Disclaimer: I do not own claim ownership rights to FFX-2 or any of its contents.
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"Ow! Hey, be careful, Yuna!"
"Sorry, sorry. Hmm . . . well, these don't look too bad. A hi-potion should take care of it. Hold on a second."
The mattress springs squeaking harshly, Yuna stood from her stop at the foot of the bed and headed over to the corner of her and Tidus' small hotel room, where a bag of equipment and items had been haphazardly thrown upon their arrival. After unzipping it, removing a few wrinkled bits of clothing, and moving them off to the side, she got to work in her search for a hi-potion amongst the remaining mess, various bottles clinking together as she sifted through them.
"I can't believe I let that guy knock me out of the sphere," Tidus grumbled to himself, irritably wringing the shirt that he'd been wearing up until a moment ago between his hands. "Stupid. I should have been paying attention."
"You were taking a shot," Yuna argued, excitedly removing a bottle only to find herself staring with disappointment at a remedy. "You had more important things to worry about. It's all right."
"Didn't even make the shot," she heard him mumbling under his breath, and she couldn't help but sigh. Frankly, she didn't see what he was so upset about. Even if they hadn't won, a tie was good, and they had a tiebreaker game coming up tomorrow. They still had a perfectly good chance of advancing. Then again, this was Tidus after all. Star player of the Zanarkand Abes and faultless in every which way when it came to the arena. At least, that's what he seemed to think his bare minimum should be, unfortunately.
Finally coming upon what seemed to be the only hi-potion in the entire bag, Yuna got to her feet, turning back toward him. To say the least, he looked all sorts of disheveled and gloomy, hunched over with his sopping wet hair hanging in his eyes. The fact that the late-afternoon sunshine (which made the area of Luca outside their hotel room window look absolutely beautiful) only shone on his back and cast the rest of him into shadow didn't exactly help much, either.
"Here," she said sympathetically, uncorking the bottle and handing it over.
With a tired, unenthusiastic mutter of, "Thanks," Tidus took it from her and swiftly downed the concoction within, his face twisting into a strange expression of disgust once it was gone. As long as Yuna had known him, he'd never liked the taste of hi-potions (though, for some strange reason, he was partial to that of X-potions, which she detested immensely).
"Feeling better?" Yuna asked, plopping down behind him once again and inspecting his back. As she had expected, the hi-potion had successfully taken care of all the cuts and scrapes that he'd gotten after being rammed from the blitzball sphere and falling rather gracelessly into the crowd (though Yuna would never describe it that way; it would only make his mood worse).
"Yeah," Tidus admitted, nodding shortly. "Just kind of sore."
Sure enough, as Yuna ran her fingers along his back in search of any cuts her eyes might have missed, every muscle she touched felt like it'd been twisted into a knot (or two). With his muscles that warped, almost any sort of movement was going to be torture.
Pausing for a moment, Yuna narrowed her eyes at the floor, watching her own bare toes and she wiggled them absently. Aside from basic, everyday potions, Yuna hadn't really packed much else. Certainly nothing that would help here. She wasn't even sure if there was a potion for sore muscles, and if there was, it was probably rather expensive. After all, a masseuse did they same thing, and they were hardly cheap—
And suddenly, though she would have never thought she'd live to think such a thing, Yuna reminded herself to thank LeBlanc the next time she saw her.
"Here, lay down," Yuna said, patting the freshly made bed beside the blonde.
"Hmm?" Tidus responded, glancing over his shoulder at her.
"Something else I learned while you were gone," Yuna explained, patting it once again. "Come on. Lay down." Then, as a quick afterthought, she added, "On your stomach." Best not to confuse him.
Raising an eyebrow at her, Tidus shrugged and (after hissing violently at the pain it caused him), did as he was told. "I can keep the pants on, right?"
"I'd be worried if you didn't," Yuna joked back, though she couldn't keep a bit of color from tingeing her cheeks (for all her talk and experience, and as much as she hated to admit it, she was still a good girl at heart). Crawling further up onto the bed and kneeling beside him, Yuna gently rested her hands along his spine and splayed her fingers out, trying to remember what it was she had done with LeBlanc. It had been over a year now since she'd initially learned of her strange inborn 'talent', and even then it had taken a few tries to get it just right.
Well, first off, she realized she was sitting the wrong way. Sliding over a bit, she rested her weight to her left and expertly threw her other knee over him, straddling his hips. As could be expected, this got a rather surprised reaction from the blonde, who whipped around to stare at her so rapidly she could have sworn she heard his neck crack (another thing for her to fix). Giggling at the humorous display, she rested her hands on his back again, and explained, "Don't worry, this is just the position. Just try to relax, okay?"
Mumbling something indistinct and seemingly sarcastic about that being so easy, he once again diligently obeyed her instructions, bringing his arms up and resting his head on them. Trust Tidus to prefer the hard muscle of his arms as a pillow to the soft mattress and blankets right below.
Shutting her eyes and once again spreading her fingers over his back, Yuna slowly began going through the motions that she remembered. Her hands doing a crabwalk along the sides of his spine, she stopped at his shoulders, lightly grasping the flesh and muscle there and starting to knead it. Apparently a little too hard.
"Ahh!" Tidus yelped in pain, gritting his teeth against it. "Yuna! Ow!"
