"You have no idea what you're getting yourself in for," Reno hissed quietly, his eyes narrowed in challenge as he stared across the table at his unworthy opponent. The smoky atmosphere made his eyes water like a punch to the face, but that wasn't enough to make him drop his gaze from the hateful stare of his adversary.
"I've seen you in action," came the heated reply, the brashness somewhat tainted by a mild sputtering cough that bubbled up towards the end, "and you wouldn't scare me less if we were in the middle of a knitting contest." Fingers hung poised in the air, wavering, ready to swoop down and grab their weapon of desire and throw it into action, hovering just seconds before an attempt to blow the other away.
They both reached down at the same time, snatching a shot glass from the wooden surface of the table and bringing it up to their lips, tossing it back with a single flowing motion. The harsh alcohol raced over tongues and down throats, and while the former Turk took his like water it ended up catching somewhere between Yuffie's lungs and her tonsils and she nearly choked as she felt the fiery liquid go to work on her insides.
"What are you, a maso?" Reno asked calmly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Yuffie glared at him, but clearly felt that opening her mouth would be asking for a second stream of hacking convulsions and was forced to be content to speak her mind with her seething gaze. Deciding to take this as an inquiry, Reno just shrugged and turned to look around the bar, a half smile on his face that he always wore when located in his home environment. "I'm just saying, you weigh all of three pounds, and you challenge me to a drinking contest."
"Three pounds?" Yuffie asked after she had regained the ability, "I'm not sure whether I should be blushing or offended. That is sort of bordering between flattery and-"
"-it was a compliment," Reno cut her off gently, "sort of. Let's leave it at that."
"Hm," Yuffie mused, "so why did you pick this place, anyway? There's a great bar just down the street from my house."
Inwardly, Reno was wondering why he had chosen any place at all. The fact was, he had wanted to get out and about, cabin fever was hitting him hard cramped up in the thief's place. The problem was, she was still insisting on going along with this notion that he was her captive, even though the way she kept dozing off in front of him while he was carrying his EMR probably won her the award for world's worst warden. Thus, he would have had to drag her along if he wanted to go outside...
...so why exactly had he gone into his old routine when bringing the venture up? He didn't figure himself as a guy who was easily surprised, but he had stunned himself when he'd managed to ask her out instead of requesting a brief leave from encasement. Not as stunned as she had been, granted, but after she'd ensured that the place he wanted to take her to was in no way a brothel, strip club, or other kind of prostitution ring she had readily agreed.
"That dive?" Reno asked derisively. "If I felt like some candy and hop skotch... that still wouldn't be the first place I went to. I wanted a drink, not a fruit drink or a daiquiri or an extract. That place is a set of glow sticks away from being a rave joint for fifteen year olds popping placebos with trademarks stamped into the sides."
"Well," Yuffie said slowly, "a simple 'because' would have sufficed."
Reno had to laugh. It had been a long, long time since he had genuinely gone out with anyone at all. Bars had two purposes, getting trashed and getting laid, both of which Reno had gotten quite skilled at. Even when he had still been a Turk, small talk with Tseng had been reduced to mission briefing, with Rude it was non existent, and with Elena it was simply intolerable. Deciding that for a passing distraction, this was working out quite well, Reno decided to press the conversation.
"So how did you end up in that place of yours, anyway?" he asked between gulps of skotch. "I mean, you are a genuine princess, right? Shouldn't you live in a place with spires, and servants, and working hot water?"
Yuffie frowned. "I did that," she admitted, "for the first thirteen years of my life. There is a reason that Spike and his motley crew found my in the forests of an entirely different hemisphere, you know. I had to travel the world for five years just to get over the memories of my childhood, and you can imagine what that says considering I love this country. Now that I've finally mellowed out enough to get my own place, you'd better believe it isn't going to look anything like my old one."
"Fair enough," Reno said, before taking another swallow. He put his glass down and eyed Yuffie's side of the table, which was slowly beginning to pile up with filled glasses. "You're falling behind."
"I know," Yuffie admitted, "but I figure that once you pass out I can just pour these down a sink and pretend I drank them."
"Don't get your hopes up," Reno smirked, "odds are I'll fall asleep from exhaustion before I succumb to this stuff."
