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Aerith wakes well before the wake-up call that Tifa had made a point of scheduling the night before. She wakes almost even before the sun does. And that, she thinks, is no small doing when the sun wakes just barely past five in the morning, and she for one, has always tried to make a point to sleep until at least eight. Just the warm edge of it brimming the waves, and breathing the brims of them pink and golden.
It does take her a minute to actually will herself to move. Two, if she’s honest. One to untangle herself from where her arm has gotten looped with Tifa’s during the night, to step soft as she can to the hotel room door. One to offer the sunrise a silent apology for not watching it properly, like it deserves.
Next time, she hopes. If she’s lucky, sometime very soon.
But this particular morning, she has much more important things to see to.
-
She’s never read a mystery novel. She’s seen a few movies of course, and more than a few spare episodes of a handful of different shows featuring hard smoking, hard drinking investigators, and high heeled socialites with dangerous secrets looking to hire them for something or other, on days that the electricity had held good in her home bellow the plate. She is quite sure that in none of those movies or mismatched episodes she had ever seen anyone wearing a sunhat quite as wide-brimmed or floral as the one she’s hiding under as she picks her way through Costa’s sleepy side-streets. It doesn’t stop her from feeling like the heroine of one of them though. Not when she’s running over her lines in her head, and watchful of doors or windows that look like they might be about to open, spill out some tourist or local business owner who might recognize her later.
It’s starting to happen actually, as she rounds the corner of Nova de Juhlo onto Rua Avanhadava; she almost collides with, of all people, a flower seller pushing his cart towards the shore. It’s only by spinning around a lamp post and hopping up on its stand that she avoids knocking the whole thing over, and even then, not without losing a few blossoms off of her hat, herself.
She sighs. In the half hour she’d owned it, she really had started to get fond of the thing.
A long, low whistle snaps her back to attention.
“Careful there. Wouldn’t want blow all your hard-earned eco-terrorist dough on somethin’ you coulda grown at home, now would ya?” She can hear the grin in his voice, and if she’s honest, her own probably matches.
Just who she’s looking for.
“Careful yourself.” She twirls on the pole, and finds him seated at a cafe table, in the shadow of an ancient looking fountain. “Someone might get the idea that you’ve run out of idea’s of your own.”
Reno of the Turks narrows his eyes at her, and takes his time about pulling a cigarette from behind his ear, and lighting it.
“Watchu want, sis?”
Is that really how he’s going to play this?
“Meanie! Don’t act like you forgot!” She stomps her foot on the lampposts, seat. Stomps her way off of it actually, and all the way across to lean her hands on his cafe table, and look him hard in the eye. It’s about two heartbeats before she sees his patience start to crack, and by the fifth, hers is run out too. “Look,” Deflating into the chair across from his, and crossing and resting her head on her crossed arms, “Today is really important to me, okay.” Honest, even if she hadn’t planned to be.
She waits. She turns her lines over in her head, if he refuses. She doesn’t have to wait long.
“Uh-huh. Must be. I dunno if I can even think of a thing important enough to me that I’d fork over the Keystone for it.”
“I never said I was giving it to you. I said I would tell you a secret about it.”
“So you’re wasting my time after all, huh?”
“I know more than you know.” Singsonged and petulant.
Another beat, and he relents. Snubs his smoke out on the table, and turns away. She’s out of her chair before he speaks again, knowing that at least his time, she’s won.
“Yeah, yeah, a deal’s a deal. I was just messing with you, yo. Go. Have fun. We’ve got our end of it.”
“You better.” She sticks her tongue out at his back and the dismissive wave of his hand, and walks away with a little more huff and stomp than she really needs to, but it’s as good a reassurance as she’s going to get. At this point, she figures, that’s good enough. “And don’t hurt anyone!”
“If you say so!”
Either way, no time to waste thinking about it.
Aerith has a date.
And nothing. Absolutely nothing. Is going to ruin it.
-
She makes it back to the hotel before Tifa wakes, which is perfect on two counts. Count the first, Tifa deserves a decent nights rest - Shiva knows when any of them will have the chance again. Count the second, It means that Aerith gets to brush the last fingertips of the sunrise that had greeted her that morning after all. And, count the third, she supposes, that she knows the coffee is fresh and strong when she places it on the nightstand, and Tifa blinks herself awake, because she’d had the time to figure her way around the new, expensive looking coffee machine herself.
“Good morning.” Yawning and satisfied, are the first words out of Tifa’s mouth, followed quickly by her sitting sharply up in bed and casting around the room “Hold on, are we late?”
Aerith doesn’t bother to suppress a laugh.
“No, silly, you worry to much. The phone would have woken you.” She nudges the coffee cup slightly in Tifa’s direction. “Even I can wake up early when I’m excited about something.”
