raspberryturk | Room 429, Monday, Early Evening

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Room 429, Monday, Early Evening

After checking on Romeo this morning, Reno had headed back down to his own room. It wasn't that there was anything of particular interest in there, really. His laptop was still useless and he still didn't have any desire to start on his report back to the boss. It was more that, by and large, he didn't feel up to going anywhere else.

He'd spent a short while looking over the texts on his phone that he'd been ignoring all week.

There had been a lot of them.

Dumbass. You owe me. Laptop in mail. -- Thanks, Rude.
Report incomplete. Send update as soon as possible. -- Tseng.
Do not do anything that will jeopardize your assignment. -- Tseng again. Most likely after a couple of days sitting on Reno's failure of a last report.
Get yourself killed, I kick your ass. -- Rude again.
Report still not received. Is this a cause for concern? -- Tseng. Good old Tseng.
Is there a particular reason you haven't been checking your texts and e-mails? -- More Tseng. Reno would thank Rude later for not telling Tseng that his laptop was toast.
Do not get involved with the statues, Reno. We can't afford to lose another Turk. -- Tseng.

There had been more like those, but Reno had stopped there, closed his phone, and set it to the side.

He still didn't feel like answering them. Tseng could wait.

Right now, he'd just crack open his window a little, light himself a smoke, and look outside over the island for the rest of the afternoon, and then on into the evening, while the sky grew progressive shades of dark.

[The door is shut, the post is open. Ooooh. :o]

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"I don't want you to leave either," she said. And then the rest came nervously spilling out. "Please don't start saying I shouldn't get attached again, and you wanna pretend this doesn't mean anything and let's ignore it 'cause you'll have to leave eventually and life always sucks sooner or later and I know all of that. Okay?"

Reno fell very quiet for a moment. Couldn't speak even if he had words. There was just him and this wall and the other way for him to get his head around the wall was to stand, and move to sit down beside her. And wrap his arms around her. And breathe. And.

And.

And just hold her close. And breathe some more. Deep breath. Hold it. Let it out. Wonder why the fuck he can't just spit it out and breathe.

"Thought I was gonna die yesterday. When you tripped. Couldn't look, couldn't make sure you were okay. Kept my eyes open so wide it hurt until you said to blink. So I did. And there it was in our faces again, and I still couldn't look to see if you were okay. Wasn't worried it was going to grab me, there. Thought it would kill me if it was okay to look, and you weren't still there."

Deep breath. Still breathing.

"I care. If there's such a thing as caring too much, maybe that's what I'm doing. Maybe it's just enough or not enough or something. But it's... huge. Like, nothin' else and. I dunno. I care. I'm too attached to even think about askin' you not to be."

"I'm sorry," she said quickly, not sure what she was apologizing for and not sure why she was tearing up a little and his words were coming at her like waves on the beach and if she didn't start talking she never would. "I didn't mean to trip, I didn't mean to scare you, I didn't mean for ... any of this to happen, I know, you n-never wanted this, to be a thing, I ... I don't think I did either, I m-mean, not because of you, but because I didn't want anything, I just didn't, and then there you were and I tried so hard not to feel any of it, and I had to, you got to me when I was trying so hard ..."

She buried her face against his shoulder. Breathing. Breathing. "I ... I do too. Care. All of it. Like I can't breathe if I think about it. It's terrifying and I was so scared I didn't mean anything to you, at first, and then I was even more scared when I did, because that means I can't just push you away and I ..."

He had forgotten to breathe. Was holding his breath. Good thing he'd been working on that.

He held her closer the more she spoke, tighter, shutting his eyes and listening and once again finding himself without words. But he had to find words. There were words in there somewhere, if he'd just open his mouth and make his voice work.

"We... Both do a lot of that, don't we?" He licked his lips. They were too damn dry. "Running away. Pushing away. Kinda... counterproductive, zoto. Or something."

"Part of ... not getting hurt," she said, shrugging a little. "You don't get attached. You don't let that wall down. You ... don't let yourself feel it, when everything burns to the ground. I ... I started to. Before. And then ... when it all fell apart? It was worse. Because I was feeling it. So I ... didn't want to again and ..."

Sure. Ramble at him. That was good.

"...And it ain't as easy to just stop feelin' as sometimes you wanna think. Kinda... creeps up out of nowhere when you think you got yourself strong enough not to care, and the next thing you know, it's all..."

Rambling back was equally good. They were making progress in leaps and rambling bounds.

"All right there. And when it's there, you don't know anymore if you're holding onto it or if it's got you by the throat."

"I got to Home just in time to watch it burn," she said, very softly. "Fiends and fires and the bodies of my friends, all over the ground. I wanted to scream. I couldn't. I had to lead everyone down into the sanctum, in the underground. We had to find Yunie."

