A/N for this chapter: Woohoo! A lot more reviews than I expected for the prologue and first chapter. I've never written a fic like this (meaning, well, long) before, so let me know how I'm doing.
The next day, Rude showed up around five. I got off at eight, and I joined him at his table with the free drink I was entitled to, a frozen margarita – it was unseasonably warm for November, so it wasn't as weird a choice as it might sound. I saw Maya and Kiri standing close together, talking rapidly and casting glances at me, which was mildly amusing. Yes, Maya, I associate with gangsters. Or whatever she thinks he is.
"How's Strife doing?" he asked, once I'd settled myself and my drink across from him.
"I guess he's fine. Last I heard he was living at the ranch, still racing chocobos, but that was a year or so ago." It was easier not to keep in touch.
"Cut him loose, then?"
"Something like that." I remembered the look on his face when I said we needed to talk. I remembered almost changing my mind, but it was already too late.
"You're better off without him."
"You think?" I asked, lightly.
"Yeah. Don't you?"
"Nnn," I replied, as noncommittally as I could, and poked at the lime wedge with my straw. "Maybe. He was rich, you know," I added, trying for the light tone again.
"Was. Signed the ranch over to Valentine."
"Huh?!"
"That's what Elena said too," he replied, sounding amused by my shock.
"That's a really bizarre decision, and how do you know that anyway?" Like I even needed to ask.
"We still have connections," he said, sounding mildly wounded.
"So what's he doing now?"
"College in Midgar. Grades are good. We're still looking into his roommate." I almost expected him to add "sir" at the end, he sounded so much like he was making a report.
"Do you do this for all of us?" I asked, a bit irritably.
"Just the dangerous ones."
"So I'm out? Or are you stalking me?"
He grinned, in a way I could only describe as "wolfish." Or "creepy." But at least it proved both sides of his mouth worked. "Are you dangerous?" he asked.
"Try me," I replied, grinning back.
"Wanna spar?"
"Nah, we can't afford to break any furniture right now and upset the customers. Maybe some other time."
There was a long pause. I stirred the margarita. He drained his beer. "Why're you talking to me, anyway?" he asked.
I shrugged. The drink was starting to work on me, a little, possibly because I hadn't really had lunch, and I didn't want to talk too unguardedly to him. "Why not? I at least know you, sort of, and it's better than going back home right after work." Empty apartment, just me and the cat and a casserole in the oven that I'd be eating all week. I still haven't made friends here, and I don't want to pop back into my old friends' lives after all this time. They're busy with their own problems, some more than others. They don't need to deal with a lonely barmaid in Junon who brought her troubles on herself.
"You hated us, though." No hurt in his tone, just a statement of fact.
"Well, we weren't a whole lot better, were we? Lots of innocent people got killed on both sides. It'd be hypocritical to act like I'm more moral than you. Not that I'm less."
He nodded silently – I thought he looked gloomy, but maybe I was imagining it. "Want me to refill your beer?" I asked him.
"Nah. Had enough for today."
"You went through a shitload of it last night, pardon my language—"
He gave a short bark of laughter at that. "Lockhart, Reno's been my partner for years. You're not gonna offend me."
"Reno's like that too?"
"When he was younger. Thought it made him sound tough. He still gets that way sometimes when he's pissed. Whaddaya mean 'too'?"
"Cid. Highwind?" He nodded at the surname. I began to realize the man probably worked only with those. Yet they'd know my blood type. If they thought I was dangerous, anyway. "Well, my point was you were putting it away like it was water, and you weren't drunk then. Hell, you're not drunk now. What were you doing, pouring it on the floor?"
He shook his head. When I squinted at his face I realized one corner of his mouth had quirked up very slightly. He was smiling? Not doing that weird threatening grin at me, but smiling. How bizarre. "Kept you comin' by, right?"
"Just to make work for me. Lovely," I sighed, pretending to be disgusted.
He shook his head again, looked as if he were about to say something, then thought better of it and stood up. I did the same; no point to sticking around to hang out with Maya and the regulars. "C'mon, I'll buy you dinner," he offered.
Well, better than sitting around at home, right? I was never going to get over Cloud if I never went out except for work. So I smiled and said "Sure."
I let him help me on with my jacket, and he even opened the door for me. That was nice, but kind of surprising. I gave Maya a cheery wave on my way out the door. She looked horrified. Once we were out on the street, I began to wonder what I'd gotten into, though. After all, they had been our enemies. Sort of. And if it were his job to kill me, for whatever reason, he'd try, which could be a problem since I no longer travel with a fighter's glove or materia. But the door-opening and jacket-holding suggested this might just be personal, and not potentially fatal. I probably should've finished thinking about this before I walked out with him, I thought. I didn't voice any of it; I just asked, "Where are we going?"
