Chapter 3: Pictures
Posing for cosplay pictures was a little bit like acting. Tifa had figured that much out just by looking at Aerith's pictures each year from convention. You didn't just stand there and smile – you were your character and so you had to strike a pose that looked like them. Fists raised or putting on the punching gloves usually worked for 'Rita' but since 'Rita' now had a 'Tini' and a 'Clash' she could get a little more creative. Together they did a few 'action' poses, Clash with his sword, Tini with the oversized shuriken and Rita in the middle of them with her gloves on and her fists raised. For a group that was armed to the teeth with sharp and poky things, Tifa had admired Rita (and wondered about her sanity) for only using her fists.
It was kind of fun – doing this with a group of other LT actors, Tifa had to admit to herself. She already vaguely knew Cloud and Yuffie, which made it comfortable and strangely she felt like part of a small, temporary family when they were pressed close on either side of her. Apparently they were also doing a good enough job – or looking goofy enough – that people were even stopping to take pictures alongside the oversized jawa they had handed their own cameras over to for pictures.
When Yuffie went 'anime' with her tongue stuck out and one eyelid pulled down, Tifa flashed a victory sign and winked. Cloud must have taken that as his cue because Tifa felt his warmth leave her side. But instead of hiding in the corner until the 'girls' were done, he took the cameras back from the jawa and let her and Yuffie goof while he took the pictures. It made him a pretty cool older brother, Tifa decided as Yuffie glommed on to her in a hug that Tifa returned with a pleasure that might not have been entirely in character for the slightly angsty Rita. If she wasn't mistaken, Cloud might even be smiling that quiet smile of his.
Then an Edward Easter showed up in his tattered red cloak. Or rather her tattered red cloak since it was a girl doing a very impressive cosplay of the vampire-like, mysterious long dark haired male of the FLOOD team. It meant that Clash was needed again and so he surrendered the cameras to a Shawn who set aside his red tipped cricket bat to juggle them all and get shots.
"This is so much fun!" Yuffie was having the time of her life in the middle of the group with Tifa while the 'men' took up the outside. Edward's cosplayer was really amazing at setting them up in dramatic looking poses and Tifa thought they were going to get some pretty good pictures out of the deal. It would be fun to show them off to her friends when she got home and Aerith would flip with glee.
"Now do me and Edward!" Yuffie triumphed and gave Tifa a wink. "The fan girls will go nuts. You have no idea how many Edni fics there are out there! I'll get all kinds of hits on my web page!"
"What's an 'Edni'?" Cloud had his head lowered close to Tifa's ear as he asked it and she turned her face toward him with a grin. It made her eyelashes brush against the outside of his nose. She hadn't realized they were so close and she froze while Yuffie pulled 'Edward' off to a nearby bench so they could sit back to back. No one seemed to be paying attention to what 'Clash' was doing at the moment and the area around them suddenly seemed very quiet.
"Ah" she swallowed against a dry throat. "It's a – a scary fan base of girls that think Tini's character should be romantically involved with Edward's."
"Scary?" his voice was low. Amused. And he apparently wasn't aware of how close they were standing or the way their faces were tucked together the way Tifa was starting to notice with a growing clarity.
"They're very protective… of their – ah – coupling," she supplied. 'Protective'… It was funny. That's the way she felt right now. Protected. Which was silly because there wasn't anything to be protected from and she didn't need anyone to protect her anyway. He made a sound low in his throat, like a hum, and she didn't realize she'd been staring into his eyes until the vivid blue flicked upward and away from her. It startled her and she rocked back a bit in surprise at herself.
His hand was already there and around her arm to steady her though. He didn't seem to notice he'd done it, eyebrows coming down over his eyes instead as the edge of his lips started to tug upward again.
"I'm going to go rescue 'Edward'," he muttered and Tifa turned her head to see that the pictures were starting to get goofy between 'Edward' and 'Tini'. They were in the process of trying to figure out how to get 'Tini' up on 'Edward's' back for a piggy back ride as far as she could tell.
"Don't!"
Tifa jerked around in surprise to see a girl dressed in the surprisingly normal outfit of jeans and a t-shirt – though granted the t-shirt did read: 'hastur, hastur….' Another girl next to her dressed in even more 'normal' garb was nodding vigorously.
"That's right. We need some pics of Rita and Clash. Everyone knows they should have been together." She stated it as if she was prepared to defend a very strongly opinioned argument, one she'd given often before.
"'Rish' fans?" Tifa heard Cloud murmur near her ear and suddenly she was laughing and shaking her head.
