Disclaimer- I own nothing from FFVII, you realize.

(A/N) I'm sorry for slacking on this fanfiction recently but I've been literally SWAMPED with... well life recently. Geez it sucks being busy. Anyway here's chapter 11 (man this fic is getting long). It was so hard trying to capture that awkward tension after a one nighter but I tried :/

Yuffie faded into awareness, willing to stay in the betwixt of asleep and awake for as long as she wanted. She dismissed the thought of time and smiled into her pillow because for some reason, she felt… amazing. Knowing that she wasn't going to fall back into a slumber anytime soon, she decided to make herself comfortable and shifted a little, puzzled at the limited range of her motion. Her eyelids snapped open and took a moment to adjust on her surroundings, but when they focused she gasped at her position. Her hands were resting on the chest of her 'bodyguard' and her face was buried under his chin as she felt him breathing softly into her hair. She discovered her restriction of movement was a result of his arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her closer to him.

The ninja broke from his embrace and shot up straight in the bed, gasping again as she felt the sheets brush against her bare skin and quickly pulled the blanket up to cover her chest.

I'm naked?

She looked under the sheets to assess her indeed nude body and looked down at a content Reno with her mouth agape.

"Reno!" she exclaimed, her lips swollen and voice hoarse from… oh god.

"Reno!" she shook him fiercely, earning a groan as he stirred, his eyebrows knitting together in slight complaint.

"Turkey!" she shouted, worsening the dull ache in her head and hit him with a pillow. He reluctantly growled and rolled onto his back, bringing the base of his palms to his eyes in order to shield them from the light.

"What?" he rasped, annoyed.

Yuffie waited for him to remove his hands from his face and was put only slightly at ease when his expression of shock mirrored hers. His stare rose up the girl's exposed back and to her neck which was eclipsed in reddish-purple bruises then back to her face, still stupefied.

"Oh Gods…" she breathed and lay back down under the blanket, covering herself as she picked up items of her clothing from the ground.

"Yuffie?" he hesitated, searching his mind for a way to make a sentence again as he raked a hand through his hair.

"Don't look!" she squealed and rustled under the sheets, slipping into her tank top and the khaki shorts that had gotten them into this situation in the first place. Reno decided to follow suit and pulled his pants over his boxers as he repeatedly glanced back to the frazzled girl who'd made her way to the mirror and gawked at the sight of the marks on her neck disbelievingly. The redhead approached from behind, his belt buckle still hanging loose and ran his finger along the trail of hickeys she'd branded on him.

"Well at least we know it was consensual," he quirked an eyebrow at their reflections, too serious for comfort.

Her eyebrows furrowed upward and her cloudy discs filled up with an emotion he couldn't quite peg as her face flushed scarlet.

"You okay, Yuffs?" he whispered.

"Don't call me that!" she snapped, making him draw back clearly startled. Her eyes became remorseful almost instantly but she refused to apologize. Sighing, she averted her gaze from the mirror and dug through her backpack quickly before setting it on the bed with a frown.

"We're broke again," she stated.

Reno rubbed his head, throbbing in pain, with a scowl. Must have blown everything on the bar. He sat down on the bed, hunched over with his face in his palms and tried to remember the details of last night's events to no avail. Yuffie's sharp breath interrupted his thoughts.

"What?" he muttered.

She twisted him around so his back faced the mirror. He looked over his shoulder to find that his skin was marred by numerous claw marks dragging down to his waist. He wasn't, however, as worried as her. You suffer much worse as a Turk. Besides, though he would never admit it out loud, Yuffie's love scratches were scars he could deal with. He looked back to the ninja who was running her hand up and down her neck anxiously.

"How are we gonna cover these up?"

Reno grabbed his shirt from the bed and slid his arm through one of the sleeves.

"I honestly don't think we can," he admitted as he tried to focus on the buttons instead of the girl's expression that had fallen flat.

Yuffie sighed heavily and bent down to begin lacing her shoes up.

"Wonderful…"

"You know," Reno whispered as they dragged through the poorly paved dirt paths of North Corel that barely qualified as streets. Yuffie grunted as the sunlight seemed to solely beat down on the two of them, validating her shame to the rest of the inhabitants of the town and worsening her migraine, "you're only attracting more attention to yourself."

