Author's note: Guys, I'm glad you're enjoying it and all, but can we please not squish their names together for an abbreviation? Please? I'm begging you here. It's nothing personal, I just oppose all name-combining on principle.
I woke up the next morning being poked in the feet with something sharp. "Ow, quit it," I whined sleepily, and kicked. It did no good, so I opened my eyes and sat up, drawing my feet up. My cat joyously followed them up the bed and pounced on my toes. I scratched him behind the ears. "You're evil, you know that?" I told him. He walked up my legs and butted his head against my chin. "Rude?" I called out, scratching the cat behind the ears. The place didn't feel empty.
"Yeah?" he called back, from the direction of the kitchen. I smelled bacon, coffee, and burned eggs.
"Just checking to see if you were there."
"Cat wake you? I was trying to make him leave you be."
"It's okay..." I picked him up, which he didn't like much, so I put him back down and went to close the door so I could pull on a bra and jeans under my nightshirt.
When I emerged, pushing tangled hair off my face, Rude handed me a cup of coffee. "I had no idea you could cook," I commented, settling at the table and watching as he deposited a plate of bacon, eggs and toast in front of me. Everything looked fine, surprisingly enough.
"I just learned. Uh, I need to buy you some more eggs."
"More...?"
"The first few came out sort of crunchy. So I tried again. Uh, and again."
That explained the smell. "Maybe you should just buy me another skillet."
"No, it cleaned up pretty well. I think," he added sheepishly.
"Who feeds you people?" I asked, grinning as I cut up my eggs. I had a vision of them living among stacks of takeout boxes.
"Reno. Seriously," he continued, seeing my look.
"Reno?"
"Didn't think you'd believe it. But yeah."
I shook my head and started breaking my bacon into little pieces. "Wouldn't have thought you were a history major, either..."
"Reno was Classics."
"You're making this up!" I insisted, trying to envision Reno doing whatever classics majors do. Acting in ancient Mideelian tragedy with all the masks? I got a mental image of that, and with it a fit of the giggles.
"Yeah," he admitted. "Dunno if he actually had any college. He came up the traditional way, beat the boss in a fight. The old boss, before Tseng."
"Okay, I can buy that. So what about Elena?"
"Lit major and receptionist. With a lot of pent-up rage. She ran into Reno in a dark alley, thought he was attacking her. Kicked the crap out of him. He managed to lift her wallet and had Tseng call her the next day."
"Good God." I could kind of see it, actually. "So you were the only one recruited for your education?"
"Something like that." He scooped his own eggs onto a plate, then sat down across the table from me, smiling. "Eat up."
"See, thing is, I like my eggs kind of cold."
"I always knew you were crazy."
"Everyone says that! I don't get it," I agreed cheerfully. My father would set up a barricade of jam jars between my plate and his at breakfast on Sundays rather than watch me eating congealed yolk. Rude just shrugged and smiled. "Did you cook wearing the sunglasses?" I asked, changing tacks.
"You've got a nice place here, Lockhart."
"It looks even better without sunglasses."
"I'm not taking them off."
I pouted at him in between bites of egg. He remained deliberately expressionless until I tried the jutting lip, which caused him to crack up. He laughed almost silently, shaking with mirth. I just watched him, fascinated. "I've never seen you laugh like that," I said wonderingly.
"Never seen anyone make a face like that!"
"Didn't you ever babysit? Have any little siblings or cousins?"
He shook his head no, and started straightening out his face. I stuck my lip out and he lost it again.
"I could do this for hours," I told him. He didn't stop laughing.
We didn't actually do that for hours. Eventually, I quit tormenting him with the pout and went into the kitchen to wash the dishes. He tried to insist on helping, but I wouldn't let him; I wanted to examine the skillet myself. It was, in fact, spotless. A testament either to the skillet-maker or to Rude's sense of duty, I wasn't sure which. I didn't say anything about that, just watched him with a touch of concern while I scrubbed. He sat at the table, back to me, silent and almost motionless. I guess I should have adapted to it, after Vincent, but I never had, and it was almost eerie after he'd been so normal and friendly during the meal. Finally when the water stopped running, he spoke.
"You work today?" he asked, quietly, from the table.
"Nope. My day off. Tomorrow I close again."
"Wanna find something to do today?"
I felt the smile break over my face. "Yeah. That'd be good."
I put the dishes in the draining rack and bustled off to get dressed, then made him hold my cat while I put my hair in a midgar braid. "He always tries to fight with my hair when I do complicated things to it," I explained.
"Wow," Rude said, evidently almost as mesmerized by the braiding as my cat had ever been. "How do you do that?"
"Practice, I guess? I dunno. I've been doing this for years. Braiding's kind of... logical, you know? It has to follow a pattern."
"I started going bald when I was twenty."
"Did you really? You poor thing. When did you give up and start shaving it?"
