InsaneJournal

"The Birds and the Beasts", FFVII (Cid/Vincent)
Title: The Birds and the Beasts
Author: Cephy
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Cid's language, as usual.
Word count: 750
Prompt: Final Fantasy VII, Cid/Vincent: courting rituals - He was really @#$%ing confused

Okay, so it wasn't like he'd ever really dated that much-- not his fault that most of the girls thought he needed to wash more of the grease from under his fingernails, and he'd only tried auto show tickets as a lure once-- but he still knew how it was supposed to go. Sidle up, a bit of conversation, ask them out to lunch. Complement their hair. The candy-flowers-and-a-movie routine. It really wasn't that %$#*ing hard to figure out, even if it did usually sound %*&@ing boring and definitely more trouble than it was worth-- flowers made him sneeze, chocolate made his teeth hurt, and they didn't usually like it when you smoked in the theater.

It's not like he had time to miss it, really, not after he'd left the city and the school behind, gone off to settle down with his rocket in the middle of nowhere where the available date prospects were all either older than his mother or-- well, Shera. Who, while appreciably willing to put up with dirty fingernails, was far too much a fellow engineer to become anything more romantic-like. He could just see it-- settling down to a candlelit dinner and ending up falling asleep at the table over vector calculations scribbled on the napkins and a plate of half-eaten steak.

No, he liked to think he had a pretty good handle on the whole dating thing, even if his practical experience was more limited than he might like to admit in certain company (sure, all the grease-jockeys joked that he was married to his rocket, but to date it was only jokes and he thought he'd like to keep it that way). So how exactly he found himself in a situation where he was this &^$*ing confused about the whole affair was, to be perfectly ^&*#ing blunt, a big %$#&ing mystery.

It wasn't because Vincent was a guy-- okay, maybe that part was a bit of a shock at first but when he gave it some thought it might not have been that much of a surprise (there always had been something appealing about those magazine ads for tool belts, and he was man enough to admit that maybe it hadn't always been the belts themselves). And it wasn't just that they were in the middle of a %$#&ing war, or at least the end of the world, and the idea of romance had never been further from his mind.

It wasn't even really because in all his figuring of how the whole courtship &^%$ went, it had always been with the assumption that he would be the one doing the courting. Never let it be said that Cid Highwind was a fainting flower to be seduced by bad poetry and a bunch of weeds, and anyone who tried to sweep him off his feet might better be prepared for a fist in the face. Still, you didn't get anywhere in life by not rolling with the punches. If someone wanted to buy him dinner, fine, he could deal with that, so long as they ordered him a beer to go with it.

No, the real problem? The one that kept him off-balance enough to near fall over? Was that he thought maybe it wasn't only Vincent that was courting him. He wasn't sure, but he thought the dead monster left on his doorstep one morning was a pretty big #^$*ing clue. And the fact that after battles the Beast had sometimes taken to coming up and rubbing against his ankles-- hell on trousers, what with the bloodstains, and not the easiest on legs either what with the fact that Beastie was bigger than a Nibel wolf and had a tendency to purr hard enough to shatter glass. When he was in the mood.

Which seemed to be often, when Cid was around.

In fact, he sometimes got the impression that Vincent was purring at him, even when the Beast wasn't out to play. It was in his eyes-- could someone purr with their eyes? Looking at Cid like he was warm and comfortable and maybe kind of tasty, graying hair and scarred knuckles and all. It was--

... well. Kinda flattering, maybe.

Hunh.

... what the *&^%, at least Beastie could keep his feet warm when they got to the crater, and Vincent at least knew which end of a screwdriver was the business end. He could do a lot worse.

But if the big one with the wings started getting any ideas, all bets were off.