Kiri actually met me at the airport, to my shock, and while I didn't think my gossip was juicy enough to provide sufficient reward, she was pleased with my news of running into Cloud and more than happy to dissect the story of that afternoon with me. I refused to talk about Rude in any detail, however. I didn't like discussing my current relationships, and never had.
She had decided to name my cat Elvis after some popular singer she liked. I sighed, and tried to call him that, but it didn't quite seem to stick. My cat punished me for leaving, or possibly for returning, by sharpening his claws on my bed while I was sleeping in it, and attempting to sleep on my head for the first few nights. Tir did nothing in particular to punish me, but I had punishment enough with jetlag and the knowledge that I'd used up my vacation time. Which I'd been expecting, but it would have been nice to use it to house-hunt in Midgar and visit Rude when he was healthy.
I'd decided more firmly than ever to move to Midgar after all. The first time we'd discussed it had been an impulse, the second I'd been considering it seriously, but now I was determined. I didn't want to examine my feelings too closely, but I'd started missing him the minute I stepped off the plane in Junon. It was ridiculous. We'd been apart around a day, by my reckoning of time, and before that it had been three weeks. And it wasn't like I'd been expecting to see him in Junon. Maybe it was just that stepping off the plane put me solidly away from him, or that I couldn't stay in as close contact with him while he was in the hospital.
He was released not that long afterwards, which meant we were back to phone conversations. Better than nothing, but I missed the physical contact more than I had before this visit. "Too much time with you in a bed," I told him, regarding my frustrations. "When can you visit?"
"Quit your job," he suggested. "Move here right now."
That wasn't really an option, but I started working on my resumé the next day. A desk job would be nice; less time on my feet, regular hours, and fewer drunks. Ideally none, but I wasn't going to count on that. Tir had never really hired another bouncer, so I got to take care of any trouble. It wasn't as bad as it had been in the Seventh Heaven, but I was ready to get away from all that.
After a week or two, I heard from Cloud as well. Even if I'd been clinging to hope, which I hadn't, the first long phone call would have convinced me that we were simply in different places in life. Half the words out of his mouth made no sense at all to me, or came in a context I didn't follow. He seemed very irritable about a change in the core courses, though I couldn't figure out precisely why and his explanation, something to do with elective hours and the school of engineering, didn't clear anything up.
He did, however, mention Yuffie's name in passing, in reference to something else about elective hours. "Wait, back up," I said.
"Tifa, I already tried to explain, you were just tuning me out, and I don't blame you because it's boring—"
"No, I meant about Yuffie. Last I heard she was running some scuba thing around Costa del Sol and ripping off the tourists something awful." And probably using it all to buy black-market materia. Of course, I'd last spoken to her a year ago.
"Oh. Yeah, she's here. I ran into her at the bookstore at the beginning of the year – I think she's actually way ahead of me in credit hours, but then I've had to do some remedial crap."
"Huh? Why?"
"Tifa, I never even finished geometry!"
"Oh yeah. I forgot about that. Still, it doesn't seem fair after all you went through and all that time, though."
"Well, none of that actually helps me know how to do a proof..." he said, his voice indicating clearly that he was shrugging.
"What about Yuffie? Why's she bothering with college? Normally she likes things that let her get money, not give it away."
There was a pause, then he said, "I just shrugged. You couldn't see it, but I did. I dunno, I think she just gets bored. And this gives her something to do that her dad will accept."
"He doesn't mind her being educated in Midgar?"
"He probably does. The question is if she cares."
I could guess the answer to that one. "So, make up your mind. Or her mind. Why pick something he'd accept, and then pick the one way of doing it that he'll like least?"
"Hell, I don't know. I'm just repeating stuff she told me." There was a pause. "I think maybe he's not doing so well, and she's trying to... go easy on him, a little. Not too much, because this is Yuffie here."
"Then why not go and actually spend time with him, if he's sick, or—"
"I swear, I have no insight into the way her mind works," he said. "She doesn't like talking about herself much, anyway."
"Are you kidding?"
"About herself. She likes talking just fine, but not about herself, that's all. I didn't notice it either till this year."
"Huh. Well, okay."
"So how are things going with you?" he asked, finally. "Sorry, just they changed the requirements on me and no one around here wants to listen to me gripe anymore. You get to talk my ear off next time."
"I understand," I said, lying through my teeth because I hadn't understood a word of it. I'd understood that he was frustrated. "I'm... fine. Things are good. I don't know if I'll ever be able to talk your ear off."
