KH2 Fic: 'Something' Series III - Friendly Advice
College is killing me, ktxbai. I need to get my ass moving over Part V or there'll be a huge posting delay again, and nobody wants that.
Title: Friendly Advice
Pairing/Characters: Cloud/Leon, Tifa.
Warnings: Language. Fag-Hag dynamics. UNBETA'ED (anyone up to the task?). Third fic in a series of eight.
Word Count: ~2050.
Rating: R for language, and blatantly discussed sex. Not totally worksafe. Rating still's got a notch to go up.
Summary: There's no-one quite like Tifa at making a guy quit the drama.
A.N.: Written for the otp_100 challenge, under theme #30, Sister. Something Series is a canon what-if continuum of eight fics, posted in chronological order. This is Part III.
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It’s Thursday night, and Tifa should by all rights be sleeping. The next day is a big one, with all the last touches to put on the inauguration of her Seventh Heaven bar. She’ll have to be up early, and it’ll be all for the better if she only gets to sleep after Saturday comes by - the business is tough, but compared to the crap they’ve been through for the last decade or so, she misses serving losers until they drink themselves to a stupor almost too much.
Yes, it’s the last night Tifa has before her pub opens, and she should be sleeping - but she can’t. Instead she seats on the polished wood of the bar, examining the gleaming surface that’ll be stained by alcohol in no time at all, while she swings her legs between the empty stools… Waiting. All she’s got left to do is to wait for the idiot, now.
It takes him less than she thought - a dark silhouette passing beyond the fuzzy glass window, heavy-booted footsteps stopping by the door. Unmoving, hesitant. As always.
Tifa sighs ands clucks her tongue disapprovingly, wondering what the fuck is wrong with her best friend’s brain. He should know better than to try and chicken out on her by now, when she's been waiting for weeks on end for him to spill the gold already. “The door is open, Cloud.”
He steps into the bar as though he weren’t spacing out in front of it two seconds earlier, eyes traveling slowly around the simple, comfy furniture. “Great interior,” Cloud comments as he reaches the stool to her left and meets her eyes, and she knows it’s worse than she’s foreseen. If he’s feeling the need to give his opinion without external pressure - let alone forming one over such trivialities - he’s bound to have something truly important troubling him.
“Thanks. It relieves me that you like the place - I chose the decor thinking of you,” and of all the hardened, one-track-minded, traumatized bastards living in Radiant Garden. A bar like hers, in their world, is meant to be a refuge for people such as Cloud to seek comfort and human contact, but with no threats for their barely-healed emotions. Tifa has made her best for it to welcome those battle-scarred creatures. They need the attention and care - and she needs to give them those things, if only distilled into liver-rotting beverages.
Cloud nods, eyes averted to his own reflection on the dark, polished wood. Minutes stretch by slowly and he keeps quiet, as perfectly still as a statue. He knows what the Seventh Heaven is for, and he knows of Tifa’s whole purpose on opening the bar in the first place - he wouldn’t be there if he didn’t.
His pride is still getting on the way, though. Thus, Tifa swings her legs across the bar to stand up, reaching for a few choice vials.
“So, what’s up?” she asks over her shoulder. She retrieves a packet of frozen fruit from the icebox, opens a condensed milk can with an easy flick of her wrist. The neck of the vodka bottle feels as familiar as a weapon on her grip, but there’ll be no need for smashing it over anyone’s skull tonight. Odin only knows that further brain damage isn’t what Cloud needs.
She’s seen him come back from the Heartless-heavy zones day in, day out, when not in the construction sites around the town, tiring his body out in other menial tasks. Sure his sword technique is getting nicely honed, but he’s always been damn good at flicking that metal monster anyway, and he's always been in top shape. Those are not the skills he needs cleaned-up - but hell if Tifa doesn’t know how to brew a mean emotion-polisher to fix that.
“Not much. Helping with the wells, a little,” Cloud shrugs, elbows resting on the bar, interlaced fingers supporting his chin, eyes very still on the label of a Dancer’s Drop Tequila. He thinks he’s so tough; Tifa sometimes wants to cuddle him for the sheer cuteness of the whole poise.
She knows better than that. Cloud may not be as strong as he’d like to believe, but there’s something in him - something hard and edged, jagged, something broken to such sharp fragments its mere dust can cut, something so unbelievably torn -, she knows she’d end up bleeding if she ever touched it. Tifa won’t ever add the guilt of scarring her to life to his already too-heavy burden. It’s not her place to try and piece him together.
