Author's notes: A few weeks ago, I had the great pleasure of seeing Metric in concert. I'd never seen them before but, well, let's just say that they left an impression. Of course, since I'm a bit too much of a writer at heart, when they played their song 'Calculation Theme', I automatically thought of Vincent and Tifa. If those two were ever to dance, I imagine that they would dance to that song. All of the italicized lines in this story are lyrics from that song. I'd encourage you to find it somewhere.

Contact

I'm sick, you're tired, let's dance

We spin around slowly. My cheek is resting against your collarbone. It breaks all the rules between us. This contract is… sinful. There's something softly sinful in the way that we are spinning.

It hurts, being here with you like this. Our feet make soft shuffling noises as we move, like there's old paper crinkling underfoot. I feel old; I feel weathered and used. I think that you're the only person who could really understand that.

My eyes are open and starring as we turn. It's not… intimate. There's no soft pitter-patter in my heart. My head isn't racing. There's something… more profound about being here with you like this. Those illusions, they were for children and innocents and I don't believe that I can qualify for either of those anymore. But then again neither can you, can you?

Dancing. We're dancing.

Break to love make lust I know it isn't

I won't go into all the petty details. It's not very interesting, in any case. You just seem to stay around here. I'm pretty sure that you have your own apartment somewhere. Sometimes I imagine that you go home to it. Most of the times you're stretched out of my couch though, unusually sober face softened on the rare occasions that I catch you sleeping. You still don't sleep very much, Vincent.

It's an unusual symbiosis. I walk into my kitchen and see you with your hair tied back, cutting up vegetables for a salad. I've seen you get flour on your sleeves. You're a quiet sort of person. Some days it makes me feel awkward. There's a… resonance in you. We can go days without speaking to each other. Sometimes you'll be in my home but I won't see you. I'm not sure if I find the knowledge of your presence comforting or not. You're a hard man to understand Vincent.

I'm sick, you're tired, let's dance

Maybe in some peculiar fashion we both need each other. Perhaps broken people tend to clump together. Maybe there's something comforting in the fact that I don't need to pretend around you. Nobody can pretend around you Vincent. There's an intensity in your eyes – not always unpleasant, God help me – that just seems to demand the truth. You cut through my illusions and the shameful thing is that I don't even think that you try. You won't let me pretend to be happy. In the beginning, I think that I hated you for it. Now… now I think that it's one of the things I like best about you.

Cold as numbers but let's dance

You're quiet and there are more layers to you than I could ever hope to understand. If you've taken off your cloak then you've hidden it away inside of yourself and it's still keeping you awkward and sheltered and protected and safe, Vincent Valentine. You are secure in your pain, in your sins, in the awful knowledge that, yes, this is your life and you will continue living it for many, many years. There's a certain peacefulness in you that comes from the fact that you know and understand your pain. You've lived with it for years. You've cloaked yourself in its shadows for ages. Mine, I'm afraid, is quite new to me. I wish I had your tolerance for it.

As though it were easy for you to lead me

There are times when I wonder if you are atoning still. You saved the world for her but it wasn't quite enough, was it? That I can understand. I think I might've saved it for him too but I don't think that he'll ever love me for it. No, don't be silly dear. He'll never love you for it. So, we have that much in common don't we?

That's why I think that you're using me, in this strange symbiotic way. You let me have something to distract myself from the gaping hangnail living inside of my head and in return, what? You get to save another person? Are you saving me Vincent?

Maybe. Maybe we can save each other little by little, day by day. Like that time you made a cake. I don't even know why; I didn't know that you liked chocolate. It's was late, very late – we're night owls, we two – and you walked into the living room where I was sitting thinking about… unpleasant things… only to sit in front of me with a platter of chocolate cake. I laughed because I couldn't help it and you acted offended but I swear, I swear that your lips might've quirked.

"Cake mix," you said. Just like that. Cake mix.

Were you tired of me brooding? Were you trying to tell me something? That I couldn't do many things but that some things were still worth enjoying? Little moments, tiny things, minute distractions from the ache that seems far too constant for me now?

Or do you just like chocolate cake and were in the mood to share?

You do it all the time; the coffees in the evening that we'll both sit in silence enjoying, the smell of fresh laundry in the mid-afternoon, the unexpected sight of a Vincent looking out the window, possibly at the tree that's flowering across the yard. Who are you Vincent Valentine? And why is that you can distract me so easily, so calmly, and likely so unintentionally from all of the things that I should be feeling? Why is it that you can take this little bundle of emotion that I've become and wrap me up in this empty numbness with which you enshroud yourself?

I've gotten so good at almost not caring. There are times when it can last for hours, this emptiness. I live in a state of blank oblivion. I don't feel anything. I'm not sad, not happy. I'm not anything.

I'm a ghost, just like you.