Rude showed no further signs of jealousy of Cloud. I didn't go out of my way to mention either guy to the other, but I didn't try to avoid it, either. I was fairly certain that tiptoeing around either of them couldn't lead to anything good. My time dragged, and I seemed to spend most of it waiting for phone calls. I started spending more time with Kiri outside of work, which helped. We were in the armpit of winter, now, easily my least favorite time of year. "Not even any holidays to look forward to," I grumbled to Kiri, one day, as we were closing.
"Well, there's Florian's Day," she said. "That's in... wow, just two weeks."
"He's not even a real saint!" I said. "I bet they made him up just to sell candy and jewelry." But there wasn't much passion behind the complaint, because I was thinking about something else. A month had passed since the shooting. It was kind of hard to believe, in retrospect; time had seemed to pass so slowly at the time. Rude and I had almost been together long enough to justify the degree of seriousness we'd reached early. That was comforting. I'd felt, at first, as though I'd rushed into things, maybe for the wrong reasons, and that wouldn't have been fair to him.
"Well, yeah. No one calls him a saint anymore anyway. When I was little I thought it was named after the flowers," she said. "And I thought it was weird because they're not in season in winter."
"Oh. You were one of those kids with a big vocabulary."
"How do they grow them, anyway? Greenhouses?" she asked. I nodded, though I wasn't totally sure either. "I don't see why you'd have a problem with it," she continued. "You have a boyfriend."
"Yeah, and he's eight hours away from me by plane! Five hours. Twelve. I don't know, a long way. Through a time warp."
"He'll call, though. Send flowers or something. Maybe he'll arrange to have some of your enemies killed."
"Yeah, like that old guy who never thinks his martinis are dry enough. But they're law-abiding now." More or less. Someone connected to the shooting had been killed while resisting arrest. Reno was facing an internal hearing, a subject Rude refused to discuss in any way. "I just think it's kind of silly. Why can't guys be romantic the rest of the year?"
"I think some of them need the kickstart just for the annual thing. And one of my exes still managed to forget! And he worked in retail! I swear he was just trying to force me to dump him. Anyway. Rude's not exactly the king of romance anyway, is he?"
"Well, no, not exactly. I mean, not in a bad way..." It didn't bother me in him, at least. Not yet. Of course, there'd been a time that I melted whenever Cloud said 'I love you,' a phrase that later turned almost meaningless, that he tried to use as the panacea whenever we'd had a fight. Of course, I couldn't see Rude doing that. "He's just sweet, not, you know, not all... demonstrative."
"I'm sure he'll get you something," she said reassuringly. "Unless you make a big deal about hating the holiday."
"Well, I don't like it," I protested. I said more or less the same thing that night on the phone.
"Why not?" Rude asked. "Manufactured holiday, reinforcing gender stereotypes?"
"Huh?"
"Elena hates it too."
"Oh. No, I just don't like being alone and feeling like I'm supposed to be having a candlelight dinner and enjoying it. And I don't much care for the fancy lingerie, either. Though maybe I should hate it for the other reason."
"You don't have to," he said. "I think Elena's actually bitter— ow!"
In the background, I could hear her saying, "I'm bitter because no one ever gives me guns for Florian's! Or computer stuff or anything else I want! Like I give a crap about some flowers!"
"Tell her to stop hitting you," I ordered him. "And apologize for the bitter thing."
"Tifa says stop hitting me," I heard him say, somewhat muffled. I didn't hear her reply. "And I'm sorry," he added.
"You guys still rooming together?" I asked, on the assumption that he wasn't still listening to her.
"No, she's here to type a report. Claims her printer's broken, but she knows how to fix it. Wants to drag me out drinking. Worse than Reno."
"How's his thing going?" I asked.
"You know, you don't have to worry about lingerie," he said. "Naked's fine by me." I could only imagine what Elena thought I'd said to cause that change of subject.
He never did ask me what I wanted for Florian's, but I didn't worry about it. He was bound to come up with something, and it really was the the thought that counted with me; I didn't have anything specific in mind. Realizing I'd get to see him again sooner or later, even if it was only when I moved to Midgar, I went out and bought a silk nightgown. It was probably too long and opaque to really count as lingerie, but I was pretty sure it would serve my purposes, and it felt nice.
Elena had been sending me photos of apartments for some time. Finally I got her number from Rude and called her to ask why she was the one doing this. "Well, he's going to look at them too, but he doesn't seem to realize you can't just take his word on it. Especially since his word is usually 'It was nice. Looked clean,'" she said, mimicking his inflections well enough to make me laugh. "We can lease one for you any day now, or... you know, if you didn't feel like it was too much commitment, I'm sure he'd be happy to have you move in with him."
"Don't I need a job first?"
"Well, send out your resume! Reeve can get you hired just about wherever you want. Or we can find you a job in the administration."
