Kiss Me

2009

by Darknightdestiny

It all started with a kiss.

But, then again, it always does, doesn't it? That breathless moment within which one thing is completely and instantly transformed into another, and it cannot be taken back; hearts racing and palms sweating, two people take one leap of faith, and this and the fear of rejection are both felt so deeply... And suddenly two faces press together to form a new image, and in that split second there is blessed relief in the confirmation of what they had both hoped to be true—the consumation of those first glances, that first brush of touch and the first gesture of understanding—I feel you, too.

In her fantasies, he had been the one caught off his guard, struck still by the soft and unexpected caress of her glossy mouth, eyes wide in awe before he melted against her curves. In her fantasies, she had that much control at least—over what she said and did, and over the knowledge of what she was asking of him. And perhaps that had always been the problem; after all, a fantasy is only that much.

——

"I thought this was the busiest night of the year." Vincent glanced past his friend and took inventory of the room—empty chairs, no heat, and one lone beer bottle atop the varnished counter. Not a soul to be seen, save for the one in front of him. Tifa was dressed down herself, in a sweater and a pair of men's sleeper pants, her face bare and her hair sticking up every which way.

The fine, dark strands whipped about her face in the winter chill. His expression adjusted, the query implicit.

"I didn't much feel like it this year," she said. "But you should come in."

Vincent obliged, gliding on foot past the threshold, breath still lingering in front of him. "...Cold, isn't it?"

Tifa 'hmph'ed, but otherwise said nothing.

He took a seat near her drink; she took up her own stool behind the bar and across from him. Another silent question.

"Easy access," she explained, her voice a bit languid. "Can I get you something?"

Vincent examined the Costan brew on the bar top, frosty beads pooling from one surface to another. If she was going to freeze herself... He relaxed into the high back of his chair. "I'll have what you're having."

She opened the unit beneath the counter and pulled another out, all without leaving her seat. Bottle opener at the ready, she popped the cap off and slid his drink to him. "Here's to tropical nights," she said, smirking and holding her bottle up for a toast, "and to not drinking alone."

"Amen."

They both took a swig, hers a bit longer than his—he sat back for a moment and studied her. There was a slump in her shoulders, her eyes downcast, but there was nothing ingenuine about it. Tifa didn't need his attention. He was going to ask.

But he didn't have to. The minutes-long silence was broken by a growl in her throat, followed by a heavy sigh.

"Did you ever think I'd have to look this far for love?"

She was looking at him now, her head resting in her hand and her eyes trained on his. Tifa was absent the wistful non-stop gazing elsewhere and the tell-me-it-will-be-all-rights that he had come to expect from most in his very purposely limited world. There were moments, but they never lasted. Maybe for others... but not with him.

Perhaps that was why he felt she was so deserving.

"I didn't." Honesty. "It never occurred to me that you would have to go looking at all."

"Yeah, me neither." She smiled. "I thought it would begin and end with Cloud."

He nodded.

"I put a barrier between him and me. Even that first night alone... beneath Cid's airship. At the worst possible time..." she shook her head. "I deflected his attention to everything else that was going on. To her. Inward, to himself. I asked him to focus, to examine himself and his true feelings. It never got any better after that."

"Do you think you made a wrong choice?"

"Mm. I was afraid. I asked questions when I should have given answers. Why didn't I have those answers on hand? There we were, in this monumental moment, and he was so conflicted. Maybe we should have just talked instead."

Vincent digested this for a moment. "Perhaps... but now you know what life would have been like."

Tifa's large, rich eyes met and held his narrow, sharp ones. "I broke up with Lyn."

His eyes blinked back anything that might betray him, and he lowered his bottle. He tasted what remained, contemplating, choosing his words carefully.

Why?

But I thought...

You mean that didn't solve...?

And the clear winner—

"...Are you okay?"

She smiled that sincere, soft smile of hers, and he knew she was. She certainly wasn't afraid anymore. "I guess. You know, I thought for a second there that men didn't understand me. Turns out..."

