Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, its characters or storyline. This collection is mine, as is Duke. I also don't own the song "We R Who We R" by Kesha…You'll see why that's relevant later…Enjoy!
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170 – The Elephant in the Room
For The Sacred and Profane
Leon and Duke were both against one wall, watching the display with their heads tilted in the same direction. Leon had his arms crossed and looked torn between laughing and swearing. Duke's ears were as high as they could go, curious about this oddity.
"Shouldn't it have…reversed by now?" He finally asked.
Merlin sighed, tapping his chin as he walked around the sight. "For all intents and purposes, she should have gone back to normal after leaving the atmosphere."
"Well…obviously she didn't." Leon's voice kicked up a notch at the end and he cleared his throat to quench the laugh that had been trying to escape since they left Pride Rock. "Can you fix her?"
Merlin tutted, "Can Dumbo fly without a feather?"
Tifa made an indignant noise and Merlin grimaced. "No offense, dear." He apologized.
Leon looked shamelessly unapologetic, studying her from his spot against the wall. Why did she look so pissed at him? It wasn't his fault the adaptation spell had…lingered. The longest the effects of this spell had lasted before was Donald…but he was already a duck, so there was no way to know how long this would last.
Most humans who took missions in Pride Lands succumbed to the adaptation spell that morphed them into a more native form: lions. Well, lions or antelope, there was the occasional tropical bird…but this…
Duke barked and he reached down, scratching behind her ear to quiet her. The dog keened and looked up at him. Her tail swished once and her bewildered brown eyes went back to Tifa, ears lifted.
Merlin paced around the animal that the adaptation spell had morphed Tifa into. "How are you feeling, Leon?"
He blinked, "I'm not the one with the…" He gave an absent gesture at Tifa, "…issue here."
"Just because you LOOK back to normal doesn't mean something didn't morph correctly." Merlin frowned. "I'll check you over once I fix Tifa."
Tifa hung her head and Leon straightened, walking over to her. All jokes and teasing aside, he did feel some form of sympathy for her. If their situations were reversed, she would get her giggles at his expense and then cut it out. So he cut it out.
"How long will it take?" He asked, looking to Merlin.
The tottery old sorcerer finished walking around Tifa and hopped over to his cauldron, where he immediately started mixing different potions and ingredients. "Give me one hour and I'll have an antidote whipped up."
"There, see?" Leon looked from Merlin up at Tifa, whose eye level was currently several feet higher than his. "One hour and you're back to normal."
She stomped one massive foot at him, letting him know she wasn't amused, and remained sitting on the floor. Leon had made sure the others were distracted for the afternoon. Tifa wouldn't want anyone walking in on her like this. She was barely tolerating HIM being there to see her in her current state. The size and the ears, he thought the others could handle…but the trunk…Yuffie would never have let her live it down.
Within the hour, Merlin had conjured up a spell that sounded like swearing in a foreign language and made yellow sparks shoot out of his wand. At the wizard's instruction, Leon stepped away from Tifa's bulk and returned to stand by Duke, who had decided that watching this from the lying down position would be best.
"As a good friend of mine would say," Merlin chirped, "Bippity boppity boo!"
Three bright flickers of light later, the animal in the middle of the floor had been replaced by Tifa, on her knees, slumped forward on her hands, her hair hanging in a black curtain around her face. She had her eyes pinched closed and her shoulders hunched, as though afraid to see what she had turned into this time. It was sort of adorable, actually.
Leon snorted and walked over to her, kneeling down and grasping her shoulder. "Welcome back." He gave her a small shake.
Tifa opened her eyes and stared at the floor for a long moment before lifting her gaze to him. Duke barked and Merlin herded the dog away from licking Tifa's face silly.
"Don't," Tifa lifted a threatening finger just in front of Leon's face, "you say a word about this." She said, shakily getting to her feet and dusting herself off.
Leon shook his head, "I promise…But…" He looked at her slyly, "An elephant never forgets."