"I'd concede, but I don't want to give you the satisfaction," Yuffie said, then paused, apparently uncomfortable being the only one in the conversation giving information about themselves. "So how about you? I have a pretty morbid idea of how you've spent most your time since your childhood, but what have you been doing since you left the Turks? Can't be anything too entertaining, I would have heard you were in town by now."
"You don't want to know." Reno said simply.
"Why?" Yuffie asked, with considerable trepidation. "What have you been doing?"
"You sure you want to know?" Reno asked with a wicked grin.
"...if you don't tell me, I'll be forced to beat you to death with your own stool," Yuffie countered cheerily.
Glancing back and forth around the bar, Reno smiled secretly. He leaned conspiratoriously across the table and cupped his hands around his mouth, apparently preparing to unleash a secret that would bring the very building crashing down around their heads if overhead. Eyes wide in anticipation, Yuffie leaned in closer to hear him as he breathed out his answer in a single word, alcohol tainted whisper.
"Nothing."
"Nothing?" Yuffie asked, positive she heard right but knowing it was possible Reno had simply lost track of his own train of thought, something that seemed to happen to him at least once a day.
"Absolutely nothing," Reno said, leaning back in his chair and grinning.
"So you've been unemployed for a year following a long and healthy career as a murderer," Yuffie acknowledged, slowly nodding her head. "You are a catch and a half, Turkey."
"I knew you wouldn't get it," Reno said offhandedly, "but I think it was some of the most enjoyable twelve months I've ever been through. I don't have any money, so I really just go from place to place, picking up what I can when I can. The only thing I've really kept with me all this time is my EMR, and I'm not even sure why I've held onto that."
"A memento, I guess," Yuffie said with a shrug, resigned to take another shot and winced as it went down. "But you couldn't have just done nothing. I see you sitting here, and even know you look like you want to jump up and sucker punch somebody. Even if you weren't working, you'd have to have a hobby, or a few friends, or a girl or something."
"Does womanizing count as a hobby?" Reno asked.
"...in prison, maybe," Yuffie said, rolling her eyes at him. "I guess that gives an obvious answer to that last part."
"Common sense," Reno began, "gives an obvious answer to that last part. Besides the fact that I don't have a house, money, or any mode of transportation with which to drive them around in, I'm not looking for a steady women."
"You're about to make a crack about bovine purchase and free milk, aren't you?" Yuffie asked.
"Nah, fuck clichés," Reno said quickly, "the whole concept of being tied down to someone just scares the hell out of me. I did the whole co-dependency thing when I was living on the streets with my little sister, and it didn't exactly work out that well. There's nothing you could get from a relationship that you can't get from a series of rapid fire one night stands."
Yuffie paused, looking over at him in disbelief. "Do you really believe that?"
Reno smiled, showing far more teeth than he needed to. "No," he admitted, "but before most women can figure that out I'm not only out their door, I'm in somebody else's."
"And you call me a maso," Yuffie snipped, took another shot, and that time she didn't wince. "You're not only going to end up alone, you're going to end up alone with herpes. A loner guy with a fear of commitment, what a surprise."
"It's not so much a fear as an unconditional loathing," Reno said playfully, "Why? Do you mean to tell me that the sovereign Miss Kisaragi has a better half in waiting somewhere?" At his words, a visible shudder ran through his companion, even though there was no drink present anywhere near her.
"Let's just say that's one area of Wutain culture I wish would just fade away and be lost forever," Yuffie responded, and when Reno gave her a questioning look she continued onward. "It's a tradition that in cases of clan leaders, like my father, that any children he has be married off to children of the leaders of the other clans. It's just a rotational system short of incest."
Chuckling quietly, Reno gestured to the bar tender for another round, and turned back to see a thoroughly disgusted looking Yuffie. It was nice to see that she was logical enough to realize that some traditions were stupid, no matter how long they've been practiced. "It took me a long time to systematically alienate every potential suitor, let me tell you, and even after I did that dad wanted to fly people in from the other end of the country," she said.
"So you aren't against the concept of commitment as a whole?" Reno questioned her, not entirely sure why he was even interested.
"As long as the selection process has nothing to do with who your parents are," Yuffie answered, "I'm fine with it." She paused just long enough to reject the idea of downing another shot. "Not right this second, mind you, but eventually."
"So you're a chance meeting kind of girl?" Reno asked, wondering if he had heard that line in some bad country song.
