Why AVALANCHE celebrations are not encouraged
Author: uniFsky
Author's note/disclaimer: Most of the characters in here may be slightly OOC, due to overdramatization of the certain aspects of their characters. With that being said, I do not hate any of the characters in Final Fantasy VII (with the exception of Don Corneo). This ficcie was written in the spirit of pure fun. And if I did own Final Fantasy VII... well, the whole point is that I don't. *sobs heartbreakingly in a corner*
Warnings: Beware of one crack pairing, other pairings, drunken revelers, and cursing.
Let us begin, dear reader, at the Seventh Heaven bar. It is a regular-sized, homey place inhabited by Cloud Strife (the angsting hero), Tifa Lockheart (the faithful, childhood sweetheart), Marlene (an inquisitive child), and Denzel (a slightly duller child).
The night during which our narration takes place begins like this: AVALANCHE had come together to celebrate the sixth anniversary of the prevention of Meteor, after all the children had been put to bed. Or as Cid eloquently put it, to celebrate "when we almost had our fuckin' asses handed out to us by that damn nutcase Sephiroth." It was not a wise move. Shera, about seven months into her pregnancy and highly hormonal, took a sudden dislike to any form of crudeness (despite living with a husband who swore almost every other sentence) and slapped him. Hard. Her glare would have put Bahamut to shame, and left Cid cowering into his seat, wondering what he did to offend the damn woman this time.
Barret roared with laughter, and whispered not-so-conspiratorially in his ear, "You been whipped, man." This launched another round of very loud manly arguing between the two not-very-friendly friends. Shera continued to glare disapprovingly.
At the bar, Cloud and Tifa merely shook their heads and sighed. Loudly. Cloud resumed staring into the bottom of his shot glass, convinced that it held the answers to everything in the universe, including life and what comes after. He may or may not have been thinking about Aeris. Tifa, who had a developed case of woman's intuition (not to mention the size of her womanly assets), picked up on his vulnerability and sympathetically poured him some more hard liquor. She sensed victory was near; just a little more would do the trick...
Strange behavior, no? But they have a very good reason for the rampant strangeness. They are all drunk. Did I mention they were all drunk at any point so far in this narration? I suppose not. Well, now you know. And just as Tifa was about to get her hands on the handsomely tortured Cloud, the door to Seventh Heaven swung open. A melancholy Reeve Tuesti walked through, followed by Nanaki (otherwise known as Red XIII). He was still talking to Nanaki, and the rest of AVALANCHE, inebriated as they were, could hear very clearly every word he said.
"But it's not that simple!" Reeve protested. He looked anxious, and he wrung his hands nervously.
"It is that simple," Nanaki growled. He swung in front of Reeve and stared him down. "You are attracted to her, and she is not unfriendly toward you. I am sure that if you asked her out to dinner, she would not refuse. And if she does refuse, it's no great matter. There will be other girls." Exasperated, Nanaki said, "This is why I do not understand humans. If you see a potential mate, you should just ask. It's not a big deal, and it's not marriage." He swished his tail pointedly.
"...but I like her," Reeve mumbled. At this admission, everybody's ears perked up. They say that little pitchers have big ears, but the same is true of large pitchers. If anything, their ears are bigger.
".., and you should--what?"
"I like Shelke," Reeve said despondently.
"...that is a problem," Nanaki admitted.
A long, awkward silence followed. Then Tifa surged up from her position at the bar and swung an alarmingly large bottle threateningly, as she shouted drunkenly, "WHAT THE HELL'S THE MATTER!? I CAN'T GET CLOUD, BUT I'M NOT MOPING AM I? DON'T GIVE UP!"
"YEAH, don' fuckin' give up shit without a FIGHT, ya hear me? I got SHERA, didn' I?" Cid roared. Shera gave a very chilling sort of smile that promised retribution before, fortunately for Cid, her pregnant body decided enough was enough and she fell asleep.
Reeve smiled reluctantly. "Thanks."
Meanwhile, Cloud stealthily relocated to a table away from the scarily violent Tifa. He very desperately did not want to get hit by that that giant bottle she was swinging. Also, he stayed silent for he had nothing to contribute, for the woman he loved lay at the bottom of a lake in the City of Ancients right now.
Nanaki sighed. "I need a drink. And I do not want to think about human love affairs anymore." He directed an accusatory look toward Reeve. Barret handed him his mug, and he drank it faster than a dehydrated organism in a desert.
