Crossover Fic: Rocket Boys
Title: Rocket Boys
Fandoms: Star Trek XI, Final Fantasy VII
Pairing: Pavel Chekov/Cid Highwind
Rating: R
Word count: 5,809
Summary: Cid didn't know he was waiting for something until Pavel Chekov showed up on his doorstep.
He appears one night in the middle of the rain, his thin shirt ripped and soaked through and not nearly substantial enough to endure the Rocket Town winter. Shera finds him near the rocket itself (the new one that Cid's been trying to cobble together from the pieces left after Meteor) and drags him back home to sit in their kitchen and feed him warm milk like a stray kitten.
Cid grumbles about how this is not a half way house dammit, and he's not a nursemaid and why is she getting out the extra blankets, but when push comes to shove he takes a look at the boy's glassy eyes and helps Shera with the fold-out couch. That's the kind of man Cid is.
The boy doesn't speak for nearly five days, and he behaves much like the stray cat Cid had compared him to that first night. He disappears during the day, leaving even before Cid wakes (which is a difficult task) and arriving just as Cid and Shera climb up to their separate rooms to sleep. Cid knows the boy comes back because the downstairs rooms are always a little bit cleaner in the mornings, and the food is going a bit faster than usual (although not that must faster), and sometimes there are fresh flowers on the breakfast table.
In those first few days Cid sometimes sees the boy out of the corner of his eye, stealing around a hedge or headed down a street, but he'll be damned if the boy doesn't sneak around any kind of contact with an actual human being. Cid doesn't know what he does all day but the silent presence of a complete stranger in his house is upsetting his nerves.
On the sixth day (Friday, Cid notices when he finally glances at Shera's wall calender) Cid comes down the stairs with his usual thumping gait to see the boy seated on the floor of the living room, surrounded by small wires and little bits of metal and what looks like a piece of the steering system for Tiny Bronco and if it is Cid is going to be killing a certain weird silent kid in a very messy and painful way.
"What the fuck do you think your doin'?" Cid shouts, staring at the mess and the pieces of what is likely his own ship.
The boy looks up, and says something that Cid could never understand in a million years, and turns his head back to whatever the hell it is he's working on. Cid's starting to get just the littlest bit completely infuriated when the kid when the boy abruptly stands an jams something small and pointy into Cid's ear.
"OW! Mother fucker!"
There's a brief moment in which the kid goes back to fiddling with his bits of something and Cid curses and considers the Fire materia in his pocket while trying to get the whatever-it-is out of his ear canal. Just as he gets his fingers on small metal object a crackling screech in sends him to his knees.
There's a crack, and a high pitched whine that has Cid wishing for a fifth of whiskey and a bottle of aspirin.
All of a sudden everything goes quiet, save for Cid's cursing.
He glares up at the kid, ready to kick him to the curb and then kick him a few more times for good measure...
"Hello?" Says the boy, "Can you understand me?"
"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" Cid shouts, "I think my brain is coming out my ears."
"I'm sorry." The boy says in a most heartfelt and apologetic voice.
Cid has trouble at staying mad at anyone who uses that sort of voice. Hell, if Sephiroth had come up to him and given him puppy eyes and apologized like that he'd probably have gone and let the crazy bastard blow up the entire Planet.
"We'll don't fucking do it again." He grumbles, standing and briefly rubbing one ear where he can still feel the strange device poking him.
"Now why the hell are you going around sticking shit in my head? Little..."
There's a short pause while Cid's brain catches up with current events.
"Did I just hear you talking?"
"...Yes?"
"Almost a week and you haven't said a word and now you're chatting away and driving spikes into my ear." Cid grumbles.
"I'm very sorry!" The kid tells him desperately and Cid briefly feels a flash of remorse for being so harsh, "I came over without any equipment and I couldn't understand and..."
...and the kid running his mouth at a mile a minute and talking about subspace phenomenon and wormholes and time-jumps and Cid finds himself unable to keep up with anything he's saying and why is this translator doohickey (which is what he gathers it is) not translating away the kid's accent?
"Shut up!" He says finally when the kid takes a moment to breathe.
"Sorry." The kid tells him. Shutting his mouth with a click.
"Good." Cid pauses for a moment to gather his thoughts, "I take it you're not from around here..."
The kids nods furiously. His curls are rather distracting, Cid notices, golden and soft-looking and he really shouldn't be thinking about the touchable-ness of some poor lost underage kid's hair and so he stops. Cid has always had a bit of a soft spot for the young and the lost. He hadn't spent all that time tromping about with Avalanche just for the sake of the planet after all.
Hell, Cid could take or leave the planet. He can't take or leave Cloud's big blue eyes looking at him like he some kind of answer or Vincent's humor after a long period of silence. Deep down Cid knew he was just collecting strays. He made up for it by swearing as much as he possibly could.
"What was your name?"
"Pavel Andreivich Chekov. It is a pleasure to meet you." The kid, Pavel, says with a smile. Cid feels himself smiling in return and restrains himself.
"You made this thing so that I can understand you?" He asks poking at his ear.
"Da!" The kid cries before launching into a highly complicated description of exactly what he had done and how it worked. Cid rubs at his temples.
"Oh for fuck's sake, kid." He growls, "I'm an airship mechanic not some kind of god damn technical genius..."
And suddenly Pavel Andreivich Chekov is looking at him with the world's biggest eyes as though Cid just punched him in the neck and took all his cake and Cid has no idea what it was he said that caused that heartbreak.
And Cid wants nothing more than to make him laugh again.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the weeks that follow Cid learns a lot about Pavel and what his life had been like before. He's the only one that Pavel talks to, the only one Pavel can talk to because he only has one receiver for what he calls his 'universal translator' and doesn't have the technology to have it broadcast the same way as the ones (he claims) he had back home.
Shera takes a shine to the kid, as Cid had expected. Pavel remains painfully shy and withdrawn around her despite the fact that she thought he was the sweetest thing since kittens and made him pancakes. It might have been, Cid thinks, the fact that she couldn't understand him even if he did speak to her in any of the strange hard languages that Cid can't understand when he takes the doohickey out of his ear.
Pavel does start to show up more often, now that he can communicate a little, and starts coming to meals with a fresh face and a smile. He always does the dishes afterward even though Shera tries to take them from him.
It's a all pretty domestic really. It makes Cid's skin itch.
It's obvious to Cid that Pavel is trying hard to be useful, which is more than Cid can say for others who have crashed on his couch (namely Yuffie). Pavel can often be found cleaning or doing various chores for Shera, and running into the center of town with a note clutched in his hand in order to pick up new parts of groceries or whatever it was Shera asked for.
But there's something in the way that Pavel's eyes glaze over when he's looking at the sky, something about the strings of incomprehensible equations that Cid finds written on spare napkins and shoved in between the cushions of the couch. Cid knows that Pavel isn't happy in Rocket Town and Cid can't blame him because Cid isn't happy in Rocket Town.