And then Tifa had grabbed up Merlin's wand and commenced shooting every conceivable spell at Leon that she could think up, and he was ducking behind furniture.
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171 – Exclusive
For justagirl8225
"I saw that." Tifa called him out from her spot leaning over the table.
Leon didn't dignify her remark with a response and just continued to type on the computer. She straightened and put her hands on her hips.
"Leon…" She said warningly.
"Tifa…" He mimicked in reply, and grimaced in doing so.
"If it's still hurting you, then go back to the dentist." She said, as though one would to a stubborn child.
"Root canal was bad enough." He grunted, and then frowned, "I'm fine."
"Fine." She sauntered over to him, "Just let me poke your jaw and I'll leave you alone."
He looked genuinely afraid for a wild second, but then deadpanned and turned away from her. "Don't you have patrol duty to get to?"
"I knew it." Tifa smacked his shoulder.
He shook her off, "Lemme alone."
She sombered, "It won't go away if you just ignore it."
"I'm not ignoring it." He grumbled.
She reached over and plucked up the half empty bottle of pain medication and held it in front of him. "Root canals don't need these." She jiggled the bottle.
He swatted her away. "Seriously—"
Tifa huffed and reached a hand out, grasping the side of his jaw opposite where he had had a root canal two weeks earlier. He instinctively stiffened but didn't shake her off this time.
"The worst they'll do is pull the tooth." She said, "Gurgling healing items won't fix it." She straightened, "Besides, if you're the one watching my back, I don't want you distracted by a lousy tooth ache."
"…hate the dentist…" He mumbled.
"As does every child under the age of 12." She tutted. "You'll face down Heartless and run into the heart of Radiant Garden itself, but when one little tooth might get pulled, you'd think someone was trying to take away your firstborn son."
Leon looked sourly at her and she softened, sitting on the desk in front of him. She propped one leg on the arm rest of his chair and tilted her head.
"There might be something in it for you if you do it." She smirked.
He deadpanned, "You're flirting in order to make me go to the dentist?"
"I'm flirting," She corrected, "in order to make you stop being a stubborn ass."
He lifted an eyebrow, "Your flirting needs work."
She chuckled, leaning in, "So does your tooth." She kissed him briefly on the lips.
He returned the kiss, but grimaced halfway through it. She sighed and sat up.
"I don't like kissing men who are in pain." She huffed.
He snorted at that and gingerly rubbed his jaw. "Then go kiss somebody else." He said irritably.
She snorted and sat back on her hands, looking at him coyly. "What if I don't want to kiss anybody else?"
It was a very forward thing to say, but she found herself not regretting it. Leon looked at her, his hand still on his jaw. He would cave, she knew he would. No hatred of dentists ever trumped the desire to kiss a woman…Thus, if he liked kissing her, then he would cave and go to the dentist.
There, she had presented the question without directly asking it. To pull the tooth or not to pull the tooth, that was the question here.
"Then you're—" He groaned as the nerves in his jaw flared up. "Damn." He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. "Fine, you win."
As he dialed the dentist's office, Tifa offered a shit-eating grin and stood off the desk. He rambled off a sour conversation with the phone, setting up an appointment that afternoon, and then promptly hung up and looked at her. "Not anybody else, huh?"
She offered an innocent shrug and looked at the computer screen. "I'm not currently kissing anybody else, if that's what you're asking."
He paused a beat, rubbed his jaw, and grunted, "Me neither."
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172 – Like No One's Watching
For justagirl8225
Several rounds of tequila shots and half an hour of intense fast dancing had worn her down, so when Yuffie tugged Tifa toward the karaoke stage, Tifa wasn't in the state of mind to say no and just went with the younger woman up to the microphones.
Maybe they were all sort of buzzed, Aerith concluded, noting how Cid was laughing like a bear at the bar, overtly and shamelessly flirting with the curvaceous, middle aged bartender, who had a noticeable gap between her top front teeth.
