Chapter Text
By his own admission, Vincent adheres to very few cultural traditions simply for the sake of conformity. The ones he does honor are all linked to some part of his past, even if he’s currently not choosing to disclose that, and so often give Sephiroth the feeling he’s being permitted to witness—and increasingly, to participate—in a very private, very idiosyncratic ritual, even when the tradition is a common one.
Sephiroth has no issue with this. As a child, he hadn’t been cut off from social customs around major holidays, but his upbringing had made it very clear that any tendency towards frivolous attachments would be leveraged against him. Accordingly, and with his mother’s chilly approval, he’d observed what others did and had learned what was necessary to induce them to behave towards him how he wanted them to. He’d even taken part here and there as necessary. But he’d never developed any emotional attachments towards any such customs, and they’ve always ranked roughly on par with matters such as mediating personnel conflicts, duties necessary to maintaining his position without actually enhancing any of his interests.
Angeal and Genesis still retain traditions from their hometown, particularly with respect to year-end, and Sephiroth has grown to respect that, recognizing it for more than mere homesickness. Zack, too, tries to bring in as many festive traditions as he can wheedle the rest of them into tolerating, and in this Sephiroth can trace the man’s need to reinforce personal bonds as well as his sheer love of any kind of celebration. But those are the meanings they assign, and not ones Sephiroth personally has adopted. To him, the end of the year has generally been no more and no less special than any other time—it only differs in that he has to recognize the difference between his own expectations and those of others.
And usually he has to be on duty. His teams earn more rest and recognition than they ever are gifted by Shinra management, and if he won’t enable them to stand down, no one else will bother. So he takes on the last shifts of the year, while everyone relaxes in the way that they prefer, and though it’s seen him take on some difficult missions as a result, he hasn’t seen it as a burden. It keeps him busy and builds political goodwill for the new year.
But this year Genesis, of all people, puts in to take those shifts, and of course Angeal won’t abandon the man. “Nothing’s up, I swear,” Angeal tells Sephiroth, though there’s a distinct undertone of uncertainty to his tone. “He just wants to take our days off around the bonfire nights instead. And look, hit me if you think I’m jinxing it, but I don’t think there’s anything lurking around the corner—”
“No, I agree,” Sephiroth says, and then has to smile when, in spite of his obvious disbelief, the other man looks relieved. “For once I don’t see any potential disruptions. We’re past the last board meeting, and Rufus has gotten all the factions in hand.”
“Well, he sits there and we stand ready behind the chair,” Angeal snorts. But he’s already glancing towards the door. “All right, I’m not going to question it if you won’t. You deserve the days anyway, Seph, so enjoy them.”
“I plan to,” Sephiroth says, and he’s being quite honest about it, that and his confidence that his plans won’t be disrupted. Genesis had been ahead of Angeal into his office, explaining lucidly that Heidegger’s death and the collapse of the man’s faction had convinced him it was finally safe to visit Banora outside of official duties. He had never had any fear of his personal safety, but Heidegger had taken over Hollander’s operations down there and while alive, had never missed an opportunity to bait them over how many locals had been collaborators. Angeal has never been able to control himself well in that sort of situation, Genesis had reminded Sephiroth.
“Call me what you will, I can wait for my revenge to ripen on the tree,” he’d said. “He can’t. But enough of them have run off at this point I don’t think we’re likely to run into anyone who’d dare face us. And I do owe my respects to the few who did stand for a couple orphans, and who were cut down for it.”
“You have enough time accrued, Genesis, and there are no operational reasons why I shouldn’t approve. That’s enough of a justification,” Sephiroth had replied.
In other years the exchange might have used the same words but in very different tones. But Genesis has…if not mellowed, grown more studied in how he directs his temper. They have more mutual enemies than ever merits his railing against Sephiroth for continuing to let them exist, and Sephiroth does appreciate not having to fight the man into accepting that. There had been a moment where they’d both looked at each other, and felt the difference. And then Genesis had nodded and withdrawn, and Sephiroth had turned back to the work matters crowding his inbox.
