Room 308, Thursday Evening

[raspberryturk]

Okay. So. Reno had to talk to Rikku.

He really, really had to just man up and talk to Rikku.

Which involved knocking on the door.

He could do that. Any moment now. He'd lift his hand, and then he would knock. On the door.

Yep.

... Dammit, Reno, there is no fine art to knocking on the door. Just do it already.

There we go. Door: Knocked upon. And now he was going to work on standing there and not taking off down the hall.

This was going to be an interesting night.

[For she who lives here, natch!]

Comments

[the_merriest]

She was not going to mention her letter to Tseng. Especially since nothing might come of it.

"You could always ask," she said, frowning. "There's .. different groups, now, in Spira. The Youth League, and the Machina Faction? Some of them are working on rebuilding places, and some of them are dealing with politics, but ... you know. Any of them could use the help. Yunie said the Youth League completely rebuilt the Kilika Docks. Like, you wouldn't even know they'd been destroyed, that sort of thing."

She was going to wriggle a little closer. If he didn't mind. He didn't, did he?

"Is that ... what you want to do? Go help with cleanup?"

[raspberryturk]

"I dunno what it is I wanna do," Reno admitted, and if she was going to wriggle closer, than he was going to let go of her hand. But just for a moment, because his arm would be much better placed if it was around her shoulder, right? "Anything where I'd be useful, I guess. I mean, I ain't a carpenter or nothin', but mechanics, I can do. I'm a pilot, yo. If Spira needs machina, I can help with machina."

Gaia, on the other hand? He had no clue.

[the_merriest]

She was going to snuggle in. This was ... cozy. And. She belonged here, right here, taking deep breaths and savoring the just-Reno scent.

"You'd be useful anywhere," she said. "There's ... I mean, there are lots of places we could go. We don't have to go to my world or yours, if that's not gonna work right." Her fingers were tracing lightly over his jeans. "But ... yeah. We'd need ... lots of things. Machina, and the airship working again, and ... if we can rebuild a Home, that's gonna take some work, too."

[raspberryturk]

"You got enough interest in the way mech works for the both of us," Reno pointed out. "Ain't just like I'm the only one who'd be useful, you know. You kicked ass with them patrol droids you did up for the science fair."

Snuggling right up close, that was nice. She was warm, and maybe that was part of his reasoning, but... Damn. He just needed to snuggle a Rikku right now.

"There are probably plenty of places that we could go to, but there ain't really nothin' else that feels right, is there? I dunno. Maybe it's just me. Maybe I kinda feel like I owe it to Gaia to at least try to put in some work there before findin' some place to run away to, if things get... hairy, or whatever."

[the_merriest]

Her bed was just as useful for snuggling as his. And her bed had a convenient purring lump of Petey, and body heat, and ... they should be stretched out, shouldn't they? Sharing blankets. Blankets were good to share.

"That doesn't mean it'd have to be ... permanent, you know," she suggested. "If you wanted to ... pay back Gaia. You could do that, and then ... I mean. That doesn't mean you have to stay there, if you don't want to. We do some work, then we move on to what's next."

[raspberryturk]

He was going to have to nod, to that. Because with the snuggling and the body heat and the stretching out and the purring lump of cat, everything sounded like a good idea to Reno.

"What is next, then? I mean, if you wanna help out on Spira at all, that doesn't have to be permanent either, yo. I can help fix up that airship, and, I mean, there's a guy on Gaia I could hook you up with who's a freakin' master with airship mechanics. Cid ain't really a friend of mine any, but I don't think he'd have a problem helpin' you out if you wanted a crash course or somethin'."

Yes, the name parallel did fail to escape Reno's notice.

[the_merriest]

It didn't escape Rikku's.

"His name is Cid?" she asked, sitting up and giggling. "Is he bald and grumpy? Does he wear really weird clothes?"

She wasn't used to people from Gaia having Al Bhed names. She liked the guy already.

[raspberryturk]

"Blonde and still grumpy," Reno clarified. "Got a mouth on him that'd nearly make Rude blush."

He considered for a moment, and then shrugged. "Chain-smokes. Used to work for ShinRa, but took his ball an' bat an' went over to the other team when things didn't go too hot for him. Fights with a lance. Does wear goggles, like mine."

