Disclaimer: If you haven't caught on to this concept already, I don't own FFVII.
Edge Street Strip Mall Chapter Four Quarter to Twelve
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"Aeris?"
No response.
"Aeris!"
The brunette at the back of the shop shook her head, dazed. "Wha?"
"Fifteen minutes until noon!" Elmyra called from the front counter, cheerfully dismissing a customer with a "Have a nice day!" before wiping her hands on her apron and taping a sign to the door, reading 'Out to lunch, be back at 1:00.'
Aeris' eyes wandered to her wristwatch, then to the wall clock - sure enough, both were right on time, and both read 11:45. The sigifigance of the time of day finally smacking her in the face, the young brunette sprung to her feet, suddenly feeling at a loss.
Her mother, walking through the doorway to the back room, smiled. "Well, don't just stand there!" she chided, "Fix your hair, go wash up and for God's sakes, take off your apron!" She reached around her waist, undoing the knot in the back, pulling the dirtied white scrap off of the girl. Elmyra spun her around and pushed her in the direction of the bathroom. "Go!"
Aeris rushed into the bathroom, pulling the hair tie out of her hair to redo her ponytail, brushing it and making sure that there weren't any fly-aways sticking out the sides. Once it was refastened, her mother brushed past her with a bottle of rose water and gave it a spritz over the girl. "For good luck," she said.
By the time Aeris had walked out of the bathroom, dusting her dress off, it was about two minutes to noon, and she figured there would be no harm in being early. After all, to be early was to be on time, and to be on time was to be late...
"Aeris!"
"Huh?" she asked, spinning around to face her mother, who just so happened to be touting a scrap of red coudoroy.
"Don't forget your jacket. The sun damage is hell in the summer, you know that!"
Aeris smiled. "Yeah." She shrugged the soft material over her shoulders. "Thanks, Mom."
oOoOoOo
"Lucky me, I get to make the pizzas for the lunchtime rush," Cloud murmured sarcastically, pounding a ball of ivory-tinted dough flat with his fist. Sure, Zack had taught him how to make pizza, but he was as much of a newcomer to the comcept of cooking as he was to the Shinra chain.
Zack ruffled his hair. "Experience is the best teacher, kid, keep that in mind," and glanced at the clock just above the pizza oven on the eastern wall of the shop. "Fifteen minutes until my date," he concluded.
Cloud huffed, "As if nobody could tell that it wasn't a date day, that cologne has distracted anything that shops on the 'male' side of the aisle standing at that counter all morning."
Zack smirked. "Oh, so would you even admit to it?"
The blonde threw a wet paper towel at his big brother figure. "Like I would ever go for you."
"Uh huh," the black-haired man retorted, "And yet you're bumping uglies with the District Manager."
The office door creaked open next to the dish-washing station in the far corner of the opposite wall, Angeal walking out and saying something about walking down to the drugstore a few doors down. "I don't need to know who our delivery boy is getting his freak on with, I think I'll go die a tortured death now."
Instead of having the shocked effect the older man had hoped for, Zack snorted. "I can't believe that Angeal just said something sex-related with a straight face!"
Cloud gave up on beating the puff of pizza dough flat. "I can't believe that he just issued a suicide threat in reference to my love life."
"So you admit you're in love with him!" Zack pointed his finger at the chocobo-likened boy, as if he were mimicking the newest Phoenix Wright game he'd just gotten the week before.
Said young boy flushed, smashing his head into the pile of dough and successfully flattening it to the size of a personal pizza.
"Zack, you're officially late," Angeal called from the front door of the shop, holding it open as the other rushed out the door, dumping his apron on the elder's head and speeding down the sidewalk of the Edge Street Strip Mall, headed to the Gainsborough Gardens shop to pick Aeris up-
Not even realizing it, his face crashed into a pane of glass, which was attatched to the structure of a door, which was held to the doorframe on the front wall of the flower shop. Aeris gave a stunned gasp, rushing to where Zack had fallen back unceremoniously on the concrete, asking if he was all right.
He shook his head, flexed his shoulders and poked his nose to make sure it wasn't broken. "No blood, no foul," Zack chimed, Aeris pulling him back to his feet with a smile.
"Where to?" the girl asked, taking note of the fact that Zack was holding a bag full of take-out containers. Looks like they weren't really going out for lunch.
"We're going to have a picnic," he said, taking her wrist with his free hand and pulling her south on Edge Street, turning left into a nearby schoolyard, leading the way to the elementry school's playground. "This way, we could go on the swings, our climb around the monkey bars, or anything at all."
Aeris giggled, a plot slowly forming in her head. "So," she started slowly, waiting for him to put down the bag of food.
"Race you to the slide!"
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I think that this fic is turning out pretty well, considering it's coming in short bursts. It's only halfway modeled after the first date in CC.
The pretty little purple button is calling you...