She didn't know why she was telling him this. She really didn't.

"Yunie wasn't there. More bodies. We had to get underground before the whole city went down. We had to get everyone alive on the ship. I had to guide them. You can't stop to feel it. You just pretend you're okay and hope you can choke it down far enough to make yourself believe it. And when it comes back you tell yourself it's over, it's the past, no use dwelling on it. And sometimes ... you believe that, too."

"Sometimes you believe it so hard that your belief in it breaks. Sometimes... you just stop believing in anything anymore. And it leaves cracks to fall into."

He couldn't possibly hold her close enough, now. Couldn't for the life of him tighten his arms around her as much as he wanted. So he sat there, pressing his face against hers, eyes still shut. Words just... there.

"I'm sorry you were ever given a reason to believe it, Rikku. Nobody should have to. Not like that. And... if I made it crack and you didn't want it to..." He shrugged his shoulders faintly. "Plenty to be sorry about."

She looked at him, curiously, and then placed a kiss on the tip of his nose.

"Don't be," she said gently. "You snuck up on me when I wasn't looking. I'm glad. If I had seen you coming, anyone coming, I would have tiptoed out the back. And then I wouldn't be having awesome sex with a dork who has a chocobo on his butt."

"And I wouldn't have a chocobo on my butt," he added, smiling faintly, feeling better about it all with something as simple as a kiss on the nose and a few words.

...

"Wark."

His warks weren't nearly as convincing as anyone else's. Not while he was sober, anyhow. He hoped that his tentative-wark-offering would suffice nevertheless.

Which meant she had to crack up now.

"Do you even remember that night?" she giggled. "Or does it stop around 'hey, more mezcal' and jump straight to 'whoa, my butt hurts'? Which is really never a good thing to think with a hangover, you know."

"I remember sayin' I'd pay. And deciding that there was nothing in the sample art that was any good for me." He wrinkled his nose a little as the implications of that one sank in. "So I must have had a lot of mezcal to think that a drunk blue Keppel was the way to go. Mostly, it's a fuzz."

He paused, looking slightly chagrined.

"I didn't start dancin', did I?"

"No dancing," she said innocently. "You, uh, you said you didn't like anything, but you weren't gonna chicken out, and then we were going, okay, uh, you'd better pick or we'll pick for you, and we'll pick something embarrassing and horrible. Uh. And. I said a chocobo, and Dojima said some liquor, and ... then I ran back to the hotel, to get Keppel?"

She facepalmed. "It was a threat. And I got back and you were all 'Yay, the chocobo, let's do this thing!' and I was going, 'no, you DUMBASS. The chocobo is what you get if you don't PICK SOMETHING.' And then you started going WARK! and shaking your ass around and trying to get them to draw Keppel and, uh, I called Rude? 'Cause I thought maybe he could talk you down and he just wanted pictures and, uh. I tried, zoto. And you kept rambling about how people could kiss your chocobo."

...

"I'm a really, really, really fucking retarded drunk, aren't I?"

He had to have this clarified. It should have been obvious, with the tattoo and all. But sometimes, it was a good idea to just have someone tell you, flat out, yes Reno, you are a moron.

Sometimes, 'yes' would not suffice as well as a nice clear example.

"You kept changing the drawing. To match the el doll-o. And then you would wark at the guy."

She would have to excuse him for moving his arms from around her. It's just that his face needed to be buried in his hands right now, and he had to groan. A lot.

"Oh wow. I'm an idiot."

Rikku chewed her lip. And meant to say something reassuring. Except.

"Um. You ... really didn't ... figure that out when you ... woke up with a chocobo on your butt?"

"What? Nah." He grinned faintly. Stuck out his tongue and everything. "I like the chocobo. In a weird sorta what-the-hell-was-I-thinking kinda way, sure. Could'a been a crapload worse than a bird with booze. But warkin' at the guy who was gonna draw it? That could'a turned out far worse than it did, yo."

"He looked horrified," she snickered. "I figured, if he wasn't gonna turn you down for being really hideously drunk, then he deserved to stare at your pale, skinny ass for a couple of hours."

"He probably didn't know English for 'stop bein' a retard or I'll permanently scar a chocobo into your ass cheek,'" Reno mused. "On the plus side, it's in a good place, yo. I don't gotta look at it."

"I do," Rikku sighed. "It is really hard to take you seriously as a stud-muffin when you have a drunk baby chocobo on your ass."

"Aww, but it's just little," he grinned. "Can always avoid it by lettin' me turn the other cheek."

There was the solution to all their problems. Let Rikku stare at just his left buttock from here on in.

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Room 429, Monday, Early Evening

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