Chapter 11: We Are Fine
Bee's phone rang on and off for the better part of two hours while she waited for Reno to arrive. It woke her whenever she dozed off, but she never answered it. She always checked it to make sure that it was not Reno, or even Tseng who was calling her, as she realized that she had not asked Reno how he was coming to get her. She thought she remembered someone saying that Reno was a very talented helicopter pilot, but she wasn't sure. So she laid in the grass, looking at her phone every other half hour, trying not to cry again, or to even think about her brother. She laid there until she felt numb, and could no longer even move to grab her phone anymore. The only thing she really felt was her heart beating steadily against her chest and she felt like she was dying, and she felt more and more pathetic as the time went by.
Reno really thought she was dead when he finally managed to get to her. Tseng had managed to trace his phone-call with Bee to a small valley just over three miles away from headquarters. Reno then asked Tseng to call Tifa or Reeve and let one of them know that he was coming to get her, but Tseng had called him right back saying that the two were still worried for her, and wanted to find her themselves, which was why they continued to call her. Tseng assured Reno that he had let the other two know that they were not to go after Bee, that Reno would handle it.
"I suppose you're lucky that she is an asset to Rufus," Tseng had said mildly over the phone after giving Reno permission to take one of their fastest choppers, "If she wasn't, I would have had a much harder time convincing him to allow you to go."
Reno had smiled ruefully over the phone at this and answered, "Thanks, Chief. I owe ya big time."
He made a half a day trip to find her in just under five hours, noting to himself that that had to be a record. He had landed about ten feet away from her, and she had not moved from her position, even after he walked over to her and loomed over her. She looked back up, her eyes dull, and tear stains adorning her cheeks. She said nothing, so he sat down pretzel-style next to her and gave an over exaggerated sigh.
"So, you fucked up the meeting with your bro, huh?" he asked her, taking in the grass stains on her shorts and knees. He looked up and saw that she had left tracks in the long grass. She had walked very far. Then he noticed the large imprint of her fall down the hill about a quarter of a mile back and he snorted.
"I did," she told him, looking up at him, catching his eye again, "I have a sister-in-law and a nephew. Did you know that?"
"Well, considering you probably didn't even know that 'til right now, no I didn't."
"Did you bring alcohol?"
"Sure did, babe. But we ain't drinking here in the middle of fucking nowhere. Let's go back to your place, okay?" He stood, and held a hand out to her, which she accepted without any further prompting. He helped her stand, noticing that he had to support her almost completely, and she stumbled forward once she had finally made it to both of her feet. He caught her around her waist and kept it there as they walked back to the helicopter.
"I think... I really think I went into shock," she told him as he buckled her in to the co-pilot seat, her backpack on the ground by her feet. "Can you go into shock over something like that?"
"Well, if people thought you couldn't before, I think you just proved them wrong," Reno told her with a smirk, "Your angelic frame of mind couldn't handle being a bad girl, could it?"
"I yelled and even slapped him! I hit my brother!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air for emphasis. She thanked Reno for buckling her in and he nodded then moved around the helicopter in order to get to his own seat.
"Did he deserve it?" he asked her seriously.
She paused and looked at Reno critically, really thinking his question over. Normally, her answer would have been no. Nobody deserved to be slapped like that. But Toby had really hurt her, left her out to dry. She felt so betrayed by him.
"Yes," she finally answered after much consideration. Her headphones were already on, and Reno had already started the rotors. "He even called me by my real name even though I specifically told him not to!" She crossed her arms and pouted at that, earning a chuckle from Reno.
"Then I hope you hit him hard," he told her, just a hint of sarcasm in his voice. Once he had lifted the chopper into the air, he turned to take a quick glance at her. "You look like shit, by the way."
She ran a hand through her hair quickly, pulling out strands of grass, and then wiped at her face, trying to remove any evidence that there had been tears. She then ran a finger under her eyes, wiping away the smudged eyeliner and mascara. She knew that she had been sweaty from her long run, and it had dried already, crusting into her hair. She finger combed it even more, then pulled it back entirely with her headband so that it no longer stuck to her face.
