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tampered2007-06-07 10:38 pm
red-dragon-666.livejournal.com) wrote in tampered2007-06-07 10:38 pm
Log; Complete
When; June 6th. Late Night.
Rating; PG-13.
Characters; Elena [![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lady_turk] and Jr. [red_dragon_666].
Summary; The magical backlash that knocks Jr. off his feet somehow bring him and Elena closer together.
Log;
He was kind of surprised at how many fights Elena had gotten into, honestly. It seemed like whenever he turned around, there was someone new that she had challenged to a match. And yet he was considered a firecracker?
True, he had been spending an extra lot of time in the firing range lately, but he had mostly avoided that sort of interaction with people... He thought about that while in the shower. He certainly used to get into a lot more fights than he did now... Sure, his adventures with Shion and the others had encouraged that, but even outside of that, he usually liked to take a tumble with people on occasion.
Rubedo was a weapon after all, wasn't he? Or was he just a 'wonderful boy', like Sakura insisted? Maybe it was because of her that he got into so few fights, now... She had gotten so upset whenever he had, even acted differently around him.
Was he going totally soft?
Scowling a bit at that idea, Rubedo finished fastening his pants as he stepped out of the shower and into the living area. His quarters were the largest in the ship--even bigger than Gaignun's, and more like a suite. But that was the plus to commanding a ship, after all.
He was just about to tug on the sleeveless turtleneck when he spotted Elena at a terminal. He couldn't really see what was on the screen from where he was, large as it was, but it was only natural to assume she was messing around on the Network.
"Anything new?" he asked as he finished yanking the shirt on. It was while he was trying to fold the collar down that Rubedo felt the initial light-headedness.
That was all the warning he got before the power slammed into him like a wall, knocking him flat off his feet and right onto the coffee table behind him. His force field activated instantly, shattering the glass table before he could even hit it, though it was hard to tell from how quickly it all happened, leaving him sprawled in a mess of broken glass.
Having showered herself after her little bout with Roy, where she had managed to get a workout out of it, Elena had promptly plopped herself down in front of her computer to see what she might have missed. She checked it often, but she had reasons to. Though her PHS, which had been stuffed into a box, long forgotten and recently dragged out again, informed her that none of the other Turks had posted anything at least. Still, there were other people and things going on in the City she liked to be informed of.
Elena, dressed casually with a regular shirt and jeans since she didn’t feel quite up to wearing a full suit quite yet, had only managed to get a brief understanding of what was going on before Jr. spoke up.
Just as she was about to answer, she felt the force that she’d only come to learn about herself. Elena wasn’t a Cetra by any means, but out of the Turks, she had the strongest affinity for materia. Which meant that she was the most sensitive to magic. However, her winces of pain were quickly forgotten when she heard a loud crash.
Snapping her head upwards, Elena’s eyes widen when she caught sight of the broken glass and Jr. body on top of it all. With a small cry, she quickly stood up, making her chair fall backwards, and rushed over to where he lay, not paying any mind to the broken glass.
“Rubedo?!”
His only response at first was merely a groan before his eyes fluttered open. When his eyesight focused enough for him to make out Elena, he flinched and held his arms up, eyes squeezing shut almost immediately.
"Son of a bitch! What the hell was that?! Lights off!" he croaked out, the last command recognized by the ship and instantly cloaking them in darkness. That was better. He still had a splitting headache, after all, and the nausea was no joke.
Opening his eyes once more, Rubedo moved a hand to rest against his stomach as he tried to sit up.
Putting one hand on his back and using the other to help him up as well, Elena paid about as much attention to the darkness as she did the glass or the small cuts she was getting. Her eyes would adjust soon enough and even if she still couldn’t quite see well enough to make too many things out, that didn’t matter too all that much right now. She was more worried about Jr. and how he was faring. Because if she used her own headache as any sort of base for comparison, it couldn’t have been very pleasant for Jr. in the least bit.
“Take it easy okay?” she said softly, voice gentle for his sake as well as her own. “There was a magical backlash and I’m pretty sure it just hit us.”
"Backlash? Well that's better than an attack, I guess..." Still, it had felt like one of Albedo's nastier attacks...although those sometimes rendered him numb. He would have preferred that over his stomach lurching inside of him.
Shaking his head to get a few small shards out of his damp hair, he staggered up to stand and clutched at his stomach. He was a bit cut up, which was somewhat annoying considering he'd just showered, but nothing a few small band-aids couldn't fix. Squinting, he glanced up at her.