And so this year Sephiroth is free to rest, and to do so with company of his choosing, and in a way that…he probably would have laughed at, if not taken deadly offense, if someone had posited it to him so much as a year before. Not for the vices it entails, but the way Vincent chooses to indulge them and him—he sometimes wonders at Vincent’s sense of humor.
Sometimes he simply wonders. He has the space to do so, lying quietly on their bed. He can still smell the faint scent of soap off his body in between the waves of enticing aromas periodically wafting from the kitchen—he showered himself, made a clean canvas for Vincent’s pleasure. His hair is brushed and braided back with green and red ribbons, the ends of which crumple against his fingers whenever he moves them, and he’s been slipped into the green woolen dress from their trip to the Nibelheim mansion. The bodice top has slipped a little from when he was squirming about earlier, straining his bonds to feel their grip around him, and when he breathes now he can feel the slight shift of the silver rings piercing his nipples.
It's been long enough they’ve healed and are no longer sore, but the flicking weight of the piercings keep the nubs stiffened against the tease of the dress’s fur trimming. He presses his shoulders back into the bed, raising the rings free of the trimming, but when he relaxes they flip down and drag the tips of his nipples just into the fur so he shivers, and so the taunting sensations continue.
Vincent took his time tying Sephiroth up earlier. He hadn’t fucked Sephiroth into exhaustion first, hadn’t roughed Sephiroth into submission but instead had seduced him into it, murmuring tender promises into Sephiroth’s ear as his fingers had sleeked loops of plastic cabling about Sephiroth’s body. It’s red, the kind one pulls out at this time of year to make functional wiring blaze out with the rest of the decorations rather than hide it. Red and flat and a half-inch wide, narrow enough to move easily along with a caressing hand but wide enough to not immediately start to cut into the flesh. Not unless, like Sephiroth, one has been bound with it for a while.
Though he can’t say it cuts. He feels it, feels how the plastic has long since lost its slipperiness and now sticks to his skin, inescapable no matter how he moves. It doesn’t hurt but he feels it and he can trace out its elegant lacing along his body. Over the top of his chest, then wound about both arms to pinion them behind his back, drawing them into the vee of his crossed wrists—bound additionally with tape for cushioning, Vincent knowing better than to let Sephiroth mind himself—before looping forward about his torso in pretty diamonds. Binding and decoration all at once, webbing over him so that when he tries to turn himself, he feels the twist along the cabling and feels how it tightens, how it draws the breath out of him and pulls up the heat to flush against his bonds.
He’s far freer below the waist, only a makeshift shackle of more of the red cabling leashing him to the end of the bed, but the lack of restraint only makes him more wanton. The skirt of his dress has long since rucked up to bare him and when he hears Vincent’s step in the hall, he doesn’t throw his free leg over himself. On the contrary, he lets it fall to the other side, spreading himself, hips arched to offer up the pretty, red, weeping cock Vincent wants to see.
“Dinner will be another twenty minutes,” Vincent says, standing at the side of the bed. Missing his suitcoat, his shirt carelessly untucked with its sleeves rolled to the elbow. He takes the time to catch a stray lock of hair and retie it back into his ponytail as he leisurely sweeps his gaze over Sephiroth. “But the speech is about to start.”
Sephiroth groans. Vincent gagged him with a white silk scarf, and the dampness of his spit has allowed it to stretch as he does, pushing the fabric out from between his lips. But before he can slip true words out, Vincent leans over, smiling, and puts his palm firmly over Sephiroth’s mouth. Holding Sephiroth down that way, the tips of his claws lightly grazing the underside of Sephiroth’s jaw, as he picks up something from the bedside. One of their tablets, Sephiroth can’t turn his head to see which, and once Vincent has set it to broadcast the annual year-end speech the President of Shinra delivers, he tosses it to the far corner of the bed.