"I went on a life threatening mission I barely understood because I bumped into a group of misfits in the middle of the woods and saw a slight opportunity to pick up some materia along the way," Yuffie said with a self mocking smile, "Let's just say I don't keep a day planner."
"So you've gotta be surprised," Reno ventured idly, "I'll have to remember that."
"Oh yeah?" Yuffie asked. "For what?"
"Escaping, stealing your money," he smirked coolly, "anything else that occurs to me." He yawned once and glanced at his wrist, quickly realizing that the last time he had even owned a watch had been long over a year ago. He put his elbows down on the table and sunk his chin into his hands, determined to put his drinking on halt until Yuffie began to catch up or until the room stopped spinning.
Neither seemed probably as Yuffie mimicked his actions, though with her shorts forearms she quickly found herself looking up at him. The smoke had begun to clear as the night ticked away and more and more people began to slink out the door, and she suddenly realized that they were almost alone in the place. "Anything else?" she asked softly.
An interesting that about Reno is that he was pretty fond of himself as a whole, he absolutely abhorred his inner voice. So when it picked this moment to start speaking up and warning him about the impending trouble that would be caused by what he was about to attempt, it confirmed the action in the former Turks mind. He dropped his hands away and leaned further across the table, turning his face to the side and bringing his lips forward to meet hers while she watched him closely.
A sudden flurry of activity at the door interrupted his move, the door flung open much harder than any man should be able to do at two o'clock in the morning. As the few remaining patrons of the bar looked on in surprise, three men in the law enforcement uniform of the city came marching in. Yuffie turned to face them with a blank expression, and when she turned back to say something to Reno he was already gone, the alcohol apparently not enough to dull his survival instinct- he had ducked down and under the table.
It was just as well he did, as the leading man spotted her and pointed her out to the others. The remaining two talked amongst themselves, apparently disagreeing, but eventually one over ruled the other and sent him trudging over towards Yuffie. She rose to meet him, still holding her glass, waved off the salute of respect he gave her, and cut right to the chase. "What is it, Stephen?"
"Well, ma'am, its about Gorki..." Reno heard him say from under the table, and closed his eyes. It didn't take a genius to figure out what was about to come. "There were reports of gunshots in the alley behind the Pagoda, and we found him when we went to investigate. He's... he's gone."
Glass shattered as Yuffie's grip slipped, and as he scooted backwards across the floor to avoid the flying fragments Reno knew it was time he got to work.
"I've seen you in action," came the heated reply, the brashness somewhat tainted by a mild sputtering cough that bubbled up towards the end, "and you wouldn't scare me less if we were in the middle of a knitting contest." Fingers hung poised in the air, wavering, ready to swoop down and grab their weapon of desire and throw it into action, hovering just seconds before an attempt to blow the other away.
They both reached down at the same time, snatching a shot glass from the wooden surface of the table and bringing it up to their lips, tossing it back with a single flowing motion. The harsh alcohol raced over tongues and down throats, and while the former Turk took his like water it ended up catching somewhere between Yuffie's lungs and her tonsils and she nearly choked as she felt the fiery liquid go to work on her insides.
"What are you, a maso?" Reno asked calmly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Yuffie glared at him, but clearly felt that opening her mouth would be asking for a second stream of hacking convulsions and was forced to be content to speak her mind with her seething gaze. Deciding to take this as an inquiry, Reno just shrugged and turned to look around the bar, a half smile on his face that he always wore when located in his home environment. "I'm just saying, you weigh all of three pounds, and you challenge me to a drinking contest."
"Three pounds?" Yuffie asked after she had regained the ability, "I'm not sure whether I should be blushing or offended. That is sort of bordering between flattery and-"
"-it was a compliment," Reno cut her off gently, "sort of. Let's leave it at that."
"Hm," Yuffie mused, "so why did you pick this place, anyway? There's a great bar just down the street from my house."
Inwardly, Reno was wondering why he had chosen any place at all. The fact was, he had wanted to get out and about, cabin fever was hitting him hard cramped up in the thief's place. The problem was, she was still insisting on going along with this notion that he was her captive, even though the way she kept dozing off in front of him while he was carrying his EMR probably won her the award for world's worst warden. Thus, he would have had to drag her along if he wanted to go outside...
...so why exactly had he gone into his old routine when bringing the venture up? He didn't figure himself as a guy who was easily surprised, but he had stunned himself when he'd managed to ask her out instead of requesting a brief leave from encasement. Not as stunned as she had been, granted, but after she'd ensured that the place he wanted to take her to was in no way a brothel, strip club, or other kind of prostitution ring she had readily agreed.
