White
Nothing beats the feeling of waking up in the morning six hours late for work. I've learned that through experience, and it's a strange blend of feelings. One half of you is, like, 'Gawd, I'm late AGAIN. I'm so fired. What the hell am I gonna do?'
The other half is all, like, 'Who caaaaares? I'm an epic ninja. I can get another job. May as well go back to sleep."
Well, okay. Maybe that's not how it is for you, but it's exactly how it is for me. Except, it isn't. At least, not any more.
That's what happens when your boss is one of your best friends AND knows your mobile number. No more lie-ins.
My phone buzzed next to my head like a hornet, stinging me again and again with guilt. Hey, you never know with me. That next phone call might be asking me to help save the world. Again. Groaning, I reached over and tapped in my answerphone code.
"Yuffie. Hn? Is this message recording feature even functioning? Hmph. It doesn't matter. Reeve has asked me to come and get you, regardless of what condition you're in. I shall arrive at your house at approximately one-thirty pm. Be clothed, please."
Even though he hadn't left his name, it was so obviously Vince. I guessed that Reeve got sick of me ignoring his calls. Groaning, I looked at the time.
"Wait, one-twenty-four?" I shrieked, leaping from the covers. Vincent was gonna show up at my house in six minutes, and there I was sitting in my underwear!
As I leapt, I heard clinking. And crashing. And smashing. That's not a good thing, because it usually means there's bottles around my bed. Bottles that, nine times out of ten, had alcohol in them a couple hours ago.
As soon as my feet hit the floor, it became startlingly obvious that I was hungover, because my face hit the floor seconds later. Dammit all.
At least my fall gave me time to count the bottles. Although, I didn't. Because that would be depressing.
I snuck a look at my phone, and found that sixty of my three-hundred-and-sixty precious seconds had ticked away, and I was still no nearer to dressed than when I started. Luckily, my very urgent desire to not have Vincent see me sitting in my knickers and surrounded by empty beer bottles got me up almost as fast as I'd gone down.
Within four minutes, I had accomplished a herculean feat: I had hidden the beer bottles and struggled into a somewhat unflattering green jumper and some cargo pants. (And hey, for all you critics: Herc may have wrestled the Hydra, but I doubt he could have done it if he had ten bottles of Budweiser in his system.) I whiled away my spare minutes by wondering exactly why I had the jumper and the cargoes. I mean, they completely swamped me, and it wasn't like I needed clothes to hide the few curves I ha-
Knock. Knock. Crunch.
I winced as I heard the inevitable conclusion to the battle between Vinnie's metal hand and my wooden door. Gawd, just like Vince to be annoyingly on time. I'd have to stall him. I padded, barefoot, to the front door, and opened it to find something surprisingly tasty: bed-head Vince.
Now, the guy doesn't comb his hair too often anyways (thus confirming my suspicions that Vince is a secret hippy and advocates peace, love and seven different kinds of drugs), but when he really lets it go, it's actually kind of impressive. More like a mane, than anything, framing his head and making him seem kinda...wild.
Oh, wait wait WAIT. I meant 'tasty' as in a tasty blackmail opportunity. Not as in the somewhat scary 'he looks tasty, I'll get the pepper', or the more awkward 'he looks tasty, I wonder how he'll take it if I squeeze his buttocks'. Just wanted to clear that up.
Even though those buttocks would be pretty tempting to other, less refined women, I thought. Then I started wondering idly if any of those bottles had any beer left in them. No use wasting good booze.
"Yuffie. You're in surprisingly good condition." he rumbled, stepping in.
"Yeah, well. You'll still have to wait before you take me off to work. I kinda had a party last night, and I haven't showered." I said. Vincent coughed awkwardly.
"Yuffie, I am well aware of the party. I was also in attendance."
My jaw hit the ground like an elevator with a cut cable. I coulda smashed a Brazil nut with it, I swear.
"You were at a party? With, like, people? What's gone wrong in the world?" I teased.
