Disclaimer: I don't own either of the games or their respective characters.
They called it 'Heaven' and it's apt enough. Compared to its surroundings, the bar had managed to scrape together as much homeliness as it could gather. The air was thick with heavy hearts and the contrast oddly soothed him.
Stranger still were the kids sprawled on the floor, playing a round of 'Go Fish!'.
Then again, Heaven played home to worse scoundrels from the looks of things. He shifted slightly on the heels of his feet, unsure of his place. Then he looked down over the shoulder of one of them, a boy with hair a dusty shade of sawdust. Eight cards in total; he could make out a three of hearts and an ace of diamonds. The boy chose the latter and raised it to the girl lying across from him.
"Ace of hearts?"
"No… I mean, 'Go Fish'."
Oh, so this was more like 'Happy Families' than the usual rules? The synonyms were beginning to get to him.
When someone's watching, they made a watching sound. The boy must have heard him watching because he turned and looked up, cornflower blue eyes peering curiously through a tufty fringe. So he heard someone else watching too, measuring his actions by theirs. But instead of down to the floor, he faced the bar.
Now if he had to sum her up in a few florid praises, maybe even some sonnets, he'd have brushed those all aside because why gush a river, when a single drop would do?
So, given a phrase or two, she was… kinda hot.
If not the smiley bubbly type, he guessed.
Well he'd fix that. All he had to do was flick a loose strand of russet hair away from his face, flash the trademark smirk and wait for a blush or a wink to flutter his way. He straightened his back for better effect, listening for anything other than the watching and the listening and the judging and the cards shuffling.
She blinked.
So… that had to count for two winks, right?
He figured that the ringing in his head was a nearby phone and not an alarm-bell when she suddenly stepped back into a narrow hallway, leaving the kids with a cautionary glance and him with a frown. The tear-off calendar tacked on the wall behind the bar stopped at February 14. The connotations had him wincing; lonely bar, a faded pair of kids keeping silent company, him, and her. The voice that wafted in from behind the door she'd left ajar was a soft, reassuring one.
"… no, Cloud, it's definitely not him again. Unless Turks do the whole rubber mask and smooth operator decoy thing now…"
She lost him at that name. What kind of a friggin' name was 'Cloud'?
"Ah, 'Go Fish'!" The boy peered triumphantly from behind his deck.
He heard the phone clicking back into place and the echoing thud of footsteps growing nearer.
"Anything I can get you, sir?"
The smile snuck back onto his lips because no one who knew better would ever call him that and, frankly, it tickled. "A name would do."
"Lockheart. And yes, I do mean well by that."