Cid has a feeling that Pavel, like him, is just making do.
Shera buys Pavel a bed after a month and they squeeze it into the study among Cid's old blueprints and engineering manuals. He walks in one morning to find that the kid has organized the entire place, placing books and documents according to type and subject and author (by last name). He's furious that Pavel has touched those things that represent his lost dream of space travel (he still works on the rocket but he and Shera both know it's a lost cause). He shouts and Pavel shouts back and there is silence in the house for days until they manage to come to terms in a round about manner over the breakfast table.
"I should not have touched your things." Pavel says as he reaches for the sausage.
"Yeah, well..." Cid grumbles, not admitting that he stopped minding about three days ago.
"I am not sorry." Pavel tells him. Cid understands what it's like to never apologize for something you've already done. He nods sharply.
"Where the hell did you learn to make tea?" He says instead of apologizing himself, "This shit tastes like pond water.
"Real men," Pavel informs him primly, "Drink coffee"
The thing is, Cid realizes, that he is the only one that Pavel can communicate with, really, because the kid surely has no talent for learning languages and has managed to pick up nothing more than some nouns and basic swear words. He can understand what people say to him, thanks to that strange device in his ear, but Cid is the only one who can understand back at him.
Cid's not much of a talker, but sometime all Pavel needs is for someone to hear his voice in his own language and to nod at the bits that need nodding at.
He's surprised to find that he doesn't really mind listening to Pavel either. The kid's... well, "brilliant" doesn't even begin to cover it, and it's been a long time since someone could keep up with Cid in any kind of mechanics talk.
That and... and there's something almost profound about Pavel's laugh, his happiness, that pokes at a place in Cid's heart that had crusted over with anger and hurt and broken dreams.
The fact that the kid is ridiculously attractive doesn't hurt things either.
Pavel fits nicely into Cid's life in a way that no one has before. He's comfortable and exciting all at once and Cid finds himself smiling more, laughing more, thinking more.
Shera puts up new wallpaper in the study.
One morning before the sun has risen, when Cid is roaming about the house because he woke up an hour ago to the sound of Sephiroth's voice in his ear, he stumbles across Pavel sitting in the kitchen on the floor with tears that are falling like when you can't stop them and you can't make them go any faster.
"I want to go home." Pavel tells him like it's some big secret.
Fuck, Cid thinks. Because Pavel's what, nineteen? Twenty? And it's been nearly two months since he arrived and Cid's only seen him cry twice. Hell, in his position Cid would be bawling his eyes out at any opportunity.
Well, he'd be bawling on the inside and that's what counts.
But he doesn't say all that, instead he just mutters "Yeah." And slides down to sit next to him.
That's the point where Pavel tells him what happened. Not the scientific mumbo-jumbo of singularities and teleporters and emergency maneuvers but the real facts about the attack, the crushing fear he had felt, a hole in the blackness of space.
It's terrifying, but Cid can't help but feel a pang of something like jealousy because Pavel has been there. He's done the dream in a way that Cid will never be able to experience because he'll never get his damn rocket off the ground.
Something about the terror of it drives home the fact that Pavel has seen and done more in his nineteen years of life that Cid ever will and it hurts Cid that it doesn't hurt as much as he would have thought.
The kid is beautiful. Cid realizes in that moment. It's possibly the most frightening realization of his entire life.
Pavel is truly crying now and Cid doesn't really know what to do with crying folks (his only experience being with Shera, who only cries when she's furious, and Yuffie, who fakes it half the time) he pats him lightly on the arm and when that does nothing to assuage the tears he lets his hand rest on Pavel's shoulder even though it makes him think about things that are not very comforting and are very, very wrong.
"I want to go home." Pavel tells him again in that same lost voice. Cid wants nothing more than to grant that wish. He wishes there were a materia that would fix this.
"You'll get home kid," He lies, "We'll find a way."
Pavel shakes his head and turned his face into the crook of Cid's arm, falling gently asleep while Cid thinks about how wrong it is to feel the way he does.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The next morning they're sitting together at the breakfast table while Pavel explains to him the mechanics of subspace travel using forks and bits of toast.
"Is violation of the prime directive." He explains, his accent is much thicker before his first cup of coffee and Cid wonders why he didn't just set the damn translator to his own damn language, "But I trust you not to ruin the development of your society."
Somewhere behind that loaded sentence Cid hears "I am lonely and I want someone to know what I know." and "I'm never going home, there is no one to punish me."
He doesn't mention it. It isn't like he'll ever get the rusty bucket he calls a rocket out of the atmosphere anyway, and Planet sure as hell doesn't produce any dilithium.
They're discussing various forms of sub-warp propulsion when Cid hears the thud of heavy boots at the doorstep. He is standing and reaching for his spear before his mind registers the noise. Something in him is still strung tight from Sephiroth and Shinra, even though it's been years.
"Cid!"
"Hey there old man!"
"Hn."
He relaxes his guard (just a little bit) as Tifa bursts through the door, smiling and running up for a hug that he gives her grudgingly. She brought the whole gang, it appears, as Cloud and Vincent and Yuffie (god dammnit!) file into his living space like he invited them or something.
It's been at least a year or so since the last time they'd gotten together, after defeating Sephiroth a second time and for all the familiar noise, Cid can tell they've changed. Tifa seems more motherly, calmer than before, and while Yuffie remains a hyperactive annoyance Cid is almost sure that she is less obnoxious than before.
Cloud, on the other hand, looks skinny and tired and distant, continuing a trend that Cid has been observing since before Sephiroth went down the first time. He doesn't say anything in greeting as the old gang fills the room, merely nodding at him and taking a seat while Cid is overwhelmed by the chattering and well wishing of others.
There are deep shadows under Cloud's eyes and a glaze over his expression that implies he isn't looking at things that are real. Cid makes him some tea because it's the only thing he can think of to do besides give the kid a hug, and Cid doesn't do hugs.
It isn't until he's introducing them all to Pavel (and explaining why they won't be able to understand a word that comes out of the kid's mouth) that Cid notices Vincent, sitting in the corner like he had been there all day and would remain there for all eternity. Cid felt a brief pang of... something at the sight of Vincent sitting in his kitchen again.
They'd been lovers, at one point. Vincent had been a fixture in his life and in his home. Cid had found comfort in the domestic, in living with Vincent in his bed and Shera in the room down the hall and having breakfast all together and sitting on the porch with a smoke and a cup of tea and Vincent.
It was boring, and Cid could feel that ancient itch in him that had driven him to the skies and was pushing him towards the stars. Cid was trying something new in normalcy, and with Vincent by his side it had felt... Doable.
But while Cid had been trying relax into the comfort of real life, acting the old man for all that he is only 35, Vincent had been looking to live the life he'd missed during his sleep. He'd chafed at the calm existence Cid had created for them until eventually he'd slipped the reins entirely.