Reeve sighed. Now what was he going to do? He'd discovered that he really liked Shelke that way only recently. One day he'd bumped into her in the corridor and as he turned around to apologize, he suddenly noticed how pretty she was, her clear eyes gazing at him to pass it off as another stage in friendship didn't help, and he couldn't even keep up a firm wall of Denial. Every time she smiled at him, his heart experienced a noticeable jolt of warmth, and his day went from questionably pleasant to butterflies and rainbows.
Barret gave him a calculating look, before thinking that thinking was overrated, anyway. He grabbed another mug, and shoved it into Reeve's hands. Surprised, Reeve pushed it away.
"But..." Reeve began weakly.
"NAW, come on buddy!" Barret exclaimed uproariously. "DRINK!" He shoved the frothy mug of beer conveniently provided by a tipsy Tifa into Reeve's reluctant hands.
He looked at the mug sadly. Life had not gone well for him, and he probably wouldn't even get a date with the girl he loved. So much for being a good guy. Reeve decided right then and there that he'd had enough of being a good guy. He held the mug firmly, squared his shoulders, and said, "Well, all right, maybe just a little..."
.~.0.~.
The next day, the door to Seventh Heaven jingled merrily as it opened. Footsteps clicked on the polished hardwood floor, and then abruptly stopped. Vincent, Yuffie, and Shelke paused. They blinked. And they blinked again.
Let me give you a little description of the scene that Vincent, Yuffie, and Shelke are currently seeing.
At the far back of the bar, Cloud had draped himself artistically over a table in an attitude of utter despair. His hair shone prettily, ethereally blonde in the dim light and framed his surprisingly delicate facial features in a way that would have had numerous famous artists in rapture over the 'fallen angel' image. It would have made a very tragically beautiful picture too, if not for the thin line of drool coming out of the corner of his mouth. A little distance away, Tifa had collapsed on top of the counter, and fallen asleep hugging a large bottle of booze. She mumbled, very creepily, something that sounded like "...mine... Cloud... f'nally mine... heheheh..."
... Let's move on.
Where the booth seats were, Barret had slumped over in an unconscious heap of large, snoring man. He looked, quite frankly, like a large bear hibernating the volume turned on high. Next to him, Cid slept with his head on Shera's shoulder. Shera's hand twitched in her sleep. It looked suspiciously like she was trying to strangle something. Closer to the doorway, a patheticallly unconscious Reeve sprawled on the ground with his back to Nanaki. Empty bottles lay scattered around the unconscious slumberers.
In short, the rest of AVALANCHE and Seventh Heaven itself looked like a disaster zone.
The three sober onlookers stared for a while in stunned silence. Yuffie winced as she muttered, "They'll need sooo many hangover meds, it's not even funny."
Vincent nodded in agreement. In his Turk days, there had been many a drunken celebration. He had been in enough of them to know approximately how many hangover cures would be needed. Most of the credit could be given to his unusually high tolerance for alcohol even before Hojo's experimentation, so he often ended up as the one in charge (more like the only person able) of purchasing and distributing the cures. It was an ironic twist of fate that he would have to find hangover cures for his friends even as an ex-Turk.
Shelke looked mostly just horrified. "Vincent Valentine, Yuffie Kisaragi, is this normal for behavior for your friends?"
"Yup, on this day at least," Yuffie chirped brightly. "It's the sixth anniversary of anti-Jenova day. I guess they got started on celebrating early without Vince or me."
"By the quantity of bottles I see, we may need a box of hangover cures this time," Vincent stated.
They all looked around the room again.
"I guess we might as well go to Wall Market and buy them right now." Yuffie put her hands on her hips. "They'll probably wake up all 'ouchy' and 'my brain's exploding'. I don't wanna face a hungover Teef, either. A hungover Tifa's scary." She shuddered. "Anyway, we might as well leave right now and start buying those hangover meds." She skipped to the door, and paused when she noticed that Shelke wasn't moving. "You coming, Shelke?"
Shelke looked down at Reeve, propped up against Red XIII with his hair hanging forlornly in his face. "No," she said decisively. "I'll stay."
Vincent and Yuffie exchanged knowing looks. Yuffie bounded over to her and whispered in her ear, "You go get him, girl! And let me know how it goes later, 'kay?" She winked at Shelke, who blushed.