"Better?" she asked him indignantly, as she hadn't really cared what she had looked like, focusing more on the fact that she had hit her brother.
"Much," he told her after stealing another glance her way. He gave a grin, though did not takes his eyes off of flying the helicopter again. "Go to sleep." No amount of wiping could take away the exhaustion from her face.
"Okay," she agreed. She started to close her eyes but jolted upright when she remembered something. Reno watched out of the corner of his eye as Bee grabbed her phone from her pocket, pressed a bunch of buttons on it, most likely sending a text, and then ripped the battery out of it, flinging the two into her bag again. "Tifa knows I'm safe."
Reno nodded, and she closed her eyes, letting the muffled sound of the propeller through her headphones lull her to sleep.
In Reno's experience, there are four stages to being very drunk. The first, which Bee was currently at, was giddy, clumsy, and just all round goofy. This stage also had a substage of being horny, which, thankfully, Bee was not yet at. The second stage was the breakdown stage, where the person who was drunk begins by becoming mopey, and then full out drowns themselves in their tears, which Bee would definitely get to considering her day. The third stage was the regurgitation stage where the body does whatever it can to purge itself of the alcohol that got it there in the first place. Reno was not looking forward to this, and knew that it was coming eventually. And finally, the fourth stage was where the body just cannot deal with the alcohol anymore, and passes out. Reno could only hope that Bee got there quickly, and painlessly.
He was kind of regretting bringing her alcohol now that he thought it all through.
By the time they had reached her place, it was dark out. Bee had let them into her shop in silence, she hadn't really talked very much once they had landed. She was coming down from the shock of her argument and feeling extremely embarrassed about the whole ordeal, and Reno knew it. So, once she had put her bag down in her room and came back into the living room, he immediately handed her a shot of amber liquid, and a glass of whatever fruity juice she had in her fridge as a chaser. She took one look at it, didn't even ask what it was, and downed it in one try, sipping frantically from her cup right after.
Five shots afterwards, and Reno was really regretting letting her get drunk on his alcohol.
"Reno! Reno! Renoooo!" Bee was basically draped across his lap on her couch, the bottle of alcohol on the floor just beside it. He had his back against the one arm of the couch, with one leg running the length of the cushions, the other planted firmly on the ground. Bee was half laying, half kneeling over the leg that was on the couch, facing him, her hands supporting her on the couch.
"I'm right here, you insect," he told her, shoving her away gently. She had put her face very close to his, and he was really starting to hope that she hadn't entered the horny stage. Not everyone got there. Hopefully she didn't either. He didn't know if he'd be able to resist her, and that would not be a way to keep a friendship with her.
"Right! But I wanted to hear your voice!" she told him, giggling furiously at her comment. She moved closer to him again, and he didn't even bother to move her away again, instead placing both his hands on her waist to hold her back from getting even closer.
"Hear my voice?" he questioned. Her eyes were wide and excited and she giggled again, and he couldn't deny he liked the sound. Her giggle was rare, and made her seem her actual age. He liked the way her nose scrunched up whenever she did, how her light voice reverberated in her throat, her eyes showed pure happiness. He liked it better then her laugh, because her laughs didn't always reach her eyes. Her giggles always did, making the gray seem lighter, and the black flecks stand out more, dazzling him, entrancing him.
"Yes! Your voice... is like, soooooo sexy, Reno! Has any other girl ever told you that?" She moved her hands so that they were on either side of his head, just above his shoulders, one on the arm of the couch, the other on the back cushion. Reno had to hold her up as she decided that moving both arms at the same time and not leaving any support for the rest of her body was a very good idea.
"Whoa! Come on! Hold yourself up!" he chastised, but couldn't help from laughing at her as she giggled yet again. She found her whole situation very funny, apparently. Which, he admitted to himself, it was. Bee never let herself go like this, and he had been too drunk to notice the first time they drank together if she had been the same way as she was now.