Cid had woken up one day to an empty bed and a note on the fridge that read 'Might be back-- V' in an elegant and cold calligraphy. Cid couldn't blame him for leaving. He understood the way Vincent felt, he really did.
He had blamed Vincent for the way he left. He had blamed him hard for that.
He still blames him.
There is a moment when their eyes meet across the room and Cid wants desperately to be the better man but he can feel his gaze growing cold and hard.
Pavel looks around the room with wide eyes, he isn't used to the energy and loudness that comes with having Yuffie and Tifa together in a room. He seems intimidated by the silent stares of Cloud and Vincent. Cid can see him fading into the woodwork, his eyes glancing toward the door and freedom every few seconds.
This won't do.
"Come sit at the table kid, they're not gonna bite." Cid growls and Pavel gives him a weak smile as he slides into the chair at Cid's right.
He resits the urge to sling his arm around Pavel's shoulder or rest his hand on the kid's thigh. It's a close call though.
He can see Vincent's eyes narrow as Pavel slides into the chair, sitting closer to Cid than is really necessary and glancing shyly at the gathering. Everyone has gathered around that table with tea and scones (freshly prepared by Shera and slathered with butter), even Cloud. Vincent is the only one apart from the group, and his gaze is fixed firmly on the place where Pavel's knee touching Cid's leg.
Cid feels the urge to crow in triumph. He and Pavel might not be fucking (though the gods know Cid wishes they were) but Vincent certainly thinks they are and the flash of jealousy in his otherwise calm and collected face brings a vicious warmth to Cid's heart.
A warmth which is quickly cooled by guilt. Cid has never been the type to use someone to make another person jealous. Especially not a kid like Pavel. A kid who is sweet, attractive, intelligent, and (most importantly) fifteen years his junior.
He shifts until he and Pavel are no longer touching. Breaks eye contact with Vincent. Inhales. Wishes he could smoke inside.
"So." He says to the only slightly uncomfortable silence, "What have you crazy kids been up to?"
And Yuffie is off, her mouth running faster than a chocobo with story after story that Cid only understands half of anyway. A quick glance to his right shows Pavel looking between the girls with a smile. It's genuine. Cid can tell because it looks like fifty percent hurt.
That smile is the most beautiful thing Cid has seen since he first looked up at the stars.
"I'm gonna grab a smoke." He stands abruptly and heading for the door while reaching for his pack.
He out by the rocket before any of them can say a word, lighting up and taking a drag with shaking hands.
Somewhere in between drags three and four Cid notices a familiar presence beside him. He waits for two more long breaths before speaking.
Inhales. "You're as social as ever." Exhales long tendrils of smoke and the promise of cancer. Taps ash onto Vincent's boots.
"You know me." Vincent shrugs as if that were an excuse. For distancing himself from his friends. For leaving his lover.
Cid snorts and runs a jittery hand through his hair. "You never change."
"You have." Vincent tells him, "Changed."
"Somebody's got to." Cid feels cold. He takes a long drag on the cigarette, hoping that the smoke will warm him up. It doesn't.
There's a long silence of the sort that Cid used to enjoy but now finds incredibly awkward. Vincent shifts from foot to foot, almost silently, Cid puffs at his cigarette and they stare into space.
"What did you want to say, Vincent?" Cid asks finally, "Or were you just going to glower at me until nightfall."
There's a pause in which Cid imagines Vincent considering the "glower" option. Cid smokes. Vincent shifts.
"Where did you get the boy?"
So that's what this all is about. "I found him in a box by the side of the road."
Vincent snorts, the closest he ever comes to laughter, "Did it have 'free fuckbuddies' written on the side?"
Cid snorts. It's just the sort of barbed (poisoned) comment that Vincent makes when he's in pain and looking to lash out. "You don't know a damn thing about that kid..."
"I know about you." Vincent tells him in that monotone that drives Cid up the wall, "I know what you look like when you're...
"What?" Cid growls "In love?"
"In lust at least."
"I'm not fucking the kid. And even if I were," Cid takes the opportunity to turn and look directly into Vincent's inhuman eyes, "It wouldn't be any of your goddamn business."
"Highwind." And isn't it dandy, Cid thinks, that they're back to calling each other by their last names, "I didn't mean to hurt you. I still care..."
"No matter how sorry you are I won't forgive you, Valentine." Cid says through a cloud of smoke, "And that's my own fuckin' prerogative, so nut up and deal with it. At this stage in our relationship I think it's fair to say that I won't tell you who to fuck and you..."
There something in Vincent's face. A shift of the eyes. And indrawn breath. Cid's years of experience dealing with Vincent's micro expressions tell him exactly what they mean.
"... Who are you fucking?"
Vincent doesn't say a word. But Cid's brain is already firing away, creating and destroying possibilities as he peers into Vincent's face. It's got to be someone Cid's already met because Vincent does not make friends easily and makes lovers even less so.
Cid's mind flies through all the people he's ever met and all the people who would ever bend over for Vincent and comes up with...
"You're having sex with Cloud?" Cid barks and the slight twitch at the corner of Vincent's eyes tells him he's right and he can't help a bitter laugh, "You hypocrite. You fucking-- Tell me you weren't fucking him before you left me."
Vincent doesn't say a word. Cid's used to that.
"Tell me you weren't fucking him before you left, Vincent!" Cid shouts and he's sure they've heard him in the house and he can only hope that they don't come out and make a scene because he's holding himself together with willpower and nicotine.
"Don't be angry at him."
"At him? Him?!" Being angry at Cloud is like being angry at a baby chocobo. Cid knows exactly who he'd angry at and it isn't Cloud, "I'm angry at you, you motherfucker. How could you do that to him?"
Vincent blinks, "Him?"
"That kid doesn't need you, Vincent." Cid growls, "He needs someone who will hold his hand in the street and go to the movies with him and make him drink till he pukes. He needs someone he own age who will help him to be young again. He doesn't need an ancient bag of mako and issues who only wants him for the sex."
"I don't--"
"You don't what?" Cid's in fine ranting form now and it's making him feel better than any amount of violence of alcohol ever could, "Take care of him? That's obvious since he looks like a strong wind will blow him over. Do you know how old he is?"
Vincent shifts.
"You don't, do you? Fucker."
"You're one to talk." Vincent says so quietly that Cid can barely hear him, "Or has Pavel just discovered the fountain of youth?"
"Pavel is a well adjusted young man with a firm grasp of reality and a healthy self esteem." Cid throws the but of his cigarette on the ground and stomps on it with relish, "And I'm still not fucking him."
Vincent snorts again and Cid comes up to him with bared teeth, getting into Vincent's personal space in a way that he hasn't done since before the other man left.
"You take care of that boy, Vincent Valentine." He growls, "You help him get better."
"Or what?" Vincent asks, hearing the silent threat.
Cid doesn't answer, just stomps back inside and pretends he doesn't notice that everyone in the room has been listening all along. Cloud looks grim, as always, but the way he looks at Vincent as they take their (awkward) leave makes Cid feel a pain in his heart.
