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“The map saaays…” Aerith bites her tongue as she clamps the phone receiver between her cheek and shoulder while holding open a map almost too wide for her armspan. “There’s a motel around four hundred miles south.”
“The one between the canyons and the river?”
Aerith squints. “Yup! Looks like it.”
“Alright. We’re around the same distance out, so we’ll try to meet up there by tonight. Sound good?”
“Roger that!” Aerith smiles as she starts to fold up the map. “See you tonight. Say hi to Barret and Red for me!”
“Will do.”
It takes a bit more flapping about to get the map back to a portable size, but she manages. Un-wedging the receiver from her neck, she hangs it up and hops out of the phone booth and into the garage.
Well, that’s that, at least— though they should really look into getting a few extra PHS units for the crew. It would have been a disaster if Tifa couldn’t remember Cloud’s number— a sandy disaster, at that, and Aerith couldn’t be more grateful. She’s pretty sure she would have ended up a dried-out cactus buried in sand if Tifa hadn’t managed to find an abandoned truck in the sandstorm, hot-wired it, then dragged it over to the first non-abandoned building they could find.
“I gotta say, miss,” says the mechanic (the guy who owns the workshop? Aerith’s not sure). “This is the cleanest damn engine change I’ve seen this side of the desert.”
Tifa laughs as she pulls her hands out of the truck’s guts, tossing her wrench up where it flips a bunch of times before landing easily in her hand again.
(A fun quirk of Tifa’s that Aerith’s noticed: she likes to show off little flourishes of dexterity when she’s in a good mood, most likely unconsciously.)
“You’re too kind. I wouldn’t have been able to pull it off without your help.”
“Ha!” The mechanic barks, straightening up and crossing his arms. “She’s humble, too!” He shakes his head. “Didn’t think they made gals like you no more, missy, I really did.”
Tifa grins bashfully, and it’s infectiously nice— getting to see the more casual sides of Tifa has been like that, the whole time. Not that Aerith doesn’t appreciate Tifa’s smiles that are tinged with such incredible relief or gratitude or whatever else she feels when lives are at stake, but there’s something about the way that Tifa just lights up when she gets to put her work into something she enjoys doing that Aerith hasn’t been able to get enough of.
“Say, you’re not looking for a job ‘round these parts, are ya? Could use another pair of deft hands in the garage.”
“Oh, that’s kind of you to offer, but—”
Aerith sees the guilty furrow of Tifa’s brow and jumps to her rescue.
“But we’re on a super important trip,” she chimes in, “and we’re gonna need our one-of-a-kind gal every step of the way.”
She punctuates her point by looping her arm through Tifa’s and giving the guy her best smile. Tifa just does that super cute thing where she smiles shyly and tucks her chin before looking away when someone compliments her that Aerith noticed the first time Tifa cooked dinner for them and Aerith was just so blown away by how good she made a random monster taste—
The mechanic laughs. “Shucks, but y’can’t blame me for trying.” He shakes his head. “A’ight. I’ll go get you gals some water for the road while you’re cleanin’ up.”
“Oh, no, that’s alright—” Tifa holds up her hands. “You’ve already helped us so much!”
The mechanic stops in the doorway to laugh again. “Gal shows up in the middle of a sandstorm pushing a beat-down truck and shows me some tricks I ain’t even thought of before? I should be thankin’ you.”
“But—”
“Now, now— I don’t wanna hear another word of it. I ain’t ‘boutta send two perfectly nice girls out into the blasted sand with nothing but their truck, aight?” he says in a facetiously stern tone. “You ladies just sit tight, now. Be back in a bit.”
With that, he steps out of the garage and farther into the building. Tifa sighs as she rubs a particularly stubborn patch of grease on her hands with a rag.
“Well, that’s awfully nice of him…”
Aerith giggles as Tifa closes the hood of the truck. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“It’s not, but I just feel guilty, you know?” She wipes the sweat off her face with the back of her arm, turning around to sit lightly against the front of the truck. “He’s done us a huge favor even though we basically showed up out of no… what are you laughing at?”
Aerith coughs back a giggle. “Sorry, you— you got a little…” she taps at her cheek, mirroring where Tifa just smudged the biggest patch of motor oil on her face.
“Oh, dammit—” Tifa snorts at herself while trying to wipe it off with the rag. “How bad?”
Aerith can’t hold back her laugh this time. “Oh, you’re—” she half-reaches out to stop Tifa. “You’re making it worse,” she giggles. “Here, let me just…”
She reaches out for the rag, smiling when Tifa sighs and hands it over, letting Aerith cup her face and wipe with the cleanest patch of it that she can find.