He didn't need to finish her sentence.

"...I mean, I helped fight for the fate of the planet. That's a big thing. And I'm tired of fighting, I don't care what for. Don't give me a radical agenda when what I want is someone to hold. I've done all that before, and I'm done with it."

He didn't have to ask what she meant by that, as they'd all seen it. The only question left was... "What will you do now?" It hung like an echo in the room, unconsciously much quieter than he'd intended, but nonetheless more powerful.

"I don't know, Vincent," she replied after a moment. "I really don't know." She lowered her head so that her long bangs hung down over her eyes, and she tugged on the shaggy spikes in the back. A side-long glance up at him—"Did I really do this for a relationship?"

He grimaced. "It wouldn't be the first time."

Tifa lowered her hand, lifted her head and looked at him soberly. Her eyes reminded him of dark pools of chocolate—his reminded her of broken glass. "No more," she said.

"Hm?"

"I'm so tired, Vincent. I've given up on normal, on fitting in with a billion other people, or even on fitting with one person considered 'somewhat' normal. No one understands people like you and me." She uncapped two more bottles and set them down, throwing hers into a bin with a hard, tell-tale clink. He took his with a gracious nod, a sip and a shiver.

"You need someone who won't put you in boxes."

Her eyes crinkled around the edges, twinkled even. "Yes... I suppose that's one way of putting it."

Two more sips on his end and more silence, and he realized then that she hadn't removed her gaze. He tilted his head to the side and raised one eyebrow, which was closely followed by the other. "...Yes?"

"What about you?"

Huh?

Her voice was very quiet now, very serious, her face suddenly full of heavy questions. "Are you available these days? I mean... emotionally?"

Something hurt him just then, somewhere deep inside, he just couldn't place it. But it felt darker outside. And much, much colder. "...Now you ask me that?"

"What?"

One deep breath. Two. "You have no idea," he said, "how badly I've wanted to shake you some days. Or how much I invested in trying to put the idea out of my head that there was ever even a chance for us. And now you decide you like men again?"

She glared at him. "What the hell is that supposed to mean? When did I say I didn't? I found out I could never live with a woman—not that woman, anyway. I mean, do you even remember rooming arrangements and what a disaster that was? Besides, messing around with someone I don't see a future with goes against my conscience. And, if you didn't notice," she hissed this last part, "I just narrowed that prospective group down quite a damned bit."

"I want to shake you now."

"Why? Why do you get to be angry, when all this time you never said anything?"

He heard the broken quality of her tone, the sadness cresting beneath it, and his heart began to soften. "...This is the worst possible time," he whispered.

"Time is all we have, Vincent."

"No. You have the opportunity to stop running around trying to find people you can make happy. You've finally realized that. You can go and figure yourself out, do the things you want to do, and stop worrying about that person who might not love you anymore if you were this or that. You get to start over without any worries or secrets. You can write your confessions," he said—and then affectionately tugged on the third stud in her left ear—"or go and get pierced..."

"That one was for me," she grinned, then gently pushed his hand away. "And ouch. That's still off-limits for three more weeks."

"You get my point. Hm—and sorry."

"Are you saying you want to wait and see who I am before you make that decision? That you wouldn't love me anyways?"

"I never said that. I never—all relationships take work. Besides, what about me?"

She crossed her arms, challenging. "I know you never said that. I was being rhetorical." Because I'm already counting on you. "And what about you?"

"Lyn said you both hated the 'oppressive male sex'. And I have my baggage, too. What if one day you decide—"

Tifa tried not to laugh, but it came out anyways. "—that you're too much? Or not enough?" She chuckled. Still afraid of being lumped in with someone? You never had to worry about that. "Lyn was jealous of all my men. Especially you."

Her forehead pressed against his playfully—her breath was driving him wild, and it wasn't so cold anymore. "Wonder why," he teased.