"Melville's. Best seafood in town."
"Oh. Is this supposed to be business, or something like a date?"
"You want it to be?"
"Will you stop answering questions like that!"
He gave another bark of laughter. "Only did it a time or two. And that was a real answer." I glared at him, and he heaved a mighty sigh and elaborated. "If you want, it's a date."
"I hardly know you and you kept tryin' to kill me there for a while," I protested, hearing the Nibelheim twang creeping back into my voice. And a pouty, flirty tone, for some reason. That was weird. Was I on autopilot? Why couldn't I have engaged this back when I was trying so hard to get Cloud's attention? "I don't know if I trust you not to poison my food."
"Hey, you have an accent! That's.... cute."
"Hey, you have verbal inflections! That's cute too," I said, grinning up at him. I'd managed to shake the accent. Good.
"Smart-mouthed broad," he grumbled, but his mouth had tilted again and I thought I saw some crinkling at the corners of his eyes. I felt my own grin broadening.
"And you're talking!"
"I'd think you'd have a better alcohol tolerance, long as you've worked in bars."
"Yeah, you make so much money drinkin' up the merchandise. I'm not drunk, I'm just relaxed. And what about you?"
"See, I'm planning to kill you at the end of the evening, so it doesn't matter if you've heard me speak."
"Fine, then you can pay for dinner. But it's still not a date." I was having a hard time imagining Rude trying to feel me up, honestly. But I also couldn't imagine him trying to kill me, right now. He'd never been this chatty any of the other times we'd fought.
"Fine by me. Here we are."
"This is the best seafood in town?" It looked like a cheap diner.
"Yep."
He held the door open again, and pulled out the chair for me when I sat down. It looked like a cheap diner inside, too, but they had lobster and crab on the menu. "You're really paying?" I asked, and then I ordered the lobster tail – cheaper than it would be further inland, but still beyond my usual means. He didn't even twitch.
"Talk about yourself," he said peremptorily, once the waiter had taken our menus.
"Smooth. Don't you people already know my shoe size and my hobbies and what brand of milk I buy?"
"Not the milk. The supermarket clerk hasn't cracked yet."
"Yeah, I thought she looked tough," I agreed. "What's to say?"
"You've been in Junon longer than a month." It wasn't a question, though he quirked an eyebrow (I could see it over the sunglasses) in an attempt to make it look like one.
"Yeah. I had a bar in Kalm, you have to know that, but it wasn't doing too well. So I sold it to pay off the loan Cloud had given me, and moved here. Just wanted to disappear in a crowd." And get away from the house I'd shared with Cloud, places where we had memories. The house was still his, but he told me to put it on the market anyway. "I worked at a bakery for six months before this," I added, like he didn't already know that, along with the addresses and usual orders of the regular customers.
"You like this job better?"
"You sound like you're interviewing me. It's not bad. I could live without the soldiers. What are the Turks doing here?" For that matter, what did the Turks ever do? I'd never been completely clear on that. They fought us, of course, but they must have had some other purpose once.
"You're assuming we stuck together."
"You always did, didn't you?"
He tilted his head again. Maybe he has some weird spine injury and can't nod. "Lot of rival factions here. Free agents can make a lot of money."
"So you're not just working with one group?"
"I don't talk business in public."
"Oh," I replied, stung and feeling a bit stupid – it wasn't like we were friends, after all. Now that I thought about it, I realized he hadn't actually said anything concrete.
"No offense."
"Yeah. I guess it would be a... problem."
And that effectively killed conversation till they brought us the rolls. We each took one, buttered them in silence and almost in unison. He tore off a bite with his teeth, and around a full mouth, said "The Marcus family thinks we're loyal to them, but we also... run errands for the San Miguels."
"Oh," I said again, very quietly, the roll and knife suspended where they'd been when he first spoke. He chewed, swallowed, and grinned at me, that same creepy one from earlier. I guess that answers one question I'd wondered about – he does eat.
Inspired, I guess, by that show of trust, and by the desire to keep that smile off his face, I kept up a more normal conversation for the rest of the evening. I'd talk about things – the few TV shows we still get, news from elsewhere, sports – and he'd grunt a few syllables in reply. I'd had other dates like that. Even if this one wasn't a date.
"Who was the waitress who wouldn't bring me drinks?" he asked, the longest sentence he'd spoken since he admitted who they worked for.
"Maya. She has the brains of a trout. You know how I was saying I need to make friends around here? I thought, co-workers, maybe I can be friends with them. Maya has no use for anyone without a penis."