The ninja tried to deny the statement, but her mentality agreed with the Turk as she steadfastly held her hands to her neck in an attempt to conceal the bruises. Well at least she was trying. Reno made a point to do absolutely nothing about the marks, sauntering along without what seemed like a care in the world if they were criticized or not. Yuffie envied him for doing a much better job at brushing off the stares of the villagers that passed them in the street, who seemed much too interested. It irritated her even more that after she caught them ogling, they would quickly avert their eyes and pretend as if they hadn't seen anything.

"Yuffie!" a familiar voice called from a shack-like abode. The ninja covered her face and sped up her walking as Reno snapped his head up to see Kahlina step out from behind the curtain that sealed the entrance with a troubled expression when she was met with Yuffie's defensive action. The redhead tried to reassure her with a wave but it didn't seem to ease the anxiety of the woman as she replied with a weak wave of her own.

Kahlina sighed worriedly as she observed the couple cross the exit to the town. Yuffie had promised to say goodbye to her and while she tried to be understanding toward the girl, who probably had much more important things to tend to, a simple fact made itself blatantly known in her mind. Yuffie never broke a promise.

Reno shoved his hands in his pockets and looked up to see the beams of dim light that strained to puncture the thick canopy overhead. And through the past 9 or odd hours of navigating through the plains and eventually the expanse of the forest in a labored reticence, he could only come to a single conclusion. Somehow, he fucked up.

The redhead brought his stare back down to the sedate ninja who pressed on without a word as she had the entire day. And for some unexplained reason, he wasn't even remotely concerned with the accuracy of the path they had taken, seeing as he entrusted her with the map and the lead. He told himself it was to avoid any confrontation though it was pretty clear she wouldn't make a fuss either way due to the unsettling vow of silence she seemed to have taken. No, he didn't care about that. He wanted to know what was wrong with her.

She wasn't as hyperactive and blatantly confident as her usual demeanor called for, not that Reno really minded that. But the thing that really threw him off was that she wasn't openly expressing any anger or dissatisfaction in the typical childish manner. Instead, she just walked on solemnly, only pausing occasionally to check the map. She just seemed so… empty and somewhere in his mind, he knew that it was his fault.

"We should camp here for the night," Yuffie broke the perpetuate silence with a statement that was barely there and stared at the setting sun. There was no way they could make it to an inn by nightfall so they would have to use the bit of daylight left to find the materials for a fire.

Reno nodded, causing the ninja to set her backpack down and set off in search for firewood. As she disappeared behind the brush, the Turk smacked his forehead with the base of his palm. She finally talked after nearly a whole day of nothing but the sound of their footsteps and he didn't say anything?

"Dammit," he muttered and trudged off in the opposite direction with the same objective in mind.

Yuffie scavenged through the pile of newly discovered timber and sighed. It had really taken her the whole day to process such a clear fact. She slept with Reno.

The ninja shook her head fiercely and tried to focus on the wood she was raking through but soon failed. How in Leviathan's name did that happen? And more importantly, how was she going to look him in the eyes again?

She bundled a sparse amount of tinder under her arm, knitting her eyebrows together at the diminutive quantity of dry wood. It must have rained the night before. She spun back around and began walking through the thicket that confirmed her suspicions as small rivulets of water flowed from the leaves when she brushed them. Her head thumped again and she winced at the ache as it brought Reno to the forefront of her mind again. Right. Booze was how it happened.

The girl lifted a branch and continued advancing back to the campsite as she tried to remember what exactly happened in vain. Nothing came to her and suddenly she felt a surge of anger wash over her. At who, she couldn't decipher nor did she care.

"Gods!" she stomped her foot and stopped in her tracks, holding back her urge to scream at the sky.

"Of all people," she grumbled, entirely too absorbed in her thoughts to not let them exit her mouth, "Of all the damn people in Corel. It had to be him, didn't it?"

Yuffie huffed sharply and closed her eyes to calm down.

A rewind button would be really freaking useful right about now. Well that or… I dunno, magical memory wizardry or something.

