Chapter 2
'Bad Habits'
It was quite innocuous, really, the way Tifa began her approach, the same way a raging storm announces its presence with a gentle breeze. She was, after all, not merely angry. No, she was quiet mad. Yuffie had a feeling that things were about to escalate quickly. She watched as her friend drew up near where Cloud was seated at the bar. Tifa paused, clearing her throat in order to get Cloud's attention. When this failed to elicit any kind of response, she spoke up, which Yuffie figured was going from 'Storm Warning' to 'DEFCON 5'.
"Cloud?"
No reply.
"Cloud."
"Hmm?" he gave a half-hearted answer, without looking up.
"Cloud Strife."
The full name treatment. That meant something was up.
Cloud looked up from his drink. "What?"
Tifa sighed, planting her hand on her hip. "Don't tell me you haven't noticed."
Seeing that he still wasn't comprehending her meaning, she directed his gaze in Yuffie's direction.
"Oh," Cloud replied, the tone of his voice as blank as the look on his face. "Yuffie's here."
Tifa's face fell. She opened her mouth, as if to say something, then snapped it shut again, before hauling Cloud from the bar stool and dragging him off behind the corner. From that distance, Yuffie couldn't hear what they were talking about, though judging by the look on Tifa's face, she guessed that Cloud was about to receive the scolding of a lifetime.
"You cannot be this dense," Tifa said, once they were out of view. "It's... it's impossible. No, it's almost illegal."
Cloud watched Tifa's furious reaction with characteristic detachment, completely at a loss as to what it was that she was getting so worked up over. "What are you talking about?"
"It's Halloween," Tifa said.
Cloud shrugged. "And?"
"Do you see any kids around?"
Cloud paused for a moment, thinking. He suspected that the nature of Tifa's question was more in the rhetorical sense than the purely inquisitive one, but it was hard to tell. It was better, he figured, to tread lightly when she was this cross with him.
"...No?" he hazarded.
"Do you think there might be a reason for that?"
"Tifa, I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you're talking about."
"I'm talking about Yuffie."
Cloud shrugged. "What about her?"
He watched with curiosity as Tifa got that frustrated look on her face that she sometimes did when her hinting at things clearly wasn't working. It was plain that she'd decided it was time to spell things out for him.
"She wanted to ask you out," Tifa explained. "Or rather, she was hoping that you would ask her out."
Somehow, the full meaning of her words still didn't register with Cloud. "Why?" he replied.
Tifa sighed again, palming her face. "Gaia, you really are dense sometimes, you know that?"
Cloud merely blinked, waiting for a further explanation on her part.
"It's because she likes you," Tifa said.
There was a brief pause, as Cloud evinced something approximating mild shock at this revelation.
"Yes, in that sense," Tifa affirmed. "She asked me for my help because she was too shy to say anything to you."
Cloud simply stood there, mute, looking as though a mental block were slowly melting away in his mind. As long as he had known Yuffie, he'd never been aware of her showing any romantic interest in... well, anyone. He certainly hadn't detected any kind of infatuation on her part as far as he himself was concerned. He had simply assumed that she preferred the freedom to adventure and roam the continents as she pleased, happy to leave all that doe-eyed nonsense to other people. Secondly, he had never known the young ninja to be shy about voicing her thoughts on anything. So the news that she thought of him that way came as quite the surprise. Up until now, he had always regarded her as a comrade-in-arms, and nothing more.
Which was not to say that he'd ignored her outright. He was aware that she existed, per se. But he couldn't say he knew her very well, either. Whenever they'd been around one another, they were usually at the periphery of each other's awareness, either traveling through hazardous territory together or in the middle of a confrontation of some sort, always caught up in one crisis or another. It had never occurred to him before, but Cloud couldn't recall the last time they'd spent time together under anything one might term normal circumstances. It was strange, he thought, how you could know someone for over three years without really getting to know them.
His first impression of her had been that of a bratty, hyperactive, slightly boyish ninja princess, and while he could still check off the majority of these qualities as being true, she had undeniably matured over the course of the three years he had known her. And there was something else he was becoming acutely aware of, even at a cursory glance: In those three years that they had known each other, 'boyish' had gone right out the window. Sure, Tifa had dolled Yuffie up some, which helped to outline her more feminine qualities, drawing them out in ways that he hadn't noticed before, but it only served to remind him that they'd always been there.
Tifa noted the subtle change in his attitude as he observed Yuffie from their vantage point. "You were looking, but you weren't really seeing, were you?" she said in a quiet voice.
Tifa was right. He hadn't seen it. It had been right in front of his face the whole time, and he still hadn't seen it. He really was dense.
There was something else that he was starting to realize. Yuffie wasn't merely pretty. She was hot. Smoking hot. Cartoon-wolf-howling-and-banging-his-head-against-a-desk-while-morphing-into-crazy-shapes hot. Private-eye-in-a-smoky-dive-bar-monologuing-to-a-jazz-soundtrack-about-what-a-loaded-dame-he'd-just-seen kind of hot.
She was smoldering.
...She was almost literally smoldering. As lovely as she looked, she had also never seemed more pissed off at him than she was right now. He observed her as she glanced out the window, pensive, shivering slightly and rubbing her arm from the cold, her slender figure haloed by the light from passing vehicles. But as she turned back to him and he caught her eye, she scowled, giving him the meanest death-glare he'd ever received from the young ninja, including that time they'd first scrapped in the woods outside of Junon, and he'd knocked her to the ground. He quickly tore his gaze away and looked back over to Tifa.
"Well?" Tifa said. "Don't you think you should go and apologize?"
"For what?" Cloud asked.
"You just completely snubbed her," Tifa said.
"But, I.."
"Cloud.." The tone of her voice told him it was unwise to make any further protests.
The truth was that he hadn't expected anyone to be in the Seventh Heaven when he returned, and had been so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he genuinely hadn't noticed when Tifa and Yuffie greeted him. Not that this was much of an excuse for his behavior. He turned to apologize to Yuffie for his earlier indifference, which would have been easy enough to do, except for the fact that she was no longer there.
Notes
That cartoon wolf simile might have been a bit over the top. I just thought it was funny.