Sephiroth may be trouble, but it’s never been him who prevented Cloud from dealing with his mistakes. There’s no hope of anyone else ever understanding, when Cloud can’t figure himself out to start with.
Tifa knows better, way better than fucking things up with badly shaped sympathy. Therefore, she pours three parts vodka for one part strawberry and condensed milk, and lifts him a very incisive eyebrow. “Really? Things seemed even more hectic than usual to me, these days. ‘Been seeing a whole lot of Leon and Committee business.”
Jackpot - or so the slight, subtle tension coating his shoulders says. She’d feared it would be way worse news, but if it’s just Leon his bloody problem... Well, fuck. Literally, at that. She even has the remedy on the way, the way she’s shaking the mixing jar.
“The whole floodgate business left everyone on edge, sure, but the guy's still tenser than a livewire... D’you know if there’s trouble going on?” she prods further, holding back a smirk.
“There’s... something going on, alright,” Cloud says quietly, and damn the cuteness again as he doesn’t look her in the eye to say that, still examining the tequila as though it enthralls him. Tifa knows for a fact that Cloud can drink tequila as much as he can make his hair abide to the laws of physics. “With Leon and stuff.”
Because 'Vagueness' is right there before Strife on his ID card, but Tifa is way past the point of minding that - in all truth, it barely registers. From his travesty of proper speech she can make out what’s there to be known. The mere fact he acknowledges the reason of his presence at the Seventh Heaven - asking for her ever-friendly ear to drone on about his sorrows - is already enough.
She’s got a name, a face and a stony personality to the problem. Cloud has gone easy on her on the warm-up for the job - giving advice alongside the drink to level the high price of her booze is almost too simple this way.
“I’ve seen him wrecking Heartless up a lot. You also, by the way,” Tifa comments, still shaking the drink energetically. Cloud doesn’t like pieces of strawberry floating on his alcohol, and Tifa is much too proud to lower her drinks to the blender. “I can lend a hand if the bastards grow too thick again, y’know.”
That breaks Cloud’s stillness - he shakes his head sharply twice, crossing his arms in a rather defensive gesture. His elbows are still on the counter, though. He’s here for her shoulder, and not even his stubbornness can truly get in the way. “That won’t be needed. The cleaning missions are more of means to… vent… than a real must. Besides, you’d better not go into risk for nothing.”
“Helping you is hardly nothing by my standards, Cloud,” she drawls lazily, a warning tone for him to lay off the stupid macho protectiveness, or find his ass handed to him in six different ways by her bare hands. He faces her for a second before nodding ever so slightly, and Tifa keeps shaking the drink. “And what’s the venting to blame on, hm?”
His gaze grows still again, fixed upon his own reflection on the polished wood this time. The poor guy is distressed, taut with tension, and Tifa feels her baser instincts calling to maim whatever put her dearest person in such a state.
But Tifa knows better, and she wouldn’t maim Cloud himself.
“It’s… complicated. With Leon, and stuff,” he mumbles in all of his glorified articulation, and Tifa is amazed he’s managed this much. This is serious. This means something, for him to put his finger so strongly upon it. “There’s just this… whatever.”
The mixing jar tingles as Tifa places it swiftly on the counter top, and an empty bottle gleams as she fetches it from the underlying racks. “That’s his trademark expression, I’ll have you know,” she smiles, pouring the strawberry vodka on the new container dutifully.
Cloud blinks, rose-petal lips falling apart as his jaw slackens - and in a second he’s recomposed, lithe arms wrapped tighter to his chest. Tifa only keeps smiling.
He finally holds her gaze truly, a lump working down his white neck before he speaks. “What do you think?”
Tifa tilts her head to the side, fingering the unlabelled bottle still in her grip distractedly. “Who are you asking that? The helpful bartender, the woman, the childhood friend?”
It’s Cloud’s turn to smile - that small, sketched, so utterly cute thing he calls a smile, and for all that he can be dense as fuck, Cloud also knows better when it really matters. “I’m asking Tifa.”
She laughs, and she hops back atop the bar, and her legs are swinging between the stools again, and it’s good. She ruffles his hair, so he bats her hand away pretty half-heartedly. “Well, Cloud dear... I think you should go and pound that sexy piece of man-ass through a wall, really.”