"Yes, why ever could that be?" Her mouth inched a bit closer. "I'll tell you one thing: your sex? It had nothing to do with it. In that, you were the exception. I couldn't have cared what you were, and that's why people who might have cared were threatened by you. But that's nothing new to you, is it?"

"Well," he began, "it's nice to know that you don't see a man when you look at me..."

"Not just a man." Tifa laughed and rubbed her nose against his. "I'd take you—in any form."

She never even had a chance. Rather than give her what she expected—a challenge—he crossed the distance immediately. In that instant, his argument went out the window. He couldn't take it back, and if there were any boxes to put her in—well, they'd just have to be done away with, because there wasn't going to be room for those. He'd already accepted the whole package, the whole Tifa, and nothing that had happened already had dampened his want for her yet.

As for Tifa, she was still for a second, as if deciding—but she already had him, and what if someone else had gotten there first? Well... they had, hadn't they? But they were both in the unique position to start over, and so her hands found their way into his hair—and all of a sudden she noticed that there was that counter between them, and that she was nearly leaning out of her chair—and soon she found her way over the divide and into his lap.

If there was anyone she could trust, anyone in the whole world...

His body was warm and inviting, his hands a welcome presence on her hips. His mouth, chapped lips but tongue so much softer and intentioned than she had imagined—and that's when she'd known, really, when she'd been with someone else and still thinking about crossing that divide when he was on the other side of it—was a mix of breath and touch and sound, and then...

"You know I'm always here."

She pulled back to look at him, searching. What did that mean, anyway? He'd always been there. "...Don't push me away."

"I'm not," he said quietly. The light from outside was quickly fading to grey with the oncoming dusk. "I'm just letting you know, in case you didn't." That had always been the only safe assumption, and one that he'd noted duly. Her leap had been grounded by her faith in it.

His thumb was absently moving up and down her spine, comforting against the solid support of his hand. "I'm still me," she said. "And it's not like I just decided this by process of elimination. No matter that... it might have sounded that way."

Vincent rolled his eyes. "Even I knew that."

"You did?"

"It's hard to miss someone sending those looks your way. For months."

Tifa looked sheepish. "I thought maybe I'd missed my chance. But—"

He smiled at her from beneath their dark cover. "Neither one of us died." She could be the man, for all he cared—she could be an antelope, really. After all, who was he to say what was normal timing, form or execution? She was right—if she had loved him all this time in one way or another, and if each of those ways was so wrong to other people for whatever the reason, what did that make her in their eyes? And what did that in turn make him for loving her back? They had both been waiting on each other at different times; they would be foolish not to take the chance, and to hell with the warnings from those who had no idea what they were talking about.

——

In his fantasies, she was also the one who took him by surprise. And why not? Tifa had always taken him by surprise, had always pushed his ideas of who she was further, until she became something more—something beyond all of his prior expectations. Some might have called him a monster, but her acceptance of his friendship in the very first place was his first lesson: never assume.

So it was normal—whatever that meant, anyways—for her to catch him unawares with a kiss; one that could be justified, one that could change everything. But that was their convention, and why couldn't he defy, just a little bit? They had both started in very different places, and it was his turn to be in awe, and to respond—ardently.

It started with a kiss.

Dark's notes: Something unconventional—coming from me, anyways. Or, at least, what you've seen. A lot of things have happened since I last appeared in this haven—and I return because that's exactly what this is—but that's another long story. I want to clarify: this content doesn't necessarily reflect, endorse or deny my belief in anything—I am merely telling a story, from two fictitious perspectives which may or may not be informed, and whose manners are also not reflective of mine. This is only one of many ways it could go.

Mostly, I want to thank my life-long friend and next-door neighbor Stephanie for inspiring me, and I want to thank all the readers who asked me to write another segment this V-day. You know who you are. Happy Valentine's Day to Jess, Steph, and all my friends and readers, near and far.

I wrote this between two twelve-hour work days because I love you.