"Well, whatever did go wrong, I'm sure you drank enough to forget the misery it caused you." he smirked. Smirking was kinda a new expression for Vinnie, and he'd been using it more and more often recently.
Tifa blamed my influence. If it were her influence, he'd have grown boobs.
"So. Didja do anything interesting when you were drunk?" I asked conversationally. My mind's eye had dollar signs in it. Today was turning out to be a great day for blackmail.
"I wasn't drunk." he said, his voice taking a sharp edge. I ignored it.
"How do you know? You might have just forgotten." I smiled.
"I am a genetically engineered monster, and a Turk before that. I can handle my alcohol." he said darkly.
"Pfft. I'm a ninja and I've been stealing my dad's sake for since I was five, but that doesn't mean I can't get smashed every so often."
"So often being how often you get smashed, I assume." Damn him and his word games.
"Yeah, yeah. Seeing as you're, like, this almighty Turk, gunman and amateur poet guy, could you make us some breakfast whilst I take my shower? I don't care if Reeve's blowing steam out of his ears- I'm not leaving without a shower." I pouted. He silently nodded, and that was that.
It's strange, how you can trust Vincent with some things and not with others. As the hot water hit my skin and my mind started to clear from an alcohol haze, I started to think of Vincent cooking breakfast. Somehow, all my mental images contained a good deal of fire, a dash of smoke, and me looking for a new house. Of course, that assumed that he didn't accidentally burn the house down whilst I was in the shower, in which case I would die. Because there is no way in hell I was going to go out of my house with only a towel on.
With that in mind, I rushed doing my hair, and ended my shower a lot quicker than I wanted to. Throwing the same (chronically unfashionable) clothes on, I rushed to the kitchen to check exactly how much fire Vincent had caused.
I never even got to the kitchen, to be honest. He was sitting in my living room, eating a plate of Continental Breakfast in the most utterly civilised way I'd ever seen. It may have been the first time that my cutlery was exposed to that most dangerous of perversions- table manners. I mentally made a note of how ridiculous he looked sitting on my tiny sofa. He waved a metal hand at a plate identical to his, plainly meant for me. I grabbed a fork and got started.
"You can cook." I said, surprised, my mouth very full of bacon.
"I can cook." he confirmed, his mouth very not full of bacon.
We didn't talk again until I had scraped my plate clean, and he'd done the same but taken way longer. Stupid table manners.
"So." I said, looking desperately for a conversation topic. Vince was kinda hard to talk to. "Are you sure you didn't do anything last night?"
"Very." he said, looking at me strangely. "Although, even if I did, I doubt it would have lived up to what you did."
Oh no.
"What did I do?" I asked, unable to keep the little squeak of panic from my voice. This was just great. I'm finally gotten to know Vince a little, with the whole poetry festival and the dancing and everything else, and now I'd spoiled it all in a single night of drunkenness.
"Hn. Are you even sure you want to know, Yuffie? It was somewhat..." he tailed off, making a circular motion with his metal hand.
"Oh, Gaaaaaaaaaaawd." I moaned.
"At any rate, there will be time to discuss your antics later." he said, rising. "Reeve is expecting us to be there...about six minutes ago."
I groaned, and got to my feet. Vince really was all business, even if he could cook a mean breakfast. I plucked my keys from the table, and was immediately surprised when Vincent plucked them from my hand. His fingers were long, thin, and surprisingly warm, and the goosebumps on my arms stood to attention as he smiled at me.
"I'm driving, Yuffie. I still haven't gotten over the trauma." he said. I got the feeling he was never going to let me drive.
"You can't handle one car crash? Some genetically engineered monster you are." I muttered. He heard me, but he didn't look too angry.
We didn't talk on the drive, except for one incident. As we pulled up to the lights in our (our? I meant my) Shadowfox, a punk on a motorbike pulled alongside us. I had the window down with my arm hanging out.
"Hey, baby!" he said, in the most annoying accent ever. "You and me could have some fun!"