Then he climbs onto the mattress and casually settles himself between Sephiroth’s legs. His knee slides over Sephiroth’s inner thighs, pinning them open as he cradles Sephiroth’s head between his hands. He pulls the silk scarf tight into the corners of Sephiroth’s mouth, till Sephiroth is gasping at the taut band pressing down onto his tongue now, and then reties it that way. Kissing Sephiroth lovingly over the gag as he does, and when he’s finished with that, he continues kissing his way down Sephiroth’s body. At the throat, the collarbone, both nipples—he bites them lightly, then ducks away when Sephiroth tries to press into his teeth—and then down the cables interlaced around Sephiroth’s waist.
Before the President speaks, a department head is always tasked with introducing him. Sephiroth has had to perform that duty more than once, but this year it’s Tuesti, with Rufus wanting to foreground Shinra initiatives besides the military. The man coughs awkwardly after the first few words, apparently not comfortable with the microphone—and then Vincent’s teeth graze at the head of Sephiroth’s cock and Sephiroth forgets the speech altogether. It’s only background noise, an intermittent crackling beneath Sephiroth’s own moaning as Vincent suckles him to the brink, then forces him to teeter there with a merciless grip on the base of his cock.
Three times Vincent tortures him that way, and then the man allows him relief just as mercilessly, nursing his cock down to limpness. Then, as Sephiroth lies under him, drained to soft, dazed docility, Vincent pulls out a pair of silk stockings from his trouser pocket. He uses one to wipe off Sephiroth’s cock and then bind it, tying it to the ball sac, then leans up to wrap the other one about Sephiroth’s eyes.
Sephiroth groans once into the darkness. His head lolls and comes up against Vincent’s hand, which holds it still as the gag is tugged away. His lips instinctively purse against the parching air, then obediently open as a commanding tongue laps at them. Once Vincent’s had his pleasure, he pillows his arm under Sephiroth’s head and tips a little water into Sephiroth’s mouth.
“Please,” Sephiroth says as soon as he can. He licks at the tip of Vincent’s finger, then nuzzles the man’s hand more fully as he feels Vincent stretch over to put the cup down. “How…long…”
Vincent’s weight shifts to the side. It’s Rufus on the broadcast now, but the sound of the shifting mattress cuts out what the man is saying, so Sephiroth can’t tell where in the speech they are. And then Vincent is sliding in behind him, pulling them together so that Sephiroth is cradled in the man’s embrace, with deft fingers knowingly seeking out where the cabling bites and adjusting it to a pinch. And then, as Sephiroth slowly finds the breath for more words, hooking flirtatiously at a nipple ring.
“Not that much longer,” Vincent says. His other hand curls under Sephiroth’s thigh and then lifts it up and to the side, bending that leg over his own. Then it dips back, tucking Sephiroth’s skirt out of the way so Sephiroth is helpfully bared to the oiled fingers now starting to work into his hole. He presses his nose against Sephiroth’s throat and breathes in when Sephiroth gasps, as if scenting that. “Still long enough to make you sore through dinner. I know how you want to have that.”
“All I said—” Sephiroth half-recalls, half-gasps “—doing something better than—than hearing what I’ve already proof—proof—”
There’s no reproach in his voice, only need, but Vincent kisses him as if silencing a protest. And then keeps kissing him, even though he only grows noisier as the man fucks him on long, insidiously clever fingers, twists his nipples till they’re swollen about their piercings. The speech goes on and on but Sephiroth doesn’t need it muted to not catch a single word of it.
When it’s over, and the familiar tinkling of the holiday closing music filters in, Sephiroth is finally quiet again. Spitted on Vincent’s cock, bite-marks finally stinging his neck and shoulders, his aching cock dribbling on the finger Vincent keeps tauntingly running over its head while Vincent slowly recovers his own breath in the nest of Sephiroth’s hair.
