Work Text:
"You're joking," Nero scoffs, and leans petulantly against the door frame.
"Sod off," Wedge snips, which gives Cid pause, which is a really bad idea because the cast iron skillet he's holding with a flimsy oven mitt has been in the stove for a whole bell and Wedge had stolen Cid's actual welding mitt a solid bell before that.
There's plenty more of Cid's endless mittens in the workshop but going to fetch them would be as good as admitting defeat, and who among them wants to confess they can't make a single piece of candy?
Biggs elbows by and whisks the skillet off to the pile of similarly sugar-encrusted pans looming in the sink basin.
Nero saunters into the kitchen, regardless of the general lack of welcome. "You set off the fire alarms on three and four," he points out, unnecessarily.
Jessie's turn now. "Go away."
"We disconnected them hours ago," Biggs adds. "Don't worry."
Nero's ugly eyebrows go right up his massive forehead. "How provincial."
"Is there something you wanted?" Cid decides to ask, because if he doesn't, Nero will swan around all day.
Pain in the arse that he is, Nero takes a beat to look over the kitchen. There's the pile of used cooking-ware, of course. Then there is the stove, though calling it that is a touch generous. The Ironworks has the best of everything on the continent, in general. In the workshops. The kitchen, on the other hand, well, if it had ever gotten used, there would have certainly been a dozen petitions on Jessie's desk to add more modern appliances. They've got a straw icebox and a wood-burning oven. Hells, they don't even have a fire crystal oven. There's ash burns around said oven, now. It turns out staring a kitchen fire requires a slightly more delicate touch than starting a forge. In the kitchen there's also Wedge, Biggs, and Jessie, all in various states of disarray. Wedge - posted in front of the stove - is fair shiny with sweat. Biggs is covered in egg splatter from the first broken glass bowl. Jessie has an apron in the front and back so she's made it out okay, but she's spent too many bells hunched over the counter squinting at the handwriting on the various recollections they'd gathered from the rest of the Ironworks.
Nero comes to a pause by the rapidly shrinking pile of apples on the corner table. He picks one up and gives it a toss.
Nero looks at Cid, then the apples, then at Cid, and then the apples.
"Pastila?" he says. Each syllable sounds more judgemental than the last.
Cid's welding mitt smacks Nero in the face. Wedge flips him off without turning around. To his infuriating credit, Nero doesn't react. He never does. Why Cid? Why is it that whenever Cid so much as breathes, it sets Nero off, but for everyone else, nothing. It's like walking around dodging the least exciting piles of copper azide on the star.
"Is there," Cid repeats, calmly, very fucking calmly, "something you wanted?"
"You set off the fire alarms."
"Did you want something?"
Nero huffs. "I want a safe and healthful workplace wherein unlawful experiments are confined to appropriately rated areas. Barring that, emergency exit signs."
"Don't react," Jessie warns, at the same time as Wedge calls, "More apples, I think."
Easily enough done. Nero's skinny arse doesn't take up much space, even when he's puffing himself up.
"Two please," Wedge asks. He takes them, and the retrieved welding mitt. The whoosh of heat from the stove is almost oppressive. It's frankly impressive that Wedge can reach inside it, especially swaddled in a Garlean-sized glove, to place the two apples in the middle of the melting charring mess in the latest cast iron pan.
"Hm." he nods solemnly. Biggs pats his shoulder.
"Pastila," Nero points out, "isn't made with the kind of apples you can get here. Or with that."
He gestures at the stove. Everyone ignores him.
"Don't tell me this is some bout of ill-advised homesickness."
Cunt. "Yes, Nero, some of the Ironworks are possessed of feelings. If you were half as attentive as you think you are, this wouldn't come as a surprise."
"Oh?" Nero says, and raises a hand to his face. "The defector has tender feelings towards his abandoned home? The home you waltzed out of, that you, Garlond that you are, could simply waltz back to at any time you well please and-"
"Shut up!" Wedge whirls on him. "Some of us can't! Some of us can't! And some of us don't ever want to! And it's not that wrong to miss something, even if everyone says it is! Sometimes you can miss something and that's okay! So you can take your boot and shut up about it!"
The room falls silent. Even the oven seems to sizzle more quietly.
Cid looks at Wedge, whose chest is heaving. Biggs blinks at him. Jessie stares.
Nero puts his apple down. He opens his mouth.
"It's 'take your boot and shove it'," he says.
Wedge jumps about a solid decimeter in the air. Biggs has to grab his collar and pulls him back while Jessie darts over to stabilize the now un-supported tower of dishes. Cid catches himself moving in front of Nero and has to pivot to face him and shove his hand in his chest.
"'Up your arse', typically," Nero adds.
The front of Nero's uniform curls up in Cid's fist, "Listen here-"
And then he can't speak, because the smirk has gone off Nero's face, and he's wrenched Cid's hand free of him, only, usually, of course, Cid has some kind of work gloves on and he doesn't today, it's just the rough pads of Nero's fingers on Cid's own dry and sensitive and so very rarely touched skin and gods damn how that burns worse than the stove.
