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]

"Do I look busy?" Reno glanced over his shoulder, smirking lightly at the Al Bhed in question. "Besides the flowers, anyhow?"

There was a small heap of things on his desk that could probably be sold off for a decent price. Or he could stuff them in Genesis' doorway, because he was too damn proud to accept charity. One of those.

[the_merriest]

"Should I be jealous?" she teased, nodding to the bouquets with a flicker of a smile. "If some pretty girl's been sending you flowers, I need to go knock her teeth out."

She paused to sniff them with a frown. "How come you let them go bad?"

[raspberryturk]

"I grew up in Midgar," Reno pointed out. "You think I know what the hell I'm doin' with flowers?"

He scowled at the bouquet, and then shrugged. "It ain't from no girl, anyhow. Co-teacher got 'em for me, because he thinks he's clever, or some shit. We did dancin' in class a few weeks back, and I joked that if he wanted to dance, he better be gettin' me flowers, yo."

He'd gone nuts with that, apparently.

[the_merriest]

"Okay," Rikku said, considering that. "He can hit on you, so long as I get to watch."

That was totally fair.

"How is your class going?" she asked. "Sorry I took longer to get back than I thought I would. Yunie's not ... always the easiest to track down."

[raspberryturk]

"Hey, so long as you're back and you're okay," Reno replied, grinning her way while he wiped his hands on his pants. "I can't complain about class. Makin' the students sing in public this week. We'll see if any of 'em get chased outta town with rotten fruit before the weeks' through."

A pause.

"How'd it go?"

[the_merriest]

"Okay, fess up," she laughed. "Are you just amusing yourself by torturing them? You can tell me."

She took a seat, watching the flowers for a bit. As if they might do tricks.

"I ... don't know," she admitted. "I said a lot of things I really needed to say. I'm ... not sure she gets it. But I ... it felt good to say, even if she doesn't, you know?"

[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.