Aerith had been elected as designated driver, but she wasn't much of a drinker, so she hadn't fought them on it. Now Tifa was hammered, Yuffie had managed to get her hands on a few bottles, Cid could barely sit on the stool at the bar, and Leon was sitting beside Aerith, looking far too relaxed and amused to be sober.
She was quickly realizing that in order to tolerate the drunk people around you, you have to be a little buzzed yourself. This was why Aerith had called Cloud to come get them and promptly indulged in a few drinks herself.
The song blasting over the speakers had to have been picked by Yuffie. Aerith had never known Tifa to listen to this kind of music. It was too…manic. Then again, Tifa practically snatched the microphone away from Yuffie and started belting out the lyrics, so maybe Aerith didn't know Tifa as well as she thought.
"I've got that glitter on my eyes…" She was singing, "Stockings ripped all up the side."
"Looking sick and sexy-fied!" Yuffie took the mic back, "So let's go-oh-oh!"
The guy working the karaoke line up—baked like an apple pie already—was bouncing with the beat and knocking the strobe lights around so that the colors dancing through the bodies in the bar could have invoked seizures. Aerith blinked repeatedly and sipped at her martini, looking at Leon. He was enjoying this too much.
She snorted and shook her head.
"Tonight we're going ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-hard!" Tifa and Yuffie sang together, dancing around on the karaoke stage. "Just like the world is ou-ou-ou-ou-ou-ours."
Yuffie climbed over onto the bar, like she worked for Coyote Ugly, and dancing the part.
"We're tearing it apar-par-par-par-par-part." Their voices were drunk and dissonant, but Aerith found herself laughing at the sight as Tifa tossed her hair and started waving her arms in the air, getting the rest of the drunk crowd into it.
"You know we're superstars…We are who we are!" Yuffie chimed in.
By then, Tifa had reached Aerith and Leon, still dancing in that Exotic Background Dancer Number Four kind of way, and Aerith could tell from the look in her eyes that Tifa was absolutely gone at this point. Also at this point, Aerith was buzzed enough to not be alarmed that Leon was pretty gone as well.
So when Tifa promptly sat herself in Leon's lap—still dancing, mind you—and proceeded to give him a lapdance, Aerith just snorted into her martini and giggled.
"We're dancin' like we're du-du-du-du-du-dumb." She couldn't tell if the words were coming from Tifa or Yuffie or the rest of the drunks who'd gotten enthused, but the base was thundering through the floor.
"Our bodies go nu-nu-nu-nu-nu-numb."
Well, now Tifa couldn't be singing, because Leon had covered her mouth with his and the way Tifa had pressed her chest up all against him, there was no way she could get enough air to—wait...
For a wild second, Aerith just gawked as Leon's hands ran up Tifa's back and in her hair and Tifa leaned into the kiss…Oh, there was tongue—Aerith clamored out of her seat, forcing her eyes over to Yuffie, who had gotten a hold of two drum sticks and was beating a rhythm on the counter of the bar, still singing. Aerith glanced back at Leon and Tifa and then immediately looked away. She could never UN-see that!
Was no one else seeing this?
Aerith set her drink down and shook her head. That was enough from Mr. Alcohol tonight, she figured, looking over to the entrance to the bar. There, sober as a brick, stood Cloud, looking at the crowd in the bar with a mixed expression of bewilderment, confusion, and downright 'WTF'.
She waved to get his attention and when he spotted her, his gaze slowly slid to her right to the…massive PDA offense taking place behind her. Aerith followed his eyes to see the two making out and then turned her slurring vision back to Cloud.
Aerith lifted her hands into the air in a 'whatcha gonna do?' motion and sauntered over to him. Wow, the floor was moving. She staggered to remain upright…and not jump on Cloud too.
This was why she was supposed to be DD.
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A/N 171: Because it's cute…and I think they need to start moving toward couple-dom.
A/N 172: This song has been stuck in my head for days! This prompt was just the perfect outlet to get it out and do something fun with it. I hope it was as entertaining to read as it was to write…Alcohol-lowered inhibitions are always amusing.