Cidshera, 21. Vacation. (give them that holiday they desperately need)
also here on ao3
from this post
A few months of bliss roll past in the aftermath of Meteorfall. Which is a horrible thing to say, considering what said almost-world-destruction cost them, but Cid has the positives to consider, and chooses to consider them. He’s in love, and his love is returned, and he thinks, as he watches Shera potter about in his t-shirt and her underwear with her hair knotted into a bun atop her head, that he’ll make good on that marriage proposal.
‘Let’s get away for a few days,’ he says, and she glances back at him, spoon halfway to her mouth.
She hums, and taps the steel against her chin for a moment. ‘Get away? Where would we go?’
He hadn’t thought that far ahead admittedly, but then she stretches to get something out of the cupboard and any thoughts he’d had up to that point fly out of his head.
When he’s able to get some thoughts in coherent sentences back into his head, he watches her brushing her teeth as he perches on the edge of the tub, his toothbrush loose in his fingers. She’s examining her hairline as she brushes, on her toes to press her nose to the mirror above the sink, and he’s very lucky to have her in his life. She’s no more grown up than she was when she arrived, barley a day over adulthood, and full of the quirks of a girl that grew up mostly alone.
‘You were talking about getting away,’ she offers around a mouthful of fluoride.
‘Yeah,’ he says, and finally gets to his feet to take over the space she vacates. ‘Yeah, I thought. Maybe we could take the Bronco, fly out to Costa? Take a few days in that swanky hotel of theirs, catch some sun, swim a bit.’
Get married, maybe.
‘I didn’t take you for the tourist trap kind of holiday-maker,’ she teases, bumping his hip to spit and rinse.
‘I’m not,’ he tells the back of her head, ‘but I ain’t gonna go to the fuckin’ Saucer for another year.’
He’d pondered taking her there for her birthday, of course, but fuck that. Twice is enough for him. Fucking chocobo racing, who’s idea was that? Cloud’s, obviously. And Yuffie had gone with it, and he’d had better things to do with his time than race jumped up little bastards, but he’d done it anyway. Fucking whatever. It’s not the point.
‘I just think it’d be nice,’ he shrugs. ‘We don’t gotta go.’
‘No, no,’ she smiles, all minty and fresh, and kisses his nose, careful to avoid the froth of his mouth. ‘I like the idea. When do we go?’
‘As soon as you’re packed,’ he shrugs.
And so it’s a half hour later that he’s helping her up into the backseat of the Bronco, their packed bag – one between them, because they know how to pack light, and Costa has a solid enough retail industry that they can pick anything they need up there – safely behind her feet, and they’re heading out on their way.
It’s been a long while since they’d taken the Bronco out, and Cid’s missed having her in the backseat, yelling over the wind and utterly unintelligible. He glances over his shoulder at her, helmet and goggles, and she’s adorable, and he’s so fucking in love with her.
‘I love you,’ he shouts, but it’s swallowed by the clouds around them.
Touching down in Costa, he’s not surprised that it’s busy. Meteor is quickly becoming a distant memory for everyone not in the Midgar area, and he wonders how long before people just forget how close they’d come.
‘Wow,’ Shera says, as he helps her down out of the Bronco, ‘swimsuits have gotten a lot smaller since I last wore one.’
‘If you want to call the thing you wore a swimsuit,’ he snorts, and hikes himself up to reach the bag, yanking it free. ‘It had sleeves and was longer than your shorts.’
Shera huffs out a big breath, lips pursed, but there’s laughter in the creases of her eyes.
‘It was not,’ she protests, ‘just because I wasn’t flashing my – ‘ Here, she casts a glance about herself, looking at the people on the beach, pottering about on the dock, ‘ – flashing my tits,’ she finishes in a whisper.
Cid laughs at that, and bends to kiss her.
‘You’d have to be naked to flash ‘em,’ he teases, and she gives him an affronted yelp and a soft slap to the arm for his trouble.
‘Ha! And to think I bought a new one, just for you.’
He’s just about to walk away, but he glances back at her, eyebrow raised. She eyes him back, and he grins, hikes the bag onto his shoulder so he has a free hand to take hers with.
‘Fuckin’ adorable, you are,’ he tells her, and she wrinkles her nose with her smile.