“Thank you,” Tifa says, resigned. “It’s been a long morning.”
“Tell me about it.” Aerith wipes gently, gradually rubbing away the smudge without being too rough on the skin. Can’t be too careful with a face as pretty as this: soft skin and a marble-carved jaw paired with high cheekbones and just the cutest touch of baby fat to round it all out. Aerith admires the curve of Tifa’s eyelids as she cleans off the grease.
“Aaand… there.” She wipes off the last of the mudge with her thumb. “All done.” Smiling, she cups Tifa’s jaw with both hands as she studies the flutter of her eyelashes. Gosh. They’re so… long and dark and pretty and—
“Aerith?” Tifa frowns, brushing her fingertips against the back of Aerith’s hand. “Is something wrong?”
And, god, if Aerith doesn’t love that slight rasp in Tifa’s unsure tones.
“Sorry. Just noticed you’re not wearing mascara.” She takes a breath, takes a chance, and runs the tip of her finger under Tifa’s brow. “Your lashes really are just that long, huh?”
And maybe— maybe that last part came out a little too intimately, a little too tenderly— she pulls her hands away to clasp them behind her back and gives Tifa a playful pout. “No fair.”
Tifa smiles widely, her eyes doing that bashful downwards flicker again as she pushes off the hood of the truck and stands up straight.
“As if you have anything to be jealous about,” she laughs, lightly tapping the first knuckle of her index against the underside of Aerith’s chin. “You probably have the prettiest eyes this side of the continent.”
(And Aerith can’t decide if she’s more enamoured or frightened by this dance they’ve been doing— one touch following another, in slow escalation of closeness, as if testing the limits of what a few days of fast friendship will allow.)
“Oh?” she grins, because she can’t pass up the opportunity to tease Tifa’s bolder comments. And, maybe, she just wants to see her blush. “Prettier than Cloud’s?”
Tifa leans in with an equally mischievous smile. “Cloud doesn’t even come close.”
Ah. Sometimes, she runs into the mistake of forgetting how charming Tifa can be without even really trying— the smile she’s getting right now is wide, crinkling Tifa’s eyes with sincerity, just like when they were daydreaming about their shopping trip the night that they met—
Tifa gasps in delight. “Aerith Gainsborough,” she says as Aerith claps a hand over her mouth and swivels away to hide; Tifa steps around her to try and peer at her face regardless. “Are you blushing?”
“Wh— no— I—” her face is on fire. Tifa doesn’t even have the decency to give her a shit-eating grin to get mad at: her smile is all dimples and genuinely delighted surprise, as sincere as the rest of her. “Oh— you—”
She lunges forward to jab at Tifa’s sides on a whim, only to be rewarded with a startled squeak and a jump backwards.
Aerith blinks as Tifa stands two feet away, arms wrapped protectively around her middle. Oh ho. Oh ho ho.
“Tifa Lockhart,” she purrs wickedly. “Are you ticklish?”
Tifa’s pretty eyes go wide as Aerith ambles towards her. “Oh, no—” she backs up into the workbench behind her. “Aerith—”
Aerith pounces. Tifa’s giggle-squeal as she goes straight for her abs is adorable, but unfortunately she doesn’t stick the offense: gloved hands grab her wrists and deftly spin her around, trapping her with her back against Tifa and her own arms pinned to her front.
Tifa’s triumphant laugh puffs into her hair. “Gotcha.”
It’s a good thing that Tifa can’t see her face light up again, because Tifa feels so solid behind her— and it occurs to her that this is kind of the first time they’ve hugged. Yes, Tifa’s grabbed her out of the way of danger before, but there’s barely a second of actual holding going on before Tifa pulls away. This is— this is sustained holding with her arms wrapped around Aerith, and it’s… warm. It’s safe. It’s…
“No fair,” she pouts, half-heartedly trying to wiggle away.
“Neither is tickling!” Tifa laughs. She squeezes Aerith’s wrists, and Aerith doesn’t know why that feels so nice. “Come on,” Tifa hums into her hair. “Truce?”
Again with that rasp as her voice drops into a softer shade of playful— Aerith pulls out her best beleaguered sigh.
“Oh, fine,” she says dramatically. “Only because you asked so nicely.”
Tifa laughs and lets go of her wrists, and for a second it’s just Aerith pressed against her with nothing really holding her there. She thinks about staying, pulling Tifa’s arms back around herself, but decides against it: there must be a reason that Tifa’s been completely okay with holding hands and touching shoulders but has never willingly hugged her before.