“Alright, alright.” Tifa smiles softly at her, takes the hint and takes the coffee cup in her hands, and in the quiet moment that she holds it and just breathes, just lets the sunlight and salt air wash through the window, and the cup warm her hands, in that moment before she has to pull on her guard for the day, Aerith realizes that she’d trade any number of sunrises if she got to keep the moments like these, right after them.
She likes the moments they spend out in the world together, too.
Back home, as much as Midgar had ever really been a home to either of them, Aerith knew the lines and threads of the city the way she knew the veins in the petal of a flower, and Tifa had maps and blueprints in her head that would have put a public works employee to shame.
Here, in a town they’ve only been to once before, getting lost is easy.
A painting in the window of a store, that’s framed in Aerith’s favorite color. A cat, carrying it’s kitten down the street that Tifa wants to make sure gets there safely, follows, and finds a small colony of them roaming a city park.
They explore, and they don’t have to play any roles in a place that doesn’t already have it’s mind made up about them.
And if it happens that the traffic always seems a little thinner on the streets they happen to turn down, well, Aerith for one is not complaining.
That’s all they do, for the first hour or so really. Wander. Take moments here and there to link there fingers when there’s no one much around. Aerith has a general plan for the day, but nothing she’s wedded to. Not, at least, until she catches the wistful look in Tifa’s eye as they pass one particular window display.
It’s a music store. A lot of it is gaudy, which makes Aerith want to touch it all. But it’s none of the brightly colored things that have Tifa’s attention. It’s the piano. Simple and unadorned, not in the window of the store but back, near the counter, if she looked paste the sun-glare on the glass.
It’s helpful that Tifa’s hand is already wrapped in hers, because it gives her a head start when she declares
“Well we’ve got to go in here!”
It takes a minute, or rather it takes a few, before Tifa gets her nerve up to ask about the piano. Not to buy it of course, they couldn’t possibly take it with them. But just to ask if maybe she can play for a minute or two. In these minutes that she’s building herself up to it, they share books of sheet music back and forth. Aerith can’t read a note of it, but she doesn’t tell Tifa that. She wants to hear Tifa go on about this composer or that. Wants to memorize the light behind her eyes when she finds something she really, really likes.
And one thing she really, really likes, it seems, when she eventually gets around to asking, is the piece of music already set up on the piano’s music stand. Aerith doesn’t know it’s name, and for once, she doesn’t ask, but it sounds to her like something about starlight.
They each leave with miniature harmonica’s on chains around their wrists, and folded bits of paper that promise to teach them the same songs, and promises to practice together. Tifa has promised that she will teach Aerith at least the basics of reading music.
It’s well gone noon by then, and the day is getting hot. Luckily, it’s about as easy to find ones way back to the beach in Costa as it is to get lost in the first place. It doesn’t take them long to find a beach, and the first stretch of sand they find seems inviting enough. The water crisp blue, and beckoning underneath the height of the sun.
Aerith has seen the ocean before, of course. Just like she’s seen noir films, and shows and things. She’d seen it on TV before, at least. And she’d seen it the first time they came through here. But she’d not had time to touch it then.
Armed now with a bathing suit, and a towel laid out for later, she is definitely, absolutely, going to touch it this time.
“Hey wait!” Tifa follows after, but not closely enough to stop her. Just enough for Aerith to know that no matter what happens when she actually gets to the water, she’s going to be safe.
She hits the water at a run, half-surprise and gasping delight at the cold rush and crash of surf and splash of salt – and then yelps as she slips on the smooth-wet stones and sand underfoot. The next thing she knows, she’s down on her bottom and the palms of her hands, sputtering salt water and shaking wet hair out of her eyes.
“Oh my gosh Aer! Are you okay?” Tifa is beside her in an instant, strong hands under her arms and dragging her back to her feet. It takes a few wobbling, slippery steps for Aerith to find her feet again, but Tifa’s planted, keeps them both upright long enough for her to steady, and catch her breath.
“Yes, yes, I’m okay!” She manages, between coughing, laughing breaths. She wants to explain that of course she’s okay. How could she not be? Even if she’d caught a lungful of water and spent the next fifteen minutes coughing it back up, she’d be okay, because that would be something new. She’d seen the sun glittering off the waves the last time they were here. Heard beach goers splashing, and shrieking about the temperature. Smelled the brine. But she hadn’t gotten to touch it for herself then. Hadn’t gotten to experience, only watch. And this was a part of the world she’d never touched before, had thought for most of her life that she never would. But now she was here, and Tifa was too and- But she doesn’t have the words for it, not in this moment. The best she can pull up is “It’s just it’s so cold! I wasn’t expecting it.”
And that’s true enough to work.
Nonetheless, Tifa hauls her to her feet like even soaking wet, she doesn’t weigh a thing, and doesn’t let go until Aerith is steady again.
“Let’s just get some ice cream instead, alright?”
“Alright. Ice cream it is!” Aerith agrees, maybe a little more loudly than she needs to.
