Author's Note: Okay, here I go, writing this chapter with no clear idea of what's going to happen in it.
A quick advertisement: Pingpong867 has started a Squffie community at www.livejournal.com So far, there are few members and conversation mainly consists of me acting like a rambling idiot. And there is going to be a scene writing competition starting July 1st. So, if you're interested, just go to livejournal.com and then search for 'squffie' as a community.
Note to ObsidianSorrows: Yeah, when I named the dove Yoshi, I immediately thought about Mario Bros. I liked the movie version best. It was awesome... Okay... I'm a geek.
[Disclaimer: Do you really need this? I don't own 'em. I own Yoshi. I think that is all the I own. However, in my dreams, Squall belongs to me, and only to me.]
Chapter Eight: Are They...?
"Aerith?" Yuffie called sweetly through the connecting door between the Red and Green Rooms, gently rapping her knuckles against the hard surface as she did so. The dove she had named Yoshi rested in Squall's hands, who, in turn, rested upon the bed with his back reclining against the headboard. At the sound of soft shuffling footsteps on the other side of the door, Yuffie backed away, a wide grin on her face as Aerith opened the door.
"What is it, Yuffie?" the Flower Girl asked hesitantly, recognizing the grin upon the ninja's face as the same one she used when she wanted a favor. Usually a favor that no one else wanted to do. Before Yuffie had a chance to answer, Aerith's eyes trailed across the room to the bed, falling upon the wounded bird that was quivering in fear as the Gunblade wielder kept a gentle, yet firm grip upon it. Aerith immediately crossed the room to the bed, her eyes narrowing slightly as she neared and looked over the dove. "Okay, Yuf, where did you find it?"
Yuffie bounded across the room and plopped down upon the mattress next to Squall, taking Yoshi carefully out of his hands and holding him out to Aerith. "He was in the alley and a cat was attacking him. Do you think you can heal him?"
At the hopeful expression on the young ninja's face, Aerith bit her lip as she realized that the main injury the bird had suffered was the loss of it's tail feathers, something magic could not heal. "I don't know," she admitted quietly. "Here, let me see him."
Squall rested his head against the headboard, listening silently to the conversation between the two young women. The lilting rise and fall of the ninja's voice spread a tranquil blanket across him, oddly giving his mind a peace that it hadn't felt in years. It was amazing how the one person in his acquaintance that he normally associated the least with peace was able to do this to him. At the sound of his name, Squall jerked his head up and came out of the reverie he had fallen into. "Hm?"
"I asked if you knew where you put the box your boots came in," Yuffie repeated in fond exasperation as she rolled her eyes, the dove she had taken back from Aerith beginning to struggle in her hands. "Well?"
As Squall tried to recall where he had stored the large box, he felt the eyes of both young women upon him. "Didn't you insist that I put it in the closet, Yuf?" he asked, the closet being the only place he could think of to keep something in this small room.
"Maybe I did," Yuffie said thoughtfully as she looked over at the closed closet with narrowed eyes. "Here, hold Yoshi." She thrust the bird into Squall's hands before crossing the room and pulling open the closet door, immediately beginning to rummage through the things they had accumulated, most of it being his as she had only moved into the room about a week ago.
While Yuffie was busy with the closet, Aerith began to unwrap Squall's bandages from his head, intent on medicating his eyes while she was there. "So, can you see anything yet? Anything at all?" she questioned when the last bandage fell away from his eyes.
"I can only see the difference between light and dark and that's it," Squall muttered as his icy blue eyes darted around the room in an attempt to recognize some shape. "And a few blurry shapes," he added as he noticed the movement of what he assumed to be the flower girl as she moved to put herself in a position to place the eye drops.
Aerith let out a soft sigh as she firmly held Squall's eye open and dropped the medicine into it. "Well, that's an improvement," she finally said as she turned her attention to the other eye, glad that the Gunblade wielder had quickly learned to control his squirming when she tended to his eyes.
Across the room, a very annoyed ninja picked her way through the junk, as she called it, Squall had packed away in the closet. Seeing no other way to find an empty box within the clutter, she began pulling out everything from the closet, including the boxes of books and photo albums in the dark recesses of the small closet. "Squall, how did you ever get this much junk?" she called from her kneeling position on the floor.