"That dive?" Reno asked derisively. "If I felt like some candy and hop skotch... that still wouldn't be the first place I went to. I wanted a drink, not a fruit drink or a daiquiri or an extract. That place is a set of glow sticks away from being a rave joint for fifteen year olds popping placebos with trademarks stamped into the sides."
"Well," Yuffie said slowly, "a simple 'because' would have sufficed."
Reno had to laugh. It had been a long, long time since he had genuinely gone out with anyone at all. Bars had two purposes, getting trashed and getting laid, both of which Reno had gotten quite skilled at. Even when he had still been a Turk, small talk with Tseng had been reduced to mission briefing, with Rude it was non existent, and with Elena it was simply intolerable. Deciding that for a passing distraction, this was working out quite well, Reno decided to press the conversation.
"So how did you end up in that place of yours, anyway?" he asked between gulps of skotch. "I mean, you are a genuine princess, right? Shouldn't you live in a place with spires, and servants, and working hot water?"
Yuffie frowned. "I did that," she admitted, "for the first thirteen years of my life. There is a reason that Spike and his motley crew found my in the forests of an entirely different hemisphere, you know. I had to travel the world for five years just to get over the memories of my childhood, and you can imagine what that says considering I love this country. Now that I've finally mellowed out enough to get my own place, you'd better believe it isn't going to look anything like my old one."
"Fair enough," Reno said, before taking another swallow. He put his glass down and eyed Yuffie's side of the table, which was slowly beginning to pile up with filled glasses. "You're falling behind."
"I know," Yuffie admitted, "but I figure that once you pass out I can just pour these down a sink and pretend I drank them."
"Don't get your hopes up," Reno smirked, "odds are I'll fall asleep from exhaustion before I succumb to this stuff."
"I'd concede, but I don't want to give you the satisfaction," Yuffie said, then paused, apparently uncomfortable being the only one in the conversation giving information about themselves. "So how about you? I have a pretty morbid idea of how you've spent most your time since your childhood, but what have you been doing since you left the Turks? Can't be anything too entertaining, I would have heard you were in town by now."
"You don't want to know." Reno said simply.
"Why?" Yuffie asked, with considerable trepidation. "What have you been doing?"
"You sure you want to know?" Reno asked with a wicked grin.
"...if you don't tell me, I'll be forced to beat you to death with your own stool," Yuffie countered cheerily.
Glancing back and forth around the bar, Reno smiled secretly. He leaned conspiratoriously across the table and cupped his hands around his mouth, apparently preparing to unleash a secret that would bring the very building crashing down around their heads if overhead. Eyes wide in anticipation, Yuffie leaned in closer to hear him as he breathed out his answer in a single word, alcohol tainted whisper.
"Nothing."
"Nothing?" Yuffie asked, positive she heard right but knowing it was possible Reno had simply lost track of his own train of thought, something that seemed to happen to him at least once a day.
"Absolutely nothing," Reno said, leaning back in his chair and grinning.
"So you've been unemployed for a year following a long and healthy career as a murderer," Yuffie acknowledged, slowly nodding her head. "You are a catch and a half, Turkey."
"I knew you wouldn't get it," Reno said offhandedly, "but I think it was some of the most enjoyable twelve months I've ever been through. I don't have any money, so I really just go from place to place, picking up what I can when I can. The only thing I've really kept with me all this time is my EMR, and I'm not even sure why I've held onto that."
"A memento, I guess," Yuffie said with a shrug, resigned to take another shot and winced as it went down. "But you couldn't have just done nothing. I see you sitting here, and even know you look like you want to jump up and sucker punch somebody. Even if you weren't working, you'd have to have a hobby, or a few friends, or a girl or something."
"Does womanizing count as a hobby?" Reno asked.
"...in prison, maybe," Yuffie said, rolling her eyes at him. "I guess that gives an obvious answer to that last part."
"Common sense," Reno began, "gives an obvious answer to that last part. Besides the fact that I don't have a house, money, or any mode of transportation with which to drive them around in, I'm not looking for a steady women."
"You're about to make a crack about bovine purchase and free milk, aren't you?" Yuffie asked.
