DISCLAIMER: I do not own them with a cat, I do not own them with a rat. I do not own them with a dog, the only thing I own's my blog. And even that's negotiable.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Wellllllllllllllll... A songfic. One of the Forbidden Types on ff.n now, so unfortunately one that can never be published in its "entire" form on the site. Hopefully, I've managed to work the story enough around the lyrics so that the lyrics aren't necessary to understanding the story, though I wish I could leave them in because they set the mood so well. If you want to read the fic in "full" form, I've posted it up in my LiveJournal, user tairako, the link to which can be found on my bio page. For both the translation of "Hikari" and the lyrics for "Simple and Clean," I've used an absolutely fantastic site that has tons upon tons of anime, video game, and J-pop lyrics, a good many of them translated and translated well.
And this is my first Squiffie. I'm a Squiffie-nut at heart, and have trolled the archives many times in search of Squiffies to read. Soooooo, of course I had to try my hand at writing one at some point. It turned out... a little different from most Squiffies, I think, and all in all I'm not actually sure if I like it, though I'll say that it certainly turned out interesting for me (yeah, "interesting" is my catchword - I overuse it quite a bit) and I like the way it ended. I had a way I wanted it to go, but it didn't want to go there. Eventually I just had to turn it loose to do whatever it wanted, and this is the result. I have ideas for other Squiffies as well, including one that would probably be a many-chapter affair, but the problem is they're all songfics! Even the multi-chapter one! Ah well, we'll see what happens. First I'd need time to write, which is in very short supply this semester... But hey, I hope you enjoy this, or at least not hate reading it .:chuckle:. It's all I ask, really.
Both "Hikari" and "Simple and Clean" are property of Utada Hikaru and various others, and I make no profit nor claim any ownership of those songs. They're simply very good songs - ones that I enjoy and ones that inspired this story. I can only hope I've done them justice.
And I figure if they can have modern ceiling fans, they can have television :) Onward!
Leon didn't know what had awakened him; usually he slept like a rock, falling asleep right when he hit the bed and waking up, in some unfathomable way, at exactly whichever time in the morning he chose to, as if he had an internal alarm clock that was accurate to the millisecond. It was rare for him to suddenly gain consciousness, and when he did it usually meant trouble. Reaching for the gunblade balanced carefully within arm's length of the bed, he rolled over to look out the window above his headboard.
A flash of pink and a long brown braid were all he saw as Aerith ran around the corner, struggling into her red jacket as she moved in the direction of the infirmary. Leon relaxed, releasing his grip on his weapon; if it had been an emergency that involved them, she would have woken up the entire house and dragged them all with her. Settling down into his blankets again, he tried to go back to sleep.
Ten minutes later, at 1:47 AM by his bedside clock, he gave up trying. For whatever reason, he was well awake again, and his stomach was complaining. An earlier bout with some Heartless and an unexpected healing had left him desiring nothing more than a soft bed and a long sleep when he'd arrived home, leading him to miss dinner and collapse into his pillows. The early bedtime was possibly the reason Aerith's leaving had disturbed him, with his body informing him that it had had enough sleep, thank you, and now what it wanted was some food. Struggling sluggishly to his feet and pulling on the shirt that he'd just tossed on the floor earlier, he left his room and headed down to the kitchen, wondering what was there that didn't require cooking.
After satisfying his hunger with an apple and some toast (unfortunately there hadn't been anything to just heat up), Leon headed back upstairs, hoping he could go to sleep again as it was almost two in the morning and he needed to be at least somewhat alive for training the next day. About to turn down the hall to his room, he caught a flicker of something coming from the other direction and looked back to investigate.
A door down the hall was propped open a little, allowing some light to spill out into the hall, along with some sound – voices that certainly weren't in the room and a high-pitched laugh. He had to sigh, a sigh which was more of a groan, as he raked his long brown hair out of his face. Yuffie. She was still awake, and he was willing to bet that she hadn't been sleeping before as he had been. It wasn't smart at all; she knew he was going to come drag her out of bed in about six and a half hours, and this wasn't the first time he'd caught her up at this hour. How in the hell did she always have so much energy, both in fighting and in her personality, if she never got enough sleep?