-0-0-0-
The hotel has air-con and it’s priced over the odds, and Shera baulks at the receipt, but Cid shrugs it off, and leads her upstairs. The view is incredible, almost entirely the blue of the sea, and she makes some soft comment or another about how different it’s going to be, waking up to the sound of the waves.
‘Even at home,’ she says, and he comes to stand behind her, fingers working under the edge of her vest to rest warm and gentle against her hips, her belly, under the waistband of her shorts, ‘we couldn’t hear the water from our house.’
‘Have you been home?’ he asks her, presses a kiss to her neck.
She shakes her head, relaxes into him. ‘No, I keep meaning to write them a letter, but I never seem to get there.’
It’s Shera’s way, the meaning to do things but never quite getting there. She’s forgetful about the strangest of things, and remembers even stranger things than the things she forgets. There’s no real rhyme or reason to it, and not remembering to write to her parents is about right for her. He loves her so fucking much.
‘Do it later,’ he says, ‘I have an errand I need to run, so you’ll have time, then we can post it on our way to dinner.’
She turns her head, gets distracted by how close he is, and she’s fascinated by his eyes for several long moments, and fascinated by his mouth against hers for a few more still.
‘An errand?’ she asks, when he lets her go some half an hour later, to dress and fuss with her hair.
‘Mm,’ he nods, ‘it’s not that important, I just want to check on something I saw when I was here last time, with the kids.’
The kids. She thinks it’s hilarious that he refers to AVALANCHE as “the kids.” They aren’t kids any more than they are, but they’re so young. They’ve all been by once or twice, and Shera had never really felt old, or grown-up, or like an adult, until she’d met them. Then planet below she realised she was about to hit thirty and it just – it was a very strange feeling, and not one she’s keen to relive.
She pulls on her swimsuit, a red thing that fits her very nicely and is just as revealing as the other one had been, thank you very much, with its thin shoulder straps and high leg line, and a loose shirt to protect her shoulders. He eyeballs her, top to toe, and then grins, rakes his hands through his hair.
‘You’re beautiful, you know that?’
She laughs, and tosses a t-shirt at him.
‘Take me to the beach, Captain,’ she says.
-0-0-0-
He leaves her to return to the hotel a few hours later, sand between her toes and in her hair, and her sunglasses sticky with sun lotion. He refuses to tell her, no matter how she needles, where he’s got to go, and she gives up very quickly, which is more fool her than him, but he kisses her nose and pats her arse, and tells her he won’t be long. She tries to watch where he goes, but he disappears between buildings and she can’t see through them, so she has nothing to do except go to the hotel and wash and change and write to her parents, as he’d suggested she do.
She’s still chewing on her pen when he returns, her hair towel-dried and curling around her neck, in his t-shirt and her underwear, and he stops at the doorway to watch her. She’s so caught up in trying to find the words she wants that he doesn’t want to disturb her, but he’s booked them dinner, and she needs to get ready. They didn’t bring anything nice to wear, but that doesn’t matter, he doesn’t think. She’s stunning in everything she wears.
Finally she groans and tosses the pen down, and he takes it as his cue to enter properly.
‘You looked like you were having fun,’ he says, and she grunts, rolls her eyes.
‘I never know what to say to them,’ she says, ‘it used to be so easy, but since I – since the – since the last time I saw them, I never really know what to say.’
‘You should have taken the Bronco,’ he shrugs, ‘and gone to see them.’
She shakes her head.
‘I don’t know how to fly it,’ she admits, and this surprises him; he’d always thought she’d known, considering she’d designed them at fifteen.
But then, he supposes with a shrug as he runs a hand along her head, smoothing her hair as he passes, that didn’t mean she flew them at all.
‘We’re going out for dinner,’ he tells her, and she looks at him, shocked. ‘I did tell you we would be.’
‘But so soon?’ she asks, and touches her hair. She’s never cared about her hair before, but then, he supposes he’s never really taken her out for dinner before.
‘No rush,’ he tells her, ‘you’ve got time to dry your hair.’
‘Is there a dress code?’
He flops back onto the bed, but raises up enough to give her an eyeball. Does she really think he’s going anywhere he needs to wear a suit? The last time he wore a suit, he nearly punched his boss and she lost an expensive pair of shoes. He’s not keen to repeat the experience, even if he doesn’t have a boss to punch. She watches him, waits for him to crack, but he just offers her half a smile and flops back onto the pillows, arm flung over his eyes.