"Nah, fuck clichés," Reno said quickly, "the whole concept of being tied down to someone just scares the hell out of me. I did the whole co-dependency thing when I was living on the streets with my little sister, and it didn't exactly work out that well. There's nothing you could get from a relationship that you can't get from a series of rapid fire one night stands."
Yuffie paused, looking over at him in disbelief. "Do you really believe that?"
Reno smiled, showing far more teeth than he needed to. "No," he admitted, "but before most women can figure that out I'm not only out their door, I'm in somebody else's."
"And you call me a maso," Yuffie snipped, took another shot, and that time she didn't wince. "You're not only going to end up alone, you're going to end up alone with herpes. A loner guy with a fear of commitment, what a surprise."
"It's not so much a fear as an unconditional loathing," Reno said playfully, "Why? Do you mean to tell me that the sovereign Miss Kisaragi has a better half in waiting somewhere?" At his words, a visible shudder ran through his companion, even though there was no drink present anywhere near her.
"Let's just say that's one area of Wutain culture I wish would just fade away and be lost forever," Yuffie responded, and when Reno gave her a questioning look she continued onward. "It's a tradition that in cases of clan leaders, like my father, that any children he has be married off to children of the leaders of the other clans. It's just a rotational system short of incest."
Chuckling quietly, Reno gestured to the bar tender for another round, and turned back to see a thoroughly disgusted looking Yuffie. It was nice to see that she was logical enough to realize that some traditions were stupid, no matter how long they've been practiced. "It took me a long time to systematically alienate every potential suitor, let me tell you, and even after I did that dad wanted to fly people in from the other end of the country," she said.
"So you aren't against the concept of commitment as a whole?" Reno questioned her, not entirely sure why he was even interested.
"As long as the selection process has nothing to do with who your parents are," Yuffie answered, "I'm fine with it." She paused just long enough to reject the idea of downing another shot. "Not right this second, mind you, but eventually."
"So you're a chance meeting kind of girl?" Reno asked, wondering if he had heard that line in some bad country song.
"I went on a life threatening mission I barely understood because I bumped into a group of misfits in the middle of the woods and saw a slight opportunity to pick up some materia along the way," Yuffie said with a self mocking smile, "Let's just say I don't keep a day planner."
"So you've gotta be surprised," Reno ventured idly, "I'll have to remember that."
"Oh yeah?" Yuffie asked. "For what?"
"Escaping, stealing your money," he smirked coolly, "anything else that occurs to me." He yawned once and glanced at his wrist, quickly realizing that the last time he had even owned a watch had been long over a year ago. He put his elbows down on the table and sunk his chin into his hands, determined to put his drinking on halt until Yuffie began to catch up or until the room stopped spinning.
Neither seemed probably as Yuffie mimicked his actions, though with her shorts forearms she quickly found herself looking up at him. The smoke had begun to clear as the night ticked away and more and more people began to slink out the door, and she suddenly realized that they were almost alone in the place. "Anything else?" she asked softly.
An interesting that about Reno is that he was pretty fond of himself as a whole, he absolutely abhorred his inner voice. So when it picked this moment to start speaking up and warning him about the impending trouble that would be caused by what he was about to attempt, it confirmed the action in the former Turks mind. He dropped his hands away and leaned further across the table, turning his face to the side and bringing his lips forward to meet hers while she watched him closely.
A sudden flurry of activity at the door interrupted his move, the door flung open much harder than any man should be able to do at two o'clock in the morning. As the few remaining patrons of the bar looked on in surprise, three men in the law enforcement uniform of the city came marching in. Yuffie turned to face them with a blank expression, and when she turned back to say something to Reno he was already gone, the alcohol apparently not enough to dull his survival instinct- he had ducked down and under the table.
It was just as well he did, as the leading man spotted her and pointed her out to the others. The remaining two talked amongst themselves, apparently disagreeing, but eventually one over ruled the other and sent him trudging over towards Yuffie. She rose to meet him, still holding her glass, waved off the salute of respect he gave her, and cut right to the chase. "What is it, Stephen?"
"Well, ma'am, its about Gorki..." Reno heard him say from under the table, and closed his eyes. It didn't take a genius to figure out what was about to come. "There were reports of gunshots in the alley behind the Pagoda, and we found him when we went to investigate. He's... he's gone."
Glass shattered as Yuffie's grip slipped, and as he scooted backwards across the floor to avoid the flying fragments Reno knew it was time he got to work.