"Thinking positively," I noted, and she laughed a little. "I... jeez, I don't even know what I can do. Technically the Seventh Heaven never existed, there's no documentation – never was on most of those slum businesses. I just moved into an empty building and we fixed it up, had Jessie do the wiring..." Of course, I'd owned the Final Heaven outright. I suppose that amounted to something, but what? I didn't exactly have any references for that time.
"You can learn. You can learn to type, you can learn to work with computers, you can learn to shoot people in the head... So from your not answering I take it you don't want to move in with him?"
"I...." Don't want another relationship to fall apart under the strain of daily life. "Cloud and I had problems because of it, so I'd just as soon not live with anyone else again until I'm married. You know, so we'll have more reasons not to break up."
"Like lawyers," she agreed. "Makes some sense. You know, there should be an opening on the Turks soon. You interested? You'd look cute in the suit."
"Are they going to fire Reno?" I asked.
"No, I'm resigning."
I blinked. It had always seemed to mean so much to her. "Elena, why?"
"Well... it's not quite like it used to be, you know, just the three of us? The Turks now, we have nearly a dozen, plus all the other branches of the secret service and intelligence. And... I don't know, I just want to be free to do my own thing."
"Is this about Reeve?" I finally asked, after a second's hesitation. The probable future president couldn't exactly date an employee openly, and there was probably some problem with a bodyguard dating her responsibility, too.
"Not just him," she said. "I always wanted to work with computers, too. I also always wanted to be a ballerina, but I don't think that's gonna work out as well."
"Yeah. Well... it's what you want to do, right? If you never take a chance, you'll end up regretting it."
"Yeah. So, get to work on finding a job, choose your apartment, and we can get you here whenever."
"We?" I asked.
"Tifa, I have an eighty percent approval rating, I think I can probably get you hired somewhere if you move here without a job," Reeve called out in the background.
"Ahhhh, I see," I said, gleefully, whatever that meant. She could easily have been at work – it was her cell phone. Or they might have been having dinner together, which of course was what I liked to think.
"Oh, shut up," she said happily, and I laughed and said goodbye to her.
I could not figure out how to turn items like "Owned own business; used to roughing up winos" into an asset on my resume, so I decided to let that wait until I was in Midgar and instead asked Rude to lease me an apartment in a building called the Bifrost. He said "nnn," so I suggested the Typon Towers instead, and he seemed more amenable to that. Later I found out from Elena that he'd been choosing both for closeness to his place, and distance from old Midgar; he had his worries about plate stability, too.
Florian's Day came and went with no word, no card, and no flowers. I tried not to mind, but I didn't call Rude that night at the usual time. He called me, and acted perfectly normal. I concluded he'd forgotten, and continued trying not to mind, since I'd already said I didn't like it and so it'd be silly to make a scene.
It was about two days later that Kiri and I used a coinciding day off to go in and get our paychecks. "Oh, there she is," I heard Sally saying, and then I spotted him, turning and reaching up to take off his sunglasses.
I guess I jumped, because I ended up with my legs around his waist, my arms around his neck, and thank heaven I was wearing pants. He kissed me somehow – which was really pretty impressive because with the momentum involved it was just lucky we didn't smack into each other face-first – and managed to keep from dropping me, though I had a fair hand in that, too. I heard laughter, and a wolf-whistle that I figured was probably Kiri. Rude was grinning, or so I figured from the crinkling around his eyes, and our noses were brushing. "Sorry it's a bit late," he said, too low for anyone else to hear. "Miss me?"
"Oh hell yeah," I said happily, and kissed him deeply. When we surfaced for air I let myself down, collected my paycheck amidst much teasing, and dragged him out by the arm. He wasn't smiling much, but I could tell he was happy all the same. I was grinning enough for both of us anyway.
"Where are we going?" he asked, once we were outside.
"My place," I said, wondering why he was even asking.
"Uh. I was going to get a hotel room."
"Well, we can do that too if you'd rather."
"Oh," he said, quietly, and I turned to beam over my shoulder at him. The slack surprise in his face shifted into something else, or probably several somethings. "I'll have to, uh, to buy, uh..."
"You came all this way and weren't counting on me wanting to sleep with you?"
"Seemed like a bit much to hope for..." he said, seeming embarrassed.
"You are so weird," I said affectionately. "Okay, go buy that and I'll put a bottle of wine on to chill or something."
"Gotta get you home first," he said, stubborn.
I opened my mouth to argue, then went to his side and took his hand. Our fingers laced together, I looked at his tie and said "I love you. I just wanted to say that before I got to the wine, so you'd... know. And so you wouldn't think I was just saying it, I mean..." I trailed off, trying to find the right words, but then he lifted my chin and took a long look at me before he kissed me, so I figured it didn't matter. I was pretty sure it all showed in my face.