"This is where Gaignun would rub my love for antique things in my face, I'll bet." He cast a look at the destroyed table behind him. It had been from the twenty-first century, and has cost him a damn fortune. "...Shit. How are you feeling?"
Like Elena really could have teased him about that when what he considered antique, she considered commonplace and normal. Not a fact that she really felt it was time to remind in about though. A glass table could be fixed one way or another. Either glue or duct-tape if a person was feeling creative. Or if they were lazy, they could just go out and get a new one.
Standing when he did, although Elena had to do it at a slightly different pace given the height differences, she didn’t remove her hands or move any distance away from him. She was worried and slightly chewing on the insides of her bottom lip. Brushing a hand through his hair and getting out a bit more of the glass, Elena just cracked a small smile and shook her head.
“I’ll survive. But I’m more worried about you,” she stated. Her head was pounding and her knees felt a bit weak, but those things were easily pushed aside to be dealt with later or ignored till they weren’t an issue anymore. “You can’t be feeling like anything but shit if you got hit as hard as I’m guessing you did.”
Shrugging his shoulders back, he slowly reached up to brush off his shirt, making sure nothing was stuck in his clothes. "I'll get...Mary to come in and help clean it up later. I think I'll...need a new one."
Rubedo had to step carefully out of the mess considering he didn't have shoes, but he kept a hold of Elena's hand to pull her with him. "Fuck, no kidding. I dunno though... My powers aren't considered magic where I'm from, but I guess I can see how it'd work that way here. I'm going to need to shoot up with something fast... Fucking migraine..."
He paused once he stepped outside the circle of shattered glass and turned, letting go of her hand and narrowing his eyes at the mess. "...I wonder..."
“Table later,” Elena stated firmly. They could clean up the mess and get whoever they wanted to help with it later. Once they both felt up to speed. But at least it was a sign that Jr. didn’t have a concussion if he was still able to think rationally like that. It was one less thing to worry about and one less thing to cause her wrinkles.
She was about to offer to get him something for his headache, and to get some for herself as well, when her words were cut short at his query. Raising a questioning eyebrow, Elena changed her train of thought and lightly cradled her arm. It acted up sometimes, not as much as it used to, but sometimes it still bothered her when she didn’t feel quite up to her normal pace.
“What are you wondering about?”
Elena's question actually startled him, he had been so lost in thought. "Oh. Well. It's just... I wonder if I can..."
Reaching up, he rested his hand over the right side of his chest and shut his eyes. Maybe they wouldn't need Mary's help after all, but... I guess you can't really help with this, huh Albedo? You aren't inside me anymore, after all...
Still, his own power should have been plenty enough. He just had to know how tap into it. So much of it was subconscious...just like the force field when he had been thrown through the table. If he could just learn to control it, and bring it to the surface when he consciously wanted it...
Ah. There.
Slowly, he opened his eyes, the blue shimmering with the crimson glow that began to surround his body as he held out his hand towards the table. Bit by bit, the pieces of glass trembled and lifted, and his brow furrowed in concentration as he tried to lift it all, including any pieces still sticking to the two of them.
He could probably put the table back together if he just concentrated hard enough. He knew how to meld items, after all...that was how MOMO's charm had been created. But this was quite a project, and as the shattered glass began to gather, it formed a slowly rotating sphere in front of them as he tried to picture how the table used to look.
The headache was getting worse, though, and Rubedo's hand shook as he tried to keep a hold on his power. Shit, shit, shit, what if I lose it?!
If she had any more questions about what Jr. was planning or was wondering about, she soon got her answer soon enough. Elena was pretty much stunned speechless by the sight of Jr. glowing the way he was and by the way the glass lifted off the ground and off them. It wasn’t like the times previously as there was a more than one color surrounding Jr. right then. And he was purposely controlling it.
Her feet were rooted to the ground as she watched, barely daring to breath, not that it was noticeable or necessary, but just the same. It wasn’t until she saw Jr. trembling hand as he continued on that Elena’s brain snapped back to focus.
Now biting rather than nibbling softly on her bottom lip, Elena took a few steps back, fighting with the urge to get out of the way and to help somehow. She might have been more familiar with the concept of magic than Jr. was, but she didn’t think that what he was doing right now would qualify. And even if it did, what could she do? Her skills weren’t of this nature. If anything, she had more control over ice than anything else.
Ice… Could she? The materia was already warmed up from her earlier bought with Roy…
Quickly turning around and going for the table where the Minerva band still sat, Elena snatched it up and turned to see if Jr. had lost his control yet or not.
