Author's Note: Overdue birthday fic for one of the best friends I've picked up. Happy fifteenth, God, even though this'n is a bit overdue. Four months, yes? Hope this makes up for it. Sequel to 'Checkout.'
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A Blonde Walks Into a Bar…
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"What do they call this?"
". . .A steamroller."
Reno, chin on the bar and eyes trying to focus on the burgundy drink in front of him, groaned. "My excitement scale sure is flat as fuck." He made a large display of taking another drink, glancing toward the door as he did. "Shit, I wish Rufus would call and tell us what the hell to do."
His bald friend nodded in agreement and sipped his water. Rude hated to drink, so he refused to do anything but drink water and eat chocoburgers when they went to a bar. The Turtle's Paradise was usually a good spot for entertainment on a Saturday night, but the whole place was just dull this time around. "Where's Tseng?"
"Pfft," the redhead sputtered, looking offended. "That lousy bastard? He went off to Costa for a week for 'recreational hibernation.' If Heideggar could hear with his head so far up his ass, he'd know that hibernation isn't even a professional term." He watched the deformed head of Rude turn through his drink.
"What've we here?" Rude's voice had a tinge of confusion to it, which was strange considering how much he could look at and not feel at all puzzled. He was possibly the only man in the universe who liked running around the Icicle Inn tundra.
Reno turned one way and saw nothing. He flipped back around the other way with the same result, then leaned back and kicked at the table, throwing his chair at the ground with the sound of splintering wood. He found himself staring almost directly up the dress of a total stranger, but she'd stepped back upon his impact.
She smiled down at him. She wore a Wutain ceremonial dress, her heritage-defying blonde hair curled around two styling sticks in a large, intricate design, and she'd modified the formal wear into something Scarlet might prance about in. But it was that smile that got to him.
He'd seen it before.
And hell if he hadn't seen her before.
He squinted up, trying to focus on her two, revolving faces that were a bit blurred anyway, and one good look told him where she was from. It had been. . .exactly a year ago, come to think of it. . .and Tseng had left him with his cat. . .because he'd gone to Costa. . .for a week. . .
He narrowed his eyes and stood up. "Are you and my boss in on this shit together?" He almost fell onto the table, but kicked his chair up and sat on it backward so he could talk to her.
"Reno, darling," she said sweetly, though they'd only met once at the checkout in Midgar. Or Junon. Wherever he'd been living at the time. "You know it's my birthday again today?"
Rude had no idea what was going on, so he excused himself to the restroom. He had a feeling this was a relationship he wanted to have no dealings with.
The redhead lit a cigarette and puffed it a few times. Outside there was a yell, but Tonya blocked his path when he tried to look at the door. "No shit? I got a memo they'd rescheduled it this year. I guess you didn't receive that one?"
"I want a present!" she chirped, totally ignoring whatever it was he might have said. Her mind was obviously somewhere else; unlike with most women, it wasn't in his pants. "And I know just what that is!"
"Mm?" That was the universal Reno Drannor sound for 'I'm too damn tired to answer you extensively and probably don't care anyway, but what do you want, you lousy bitch?' Tseng had named that when Reno had been in the hospital; it was later nicknamed the Drannor Nurse Grunt, but the Turks all liked the full title a lot better.
She pulled up a chair next to him and smirked. "Just go with it, doll."
'Sure as shit,' might have been his next response, but it was halted by a few things. One was the fact that he was swallowing a mouthful of alcohol. The second was that the door had just been smashed in by a large man with at least ten tattoos on his neck alone swinging a large chain around. The third was that he was about to not say 'sorry' for burning a hole in her dress because of the fourth, the reason he would have responded at all. The fourth was that he couldn't say something as short as 'um,' simply because she'd started making out with him.
Something told him that this would be interesting.
He went with it.
The large man in the doorway paused with the look of a neurotic vegan who has just found a murder of crowds strung up in his hallway. In a moment that was replaced by a solid wall of rage as he barreled through the bar toward the pair, chain swinging aimlessly. In the garble that flew out of his mouth, Reno deciphered that he'd been cheating and she ran because she was mad.
She pulled away from Reno with a wink. "Oh, no, please don't hurt me," she said feebly, waving her arms in the way that said he might as well just whack her one because she didn't give a shit.
The redhead allowed him to approach until he heard the tink of the chain knicking his earring. Within a fourth of the next second, six shots had been fired. The first landed in the big man's wrist, sending the chain flying. One hit his head and the other four went directly into his chest.
Reno had only fired three times, so he glanced at the bathroom and saw Rude putting his gun away. Everyone had gone appropriately silent, kind of white after what had just happened. Tonya's smile hadn't wavered a bit. She kissed Reno with a giggle and leaned close to his ear, like she might say something else.
When Rude sat down, Tonya waved to him and walked out the door with a grin, as if she hadn't a care in the world. Reno turned and looked at his friend with a strange expression on his face. He picked up a glass, faced the other way, and hurled it at the wall.
"Happy birthday, wench!" he shouted, and he knew she heard it.
Rude's eyebrow cocked. "Do I want to know?" he asked quietly, sipping his water.
"Wanna know what?" his friend asked as he finally settled on facing him. "How we know each other or how much I need to get laid now that she made out with me and breathed in my ear?"
The bald man stared at him. It took a few seconds, but when he'd regained his clean mental slate, he opened the newspaper to the obituaries. "You're absolutely right. I really don't."