He gives the kid a smile and a wave. A sign that he won't hold it against Cloud and that he's there. Cid snorts, someone's got to be there for him after all.
It isn't until he's turning back to his now empty kitchen that he realizes that he hasn't seen Pavel since he went to have his little pow-wow with the local vampire.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cid finds Pavel out near the Rocket, right where he had dressed down Vincent not an hour before. He's sitting on the ground, his back up against the side of the thing, as he methodically rips grass from the ground. Cid sighs, seeing the beginning of another long and painful talk.
He pulls out another cigarette, his number one weapon against long, painful talks.
"You ok kid?"
Pavel smiles. It's a real smile, the type that makes Pavel's eyes look sad. "Your friends, they are..."
"I think the word you're looking for is 'insane'." Cid says with a chuckle, sliding down to sit next to Pavel and offering the kid a drag of his cig.
Pavel accepts it, delicately inhaling the poison and breathing it out in a thin stream. Cid remembers the first time he's smoked in front of Pavel and how he had thrown a hissy fit about cancer and emphysema and antiquated traditions of self-harm. He'd relaxed after a few weeks and Cid wondered if that was because he was learning to accept Cid's faults or if it was because he no longer cared about suffering a slow, hacking death.
"I thought you and Shera..." Pavel begins.
"You did?" Cid's a little shocked, Pavel might not be a mind reader but he's been very perceptive so far. Cid never thought to explain his home situation to him. "We sleep in separate rooms!"
"Different cultures have a variety of different societal expectations when it comes to marriage and sexual relationships." Pavel tells him, "There was a planet we visited where husband and wife lived on separate islands and met once a month. And their months were nearly ninety standard days long."
"That seems mighty inconvenient." Cid isn't sure how he feels about being put in the same category as some aliens Pavel met on some planet, until he realizes that he is some alien that Pavel met on some planet and the thought of it makes him feel a little shaken.
"Captain Kirk still managed to get nearly killed by offering to sleep with a married woman." Pavel chuckles.
"Impressive."
"It was." The sad-kitten look of the first few weeks is back in Pavel's eye and Cid suppresses the urge to kiss it away. He knows that Pavel is lonely and homesick, that doesn't give him a pass to make unwanted advances.
"But here on this here Planet we generally share quarters with our lovers."
"Ahh." Chekov says, "Xeno-anthropology was the only class I have ever gotten a 'C' in."
"That's bad?" Cid can hardly remember seeing the inside of a school, much less what the grades looked like.
"It was for me. Physics is much easier than people."
"That it is." Cid says with a grin and a puff of smoke.
"Were you really...?"
"With Vincent?"
"Da."
"Sure was. Up until a few months before you arrived on our doorstep."
"What happened?"
"He left." It's the first time Cid has said it out loud, to another person. The saying of it makes it real in a way that Cid wasn't anticipating. He says it again, testing the reality, "He left me."
Pavel nods. Looks at the grass. Looks at Cid. Looks back at the grass.
"Was it true?"
"What?" The cigarette is burning down but Cid doesn't bring it to his lips or tap off the long column of ash. He looks at Pavel instead.
"What you said... about me."
"And what was that?" Cid can feel his throat constricting as he waits for Pavel to laugh and back off or call him a dirty old man or change the subject.
"That you... Like me."
Cid looks at Pavel's hand as it tears up some defenseless vegetation. Looks at Pavel's face. Look's back at Pavel's hand. Sighs.
"Damn it kid, I'm nearly twice your age."
"But do you?"
"I like you fine, kid." Cid deflects. He's calling Pavel 'kid' partly because it's his nickname and partly to remind himself of all the reasons he's not reaching out to stroke that hair or kiss those lips or bend that body over the kitchen table. It isn't working.
"Cid." Pavel glares, "Do. You. Like. Me."
"It's not about whether or not I like you, kid."
"Yes it is."
Cid rolls his eyes, "I'm too old for you."
"I thought I was 'a well adjusted young man with a firm grasp of reality and a healthy self esteem'. Doesn't that mean I'm capable of making my own choices?"
"Fuck. You heard that?" Cid wishes desperately to take the whole argument with Vincent back, for all that he meant every word.
"Da."
"You remembered that?"
Pavel taps himself on the temple, "Eidetic."
"Fuck." Cid smokes.
The sit in silence for a moment and Pavel doesn't touch Cid for which Cid is grateful because if he did Cid would either jump him or run away. Running away, Cid thinks, is becoming more and more appealing.
"I'm not a child, you know." Pavel tells him.
"Yeah." Cid's not sure if he's agreeing or just acknowledging that Pavel spoke. He doesn't consider Pavel a child. But maybe that's part of the problem.
"And I'm not a virgin."
Cid opens his mouth to agree again. Chokes. Coughs. "What?"
"If that's what you're worried about." Pavel says and Cid tries to pretend that he isn't imagining... Something. Pavel. With some faceless man or woman (or genderless alien). Naked and writing on some other person's bed or floor or...
"I've been having sex since I was fifteen and I know what I want." Pavel tells him with serene confidence. "I know that I want men and that I prefer them older and that I like them bitchy."
Cid snorts.
"Is true!" Pavel declares and the light, teasing tone of his voice makes Cid want to smile. He bites down on his cigarette instead.
"Back on the Enterprise," Pavel begins and it sounds like back home and Cid can see the brief pang of longing in Pavel's face, "I had a crush on one of my superior officers."
Cid blinks. He's not sure where this is going. He's surely never tried to seduce someone by talking about previous conquests.
"He is... Not a nice man. He is a good man, but not nice." Someday, Cid is sure, one of Pavel's smiles will be truly and completely happy but as it stands the smile that crosses Pavel's face is full of the sort of pain that one can only feel when they know they will never see their loved ones again.
Pavel is speaking of his-- of the object of his affection in the present tense as though maybe he will stop by for lunch later and Cid wants to reach out and hold him. Cid doesn't. Instead he brings his cigarette to his lips and listens.
"He's just like you, too." Pavel continues, "He is loud and rough and he cares too much about everyone around him. He didn't want anything to do with me either."
"That's..." Not true, Cid wants to interrupt but Pavel has already set his mind on speaking and Cid's opportunity has already passed him by.
"The thing is, Cid, solnyshko moyo... I missed the chance I had to be with him because he said I was too young. I let him walk away from me."
There's a shine in the kid's eye that reminds Cid a little bit of Cloud when he talks about Zack Fair. It's not insane, but it's close enough to make the hairs on the back of Cid's neck stand on end. He wants to hug that look away.
"I'm not going to let you walk away from me, Cid Highwind."
"I can't do this, kid." Cid tells him. Not now, not today, with the memory of Vincent and all the things he had said still fresh in his mind.
"Ok." Pavel tells him with a rueful (painful) smile, "I will wait."
Cid's standing and beginning to move away when Pavel ghosts his lips against Cid's ear, almost a caress, and whispers:
"But I won't be waiting quietly."