"Sexy voice," she sang out, still trying to get closer to Reno's face. He held her back, and didn't let go even when she continued, "Ya know, you're probably the most beautiful man I have everrrrr seeeen!" She gasped, and placed both of her hands over her mouth, forcing Reno to hold her up again, his grip tightening on her waist. She full out laughed this time, and her face flushed. It was an awkward laugh, one that conveyed that she shouldn't actually be laughing, but was anyway. Even in her drunken state, she knew that what she said was crossing the boundary between them.
Reno laughed too, and finally decided to sit up, situating Bee so that she was sitting on the cushion next to him. He was getting annoyed at holding her up over and over again. She went willingly, smiling up at him the whole time, her hands between her legs on the couch as she leaned over, still trying to be close to him.
"Do you think that I'm beautiful too?" She tried to look up at him, focus on his face, but she was finding it very difficult to even hold her head upright. Everything was blurry, but she desperately wanted to see his face. Gaze into his sea-green eyes, appreciate just how red his hair was again, follow the tattoos on his cheek bones.
Deciding that she wouldn't remember it tomorrow anyway, Reno answered truthfully. "Babe, I think you're the most beautiful thing in Edge."
She stopped, and Reno was surprised to see how much composure she managed to gain when she heard his answer. She looked at him through droopy eyes, and managed to get her head to stay still long enough to look at him quizzically.
"You do not," she told him, pouting enough that her bottom lip literally protruded further than her upper. Reno had the distinct urge to bite it. "I'm short. Well not that short, but I'm shorter than Yuffie, and have shorter legs than her. And I'm not as thin as Tifa, and my hair is too wavy. Too wavy! And my boobs are definitely not as big as hers, buuuut they are bigger than Yuffies! So that's a start! But my forehead is too big, I mean, if I laid down, you could put a cup on it! OhmygoshIshouldshowyou!"
She sprang from the couch then, trying to get to the kitchen, but failed horribly as her foot caught on the couch cushion and she wiped out on the floor, limbs flailing in every direction, before Reno could process what she had said or what she was doing. He rose from the couch, and dropped to her side to see if she was okay.
"Bee! You crazy insect, are you trying to hurt yourself?" He helped her stand as she laughed so hard that her shoulders shook. "It's not funny! You could've really gotten hurt!"
She slowed her laughter long enough to look up at him and ask, "Are youuu worried about me, Reeeeno?"
He suddenly noticed how close they were, and he distanced himself from her, putting her at arms length so that he could hold her upright but so that they were not touching more than that. She frowned, and her head started to bob again and Reno was really worried she would fall over. Hell, she couldn't even get up off of the couch without landing flat on her face.
"You worried about meee when you came to get meee tuday!" she told him, stomping her foot like a small child, trying to get him to admit it. She pushed forward again, and moved a hand to cup his face, hitting his shoulder in the process, and then landing messily on the side of his face. "You worry about meee! Reeeno! I know you doo! Because... Because I worry about youuu! And when Tifa asked mee tuday if I liked you romanti... roman... as more than friends, I didn't know! Isn't that weird? How do I not know? Maybe because Viiincent told me not to! Isn't that funny?"
"Ah..." Reno listened closely to her, absorbing everything she said, but it was very hard to listen when she was so close, and her hand was on his cheek. So hard, because he had to concentrate on making sure that he didn't kiss her, throw her on the couch, and make love to her right then and there. It didn't help that the straps of her tank-top were falling over her shoulders, while the bottom of it was riding up and a strip of creamy skin was poking through. She had changed out of her grass stained shorts in favor of light blue fabric ones, but she still had grass stains left on her knees that she hadn't been able to wash off completely. But he found that to be part of her charm; she had fallen, and gotten hurt, and kept going and wound up in his arms and he still had no idea how.
She stared up at him, expectantly, but when he didn't say anything, she decided to take charge and stand on her tip-toes, kissing his lips firmly and wrapping the hand that was on his cheek to the back of his neck, entwining it into his red hair.
Substage of stage one had officially been reached.