"Yeah, right, Austin Powers. Go back to your mom's basement." I spat. The punk laughed. I turned to Vinny, and I could see from the set of his jaw that he was in Chivalry mode.
Note to self: must introduce Vinnie to a hardcore feminist. Preferably one who doesn't realise that he always carries a gun.
"Vince, race this guy." I hissed. He looked at me as if I'd gone crazy. Figures. He's a complete b.a.m.f., but he obeys road traffic laws.
"Yuffie, we're in an armoured van. He's on a motorbike. We will lose." he said calmly.
I was still annoyed with him as we pulled off from the lights at a fraction of the punk's speed. In fact, I was annoyed at him for the rest of the drive, until we arrived at a destination that I wasn't expecting.
"Vince, this...isn't work. This is Tifa's bar." I said, poking him.
"How convenient. Look." he said, ignoring me and pointing. I rolled my eyes and looked. I was surprised to see Austin Powers' motorbike parked there.
"Vince, tell me you didn't follow this guy here because he ticked you off." I groaned. I could do without a bar fight. He ignored me again.
"Yuffie, I am an upstanding citizen and I support the law in all its forms." he said, going completely off topic. I groaned. What in the- "However, I don't think I would be able to notice if someone were to let all the air out of his tyres."
I looked at Vincent long enough to clock that he was smirking again. Then I got out of the van.
Payback time.
After I'd gotten my revenge, Vince escorted me (basically frogmarched me, but anyways) into Teef's bar. I wondered exactly what we were doing there. As I walked in, I saw the motorbike punk leer at me from a corner booth. I stuck my tongue out.
"Yuffie, Vincent! You're a little late, y'know."
It was Tifa, and hell was she wearing a smile. It lit up her face like her lips were made of neon.
"My apologies, Tifa. Yuffie needed time to become respectable." Vince muttered. I could almost hear the afterthought in his voice: "Well, respectable for her." I realised that he was teasing me.
"Ha ha. I'm not surprised, after what she did. Well, Cloud, Reeve and everyone are in back, so go on through." Tifa giggled.
I scoured Vincent's face for clues as to what the hell was going on. He noticed, of course, and as we walked into down the long corridor to Tifa's back-room, he talked without me prompting him.
"Hn. You don't remember what the party last night was about, I suppose?" he asked lightly.
"Of course not. It was just a party, right?"
He shook his head in an exasperated way. "No, Yuffie. If it were merely another party, I would not have attended."
"Then what was it?"
"Cloud and Tifa have announced their relationship officially." he explained. "Barret thought it was 'about fricking time', and ordered a party to be thrown. We all attended, although I think Cid only came because Barret was paying for it."
My elevator jaw hit the ground again, and started getting friction burns as we walked down the hallway. As we reached the door, I regained my senses, and grabbed Vinnie by the mantle.
"And you couldn't have told me this before?" I hissed, getting right up in his face.
He smirked again in the most evil way possible, and pushed the door to the back-room open with one hand. Immediately, everyone was staring as I stood with my face mere inches from Vinnie's mouth and my hands on his chest.
"Oh. Are you guys announcing your relationship too?" Cloud asked, walking over.
I almost killed him.
After a long day's...well, drinking, Vince insisted on driving me home again. He walked out of the door to start the engine of the Shadowfox. Discreetly, I took Tifa aside.
"Teef, I heard some stuff from Vince...Did I do anything embarrassing last night?"
She leant forward and whispered, her breath tickling my ears. I felt myself blanche.
"I did WHAT?"
"Well, well." Vinnie said, framing himself in the doorway with the keys in his hand. "There goes my blackmail angle. Obviously, this 'karma' you told me about doesn't work too well."
I ran over and kicked him in a very delicate place.
"Don't be so sure." I smirked, as he doubled over.
A/N: Well, sorry for the huge delay. I really wasn't sure what I was doing with this...And I'm also not sure how it came out. Vinnie may be a little OOC, but I blame Yuffie's influence, like everyone else.