“Tifa!” he pales, then blushes, but he doesn’t avert his eyes - neither does his smile drop. “It’s not about that only!”
“But it’s about it also, and at least it’s something to start with, moron,” she insists. Then she’s the one to break eye contact,levelling her sight to the spotless ceiling, and she’s the one to swallow past a lump in her throat now. Shit, she wants so much for this idiot to just be happy, Tifa can only hope she’s not setting his road for more heartbreak... but if her advice won’t do, than she’ll be useless, and Tifa isn’t the kind of girl who’d let herself believe to be a waste of space for a single second. “I mean it. Go break some beds with Leon - good Bahamut knows how much you need to vent properly and afterwards... dunno, you’d seem to fall together nicely, I suppose. There’s… something about you guys. Give it a try, see where it goes. You know you really want him, if you’ve come to ask me about it.”
“I can’t really fuck things up once more, Tifa,” Cloud says, and his tone is dead serious. She breathes in deeply, before facing him. Neither of them is smiling now, but that’s okay. She’s learned to cherish his smiles in their short, sincere beauty.
“Then don’t,” Tifa replies, pushing the bottle of pink booze to his chest. “Do something out of your life before there’s nothing left. Chances like Leon don’t come around that often.”
It takes him three, four seconds, before his fingers hook around the neck of the bottle and he pushes himself upright. “It’s just… really complicated,” he sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his free hand.
The leather of her gloves looks dark and worn against his skin as Tifa holds him by the chin and pulls his face to her, stretching her body to plant a quick kiss on his forehead. “You can manage. And I’ll still be here if it all goes really screwy. Leon won’t see what hit him if I decide I want him beaten to a pulp.”
“That’s entirely not going to be needed, Tifa,” he chides, lifting her an eyebrow for the protectiveness as much as she’d done before. She sticks her tongue at him, and Cloud shakes his head before placing a peck on her cheek. He turns on his heels to go, no goodbyes ever shared between them. “Thanks, sis.”
“Don’t mention it, bro,” Tifa smiles, hoping around the bar to feast on that Dancer’s Drop tequila and wait for brighter confessions. “Come by anytime."
There's something telling her this first therapy session will hardly be the last.
-------
Please drop a comment ^^~ Crits much welcome.
X-Posted to otp_100 and leonxcloud.
Title: Friendly Advice
Pairing/Characters: Cloud/Leon, Tifa.
Warnings: Language. Fag-Hag dynamics. UNBETA'ED (anyone up to the task?). Third fic in a series of eight.
Word Count: ~2050.
Rating: R for language, and blatantly discussed sex. Not totally worksafe. Rating still's got a notch to go up.
Summary: There's no-one quite like Tifa at making a guy quit the drama.
A.N.: Written for the otp_100 challenge, under theme #30, Sister. Something Series is a canon what-if continuum of eight fics, posted in chronological order. This is Part III.
-------
It’s Thursday night, and Tifa should by all rights be sleeping. The next day is a big one, with all the last touches to put on the inauguration of her Seventh Heaven bar. She’ll have to be up early, and it’ll be all for the better if she only gets to sleep after Saturday comes by - the business is tough, but compared to the crap they’ve been through for the last decade or so, she misses serving losers until they drink themselves to a stupor almost too much.
Yes, it’s the last night Tifa has before her pub opens, and she should be sleeping - but she can’t. Instead she seats on the polished wood of the bar, examining the gleaming surface that’ll be stained by alcohol in no time at all, while she swings her legs between the empty stools… Waiting. All she’s got left to do is to wait for the idiot, now.
It takes him less than she thought - a dark silhouette passing beyond the fuzzy glass window, heavy-booted footsteps stopping by the door. Unmoving, hesitant. As always.
Tifa sighs ands clucks her tongue disapprovingly, wondering what the fuck is wrong with her best friend’s brain. He should know better than to try and chicken out on her by now, when she's been waiting for weeks on end for him to spill the gold already. “The door is open, Cloud.”
He steps into the bar as though he weren’t spacing out in front of it two seconds earlier, eyes traveling slowly around the simple, comfy furniture. “Great interior,” Cloud comments as he reaches the stool to her left and meets her eyes, and she knows it’s worse than she’s foreseen. If he’s feeling the need to give his opinion without external pressure - let alone forming one over such trivialities - he’s bound to have something truly important troubling him.
