Stupid Spaghetti!
"Damn it!" she exclaims angrily, slamming the wooden spoon onto the countertop. He looks up quickly from the table and frowns.
"What's the matter?" he asks quietly, in that way of his. His aqua eyes shine with concern but she takes no notice, being herself too wrapped up in the drama of cooking.
"It's nothing," she grumbles irritably. He just arches a blonde brow and waits for her to explode, just like she always does. So he waits. And he waits.
And finally, his patience is rewarded.
"It's just that I can't break the spaghetti noodles without stuff flying everywhere and bits of uncooked noodles going into the sauce and onto the floor and I can't even take them out of the bag much less get them measure and into the pot and it's just all so frustrating! I hate cooking!" And with that, she picks up the spoon that she had discarded earlier to throw it down again, then she stomps out of the small kitchen.
He watches her go with a slight, slight smile curving his lips and bemused eyes, then he turns back to the pot of boiling water and the remains of the split dry noodles. He lets go of his book to scratch his brow thoughtfully, then gets up to go look at what had become of his dinner. For a very tiny moment, he ponders trying to take this up and cook the perfect meal for his little ninja, then throws the thought out with a grunt. He might be good, but he's not friggin' superman. He can't do everything.
"Uh, honey?" he calls uncertainly, afraid she will come back into the doorway with her shuriken, but she just pops her head back in to yell back at him.
"What!?" Her glare is enough to want him to curl into a ball and back away from the spaghetti, but he holds his ground.
"Honey, this water is close to blowing up. If you don't want to cook dinner, that's fine, but at least lets not burn the apartment down, okay? We just rent it, we don't own it," he jokes, half-heartedly, because all of a sudden her face morphs from angry to miserable and a big, fat tear slides down her soft cheek. He jumps when he notices it, then glides gracefully in two meaningful steps to stop in front of her and cup her cheeks with his hands.
With the pads of his thumbs, he gently rubs away the tears and brushes his lips across hers with agonizing sweetness. They stay there for a few moments, enjoying the momentary peace, their lips still together, their breath mingling. Then he pushes her towards the stove and gives her a light pat on the butt.
"Now go on there, babe, and kick some spaghetti ass," he murmurs with a grin. She throws a smirk over her shoulder at him, then places her hands on her hips. She glares down at the spaghetti for a few moments, then a less-than-pure gleam sprang into her eyes.
"Now you listen here, uncooperative spaghetti. You are going to be cooked and stringy for my baby, because he killed some stupid monsters today, and he deserves a good dinner." Raising her pointer finger, she shook the digit at the spaghetti noodles. "So if you give me any more of your crap, I will break you so small, you won't even know you're spaghetti, got it?"
He just shakes his head with an amused, affectionate smile, and sits back at the table, picking up his book, but his eyes not traveling near it. He listens closely to what she is mumbling, then arches his brows and grins at her small back.
"Stupid spaghetti," she mutters, splitting the spaghetti on every down beat, "stupid, stupid spaghetti."
He is up and behind her now, and he brushes her hair away from her neck and presses his lips to the back of her neck in an appreciative kiss.
"Oh, Yuffie," he says with that idiotic smile still in place, and she leans against him, with her spoon in hand, "you make me feel a thousand years younger."
She twists her head to grin cheekily up at him and winks.
"I know," she says, "but I love you." She kisses his collarbone (which is the only thing she can reach) and wrinkles up her nose. "And I'm not exactly sure how Godo will feel about me and a man exactly one thousand and seven years older than me, but…"
He kisses her to shut her up.
Disclaimer: If I owned FFVII…I would have a really big brothel, and everyone would be invited to come and rent out Cloud, and Yuffie, and Vincent, and Sephiroth… etc, for a day or two… and I would be very, very rich. Sadly, this dream will never come to pass, because FFVII belongs to some very smart people at Square Enix. Damn them.
Author's Blurb: A Clouffie fic! Another one! This time, it really is a romance-type fic! The idea for this came when I was trying to cook spaghetti tonight for my family. That exact same problem kept occurring for me and I got really frustrated. Sadly, I didn't have a devoted Cloud to cheer me up, but oh well. We can't all be Great Ninja Princess's like Yuffie.
So if you liked this, er, review. And if you didn't like this… leave. I mean, uh, review.