“Yes, you said. But I heard that you wanted to be here, like this—” Vincent nuzzles at Sephiroth, then pauses as his voice roughens. Then he makes a low, lazy, appreciative sound as Sephiroth whimpers at the feel of one of his claws finally slipping between Sephiroth’s skin and the stocking knotted about Sephiroth’s cock. “Kept away from all of that, kept tight on my cock like you should be…like a gift, like the gift you are.”
Did Vincent’s parents give the man gifts as a child? The thought had passed through Sephiroth’s mind as he’d laid there on the bed, because he still can’t help but wonder sometimes why Vincent does what he does. The man has a very clear idea of his wants in life, and what he is and is not willing to tolerate in order to attain them, and before they had run across each other in Nibelheim, he’d apparently been satisfied with that. Sephiroth believes him when the man says he cannot go back to that way of life, but he wonders whether Vincent had reasoned out the pros and cons and then made a decision, the way Sephiroth has every year before this decided how much of his time he’s willing to expend on holiday activities. Or whether this somehow links to some unfulfilled element of the man’s past, the way Genesis and Angeal never disavow their Banoran roots no matter what they feel about what happened to them there.
He has thoughts like that, when the man leaves him alone, but when they are together—when Vincent has him like this, says things like that, he thinks only that he can’t imagine what else they could want.
The last shred of silk comes off his cock and he spills out onto Vincent’s hand, feeling as if all parts of him are slowly crumpling together. His bonds, tight as they are, aren’t enough to hold him, but Vincent swings his arm up and tugs Sephiroth back against him and the solidity of the man is. Vincent’s still breathing a little roughly from his own climax minutes before, but he keeps Sephiroth cradled to him.
It's not till Sephiroth has recovered enough to nudge at his head that Vincent loosens his hold. “You’ll have your marks,” he says, both indulgent and gently teasing, as he traces over the cabling at Sephiroth’s upper arm. “Past dinner and into tomorrow at this rate.”
Sephiroth drops his head against Vincent’s jaw, letting himself go limp again as the man starts to cut him free. “Into the new year,” he murmurs.
Vincent slows for a moment. Then shifts, apparently to better reach the wire wound around Sephiroth, but his lips graze at Sephiroth’s temple, too, and that isn’t necessary for that. “Spoiled,” he says, but it’s a little absentminded. “If you’re back to doing the intro next year, I’ll have to find a way to mark you beforehand.”
“Dressing-room. Sound-check always runs over,” Sephiroth says without thinking. Then he pushes his head up Vincent’s shoulder, into the crook of the man’s neck. “Are you always going to be in town?”
Because he can’t not think of the world they live in. He can put it aside, take it out of his mind for a while, but in the end they always come back here, too. Vincent doesn’t promise him otherwise—the other man moves back so that they can see each other, and he’s thoughtful but not irritated or regretful.
“I can plan for it, and you can too, and I think between the two of us, we have a better chance at making it so than the rest of them,” Vincent says after a moment. Then he tilts his head so he can cut another wire, with the side of his mouth facing Sephiroth also tilting, but up instead of down. “Unless you’d like to try something else next year. I admit, I didn’t think you’d want to bow out of the speech entirely, so I didn’t have the time to—”
“Come up with something more elaborate?” Sephiroth says, amused, because when it comes to their scenes, Vincent’s idea of ‘simple’ is anyone else’s crowning masterpiece. Then he lets his smile come to rest against the man’s throat, and thinks he can let his duties—official and self-imposed—lie just a little longer. He has no tradition of doing so but he’d like one. And he can afford it now. “Mmm. I’ll think about it after dinner.”
Vincent rolls his nipple between thumb and forefinger, and then, as he’s starting up from it with a throat-caught whine, kisses him. “You’re not going to think if I feed you properly,” the other man says, and this time it is a promise, one he keeps and one Sephiroth gladly accepts.