"What makes you think I did?"
"Well, I, uh..." Most naturally bald men have some hair on the backs of their heads, at least. Right?
He did that half-smile of his again, letting me off the hook. "When I was twenty-two. Right when I joined the Turks. Image thing."
Well, he'd volunteered this, so I might as well pursue it. "How old are you now?"
"Twenty-eight. Birthday's in July."
"Where were you born?"
He just looked at me. I tied off the braid and smiled sweetly at him. He sighed. "Eisen. Little town south of Kalm. What else?"
"What's your family like? Or if you'd like I can just yank out a couple of teeth with my bare hands, it might be easier."
"Don't like talking about myself. You ready to go?"
I pulled on my coat, considered the stocking cap and decided against it. It looked warmer out, and I didn't want to ruin my hair. "Yep. I'm not going to quit asking things, though. And you didn't answer that last one."
"Only child, parents still alive and married. Don't see why it matters..." He grumbled under his breath all the way down the hall to the elevator, then we both had to stop and brush cat hair off of him (the cat had nested in his suit overnight, evidently) before we could call for it. "Cat needs a name," he said firmly, as if it would keep him from shedding.
"Yeah, probably so. I can't come up with one that fits, though, and I've been trying for nearly a month."
"I'll ask Reno. He named Cait, for one." I didn't say anything to that, and he tried to look at my face. "If, uh, you don't mind."
"Well, he does need a name. What were you like in high school?"
"Tall."
I was not going to laugh and encourage him. "Rude, dammit!"
He just gave a long-suffering sigh. We stepped into the elevator, and he waited till the doors closed before he turned to me and took off the sunglasses. I just stared at him for a second. His eyes were a dark brown, deep-set and tilted slightly, and I found myself envying his eyelashes. In other words, he had very nice eyes.
"Lockhart. Listen. I don't know what this is about. But if you're worried because I know more about you than you do about me... don't be. Your file is all copies of your apartment leases and medical records. And not much of that before you were fifteen and in Midgar. I don't know what you were like in school or how you got along with your mother. You know as much as I do now. Can we call it even?"
"You know what I did after Sephiroth and Meteor, though. Because I told you, I know that," I added, seeing that he was about to protest.
"Not much to tell," he said. "Got out of Midgar with the other two. Bought chocobos in Kalm. Ended up here." He put the sunglasses back on, just before the elevator doors opened. "Told you all I can about business. The reputation helped."
I nodded, reached up to tuck my hair behind my ears, but there were only a few strands loose to tuck. I let my hand drop and brush against his, hoping it seemed accidental. He grabbed it, held it all the way across the lobby, squeezed and let go so he could open the door again. Out on the street, he made no move to take my hand again, but he put his arm around me while we were in line for the movie, and I leaned against him happily the whole time. The movie itself was a date movie; two people with Midgar plate accents, getting in amusing arguments and not realizing until right at the end that they were in love. It was better than some movies like that, at least, and I heard him laughing a few times.
After it was over, he made for the stores. "Need to buy you a new weapon. Unless you still have the old ones."
"I might, I don't know."
"Buying you a new one anyway, just in case."
"Why?"
"Don't like your route home. Badly lit, bad part of town. Trust me, I know which parts are bad. Can't walk you home every night."
"I've never had any trouble," I protested, though it's not like I'd never been frightened on the way home, either. I'm not in fighting shape anymore, and while I really should carry materia, I usually don't.
"What do you say to a gun?"
"I don't need a gun! I'll just start wearing a glove, okay? I can't have thrown out the Premium Heart."
"Getting you a new glove, at least. In case you can't find the others."
"If you insist..." I said, humoring him.
"Just worried about you, Lockhart," he said softly, and I ended up smiling.
"Not that store with all the girls, though, all right?"
He dragged me through all the stores looking for one we'd both find acceptable, including the one with all the girls, though I noted happily that he more or less ignored them. I tried to convince him I just wanted a light glove, finally winning when I argued that it was better for the weapon not to look too much like a weapon. Then he got a bit fidgetty about the lack of room for materia, so I tried to distract him by getting him to buy me lunch. I'd almost gotten him to give up on materia slots when a black car rolled up next to us.
"You didn't come home last night, young man!" a female voice scolded, and both our heads whipped around. It was Elena.
"...I, uh, well, uh..." He cleared his throat and cast me a beseeching look.
"He was staying with me," I said, since he hadn't seemed willing to say it. Elena's "oooh" was matched by another from inside the car. So I guess they also had Reno. And a chauffeur, since they sounded like they were both in the back.
"Yeah, well... you come just for that?" he demanded, a bit defensively.
"Nope. Tino wants us. You ready to go?"
"Guess I have to be. Sorry, Lockhart. I guess I'll owe you lunch?"
"It's okay," I said, hoping I didn't sound disappointed. "See you, um, later."