“Thanks. It relieves me that you like the place - I chose the decor thinking of you,” and of all the hardened, one-track-minded, traumatized bastards living in Radiant Garden. A bar like hers, in their world, is meant to be a refuge for people such as Cloud to seek comfort and human contact, but with no threats for their barely-healed emotions. Tifa has made her best for it to welcome those battle-scarred creatures. They need the attention and care - and she needs to give them those things, if only distilled into liver-rotting beverages.
Cloud nods, eyes averted to his own reflection on the dark, polished wood. Minutes stretch by slowly and he keeps quiet, as perfectly still as a statue. He knows what the Seventh Heaven is for, and he knows of Tifa’s whole purpose on opening the bar in the first place - he wouldn’t be there if he didn’t.
His pride is still getting on the way, though. Thus, Tifa swings her legs across the bar to stand up, reaching for a few choice vials.
“So, what’s up?” she asks over her shoulder. She retrieves a packet of frozen fruit from the icebox, opens a condensed milk can with an easy flick of her wrist. The neck of the vodka bottle feels as familiar as a weapon on her grip, but there’ll be no need for smashing it over anyone’s skull tonight. Odin only knows that further brain damage isn’t what Cloud needs.
She’s seen him come back from the Heartless-heavy zones day in, day out, when not in the construction sites around the town, tiring his body out in other menial tasks. Sure his sword technique is getting nicely honed, but he’s always been damn good at flicking that metal monster anyway, and he's always been in top shape. Those are not the skills he needs cleaned-up - but hell if Tifa doesn’t know how to brew a mean emotion-polisher to fix that.
“Not much. Helping with the wells, a little,” Cloud shrugs, elbows resting on the bar, interlaced fingers supporting his chin, eyes very still on the label of a Dancer’s Drop Tequila. He thinks he’s so tough; Tifa sometimes wants to cuddle him for the sheer cuteness of the whole poise.
She knows better than that. Cloud may not be as strong as he’d like to believe, but there’s something in him - something hard and edged, jagged, something broken to such sharp fragments its mere dust can cut, something so unbelievably torn -, she knows she’d end up bleeding if she ever touched it. Tifa won’t ever add the guilt of scarring her to life to his already too-heavy burden. It’s not her place to try and piece him together.
Sephiroth may be trouble, but it’s never been him who prevented Cloud from dealing with his mistakes. There’s no hope of anyone else ever understanding, when Cloud can’t figure himself out to start with.
Tifa knows better, way better than fucking things up with badly shaped sympathy. Therefore, she pours three parts vodka for one part strawberry and condensed milk, and lifts him a very incisive eyebrow. “Really? Things seemed even more hectic than usual to me, these days. ‘Been seeing a whole lot of Leon and Committee business.”
Jackpot - or so the slight, subtle tension coating his shoulders says. She’d feared it would be way worse news, but if it’s just Leon his bloody problem... Well, fuck. Literally, at that. She even has the remedy on the way, the way she’s shaking the mixing jar.
“The whole floodgate business left everyone on edge, sure, but the guy's still tenser than a livewire... D’you know if there’s trouble going on?” she prods further, holding back a smirk.
“There’s... something going on, alright,” Cloud says quietly, and damn the cuteness again as he doesn’t look her in the eye to say that, still examining the tequila as though it enthralls him. Tifa knows for a fact that Cloud can drink tequila as much as he can make his hair abide to the laws of physics. “With Leon and stuff.”
Because 'Vagueness' is right there before Strife on his ID card, but Tifa is way past the point of minding that - in all truth, it barely registers. From his travesty of proper speech she can make out what’s there to be known. The mere fact he acknowledges the reason of his presence at the Seventh Heaven - asking for her ever-friendly ear to drone on about his sorrows - is already enough.
She’s got a name, a face and a stony personality to the problem. Cloud has gone easy on her on the warm-up for the job - giving advice alongside the drink to level the high price of her booze is almost too simple this way.
“I’ve seen him wrecking Heartless up a lot. You also, by the way,” Tifa comments, still shaking the drink energetically. Cloud doesn’t like pieces of strawberry floating on his alcohol, and Tifa is much too proud to lower her drinks to the blender. “I can lend a hand if the bastards grow too thick again, y’know.”
That breaks Cloud’s stillness - he shakes his head sharply twice, crossing his arms in a rather defensive gesture. His elbows are still on the counter, though. He’s here for her shoulder, and not even his stubbornness can truly get in the way. “That won’t be needed. The cleaning missions are more of means to… vent… than a real must. Besides, you’d better not go into risk for nothing.”
