"I really shouldn't be doing this," Tifa admitted, taking another shot and giving a bitter grimace at the burning aftertaste. "This is all I did the week after he left. It was the only way I could sleep at night." She handed the bottle back to him and gave a quiet burp that surprised her into an embarrassed smile. "Excuse me." She pushed her hair out of her face and took a breath. And hesitated. "Damn, forgot what I was saying."

She was getting drunk; not heavily, this was only her second shot, and maybe it wouldn't be a good idea to let her drink too much tonight. Not that there were many shots left in the bottle anyway, he thought, eyeing the inch or so of alcohol still lining the bottom. He would have to go shopping again soon if he wanted to keep his supply alive. "The perfect bar..."

"Oh right, right." She took another breath, turning her eyes to the ceiling as she presumably recalled events. "I found the perfect house, and so Cloud and I moved in. But that's where it all went wrong. He was angry all the time and I didn't know why. And he seemed angry at me, but I didn't know what I was doing to upset him. It took me awhile to realize that it was because of..." She shrugged a little, dropping her eyes. "...of Aeris. He was still in love with her."

Not a surprise. It hadn't been hard to see his infatuation with the fragile-looking creature. There had been many times, Vincent remembered, where he'd come back to camp in the night after a hunt (he'd learned early on -- days after leaving the mansion -- to observe the precaution of keeping *them* sated) to find Cloud and Aeris sitting together by the fire while the others slept. Aeris talking, asking the curious questions of a girl who is interested in a boy, listening in rapt attention to Cloud's quiet responses, giggling when he smiled. A simple kind of fondness that had taken him back, sometimes sickeningly, to the months of innocence before he and Lucrecia had stopped caring about protocol enough to find each other in the night.

"I wasn't Aeris, and I couldn't be Aeris, and I just became so angry. But I was scared, too, that he would leave." She frowned and Vincent noticed her eyes straying to the bottle in his hand again. "We just got angry at each other, I guess, and then all we did was fight. Fight, and make love out of commiseration, I think. And then he just left one night. Just got out of bed without waking me, walked out the door, and..." She sighed. "Never came back." And then she nibbled her bottom lip and reached for the whiskey.

Vincent let her take it. She took a quick swig and then wiped a trickle from the side of her mouth, half grinning. "Sloppy," she said quietly, as if it was an apology. And then she gestured the bottle back to him. "Maybe you'd better hold on to that. I shouldn't have any more."

He reached over and placed the bottle on the coffee table. Tifa was watching him, he realized, as he sat back again. He made an effort not to notice. *Something* there still, in having her eyes on him. Tifa, not Lucrecia, he reminded himself. But he still couldn't relax again until she glanced away, into her lap.

"You are a good listener, you know. Lily was right," she told him, picking at her thumbnails. "Thanks, in case I don't remember to thank you later." She glanced up with another smile and then blinked a little. "Oh, maybe that last shot was a mistake." She took a breath and then gave a soft chuckle under her breath. "Sorry in advance if I pass out again."

It didn't bother him. Once she was asleep, he would sleep. Not exactly impatient for it, though. He'd learned the value of waiting, crouched behind the scope of a sniper rifle.

Tifa sighed and swept the hair away from her face again with a gesture he imagined was largely unconscious. "After he left, I didn't open the bar for a couple of weeks. First week, I drank a lot, and I slept a lot." She paused a moment and twitched her lips in something that might've been self-reproach. "I also cried a lot. And then I opened the bar again because I had no food left and I needed the money. But it didn't do very well. And without Cloud's income, I was barely making the lease payments. So..." She shrugged her shoulders and glanced at the bottle. But then she looked away. "So, I just got sick of it one day, I guess. Tired of waiting for things to get better. And the bridge seemed like the perfect...um...you know." She frowned a little as the word she'd been about to use eluded her. And then she blinked again and sighed. "I don't know." And then she took a breath. "Wait, what was I saying?"

He didn't reply; the gash was beginning to ache and, just as he'd expected, itch. Irritated skin trying to heal around the thread. The thread was made to break down with time, but that wouldn't be for weeks yet, long after the actual injury had disappeared. And the itch would remain like a phantom wound. Restlessly, he brushed his hand over his pants and rubbed at the spot with a thumb, trying to subdue the itch without causing any damage to the stitches.

Tifa was watching him again. He could nearly feel her gaze.

"Does it itch?"

He gave a small nod.

"Didn't I give you something for that?" She sounded as if she wasn't quite sure.

The creme was in the bathroom. Tonight, before he went to bed, he would use it.

"I know a trick that'll stop it itching." She put her hand against her own leg. "I did this in the hospital, when I couldn't stand it anymore. Like this, just with the edge of your nail. Though..." She frowned at his hand. "Your nails are too short. Here, like this..."

