The Nature of Patience

oO0Oo

Hope was a damn attractive boy.

Like, he was almost too pretty, Lightning thought. Those expressive, pale green eyes and full, soft-looking lips and that fluffy silver hair, so fine and smooth...he was like a doll. A platinum-haired, pale-skinned, green-eyed doll boy; beautiful and soft-featured like a girl, but just masculine enough to distinguish him from the lady-folk. Yes, Hope could seem a tad girly at fist glance, no denying that, but...

Then he'd open his mouth, and god damn.

There was no mistaking that voice. The kid had a panty-dropping voice. Especially now, after he'd lived for a millennium and entirely abandoned the higher, more boyish tones he'd used back when his appearance had actually matched his age. Lightning could sit and listen to him in fascination for hours, just admiring the sound as he happily chattered on about topics she doubted she'd ever be able to wrap her mind around—because cripes, the little shit was brilliant as fuck. (He was also sassy as fuck, as she'd learned during the thirteen days she'd spent tethered to him via wireless comm.)

Of course, Lightning had always recognized that Hope was an attractive boy, ever since she'd met him. How could she not? How could anyone not? But she'd never had any kind of romantic or sexual interest in him back when they'd first adventured together. He was seven years her junior and acted like a little princess—certainly not the kind of person to ping on Lightning's romantic radar. But you see, the problem with Hope is that once you get past his bitchiness, he's actually a badass motherfucker. The kid was borderline nuts and could hold a hell of a grudge, but he could also cast a blizzaga like nobody's business, had surprisingly sharp senses, and was somehow able to understand Lightning better than anyone, bar her sister, ever had in the past or probably would in the future. He'd quickly grown into someone that Lightning cared about despite herself, and then he'd gone and closed the age gap as well. More than closed it; reversed it. The sneaky bastard.

Now, in the new world, Lightning was finally coming to terms with the fact that Hope didn't just ping on her romantic radar, he'd written his goddamn name all over it in permanent marker. This was somewhat of a problem as the fool had somehow managed to be "reborn" into his fourteen-year-old body, but luckily, it was looking like it would only be a temporary issue since he'd exhibited oddly accelerated growth since his rebirth. However, the fact remained that until he hit a more appropriate age, she couldn't glare away his various romantic pursuers without looking like a pedophile.

And Hope had many romantic pursuers. It shouldn't have come as a surprise to Lightning that he'd be popular with girls. He was smart and polite—and we've already established that he's attractive—but the sheer number of longing sighs and annoying giggles that followed him around on a daily basis irked the frick-frack-pattywack out of her. Had he been this sought-after during his time as the director of the Academy? Surely, he must've been. But he'd never mentioned any romantic involvements to her. He would, right? They were buddies. Buddies talk about stuff like that.

Sometimes Lightning thought it would make her feel better if she had droves of men flocking her wherever she went. Not that she wanted the company of loads of strangers who would really only serve to grate on her nerves and make her want to strangle half the population of the world—she wasn't any more of a people person in the new world than she'd been in the old one—but she could at least rub it in Hope's stupid, pretty face that she was as popular as he was (and hell, maybe one of them would be tolerable enough to settle for in the event that Hope didn't and would never return her feelings).

Except that nobody was interested in her. Not one person. Sure, men would occasionally approach her, but they'd usually leave with disturbed looks on their faces not long into the conversation. That was something that Lightning was finding increasingly dismaying. Sure, she could be short with people, and her preferred topics of conversation weren't the most feminine, but she didn't think she was that repulsive.

Was she?

That was something that she was going to have to talk with Serah about. Sweet Serah was every boy's dream. Surely, she would know what Lightning was doing wrong and be able to provide some helpful pointers.

Visit Serah, she did, after yet another failed conversation with a man during her morning jog through the local park with Hope. When Lightning described to her sister how the man had made a totally weirded out expression partway through their discussion about exercise and had promptly beat a hasty retreat, Serah gave her a knowing look.

"I don't understand," Lightning complained, crossing her arms and shaking her head. "I wasn't even talking about work that time. Do I have something in my teeth? Do I look like a cow?"