So she just steps away with a smile, dusting out her dress as the mechanic returns to the garage with a six-pack of bottled waters.
It doesn’t come up again until an hour into the drive, while Aerith’s carefully studying the passing landmarks and comparing them to the map, just to make sure they’re where they think they are. It’s… scary, in a way, because the desert is just so open and expansive— as is the blue sky that just doesn’t end, like the pictures of oceans that her mom would paint sometimes. Even in the safety of the rusted truck, Tifa’s steady grip on the wheel beside her and the taste of blue raspberry candy, it just feels like they could get… lost. They’ve already lost Cloud and Barret and Red in the sandstorm earlier— and the possibilities of the horizon and the future and the places they’ll need to go to stop Sephiroth dance around in her head so much she focuses on the latitude lines of the tattered map and tells herself they’re doing fine.
(Before, she had the Planet humming lullabies in her ear at night— it’s okay, She said, you’re exactly where you need to be. But she doesn’t even have that encouragement now, because She’s been sulking about the whole capital D Destiny thing. Aerith thinks so, anyway. It’s hard to tell. She wonders if it’s because she’s only half, if she’d hear Her so much clearer if she was more like her mother, if She’s disappointed that the only one left is just a half-breed—)
“Hey, listen…”
Aerith glances up at Tifa once before going back to studying the map, chewing the last of her lollipop. “I’m listenin’,” she singsongs through the chips of candy sticking to her teeth. “What’s up?”
“I just…” She hears the pad of Tifa’s finger tap against the steering wheel. “Wanted to apologize for grabbing you earlier.”
Aerith blinks. She looks up at Tifa for real this time. “Huh?”
Tifa glances at her and it looks nervous, what with the slightest gnawing of her bottom lip. “In the garage. I was trying not to get tickled, but I think I went overboard.” Another nervous glance— and Aerith’s sure Tifa’d be giving her one of those heartfelt looks right now if she weren’t driving. “I’m really sorry. I hope I didn’t make you feel uncomfortable or anything—”
“Have you been sitting on that for the past hour?”
“Uhm.” Tifa blinks. “Yes?”
Aerith shakes her head and laughs, chewing on the now-naked end of her lollipop stick.
“And here I was, happy to get my first hug from you,” she chuckles, going back to trying to triangulate the rocky outcrop she sees in the distance to one of the darker spots on the map.
Tifa sighs deeply. “Okay, I’m glad. I was really worried there.”
“About hugging me?” Aerith giggles. “You know I like hugs, right?”
And she painstakingly makes sure it doesn’t come out too honestly— because, yeah, that was really nice, and she’d probably like a lot more hugs from Tifa but it doesn’t have to be a whole thing. Not if Tifa doesn’t want it to be.
“Well,” Tifa says, a little sheepish. “We’ve known each other for less than a week, I didn’t want to assume…”
And it is strange, isn’t it? Tifa knows the gritty details of Aerith’s past, her fears— they’ve been through literal life and death and different dimensions together and Aerith knows that Tifa would jump in front of a train for her with no hesitation, but she doesn’t know what her favourite color is. She doesn’t know what words she hates or what her pet peeves are or if she’s just not much of a touchy-feely person. She only knows how to make Tifa smile in five different ways and it’s not enough, not really— she wants to know more. She wants to see more of that wonderful soul she glimpses sometimes when Tifa lets her guard down for just a second because Aerith said the right thing, made the right joke—
And that? That doesn’t come easy just because they’ve saved each others’ lives. That takes time getting to know each other, and for all her childishness, Aerith knows a thing or two about patience. You can’t rush flowers, after all.
“Well, assume away,” she says, popping her lollipop stick into the small garbage baggy she’s looped into the door handle. “If I’m ever uncomfortable, you’ll be the first to know.”
Tifa’s glance is much, much sharper than she anticipated.
“Will I be?”
… Well. That’s not quite the response she was expecting. The surprise passes after a second and Aerith makes a concerted effort to focus on the dry, cracked road flowing towards them in the windshield, trying not to be annoyed.
Hypocrite. As if Tifa doesn’t wear just as much of a mask in the name of making things easier for other people. Aerith remembers the strained laugh and flickering smile Tifa gave her that night in the Shinra building—
‘I’m fine,’ she said, as if Aerith couldn’t see the stress and fatigue filling up the bags under her eyes.
“Sorry,” Tifa murmurs. “That… came out wrong. It’s just…” Aerith waits patiently. “You’re always looking out for me, even when you’re not doing so great yourself. I get worried about what you’re not telling me.”