It was a clumsy lunge across the couch, gravity pulling her down as she moved, and she laughed as he caught her wrist firmly in his fingers, like nabbing a speeding ball out of the air, before she could touch him.

Tifa, Lucrecia, it suddenly didn't matter. She fell sideways and landed with her head beside him, peering up at him through her hair. "Phew," she breathed with a grin, "I'm dizzy." And then she blinked, as if the reclined position was making her realize her weariness. "Why didn't you ever join us?" she asked suddenly, pushing her hair away from her face with slow fingers. "Barret would've dealt you in. I would've made him, anyway." She laughed again, softly. "Though you would've taken all our gil."

Her arm had gone limp in his grip. He moved her hand away from himself and let it fall to her side. Muscles tensed, his wound burning. Fight or flight, but now that the initial moment of panic was over the urge was fading. This, perhaps, had been a bad idea in the end.

"Cid might've given you some of his...you know, cigarettes." She opened her mouth in a silent yawn. "God, I'm tired now." She blinked again, then smiled a little grimly. "You know, I asked Lily if you two were lovers." She chuckled suddenly to herself and after a moment it turned into a sigh. "Sharing the same cigarette. It's intimate, sort of like kissing. So's drinking out of the same bottle, though, right?" She glanced up at him, one weary eyebrow stuttering upward. "Like an open-mouth kiss. That's what Cloud told me." And then she frowned at herself. "I'm...not making any sense, am I? Told you that last one was a bad idea." She dropped her cheek against the seat cushion and closed her eyes. "I think I might sleep," she murmured.

He was grateful for that. The conversation had taken a decidedly unsettling turn.

By the time he draped a blanket over her, she was almost too far gone to realize he was still in the room. And then he took a couple of painkillers, and tonight applied creme to the wound. It didn't sting, but it was uncomfortable at first. Though he imagined he would get used to that eventually.

And then he slept. Blessedly dreamless sleep until the early morning. When he finally dreamed.

The memory of a kiss. The memory of an open mouth beneath his own under sweaty sheets, lost in sensation, skin on skin, just moving together in the shared joy of giving, receiving pleasure...

A long, long time since he'd had this dream. Not since the mansion, after she'd stopped coming to him, talking to him. But he knew what happened next. Those green eyes, like hard emeralds, and he would wake up suddenly.

But, it was different. Dark eyes instead, brown-burgundy, staring up at him through a cascade of hair; not like gems, but like cimmerian wine: ripe grapes -- crushed, bottled, and then shoved away onto a precarious shelf. Waiting to be rescued from the possibility of falling, or of being forgotten there forever.

And he gasped himself awake.

He'd heard somewhere that a man who has never tasted alcohol doesn't know what he's missing when there's none to drink. But he had not abstained in his youth. Don't mix business with pleasure they'd told him; but he'd been in love and it had been such a temptation with her whispered promises, her hasty kisses in dark hallways, her teasing hands...

And even after thirty years of dead sleep, still human enough to feel that terrible thirst...

        * * *

Tifa was gone when he came out of the room. And he sighed in some relief at the empty, rumpled blanket on the couch.

Not since the mansion. He pushed the shower curtain aside. And then forced himself to stand in the icy spray until his traitor flesh was numb again.

        * * *

"Okay."

Tifa looked up from what she'd been doodling on the edge of a scrap of paper and reflexively reached for her morning tea to take a sip.

Lily was frowning a little as she brought the cigarette to her mouth, though she didn't put it between her lips. "He'd keep it from me if he was hurt. I know that much." She ran a thumb over her chin as she thought. "So that's what I'm thinking. His foot, his leg; something. Haven't seen him do anything but sit since he came back from Kalm." She met Tifa's eyes. "Am I close?"

Tifa blew her breath out and flipped the pen in her fingers. "Lily, you're putting me in the middle..."

"No, I know. I know." She waved her cigarette in a dismissive gesture. And then she brought it back to her mouth and took a drag. Sighed. "I know, but at least tell me he's taking care of himself. That's all I'm asking."

Tifa grimaced to herself and looked down at the paper. What was she supposed to do? The frown deepened as she realized that she'd been drawing a 'C'. She scribbled it out quickly. "All right." She took a breath. "I've been helping him a little, when he lets me."

Lily raised an eyebrow, but she nodded. "I'm glad for that." And then she sighed again. "Confuses me, though." She kept her eyes down as she reached for her own tea. "He lets you know, but he hides it from me like I'd want to cauterize the thing."

