Disclaimer: Not mine.
Okay. I am soooooo not proud of this story right now because I think it's extremely bland and without emotion. But my friend wanted a fluff so this is seriously the best I can do right now. I'm so ashamed of myself. : ( Read on if you dare.
Talk to Me, Beautiful.
Annoying laughter.
Incessant chatter.
An excited scream from the corner.
A glass breaking.
That and the God awful stench of alcohol are almost more than I could handle.
The volume of everyone in the room trying to shout over each other began to get louder and louder as the night went on.
I was never one for bulllshit noise.
Unnecessary sound.
It reminds me of chaos; people and things running back and forth in panic.
And I –after watching as Sephiroth tore my town to shreds -had had more chaos in my lifetime than I honestly needed.
"Hey, Miss Tifa, tell us about how you and AVALANCHE found the cure for Geostigma!" A customer calls from one of the tables. A cheer from the rest of the bar follows.
Giving a faux grin, I inhale and begin. "Weeell... It's a long story... Here's how it begins..."
-------
Halfway through the tale, a tall figure pushed his way through the dense crowd packing the cozy bar and took a seat on the far dark side of the bar counter. I look up and spare a quick wave to Rude.
After ordering a beer from one of my waitresses who seemed to be bending over a bit too much for a bit too flashy view of her well endowed chest, he got comfy and made no move to interact with anyone else in the room.
I have to admit, my eyes flicked over to him more than once. But it's not anything weird or flirty. I'm just wondering 'Where's Reno?'
Honest.
For two weeks, they've been crashing my bar. Up until this night, Reno had always been with him and I always assumed that the redhead had always dragged his poor comrade along for a drink.
By eleven, the story had come to it happy finale and the crowd dispersed. Walking over to the ex-Turk, I lean casually against the counter.
"So, Rude, where's Reno tonight?" I throw on a smile and don't realize that my eyes are already telling everyone in the room that I'm dead tired.
He sips his beer. And gazes back at me, unnerving my entire being as he does so.
The silence stretches and I kept waiting.
He takes another sip.
No signs of replying.
Should I ask again? Yeah, I think I should. I open my mouth, readying the phrase when: "I'm mad at him."
Funny, he doesn't sound very angry.
Actually he doesn't really sound very anything. Hell, I've heard more words come out of Vincent Valentine's lips than Rude's. Hmm, they both talk the same way too; monotone. Perhaps they'd make good friends.
What a blast those two would be.
Vincent sulking in the shadows while Rude sits comfortably on a couch.
Vincent nods a bit. "…"
"..." Rude replies. "...?"
Vincent gives a slight chuckle before answering with a simple: "…"
"..." Rude smiles a bit. "...?"
And so on.
…
The hell's wrong with me? Shaking the strange scene out of my head, I tilt my head in curiosity.
"Oh? And why is that?"
Tipping his beer bottle, I take it as a sign that he wants another. Reaching under the bar, I swiftly pull out another beer without ever breaking eye contact (Except Rude still had his shades on. For the longest time, I've secretly wondered what color his eyes were).
He takes a drink from his fresh bottle before tapping a finger to his brow where a vicious cut is stitched up.
"Oh my god. What happened?" Without any hesitation, my motherly instincts take over and I reach to touch the cut. It feels jagged under my fingertips.
I don't see it, but a faint pink manifest under his cheeks.
"Reno." A small grin grows on his lips. "You ever hear the saying 'Don't run with scissors?'"
The smile stretches when I couldn't hold in the giggle anymore. "That must have hurt."
Suddenly, he flinches as my thumb brushes over a stitch. My eyes widen as I'm trying to say Sorry and pull my hand away, but all the words caught in my throat when his fingers slip over mine and put it down on the countertop. With his hand over mine.
Itfeels warm. "So, uh…"
The words still refused to come out right.
He smiles a bit and I blush when his thumb begins to run over my knuckles.
"Can I get some service over here?" I jump a bit and look over to the patron. Pulling my hand away gently, I walk over to help her without a word to Rude.
-------
After I help that woman, more people start to come in and the bar is busy until nearly one. In the midst of trying to serve every single one of the damn alcoholics, I couldn't spare a glance at my special guest.
Each and every patron slowly seems to get up and leave one by one after the clock strikes one thirty. By a quarter to, no one except Rude is left.
He seems to be sucked into his own world, not realizing that only the two of us were left in the room. I take a moment and run my eyes down his frame from the table I'm standing at.
He's a big guy that always seemed to be well dressed in a suit, whether Turk uniform or just fancy pants and a blazer. Unlike his partner, he never seemed without composure (unless it's those frequent but short lived moments when Reno would accidentally nail Rude in the face with his EMR, the handle of a gun, a coffee mug, scissors, etc…)
Suddenly, he turns and catches me staring. I nearly drop the dirty glass I'm holding.
"D-Don't you have work tomorrow?" It isn't supposed to come out harsh or rude. But I guess it does when I see him lower his head. "I-I mean, it's just, it's late. Won't you end up being tired?"
"Don't worry." He doesn't say anything after that. He simply sits there and watches as I clean the rest of the bar.
-------
Technically, the bar doesn't close until three. But by two thirty, the place is so clean I can see my reflection off some of the table tops, but with only me and him left in the joint, it seems rude to tell him to leave.
"So…" I slip back behind the counter and lean against it. Look up at him and wonder if I asked really, really nicely, would he take his sunglasses off for me? Even a better question would be if Reno has seen how he looks without his usual glasses at how many times the guy probably smashed the shades up each month.
But of course I don't say anything.
He makes no move to say anything either.
"… Yeah." I bite my lip.