Serah smiled that smile of hers that told Lightning she knew something her older sister didn't. "I don't think you're the problem, sis," she said, stifling a giggle.

Lighting furrowed her eyebrows. "What do you mean? Are you saying that men just happen to suddenly contract Irritable Bowel Syndrome when they talk to me?"

Serah waved her hand in front of her dismissively. "No, no, nothing like that. Look, here's my advice," she offered, "try paying more attention to what's going on around you when that happens."

"Around me? Serah, you know I keep a careful eye out at all times," Lightning protested. "I really think it's something I'm doing."

Serah shook her head. "It's not. Believe me." At Lightning's continued skeptical look, she took her sister's hand and began leading her toward the door. "Come with me. I can prove it."

Serah brought her back to the park where she and Hope had been that morning and purchased some ice cream for the two of them to enjoy under the sunshine. Serah led her to a bench where they perched while consuming their cold treats. Sure enough, men appeared to talk to them. Most of them were more interested in Serah and would leave after she flashed her engagement ring—a gift from Snow shortly after their rebirth—but Lightning did draw the attention of one handsomely dressed fellow named Gerard who, after a short conversation, scribbled his private number on a business card and handed it to her with a wink.

"See?" Serah said after the man had departed. She stood from the bench and brushed ice cream cone crumbs off the front of her skirt before looking back up at Lightning with that same knowing expression from before. "It's not you."

Lightning thought on this as she walked back to her house. Hope was probably already there waiting for her, possibly even restocking her fridge with groceries as he often did. She still couldn't wrap her mind around it. Why had this afternoon been different? She didn't think she'd acted any differently than normal. Was Serah right, then? Was it not her, but something else?

She arrived at her door and opened it to find Hope already inside, much as she'd expected. His head popped out of the kitchen, followed by the rest of his body when he saw that the noise from the front door was, in fact, her returning. He was wearing an apron and holding a bubbling pot of pasta sauce—he liked to commandeer her kitchen upon occasion and cook her dinner; usually on days when he knew she had an extra long shift at work, but sometimes (like today, apparently) just because. "Welcome home, Light," he said in that too-goddamn-sexy-for-a-fourteen-or-however-many-years-old-boy voice, and Lightning was promptly brought back to her time in the Ark when he'd greet her like this every morning at six o'clock sharp. He smiled up at her, a few inches taller but still nowhere near surpassing her in height, and yep, he was still as stupidly attractive as he was that morning, the bastard.

His eyes flicked down to the business card she still clutched in her hand. "What's that?"

"I met a man in the park just now," she explained. "Nice guy. He gave me his card." She held up the stiff, rectangular cut of paper for Hope to see.

"Gerard Wesley," he read. A small frown tugged at his lips as he took the card from her with his free hand in order to read the finer print. "Neurosurgeon." His eyes narrowed slightly as he examined the rest of the glossy text. Lightning wondered what was going on in his fluffy silver head. "He wrote his number," he observed. His eyes travelled back up to meet her own. "Are you going to call him?"

Lightning considered that. Should she? It would be a nice change of pace to get Hope off her mind for a few hours. And she'd never really been on a date before. It could be fun. "He was rather good-looking," she mused aloud. "And he's a neurosurgeon. That's pretty impressive."

Hope's eyes flashed. Or she thought they did. She couldn't be sure because the next moment he shrugged with all the nonchalance in the cosmos and said, "You could do better."

"Better than a neurosurgeon?" she asked skeptically. You know, god-boy, not everyone is going around building planets and fal'Cie. Down here in the mortal realm, being a neurosurgeon is a big accomplishment.

Hope shrugged again and made to hand the card back to her but it slipped from his fingers and landed face down in the pot of tomato sauce. "Oh! Sorry, Light. My hand slipped."

Lightning sighed. So much for Gerard Wesley.

o0o

The ex-savior was browsing a produce display in the supermarket when she heard it. That infernal giggling that seemed to follow Hope around. The boy himself was a few feet away, standing in front of the meat counter. Probably deciding between steak and fish for the night's meal. She'd heard him muttering to himself about it before.