"'Clari' fans" she corrected with a grin. Secretly, she was one too, she supposed. Phoenix had been a dolt when it came to women, as far as she was concerned. While she understood that you couldn't choose who you loved – she hadn't seen any reason for Clash to love Iris beyond plot drama either. They'd had nothing in common and, by the end, Clash had been too dark for shadowless Iris in Tifa's opinion. Determined – dang 'its not fair' reaction kicking in big time – Tifa put both of her hands on Cloud's arms. He looked down at her and instead of looking surprised he simply looked… 'watchful' she thought. As if he was waiting to see what she was going to do next. 'Watchful' because 'surprised' indicated a hint of worry and he didn't look worried. He looked more like a too polite little boy presented with a box that wasn't open. Not sure what he was expected to do and waiting patiently for the instructions.
"Did you see the movie?" she asked him and he nodded. Just once and the motion barely made his blond spikes move. Tifa nodded back, brows down just a little over her eyes. Deeply in the 'not fair and needing to fix it' mentality by this point.
"Clash was a moron," she told him flat out. "Rita was exactly what he needed. She was the one he always turned to. She was his best friend. Even when he didn't ask her to be there for him, she was. Whenever something was really important or bothering him, she was the one he went to."
"Like when he was sick with Green Fever" 'hastur's' shirt wearer piped in. Her friend was nodding with a scowl.
"Or when he went to the Dream Time and got lost."
"And he was always so protective of her after he got over being a jerk."
"Of course, Tempest was sweeter to her in the video game…"
"The point is" Tifa wrapped her fingers in the blue knit of the shirt in front of her to get his attention back. "The movie ended wrong. And it shouldn't be that way. She should have been able to be happy."
She caught the tiny shifts at the edges of his lips before she'd even finished her not exactly logical, not exactly sensible argument and he laid his single hand over both of hers.
"I saw the movie," he repeated. As if they were trying to explain the basics of how ice was made or why things fell down. Tifa realized she'd let some of her inner closet romantic out and felt suddenly embarrassed, jerking her chin down to stare at her hands under his. Realizing that she had fisted her hands in his shirt and that probably was a weird kind of thing to do to people that didn't really know her. She made her fingers loosen and proceeded to try to brush his shirt back into smoothness over his chest. His very solid, nice chest from the feel of it.
Crap. Had she really just gone mushy and in front of a cute guy no less? Double crap – had she just let herself admit he was cute?
"So you want pictures of 'Rita' and 'Clash'?" he'd turned his head to the two girls with the cameras, his hand forgotten and still over hers lightly as she fiddled. "Because it's the way things should be."
Grateful for the reprieve from his attention, Tifa caught the enthusiastic head bobs in response to his question.
"Nice ones" 'hastur' clarified.
"Romantic ones' her friend added.
Cloud cocked his head a little to the side to look down at Tifa and his eyes were watchful on hers again. Still holding the box waiting to be told whether he was supposed to open it or put it somewhere. Feeling more comfortable since he'd obviously missed her 'fangirl' moment – or chosen to ignore it – Tifa gave him a little smile. She embarrassed easily but she usually recovered pretty quickly too.
"Just watch your hands," she told him with a little bit of teasing starting to leak back into her eyes "and its okay."
It would be okay too. If he was going to try anything with her, he would have already. Tifa was used to the guys that came into the bar. Most of them were familiars but there were always ones you didn't know and she'd gotten very good over the years at knowing which ones were going to cause her problems and which ones weren't. Cloud, blue eyes thoughtful and inward as he contemplated for a moment in front of her, wouldn't.
At least that's what she thought, starting to smile again and feel comfortable, until he shifted to the side and moved behind her. She felt his arms slid around her waist – suddenly remembered that the halter top left her waist bare – and found herself pulled back against him. His shoulders curved forward to cradle the backs of hers and his arms could have almost wrapped double around her. She felt surrounded and warm – a little hot actually – and –
and waaaay too nice. Far too comfortable and right and pleased and flushed and – oh and all kinds of things she really shouldn't.
She felt his chin settle to rest on top of her head and found that her fingers had automatically risen to curl around the bare skin of his arms. Holding him.
"Like this?" he calmly asked the girls with the cameras and was rewarded with squeaks of pleasure.
oh, crap, Tifa… she mentally chided herself. You are in so much trouble when you stop being Rita…
He felt… really wonderful though…
Tifa was a snuggler, though it was usually with confined 'safe' friends and family. She liked holding and being held. She loved hugs, giving and getting. And for just a minute she let herself forget the giggling girls snapping pictures and the fact that the guy holding her was a practical stranger and even that she was pretending to be Rita just so she wouldn't look like 'Tifa the wandering huggaholic' – and just let herself enjoy being held.