"Enough," Nero says. And then, "at any rate, I came to help."
"Excuse me?"
Nero sighs. He removes his hand from Cid's - so suddenly cold - and threads his way quickly though the assembled. He looks Wedge over, still glaring with open hostility, and shrugs, dramatic and fluffed up and pompous git, and then he easily undoes the tower that Jessie is straining against as if it was nothing. He neatly replaces the pans on the counter, then turns and tuts.
"You don't wash cast iron, not, that I expect you to know that, Garlond. And you need honey for pastila."
Wedge recovers enough to cross his arms. "You can use regular sugar."
"If you're a rich brat from the capital," he responds, continuing to treat the universe like it contains him and Cid alone. "Speaking of, beloved chief, if you wouldn't mind going to fetch the most tart, most unripe, and least expensive apples Rowena can be persuaded to part with, yes?"
Cid balls his hands. "If you think for a second-"
"It's for your Ironworks," Nero interrupts. And perhaps it's because Nero doesn't say, who can't go home, not like you can, even though Cid knows Nero wants to, could, would and it would hurt-
Or maybe it's because they've been trying to make one piece of candy for almost the entire day, now, and all they have to show for it is a bowl of turned eggs and a dozen cast-iron pots with burned remnants of apples inside.
Or maybe it doesn't matter why. The end result is the same. Cid makes his hands relax. Or lets. Or it doesn't matter.
He glares at Nero, and glares, and glares until Nero gets the point, that if he hurts these people, he will pay.
And when Nero only smirks back, and does not change in the slightest, Cid surrenders for just a moment and goes.
-
They don't hear Cid come back in, because they are laughing. Biggs has a cloud of something white and puffy on his chin. It looks rather more like what the beaten egg mixture was supposed to look like, and rather a lot less like a beard, which is what Biggs seems to be going for. He's got Cid's welding mitt on, which is giving CId the impression that this is some sort of... impression. It's not particularly amusing, but...
Jessie is chiding Biggs, her face red from the heat and frustration, but she is also smiling, and her hair is coated in puffs of candy sugar. She looks relaxed, almost, freer than the usual Jessie that sits, dwarfed by increasing mounds of paperwork and worries for her Ironworks and fears about their future in Eorzea amidst the war. Wedge is gesturing emphatically, jumping up and down but still managing to keep a handle on some kind of cloth-wrapped brick, the twin of one keeping the oven door propped open. He looks cooler now. There's a wet cloth slung round his neck and an ice crystal tucked in the back where he couldn't have reached it without help, And there's Biggs, of course, who is clowning around but still subtly keeping an eye on the Emergency Wedge Cooldown System, grinning and joking but still watching out for everyone.
And then there's Nero.
Who has managed to fade towards the back. Remarkable, how he does that. How many times has Cid come back and Nero been gone? And no one missed him? How is it that the most annoying, attention-seeking, obnoxious, loud man in the party can vanish so suddenly and completely?
He has a small, small smile on his face. His lips are curled just so slightly, on the edge of admitting he is enjoying himself, but so far from appearing so painfully, vulnerably obvious. He stifles a small snicker when Biggs nails one of Cid's stances, a mimicking thing of the way Cid hits his hand on his fist in midair that, in Cid's defense, he got from the vaunted Warrior of Light in the first place.
There he is, Nero, the obnoxious manufactured bright light thing that stands in the middle of a room and demands everything, everything, even though everything is never enough...
And then there's this Nero, who notices Cid before everyone else, and stiffens, and then watches Cid watching them with a rare moment of soft appreciation and relaxes. Just a hair. He nods, slightly, and doesn't say a word, and leans back and lets Cid just rest in this moment, when the Ironworks is happy, and safe, and feeling like home.
This is a memory. Cid will impress it in his mind and keep it there forever.
...of course, Nero is both Neros, though, so that moment of altered time lasts only that moment before Nero shakes himself off and crows at Cid, pointing out that, actually, they didn't need those apples after all. Shame on the waste of money and time.
"Oh?" Cid says, and hauls the bag up on to the table. "A question, then, for your over-lauded mind - if you didn't need these, then where is the pastila? I don't see a finished product."
Nero scoffs, but Wedge beats him too it. "Chief," he says, and wags a finger. "I know you want results right away, but a proper pastila takes quite some time to set!"
No one notices Nero mouthing the sentence along with Wedge. Cid manages not to react.
"Oh? How long?"
"Four-"
"As long as it takes," Nero breaks in. "It takes as long as it takes. Can you cope with that?"
Cid breaths. The room smells like burned sugar, and ashen apples, and hot metal and red.
Nero looks at him, with those pale eyes and that incomprehensible schema.
"I can try," he says.
"Good," Nero tells him.
-
"...or!" Wedge reminds. "Since I would prefer to be talking about the candy. It takes four hours."
-
"Fuck off," Nero tells him.