Woman Driving, Man Sleeping (Final Fantasy VII, Rude/Tifa, #8)
Title: Woman Driving, Man Sleeping
Author Lirillith (liri42)
Pairing: Rude x Tifa
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Theme: #8, our own world
Disclaimer: FF7 is not mine.
Notes: Followup to Background.



When her stomach starts rumbling, she puts her hand to it, embarrassed. "Stop at the next town?" he suggests, one corner of his mouth quirking in what she's come to recognize as a smile, and so much for her hope he hadn't heard.

"It's just seven," she says. "I don't want to stop for the night."

"Fair enough," he replies. "You have the map?"

She's still unfolding it as the sign swings into view - Gas Food Lodging, next two exits. "Could use a chance to stretch my legs," he adds.



At the gas station, she gets out and stretches, then abruptly shrinks in on herself when she realizes she's sticking her chest out. She thinks she catches him looking away when she glances at him. Embarrassed, she heads into the convenience store.

He likes her. She feels like she's back in middle school, putting it that way. He's interested in her. He has been for a long time, and she effectively made the poor man admit that he still is, and for what? She looks out the window, over the display of candy bars, and tries to watch him speculatively. He's tall, broad-shouldered, not a bad-looking guy, but then the bashfulness takes over and she studies the chocolates and packs of gum, worried that her face is red. This isn't a good time to try to make herself think of him that way, anyway, not when they're stuck in the car with each other for hours. And what does she know about him, anyway? She knows he was born in Junon, she knows what he studied in college (and that embarrassed her, too, because he knows she never even finished high school) and how he met Reno. "Story's better when he tells it," he said. "I kicked him out of a bar and wouldn't let him back in, but he kept coming back for a week to talk to me." He'd paused, or stopped, because apparently that was the end of the story. "It's a lot better when he tells it," he added. He'd been working as a bouncer at the time.

He worked for Shinra. He doesn't regret it. She knows that, too.

"Why not?" she'd asked, when he said that.

"You think Shinra was bad? You think any of the governments they replaced were squeaky-clean?"

"That's not the point! People got to vote for them."

"Some of them. But fair enough."

"And whatever any government may have done, none of them did the damage to the Planet that Shinra did."

"You ever smelled an oil refinery?"

"What?"

"Mako was clean power. Cheap and plentiful. All Palmer's rate hikes couldn't jack the price up to what it used to be when power was oil and coal."

"It wasn't clean, it was--"

"We know that now," he said. She'd kept glaring at him, but he didn't look at her. "No one knew before."

"That doesn't change what Shinra did," she said. He hadn't said anything. He'd nodded. Maybe that was a concession.

It was odd; it seemed to be the one thing he'd talk about without prompting or questions. Everything else she'd had to ask of him - where were you born, what were you like in school ("Quiet," he'd said, with that half-smile, and she'd started giggling) what did you do after that, how did you end up in the Turks. But defending Shinra, of all things, pulled him out of his shell.

"Ready to go?" he asks, and she jumps.

"I... we could buy some snack food here and get back on the road," she says, and reaches for a candy bar distractedly. He stops in the middle of putting his wallet in his pocket, and opens it up again.

"If you want," he says. "Just as soon get pizza though."

"Oh, well, pizza's good," she says. "Whatever you want."

"Doesn't have to be pizza."

"No, I-- let's go back to the car."

He nods, opens the door for her and steps back to let her through. She used to tell Barret she could open her own damn doors, but she lets it go this time. "Let's go get pizza," she says, as she opens the car door - she managed to get to it before he could.

"You sure?"

"Yes."



The pizza takes time - the both order beers, then make faces at what they get, but keep drinking for lack of much to say. "Looks like there's another town about an hour or so from here," she says. "We could stop there for the night."

"Sounds fine," he says.

"You'll be okay to drive?" she asks.

"After one beer?" He sounds amused. "You ran a bar."

"People can surprise you! And you didn't say you were going to stop at one."