...TBC in Part 2
Fandoms: Star Trek XI, Final Fantasy VII
Pairing: Pavel Chekov/Cid Highwind
Rating: R
Word count: 5,809
Summary: Cid didn't know he was waiting for something until Pavel Chekov showed up on his doorstep.
He appears one night in the middle of the rain, his thin shirt ripped and soaked through and not nearly substantial enough to endure the Rocket Town winter. Shera finds him near the rocket itself (the new one that Cid's been trying to cobble together from the pieces left after Meteor) and drags him back home to sit in their kitchen and feed him warm milk like a stray kitten.
Cid grumbles about how this is not a half way house dammit, and he's not a nursemaid and why is she getting out the extra blankets, but when push comes to shove he takes a look at the boy's glassy eyes and helps Shera with the fold-out couch. That's the kind of man Cid is.
The boy doesn't speak for nearly five days, and he behaves much like the stray cat Cid had compared him to that first night. He disappears during the day, leaving even before Cid wakes (which is a difficult task) and arriving just as Cid and Shera climb up to their separate rooms to sleep. Cid knows the boy comes back because the downstairs rooms are always a little bit cleaner in the mornings, and the food is going a bit faster than usual (although not that must faster), and sometimes there are fresh flowers on the breakfast table.
In those first few days Cid sometimes sees the boy out of the corner of his eye, stealing around a hedge or headed down a street, but he'll be damned if the boy doesn't sneak around any kind of contact with an actual human being. Cid doesn't know what he does all day but the silent presence of a complete stranger in his house is upsetting his nerves.
On the sixth day (Friday, Cid notices when he finally glances at Shera's wall calender) Cid comes down the stairs with his usual thumping gait to see the boy seated on the floor of the living room, surrounded by small wires and little bits of metal and what looks like a piece of the steering system for Tiny Bronco and if it is Cid is going to be killing a certain weird silent kid in a very messy and painful way.
"What the fuck do you think your doin'?" Cid shouts, staring at the mess and the pieces of what is likely his own ship.
The boy looks up, and says something that Cid could never understand in a million years, and turns his head back to whatever the hell it is he's working on. Cid's starting to get just the littlest bit completely infuriated when the kid when the boy abruptly stands an jams something small and pointy into Cid's ear.
"OW! Mother fucker!"
There's a brief moment in which the kid goes back to fiddling with his bits of something and Cid curses and considers the Fire materia in his pocket while trying to get the whatever-it-is out of his ear canal. Just as he gets his fingers on small metal object a crackling screech in sends him to his knees.
There's a crack, and a high pitched whine that has Cid wishing for a fifth of whiskey and a bottle of aspirin.
All of a sudden everything goes quiet, save for Cid's cursing.
He glares up at the kid, ready to kick him to the curb and then kick him a few more times for good measure...
"Hello?" Says the boy, "Can you understand me?"
"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" Cid shouts, "I think my brain is coming out my ears."
"I'm sorry." The boy says in a most heartfelt and apologetic voice.
Cid has trouble at staying mad at anyone who uses that sort of voice. Hell, if Sephiroth had come up to him and given him puppy eyes and apologized like that he'd probably have gone and let the crazy bastard blow up the entire Planet.
"We'll don't fucking do it again." He grumbles, standing and briefly rubbing one ear where he can still feel the strange device poking him.
"Now why the hell are you going around sticking shit in my head? Little..."
There's a short pause while Cid's brain catches up with current events.
"Did I just hear you talking?"
"...Yes?"
"Almost a week and you haven't said a word and now you're chatting away and driving spikes into my ear." Cid grumbles.
"I'm very sorry!" The kid tells him desperately and Cid briefly feels a flash of remorse for being so harsh, "I came over without any equipment and I couldn't understand and..."
...and the kid running his mouth at a mile a minute and talking about subspace phenomenon and wormholes and time-jumps and Cid finds himself unable to keep up with anything he's saying and why is this translator doohickey (which is what he gathers it is) not translating away the kid's accent?
"Shut up!" He says finally when the kid takes a moment to breathe.
"Sorry." The kid tells him. Shutting his mouth with a click.
"Good." Cid pauses for a moment to gather his thoughts, "I take it you're not from around here..."
The kids nods furiously. His curls are rather distracting, Cid notices, golden and soft-looking and he really shouldn't be thinking about the touchable-ness of some poor lost underage kid's hair and so he stops. Cid has always had a bit of a soft spot for the young and the lost. He hadn't spent all that time tromping about with Avalanche just for the sake of the planet after all.
Hell, Cid could take or leave the planet. He can't take or leave Cloud's big blue eyes looking at him like he some kind of answer or Vincent's humor after a long period of silence. Deep down Cid knew he was just collecting strays. He made up for it by swearing as much as he possibly could.
"What was your name?"
"Pavel Andreivich Chekov. It is a pleasure to meet you." The kid, Pavel, says with a smile. Cid feels himself smiling in return and restrains himself.
"You made this thing so that I can understand you?" He asks poking at his ear.
"Da!" The kid cries before launching into a highly complicated description of exactly what he had done and how it worked. Cid rubs at his temples.
"Oh for fuck's sake, kid." He growls, "I'm an airship mechanic not some kind of god damn technical genius..."
And suddenly Pavel Andreivich Chekov is looking at him with the world's biggest eyes as though Cid just punched him in the neck and took all his cake and Cid has no idea what it was he said that caused that heartbreak.
And Cid wants nothing more than to make him laugh again.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the weeks that follow Cid learns a lot about Pavel and what his life had been like before. He's the only one that Pavel talks to, the only one Pavel can talk to because he only has one receiver for what he calls his 'universal translator' and doesn't have the technology to have it broadcast the same way as the ones (he claims) he had back home.
Shera takes a shine to the kid, as Cid had expected. Pavel remains painfully shy and withdrawn around her despite the fact that she thought he was the sweetest thing since kittens and made him pancakes. It might have been, Cid thinks, the fact that she couldn't understand him even if he did speak to her in any of the strange hard languages that Cid can't understand when he takes the doohickey out of his ear.
Pavel does start to show up more often, now that he can communicate a little, and starts coming to meals with a fresh face and a smile. He always does the dishes afterward even though Shera tries to take them from him.
It's a all pretty domestic really. It makes Cid's skin itch.
It's obvious to Cid that Pavel is trying hard to be useful, which is more than Cid can say for others who have crashed on his couch (namely Yuffie). Pavel can often be found cleaning or doing various chores for Shera, and running into the center of town with a note clutched in his hand in order to pick up new parts of groceries or whatever it was Shera asked for.
But there's something in the way that Pavel's eyes glaze over when he's looking at the sky, something about the strings of incomprehensible equations that Cid finds written on spare napkins and shoved in between the cushions of the couch. Cid knows that Pavel isn't happy in Rocket Town and Cid can't blame him because Cid isn't happy in Rocket Town.
Cid has a feeling that Pavel, like him, is just making do.