I could be passive gracefully

We're both the ghosts of the people that we once were. If I catch you from the corner of my eye, sometimes I can imagine a younger – infinitely younger – man standing in your shoes. I wonder if you still sometimes catch the sight of a young determined woman too. I don't see her around here too much anymore. She went away somewhere, I believe. I'm just the little bits that she left behind.

Somehow though, you keep me from total melancholy. That's your gift to me. I wonder if you realize that you're giving it away. I'm numb but not entirely lost. It's like the ocean, I think. You keep me floating somewhere in the middle of the water. The surface is high above me but, somehow, I haven't sunk to the bottom yet. It's a darkness but not a complete one. I think that it's the most that you can give me.

It's a kind of life, this pseudo-life that I endure and indulge in with you. Like you, I can go days without seeing the sun. It's an ugly thing, the half-light that we clothe ourselves in but I doubt that we'd survive well in the sun.

Half the horizon's gone for a skyline of numbers
Half the horizon's gone we're working the numbers 'till I'm sick

All of it changes with contact. I don't know exactly when it happens. I suppose that it's only natural, two adults living together. It makes sense that they might accidentally brush each other in passing. I don't know when it first happened but then somehow it didn't stop happening. Tricky fingers that touch when they are passing utensils in the kitchen, palms that smooth wrinkles on shoulders, toes that might brush when two people are sitting at opposite ends of a couch too small for both of them… When did I become comfortable with you Vincent?

But there is a moment that I remember very clearly beyond all the confusing maze of instances that I have stolen with you. It was a nightmare. There are many reasons why we don't sleep very much, you and I.

Sleep don't pacify us until
Daybreak sky lights up the grid we live in

Maybe it was worse than normal, maybe I cried out, I don't remember. I don't remember the dream but when I woke up, frightened and lost, you were there. There was a warm hand on mine – a kindness that you had never, ever once extended to me – and I clutched it like a small and broken child. I touched my feverish face to those cold fingertips and I sobbed against that tiny cool bit of warmth. My reaction caught you off guard and you stiffened but I couldn't stop crying. There were many reasons why I needed to cry. I had never cried; not once since he left me. It was like my toes had brushed against the bottom of the ocean and in my screaming despair you had reached out to give me the only thing you had: contact.

It wasn't pretty. There is nothing beautiful about a woman crying. I sobbed against your outstretched hand and in a slow, creaking kind of way, you bent down so that you were kneeling beside my bed and gently placed you metallic claw against my back. It was almost an embrace.

I don't know what I am to you. I don't know what you were thinking when you touched me. I have always secretly thought that you might have a weakness for women crying. When I watch your eyes, sometimes there's an old ache only reawakened by another person's tears. I think that you let too many people cry in your other life. Maybe you're not really comforting me. Maybe you're a younger man comforting a woman who's younger and far more beautiful than I am. Maybe you're remembering words that you'd rather forget. Maybe you've felt your feet touch bottom a few too many times to let anyone sink that low alone. I don't know but I'm not thinking; I just hurt so much that I clutch you and cry.

You never say anything all night long.

Dizzy when we talk so fast
Fields of numbers streaming past

The next morning, I walk out of my room carefully. I feel like a burn victim with too-sensitive skin. My eyes squint at the sunlight sneaking in from the windows but I resist the urge to shut the curtains. I smell pancakes from the kitchen and so I walk forward carefully to investigate.

You're standing by the stove, shaking a skillet slightly. The smell of pancakes is intoxicating. You look over your shoulder at me. You don't smile but there is a kind of warmth in your eyes, I think.

"Pancakes," you say.

I laugh. Pancakes. Of course.

I wish we were farmers, I wish we knew how
To grow sweet potatoes and milk cows

Sometimes I have these wild little thoughts, what if questions that dance in front of my eyes like colourful butterflies. What if you'd never known a woman named Lucrecia? What if my father hadn't died in the Reactor? What if she'd never gone and done the noble thing? Would we still be here, you and I? Would he be here instead? Would she? Would I have faded along the way somewhere or maybe we could've painted ourselves in a bit more sunlight and colour? What if we were generally happy together? What if I could make you happy?

I tend to stop my questions after that.

I wish we were lovers, but it's for the best

We don't touch as much anymore, not after that night. I've gone and made things awkward for us, I think. I think that you were shocked and surprised by your reaction. I know I was. Maybe you're lamenting another sin heaped upon your too eager shoulders. I don't think that I'll ever understand you. I wish I did though. I wish for many things.

Tonight your ghost will ask my ghost,
Where is the love?

I think that I might be depressed and it frightens me a little. I look at myself in the mirror and my eyes look pale and shallow. I don't think that I'm getting enough sun. I'm not eating as much as I used to. Maybe I'm waiting for another chocolate cake but you haven't baked in a while.