Her kiss was fierce, and needy, but still sloppy. She pulled him down so that she didn't have to struggle to reach him anymore, and he followed her, unable to think of what to do otherwise. He kissed her back just as hungrily, all other thoughts be damned, and he let her lead him to her couch where they both crashed onto the cushions as a heap of tangled limbs and flowing hair, Reno hovering over Bee delicately. She had undone his pony tail, so his hair cascaded freely over his shoulder and tickled her face, and she reveled in the feeling of the silky locks against her skin. Her world had spun out of control, her brain on the fritz, and Reno's lips were the only thing that made sense at that moment, the only thing she felt were steady while the rest wouldn't stop moving.
He bit her bottom lip, as he had wanted to do earlier, sucking it into his mouth and causing her to moan. He let it go reluctantly, but immediately brought his lips back to hers, twisting his tongue with hers in what was probably the messiest, most slobber-filled, yet completely satisfying kiss of his whole life. The hand that wasn't lost in his hair traveled down to his shoulder, pulling at the fabric, clawing desperately as she tried to take the jacket off of him. He obliged, easily removing it without ever taking his lips off of hers. Her hand snuck its way up the front of his shirt and every place her skin came in contact with burned, and he wanted her to touch everywhere, make him burn all over his body. Burn until there was absolutely nothing left but a pile of ash because it didn't matter what the end result was, as long as she kept touching him. He felt more alive in that very moment than he ever had before and he wanted her to feel alive too, to feel just what it was that she was doing to him.
She gasped when she felt his hand lift her shirt, while his other massaged her scalp through her hair. It was all too much and she moaned again, using her legs to bring him closer to her so that their pelvises touched. She continued to feel his chest, memorizing the soft skin marred by a crisscross of scars all over his body. She traced every single one she could find, softly, as if touching them would reopen them, and Reno was moved by how reverently she treated them. He moved his hand further up her shirt, positioning her tank so that her stomach was fully exposed, and then even further up. Her bra was showing now, a white lacy thing that he really hated all of a sudden. He moved a hand over it, and his lips finally left hers, tracing kisses down her jawline, and then down her neck. She moved her head so that he could reach better, and moved to whisper in his ear.
"Reeeno," she breathed out, and Reno could smell the alcohol on her breath, hear the slur in the way she said his name, and he froze. Reality crashed around him, and he hated himself for what he did next. He moved off of her, pulling her shirt down and removing himself from her legs and the couch entirely. She looked up at him with a confused and drunk expression, her eyes glazed over from her lust. "Wha?"
"You're drunk, Bee. We can't do this. I won't do this to you. You'd never forgive me," he told her, hating every word coming from his mouth. He wanted her, wanted her so badly, and of course for the first time in his life, he had to play the good guy. He knew if he slept with her again, that it would mess everything up between them. She would never forgive him for taking advantage of her while she was drunk and he was not, and she would never forgive herself for sleeping with him a second time. She would thank him tomorrow, he knew, but the look on her face now was simply killing him.
"You... you don't want me?" she asked him, her voice squeaky and unstable, and tears sprang to her eyes and Reno almost lost it all over again.
"Bee, come on," he urged, gesturing wildly with his hands, "We can't do this! We're friends! Friends don't have sex like this."
"But we already did," she argued back in a whiney voice, sitting up on the couch, her lips pouting again as they had been earlier. Her tears were slowly threatening to over flow and Reno seriously wanted to bang his head against a wall, the whole situation was so out of hand. He really just wanted to yell at her, I know! And I want to do it again, so badly! I want to fuck you senseless, I want to hear you scream my name again, just like last time! I want you more and more every day! Don't you see it?!
He took a deep breath, rubbing at his eyes. Shiva, this girl was tiring him out, testing his patience and his self-control like no other girl had ever done to him before. He supposed that was what he got for forming his first friendship with someone outside the Turks. He wouldn't know honestly. Even as a kid, he had never really had friends.
"We are not having sex, do you understand?" he asked her firmly, giving a silent chuckle at his own tone, which sounded so much like the tone Tseng had used with him so many times before. Now he knew what it was like to be on the other end. He would have to apologize to the boss later on.