"It's Leon and it's not junk," he called back, remembering this time to correct her as he always did when she called him Squall. As Aerith finished wrapping the bandage around his eyes, he rose from the bed and carefully walked across the room, dragging his feet slightly to feel for obstacles.
Aerith calmly packed up the extra bandages and small bottle of eye drops, looking over at her two friends and smiling slightly. It was nice to see them actually getting along and not bickering over something trivial as they were wont to do. In fact, it seemed to her they were getting along a little too well as she had detected some fondness in the way Squall had corrected her name mistake. The flower girl eyed them suspiciously as she watched Yuffie tease Squall about being a packrat, to which he actually smiled. "Okay, you two. What's going on?" Aerith demanded as she stood with her hands on her hips and glared at them.
"What do you mean?" Yuffie asked, slight confusion crossing her face as she stared back at the pink clad woman. The ninja suspected she knew what her friend was talking about, but she didn't want to give anything away in case she was wrong.
"What do you mean 'what do I mean'?" the flower girl retorted. "You two are getting along way too well. Something is up and I demand that you tell me what's going on." At the end of her speech, she let out a little huff of anger at the fact that her friends were hiding something from her.
"Aerith," Squall began, shifting the struggling bird in his hands as he arose turned to face her. "Nothing is going on. Just because we're not fighting doesn't mean that something is wrong. We've just finally reached a compromise, haven't we, Yuffie?"
Yuffie jumped to her feet, taking the dove away from Squall before the man dropped it. "Yeah, a compromise. That's it. I decided to grow up and Leon decided to loosen up a bit since you are forcing us to share a room."
"And a bed," Squall muttered under his breath.
Green eyes widening at an alarming rate, Aerith gasped and covered her gaping mouth with one hand. "You're what?!" she hissed as she continued to gape at the two in front of her.
Yuffie narrowed her eyes momentarily, perplexed with the flower girl's reaction until she realized the implications Squall's statement had made. "Oh gawd!" she exclaimed, covering her eyes with one hand and blushing slightly. "Not like that, Aerith!"
Squall sighed and rubbed a hand down his face before attempting to elaborate the situation to the flower girl. "She doesn't have a cot, Aerith. It was either share the bed or listen to her complain about sleeping on the floor. Which would you have picked?" The bandages across his eyes prevented him from seeing the icy indignant glare his roommate cast his way at the implied insult.
A squawk from Yoshi let Yuffie know she had squeezed him a little too hard in her anxiety at Aerith's implication and indignation at Squall's hidden insult. Taking a deep breath, the ninja calmed herself, loosening her grip on the dove and stroking his head as she planned how she would deal with the Gunblade wielder later.
"Okay, I see your point, Leon," Aerith admitted after thinking it over for a few minutes, shaking her head and laughing at the thought of Leon and Yuffie ever getting over their differences enough to actually become more than friends. "It was just... strange, for lack of a better word, seeing the two of you getting along so well and then Leon had to say that..." She tiredly rubbed her forehead as she looked at the clock. "But, anyways, my lunch break is almost over and they need me back at the infirmary."
As soon as the brunette left the room, Squall heard the sound of Yuffie hurriedly walking across the room to his side. About to turn to her, he felt a small fist punch him in the shoulder, causing him to let out a sharp hiss of pain. "Damn it, Yuffie! What was that for?!" he exclaimed as he rubbed the quickly forming bruise, wondering when she had become so strong.
Having set Yoshi down on the small table, the ninja massaged her aching knuckles, wincing at the pain. "Well, let's see. You told her you had to share the bed or listen to me complain, didn't you? If I remember correctly, I offered to sleep on the floor. But, noooo, you insisted that I sleep on the bed. Remember?" She waved her finger in his face as she continued to rant about his stubbornness in the sharing of the bed.
Squall, having felt her finger brush against his nose, reached up and grabbed her wrist, pulling it down away from his face. "Yuffie, will you shut up for a minute and listen to me?" he demanded as he realized she wasn't going to get quiet any time soon.
"What?" She tried to wrench her hand away from him only to find his grip tighten upon it, tighten almost bruisingly, in fact. A soft whimper left her lips at the pain as his fingers dug into her flesh.
Hearing her pained tone, he loosened the his grip and began to soothingly massage her flesh to make up for the pain he had given her. "I was trying to throw her off track. Remember? We don't want her to find out until we're ready to tell her."