Reno reached up with one rather chilly hand to tap at the goggles on his forehead.

"I'd say he was probably a better pilot n' I am, but that'd be admittin' that there's better, yo."

[the_merriest]

"Maybe you're tied," she smiled. "What happened, to make him leave? I thought people couldn't ... leave. With how it was, and everything."

Hunting down ex-employees. That sort of thing.

She was fidgeting with his buttons, now.

[raspberryturk]

"Different department," Reno replied, sighing and leaning in a little closer. "Company decided that puttin' a man into space was a waste of money, so they scrapped his project. Seein' as how some of the worst shit Gaia ever saw came from space, I can't say they did wrong, there. He didn't see it that way, yo."

He shrugged.

"Stuff like you're thinkin' was really only bad like that for the Turks. Even SOLDIER could hand in their resignation papers an' go home, zoto."

Provided they didn't already know too much. But Reno wasn't going to get into that. Turks knew too much from their first day on the job. SOLDIER, not so much.

[the_merriest]

"Just you guys?" she asked. Nuzzling in. It was warming up, with him close and Petey purring like a small generator. "Because you ... you'd done the really bad stuff, and you knew too much, so you could ... hurt them. If you'd wanted to. Right?"

[raspberryturk]

"We could'a done some damage, yeah," Reno agreed. "We were their dirty hands, hidin' in shadows an' snappy dark suits, yo. We knew most of the security codes for the ShinRa building. Were up past our knees in the nasty shit. That was our entire purpose, yo. Good people worked for ShinRa too. Had no clue how rotten the company was until it was too late."

[the_merriest]

"Shame you couldn't warn them," she said softly. No ill-intent behind it, just a touch of wistfulness at how it all came to be. "You'd think ... you know, you'd think if you guys could have done so much damage, that you'd have better leverage. That you could have argued it as, either we get to set terms, or we will do damage, and try to stop us when we know all of this and can bring you down."

She couldn't figure out if that was cynical, or just pragmatic, really.

[raspberryturk]

"Shame," Reno agreed, looking up at the ceiling for a moment, his voice a little lighter than usual. "It sounds easy, don't it? Havin' all that at your disposal, anyone should be able to make the giant come tumblin' down. But we were less than twenty guys with a bunch of dirty stories. They were the corporation that owned the planet and had thousands of soldiers. Hell, even SOLDIER outnumbered the Turks. And there ain't no Turk who can take on a trained SOLDIER First and live to talk about it."

Those two poor shits that Genesis offed in Banora, for example.

[the_merriest]

Rikku nodded, slowly, taking it in. "I guess it's ... I mean. If it was just you guys, that'd be one thing. But if they've got all these different branches, then ... if one misbehaves, or tries to make a stand, or anything, they just sic the next on them. You'd have to get everyone pushing back at once, and ... nobody's gonna risk that."

[raspberryturk]

"All evidence of misconduct must be destroyed," Reno quoted. He'd heard it enough, being a Turk. "Company policy. If the Turks ain't enforcin' it, someone else is. And pullin' strings to save someone's ass from it is only as good as the twitchy finger of whichever Infantry fucknut pulled the trigger first, yoto."

[the_merriest]

"Couldn't even coordinate a resistance. Someone would sell you out and get a reward for it." She took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly as she shifted position to wriggle in closer. "I'm ... you know, I'm sorry you don't have your job any more. Honestly. Because I know what it means, to you. But I ... I'm also relieved that you're safe from that."

He was allowed to hate her, for that, if it was insensitive.

[raspberryturk]

"That part, I don't miss," Reno agreed. "Just after the mission we were sent on to hunt down a guy from SOLDIER that Tseng and Cissnei knew, that's when President Shinra found out we were tryin' to help Verdot." A pause. Right. Explain the names, Reno. "The first guy, Zack, we were tryin' to save too. He was draggin' Cloud all across Gaia. Verdot was our boss. The one ShinRa wanted us to hunt down."

Sigh.

"Findin' out that we weren't doin' our jobs was bad enough. Findin' out that we were goin' directly against orders..." Shit. Shit shit shit. "I don't miss that. Never will."