raspberryturk | Room 308, Thursday Evening

If it got any colder, Rikku was going to start burning things in her dorm room. She totally could contain a fire or something, right? Before it burned the whole building down? She was mostly sure she could.

She had a few blankets wrapped around her, and a Petey on her lap, snuggling in for what little body heat she had going. And she had a mug of hot cocoa, which meant there was no way she was going to try to get up.

"Just come in!" she yelled towards the door.

Stupid freaking cold.

It wasn't too late to take off running. Really. If he turned tail and ran, she would never know it was him.

Which, clearly, was why he was opening the door and peering tentatively into her room.

...

"This a bad time?"

Oh. ... Oh. That was ... he ...

He'd taken off, because he needed some air, so she wasn't going to bother him. And she'd been good about not bothering him. For three days now. Not that she'd been worried he was avoiding her or anything. Much. At all. Sort of.

"Hey," she said, offering him a weak smile. "Sorry. Cold."

"Crazy weather we been havin' lately," Reno noted, cramming his hands into his pockets and bunching his shoulders up a little as he stepped into her room. He had been planning to demonstrate his ability to veer away from the Turks by wearing some of the stuff he'd had Romeo help him pick out a few days back, but the cold snap and the power outage had demanded that he at least wear his jacket. Which went well enough with the jeans and the blue shirt he was wearing underneath. Kind of. Sort of.

He'd made the attempt to look as not-Turk-like as possible. And had quite possibly been agonizing over that point while he was standing in front of his open dresser, without a shirt, freezing his ass off while he made the decision.

If that wasn't devotion...

"Look, Rikku, I'm sorry I took off like that, the other day. It was..." He kind of hated to say it. "... Sorta... Too much. All at once. With all the... stuff. And then other things. And you were there. I mean. You probably know."

Rambling.

"I ... was where?" she asked, frowning. She couldn't remember if she'd ever seen him wear jeans before. Maybe the regular suit wasn't good for this kind of weather. Maybe he ... was ... trying to ...

She cleared her throat. "I yelled. I ... guess I shouldn't have."

She wasn't sure if she should have or not, somehow.

"There. Here. You were here. When we were last talking." Obviously. "You're allowed to yell. I mean... It's the kinda thing that kinda causes yelling. So, you yelled, yo. And stuff was said, and that was good. And I should'a stuck around, and I didn't."

That was because he had to throw up. But that was hardly a good excuse.

"You had to go," she shrugged, staring down at the floor again. "I got all yell-y and ... you know. Wasn't a really ... fun place to be. Chatting about ... all of that."

His job, their futures, how it all seemed horrible and incompatible, lately. That sort of thing. He'd been there, too. He knew how that had started just ... circling the drain.

His shoulders bunched up a little more, and he dug his hands deeper into his pockets and tried to tuck his chin into the top of his shirt, but if that was because of the cold or the conversation, it was going to be difficult to tell.

"Had to get said. Either we were gonna say it then, or it would'a waited for grad, and... I dunno. I think maybe it's better it get said now, instead."

Even if it meant it was coming out in the open just so she couldn't get blindsided by it on some world she might not want to stay on as a result.

"Which part?" she asked carefully, lifting her hot cocoa to take another sip of it. It was cooling off already. No fair. "The ... bits about ... y-your job, or the bit about ... us ... and after graduation, and how it's kinda ..."

Couldn't go to his world, couldn't go to hers, couldn't go somewhere else. Maybe he was just glad they were figuring that out now, instead of ... breaking up after graduation, instead.

"All of it," Reno clarified, pulling his hands from his pockets, cupping them over his mouth, and blowing into them for warmth. Freaking winter, anyhow. "My job was dirty. And now you know how dirty, and where you wanna go from there is up to you. And... after grad's complicated, but that don't mean it's impossible, right?"

He wasn't convinced, himself. But he was trying. He blew into his hands a few more times, and then crammed them back into his pockets.

"I don't wanna leave you behind, Rikku. Not any more'n I wanna get left behind. So... We had a real shitty argument. It happens. I'm here right now, and I wanna fix this, and if you need more time, then tell me, and if you wanna fix it, then tell me that, too, but don't leave me standin' here guessin' where your head is. Please."

"Leave ... you guessing!?" Rikku was going to finally look up at him. "Do I need time!? Reno, you left. You remember that? Not me. You couldn't be here any longer, you needed air. So I gave you air. I haven't called, I haven't stopped in, I haven't so much as bothered you. I'm not the one that needed time. And now you're acting like I'm the one that's been avoiding you?"

The faintest of smiles graced Reno's lips for a moment, and then was gone just as soon as it had appeared.

"You were mumblin' at the floor again. Usually, that means you're makin' a wall of yourself, is all. Wasn't sayin' a word about us not seein' one another the past few days. I know that one's on my head, zoto." He crossed his arms over his chest- which was probably mostly so that he could attempt to stick his hands into his armpits to keep them warm- and tilted his head. "You up for talkin', Rikku? Somethin' somewhere in between mumblin' and yellin'? Gets us farther, zoto."