I'm avoiding sleeping once again tonight. I think that the clock is creeping close to three in the morning. I decide to sneak out to our house's tiny backyard where I go to sit and watch the stars sometimes. There's something coolly pleasant about their light. You can look at them as if they're stuck behind thick glass or maybe meters and meters of water. They're deceptive, they're distant, they're cool but they are still beautiful. They're still shining.

I'm not even really surprised when I find you sitting out there. It's one of the many things you do. I think that I could categorize all of them by now. We know each other rather well now, don't we Vincent? But not in the ways that count, not really.

"You'll catch a chill," you murmur without looking back at me. I smile a little.

"It's alright," I say quietly. "I have a blanket."

You nod and I pause a moment before taking a seat beside you. We're far apart enough so that there's no risk of contact.

We watch the stars in silence for a long time. Sometimes I feel like I can talk to you without using any words, Vincent. You have a way of listening that goes way past absorbing words. I feel like you're always drinking me in, distilling me inside yourself. Maybe that's why I'm not surprised to hear myself speaking to you. I feel like you already know.

"It looked a lot like this, the night he promised to be my hero."

You nod slowly and I don't need to say anything else. A quiet descends for a moment. It should be awkward but it isn't. I'm just waiting.

"I told her something very similar, many years ago."

The words gravitate towards me and there's something heavy lodged in my chest. I swallow the lump in my throat. You sigh very softly. It's the first time I've seen you look so… defeated.

"We're always a disappointment to the ones we love."

Always Vincent?

Tonight your ghost will ask my ghost,
Who here is in line for a raise?

I fall asleep out there with you, my head leaning lightly against your shoulder. Another infraction, please add it to my list.

With weary footsteps, you gather me up in your arms and carry me inside. In a half-awake feverish kind of state I realize this but I decide to let myself be weak just for one night.

You lay me down in bed and pull the covers up around me. I want to say thank you but I'm sleeping. You pause a moment by my bedside before walking away.

I think that I dream about a younger man that night, looking up at the stars by a well. He's not the man that I knew but he's not the man that I know either. He's somewhere in the middle but I'm still the same.

Tonight your ghost will ask my ghost,
Where is the love?

I wake up only a few hours later. The sun is just barely starting to creep in through the windows. It's diffusing through the curtains, giving everything a softly surreal yellow glow. I've never been one to lie in bed and so I wander out of my room only half aware that I'm looking for you.

There's a quiet noise coming from the living room. A melody. I stand in the doorway, taking in the scene. You're sitting on our couch and there's a woman singing over the radio. I can't quite make out the words that she's singing because you have the sound turned down so low. It's more of a sense of music.

I smile a very small smile to myself. It seems that you may never stop surprising me. I've never seen you sit and listen to music before.

I walk in quietly and I know that you realize I'm here but you don't turn to acknowledge me. It's alright; I wasn't expecting it.

I walk up right in front of you. You still don't – can't – look at me. I feel like I should be nervous but I'm still feeling numb. You've taught me oh so well, Vincent.

I break all the rules. I reach out to touch your hand. This is something different. It's not an accident and it's not comfort. It's something different, something else.

This time you look up at me. There's puzzlement in your eyes. I feel a little dizzy looking at you. I tug on your hand very slightly, getting you to stand very slowly in front of me. You're wary of me. Am I that frightening, Vincent? I used to be afraid of you, years and years ago.

I lead you out into the middle of the room. I don't know why I'm doing this but I'm not questioning. You taught me that too, Vincent. All your twisted little lessons, I've taken them to heart.

With a deliberate slowness, I close the gap between us. You hesitate and I feel your question. I smile very softly, looking down at the floor. I feel an odd pleasure in confusing you.

Do you still remember how to dance Vincent?

You move sluggishly, like you're dreaming. That sharp claw – does it remember when it was just a hand? – rests against my hip with a feathery lightness. I move in towards you and loosen my fingers from yours. Your good hand trails up to find my other hip and with a silent sigh I touch my cheek to your collarbone. We move slowly, like molasses, and start a slow dance, little more than a shuffle. We spin aimlessly in our one little circle as the unknown woman sings softly to us. My eyes are wide and open and unseeing. I can't even imagine your face. You've always been a blank to me.

Tonight your ghost will ask my ghost,
Who put these bodies between us?

I imagine that once you were just a man and I was just a woman, long before we became all tangled and snarled together. I imagine that once we might've lived differently, that we might've felt more than this. I imagine that maybe in some other life that I've never had the joy of living I might've felt loved, happiness. I would love to hear you laugh, just once.

Maybe we'll never really reach the surface. I feel like I could drown here for ages with you. Maybe it's not love, maybe we can't love, but in some oddly twisted way, we can dance.

The light that trickles into our apartment is diluted and faded but we've always looked better by starlight anyways.