And Tifa smiled. Despite the lingering effects of the whiskey in the sunlit kitchen, that familiarly tight ache under the skin of her temples, she couldn't help but be sort of amused. Was Lily feeling jealous that Vincent's attention might be divided? When Tifa spoke, though, she kept her tone neutral. "He didn't let me know. I found out by accident, when I went to take his shirt up. He was in his bathroom, stitching himself up."

Lily suddenly winced a little. "God, I had to do his shoulder for him once. Wouldn't even put any ice on it first. He just sat there, not moving, hardly even making a sound." She sucked a breath in through her teeth and shook her head. "Nasty, bloody cut. Wouldn't even tell me how he got it. And he got so sick of me after a couple of days. Poor Vince." She took a pull on the cigarette and then chuckled the smoke back out. "I kept coming up to make sure he wasn't overdoing anything, to check to make sure he wasn't letting it get infected. But that man." She shook her head again and flicked some ash into the tray. "Barely takes care of himself. I don't think he eats unless I cook for him, and sometimes I can hear him pacing up there at night. Worries me sometimes."

Tifa wondered suddenly if she'd ever seen him sleep when they'd made camp; couldn't recall. "Well, he was sleeping when I left. At least I'm pretty sure he was. If not, he was being awfully quiet."

"Yeah, that's his specialty most of the time." She took another drag on her cigarette. "Well, I'm going to hope he was sleeping. It won't fatten him up, but it might give him a little bit of colour."

Tifa wasn't so sure about that.

They spent a good hour or so in the garden that morning. And, despite herself, Tifa's mind began to stumble over a period she couldn't quite remember from the night before. Talking with Vincent about Cloud; taking that third shot and knowing as it burned its way down that it had probably been one too many -- it had been hard to care, though; and then...not quite a blank, but a blur so that she knew she hadn't passed out right away. An interval she couldn't recall; and the chagrin was like a knot in her stomach as she wondered whether she might've done something to embarrass herself.

It was nearly lunch time when they went up together to Vincent's apartment. And Vincent was, unsurprisingly, in his chair at the table. Lily, Tifa noticed out of the corner of her eye, smirked to herself but said nothing.

Vincent didn't look at her as she sat. Or as they ate. Or as Lily began to search through her coat for her cards. And Tifa began to recognize that avoidance. And it gave her a sinking feeling. Last night had been comfortable, for once, in his apartment, just the two of them. A little like it might've been if they'd been old friends. Whiskey to break the ice, and no longer so aware of the changes in him. As if he might have always been this way, as if they might have met sometimes at midnight in another life.

And now, as if she might've dreamed the whole thing, because he seemed to have forgotten how to meet her eyes.

"Damn." Lily gave up the search with a loud sigh and ran a hand through her hair. "I must've left the cards in my kitchen. Vince, would you be a gentleman and go get them for me?"

Tifa saw his chin come up as he glanced at Lily. And then he seemed to read something in her expression that tipped him off, and he let out a breath through his nose.

Lily smiled tightly at him. "Not a gentleman today, I guess." She pulled the cards out of a pocket and, slipping them out of their box, began to shuffle them. "Don't blame Tifa; she held her tongue to the end. I figured it out for myself. But I'm not going to bug you about it. You don't need two women doing your dishes." She began to deal. "Now, let's play poker." And, like that, she seemed to put it behind her.

Vincent was distracted, it wasn't hard to see. Lily made no mention of it as they played, but Tifa found herself hard-pressed not to ask him what was wrong, if she'd done something inappropriate the night before. Apologize, maybe, if that was the problem; though she wondered if the damage had already been done with no hope of repair. He made no attempts even to look beyond the finished wood of the table top. Angry? Offended? Uncomfortable? It was so hard to tell what he was feeling beyond that first expressionless wall.

After the fifth game, Lily made an excuse about there being something she'd forgotten to do, and she went downstairs. Tifa picked up the cards, preparing to deal the sixth hand for two, when Vincent pushed himself out of the chair and made his way into the living room. Tifa sighed quietly and gathered the cards up again.

"Vincent, wait."

He didn't stop, on his way to the bedroom she supposed. Tifa hesitated a moment before following him.

The limp seemed less noticeable now, but it still slowed him down a little. "Vincent, wait a second. Wait." She came up beside him, ready to duck in his path if he was going to continue ignoring her. She was half expecting the 'glare' since she guessed this was probably over the line Lily had told her about.

But he didn't glare. If she'd come up next to him with a knife, she might've anticipated the same reaction.

He stepped away from her, faster than a man with a leg injury had any right to, his hand coming up as if to push her away, though she hadn't been that close. And for a moment, he met her eyes.

And she saw fear. The unease of a man, torn between two potent and opposite urges, both under tenuous control. It made her stop and stand where she was.

And then she went downstairs.

That night, she stayed on Lily's couch, wakeful until the early hours of morning. And Vincent didn't sleep at all.

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