Rikku considered that one for a few seconds.

"Depends," she said finally. "Did you mean what you said, a second ago? You don't think it's impossible, you want to work it out, and all that? 'Cause if you came here to do the, 'it's not going to work, but hey, it's been great while it lasted' thing, then just get that over with so I can get back to freezing, here."

"If I was goin' to say good-bye, Rikku, I would'a said that on Monday, yoto."

Back around the point where they were screaming at one another.

"I came here to patch things up. And, shit, I might suck ass at doin' it, but I'm here tryin'." Freezing. And trying. "Yeah. I mean it when I say I don't think it's impossible. I'm startin' to get real skeptical that there's even such a thing as impossible, since comin' to this place, yo."

Which really went to show how easy it was to turn a hardened Turk into a big mooshy poof, when you got right down to it.

Rikku shrugged. "I dunno. I don't understand guys. Maybe you were taking some air to see if you thought we could work it out, and hey, you don't, so here we are. I'm not even sure ... why you needed air, except ..."

Except 'hey, I can't be near you right now,' which he had said it wasn't.

Another sip of lukewarm cocoa. "I ... don't know where we go from here. Or what you want from me. Or where we should end up. Or anything. And the more I hear about your job, the more I hate it. What else is there?"

"That's the worst of it," Reno said, his hands making their ways back to his pockets again. Stupid winter. "Still allowed to hate it. Nobody's gonna blame you if you do."

Deep breath.

"I don't want anything from you you don't wanna give. I don't want approval for the stupid shit I did in my life. I don't want you to have to pretend that the bad stuff ain't bad. I want you to want what you want, and maybe if I know what you want, we can... figure it out from there."

A pause. And then his eyes dropped to the floor.

"I meant it, when I had to go, when I said it was me, yoto. It wasn't I was tryin' to get away from you, or anything like that. It was... There were words. Sometimes, they get too heavy, is all."

"I do hate it," she said, lifting her shoulders in a shrug. "A lot. I hate that it changes how I think of you. I hate that ... that you're all decent people, you and Tseng and Rude. People who do things like that should be ... awful and horrible and not, you know. People who could do nice and wonderful things, but instead do terrible ones, from time to time. That's not fair."

She set the mug down on her desk, which earned her a mrowl of protest from Petey. He'd been sleeping. She wasn't allowed to move while he slept.

"It'd be easier if the whole world was sittin' there in black and white, huh?" He offered her a wry smile before attempting the hands-in-armpits thing again.

He should have bought gloves.

"If it was, we wouldn't even be havin' this conversation, zoto."

"Well, it would," she insisted. She sounded like a little kid. She didn't care. "Sometimes, I just want to shake you. You're better than that. But you did those things anyway, because they were there, and who cares, and it was easier than not doing them. That's no excuse. You know that."

Edited 2009-01-23 07:03 (UTC)

"Yeah, Rikku. I know that. There won't be an excuse. Not for that, not ever, yo. The best I got is that it ain't gonna happen again. Not from me, zoto."

Hot chocolate. He should have grabbed hot chocolate.

With Kahlua in it.

"I'm standin' here right now because I wanna fix what can be fixed, yo. Are we done with the personality evaluation, yet?"

She shrugged again. "Sure," she said flatly. "We'll skip your astrological sign and lucky numbers. How do we fix this? I'm not even sure what we need to fix. Other than, it's all messed up again, and this time, we've got three or four months until it all explodes."

Edited 2009-01-23 07:43 (UTC)

"Maybe we start by fixin' us, before we even worry about what comes after grad," Reno noted, and his hands were now cupping over his mouth again so that he could attempt to heat them with his breath again.

Which wasn't working.

"You mind if maybe... I sit down or somethin'? It's kinda cold just standin' here."

Rikku frowned at that, as if she was somewhat confused by the request.

"You can sit down," she said. "You can always ... sit down. I ... thought maybe you didn't want to."

She grimaced, pulling the blankets around tighter. "It's cold everywhere. I can't stand it. It's driving me nuts."

Petey mrowled again. He didn't like it, either. Stupid cold.

"Hard to tell sometimes, if I'm welcome or not. We kinda went from talkin' to the floor to talkin' 'bout the Turks..." Reno shrugged and glanced around the room, wondering where exactly it would be okay for him to sit, now. He was going to opt for the same bed she was sitting on. Just, maybe a little off to the side, so he could shanghai the cat if his hands got too cold, anyhow.

Yeah. That would do.

"I think... Maybe I'm afraid I managed to break somethin', and that's why I didn't just walk on in and make myself at home."

Petey got up slooooowly, stretching himself out in a sleepy sort of way, and flumped over to Reno's lap. Heyyyy. Reno. Reno was warm. Reno should pet him. Peeeeeeet him?

Rikku wrapped the blankets around herself a little closer. "You ... left," she said, awkwardly. "So you came back, but you were standing there like you weren't sure if you were gonna stay put, or not. I didn't want to ... ask you to stay if you were ... just gonna ... you know. Brush it off and leave again."

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