“Helping you is hardly nothing by my standards, Cloud,” she drawls lazily, a warning tone for him to lay off the stupid macho protectiveness, or find his ass handed to him in six different ways by her bare hands. He faces her for a second before nodding ever so slightly, and Tifa keeps shaking the drink. “And what’s the venting to blame on, hm?”
His gaze grows still again, fixed upon his own reflection on the polished wood this time. The poor guy is distressed, taut with tension, and Tifa feels her baser instincts calling to maim whatever put her dearest person in such a state.
But Tifa knows better, and she wouldn’t maim Cloud himself.
“It’s… complicated. With Leon, and stuff,” he mumbles in all of his glorified articulation, and Tifa is amazed he’s managed this much. This is serious. This means something, for him to put his finger so strongly upon it. “There’s just this… whatever.”
The mixing jar tingles as Tifa places it swiftly on the counter top, and an empty bottle gleams as she fetches it from the underlying racks. “That’s his trademark expression, I’ll have you know,” she smiles, pouring the strawberry vodka on the new container dutifully.
Cloud blinks, rose-petal lips falling apart as his jaw slackens - and in a second he’s recomposed, lithe arms wrapped tighter to his chest. Tifa only keeps smiling.
He finally holds her gaze truly, a lump working down his white neck before he speaks. “What do you think?”
Tifa tilts her head to the side, fingering the unlabelled bottle still in her grip distractedly. “Who are you asking that? The helpful bartender, the woman, the childhood friend?”
It’s Cloud’s turn to smile - that small, sketched, so utterly cute thing he calls a smile, and for all that he can be dense as fuck, Cloud also knows better when it really matters. “I’m asking Tifa.”
She laughs, and she hops back atop the bar, and her legs are swinging between the stools again, and it’s good. She ruffles his hair, so he bats her hand away pretty half-heartedly. “Well, Cloud dear... I think you should go and pound that sexy piece of man-ass through a wall, really.”
“Tifa!” he pales, then blushes, but he doesn’t avert his eyes - neither does his smile drop. “It’s not about that only!”
“But it’s about it also, and at least it’s something to start with, moron,” she insists. Then she’s the one to break eye contact,levelling her sight to the spotless ceiling, and she’s the one to swallow past a lump in her throat now. Shit, she wants so much for this idiot to just be happy, Tifa can only hope she’s not setting his road for more heartbreak... but if her advice won’t do, than she’ll be useless, and Tifa isn’t the kind of girl who’d let herself believe to be a waste of space for a single second. “I mean it. Go break some beds with Leon - good Bahamut knows how much you need to vent properly and afterwards... dunno, you’d seem to fall together nicely, I suppose. There’s… something about you guys. Give it a try, see where it goes. You know you really want him, if you’ve come to ask me about it.”
“I can’t really fuck things up once more, Tifa,” Cloud says, and his tone is dead serious. She breathes in deeply, before facing him. Neither of them is smiling now, but that’s okay. She’s learned to cherish his smiles in their short, sincere beauty.
“Then don’t,” Tifa replies, pushing the bottle of pink booze to his chest. “Do something out of your life before there’s nothing left. Chances like Leon don’t come around that often.”
It takes him three, four seconds, before his fingers hook around the neck of the bottle and he pushes himself upright. “It’s just… really complicated,” he sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his free hand.
The leather of her gloves looks dark and worn against his skin as Tifa holds him by the chin and pulls his face to her, stretching her body to plant a quick kiss on his forehead. “You can manage. And I’ll still be here if it all goes really screwy. Leon won’t see what hit him if I decide I want him beaten to a pulp.”
“That’s entirely not going to be needed, Tifa,” he chides, lifting her an eyebrow for the protectiveness as much as she’d done before. She sticks her tongue at him, and Cloud shakes his head before placing a peck on her cheek. He turns on his heels to go, no goodbyes ever shared between them. “Thanks, sis.”
“Don’t mention it, bro,” Tifa smiles, hoping around the bar to feast on that Dancer’s Drop tequila and wait for brighter confessions. “Come by anytime."
There's something telling her this first therapy session will hardly be the last.
-------
Please drop a comment ^^~ Crits much welcome.
X-Posted to otp_100 and leonxcloud.