The ninja breathed as she ducked under another branch, the makeshift camp coming into her view along with the redhead who was rearranging his materia. Her eyes widened at the sight of three dry and substantial logs propped up into a position similar to that of a teepee. She looked back down to her armful of kindling and then back to the wood he collected. It seems she underestimated his survival skills. She always figured that the Turks were city crawlers, not quite fit for the harsh wild but… well you should never judge a book by its cover.

Reno snapped his head up to the girl and sat up straight, fiddling with the strap that held the goggles to his head. It was a nervous habit he'd developed over the years but hardly found himself doing it because, as Rude would say, he simply 'had no shame for anything'.

"Hey…"

"Hey," she approached him and kneeled down to begin stacking the bundle of twigs around the skeleton of logs he'd already set up, suddenly uncomfortable with the silence. Had it been like this all day?

"Do we have any flint?" she asked.

"No need," Reno raised his EMR to the pile of timber as a flame shot from the tip of the metal. She'd forgotten he had Fire materia. Yuffie observed the fire grow, the flickers of scarlet and orange dancing on the logs that now crackled. The ninja sat back against the tree he leaned on and watched the horizon as the last bit of sun began to disappear behind it, obfuscating the colors of the sky with dusky shades of charcoal. She tried to keep herself from glimpsing back and forth between the hypnotizing fire and Reno's turquoise eyes that were now illuminated by the flames he seemed to be focusing on intently. He was still playing with that strap on his goggles, which made him look a little childish in her opinion.

"Yuffie," the redhead furrowed his eyebrows together at how unsteady his voice was, "about last night…"

She raised her head expectantly and was met with nothing but silence.

"…I'm listening," she raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, I didn't really have anything after that. I was kinda hoping that you would cut me off like in the movies," he admitted.

"Great plan," she tried not to smirk.

"Look, cut me some slack. I don't know what I'm doing here," And he didn't. Reno practically lived on one night stands but he'd never felt bad about it before. And he certainly never tried to apologize for one. He could handle being forced out of his comfort zone when it came to work but when it came to sex, he thought he knew it better than the back of his own hand and Yuffie had just proven him wrong.

She just hugged her knees close to her chest and searched for something to say in the depths of the fire.

"So…" he whispered.

"You know I don't do things like that all the time, right?" she blurted.

"What?"

"The whole one night stand thing. I don't do it," she looked back to him.

"I-I never said that," he waved his hands in front of his face.

"It just happened, you know," the ninja set her hands down and desperately tried to convince him, "If I wasn't all boozed up, nothing would've turned out that way. I mean, I don't even drink that much."

"Yuffie?" Reno drew back from her passion as she flailed her arms in the air and went on.

"I'm good for the most part! There were some materia incidents and this one party… Oh boy that was wild, but for the most part, it's not like I'm a bad person."

"Yuffie," she ignored him.

"It's just like…" she shrugged, "Damn! I can never make a good first impression! But you know I'm not a whore right? What am I talking about? Of course you think I'm a hoebag."

"Yuffie!" he shouted, pulling her from her rant as she stopped midsentence, "I don't think you're a hoebag."

"You don't?"

"No I don't. I was…" he paused and scratched the back of his head, "Well I was kinda trying to say sorry."

"Sorry?" her eyes lit up with either hope or the flames from the fire, Reno couldn't tell.

"Yeah," the redhead looked down.

"You serious?" she cocked her head sideways to get a better look at his face.

"Yeah," he lifted his head, "I'm serious."

A smile slowly spread on Yuffie's face, reaching from ear to ear.

"Well, would you look at this?" the ninja tugged lightly on his ponytail, "Reno of the Turks apologizing."

He quirked an eyebrow at her grin.

"And for scoring no less!" she giggled, completely relieving Reno of the worry he felt at her emotional absence, "Why do I feel like this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing?"

The Turk relaxed against the tree, unaware that his whole body was tensed up until now, and smiled back to the girl who had recovered her personality.

"Because it is," he laughed, earning a light-hearted punch to the arm.

"Yeah I figured…" Yuffie smiled.

At first, I was going to have his nervous habit be twirling his ponytail but it just seemed so girly and unlike him so goggles it was.

I'd like to say how overwhelmed I am with the positive response to this story. You guys are really turning me into a review whore, not that I mind. Thank you so much for the feedback :)