Shera buys Pavel a bed after a month and they squeeze it into the study among Cid's old blueprints and engineering manuals. He walks in one morning to find that the kid has organized the entire place, placing books and documents according to type and subject and author (by last name). He's furious that Pavel has touched those things that represent his lost dream of space travel (he still works on the rocket but he and Shera both know it's a lost cause). He shouts and Pavel shouts back and there is silence in the house for days until they manage to come to terms in a round about manner over the breakfast table.
"I should not have touched your things." Pavel says as he reaches for the sausage.
"Yeah, well..." Cid grumbles, not admitting that he stopped minding about three days ago.
"I am not sorry." Pavel tells him. Cid understands what it's like to never apologize for something you've already done. He nods sharply.
"Where the hell did you learn to make tea?" He says instead of apologizing himself, "This shit tastes like pond water.
"Real men," Pavel informs him primly, "Drink coffee"
The thing is, Cid realizes, that he is the only one that Pavel can communicate with, really, because the kid surely has no talent for learning languages and has managed to pick up nothing more than some nouns and basic swear words. He can understand what people say to him, thanks to that strange device in his ear, but Cid is the only one who can understand back at him.
Cid's not much of a talker, but sometime all Pavel needs is for someone to hear his voice in his own language and to nod at the bits that need nodding at.
He's surprised to find that he doesn't really mind listening to Pavel either. The kid's... well, "brilliant" doesn't even begin to cover it, and it's been a long time since someone could keep up with Cid in any kind of mechanics talk.
That and... and there's something almost profound about Pavel's laugh, his happiness, that pokes at a place in Cid's heart that had crusted over with anger and hurt and broken dreams.
The fact that the kid is ridiculously attractive doesn't hurt things either.
Pavel fits nicely into Cid's life in a way that no one has before. He's comfortable and exciting all at once and Cid finds himself smiling more, laughing more, thinking more.
Shera puts up new wallpaper in the study.
One morning before the sun has risen, when Cid is roaming about the house because he woke up an hour ago to the sound of Sephiroth's voice in his ear, he stumbles across Pavel sitting in the kitchen on the floor with tears that are falling like when you can't stop them and you can't make them go any faster.
"I want to go home." Pavel tells him like it's some big secret.
Fuck, Cid thinks. Because Pavel's what, nineteen? Twenty? And it's been nearly two months since he arrived and Cid's only seen him cry twice. Hell, in his position Cid would be bawling his eyes out at any opportunity.
Well, he'd be bawling on the inside and that's what counts.
But he doesn't say all that, instead he just mutters "Yeah." And slides down to sit next to him.
That's the point where Pavel tells him what happened. Not the scientific mumbo-jumbo of singularities and teleporters and emergency maneuvers but the real facts about the attack, the crushing fear he had felt, a hole in the blackness of space.
It's terrifying, but Cid can't help but feel a pang of something like jealousy because Pavel has been there. He's done the dream in a way that Cid will never be able to experience because he'll never get his damn rocket off the ground.
Something about the terror of it drives home the fact that Pavel has seen and done more in his nineteen years of life that Cid ever will and it hurts Cid that it doesn't hurt as much as he would have thought.
The kid is beautiful. Cid realizes in that moment. It's possibly the most frightening realization of his entire life.
Pavel is truly crying now and Cid doesn't really know what to do with crying folks (his only experience being with Shera, who only cries when she's furious, and Yuffie, who fakes it half the time) he pats him lightly on the arm and when that does nothing to assuage the tears he lets his hand rest on Pavel's shoulder even though it makes him think about things that are not very comforting and are very, very wrong.
"I want to go home." Pavel tells him again in that same lost voice. Cid wants nothing more than to grant that wish. He wishes there were a materia that would fix this.
"You'll get home kid," He lies, "We'll find a way."
Pavel shakes his head and turned his face into the crook of Cid's arm, falling gently asleep while Cid thinks about how wrong it is to feel the way he does.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The next morning they're sitting together at the breakfast table while Pavel explains to him the mechanics of subspace travel using forks and bits of toast.
"Is violation of the prime directive." He explains, his accent is much thicker before his first cup of coffee and Cid wonders why he didn't just set the damn translator to his own damn language, "But I trust you not to ruin the development of your society."
Somewhere behind that loaded sentence Cid hears "I am lonely and I want someone to know what I know." and "I'm never going home, there is no one to punish me."
He doesn't mention it. It isn't like he'll ever get the rusty bucket he calls a rocket out of the atmosphere anyway, and Planet sure as hell doesn't produce any dilithium.
They're discussing various forms of sub-warp propulsion when Cid hears the thud of heavy boots at the doorstep. He is standing and reaching for his spear before his mind registers the noise. Something in him is still strung tight from Sephiroth and Shinra, even though it's been years.
"Cid!"
"Hey there old man!"
"Hn."
He relaxes his guard (just a little bit) as Tifa bursts through the door, smiling and running up for a hug that he gives her grudgingly. She brought the whole gang, it appears, as Cloud and Vincent and Yuffie (god dammnit!) file into his living space like he invited them or something.
It's been at least a year or so since the last time they'd gotten together, after defeating Sephiroth a second time and for all the familiar noise, Cid can tell they've changed. Tifa seems more motherly, calmer than before, and while Yuffie remains a hyperactive annoyance Cid is almost sure that she is less obnoxious than before.
Cloud, on the other hand, looks skinny and tired and distant, continuing a trend that Cid has been observing since before Sephiroth went down the first time. He doesn't say anything in greeting as the old gang fills the room, merely nodding at him and taking a seat while Cid is overwhelmed by the chattering and well wishing of others.
There are deep shadows under Cloud's eyes and a glaze over his expression that implies he isn't looking at things that are real. Cid makes him some tea because it's the only thing he can think of to do besides give the kid a hug, and Cid doesn't do hugs.
It isn't until he's introducing them all to Pavel (and explaining why they won't be able to understand a word that comes out of the kid's mouth) that Cid notices Vincent, sitting in the corner like he had been there all day and would remain there for all eternity. Cid felt a brief pang of... something at the sight of Vincent sitting in his kitchen again.
They'd been lovers, at one point. Vincent had been a fixture in his life and in his home. Cid had found comfort in the domestic, in living with Vincent in his bed and Shera in the room down the hall and having breakfast all together and sitting on the porch with a smoke and a cup of tea and Vincent.
It was boring, and Cid could feel that ancient itch in him that had driven him to the skies and was pushing him towards the stars. Cid was trying something new in normalcy, and with Vincent by his side it had felt... Doable.
But while Cid had been trying relax into the comfort of real life, acting the old man for all that he is only 35, Vincent had been looking to live the life he'd missed during his sleep. He'd chafed at the calm existence Cid had created for them until eventually he'd slipped the reins entirely.
Cid had woken up one day to an empty bed and a note on the fridge that read 'Might be back-- V' in an elegant and cold calligraphy. Cid couldn't blame him for leaving. He understood the way Vincent felt, he really did.