Cloud was nice. Solid and warm against her entire back. He smelled good, like soap and wind and clean clothes. She shut her eyes for a minute, feeling heat on her cheeks but enjoying the backward hug all the same. When she relaxed a little more into him, he tightened his arms around her. Surrounding her. His skin where it touched hers was warm. Wonderfully warm. The common sense part of her brain was flaring the 'stranger' warning light pretty hard but – it felt so nice. And his hands weren't wandering. And she was never going to see him again to be embarrassed about this. That's why you dressed up for conventions, right? To be someone you weren't normally?
His cheek was resting against the side of her head now and she could feel his silent exhales tickling the fringe of hair against the side of her face. She turned her face toward him, meaning to say something and having no idea what it was. This was so nice. Warm and nice and…
Safe.
And then she was letting out a squeaking hiccup as another body impacted with hers.
"Group hug!"
Tifa let out a cough and jerked her eyes open to see frizzy dark hair and the edge of a green eye.
"Aerith?" she choked, aware in the back of her head that with her best friend tangled around her the way they were Cloud was the only thing keeping all three of them from ending up on the ground. His arms around her had shifted accordingly in fact.
"Hey!" her friend perked, flashing a cheesie smile and inverted 'v' for victory sign at the cameras. Aerith's pretty face was all smiles but the look in her eyes was worried. "You were late and so I came to find you. Who knew you'd draw such a big crowd?"
"Crowd?" Tifa choked again as Aerith dragged her backward and the arms around her let go.
Sure enough, Aerith was right if exaggerating a little. It wasn't a 'crowd' with cameras. But it was more than just two grinning fan girls that was for sure. Yuffie came bounding over with a wide grin, wrapping both hands around her brother's arm to swing into him.
"You two are such a hit! You look so cute together! I told you – Clash and Rita – you guys are perfect!"
The hidden worry in Aerith's eyes relaxed a little but didn't disappear and Tifa still wasn't sure why it was there in the first place. But it was starting to make her worry too. Cloud looked down at his little sister with a quiet smile.
"We were just standing here," he pointed out in his quiet calm voice. "You and 'Edward' were the ones drawing the crowd."
Yuffie giggled and shook her head.
"Nuh uh" she teased cheerfully. "Or maybe 'yeah huh' but you guys were drawing a crowd too. I bet you're up all over the internet by tonight. The Iris fans are going to hate you," she sang the last two words and Tifa found herself laughing again. She gave Aerith's arm, still around her waist, a squeeze and she let go - a little.
"Guys, this is my friend I was telling you about. Aerith, this is Cloud and his sister, Yuffie. Or maybe I should call them Clash and Tini."
"Hey" Aerith was all smiles again. The worry in her eyes had shifted over to what, to Tifa's puzzlement, looked like embarrassment. Cloud nodded and Yuffie grinned. 'Hastur' was giving Tifa a thumbs up from a little further away and her friend ran up to hand over a piece of paper with a web address scribbled on it.
"You guys rock" she stated with a grin and then darted back to her friend to head off into the moving crowds. Cloud lowered his head since he was still standing next to Tifa to look at the address over her shoulder. Yuffie snapped a photo of it. And then it clicked in Tifa's head.
"Crap!" Living with two minors it was her worse swear word. If Aerith was looking for her because she was late to their meeting spot than – Tifa looked around for the nearest clock. Crap! Crap, crap, crap. They were late! And it was the screening and forum for the upcoming Kurt Wimmer movie! Tifa loved Kurt Wimmer movies and she'd been looking forward to this one since it was only a rumor on the internet boards.
"We've got to go" she tugged on Aerith's arm and Aerith gave the two other cosplayers in front of her a smile.
"Tifa's a violence fiend" she supplied cheerfully.
"Action fiend" Tifa clarified, already tugging her friend away.
"Have fun. Nice meeting you!" Yuffie yelled and Tifa turned her head over her shoulder to flash a real grin at the sibling duo. For a moment, just a moment, all she saw were the bluest eyes. 'Watchful' blue eyes that belonged to a little boy still holding a package in his hands. She waved her goodbye but it was the strangest wave, coming out soft and hesitant instead of cheerful and casual. It probably made her look like an idiot, she decided as Aerith took over the steering and soon had both of them running through the crowded center.
By the time they got to one of the main halls, they were both out of breath and laughing and, either thanks to Aerith's fluttering eyelashes or Tifa's short skirt, they managed to get the guys in the process of closing the doors to hold them open just a moment longer.
For the next hour, Tifa was only really aware of fight scenes and unusual futuristic plot lines. Aerith, next to her, was happy with the computer special effects examples they showed. When they walked out afterward however Tifa was rubbing her arms.
"Was the air on kinda high in there?" she asked and Aerith in her Eisenhower jacket, shrugged.
"I don't think so."
"Let's go stand outside for a minute" Tifa rubbed her arms again. "I'm kind of cold."