Hope was oblivious to the giggly gaggle of teenaged females who were admiring him from a nearby aisle, but Lightning wasn't. Her eye twitched as she overheard their conversation.

"That's Hope Estheim, isn't it?"

"Definitely. He's in my brother's class."

"Isn't he too smart for school?"

"Right? I heard he corrected Ms. Stein during one of her lectures."

"Ms. Stein? Seriously?"

"Do you think I could get him to skip with me?"

"I doubt it. I heard he kissed Rachel Foley behind the gym."

Lightning's fingernails bit into the skin of a pear.

"Rachel's a lying bitch."

"But still..."

"You should go up and introduce yourself. He's right there."

"Seriously, you should. Aren't your parents out this weekend? Killer chance!"

Lightning dropped the pear in her basket and whirled around, marching straight over to Hope. "Hurry up and decide. We're leaving," she informed him, her voice harder than she'd intended.

Hope gave her a confused look but didn't question her. He settled on the steak and as soon as the wrapped cut of meat was in his hands, Lightning began walking toward the registers. "Hey, Light! Wait up!" he called, hurrying to catch up with her.

As they passed the aisle the girls were huddled in, she heard one of them say, "Who's that? His mom?"

Lightning clenched her teeth. Did those girls not have functioning eyes? She was nowhere near old enough to be Hope's mom, especially now that he was gaining inches abnormally fast. Not to mention she looked nothing like him.

Clearly Hope heard them this time, because he caught her eye and gave her his cheekiest grin as he grabbed her arm and picked up his pace so that he was the one leading. "Come on, mom."

Punk.

As they were standing in line at the check-out, the man behind them decided to initiate conversation, which wasn't abnormal, as their town was a small and very friendly place. He was young, golden-haired fellow with shockingly blue eyes, and he gave Lightning a charming smile as he introduced himself. "Hey there. My name is Zidane. I don't think I've seen you around before."

He held out his hand and Lightning took it, giving it a polite shake. "Lightning," she said, offering him a small smile. "I'm not surprised you haven't seen me. I spend most of my time at the base. I'm on vacation right now."

Zidane gave her a curious look. "You're a soldier?"

Lightning shrugged. "More or less. I mostly just train new recruits."

"That's awesome! I have a good buddy who's a soldier. Maybe you know him. Say, if you're free sometime, maybe—" his eyes flicked to something behind her and he stopped in mid-sentence, his expression changing to one of fear. "You know what? I totally forgot to grab milk. I should go do that." He promptly exited the line and hurried off as if the hounds of hell were on his heels.

Lightning frowned. "What the hell was that?"

She faintly heard the sound of metal scraping on metal behind her and turned around to see Hope standing with his hands in his pockets. He shrugged. "That guy must really like milk."

Lightning furrowed her eyebrows and her frown grew. Something was amiss here. She couldn't put her finger on it, but something about what just happened was niggling at her brain. Perhaps she should take Serah's advice and pay more careful attention whenever a man approached her. She was going to get to the bottom of this, if her name wasn't Lightning Farron. Er, Claire Farron. Eclair Farron? Shut the fuck up.

o0o

Over the following week, Lightning went out of her way to dress nicer, smile more, and even applied a touch of makeup, all to seem more approachable to men. If she wanted a bite, she had to make sure she set out attractive bait for her targets.

Serah and Vanille and even Snow helped (although they spent an irritating amount of time giggling behind their hands. Lightning had yet to figure out what was so damn funny). Serah aided her in selecting outfits, Vanille helped her with makeup, and Snow gave her pointers on body language, and as a result of their coaching, Lightning succeeded in attracting an increased amount of interest that whole week.

She didn't waste it. She took careful notes whenever a man tried to talk to her and the first thing she noticed was that when she was out with just Serah, she never had a problem. She'd acquired an impressive stack of phone numbers just from the day she'd spent shopping with her sister. From this, Lightning generated a hypothesis that perhaps men were more confident when women were with other women. To test her theory, she spent the next day out with Fang and Vanille. Again, she returned home with a hefty stack of numbers—although when she went to add them to her collection from the day before, the first stack seemed to have vanished. Odd, but even Lightning was known to misplace things from time to time.

