Resurfacing

“Well, if you were trying to leave your mark on the world, you certainly made it on me.” Vincent sighed as he looked in the bathroom mirror, gently rubbing the massive bruising on the side of his neck. Two scabs from where Cid had broken the skin screamed an angry red back at him, and hurt slightly when he turned his neck too far.

Cid shrugged from where he sat on the bed, a freshly lit cigarette hanging from his lips. “You always gotta find something to complain about, don’t you baby?” He just grinned as Vincent turned to look at him with a genuine scowl on his face and walked up to him with his hands on his hips.

“Don’t CALL me that ridiculous pet name, Highwind. I am NOT your wife, your girlfriend, mistress etcetera.”


“Well, maybe not, but you didn’t have that dick hanging from between your legs I’d say the way you got your hands on your hips makes you pretty damn girly.” Cid’s grin got wider as he lifted an eyebrow and winked at Vincent’s slightly pinked face. “Sides, why can’t I call you ‘baby’? It’s just another way of saying ‘I love you’.”

“You call your PLANES ‘baby’, Cid.”

“And so that to you should be a BIG COMPLIMENT..comere.” He reached out and snagged Vincent’s wrist, dragging him back to the bed and into his lap. He smiled into the gunman’s pale skin, gently kissing the large bruise on his neck. “Hmmph..guess I hurt ya a little more than I was meaning to. Still, got my point across, didn’t I?” He wrapped his arms around the skinnier waist and drew Vincent to him, smelling his flesh. Vincent always smelled like something Cid couldn’t quite place, but it was comforting...kind of like the smell of an old, well used book. “Heya Vince...I was thinking...you’ve been crying a lot these days.”

“Mmmmm?”

“You’ve been crying a lot these days. Like, that day after you hurt your hand, and then in the garage, and now, and every time you do it, I can’t help but feel like an asshole.”

“Well, that’s because you ARE an asshole, Cid...but I don’t want you to feel bad about me shedding tears. They’ve been your fault, yes, but...I don’t know how to explain it to you so that you understand why.”

“Try. I can’t promise I’ll understand right away, or hell at all, but I’ll try, and I will too.”

Vincent nodded, moving out of Cid’s lap to stand up. He’d tossed some pants on a while ago, and now he walked around the room, sighing. “When Strife and the others first woke me up, I was disoriented...and upset. I was in the coffin for a REASON, what right or purpose did they have to wake me up? When I first looked at the group I was halfway tempted to shoot one and scare them off so I could go back to sleep...they told me about ShinRa, and Sephiroth and everything. I was only partly interested, but I knew that if I wanted to get to the man who was responsible for creating Sephiroth and killing Lucrecia I would have to go with them. At first I told them no, but as they were leaving I reconsidered and joined.

“I don’t know what I was thinking. Social skills weren’t exactly my best field, not even as a Turk, and it came as no surprise to me when I found out I couldn’t stand anyone in the group at all, except for maybe Red and that was because he was the only semblance of intelligence in the entire party. Cloud was a boy with a heart stronger than his brain. He had some idea of waht he was doing part of the time and half of the time it was by sheer luck or utter stupidity we mad it out alive at all most times. Tifa was just another annoying female to me, and if Strife didn’t notice her overwhelmingly large crush on him he was as daft as I thought. Barett was an overly loud and boorish man who thought that just because he had a gun for an arm thought the meant how to use it properly.”

“OUCH.”

“Red I knew was an animal, but he was smart. I respected him from the very first moment. Yuffie...I wanted to duct tape her mouth shut and leave her in the middle of the desert to get eaten. Aeris....Aeris was a sweet girl. She was kind...gentle. She was so serene and peaceful to be around that she reminded me of my EARLY memories of Lucrecia. However, she was still a child and her mind and heart were filled with delusions that would never come true. And you, you above all people were the most useless piece of living flesh and nerves that ever walked the planet.”

“GEE, THANKS. Love you too, asshole.” Cid scowled slightly, shifting in the bed as he took another drag from his cigarette.

“That is how I USED to feel about everyone. As time wore on and the situation grew more severe, I found myself understanding and accepting everyone around me. Despite obvious imperfection, I realized that we all had our fields of specialty. I started respecting everyone as equals, even Strife when I found out his heart was in the right place...and when Aeris died. I found myself sympathizing for him- he’d lost his first real love and was suffering because of it. I knew his pain..I respected his resilience and his urge to carry on despite it all. Though I finally came to terms with how I felt, not only about my new-found ‘family’, but about Lucrecia and Sephiroth, I could not bring myself to terms about the monsters living inside of me. I felt...tainted. Inhuman, and ugly. I could not even bring myself to glance at my body or my face in shame, and I kept myself covered at all times so no one, not even me, could see my hideousness. There was only, among everyone, ONE person who treated me normally.” Vincent turned and looked at Cid with a smile “You.”