"We will meet again in an hour," Vincent confirmed solemnly.
Yuffie glared. "You and your super-duper-hearing! It was a girl-to-girl talk!"
His face was studiously blank as he said, "I heard nothing that indicated it was of a romantic nature."
Yuffie pouted rebelliously, before the twitch of her lips reluctantly gave into a smile. She hooked her arm around Vincent's and dragged him out the door, throwing over her shoulder a "See yah!" and a thumbs-up to Shelke.
.~.0.~.
Reeve woke into the curiously muggy state between consciousness and unconsciousness. He drifted in that state for a while, before a stabbing lance of pain shot through his head. Reeve groaned. The pain that an insane Sephiroth with Masamune at the ready could make was nothing compared to this. Being a good guy definitely had merits, he thought belatedly. Good guys didn't get massive hangovers. This was the last time he'd ever listen to Barret's advice.
"How do you feel?" a feminine voice inquired.
"... bad," he managed to grit out, and turned his head around to face the speaker.
What Reeve experienced next was nothing short of a religious experience. He saw Shelke's perfectly beautiful face surrounded by a bright aureole of sunlight, looking at him. He thought he'd seen an angel.
However, in reality, the impression had only seemed this way because Reeve's foggy morning vision had combined with the sun behind Shelke's back. The fact that he was in love, and that all those in love are biased may have been a factor as well.
Reeve didn't care though. He just stared at the enchanting vision he was sure had to be a hallucination. That is, until Shelke tentatively touched his shoulder. Then he thought he was in Hell. The girl he really, really liked was standing in front of him, and he was... not at his best. Fine, he was hungover, miserable, and probably looked absolutely horrible. How embarrassing could it get?
"Reeve?" Shelke asked worriedly.
"I-It's nothing..." Reeve winced. "I'll be fine, and, well, sorry for all this..." He gestured to the general messiness around him. Then the evil lance of hangover pain struck again, and he moaned pitifully. Great. Another reason for her to reject him. Potential suitor number one has a very low pain threshold.
In the midst of his misery and depressing thought-process, he felt cool hands on his face. He blinked, and looked at Shelke in astonishment.
"Don't get me wrong," she muttered, determinedly not meeting his eyes. "Yuffie Kisaragi taught me this way to help with headaches." Shelke moved her thumbs to his temples, brushing his hair back slightly with the movement. "She said it's a Wutain method that involves pressure points."
Well, Reeve thought, this is probably as good as I'm ever going to get. Shelke giving me a head massage. He decided to lay back and enjoy the feeling of her fingers moving on his head, even if he doubted the massage would help with his hangover. At first, he thought it didn't work. But then, the overflowing pain of his headache began to recede to some distant point in his head with each movement of Shelke's hands. It felt nice. Well, if he had to be honest with himself, it felt phenomenal. "Mmm," Reeve mumbled, his brain running unchecked, "I could marry you right now."
"Reeve?"
Reeve jolted. 'Oh no,' he thought despairingly, 'what have I done? She probably thinks I'm some sort of pervert. I'm not, though! I really like her! Great job, Reeve, you just blew it.'
He began to babble. "Um, don't pay any attention to what I just said, I'm so sorry, er, no, I mean-I mean, I reallyreallylikeyousopleasegooutwithme?" He paled. He didn't mean for that to come out. He was so doomed. He looked down, as if the fabric of his shirt was the most interesting thing on the Planet.
"What did you just say?"
He looked up. Shelke had the most curious expression on her face, and it looked like she was... hopeful? Reeve's heart stuttered and began to beat again. Taking a deep breath and steeling his nerves the way he used to do before ShinRa meetings, he looked her in the eyes and said very levelly, "I really like you Shelke, so please go out with me?" He held his breath.
Shelke blinked, and then she smiled. Reeve was enraptured all over again. It was the most gorgeous thing he had ever seen in his life.
"Yes," she said simply.
It was a start.
Fini
Author's note: Blegh. I've finished typing this story at 1:47 AM. I feel... exhausted. And please, please let me know where and what I can improve with my writing. Constructive criticism and/or flaming will be welcome so long as it'll give me advice on how to write better (so long as it's not about a pairing). It's the first piece of fanfiction I've ever written and completed. Thank you for reading this ficcie!
~uniFsky