his list.
"Of the substance, I mean." Cid supplied, as if he'd read the other's mind. Vincent sighed quietly with relief, before he recalled how he was so caught up in tasting Cid's fingers themselves rather than the actual substance that he hadn't the chance to carefully file away the flavour… if there was one.
"I don't know."
Cid walked ahead to stand in front of the gunman. "What? After all that sucking you still don't—ugh, never mind." The pilot ruffled his own hair in a frustrated manner and tugged a cigarette out of his pack. He turned on his heels to head for the little camp Vincent had prepared. His partner followed him with silent steps.
"Fine, I'll just tell you what it tasted like, Vince. Toffee. Coffee-flavoured toffee."
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"…Coffee-flavoured toffee?" Barret's disbelieving voice blared through the PHS. Vincent held the device away from his ear, his face contorting into a slight grimace as he heard Marlene shrieking "TOFFEE! TOFFEE! IWANTTOFFEE!" in the background.
"Yes. We haven't actually discovered how the substance ended up on this remote island."
Barret grunted from the other end of the line. "Hang on, here's Cloud. He just came out of the toilet."
"I thank you Barret, but you really didn't have to inform me of that particular detail." Vincent said quietly, waiting as Barret passed the PHS to Cloud, grunting again in the process.
The group leader quietly ordered Barret to take the hysterical Marlene to any local sweet shops still open and satisfy her needs before coming on to talk with Vincent. "What are the developments, Vincent? Are there any developments at all?"
"Just a trivial one. Around 7 o'clock, we found a hollow in the ground in the middle of the woods on the island, holding a volume of coffee-flavoured toffee."
The silence from the other line was quite deafening.
"…Tell the Captain that the joke's not funny."
At the moment, Cid was sitting on the ground and leaning against a fallen tree, cleaning his bloody lance with a cloth he always carried around in his pocket. Upon hearing Cloud's comment, he took offence. "Tell Spiky I'll twist his head off if he blames me for lame jokes like that again."
Vincent ignored the petty argument and continued with his report.
"So far we have encountered only Formulas within the vicinity of these forests. They are no different than the Formulas found on the main land, so I presume that they aren't the creatures we were looking for. Other life forms, should they exist, are unidentified as of yet. We will continue our search for the hybrids tomorrow."
"Good, Vincent. Please report back any further discoveries immediately. The mayor is quite restless."
"Understood." Vincent ended the call and slipped the PHS into his pocket. Cid was grumbling near the fire, something about not being able to 'say good night to Highwind' before she 'goes to sleep'.
"…What the hell are you stripping off for?" The pilot stopped in his rambling to stare in bewilderment at his companion as Vincent undid the catches that held his cape together. True, it was a pretty damn amazing sight to behold, but he could have appreciated a bit of warning first…
"I'm going to the river to wash myself."
"What river?"
Vincent pointed towards somewhere in the darkness. "That river."
"Where?"
"There." Vincent pointed again.
Cid looked in the direction in which Vincent indicated, but failed to see anything. He raised an eyebrow. "You know, it's getting pretty late, and maybe you're starting to see things…"
Vincent ignored the blond and left with an air of annoyance about his being. Cid shrugged.
The forest was very quiet. The only noises that could be heard were the occasional crackling from the fire as another twig burned to ashes. The pilot was unused to such a calm, tranquil environment – he had spent most of his days as an engineer, and so he could always hear the familiar noises of his machines at work, day and night. When he joined Cloud's group, nothing really changed. The noises were still there, but they were echoes from his memories, mixing with the cries of prowling monsters and the ringing of weapons cutting through air as whomever it was that kept watch dealt with the beasts. It was good to be in the middle of such lively environments; it kept his senses sharp and alert at all times.
But this… it was like being in a graveyard. And even so, a graveyard would have been a bit livelier than this. This place gave him the spooks, and his senses were too scared to react to any given stimuli – afraid that what the darkness yields would be too measly and bothersome to pique Cid's interests in adrenaline. He supposed that there were some people who liked such a place. Vincent, for example. Cid could readily imagine the gunman sitting in his place right now; his pose as rigid as it ever was and will be; his eyes focused on nothing in particular. In his minds he would re-live his past, the darkest horrors in his life, and although he would be occupied with these re-enactments he would never let his guard down – such was the expertise of an ex-Turk.