Cid smirked, nodding his head. “Yeah, I remember. You used to go off and sulk by yourself, and I’d interrupt your solitude every time. You looked so pissed off whenever I did it, too.”

“Truth to be told, it DID annoy me greatly at first. Everyone else but you understood about my need for solidarity. You interrupted my thoughts every time you came out, and you would talk to me about the most unimportant things even if I ignored you. I thought, at first, that you were just trying to annoy me, to get me to be more social when I didn’t want to be. Then I thought you WANTED something, but when you neither asked for anything or made any type of advance I became confused. I didn’t understand why you did it. I didn’t understand why, when I made it so OBVIOUS to everyone else I wanted to be alone, you insisted on talking to me and treating me so...HUMAN.

“It was one night when I was sitting awake in the room we had to share that I realized you neither wanted something nor was trying to get me to be social. You were treating me like a normal person when I was so convinced I wasn’t...I began to doubt myself, and your presence confused me and that’s why for that time I avoided you.”

“I was wondering about that.” Cid thought about it- it did seem kind of odd at the time Vincent kept himself so thoroughly hidden.

“After Weapon and Meteor were destroyed, I felt my need was over with and I vanished...for a year I wanted to see no one, convinced my punishment wasn’t over with. Then, when the clones came and I found Tseng and Elena half alive in the Northern Crater, I heard from them that Rufus had fallen ill and was talking to Cloud. I contacted no one, but when I ran into Cloud fighting the clones in the Forgotten City I knew I had to help, him and everyone else....the fight made me feel alive again...important, useful. But when it finished I felt, once again, inadequate, and I hid... it was only when Reeve somehow managed to contact me and asked me to meet him in Kalm, where the deepground soldiers first invaded, that I had talked to anyone. I then met Yuffie. She’d changed- she was more mature, and I was glad of it...and then I met up with you again.” Vincent turned to look back at Cid, and he walked over to the pilot to sit beside him. “You hadn’t changed a bit...you ever as loud, as foul mouthed and overbearingly friendly as ever..I was so glad you were the same.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.” Vincent leaned into the pilot’s side, smelling the musky tanned skin of Cid’s shoulder. “You were a rock, a stone that hadn’t moved. Even your foul mouthed language was a comfort to me, and I was glad that I was working with you again.”

“Why?” Cid leaned his head down to rest against Vincent’s, loving the way his hair felt against his skin.

“Because I felt the way you always tried to treat me...human.” Vincent kissed the tan skin and smiled into it. “And after the Tsviet’s were gone and you asked me if I wanted to go with you to Rocket Town..to be quite honest I was so happy you asked I don’t know why I even reconsidered saying yes. I know,...the first few weeks were awkward, and I know you tried so hard to get me out of my shell that a few times I thought you were going to quit but you didn’t. You made me feel so happy and normal that I found myself missing your voice when you were silent. You were my one and only best friend, and I realized I loved you for that, and everything else you’d given me.” Vincent lifted his head and looked Cid in the eyes. “And then I realized I just loved you.”

Cid stared breathless down into the dark red eyes of the gunner, his eyes searching that effeminately beautiful face for any shade of a lie. When he found none he smiled, leaning his forehead against Vincent’s. “Yeah...truth t’ be told when you told me that my heart was going a mile a minute. That don’t explain the crying though.”

Vincent sighed, closing his eyes. “When I was a child, to my father crying was a sign of weakness...he never talked to me much...I was often alone as a teenager and then when I joined the Turks I refused to feel emotions that would drag me down or endanger my team...it was only when I met Lucrecia I could smile genuinely...then everything happened that did...Chaos was in the back of my mind, haunting my every conscious moment. Emotions were a weakness I wouldn’t allow it to see. I refused to be weak around Chaos...I refused to cry. Even after Omega and Chaos were both gone, my heart was healed and my guilt over lucrecia reconciled, I still felt fear to show anything to anyone...I was afraid of being weak. I know now I don’t have to be that way....I can get angry, or sad, or excited or...” He trailed a fingertip down Cid’s chest, “EXCITED. Around you, my emotions aren’t weakness, they’re freedom. You helped me free myself...you helped me learn how to be happy, and gave me reasons to be. You gave me reasons to cry. Out of anger, or happiness...but only once out of sadness.”

“When?”

“....when I was afraid you would hate me for loving you.”

Cid felt a lump form in his throat, and he wrapped his arms around the pale man beside him. He buried his face into the pale, long neck (the non-bruised side) and inhaled the sweet and musty scent he loved so much, his hands tangled into Vincent’s long black hair. He felt Vincent hug him back and they sat there like that for a while, the only sound in the room their breathing.
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AN- sorry it took me so long to update. I just started replaying World of Warcraft and once again lives up to its nickname (Warcrack). I'll try to update sooner next time. more smut to come, (ba dump ching) ~D

Edited 3/11/08