What luck, that they just happen to be the 52 nd customers at this particular ice cream cart that day, and that just happens to mean they get their ice cream for free?
It’s such a nice gesture, but the tip Aerith leaves is like to have covered the cost anyway.
Ice cream turns into dinner the realization that they might actually be for real hungry, after all they’d done today, which turns into dinner at a tiny, bustling place that, just happened to see a table open up a moment after they walked in, which turns into balmy nightime breeze and it’s-too-nice-to-go-back-yet, which turns into the two of them seated at the bar with the best view they could find, Aerith swiveling in her seat, and Tifa catching her whenever she swiveled too far, and turning her back around.
The third time she does this, Tifa locks her feet in the slat’s of Aeriths stool, to keep her in one place. Aerith would have been a little bothered if she hadn’t known from the look on her face that it was just because she was interested in what Aerith was saying.
“So anyway, that’s why I think being strong is awesome and the day I can do half as many pushups as you, that’s going to be a good day!”
“Really?” Aerith could have chalked the color rising in Tifa’s cheeks up to too much sun that day, or maybe the half a cocktail she’d had so far, but she really didn’t think that was actually the case. At least, she hoped it wasn’t. “Sometimes I...sometimes I wish I could be more like you, too. Like today-”
Whatever it was Tifa was going to say about today, Aerith would be left to imagine it, because just about then is when a bartender with a little too familiar of a face chose to see if they needed anything just then.
Maybe, she thought, he’d been counting on the fact that they’d be too engrossed in their conversation to pay him any mind. Maybe he’d just forgotten that other people in the world actually had manners. Whatever the reason, Reno chose that exact moment to make himself known when he came by with fresh glasses of water. And Tifa absolutely noticed.
A bar fight had not been part of Aeriths ideal date plan, but she was willing to be flexible.
It seemed like she was probably going to have to be when not two seconds later, Tifa had the Turk pinned face first against the bar.
“What. Are you doing here?”
While Aerith absolutely had not been looking for a fight, she’d be lying if she tried to say she didn’t appreciate the way that Tifa could take one over before it even started.
Reno couldn’t exactly put up his hands, pinned as he was, but he makes a pretty good approximation of it with a shrug.
“Why don’t you ask your girlfriend that? She’s the one who invited me, yo.”
And Aerith, she doesn’t like the flicker of doubt and confusion that crosses Tifa’s face, even a little bit. This was not how this was supposed to play out.
She does appreciate however, that Tifa takes the time to actually ask her about it.
“What is he talking about?”
“Well, you see-”
“Keystone.” Reno interrupts. And Aerith doesn’t like it “Aer here says she knows something ‘bout it’s whearabouts, something she’d trade if I helped her make today run smooth like.”
She likes the slow, speechless, betrayed look that moves over Tifa’s face then even less. But still, Tifa looks to her, and waits.
“Okay, okay, okay! So, maybe I did ask for a little help.”
Trust me, she wills in Tifa’s direction. Trust me on this, please. Tifa, for her part, doesn’t look away. Aerith signals the other, real, bartender, to bring their tab, and all but sighs in relief when she see’s Tifa’s stance loosen, just a little. She starts to back towards the door. Ready on three, she thinks in Tifa’s direction. Ready on three.
“Hey! Deal’s a deal, sis! I did my part, what’s this goddamned secret?”
“Yeah you did! Thanks for that!” She waits just the number of breaths long enough to meet Tifa’s eyes, and as one, they bolt for the door. “The secret is it is, I don’t have a clue!” The night is waiting for them.
Behind them, she thinks she can hear the owner yelling something about how if he didn’t have the cash, Reno could always pay the tab by washing dishes.
But she’s not really listening after that. Not really thinking about anything but the slide of sand under her feet, or the stars in the sky or the crash of waves she can hear. And she isn’t thinking about any of those things any more than she’s thinking about Tifa’s hand in hers, or this feeling that they, the two of them, if they wanted to maybe they could run forever. Maybe they could save the world after all. Maybe-
And then she’s caught up short by Tifa stopping suddenly, and she’s about to ask what’s wrong, but before she can get her voice into the words Tifa’s arms are around her, and Tifa’s mouth is pressed to hers and maybe...maybe she should forget about all those maybe’s for a second because maybe it turns out kissing Tifa is the best thing to happen to her in about as many maybe’s as she’s ever even thought of.
“Well,” Breathless in a way that made Aerith need to catch her own “You sure know how to show a girl a good time. But next time, maybe clue me in to the uninvited guest? I’d have had more fun if I’d have known.”
“So do you. And okay, deal.”
“You think maybe we should get out of here?”
“Yes, I think so.”
Maybe they’ll head south next, and check on the weapons seller. They do have a planet to save after all, and that means they have a Keystone to find. If a rich-guy was looking to add to his collection, as rumor has it may be the case, his store seems like the kind of place they’d visit.
For now, just back to the hotel sounds like plan enough.