‘You got time,’ he tells her again, ‘no rush.’
She goes into the en-suite and dries her hair nicely, examines her face in the mirror, thinks that her eyebrows will probably do for a few days, and when she emerges from the bathroom, it’s to find the Captain dozing. She’s grown very familiar with the differences in his dozing and his sleeping and his fully-awakes. For a moment, she lingers on the threshold and watches him, the rise and fall of his chest, the soft bob of his knee as he breathes, the plane of his arm, the bunch of muscle. He’s incredible, in ways she’d never thought a man could be.
Quietly, she goes and settles next to him, hands beneath her head, watching him dozing.
-0-0-0-
She wakes up to his lips on her shoulder. The sun’s moved, her skin’s warm, and Cid’s fingers are brushing up and down her arm gently.
‘We need to get ready,’ he hums, and his eyes are so very, very blue.
‘Yeah,’ she breathes, and gives a full body stretch and a yawn. ‘Yeah, okay.’
She dresses in her shorts and T-shirt, which is not very nice for dinner, but Cid’s not much better in cargo shorts and a vest that clings entirely too tightly to his shoulders.
‘I didn’t know you owned that,’ she says, gesturing, and he plucks at it.
‘Usually only wear it in winter,’ he says, ‘under my T-shirts, extra layer and that.’
She can feel the heat in her cheeks when she says, ‘it suits you.’
He snorts, and ushers her out.
Dinner is at one of the street-side restaurants on the promenade, quiet even with the people strolling past, taking in the last of the rays on the beach before the tide rolls in. There’s hustle and bustle at the dock, but Cid doesn’t look at it the way she’d expected him to; he’s firmly focused on the menu.
They order, and Cid gets antsy.
‘Are you alright?’ she asks, ‘did I order the wrong thing? I’m – ‘
‘Don’t even fucking say it,’ he tells her, hand cutting the words out of the air before they can leave her mouth. ‘It’s not that, I just – listen, right, listen, I got something I need to say, before you try and eat that fucking pasta and choke to death.’
Her eyebrows climb and she huffs out a breath that could be a laugh, but the desperate look in his eyes tells her it’s not a laughing matter.
‘Okay,’ she says, and reaches across the table to take his hands, but he yanks them back. ‘What is it?’
‘You know that I love you,’ he tells her, plaintive, desperate. ‘You know that, and I want to – I want – you know that I don’t want to lose you.’
‘Yes,’ she says, slowly, and feels her eyebrows draw together.
‘Well, I was thinking that night, after – after Aerith – when we got to Icicle Inn, afterward, everyone was tired. We were so tired, and I was sat there by the fire with Tifa, and Barret was asleep next to her, and she looked so sad, and I told her.’
‘You told her?’
‘That I want to marry you.’
It takes her a moment. At first, she’s not sure she heard him correctly. She almost asks him to repeat it, but the look on his face tells her that she heard him right the first time.
‘Marry?’ she echoes, stupidly.
‘Yes.’
He fusses for a moment, and then jerks to his feet, a box in his hand.
‘I saw this when we were in Costa,’ he says, and shoves it at her. ‘It said it wasn’t perfect, that the apprentice made it, and it wasn’t even really going to be for sale. And I said to myself, that if we survived, and things turned out – you know – okay, between us. That I’d come back and buy it, because it’s not perfect, but it is. If it hadn’t said it, I’d never have known, but I think it really – I hope it fits.’
Shera blinks at him, and then looks at the box he’s still shoving at her.
Tentatively, she takes it, and he touches his hands together for a moment, as if about to wring them, and then shoves them in his pockets. She glances at him, at the box, back at him, back at the box.
Opens it.
‘Cid,’ she says, breathes.
It’s not a fancy ring, but it was never going to be a fancy ring. It’s a little band of gold, and she supposes it was meant to be a string of flowers, but they’re crooked and misshapen and it looks, with the pinpricks of diamonds in the centre, like stars. Like a constellation. For a moment, she stares at it, and then she sees him shuffling in her periphery and she raises her gaze, finds it blurry.
‘Cid,’ she says again, and he touches her hands, drops to both knees, the heathen, tries to read her face, but it’s splotchy and teary and her lip’s wobbling.
‘Is that a yes?’ he asks, and she’s so off-guard, she doesn’t know what to do.
‘I think so!’ she squeaks, and he laughs, because of course she thinks so.