She burst out into tears then, sinking back into the couch in a snotty mess, her body shaking with every sob that burst from her mouth. She wailed about how Reno didn't want her, how nobody wanted her, not even her own brother, how much of a horrible person she was. Reno sighed, and mentally checked off Stage Two in his head, then stooped down to the couch next to her.
"How many times do I have to tell ya, you couldn't get more perfect if you tried?" he told her, trying to get through to her in between sobs, but she continued to cry. She had pulled her knees up to her chest and was leaning her head on them, her tears running down the length of her legs and being soaked up into her shorts.
"No! No! T-toby! He l-left me and m-mom! Left us! A-and I couldn't h-help my mom the way h-he did! He was s-supposed to protect us! Why did he l-leave? Z-zack was d-dead! Didn't h-he understand that? H-he would never f-find him! Never!" Her words fell from her mouth in a gurgled mess of tangles, landing on her stomach before ever getting to Reno's ears. He was forced to lean closer to her, and listen as she sniffed and hiccuped and cried even harder. "And n-now you will leave m-me too! Because you don't w-want me anymore! I will n-never be good enough! N-never! I try so h-hard! I work all the t-time but it's n-never enough! My s-stupid boyfriends w-weren't impressed, and y-you're not impressed, and T-tifa and C-cloud don't have the time! B-but you c-cared and now I've m-messed it all up! And why c-can't I just forgive T-toby? Why? I'm so h-horrible, I can't even f-forgive my own b-brother! Why? I j-just want him to l-love me! I just want a person who l-loves me again. T-that's all! E-everyone says that A-aerith would be proud, b-but nobody e-ever says that they're p-proud of m-me except for T-toby! And t-then I slapped him! W-why?"
"Insect! Breath! C'mon, you're being ridiculous!" he yelled, shaking her shoulder. This only seemed to upset her more, and she wailed uncontrollably, pulling away from him and falling to land on the couch with a loud thump. He stared at her, having never seen someone breakdown so completely at Stage Two. Apparently, she had been holding a lot in, probably more than she even thought she was, and so he sat and let her cry, knowing it was the only thing that would bring her peace. He knelt beside the couch where she was laying, placing an arm on her side in what he hoped was a gesture of comfort, and listened as she sobbed on and on about her brother and about him and about Aerith and Zack and her mother. He let her cry because nobody so small, so innocent, so good, should ever hold all of that in. He let her cry because he could never address all her fears at once, could never make her feel better in the state that she was in. He let her cry because it caused him pain, and he felt he deserved that pain, as he had given her enough pain already, and she had taken it and dealt with it long enough.
He sat there on the ground beside her, not able to look at her, until she reached up and grabbed the hand that was on her waist. He looked up in surprise and noticed that she had stopped sobbing, though tears still leaked from her eyes. Her eyes were still unfocused, and her grasp on his hand was weak at best, but he still understood that she was glad he was there. Her face was a bright red mess, her nose was drippy, and her smile watery, but he still found her to be so beautiful in that moment. Maybe it was because of how sincere she managed to appear in her gesture, how she managed to convey how much she needed him, even through her drunken haze.
"I'm sorry," she said, her voice deeper than usual and groggy sounding. She cleared her throat and frowned and he knew Stage Three was coming soon.
"It's okay, little bug," he told her, making his voice gentle, "You got nothing to be sorry for, yo."
"I feel sick," she told him simply, and so he stood swiftly, picked her up into his arms, and carried her all the way to the bathroom as fast as his feet would take him.
He sat her in front of her toilet and she vomited violently into the basin, making small pathetic choking noises and crying some more. He held her hair back, and kept his chest firmly against her back so that she wouldn't fall over, his one arm across her stomach holding her steady. She finished quickly, and he remembered that she hadn't eaten much that day, she was throwing up purely alcohol and bile. She had forgone dinner in favor of drinking way past her limit. She vomited again, and then one more time before it finally seemed like she was finished. He helped her stand and she moved to brush her teeth, responsible even while drunk. He made sure that she wasn't going to fall over, and then escorted her to her kitchen where he got her a glass of water and a left over bag of fries from her dinner the other night. He heated the fries up and turned to find that she was drinking the water, stray drops falling over her chin and down her neck. He brought the fries to her, squeezed ketchup on them, and let her at them. He declined when she offered him some, which she did several times, and then watched as she scarfed down the whole bag.