Two more defunct streetlamps pass them by before Aerith sighs, leans back, and folds her hands into her lap, crinkling the map beneath them. She thinks of the night Tifa’s world was literally falling down and she still somehow found the room in her heart to be worried about the random girl they picked up in Wall Market just a few hours beforehand.
“It’s funny,” she murmurs, scratching her nail against the chipped edge of the cupholder between them. “I feel the same way about you.”
A part of her is relieved that Tifa’s too busy watching the road to look at her, at the same time that she’s dying to know what kind of look she’d be giving her right now if she could, what she’d see in those pretty eyes.
Instead, Tifa reaches out and grabs Aerith’s hand, squeezing lightly. Aerith squeezes back, even though she’s not sure what it means—
Maybe it’s a promise to be more honest with each other, maybe it’s an agreement to understand that that kind of honesty doesn’t come easy to either of them. Maybe it’s both, maybe it’s neither, but it doesn’t matter because it’s enough. In the hum of this truck rumbling past the wide blue sky, the stale desert air pushing through the old A/C, and the fragile, mismatched intimacy between them, it’s enough.
It’s enough for that moment, but moments pass, and Aerith finds herself wondering once more: how is it that someone can feel so familiar and so strange at the same time, with intimacy like patchwork? Tifa had felt like a friend instantly— and not just because Aerith had wanted her to. No, her carefully cultivated sweet disposition had gotten swept up in Tifa’s charming warmth and melted into something more genuine, more vulnerable, something that Aerith couldn’t find herself holding back even if she wanted. They met, and Tifa saw her— not the bubbly, invincible girl she likes to think she is.
And Aerith— she saw Tifa too, the strength, the compassion, the anxiety, the wonderful mystery of a person who wears her emotions so passionately on her sleeve and yet remains so reserved and stoic in her own way. But a few days is only so much time to see all that there is to see, especially with having to dodge monsters left and right.
And so, Aerith finds herself here, in a half-empty diner smelling of dry grease, tapping her nail against the chips in the linoleum of their table, sitting across from a girl she knows to the soul who’s still a stranger in the mundanities. Amidst the quiet clinks of cutlery and the constant low rumble of the burning coffee, she studies the way the bleaching desert midday sunlight brings out the auburn highlights in Tifa’s hair, memorizing the little banal details.
Tifa, apparently, isn’t a coffee-drinker— at least, not today. She orders a simple water with no ice, along with a plate of three eggs, two sausages, a small gathering of potatoes, and a side of the greenest salad she could find on the menu. Aerith picks at her decidedly less balanced tower of pancakes, wondering if she should have ordered something a little more… nutritious. Sure, sweet breakfasts have always been her thing, but they are kind of on the road running for their lives now, maybe it’s time to give up on a few luxuries.
The thought makes her pout.
“Hey,” Tifa says, reaching across the table to touch Aerith’s wrist. “Is everything okay?”
So concerned, always— Aerith finds herself smiling.
“Peachy,” she says. “Why, what’s up?”
Tifa retracts her hand and gives her a slightly unsure look. “You haven’t touched your food at all, and you’re being pretty quiet. I just wanted to check.”
Aerith shrugs and cuts into her pancakes, as if to prove a point. “I can be quiet sometimes.”
(Only around people she trusts, really, but Tifa doesn’t know that yet.)
“I know, but usually…” Tifa bites her lip. “Actually, nevermind.”
And those are the magic words that make Aerith decidedly less willing to give up a topic. She watches as Tifa primly cuts a piece of potato and raises it to her mouth.
(She eats so… properly. Aerith isn’t sure what she expected, but it certainly wasn’t the ladylike way Tifa eats, almost as if she’s had etiquette lessons as a kid. Well, maybe she did. That’s something Aerith doesn’t know yet.)
“What is it?” she pries, putting her utensils down to cradle her mug of burnt coffee instead.
Tifa smiles placatingly, shaking her head. “Nothing, really. Ignore me.”
Aerith snorts. As if Tifa isn’t the most interesting person in a five-mile radius at any given time. Raising her mug to her lips, she murmurs over the lip of it, “do you actually not want to say, or are you just afraid of upsetting me?”
She’s not sure where this confrontational boldness is coming from— maybe she’s just a little confident from how they survived their first tense moment earlier. Maybe she’s just out of it from the long drive.