The next day, she went out with Snow and Hope, and the difference was astounding. Fewer men dared to approach her while in the presence of Snow and the ones who tried—usually while her hulking brother-in-law was a safe distance away—always retreated with that familiar disturbed and borderline fearful look. Whenever this happened, Snow would notice and snigger like it was the worst-kept joke on the planet and Hope would glare at him for being obnoxious. Lightning did notice one thing, however. Everything would be going fine; she'd be talking and smiling and the various men would be reciprocating as expected; and then they'd glance past her and that's when the switch would happen. Every time. Like clockwork.

After she figure that out, the next time it happened, she quickly turned around to see what the guy was looking at but all she found was Snow with a shit-eating grin on his face and Hope staring up at her curiously with his hands in his pockets.

The next day was spent with Sazh and Dajh. She didn't get many bites that day, probably because she was out with a child, but the two men she did attract both ended in success. Sazh seemed amused by this and questioned her on both her change in attire and her change in mannerisms when dealing with men. She'd shrugged and told him that she was just trying to feel out the dating scene a bit. After all, she was twenty-one and in a new world and she needed to take advantage of this opportunity.

When she'd said that, Sazh did the strangest thing. He nodded knowingly and said, "You mean not having Hope around."

Lightning frowned, completely confused by the older man's words. "What?"

Sazh looked confused by her confusion. "You know, because he's always..." he trailed off at her clear lack of understanding. His eyebrows rose and he blinked down at her. "...You don't."

"Don't what?" she demanded, scowling at being left hanging. "What about Hope?"

Sazh scratched awkwardly at his afro and turned away from her. "Er, nothing. Forget I said anything."

Lightning badgered him during their remaining time together—he was just about to tell her, after all—but the self-proclaimed old man kept his lips sealed, saying only that if she didn't know, it wasn't his place to tell her.

Sazh's words haunted her for the rest of the day. What had he meant when he said "not having Hope around"? If that had been all he'd said, Lightning would've thought that perhaps Sazh knew of her feelings for Hope and was suggesting that those feelings were holding her back—although how he would've found out was a mystery to her—but then he'd gone and started to say something else about Hope; that he was always...what? Always what?

That night, she was so distracted by these thoughts that she barely noticed that her collection of phone numbers from the day before was once again missing.

The next day, she went with Hope to check out a festival in a neighboring town. Hope thought it would be fun (and educational) to see what kinds of traditions humanity had already set up in the new world, so the two of them hopped on the local express and spent the day wandering through rows of food stalls and playing festival games—and in Lighting's case, kicking a few asses in a gimmicky sword tournament.

Lightning was actually having a pretty good time. So much that the giggles and whispers that inevitably flanked her companion hardly bothered her—especially after Hope presented her with a large stuffed moogle upon effortlessly racking up points in some kind of boomerang game, much to the booth-owner's displeasure.

However, during that time she didn't fail to notice that once again, every time a man approached her, he inevitably changed his mind partway through their conversation. And during the most recent incident, she was absolutely certain she heard the same metal on metal sound that she thought she'd heard at the supermarket just days earlier. Very curious.

The next time it happened, Lightning was ready. The moment this man's expression changed, she looked behind her, eyes searching for whatever he'd seen. She didn't notice anything at first, but then a slight movement caught her eye and she glanced down to see Hope slip something into his pocket. Her eyes narrowed. Something about that movement was very suspicious. And something about the way Hope was looking at her seemed far too innocent. Sazh's unfinished words from the previous day repeated in her head for the umpteenth time. 'You know, because he's always...'

I'll definitely get to the bottom of this, she vowed again.

o0o

That evening, Lightning and Hope collapsed onto Lightning's couch, exhausted from a long day of merriment. Hope wore a huge grin as he nudged her side with his elbow. "I can't believe you finished that banana split. That thing was massive!"

