78. Drink
"Vince! Vinnie! C'mon!" Vincent looked at his friend with distaste. "I'm reading," he responded before looking back to his book.
"But Vinnie! I've just turned eighteen! You know I'm allowed to drink now!" Yuffie bounced up and down in front of him, puppy eyes turned up to maximum. "I've never even had a shot before!"
"Yes," agreed Vincent, "you have not. This is why I do not believe it is wise for you to start now."
She scowled at him. "Well, I just thought that since you're, like, immune to alcohol, you'd be the safest person for me to go get drunk with...but I guess if you won't come I'll just go alone." She turned and flounced out of the room. Vincent watched her with eyes wide with terror.
xXx
Idly Vincent wondered if that had been her plan all along; ask him to go drinking, and when he said no, threaten to go by herself.
"And and-and so I said, 'I AM THE GREAT NINJA YUFFIE!" and he like, ran screaming and—hic—" the giggling ninja slumped over her glass of rum and coke. Pretending to be completely hammered is fun, she thought, an evil look coming across her face and vanishing into her totally accurate impression of someone well on their way to alcohol poisoning. She knew for a fact that there was no way she could get drunk off of just two rum and cokes. She had, after all, gone out with Tifa on her birthday and proceeded to drink the barmaid under the table. But Vinnie didn't know about that.
"Yuffie, I think you have had enough," Vincent said as delicately as he could. Yuffie only grinned happily and burst into incoherent laughter. The barman leaned over the counter and said, "She just turned eighteen?"
Vincent sighed and continued to watch Yuffie. "Yes. Just last week, actually."
"Ah, so you're playing the responsible one and taking her out to get drunk so she'll have someone to protect her?"
Vincent again sighed, and this time looked at the man, who was grinning apologetically. "She threatened me." Upon viewing the incredulous look on the barman's face he elaborated, "She asked me to take her out drinking, and when I refused, she threatened to go alone."
"Ah," the barman nodded understandingly. "She your sister or something?"
At this Yuffie burst out laughing. "Me? Vinnie's—hic—Vincent's sister?" She continued to laugh and sway while Vincent twitched slightly at the idea.
"Ah, no. Yuffie is just a friend of mine," he responded brusquely.
The barman looked panicked. "I didn't mean to offend or anything, it's just, you look so alike and—"
"It's quite alright," Vincent sighed. "I suppose I should get her home now."
"Let her have her fun. When she wakes up tomorrow, she'll know what the price is for drinking so heavily, and then she'll have learned her lesson. At least," he grimaced, "That's how I learned mine."
Yuffie, pretending to catch only some of the conversation chimed in, "Yeah—hic—Vince! Let me have fun!" She downed the rest of her rum and coke and held out the glass to the barman. "Can I have another?" she asked as cutely as she could, turning puppy eyes to full blast. This part was essential.
"Um...sure," he broke to the pressure and turned to fill it again.
"Vincennnnnt?" Yuffie whined. He looked at her with one raised eyebrow. "Yes, Yuffie?"
"Vinnnnnncent?" She slumped onto his shoulder. "Yes?" he responded.
"Viiiiiiiinceeeeeent?" She turned her huge eyes up towards his gaze. Large and limpid and pleading, they said, deep in their gray depths, You sir, are doomed. I am plotting horrid things for you. I will make your life hell. Have fun!
He sighed and raised his gaze to the heavens. "Yes, Yuffie?"
"Viiiinnie, why aren't you—hic—drinking?" She grabbed his arm and began to press her torso against it. All his muscles tensed, unused to female touch. And, a certain Chaos flavored part of his mind noted, this was very female touch.
The bartender put her glass back down, full up with rum and coke, and moved away to serve another customer. "Thankies!" she called after him. "Hmmmm? Vinnie? Why aren't you drinking?" She pressed her chest into his shoulder again, with increased vertical movement. Another (false) hiccup wracked her frame, causing her breasts to rub against his arm again. Pretending to be hammered really had it's perks, she reflected. For one, she was actually coherent enough to enjoy both the physical sensations of her actions and Vincent's total discomfort.
"Yuffie, I am not drinking because one of us at least should remain sober," he responded, mentally groaning at the effect Yuffie was having on him. Or maybe, Chaos-flavored mused, that was just the effect she was having on him.