From this, Cid's thoughts spread over many other subjects. The one that always found its way back to his current frame of mind was that woman Vincent pines over. Lucrecia. What was so special about her? She had betrayed Vincent's love – she turned away his willingness to embrace her for a madman. The woman's a lunatic! Cid could not fathom Vincent's stubborn streak. When will he realize that Lucrecia is no more? When will he let go of his past? When will he be able to love again? With these questions running through his mind, Cid realized that he didn't know much about Vincent Valentine – he knew only of his name; of his skills with a gun; and of the fact that the gunman could be every bit as sexy as any voluptuous, seductive woman Cid had ever met during his lifetime. Sexier.
His thoughts were interrupted when Vincent re-entered the camp, his hair wet, strands of it glistening in the moonlight. It looked like he had washed away the old blood that clotted in his hair when the PHS hit itself against his scalp. He appeared refreshed, his eyes a brighter red than they were before, and his pale skin glowed ethereally after he had washed away the dirt it collected from trekking such a long way. Cid filed away the sight in his memories – this was Vincent at his most beautiful, and he wanted to make sure that he had something of a private memory of the gunman before they separate after this quest is over. Because it will be over soon, Cid surmised, and each member of the group had their own paths to follow. Cid was not sure where his path would lead him, or when it would end, but he hoped that he would live a longer life than most, and would get a shot at flying himself into outer space, just like he had always dreamed of.
"We should prepare ourselves to rest, Cid." Vincent said softly, his tone a little lighter than usual. Cid nodded slowly, caught up in his thoughts, before remembering that he had to empty his bladder before he could get a good night's sleep. He excused himself, retreating into the trees to relieve his urges, before returning to find that Vincent had spread his cape on the ground as a kind of protection against the dirt. Cid shrugged, and dropped back in his place against the log, making himself comfortable as he prepared for a rough night sleeping in the woods.
Vincent's voice stopped him. "Cid." The pilot cracked open an eyelid, watching as the gunman briskly patted the space next to him on the outspread cape, before flipping over to face the other side, presumably to hide away his embarrassment. It was understandable – Vincent always had a space all to himself on the numerous excursions their group went on, and he wasn't used to sharing, but since they had forgotten to bring a Tent or some individual sleeping bags with them, it was inevitable for them to share the same space to sleep.
"Nah, it's alright, I'm fine here." Cid tipped his head back and over the log, trying to will his mind to shut down and grant him sleep.
"Cid, there are many sharp stones in this area. You might not want to risk tearing your clothes."
"S'alright. I can deal with a few holes in my pants."
He could hear Vincent's exasperated sigh. "I want to share what little warmth we have. The fire will die out soon, and the night is set to be a cold one. I don't want you whining tomorrow if you can't get any sleep as a result of the cold night air."
Cid opened his eyes. That made perfect sense. "Alright, alright. I'll join you on your little picnic blanket."
A glare. "What? It certainly looks that way to me." Despite that, the pilot plopped down on the fabric and faced Vincent's back, snaking his arms around the other man's waist and dragging him as close to his chest as he could. The gunman protested a little, but realized that further resistance would appear childish, and stilled. "Don't hold me too close."
"Why not? You're the one who said that we need to share 'what little warmth we have'."
Vincent sighed again, succumbing to Cid's whims, and relaxed.
"…Attaboy."
Vincent fell asleep with the feeling of Cid's fingers running gently through his hair.
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AWWW YES. FLUFF FOR THE MASSES. 8D Hope you liked that chapter. It's a special gift from me for not updating for such a long time. Heh. I had a perfectly acceptable reason: my laptop broke down and it brought all my files along with it. So yes, all the future chapters are deleted. :P Beh, I wanted to re-type them anyway, so it's really not so bad.
Oh, and by the way… I sometimes update my profile to give you an idea of how I'm getting on with my stories… so check back when you can. So you'll know that just because I haven't posted anything for a long time, doesn't actually mean that I'm dead. ;)
Until the next update!