He had blamed Vincent for the way he left. He had blamed him hard for that.
He still blames him.
There is a moment when their eyes meet across the room and Cid wants desperately to be the better man but he can feel his gaze growing cold and hard.
Pavel looks around the room with wide eyes, he isn't used to the energy and loudness that comes with having Yuffie and Tifa together in a room. He seems intimidated by the silent stares of Cloud and Vincent. Cid can see him fading into the woodwork, his eyes glancing toward the door and freedom every few seconds.
This won't do.
"Come sit at the table kid, they're not gonna bite." Cid growls and Pavel gives him a weak smile as he slides into the chair at Cid's right.
He resits the urge to sling his arm around Pavel's shoulder or rest his hand on the kid's thigh. It's a close call though.
He can see Vincent's eyes narrow as Pavel slides into the chair, sitting closer to Cid than is really necessary and glancing shyly at the gathering. Everyone has gathered around that table with tea and scones (freshly prepared by Shera and slathered with butter), even Cloud. Vincent is the only one apart from the group, and his gaze is fixed firmly on the place where Pavel's knee touching Cid's leg.
Cid feels the urge to crow in triumph. He and Pavel might not be fucking (though the gods know Cid wishes they were) but Vincent certainly thinks they are and the flash of jealousy in his otherwise calm and collected face brings a vicious warmth to Cid's heart.
A warmth which is quickly cooled by guilt. Cid has never been the type to use someone to make another person jealous. Especially not a kid like Pavel. A kid who is sweet, attractive, intelligent, and (most importantly) fifteen years his junior.
He shifts until he and Pavel are no longer touching. Breaks eye contact with Vincent. Inhales. Wishes he could smoke inside.
"So." He says to the only slightly uncomfortable silence, "What have you crazy kids been up to?"
And Yuffie is off, her mouth running faster than a chocobo with story after story that Cid only understands half of anyway. A quick glance to his right shows Pavel looking between the girls with a smile. It's genuine. Cid can tell because it looks like fifty percent hurt.
That smile is the most beautiful thing Cid has seen since he first looked up at the stars.
"I'm gonna grab a smoke." He stands abruptly and heading for the door while reaching for his pack.
He out by the rocket before any of them can say a word, lighting up and taking a drag with shaking hands.
Somewhere in between drags three and four Cid notices a familiar presence beside him. He waits for two more long breaths before speaking.
Inhales. "You're as social as ever." Exhales long tendrils of smoke and the promise of cancer. Taps ash onto Vincent's boots.
"You know me." Vincent shrugs as if that were an excuse. For distancing himself from his friends. For leaving his lover.
Cid snorts and runs a jittery hand through his hair. "You never change."
"You have." Vincent tells him, "Changed."
"Somebody's got to." Cid feels cold. He takes a long drag on the cigarette, hoping that the smoke will warm him up. It doesn't.
There's a long silence of the sort that Cid used to enjoy but now finds incredibly awkward. Vincent shifts from foot to foot, almost silently, Cid puffs at his cigarette and they stare into space.
"What did you want to say, Vincent?" Cid asks finally, "Or were you just going to glower at me until nightfall."
There's a pause in which Cid imagines Vincent considering the "glower" option. Cid smokes. Vincent shifts.
"Where did you get the boy?"
So that's what this all is about. "I found him in a box by the side of the road."
Vincent snorts, the closest he ever comes to laughter, "Did it have 'free fuckbuddies' written on the side?"
Cid snorts. It's just the sort of barbed (poisoned) comment that Vincent makes when he's in pain and looking to lash out. "You don't know a damn thing about that kid..."
"I know about you." Vincent tells him in that monotone that drives Cid up the wall, "I know what you look like when you're...
"What?" Cid growls "In love?"
"In lust at least."
"I'm not fucking the kid. And even if I were," Cid takes the opportunity to turn and look directly into Vincent's inhuman eyes, "It wouldn't be any of your goddamn business."
"Highwind." And isn't it dandy, Cid thinks, that they're back to calling each other by their last names, "I didn't mean to hurt you. I still care..."
"No matter how sorry you are I won't forgive you, Valentine." Cid says through a cloud of smoke, "And that's my own fuckin' prerogative, so nut up and deal with it. At this stage in our relationship I think it's fair to say that I won't tell you who to fuck and you..."
There something in Vincent's face. A shift of the eyes. And indrawn breath. Cid's years of experience dealing with Vincent's micro expressions tell him exactly what they mean.
"... Who are you fucking?"
Vincent doesn't say a word. But Cid's brain is already firing away, creating and destroying possibilities as he peers into Vincent's face. It's got to be someone Cid's already met because Vincent does not make friends easily and makes lovers even less so.
Cid's mind flies through all the people he's ever met and all the people who would ever bend over for Vincent and comes up with...
"You're having sex with Cloud?" Cid barks and the slight twitch at the corner of Vincent's eyes tells him he's right and he can't help a bitter laugh, "You hypocrite. You fucking-- Tell me you weren't fucking him before you left me."
Vincent doesn't say a word. Cid's used to that.
"Tell me you weren't fucking him before you left, Vincent!" Cid shouts and he's sure they've heard him in the house and he can only hope that they don't come out and make a scene because he's holding himself together with willpower and nicotine.
"Don't be angry at him."
"At him? Him?!" Being angry at Cloud is like being angry at a baby chocobo. Cid knows exactly who he'd angry at and it isn't Cloud, "I'm angry at you, you motherfucker. How could you do that to him?"
Vincent blinks, "Him?"
"That kid doesn't need you, Vincent." Cid growls, "He needs someone who will hold his hand in the street and go to the movies with him and make him drink till he pukes. He needs someone he own age who will help him to be young again. He doesn't need an ancient bag of mako and issues who only wants him for the sex."
"I don't--"
"You don't what?" Cid's in fine ranting form now and it's making him feel better than any amount of violence of alcohol ever could, "Take care of him? That's obvious since he looks like a strong wind will blow him over. Do you know how old he is?"
Vincent shifts.
"You don't, do you? Fucker."
"You're one to talk." Vincent says so quietly that Cid can barely hear him, "Or has Pavel just discovered the fountain of youth?"
"Pavel is a well adjusted young man with a firm grasp of reality and a healthy self esteem." Cid throws the but of his cigarette on the ground and stomps on it with relish, "And I'm still not fucking him."
Vincent snorts again and Cid comes up to him with bared teeth, getting into Vincent's personal space in a way that he hasn't done since before the other man left.
"You take care of that boy, Vincent Valentine." He growls, "You help him get better."
"Or what?" Vincent asks, hearing the silent threat.
Cid doesn't answer, just stomps back inside and pretends he doesn't notice that everyone in the room has been listening all along. Cloud looks grim, as always, but the way he looks at Vincent as they take their (awkward) leave makes Cid feel a pain in his heart.