"Sober—hic—shmober! You can't get drunk, I know you Vinnie!" For added effect, she bounced up and down in her seat a few times, letting her reasonably sizable cleavage do the talking for her. Vincent tried very hard to think of a way to get out of the situation, preferably without getting himself into a lot of trouble, without drinking. He could find one.
"Fine." The bartender was passing, and he asked for a whiskey on the rocks, his only alcoholic beverage of choice besides good wine, which he doubted he'd find in this establishment. As the bartender set the drink down before Vincent, Yuffie, still in her deeply discomforting position said, "Hey Vinnie! For every drink I drink, you have to have two. Kay?" He nearly choked. "Yuffie I believe you'll find that that defeats the purpose of me even being present." She turned her face, eyes completely wide, and said the intrigued bartender, "Vinnie's ruining my fun!"
"Aw, it's her birthday binge," the bartender cajoled. "And it'll be her birthday hangover tomorrow."
"Fine." Vincent shot back the glass with distaste. Even as she released his arm to slump back over her own drink, in her head, she started counting.
Two rum and cokes (and about six cokes-sans-rum, but she wasn't supposed to have noticed when the bartender cut her off) and twelve or so whiskies later, Yuffie was almost sober and Vincent was listening to her jokes with his limitless source of patience.
"So, so-s-so, hey Vinnie, whadaya call a boomerang that doesn't work?"
He sighed. "I don't know Yuffie." The bartender looked on in admiration as Vincent took another sip of his whiskey, hand perfectly steady, speech absolutely clear. "A stick!" Yuffie exclaimed before draining her glass. Vincent sighed as the bartender filled both their glasses again. The whole fucking bar was taking bets now.
"Hey, hey, Vince! Vinnie McVin Vin Valentino! Why was the chocobo happy!" Yuffie mentally rifled through her archive of really bad jokes. That was it... She had decided. When Vinnie smiled at one of her jokes, he was buzzed. If he snorted he was tipsy. If he laughed, then he was as good as hammered.
"I don't know Yuffie."
"It's `cause everything was eggcelent!"
"That's nice Yuffie." Vincent slammed back his glass of whiskey, almost hoping that the alcohol undoubtedly making up almost half his bloodstream by now would actually take effect. He was fairly sure that she was trying to find out how much it took to intoxicate him. She was telling him bad jokes, and so was probably judging his drunkenness on his reaction. He figured he'd give in soon.
"Hey, Vinnnnnnie! Whadaya get when you cross a snowman an' a vampire?"
With unerring instinct the bartender refilled Vincent's glass. "I don't know Yuffie."
"Frostbite!" She fell into a giggling heap at her own words. While she began to turn blue from laughing too hard, the bartender sidled up and said quietly, "Right now, that couple down the bar are up to two thousand gil on you two. The book's running twenty-three to one you. I believe those guys have a pot totaling ten thousand gil on it." Vincent turned a disbelieving eye on him. "Best to quit while you're ahead," the barman, nodding at Yuffie. He the sidled off to take care of the large group of about seven men he had just pointed out to Vincent.
"Ahahaha! Heya, hi, Vince—hic—ennnnnt! What lies at the bottom of the ocean and twitches?"
"I continue to not know, Yuffie."
"A nervous wreck!" To her great surprise, Vincent snorted. Sober to tipsy? But mostly she just thought, success! She tallied up in her mind the number of drinks he'd had. Twelve...plus two...it took fourteen drinks to get Vincent Valentine tipsy! She put part five of her plan into action.
"Viiiiinceeeent...I'm...so...tired..." She lay her head on the bar and yawned. This was partially true. Playacting the part of an inebriated Yuffie was more exhausting than she could have imagined. "Vinnie, can we go now?"
"Of course, Yuffie." He finished his glass and waved over the barman. A short conversation resulted in Vincent's turning over a quantity of gil and the barman wondering at the man's ability to even move with as much alcohol in his bloodstream as he most definitely had.
Once their tab had been payed off, Vincent shook Yuffie, who picked up her head, chugged the rest of her not-rum and coke, and walked out next to Vincent, affecting a drunken stagger. She was not faking, however, when she collapsed sideways into his arms due to sheer tiredness.
Well, it had been a valiant effort on her part, Vincent mused, carrying a sleeping Yuffie back to Seventh Heaven at two-thirty in the morning, but Vincent hadn't been drunk since before the modifications, and god knows he'd tried since.
His current record involved five bottles of gin.