"Where's the spike?" I jump a bit, not expecting him talk. It takes a moment for the question and the nickname to sink in.
"Oh! Cloud. He's out on a delivery."
"…"
"Yeah."
"Are you…" I glance at him; he's making it more obvious than he probably realizes to avoid my eyes. "… and him…"
"Are we what?"
"Together?" I laugh at the thought. I wouldn't have if it were only a couple of months prior with my heartbroken and my mind on the brink of insanity. But now I can look back and laugh.
"No. Never." I downplay it to a quiet chuckle now, still reminiscing slightly about how stupid I had been before. "He'll never get over Aeris. And I'm not one to take second place."
With a wolfish grin, he tips his beer again, but this time as a cheer. For me.
But the amusement dies all too soon and we slip back into the tension-filled silence.
I'm always one for a quiet bar, it usually means that everyone's gone home and the chaos is over.
However it's more the fact that I'm alone with Rude, a man that I haven't ever really spoken to before, that makes the air so thick.
But I already like the guy. He never says anything unless he really wants it out there.
That's the way life should be.
Words are precious and they should be used carefully.
I find everything he says almost profound.
I wish I knew how to choose my words like that…
But for now, it's awkward. Painstakinglyso.I'm used to having a conversation with my customers. Not… unbelievably deafening silence.
I look up from the spot I'd been staring at on the counter and catch his gaze on me. He looks away and so do I. God damn it…
What the hell am I doing?
From the corner on my eye, I catch sight of (as weird as this sounds) the light reflecting off his head.
"Rude?"
"…?" He brings me back into his view. Is that a blush I spy?
Hell, I'm probably as red as an apple with the question I wanted to ask too.
"Are you… No, never mind." Okay, now I know I'm blushing. My cheeks burn and I press my palms against them. I probably look like a schoolgirl. "It's too… rude. So I just won't ask."
"Don't need to be shy around me."
My face scrunches up, not really sure if I want to do this. Holding my forehead in my hand and leaning down so I was staring down at my mahogany counter. I mumble, ashamed that the inquiry ever passed my mind. "Are… you naturally bald?"
His laugh is loud and hearty, the type that I expect to come from a guy his size but one that I never expected to come from him; Rude of the Turks. "What do you think?"
"Uh."Hell, I don't know what to think. That's why I'm asking you."Was your dad bald?"
"… So you think it's natural."
I'm standing tall now (though that really wasn't very tall compared to the gentle giant in front of me) with my arms pressed against the counter and I didn't realize it, but I was leaning over the counter towards him now. "You mean you shave it then?"
With the smallest hint of a smile, he pulls out his wallet and begins to counts his gil. Placing the amount he owed by my left hand, he stands and begins walking to the door. I honestly thought he was going to turn around, do some dramatic answer and walk out, up until he had reaches up to grab the door handle and make no signs of slowing down.
Instead, he swings the door open, and waves behind him. "Goodnight, Tifa."
"Wait!" He spins on his heel, looking almost surprised that I had called after him. "You didn't answer my question!"
Now he looks thoroughly confused as his eyebrows raise high above the rims of the shades. "… I thought I did."
-------
"Nice weather we're having tonight." He had offered to walk me home, and I'm not the type of gal who turns down a gentleman's offer. No Siree. That, and I wanted to hear him talk more.
He nodded and continued to stroll at the comfortable pace I had set. "You don't talk very much, you know that?"
This, however, pulled a reaction out of him. He grinned. "I only say what's important."
"Well, the answer to my 'bald' question was pretty important to me." I laugh, just recently have how strange the question was sink in. But now it doesn't really matter if he voiced the answer or not. I just want to hear him say more about something. Something he considers important.
"Wasn't that obvious?" He grins and chuckles a bit too.
"Sometimes you have to say the obvious. Especially around me." I smile up at his tall form. Damn is he tall. I've always had something for tall, dark and handsome men. "I mean, look at how long it took me to figure out that Cloud thing."
We both laugh, even though it isn't really all that funny. Well, not to me at least. But I liked to hear him talk, laugh. Or when he smiles or does something that makes me realize he isn't a robotic Turk working for Shinra.
But, just as before, as our chortles and chuckles die down, the silence sinks down upon us once more.
"Obvious?" I jump when I hear his voice. I look over and see him turned away, his cheeks, though, even from this angle I could see they're painted pink. "Then I should probably tell you that you look beautiful tonight."
Huh?
What?
Am I hearing things?
He stopped a few steps ahead of me, still not looking my way. I'm still to dumbfounded to move or speak.
Huh?
This is a dream, right?
This is all too surreal to be real.
"Tifa?" I swing back into reality. He's still standing there, waiting for me to catch up. I break into a nervous smile (the best I can muster in my state of shock) and reset my pace to his.
The rest of the walk went by quietly.
-------
He waits beside me as I fumble with my keys. I can't help but think about his words. Every single one of them. Are these the words he considers so important? Much more important than others?
I giggle inwardly.
He said I was beautiful. This fact alone makes butterflies flutter in my stomach and my cheeks burn with embarrassment.
I decide that he's a beautiful man himself, and with probably less than a hundred words, he showed me that he has a beautiful soul too.
Now I just wanted him to know that.
Once the door pops open, I turn to face him. "You know, Rude, I think you got a really good idea going there."
I can't just say it. 'Rude you're beautiful.' It doesn't feel like something I should say.
"…?" Again, his brows hover above the rim of his sunglasses.
I'll show it.
"There's so much more things we can do with our mouths than talk." Tip-toeing, I press my lips against his before he can say anything (as if he would) and all he can do was wrap his arms around me because he was absolutely loss for words.
Yeah. So tell me how much you hate it or love it. Click away!