It was too much to do at once. Maybe if he hadn't just been weakened by that backlash only moments earlier he could have done better, but as it was, it was a miracle he had managed just this much. Seeing Elena move out of the corner of his eye, he got just distracted enough to falter, and his weak grip on the power released.
The sphere fell apart, and fortunately didn't explode like he feared. It merely dropped, a few pieces scattering here and there, but mostly it remained as a rather large pile of glass. With a weak sigh, he stumbled back and wiped at his brow.
"Ungh. Never mind. At least it'll be a lot easier to clean up now in the morning."
Relaxing and unclenching muscles that had been triggered to run or act as quickly as necessary, Elena grinned as she walked over; band slipped onto her wrist now, and placed a supporting hand on his shoulder.
“That was a rather impress little display,” Elena teased lightly. “Showing off much maybe? It’s not going to be fair if I don’t get the chance to do the same.”
Quickly leaning down to kiss his brow, part a sign of relief that he was all right and part because she had been impressed by what he’d done, Elena closed her own eyes and pulled at the materia that was fitted into one of the slots of her band. It was a familiar process, but Elena mentally twisted and altered the normally destructive spell, brows creasing in concentration. The green orb glowed faintly and then flared slightly as Elena opened her eyes and released the spell.
Ice 1 flared and surrounded the pieces of glass, but rather than shattered a second later, the ice remained behind, surrounded the sharp pieces of glass in smooth ice.
“It’ll melt soon, but at least this way we can pick it all up without slicing ourselves to pieces,” she explained, just a bit more mentally exhausted than before, only showing it vaguely in her tone of voice.
He relaxed when he felt her hand on his shoulder, then watched in an awe of his own as the room chilled a few degrees and the sharp pieces smoothed over with the glittering ice. Rubedo had seen Elena use materia rarely, so that was quite a treat. He really needed to learn more about that stuff... It seemed to have the same effects as using Ether, but totally different properties.
With a weak grin, he slipped an arm around her waist to give a light squeeze. "Niiice!" Pulling away, he moved over to the mess and kicked over a trashcan. It was old, too, but not nearly as fancy as the table had been.
Sinking down onto his knees, he began to push the glass into the metal can. The cold ice pricked at his fingers, but not nearly as badly as the sharp edges would have been. "Careful, though, or you might start to look all sexy."
“Ice is my specialty, and even I like to show off a little every now and then,” she explained, smiling slightly. Tucking some of the more errant strands of her hair behind her ear, Elena couldn’t help but feel a bit smug over her accomplishments as well.
Doing much the same as Jr., Elena picked up the pieces of ice and dropped them into the trashcan, not minding the cold much since it had less of an effect on her. Elena chuckled and tilted her head so she could get a decent look at Jr.’s face. Her hair fell forward, falling out from behind her ear, but it thankfully stayed mostly out of the way.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing when you’re concerned.”
Rubedo's hand paused to rub on his pant leg to warm up a bit, and he glanced up to her face. She really was so beautiful. Suit, jeans, or a dress...it didn't really matter what she wore.
He could remember what Tseng had said about her, and part of him panicked again. He trusted her, it was true, but how much did Elena trust herself?
With a dry swallow, he reached him a hand, still shaky from the backlash, and tucked her hair back again. His voice was soft and his gaze earnest and almost scared as he asked, "Are you so sure it isn't?"
Startled, Elena didn’t bother moving or reaching for another piece of ice as she tried to figure out just what it was that Jr. was asking her. Rather, she was curious about the meaning of his question. Why wouldn’t she be sure of what? That she minded or not if he thought her sexy? That seemed to be a rather silly question to ask.
But the look in his eyes made Elena hold her tongue and think her answer through. Apparently, even though she didn’t understand, it wasn’t anything to brush off lightly.
“Jr….” And then Elena sighed as she closed her eyes to lean forward to brush her lips against his. Firm and insistent, there wasn’t any hesitation to her kiss and there was still none in her eyes when she opened them again.
She might have been confused and troubled with her feelings for Tseng and for Jr. but she knew where she stood with the both of them. And recent events had, not only given her the time to think, but confirmed things she needed to sort through with her feelings. She might never say any of it out loud, but she knew and that was enough.
“Does that answer your question or do I have to spell it out for you?”
Rubedo's neck felt hot from how deep his blush was, and he was grateful that it was so dark all of a sudden. He took a moment to respond, considering he knew that if he did right away, it'd come out like a stuttering mess.
He still felt unsure about certain things...but he knew that if he couldn't trust where they were at in their relationship, he wouldn't be able to be productive. And there was still the issue of how distant she had been regarding...certain things, and he just wasn't one to push those. But kisses, at the very least, he could tease about.