Lighting rubbed her stomach and sighed. "Believe me, I'll be regretting that when I step on the scale tomorrow morning."

Hope laughed. "Oh, come on, Light. You've never gained weight once in the thousand years I've known you."

"And you've only lost weight, shrimp," she baited with a grin of her own.

Hope stood from the couch and moved in front of her, placing his hands on his hips. "I'll gain it back in no time, though. I've already grown four inches in just half a year."

Lightning stood as well and grabbed him by his belt loops, pulling his body to hers. Pressed up against him like this, the disparity in their heights was obvious. "You're still a shrimp, shrimp."

Hope surprised her when he wrapped his arms around her waist, locking her in his embrace; hips to hips and chest to chest. He nuzzled her jaw with his nose and then looked up at her, meeting her eyes with his large, green ones. "I'll be fully grown again soon, Lightning," he said lowly, his warm breath washing over her and making her skin tingle. "And until then, I won't let anyone else have you."

Lightning felt her face flush and her heart speed up under the intensity of his gaze and the weight of his promise. In her flustered state, she looked for anything other than his eyes to focus on, and that's when she noticed something hard digging into her thigh.

She gulped. Oh, dear.

Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, she chanted mentally. Oh, dear, oh—wait, something was off about this. She reached between them and slipped her hand into his pocket and her fingers closed around something cool and sleek. She pulled it out and held it up where she could see it. Her eyes widened. "This is my—"

Hope pulled away from her and placed his gloved hand over the item, lifting it from her grasp. With a practiced flick of his wrist, the blade swung open, glinting in the overhead light. "Almost," he informed her. "Yours was lost during the battle with Bhunivelze but I borrowed Maqui's workshop and recreated it from memory."

Lightning admired the knife in his hands. It was beautiful piece of craftsmanship, perfectly resembling the original. Hope seemed to read her thoughts and said, "I, um, had a lot of time to study it."

He handed it to her and Lightning snapped the blade closed with a familiar scrape of metal on metal.

...Waitaminute. "This..." she said, her eyes finding Hope's once again. "Don't tell me..."

Hope's expression turned guilty and he scratched his head meekly. "Um..."

Lightning looked from him to the knife and then back and her eyebrows rose nearly off her face. "You! You've been using this to scare off all the men I talk to, haven't you?" she accused, putting her hands on her hips and leaning over him intimidatingly.

Hope's eyes slid away from hers petulantly. "None of them were right for you," he defended.

Another realization struck Lightning as she was about to protest his statement. "All those phone numbers I collected..."

Hope's eyes snapped back to hers. "I didn't throw them away," he hurriedly assured her. "I just put them away and hoped you would forget about them."

All this time. All this time, Hope had... "I—why?" she spluttered, trying to wrap her mind around the boy in front of her.

Hope regained some of his confidence at her seeming lack of it and he wound his arms around her neck, pushing forward onto his tippy-toes so that they were nose to nose. "I just told you that I won't let anyone else have you," he reminded her. "I waited a thousand years to be with you. The rest of them can get the hell in line."

Lightning's heart fluttered, both at his confession and his proximity. This was everything she'd wanted to hear from him. Her best friend, her partner, the person she cared about most in the world next to her sister. She couldn't even be properly mad at him because she was so stupidly happy. There was just one thing...

"Does the name Rachel Foley mean anything to you?" she asked breathlessly.

Hope's eyes revealed his confusion. "Who?"

She kissed him.

oO0Oo

Humor! Glorious humor! Oh, how I missed thee. I apologize for the potty language. If that offended anyone, well, my bad.

I hope you enjoyed my third official Hoperai story. I say official because there's also my Bacchus' Brew shenanigans on tumblr, but I feel like those don't quite count as a proper story. I really just wanted to write about how insanely pretty Hope is, and thus, this story was born. Initially, I'd considered drawing a comic instead of this, but that seemed like it was going to be more work than I wanted to put in.

Lemme know what you thought! Hopefully I'll get more fun ideas for this pairing.

Till next time!