"Why are you doing this?" she asked him once she had finished. She licked her hands of salt and then drank the third cup of water that he had brought her.
"Isn't this what friends do for each other?" he asked her. His head was resting on his arms on top of the table, and she was looking down at him through red-rimmed eyes and messy strands of hair, her chin shiny with water, and he couldn't help but grin at her.
"I don't know," she said, still drunk but more focused with food and water in her stomach, and a majority of the alcohol in the toilet and not in her body anymore. She absent-mindedly moved a strand of his hair out of his face, tucking it behind his goggles, almost poking him in the eye.
"Well, I don't know either. Some friendship we have, huh?" He chuckled at this. They really were hopeless.
She moved to mirror his position, crossing her arms on the table and placing her head on top of them. Their eyes were level now, their heads inches away from each other.
"I think... that we are fine," she told him with a confident nod. She smiled when he chuckled again, this time at her. "Wanna know why?"
"Why, bug?" he asked, curiously and amused at the same time.
"Because you actually take notice of my boring life, and I ignore your dark past," she stated, smiling proudly at her revelation.
"Well ain't that the truth?" he agreed, reaching a hand out to ruffle her hair, "But you forgot one thing."
"Hmm?" She frowned again, upset that she had forgotten something.
"We are both fucking crazy," he reminded her, causing her to giggle, and nod sleepily.
Stage Four commencing now, he thought as he watched her close her eyes, and lean her head sideways. She was breathing deeply, a sign that she was asleep, within just a few minutes. Reno sighed, shook his head at her, and stood, scraping his chair across the wood of her floor. He went and lifted her again, carrying her to her bedroom this time, and placing her gently under her blanket. He closed her curtains and then went back to her, making sure that she was on her side with a trashcan nearby, just in case. He smoothed her hair out over the side of her head and then stood, turning out her lamp before he left the room, closing the door with a small click. It took every ounce of strength he had to walk out of her house and not run back into her room and lay beside her, but he knew it would be wrong to stay with her, even in that way. She had already shown that she trusted him completely, and he could never bring himself to betray that trust. So instead, he turned out all the lights in her flat, and then down in her shop, and then locked her shop door behind her, using the key that he kept forgetting to give back to her. He probably would never give it to her, as he kept finding uses for it, and secretly, he hoped that he always would. So he placed the key back into his pocket, keeping a hand on it and enjoying the warmth it provided, thinking that he would need to add it to his keyring, with the rest of his keys.
The next morning, he received a text from Bee. He smiled as he walked out of his apartment, reading the text message and spinning his keyring on a finger.
[I am so sorry about last night. Thank you so much for helping me. I don't remember a lot (what a surprise) but I do remember that you were there the whole time, and that you took care of me. I owe a whole weeks worth of dinner. Are you up for it?]
He attached his keys to his belt-loop, then texted back.
[Damn right, I am. You let me know where and when.]
He hurried down the staircase, his keys jangling for once. Guess that was what happened when you added another key onto the ring.
A/N: If you don't live on the east coast, you may not be aware that there is a nasty hurricane on the way here. If you read my other stories, you know that I live in Pennsylvania, relatively close to Philadelphia. I will not say exactly where, but if you aren't on the east coast, please keep me and everyone here in your thoughts and, if you're religious, your prayers. We are going to be hit hard, and the storm is said to be life threatening and can cause power outages for over a week or so. I posted this before it gets worse, so that I still have power. Please keep people from New Jersey in your thoughts even more so, the news has said that the shore is basically gone, and those that did not evacuate are having it rough. If you are a reader from the area of the hurricane, be safe! I hope you are okay, and that you and your families remain safe throughout the next week.