the_merriest | MHA #1, Friday Evening

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MHA #1, Friday Evening

Rikku was okay. She was. She was back on the island with her Reno-person and their pets. And Reno didn't seem okay, and she wasn't sure she knew how to help, because it felt lately like they were talking _past_ each other, and nothing seemed to help. Maybe she was doing it wrong. It was okay, though. She'd just do it better. Whatever it was.

She was trying not to think about how he'd been out late, lately. She'd been proud when she showed Tseng that there wasn't a pile of liquor in the fridge, but that didn't mean he wasn't, say, stopping for an hour or three at the bar.

It was all the stress. So she was going to ... help with the stress. Somehow. And be cheery and helpful and ... somehow, that was going to fix everything. It had to.

Oh, hey, a letter! One from Yunie. See, this wouldn't be a bad day. Yunie would write some cheerful story and Rikku would laugh and it'd be all okay.

Except ...

Except this wasn't a ... cheerful letter. And phrases were swimming, like I wouldn't ask and please, Rikku, you're the only one who can and please let me know soon. Dutiful, polite, and sorry to impose, because ... because asking her to go back there, well, gee, it'd be hard, but that was okay. It was for the Good of Everyone, and Yuna cared about the Good of Everyone, so obviously, Rikku should, too. So personal feelings were silly and should be ignored. Right? Right.

Hardly realizing she was doing it, Rikku crumpled up the letter into a ball and threw it against the wall. A moment later, she picked up a vase and threw that, flinching at the sound it made when it broke.

One sob escaped before she had a hand over her eyes. Crying? No. Not now. Get it together.

She just ... needed a minute. Then she'd be okay again. Soon. Really.

(just for her turk. this one has nothing to do with fun phone-day antics and everything to do with some messiness that's been bubbling up, zomg. Warning: the conversation below will probably touch on some of Reno's drinking issues, so if that's going to be triggery, please stay away.)

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See? That, too, was sweet in a twisted kind of way. Or twisted, in a sweet way. One of the two.

"Thank you," she said, softly. "I ..."

She took another deep breath. "I wasn't kidding. About talking to Tseng, for you. I want ..."

She trailed off, searching for words, not finding them yet.

Reno shook his head a little.

"You can talk to him if you want," he said, slowly, "just don't expect no miracles outta him. It don't make much sense keepin' me around. He can't depend on me, anyhow."

Reno wasn't certain when exactly teaching on the island had started to be more important to him than being a Turk, but...

He was helping young people. Maybe it was just that the island had more Rookies than the Turks did, now.

"I want ... to know what's going on with you," she said, finally. "If ... if you're going to be drinking and staring off into space, do it here where I don't have to worry about you coming home. If you're falling apart, then ... then say it. I know I don't always ... say things right, I just ... I still want to know."

Reno was frowning now, as he patted down his pockets for his pack of cigarettes. Right now, he needed a smoke. He needed a pack, but a smoke at a time was probably the way to go about it.

"I can.... try, I guess? I mean... Talkin'. I'd feel kinda..." He pulled out his lighter, clamping a smoke in his teeth. "Like an ass, drinkin' around you."

Rikku considered that for a few seconds.

"Would it help if I drank?"

Yes, Rikku. It might make him piss himself laughing, to watch you get buzzed on wine coolers.

"Uh." Reno was making that face that he made in moments where his brain needed to scramble to catch up with his ears. "You remember Mexico?"

A pause.

"Or the cruise ship?"

"Riiiiiiight," Rikku said, nodding. "We could end up married again, or with another tattoo."

... Yes. That was totally his concern.

Absolutely. Reno was terrified that his other butt cheek would end up occupied by a drunk baby Tonberry.

"Well... yeah, there's that."

"Okay," Rikku said. "Maybe not the drinking. I just ... I want to know. Okay? I just do."

"I'm not sittin' here makin' you watch me get all... stupid," Reno replied, firmly. "You don't want to see that. I don't want you to. But I can... stop sneakin' around it. That's somethin'."

Rikku nodded. "Maybe .. maybe we both start ... talking before ... before it gets to this again," she said. "Because I don't ... ever want to bother you, and you don't want to bother me, so we don't, and that means ..."

Well. It made for a really nonexistent relationship.

"Means we're goin' through the motions," Reno finished, taking a deep inhale from his cigarette and watching the smoke drift up lazily around him. "We're better than that."

"We are," she said. "We can be. I think we ... we owe it to us to try, you know?"

"Yeah," Reno agreed, reaching forward to flick a length of ash onto the broken glass that was sitting on the coffee table before settling back into the couch again. "This is where we start, huh?"

"It's as good a place as any," she said, with a smile. "Except that we're short a vase. Good thing vases are cheap."

There hadn't even been any flowers in it. She had just thought it was a cute vase, to set on an end table or something.

It was funny, just how much cuteness Reno would tolerate, for the sake of living with Rikku, really.

His bathroom was fuzzy and orange.

Fuzzy orange bathroom. Yep.

"We can pick one up tomorrow," he decided, shooting her a crooked grin. "After all, Petey'd be heartbroken that he ain't got somethin' to swat at to make us get all loud an' shit."

"I think he's doing science experiments," Rikku said. "You know. 'Does gravity still work? ... Yup!' He's making sure we won't float away."

"Totally possible, that," Reno mused. "I fall on my face way more often than I land on my feet, yo."

It was sad because it was true.

"I'll take either over things landing on you," she said, her smile twisting a little at that.

Like, say, entire chunks of highway.

Entire chunks of well-built highway.

Totally important to note, there.

"That'd make both of us," Reno noted, smothering a wry smile with another puff of smoke. "I like to think I done a pretty good job, avoidin' that the past couple years, yo."

"You have," she said. "Neither of us have had the world end in a few years. Maybe things are starting to settle down, finally."

She was going to wriggle closer and see if it was okay to snuggle against his side. It was, wasn't it? Maybe?

"Not too much," she said. "I like getting to fight fiends. Is that weird?"

"You're askin' me?" Reno wasn't going to protest if she wanted to be closer. "I'm the one that fuckin' giggles when I get orders to take down monsters, yo."

So, really. The pot and the kettle were quite cozy together, here.

It was a really cozy couch. More so when Petey decided to make an appearance, sniffing at Reno's ankles and nipping.

"I don't think I could live somewhere ... without a little bit of danger," she admitted. "I mean, I get restless here, and this place is weird."

Heeey, Petey. Reno spared the cat a crooked little grin, and then... glanced across the room, at the glass on the floor.

Riiiight. He should get to cleaning that away before the critters got to it, too.

"You get used to livin' on the edge," Reno mused, wriggling his toe in order to keep Petey distracted from the mess at least until he was good and ready to go clean it, "and it gets weird, tryin' to handle anything else. You keep waitin' for somethin' that ain't never on the way."

Petey was going to nom Reno's toe. Got it!! Hey, he got it!!! Om nom nom!!!!

Just to show there were no hard feelings, he was going to lick the toe, intermittently, between vicious killer bites.

"Is that why you feel like you're going soft, here?" she asked. "You used to say that sometimes. I didn't know what you meant, except ... I think I'm starting to."

She'd been rusty, with the fiends back home. She didn't like feeling rusty. And she had realized, once she started, how much she'd missed it.

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