He hesitated for a second, then gave me a quick peck on the cheek and got into the car. I heard more hooting from inside, just before the window rolled up. Then it rolled back down again and Elena leaned out. "Hey, Tifa, does Rude have your phone number?"
"I don't know. Rude?"
"Don't think so," he said from within, slightly muffled.
I wrote it down for her on the receipt from the weapons shop. "Why do you need it?" I asked.
"Just so we can check in next time you keep him out all night. Thanks!" And with that, they pulled out, leaving me to walk home in boots I'd worn for cuteness rather than comfort. Cuteness and altitude.
That night, the phone rang, which was a bit unusual on my days off. I thought Tir might have been needing extra help, but it turned out to be Rude.
"Hey, Lockhart. Sorry to run out on you," he said by way of greeting, just leaving me to figure out it was him.
"Well, 'it's your job,' right?" I was trying to mimic Reno, but I'd failed.
"That was a bit different. Still a job I had to do, but... different," he said after a pause.
"Rude, why are you so reverent about Shinra? Didn't you know what they were like?"
".....I'm not good with speeches. Especially not over the phone. Not good at anything over the phone."
"It doesn't have to be a speech..." I told him. My cat climbed onto my lap.
"It does, but... okay. I don't know how Wallace described the Corel incident, but all our reports said there was a reactor fire and then the town was halfway destroyed by rioting. The troops overreacted in putting down the riots, but they didn't torch the town. The reactor fire was negligence, nothing deliberate. Nibelheim..."
"I know that wasn't deliberate, Rude. I was there." It was still the indirect result of Shinra's action. "I guess they were actually helping, sending the troops..." Dammit. That's what I get for trying to anticipate his arguments – undercutting my own. They couldn't have known Sephiroth would go insane.
"Yeah," he said. There was a long, awkward pause. "....And for a lot of us, I mean a lot of people, the whole idea of the Planet being alive was just superstition. So that didn't matter."
"Yeah..." I said softly. "I might as well admit it. I didn't believe it myself until after I started talking to Aerith. I just joined Avalanche because I hated Shinra."
"Why?"
"If your father had been killed right in front of you, if you... if you'd been there, you'd have blamed the whole damn world too," I said, my voice tight with tears.
"I'm sorry," he said, very quietly. "Really sorry. I didn't know... that."
"It's— ...I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to get into this. I just wanted to... I don't know." I wanted him to say 'yes, I knew they were evil but they had my family hostage,' or something. I could forgive him for the things he hadn't done, but I was having a hard time with his opinions.
"Lockhart, are you going to be okay?" he asked, genuine concern in his voice.
"You mean, like, long-term?" I said, and sniffled. My cat mewed and curled up tighter. "I'm okay now, I guess, just looking for excuses to get depressed. I guess I should quit that, huh?"
"Have you been drinking?"
"No, but that's a good idea." I stroked the curve of the cat's spine. Couldn't just kick him off.
"Would it help if I told you I knew Shinra wasn't all good?" he said, vaguely tentative.
"That'd help," I said, fumbling around in the cabinet for a dishcloth on which to blow my nose. Once I get started crying, I just leak. "Didn't you guys do kidnapping?"
"Not exactly, but it's hard to explain. Strife didn't know anything about us."
"Yeah," I mumbled.
"Sorry. It's... complicated." Evidently too much to explain. Did I really want to know every bad thing he'd ever done?
"What you did?"
"Yeah. I meant Shinra, but all of it. It's not like the world's better off now."
"The Planet is."
"Not the people, though," he insisted. I was reminded of Reeve.
"Greater good, huh?" I asked, bitterly. Like they knew about the greater good. Or, for that matter, like I did. My cat shifted and then suddenly woke, jumping off my lap and streaking over to the window.
"Stability and a decent economy. Better than this, I'd say."
"Yeah, and all the coverups and the so-called rioting and the slums and the rate hikes and—"
"I didn't say it was perfect," he interrupted.
"I guess. I don't know. Maybe you're right," I sighed, shifting into a more comfortable position on the chair. "I'm sorry I keep bringing shit up, anyway." It wasn't like I could ever change his mind. But I wanted to. So what did that tell me?
"You're allowed," he said. "...Is there gonna be a lot more? I'd like some warning."
"I don't think so..." I said, hoping I could make him laugh and cheer up myself. I don't like these moods; they just happen. It's a lot more fun when I don't get depressive on him.
It didn't work though. "I still want you to talk to me. If you're upset."
"I will," I assured him.
"Good," he said, quietly again. Then there was a pause and a sigh. "Lockhart, I need to go."
"Okay. I'll see you later, then?" I was not going to be clingy, not this time around. I hoped I sounded at least friendly, though. "Um, good luck?"
"Yeah..." he said, almost a sigh, and then after another hesitation I heard the click.