But instead of moving forward, opening her door, and chastising her as he'd done in the past, for some reason Leon only took one step before faltering. Facing Yuffie now, alone, meant facing something he could no longer deny. He'd been able to ignore, disbelieve, explain, rationalize, or lie to himself every time it had come up, but he just couldn't any longer. Not after today.
Yuffie was in love with him. There was no longer any way around it; at the battle earlier, when he'd taken his wound, something he certainly didn't like but had happened before, she'd jumped in front of him without thinking to defend him from the onslaught of the Heartless, apparently not realizing that the wound was on his shoulder and he could still fight. True, it was much easier to fight when he could wield the gunblade with both hands, but he'd trained specially for this occurrence and she knew that. She'd seen him going through the practice patterns down in the waterway, strengthening his arms and wrists so he could be prepared for any challenge. But she'd just jumped in anyway, taking over his fight with a sort of desperation to her movement that made absolutely no sense yet was perfectly transparent in its motives.
And after the fight – which had ended quickly when he plunged back into the fray – she'd insisted on healing him. She wasn't a bad healer, very capable at quick field patch ups, but they both knew Aerith was better. Before this, she'd always just help him back to her if the wound was severe enough. If it wasn't, as with this one, Yuffie would simply take care of it quickly and never a word to Aerith, who would fret kindly over him. This time she was almost panicked as she literally shoved him to the ground, saying he needed to rest before he collapsed, and cast the strongest curative spell on him she knew although he didn't in any way need it. And when she'd caught him giving her an odd look, she'd turned as red as the sun and quickly got up, moving swiftly in the direction of their residence.
Aerith had been insisting for almost a year that Yuffie had developed feelings for him, ever since that one other time, the only one, she'd done anything near approaching what she'd done today and he'd gone to the healer for advice. Since then, there had been nothing that he could detect, yet Aerith had continued to insist there was something there. He didn't think he was that blind; he spent some time every day with the girl nearly a decade his junior, and ever since that one incident – until today – she'd been ordinary, cheerful Yuffie, the one who snuck into his room and threw all his shirts out the window when he'd pissed her off, liked to dance on the railings of the balconies that covered all the districts, and wouldn't hesitate to back him up in a fight. How could Aerith see something in that behavior when he couldn't see it himself?
Damnit, she was his partner. Even if they didn't always get along, even if they'd sometimes wanted to kill each other, that was a bond that was stronger for him than with their healer, Aerith, or their supervisor, Cid. Yuffie was the one who was by his side every day during the skirmishes, shared patrol duty, fought with in training, entered tournaments with. That was just… something that couldn't be explained. He'd often thought about just abandoning her to her own devices, and once or twice even seriously begun preparations for it, but he'd never been able to follow through on those threats. She watched his back and he watched hers; it was a fair trade, one that kept them and the rest of the town safe as well. After so many years together they knew each others moves, knew what every yell meant. More than anyone in the world, even though her childish antics sometimes made him want to strangle her, he trusted that girl. And he didn't want that partnership broken up because of something stupid like this.
Leon groaned quietly again, resigned. Now that the memory of the fight and all those thoughts had come up again, he knew there was no way he could rest. Perhaps two in the morning wasn't the best time to do this, but something had decided that two in the morning was the perfect time for him to do this. Another laugh, louder this time, drifted out the door as the girl giggled hysterically at something he hadn't heard. Once again silently cursing whatever form of fate was present in his life, Leon shook his head and moved down the hallway to Yuffie's room – glad he'd remembered to put a shirt on.
Pausing once again at the door to her room, he looked through the sliver of opening as unobtrusively as he could, taking one more moment to prepare himself for this. She was sitting on her bed in a tank top and shorts, hand over her mouth as she muffled her laughter at the television. Add up yet another area they were complete opposites in: while he preferred his entertainment bound in a hardback, she lived with the remote in her hand much as it was now. A rather large bowl of something sat next to her on the bed, and the lights in the room were off to allow her to see the television better, showing a program he couldn't identify even if he wanted to. She appeared absolutely nothing like earlier, once again just normal, happy Yuffie. Since she wasn't doing anything embarrassing, he didn't bother to knock and instead just pushed the door open, walking in and startling her into squeaking. He made a mental note that they'd have to work more on her ability to sense things around her in the morning.