"I always thought you were so innocent," he mused, prodding the last of his baked potato with a fork.
"What, I can't say penis? It's the truth."
"So you don't like her."
"Not really."
"Missing the war?"
"You'd call it a war?" At that, he just nodded. I guess they had – I guess that's how they justified dropping the plate, at least to themselves, though I don't the President had felt any need to justify anything. "I dunno. Parts of it, maybe." I missed Aerith. I missed having a female friend around, someone I could really talk to, someone who never cast those glances at me while talking to someone else with her lip curling in that way. I remembered her laughing, telling me not to worry so much, that if he chose her over me it was just that I was too good for him. And I missed Cloud, the Cloud I didn't fight with all the time. The Cloud from our early days as a couple. We'd double up on Jane, the gold chocobo who was in no shape to race, on our way to and from the Gold Saucer, sleep under the stars. It was like when we were traveling with the whole group, only better, because we weren't being hunted and we got to share a sleeping bag. "And where'd you get that?"
"Just a hunch. Which parts?"
"I miss having the whole group together, but that's nostalgia talking, because it wasn't just non-stop bliss. On the Highwind the bathrooms always smelled like vomit because of Yuffie's motion sickness. Barret and Cait hated each other, Nanaki always had to rephrase things in simpler words for the rest of us, and Vincent would lurk in dark corners being spooky. Kind of reminds me of you."
"Only with a lot more hair."
I was overtaken by a fit of coughing, but his mouth had canted into that semi-smile again, so I quit. "Well, yeah," I agreed, unable to keep myself from grinning. The other half of his mouth tilted upward a bit, too.
"You know he was a Turk, right?"
"I think he said something about it. It's been a while." Actually, I wasn't at all sure he'd said anything about it, but it stood to reason. He seemed to just pose automatically whenever he wasn't doing something, and I'd never seen him eat.
"Yeah."
"Hey, you thought I was innocent? Wasn't I a terrorist?" I asked, remembering the comment from earlier.
"I meant about... uh."
His already-dark face looked a bit darker and noticeably more red than it used to be. "Are you blushing?" I demanded, leaning forward to look at him.
"No," he said firmly, and got up and walked away from the table. I blinked, thinking he was about to walk off and leave me with the bill, and then I realized he'd headed for the men's room.
He tipped generously at the restaurant too, though not as much as he'd tipped me. I suppose it still might have been to impress me, but if he was trying to buy my good opinion, at least he was thorough about it. He did the chivalry thing again when we were departing, holding jackets and opening doors, then walked me home.
He didn't touch me on the way, though, not even in the elevator, which is when I expected him to put an arm around me or something as a move towards a goodnight kiss. I considered the option that he'd been pumping me for information and wasn't really interested in me, but then I remembered the arguable blushing and decided he was just being gentlemanly. I also remembered when we were heading west from Gongaga, Aerith sing-songing "Rude's got a cru-ush!" until I had to elbow her in the stomach. I sort of thought she'd been making it up – I hadn't heard him say anything about it – but maybe not.
I leaned against my door, wishing I'd devoted less time to pondering and more to deciding what to say. "Okay, Rude? Did you want it to be a date?"
He didn't say anything. He pushed his sunglasses up on his nose, he cleared his throat, he adjusted his tie. "Rude?" I prompted.
"......wouldn't have minded," he finally admitted, very quietly.
"Okay, one other question. What color are my eyes?" You can't tell where he's looking, with those glasses.
He cleared his throat again. "...Sort of like red wine in a glass, when there's just candles."
I blinked. Not poetic, exactly, but a lot better than "brown," which is the word I would have used. "Um, doesn't... don't the shades sort of change the color a bit?"
"You knocked 'em off me once."
A fight, probably the first time I fought him. I'd buried a fist in his stomach and then landed another punch on his jaw, knocking the sunglasses off. Reno had then landed me a blow on the ribs and they'd run – or "retreated," I guess, since they were too cool to actually run. "I think I remember that," I agreed, then what he'd said registered. "You looked at my eyes then?" He didn't answer. I tucked a lock of hair behind my ear, thinking about it. "Okay," I said. "Maybe we can go out sometime, then. And I'll pay."
"No you won't," he started to answer, but then I leaned up to kiss him on the cheek and he shut up.
I unlocked the door, stepped inside and smiled at him from the doorway. "Night," I said, and he opened his mouth but didn't say anything, and then he sort of drifted backwards a few steps and smiled – with his whole mouth, not just that one side of it, and without looking evil. Then he waved at me a little and headed down the hall. He really had been blushing in the restaurant, I realized, because he'd done it again right when I kissed him.