Tifa stops in the middle of cutting another small bite, staring up at Aerith under her dark lashes. There’s a beat where Aerith holds eye contact and worries if she’s been too confident— then Tifa gives her a nervous chuckle meant to diffuse the tension, eyes crinkling good-naturedly.
“Would it be so bad if I said I didn’t want to annoy you?” Tifa takes a sip of her water.
“Would it be so bad if you did?”
Okay, she’s definitely out of it from travel fatigue, because that’s… well. That’s impatient. She’s being impatient and hoping that maybe they can skip the weird, slightly fraught parts of getting to know each other if they just talk it out enough.
Tifa looks down, running her thumbnail across the handle of her fork. She’s too… lovely to be described as brooding, but she gets this beautiful storminess in her eyes sometimes that makes Aerith so, so curious to know what’s going on in that pretty, tumultuous mind of hers.
She takes another sip of her coffee and decides to save Tifa from having to answer the overly direct question. “It’s okay. I get it. I’m scared of getting on your nerves, too. Comes with the territory of making a new friend, I guess,” she lies, because she’s never that worried about pissing people off, usually. If people don’t like her, it’s their loss, no skin off her back— she can’t explain why it’s so different with Tifa, though. “But I think I’d rather be annoyed with you than make you feel like you couldn’t speak your mind around me, you know?”
She stirs her coffee with faux nonchalance, refusing to look at Tifa because that’s more vulnerable of an olive branch than she’s used to extending to anyone other than her mom. But, you don’t get anything without giving first, and she’s not ashamed to admit that she’s dying to get to know Tifa better.
“I was just about to say,” Tifa starts quietly, her knife scraping against the worn ceramic plate, “that you’re usually only so quiet at night. Kind of like those flowers that hug themselves closed after sundown.”
And there it is, the reward for vulnerability, the compensation for the terrifying act of opening up— she flushes with the thrill of not only being known but having mundane she knows about herself reflected back to her in such a delicate way. Such a banal habit, described so sweetly. She gnaws on her bottom lip and chances a glance up to find Tifa giving her one of those ever so soft smiles again, the ones that push her eyes into these lovely half-moons.
“And you thought that was going to annoy me?”
Tifa shrugs as she starts cutting into her food again. “Well, it was kind of presumptuous…”
Aerith laughs, shaking her head. “You know what?” she says, hiking the skirt of her dress up a little to pull one leg across the other. “I think you could stand to be a bit more presumptuous. I like it when you’re bold.”
Tifa gives her a little lopsided smile, eyelashes fluttering as she glances up from underneath them. “You would.”
And was that just playful, or is Aerith right to read a bit of a flirtatious undertone there? She stares into her coffee, wondering if it’s worth pursuing— well, it’s worth pursuing, yes, but is there something to pursue at all? Or is that just… how Tifa sounds when she’s in a more playful mood?
“You know, I kind of wish…” Tifa says gently, “I wish I’d met you earlier. We lived in the same city for five years, it’s kind of a shame we only ran into each other right before leaving.”
Aerith takes another sip of her coffee, dwelling on the bittersweet idea: her, showing up in Tifa’s bar, being greeted with that terribly nice smile like any other patron. It warms her chest far more than it has any right to. Only two sectors over— with the problem sector between them, yes, but still. Aerith wonders how many times the whispers made tiny changes to their lives, the smallest of nudges to make sure they only met when it was the “right time.”
“Well, hey, at least we’re getting to know each other now, right?” she says, putting down her mug with a smile. “It’s never too late to live in the moment.”
Tifa laughs. “I guess so, but…” she scrunches her nose cutely. “There’s not exactly a lot of time to hang out when we’re on a mission to save the world.”
“Sure there is.” Aerith smiles brightly, digging into her pancakes. “Look at us now. Sitting in a diner, just the two of us, having a totally normal hangout.” She swings her ankle lightly underneath the table, thinking. “I guess it’s not exactly the shopping trip we wanted to go on, but I’ve been having a good time.”
Another bashful smile— Tifa brushes a bit of hair out of her face. “Me too. I’m…”
And it’s really the shy hesitation that makes Aerith wait, that makes her brace herself—
“I’m really glad I met you, Aerith.”
Tifa’s voice rasps so sweetly Aerith thinks that she hasn’t heard anyone ever say her name in a way that made her heart flutter so much— not since Zack, years ago. She reaches across the table to fiddle with the cuff of Tifa’s gloves, afraid that her heart might really burst if she looks directly at the soft smile she can almost feel warming up her face—
“Me too,” she echoes, pinching the leather between her fingers and trying to bite down on the grin blooming across her face.