"Sorry!" Yuna apologized frantically, ripping her hands away as swiftly as if she had been bitten. All right, she wouldn't start at the shoulders. Moving her hands instead to his lower back, she closed her eyes and did her best to focus. What was it that LeBlanc had liked (and now she felt rather unclean thinking that)? The memories slowly leaking into her mind like the last drops of water from a cauldron, she turned her fingers inward and pressed down cautiously. When no whine of pain came forth from Tidus as a result, she eased the gentle pressure, moved her hands an inch or so upward, and pressed down again, this time with a bit more confidence.
Seemingly a moment later (though in reality it had been quite a bit longer), she was back at his shoulders, pressing down on them much more gently than she had before. "How's that?" she asked, leaning forward so that he could hear her better.
"Mmhm," he replied rather unintelligently, as it came out as more of a moan than a response.
"Good," she said sweetly, smiling to herself. Even though his muscles still had the consistency of a block of wood, at least she was making progress. As she reached the base of his neck, she eased the pressure and drew her hands apart, letting her fingertips run gently along the outer sides of his back. Unable to help it, she indulged herself by bringing her fingers around to glide along the very sides of his ribs, tickling him a little and making him tense up.
"Hey," he complained, his voice a bit slurred as he turned his head to look at her (though he hardly turned it more than a few inches before he gave up and laid back down again).
"Don't fall asleep on me now," she teased as she brought her hands back to the base of his spine. "You've got a lot of kinks to work out."
And so she kept at it, moving her hands gently but firmly up along his back, every now and again switching up her technique (unfortunately, she only had two to alternate between; she really should have tried to learn a few more). Though it was a slow progression, eventually the wooden consistency of his muscles receded, giving way to a soft, putty-like feel. Though once in a while she might receive a pained hiss from him (she hadn't completely gotten it down yet), the majority of his responses came in the form of relaxed, contented moans, and Yuna could do little to keep herself from smiling.
Unfortunately, she knew she'd have to stop soon. From it's position in the sky, Yuna guessed that the sun would be setting soon, and Rikku was going to be by anytime to abduct both her and Tidus and take them out for a bit of fun (and though Yuna trusted Rikku, she couldn't help but feel a little nervous, remembering the way Rikku had waggled her eyebrows when she'd informed her of these plans).
Then, somehow, thinking of Rikku reminded her of something else; something that had her face burning in a matter of seconds. "Try this on him," she heard the Al Bhed's voice ringing deviously in her head. "Just sneak up behind him and give it a try. It'll get his attention lickity-split." While Yuna would normally start wondering anew where her cousin—who seemed much more enthused by machina than men—had learned something like that, her curiosity toward how well it would work was the more powerful of the two interests at hand.
Leaning over just slightly and glancing at what she could see of Tidus' face, she realized that he probably did need waking up. They would have to get ready soon, and from the sleepy look on his face, he'd hardly be willing to jump up and start moving in his current condition. Plus, even though a good portion of her felt unsure and anxious at the idea, the greater part of her was all too willing to give it a try.
Slowly and quietly so that he wouldn't notice, she bent over until her face was at the crook of his neck. After licking her lips nervously, she shut her eyes and let a warm, gentle breath graze the tanned skin of his shoulder and neck. His reaction was almost instantaneous, the muscles she'd worked so hard to relax tensing up beneath her cheek. "Yuna?" she heard him say slowly, uneasily. "What are you doing?"
"Waking you up," she offered, her voice innocent while her smile was anything but. Shifting until she was eye-level with his shoulders, she pressed a kiss between his shoulder blades that might have been mistaken for demure under different circumstances. He made a strange little noise at that—somewhere between a whine and a groan. A chuckle in her throat, she lightly ran a thumb along the ridges of his spine, placing a second kiss not an inch below the site of the first. Then, she pressed a third right below that, running a trail of feather-brush kisses on down his spine. A fourth; she let her hands splay out across the small of his back, resting coyly at his hips. A fifth; his breathing was suddenly heavy and strained, and she could feel him moving beneath her lips. A sixth; smile mischievously at her own daring, she hooked her thumbs under the slippery black fabric of his pants, sliding her hands around to his front . . .
Though she made to continue, that was apparently all Tidus could take. Suddenly, the once relaxed, sluggish blonde had his whip-crack reflexes back, and in the next instant he was up and on his side, a yelp on Yuna's lips as she tried to not be thrown off the bed. Then, suddenly, she was back to straddling his hips, his hands gripping her above the elbow almost yearningly. However, before she could make her surprise known (she'd know he was fast, but not that fast), she found herself pressed up against that chiseled blitzer's torso of his, her lips ensnared by an unexpectedly hungry kiss. Well, that was a bit surprising. Who knew she would have riled him that much? Was she really that good? However, hardly a moment after the thought entered her mind, he pulled away, his eyes and smile all but promising vengeance before he ducked to the side, brushing her hair away and kissing a trail across her neck. Then, suddenly, his hands weren't at her elbows anymore, and—
An extremely undignified, uncontrolled yelp-slash-gasp on her lips, she arched against his kneading fingers, meanwhile doing everything in her power to keep from writhing at the touch. Oh yes, he had put her to shame. And, if the smug smirk he gave her was any indication, he was well aware of it.
The sun, she realized, couldn't be more than a speck over the buildings by now, if the dim light filtering into the room was any indication. Rikku would be here anytime and, knowing her, she would probably burst in without a second thought. And yet, though she was perfectly aware of the disaster that was to come (because really, there was no better way to describe a situation like that), as she swooped in for another blue-lipped kiss, Yuna somehow couldn't bring herself to worry.
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A/N: This is an old one, and I must admit, reading it makes me cringe a bit. However, there was still apparently some interest in it, and as it did not have a permanent home, I figured that this would be a good place to it to go. Hope you all enjoy!