"Okay, okay... you win. I forgive you," Yuffie conceded, raising herself on tiptoe to softly kiss his lips, her free hand snaking around his neck and burying itself within his thick mane. Leaning back, she smiled at him before grabbing a handful of his hair and yanking on it, causing him to wince. "But, if you ever insult me again, you will be sorry. Got it?"
"Yes, ma'am," Squall muttered, face relaxing as she released her hold upon his hair. As she began to pull away, he started to drop her wrist, but stopped when he felt her fingers entwined with his own, leading him across the room and toward the bed. "Yuffie, what are you doing?"
"Taking you to the bed," she stated matter of factly, flashing him a devious grin that she wished he could see. But, the look on his face at her answer was priceless. His expression sported a mixture of shock and confusion, a look that made her silently laugh as she rolled her eyes.
Squall stopped walking, resisting her insistent tugging on his arm as she tried to continue to pull him to the bed. "Yuffie, why are you taking me to the bed?"
"You'll see," she murmured softly, giving his arm a quick yank to make him start moving once again. As he neared the bed, she got behind him and pushed him onto the bed, where he landed with an 'oohf' on his stomach. He quickly rolled over and sat up, leaning back against the headboard. "Now, wait right there and you'll get a big surprise," she said as she walked away from him.
Once again, Squall wished for his vision, just so he could see what the ninja had up her sleeve. Usually, one could tell exactly what was going through Yuffie's mind just by seeing the expression on her face, making it almost impossible for the girl to keep a secret a secret for long. Running through her words again, he carefully analyzed the inflection she had used with each statement, beginning to sense a hint of seductiveness in her last words. Surely she couldn't be thinking...
His train of thought was interrupted by the ninja herself, who had managed to sneak up on him unawares as he had been engrossed in his thoughts. She trailed a finger down his cheek, stopping it at his lips momentarily before moving it to his shoulder to steady herself as she leaned down to whisper in his ear. "Ready for your surprise?"
"Um... Yuffie..." Squall gulped, "I don't think this is such a good idea..."
"Sure it is, Squall. I want this, and I'm sure you will, too, once you get it."
"Really, Yuffie..." He stopped protesting when he felt a small, warm, feathered body placed onto his lap, his hands automatically going to it to keep the bird from hopping away.
Yuffie burst out in laughter, scaring even more the already frightened Yoshi. "You are so much fun to toy with Squall. You know that, don't you?" She sat on the edge of the bed, subconsciously placing her hand upon his knee as she tried to keep her giggles in check. "You should have seen the expression on your face. It was priceless."
"Why am I holding the bird anyways?" he asked, ignoring her comments and concentrating on the bird in his hand.
"Because, I couldn't find an empty box and I need you to keep him out of trouble while I run down to the Item Shop and get one from the ducklings. They always have boxes stored around there." Standing up, she playfully ruffled his hair before quickly crossing the room to the balcony. "So, have fun," she called cheerfully as she jumped off the balcony and to the alley below.
Taking a deep breath and slowly letting it out, Squall threw his head back against the wall, wincing at the dull pain it caused on the back of his skull. "Yoshi, I honestly believe the girl is insane," he muttered, stroking the smooth feathers of the dove, which seemed to have begun to accept its situation and become considerably calmer than it had been earlier. "But, she wouldn't be the Yuffie we know and love without it, would she?"
As if seconding the Gunblade wielder's assessment, Yoshi let out a soft coo before ruffling his feathers.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The bell above the door jingled as the young ninja walked into the Item Shop, jumping off the platform and onto the floor below. "Hey, Huey? Dewey? Louie?" she called as she approached the counter, eyes searching the room for any sign of the three ducklings. "Hello?" Not seeing anyone and being in a rush, Yuffie looked impatiently around the room, her eyes falling on an empty box in the corner. Smiling to herself, she strode over to it and grabbed it, heading for the exit so she could relieve Squall of his bird-sitting duties.
"Hold it right there, Yuffie," a voice called from behind the counter. She turned around to find three pairs of eyes boring into her as the ducklings jumped up onto the counter and glared at her. "We knew we'd catch you stealing again, didn't we boys?"
The other two ducklings quickly seconded the first while Yuffie rolled her eyes. "Huey, I'm just taking an empty box. I don't think that counts as stealing, now does it?"