"Squall!" she yelped, giving him one of her characteristic irritated looks. He didn't know who she thought she was fooling; he could tell she wasn't as ticked off as she wanted to make him think she was. "Don't you ever knock?"
"It's Leon." The phrase was automatic by now; she'd never fully adjusted to his name change, and the way she'd address him by name just seemed up to whatever whim she had at the time. "And your door wasn't closed."
Fwump. She threw a pillow at him, which he caught. "But it wasn't fully open either. That means 'knock'."
Ignoring that, he walked over to her bed, sitting down near her feet (and effectively blocking her view of the television), dropping her pillow next to him. "What happened today?"
Yuffie had the grace to turn a faint pink, which he could barely see in the low light from the TV, and avert her gaze from him slightly, crossing her thin arms over her chest after she muted the program. "You mean, the fight?" He nodded silently, waiting for her to go on. "Err…" She paused, apparently debating something, then looked him right in the eye, brown meeting blue. "You were going to die."
Leon blinked in surprise; he hadn't expected her to actually answer his question, and if he had he wouldn't have expected that particular answer. "Yuffie, that wound was small. I could keep fighting fine."
She shook her head, short black hair whipping around her face. "No, you don't get it. Those Heartless, the ones we were fighting, were poisonous."
"Poisonous?"
A nod this time, and the small blush, which had receded, came back again as she once again averted her eyes. "Do you remember last week, when you still wanted to train but I was bored with the drill?" He nodded; it had led to another argument, which had probably half been caused by the unseasonable heat of the day, and ended with her stomping out of the waterway in her wet sneakers. "Well, I… went looking for trouble." Her blush deepened again. "I just wanted to beat something up, and beating you up is about as easy as beating up the clock tower or something like that. About as frustrating, too, actually. But I found some Heartless in Third District and just started to fight, and it was going well until I got hurt. It was small, and I didn't think much of it, but after the Heartless were dead it was really painful and it felt like I was getting paralyzed in slow motion. That's what wounded you today."
Confusion was now the main thing on Leon's mind, and his face, normally neutral, reflected it. "But I didn't feel anything like that."
"Adrenaline rush," Yuffie supplied. "I looked it up in one of Aerith's books later. It said the poison spread much more easily with movement as well. Which is why I didn't want you fighting." She shook her head a little, not blushing anymore since he hadn't jumped on her for looking for a fight. "You were supposed to stay out of it and give the poison as little chance to work on you as possible, but of course you can't exactly explain to brainless Heartless that you have to stop a battle in order to get your partner to lie down comfortably on a bench until they were all dead, can you? So I tried to take over your fight, but you fought anyway. I think you were lucky it ended so fast, otherwise I couldn't have done anything. It's a fast-acting poison."
"But… the Curaga?"
"Fast. Acting." She gave him a bit of an annoyed look. "Powerful. From what the book said, it doesn't kill you, but paralysis in the middle of a fight will get you killed anyway. I didn't know how much had gotten through your system, so I used extreme measures." Yuffie shrugged again. "I did the same to myself, and it worked."
"Well…" For once, Leon was almost at a loss for words. If she was telling the truth – and he had no reason to suspect she wasn't, he even remembered her collapsing into bed last week as he'd done just that night – she'd gotten him out of a horrendous situation even before he knew he was in it. And really, what more could he ask of his partner? "Thank you, Yuffie."
She finally smiled, an easy smile that showed off the dimple at the corner of her mouth, unmuting the television. "No problem. What're partners for, anyway?"
"What indeed," he said quietly, noting the similarities their thought patterns had drifted into after her explanation. Perhaps Aerith had a point after all, on some level: while he still didn't think Yuffie loved him, especially now that the fight had been explained, if they had almost the exact same thoughts they had to be closer than he ever imagined them to be. Two completely opposite personalities had come to the same conclusion. Maybe that just meant it was the right one.
