Sinful Reconcilaition

The next morning Vincent met the exact fate he had been expecting. After showering and readying himself for the day, as relaxed as he had hoped it would be, the stoic made his way into the dreaded room at the end of the hall. The one housing all of the commotion mere hours prior. The rest of Avalanche lay strewn in various degrees of disarray throughout the room. Cloud had slipped disgracefully out of consciousness on the hard wooden table, having knocked over an assortment of alcoholic drinks in his midst. Vincent noticed with a grimace that his hair was practically marinating in the pungent substance. Tifa and Yuffie had luckily allowed themselves the dignity of remaining almost fully clothed, though it was evident from their unruly appearance on the couch that each had at least made a mediocre attempt at ridding themselves of their already rather un-modest attire. One of Yuffie’s boots was across the room, while the other was unlaced, her sweatshirt in Reno’s lap, and her shorts unbuttoned. Tifa’s leather top was unzipped almost completely, revealing an all too generous portion of cleavage. Vincent assumed that in their uninhibited state the girls had elected to dance for the similarly inebriated men, as they were passed out in somewhat of a circle around the couch on which the women laid. Reno and Rude slept unceremoniously on either side of a very green looking Reeve. Both still had some drink or other clutched haphazardly in each hand. Nanaki lay on his side, directly parallel to the wasted Turks, appearing only slightly more relaxed than usual and much less disorderly than the rest of the group. Cid, surprisingly, was slumped in dark corner of the room, where he couldn’t have observed the girls’ rather illustrious performance. Vincent would have perhaps even missed his presence, had his monstrosity of a snore not reverberated through the entire room.

With an audible, yet unheard sigh, Vincent began the rather arduous task of cleaning up. After every bottle was disposed of and every glass cleaned and set out to dry, the gunman began to haul each person, one at a time, to his or her respective room. Luckily their room keys told him exactly where to take them, else in his waning tolerance, Vincent would have left them all to wake rather uncomfortably to their impending hangovers. When he finally came to Cloud, Vincent lifted his head up and wrapped a towel around the disastrously putrid mop that had become of his hair before carrying the swordsman to his room and throwing him onto the messy bed.

Lastly, Vincent came to Cid, who was still snoring powerfully. Vincent reflected absently as he lifted the pilot into his arms that surely there was something someone somewhere could do about Cid’s disruptive nighttime tradition. However, he was broken from his silent reverie as the sound cut short with a disgraceful snort and Cid shifted in his arms.

“I think you can put me down now, princess.”

Without showing any other sign of acknowledgement, Vincent proceeded to swiftly remove his arms from underneath the smaller man, and Cid fell to the hard floor with a loud thump. Vincent, unperturbed in the least, simply stepped over the man and continued to make his way towards the door.

“Way to fucking warn me, Valentine!”

“I was merely complying with your request, Highwind,” Vincent stated neither stopping nor gifting Cid with as much as a glance.

The pilot stomped after him, unwilling to forget the lump forming on the back of his head so easily.

“I told you to fucking PUT me down, not DROP me!”

“Maybe next time you should differentiate between the two a little better.”

“Differentiate between the—hey wait one damn minute. What next time? It’s not like I’m planning on waking up in your arms again, Valentine!”

“We’ll see about that. Now, if you please Highwind, I would rather be alone right now. Shouldn’t you be nursing a hangover, anyway?”

“What the hell, Vince? I didn’t drink last night. There ain’t no telling what would’ve happened in there, if someone didn’t have their wits about them.”

“Regardless of your current condition, Cid, I wish to be alone.”

“Wait just one damn minute, what the hell did you mean--”

Cid’s abrasive yelling was cut short as the door to Vincent’s room slammed shut soundly in his face. Realizing the futility of his arguments, Cid went back to the room at the end of the hall and mopped up the last remnants of their overdone celebration. When the stench of alcohol had been purged from the room to his satisfaction, he sat at the table with a mug of tea to decide exactly where he would go the next day, when Avalanche disbanded again as if it were perfectly normal to say goodbye to your friends over and over again.