"Does it belong to you?" the first duckling asked angrily, shaking his fist at the ninja. "And I'm not Huey! I'm Louie!"
Yuffie sat the box upon the floor and leaned against the wall, massaging her temples with the tips of her fingers. She couldn't really care less which duckling it was as she had never taken the time to tell the triplets apart. "Look, guys, I need this box, okay? Squa-er, Leon and I found a wounded bird this morning and we need something to keep it in until it gets well." She stared at the three boys, trying to make her eyes large and watery like Aerith did when she wanted something. "So, can I have the box? Please?"
"No," the duckling dressed in blue said firmly, stalking over to her and taking the box away. "We need this box to ship some items."
"But, we do have something else you can buy from us," the red-clad duckling stated, greedily rubbing his wings together in the anticipation of finally selling the stupid thing. "We have a birdcage over there."
The ninja followed his pointing wing with her eyes, seeing a large, rusty cage sitting haphazardly upon a stack of boxes. "That thing?" she muttered, grimacing at the sight of all the rust and bent wires. The boys nodded. "How much?" she finally asked, deciding that she had to have something to keep Yoshi in and a birdcage would work a lot better than a cardboard box.
The three boys huddled up, whispering to each other as they discussed the price. The one dressed in green kept peeking over his shoulder, sneaking glances at the ninja before going back to the furious whispering of his brothers. "One hundred munny," they finally announced, all three of them crossing their arms over their chests in a no-nonsense manner. "And that's final."
"A hundred? For that old thing?" Yuffie repeated incredulously, her hands on her hips as she silently debated the matter. "Fine, I'll take it." She hastily reached into her pockets and pulled out the required munny, throwing it onto the counter as she stalked over to the cage. "It better not break, or I'll be back for my refund." Picking up the cage, she quickly left the shop, leaving the ducklings to laugh about how easy it had been to sell her that piece of junk.
Yuffie walked through the First and Second Districts on her way back to the hotel, assuming it would be near impossible to jump up onto the balcony with that monstrosity of a birdcage with her. Reaching the hotel door, she pushed through with her back and quickly marched down the hall to the Green Room, setting the cage upon the floor as she opened the door. She walked through, leaving the door open behind her since her hands were full with the cage she had picked up again.
A smile came across her face as she looked at the scene in front of her. On the bed, Squall still sat as she had left him, leaning against the headboard. However, his head was tilted to the side and his lips were parted slightly as he softly snored. And, still in his lap, Yoshi had his head tucked beneath one of his snowy wings.
She placed the cage beneath the window and grabbed the morning's paper to line the bottom of it. That finished, she quietly tiptoed over to the sleeping Squall and carefully took the bird out of his hands to place in the cage. "There ya go, Yoshi," she whispered as she shut the cage door and went back to the bed where she straddled Squall's lap. "Squall, Squall, Squall, how can you be asleep?" she murmured softly, pushing the hair out of his face before lowering herself to lean against his chest, her head resting on his shoulder and her head turned towards the balcony window.
"Who says I'm asleep?" he inquired softly as he wrapped his arms around her, his hands resting on her lower back, right above the waistband of her shorts.
"Well, you were asleep. I heard you snoring." Yuffie raised her arms and wrapped them around his neck, still lying against his chest.
"I don't snore."
"How would you know if you were asleep, hm?" When he didn't answer, the ninja laughed softly, shaking her head and tossing her hair out of her eyes. She snuggled deeper into his arms, letting out a content sigh as she did do. "This is nice," she murmured sleepily, her eyes slowly closing.
A loud gasp caused the ninja to open her eyes and quickly jump up, turning around to find the door still open and a very shocked Aerith to be standing in the doorway, her purse on the floor beside her feet with its contents spilling out onto the carpeting.
Author's Note: hehe... Bad Deplora! ::slaps wrist:: Bad Deplora for leaving it right there! Well, I have no idea where most of this chapter came from. It just kinda appeared. And I know that really it's a pointless chapter, but it was the only thing I could come up with. So, I apologize for the utter pointlessness of it. But, please, I'm in desperate need of reviews. You see, I have an addiction. An addiction to reviews. So, please, by all means, feed this addiction. And I'll try to get started on the next chapter right away, but no promises for when it'll come out.