Office Hours, Thursday

[raspberryturk]

Reno... really didn't have anything better to do today but come and hang out in his office, no.

Okay, sure, so there was the mother of all freaking bouquets on his desk, courtesy of his smart-assed co-teacher. And the flowers were starting to go a little...

Uh. Soggy, Reno supposed, was a good word for it.

So he was here today, up to his elbows in rotting flowers, with his nose wrinkled as he picked out all the valuable little nick-nacks from inside of it.

Pearls? Seriously?

The one upside, anyhow, was that Reno could sell some of this crap off and send the money back to Edge or Junon or something. This monster could totally go a long way, back home. Not that he suspected for an instant that maybe something like that was what Genesis had in mind...

[Open door, open office! Since I remembered that Reno actually has one of these things, today!]

Comments

[raspberryturk]

"What, that ain't what Rookies are for?"

Students, Reno. They are your students.

"Sometimes, it's the sayin' it that counts," Reno noted, nodding a little. "I'm pretty sure that Tseng ain't never gonna get what I gotta say, but that don't stop me from spittin' the words out, yeah?"

Okay, Reno probably could spit those words out a little less abrasively, someday. That would do him a world of good. But he was commiserating, here.

"So, you feel better about it, now?"

[the_merriest]

"Yeah," she agreed. "It's ... really good to just have them out there. Maybe I don't give her enough credit. Maybe she does understand. But I kind of feel like ... like maybe I'm free of it. Like maybe even if she doesn't understand ... I don't have to ... let that dictate what I do, or how I feel."

It was kind of horrible to say out loud, and at the same time, it felt so good. Cleansing.

"I can't ... I don't even know how to thank you," she said. "For ... everything."

[raspberryturk]

Reno shrugged a bit.

"Hey, that's what it's all about, babe," he replied, holding one arm out and inviting her to a half-a-hug.

Only half, because his other arm had rotten flower goo down the length of it.

"Or at least, so I hear."

[the_merriest]

"Grooooooss," she laughed. Not at him, or the hug, but rather, the rotten flower goo.

And, well, because joking about things that didn't matter was way easier than talking about things that did.

"They kinda smell funky," she said, along that same vein. "Maybe you should throw them out, zoto."

[raspberryturk]

"I'm pickin' out the nasty ones," Reno replied, giving his arm a shake. Flower goo? Everywhere. "I don't wanna let 'em go to waste, yo."

For the record, Reno hated flowers. Totally.

[the_merriest]

"It makes sense," she said easily, leaning up to drop a kiss on his cheek. "Do you want some help? We could peel out the bad parts and make some pretty bouquets out of the rest."

[raspberryturk]

"Pretty bouquets," Reno echoed, bemused. "Guess so. You can take some home or whatever. We gotta make sure that the pets don't get into 'em, though."

He had a garbage bag in the corner of his office, for disposal of all of the nasty rotten stuff. Ugh. Flowers. Way more trouble than they were worth.

[the_merriest]

"Oh, I hadn't thought of that," Rikku said, studying them again. "You know what we should do? We should make up bouquets and give them out to people. Everybody likes flowers, don't they?"

Yes. Clearly, Reno was, himself, thrilled with his surroundings at the moment.

She sat back down again, looking around the room. "Is that how you think of your students?" she asked, her mind wandering back to something he'd said. "Rookies? It's still kind of weird for me. I mean, they're my age, yeah?"

[raspberryturk]

"They're young enough," Reno replied, shrugging. "Rookies is..."

He really did call them his rookies, didn't he? He frowned a little, wiping the gunk off of his arm with his other hand, and then sighed.

"Maybe it's kinda like habit. You train up enough of 'em, and next people you see lookin' up to you kinda... fill the gap, zoto."

It was one hell of a gap.