He gives the kid a smile and a wave. A sign that he won't hold it against Cloud and that he's there. Cid snorts, someone's got to be there for him after all.
It isn't until he's turning back to his now empty kitchen that he realizes that he hasn't seen Pavel since he went to have his little pow-wow with the local vampire.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cid finds Pavel out near the Rocket, right where he had dressed down Vincent not an hour before. He's sitting on the ground, his back up against the side of the thing, as he methodically rips grass from the ground. Cid sighs, seeing the beginning of another long and painful talk.
He pulls out another cigarette, his number one weapon against long, painful talks.
"You ok kid?"
Pavel smiles. It's a real smile, the type that makes Pavel's eyes look sad. "Your friends, they are..."
"I think the word you're looking for is 'insane'." Cid says with a chuckle, sliding down to sit next to Pavel and offering the kid a drag of his cig.
Pavel accepts it, delicately inhaling the poison and breathing it out in a thin stream. Cid remembers the first time he's smoked in front of Pavel and how he had thrown a hissy fit about cancer and emphysema and antiquated traditions of self-harm. He'd relaxed after a few weeks and Cid wondered if that was because he was learning to accept Cid's faults or if it was because he no longer cared about suffering a slow, hacking death.
"I thought you and Shera..." Pavel begins.
"You did?" Cid's a little shocked, Pavel might not be a mind reader but he's been very perceptive so far. Cid never thought to explain his home situation to him. "We sleep in separate rooms!"
"Different cultures have a variety of different societal expectations when it comes to marriage and sexual relationships." Pavel tells him, "There was a planet we visited where husband and wife lived on separate islands and met once a month. And their months were nearly ninety standard days long."
"That seems mighty inconvenient." Cid isn't sure how he feels about being put in the same category as some aliens Pavel met on some planet, until he realizes that he is some alien that Pavel met on some planet and the thought of it makes him feel a little shaken.
"Captain Kirk still managed to get nearly killed by offering to sleep with a married woman." Pavel chuckles.
"Impressive."
"It was." The sad-kitten look of the first few weeks is back in Pavel's eye and Cid suppresses the urge to kiss it away. He knows that Pavel is lonely and homesick, that doesn't give him a pass to make unwanted advances.
"But here on this here Planet we generally share quarters with our lovers."
"Ahh." Chekov says, "Xeno-anthropology was the only class I have ever gotten a 'C' in."
"That's bad?" Cid can hardly remember seeing the inside of a school, much less what the grades looked like.
"It was for me. Physics is much easier than people."
"That it is." Cid says with a grin and a puff of smoke.
"Were you really...?"
"With Vincent?"
"Da."
"Sure was. Up until a few months before you arrived on our doorstep."
"What happened?"
"He left." It's the first time Cid has said it out loud, to another person. The saying of it makes it real in a way that Cid wasn't anticipating. He says it again, testing the reality, "He left me."
Pavel nods. Looks at the grass. Looks at Cid. Looks back at the grass.
"Was it true?"
"What?" The cigarette is burning down but Cid doesn't bring it to his lips or tap off the long column of ash. He looks at Pavel instead.
"What you said... about me."
"And what was that?" Cid can feel his throat constricting as he waits for Pavel to laugh and back off or call him a dirty old man or change the subject.
"That you... Like me."
Cid looks at Pavel's hand as it tears up some defenseless vegetation. Looks at Pavel's face. Look's back at Pavel's hand. Sighs.
"Damn it kid, I'm nearly twice your age."
"But do you?"
"I like you fine, kid." Cid deflects. He's calling Pavel 'kid' partly because it's his nickname and partly to remind himself of all the reasons he's not reaching out to stroke that hair or kiss those lips or bend that body over the kitchen table. It isn't working.
"Cid." Pavel glares, "Do. You. Like. Me."
"It's not about whether or not I like you, kid."
"Yes it is."
Cid rolls his eyes, "I'm too old for you."
"I thought I was 'a well adjusted young man with a firm grasp of reality and a healthy self esteem'. Doesn't that mean I'm capable of making my own choices?"
"Fuck. You heard that?" Cid wishes desperately to take the whole argument with Vincent back, for all that he meant every word.
"Da."
"You remembered that?"
Pavel taps himself on the temple, "Eidetic."
"Fuck." Cid smokes.
The sit in silence for a moment and Pavel doesn't touch Cid for which Cid is grateful because if he did Cid would either jump him or run away. Running away, Cid thinks, is becoming more and more appealing.
"I'm not a child, you know." Pavel tells him.
"Yeah." Cid's not sure if he's agreeing or just acknowledging that Pavel spoke. He doesn't consider Pavel a child. But maybe that's part of the problem.
"And I'm not a virgin."
Cid opens his mouth to agree again. Chokes. Coughs. "What?"
"If that's what you're worried about." Pavel says and Cid tries to pretend that he isn't imagining... Something. Pavel. With some faceless man or woman (or genderless alien). Naked and writing on some other person's bed or floor or...
"I've been having sex since I was fifteen and I know what I want." Pavel tells him with serene confidence. "I know that I want men and that I prefer them older and that I like them bitchy."
Cid snorts.
"Is true!" Pavel declares and the light, teasing tone of his voice makes Cid want to smile. He bites down on his cigarette instead.
"Back on the Enterprise," Pavel begins and it sounds like back home and Cid can see the brief pang of longing in Pavel's face, "I had a crush on one of my superior officers."
Cid blinks. He's not sure where this is going. He's surely never tried to seduce someone by talking about previous conquests.
"He is... Not a nice man. He is a good man, but not nice." Someday, Cid is sure, one of Pavel's smiles will be truly and completely happy but as it stands the smile that crosses Pavel's face is full of the sort of pain that one can only feel when they know they will never see their loved ones again.
Pavel is speaking of his-- of the object of his affection in the present tense as though maybe he will stop by for lunch later and Cid wants to reach out and hold him. Cid doesn't. Instead he brings his cigarette to his lips and listens.
"He's just like you, too." Pavel continues, "He is loud and rough and he cares too much about everyone around him. He didn't want anything to do with me either."
"That's..." Not true, Cid wants to interrupt but Pavel has already set his mind on speaking and Cid's opportunity has already passed him by.
"The thing is, Cid, solnyshko moyo... I missed the chance I had to be with him because he said I was too young. I let him walk away from me."
There's a shine in the kid's eye that reminds Cid a little bit of Cloud when he talks about Zack Fair. It's not insane, but it's close enough to make the hairs on the back of Cid's neck stand on end. He wants to hug that look away.
"I'm not going to let you walk away from me, Cid Highwind."
"I can't do this, kid." Cid tells him. Not now, not today, with the memory of Vincent and all the things he had said still fresh in his mind.
"Ok." Pavel tells him with a rueful (painful) smile, "I will wait."
Cid's standing and beginning to move away when Pavel ghosts his lips against Cid's ear, almost a caress, and whispers:
"But I won't be waiting quietly."
...TBC in Part 2