"Squall?"
"It's Leon," he replied automatically. And he must be getting tired, for her to notice his distraction. He shook his head a little to clear it, blinking as a new thought formed just out of reach, evading his grasp though he thought it might be important.
"All right, all right…" The ninja peered at him, head slightly tilted, then picked up the bowl next to her and pushed it right under his face. "Chocolate?"
Tilting his head back slightly to see better, he could see what had once been a block of chocolate. Yuffie seemed to have broken the entire thing, surely more than even she could eat in one sitting, into bite-sized pieces and was munching on one as she waited for his answer. He shook his head to decline, and she gave him a small pout before pulling the bowl back to her and popping two more in her mouth. "Your loss."
"I bet." And another division between them: her worship of junk food. Giving up on that fleeting thought, Leon stood and stretched, feeling his back crack in one spot down low, before walking over to the television and snapping it off.
"HEY!"
"I'm waking you up in six hours," he said in his tone of amusement, which only Yuffie, Aerith, and Cid could pick up on. "You need to sleep."
She snorted and clicked the TV on again with the remote. "I don't need to sleep that bad!"
"Are you planning on getting more than four hours tonight for a change?"
"Move it, Leon! You're blocking the picture!"
He just shook his head, walking over to the bed. "You did this to yourself, you know." He was fast; she was faster. But he was standing. He made a lunge for the remote and completely ignored her yell of protest, though he did feel it when one of her feet accidentally kicked him in the stomach as she tried to scramble away with her prize. Latching one hand firmly on the very end of the remote, the scuffle quickly turned into a tug-of-war between his greater strength but weaker grasp and her smaller frame but two handed-pull. Back and forth they tugged, neither gaining the upper hand, until a very devious idea crossed Leon's mind and he let go completely while Yuffie was yanking back. With another yelp the girl tumbled back into her pillows, but she didn't drop the remote as he'd planned for, instead curling protectively around it as quickly as she could. With one last half-hearted swipe, knowing he'd lost this round, Leon gave up on the remote. "Just get some sleep, all right?"
Yuffie muttered something he couldn't understand as he turned to leave, making him shake his head. But before he got out the door, something railroaded through his mind, making him stop right in the middle of the floor.
Wait a minute…
Yuffie finally opened one eye and tilted her head up to look at him when she didn't hear him leave, or turn off the TV. "Squall?"
"You didn't explain everything." Her eyes widened in shock as he didn't correct her, sitting up carefully. Leon didn't even notice the slip up, although somehow he'd always been able to hear them before, even when she was half-asleep and had a numb tongue. But now he turned back to look at her, that thought from before finally in his grasp. He watched her, thoroughly bewildered and showing it for the first time, ever, and he could easily see on her face that she didn't really have any idea how to handle him in this situation. "I understand the poison and all that… but why didn't you explain all that then?"
Even in the dim light of the television, her face flushing a brilliant red was highly obvious. She drew her knees up to herself, wrapping her arms around her legs, and resting her chin on her knees. "You made me nervous."
"I made you nervous."
"Yes, nervous, all right, nervous!" she almost snapped, face still lobster red. "You were looking at me like I was out of my mind and I just… just left."
"You've never had to do that before."
"I know I haven't, and stop sounding like you're gonna accuse me of something, damnit!" Yuffie wasn't looking at him at all, despite the strong tone of her voice. "You're still making me nervous!"
"Why in the world should I make you nervous?"
Yuffie said nothing.
Leon reached out and flicked the television off again, plunging the room into darkness except for the bit of light that trickled in from behind her curtains. Silence fell, stretching between them, somehow making her even farther away even though she hadn't moved an inch. And in the face of no other good explanation of all her actions, Leon had to fall back on Aerith's year-old pronouncement.
"Yuffie… what do you feel about me?"
AUTHOR'S NOTES II: To be continued! And please let me know if there are any typos I need to take care of!