"It'll be fine." She just nods, sips her own beer, and glances around the restaurant; a group of five teenagers, another of four adults, a family. Plenty of empty booths. She watches the teenagers; one girl seems to be the center of attention, friendly with the other girl, smiling and laughing with the boys, half-flirting. She wonders if that's how she used to look among her friends, at thirteen or fourteen. It wasn't like she set out to flirt with them, but she'd sort of known they liked her, too, a bit, and she hadn't minded. Was that what Cloud used to see in her? She'd thought of them as friends, because she'd thought she was friends with pretty much everyone at school, but she never really spent much time with him. Maybe he'd liked her better as that distant, vivacious, popular girl; that wasn't what she was now, and it wasn't what she'd been when she'd found him again. And then she thought of Aerith, because if there was anyone who really was everyone's friend it was her. She'd never really had female friends until she'd met Aerith. She watched the quieter girl snag a breadstick from her friend's plate and grin, and she let herself miss Aerith again.

Rude was watching her, she realized, but she just took another drink. He could ask what was on her mind if he wanted to know. "You have a time you need to get back?" he asks.

"Not especially. You?" He shakes his head. "Are you wanting to break for the night, then?" A shrug. "I can drive after this."

"You'll be okay to drive?" he says, and she wrinkles her nose at him.



She's okay to drive, they decide, and he tosses her the keys over the car as they return to it after the meal. As they settle into their seats, he lowers the back on his, and hands her the map. "You're planning to sleep?" she asks.

"If it doesn't look like it's working, you can lay the map on me," he says.

"Huh?"

"The noise will wake me."

"Oh."

It seems to work, though. When she looks at him, about five minutes out of town, his head's relaxed to one side; not much later, she notices that his breathing is deep and even. She wishes she could sleep on command like that, though she's not tired now. She thinks she may go on to the next town after this one, see how far they can get in a day. It's not likely she'll miss an exit - this freeway is the largest road through most of these towns. Built by Shinra, of course. She squints even through sunglasses at the setting sun and wishes she could play the radio.

She glances at him again. Five earings, and a shading of stubble on his jaw and scalp, all about the same amount of growth. It's a bit odd to see - she's used to seeing Barret's stubble contrasted to his hair, and Cloud's stubble is virtually invisible, when he even lets it grow. She promised she'd call them when she stopped for the night. "I'll answer my phone," Cloud said quietly, and she'd smiled. "Call mine," Barret insisted. "Some of us don't have to promise to answer because everyone knows we keep in touch." She'd promised, and she'd planned to call them both, but she doesn't want to make it too late. Denzel and Cloud are both still recuperating, and she doubts Barret gets much sleep when he's working; this is his chance to rest, just as the trip, in a different way, is hers.

She never told Barret about what she'd said to Rude that night they got drunk together - the night she'd gotten drunk, anyway. She hadn't mentioned the hazily-remembered kiss on her forehead, hadn't mentioned him putting his jacket on her on the walk home. Hadn't mentioned thinking of kissing him good night as she watched him shrug back into it, not far from her and Cloud's place, and leaning towards him as if hoping it'd happen without any effort from her. Maybe she should have done something before he left, said something, but maybe it would have made it worse, because she couldn't have said she was in love with him; she just kind of wished she was, wished she weren't still hung up on Cloud after all this time. Wished she could drop what seemed now to be a bad habit.

That feels unfair. It's not Cloud's fault. But maybe for her it's a bad habit; waiting for him, holding out hope. He needs people, and she thought he needed her. Maybe for a while he thought so too. But if he thinks that now, he keeps it well-hidden, and she knows he won't say much when she calls. Barret will be suspicious of Rude, and she'll have to reassure him they're in separate rooms, and he'll want the phone back after she talks to Marlene. She'll probably call Cloud first and get rid of the silence by asking to speak to Marlene and Denzel, and Marlene at least will probably demand to speak to her while she's talking to Barret as well. Barret will insist she call him the next night as well, but she suspects Cloud won't. If she thinks about it enough in advance, she won't be disappointed, she hopes.

But it's getting dark, the glare of the sunset finally sinking out of view, and she discards the cheap convenience-store sunglasses and looks at him again. Rude's still wearing his. She thinks of trying to remove them, but she'd wake him. He must be tired - he drove all day. They probably should have stopped after dinner, but she didn't want to face killing a few empty hours in a hotel room before she slept, or trying to kill those empty hours with him; the car makes that easier somehow. This way they're covering more ground, and right now, she likes the quiet, the dark, and being almost alone but not quite. She wishes she could stay like this forever - just her, a sleeping man and the noise of the tires. And her thoughts, but she can try to quiet those for now.