When he finally spoke, though, a smile had replaced his frown, and there was a playful twinkle in his eyes as he leaned back up. "Gee, I dunno. Does spelling it out get me extra kisses and cuddles?"
Laughing, Elena swatted at his head, but then she was taking one of his hands in hers and smiling at him. It wasn’t a small, half smile, or a contained and controlled one that she gave everyone else, but a full real smile that she gave to those she was close to. Jr. really could be very charming when he wanted to be. Or maybe she was biased, but did that really matter?
“You can get all the kisses and cuddles you want after we clean up this mess!” she teased back. “Although…” And here her eyes took on a more slanted and mischievous look. “Being in bed with a human-sized body pillow does sound nice right about now.”
That made him infinitely quicker in cleaning up the mess, and the glass clinked as he tipped the trashcan back upright and pushed it back over against the wall. "Look at that! All done!"
The promise of kisses and cuddles in bed did energize him, but he just started to race over to the bed before stopping again to tip his head back and think. "Ah, wait, if we're actually going to sleep, I should probably change..."
He had just changed, but since it was still somewhat early in the night, he hadn't thought that he'd be going to bed already.
“My, but we did recover from that backlash rather quickly, didn’t we?” she said with a laugh. Truthfully, she was glad to see him energetic again, even if Elena was pretty sure neither one of them had fully recovered from it quite yet. But laughing helped. As did thinking more about other things and enjoying the banter.
Getting up and brushing off her pants, more out of habit than anything, Elena stretched her back for a moment, lifting an arm above her head and holding onto her elbow with the other, and then smirked as she felt some of her exhaustion fade. “We could sleep now, but it is still early…”
He should be able to pick up on that one.
That made him turn so quickly that he nearly stubbed his toe on a chair. Oh, yeah, he still felt like he wanted to hurl, he had a headache, and he was sore from being thrown through a glass table...but hey, he'd dealt with far worse on a daily basis when fighting U-TIC, Ormus, and all the rest of them.
Besides, if it got too bad, he could always just use healing Ether on himself. And right now her suggestion was far too much for him to pass up.
"Oh really?" He grinned and rested his hands on his hips. "I might need you to spell that one out for me."
Had she been feeling more up to speed, Elena probably would have demonstrated personally what she was trying to spell out, in a manner that would have left Jr. flat on his back. But she wasn’t so Elena would have to pick a different method of getting her message across.
Walking over and then laying her arms across his shoulders, Elena smirked and leaned in close, so that their lips were barely touching, but there was still a hair’s breath of space between them. “Is my spelling getting through to you yet or should I think of it as a lost cause?”
With his eyes widened considerably, Rubedo was certain his heart rate had just doubled in speed. He had partially been joking, honestly. It had been so long that he just hadn't been sure if she was joking. He couldn't even remember the last time they had done-- Oh, right. Before Tseng arrived.
But she was making it pretty clear now, and his headache be damned. Reaching up, his hands settled over hers before sliding up along her arms. He was blushing again, but hey that could always be blamed on the sick feeling, right? "Nope. Pretty sure I can spell this one out."
He didn't want to be standing anymore, though, and he was pretty sure she didn't either, so he was quick to take another step back before turning with her and pushing her down onto the bed, intending to kiss Elena breathless before doing anything else.
Elena would have thought that Jr. would be weaker than her at the moment, so she didn’t put up any sort of resistance to being manipulated towards the bed. In fact, it actually felt nice to be lying down, although her exhaustion did hit her like a sack of bricks. It wasn’t enough to deter her from snaking her arms around Jr.’s neck and pull him down towards her though.
They really hadn’t done more than kiss and cuddle since Tseng and the other’s arrival, and only a few really simple ones lately. But Elena would have felt too guilty to even really entertain the idea of doing much more than kissing with Jr. until she wasn’t so confused.
Now, however, she was more than ready and willing to do more than entertain the idea of doing more.
Rating; PG-13.
Characters; Elena [
lady_turk] and Jr. [red_dragon_666].Summary; The magical backlash that knocks Jr. off his feet somehow bring him and Elena closer together.
Log;
He was kind of surprised at how many fights Elena had gotten into, honestly. It seemed like whenever he turned around, there was someone new that she had challenged to a match. And yet he was considered a firecracker?
True, he had been spending an extra lot of time in the firing range lately, but he had mostly avoided that sort of interaction with people... He thought about that while in the shower. He certainly used to get into a lot more fights than he did now... Sure, his adventures with Shion and the others had encouraged that, but even outside of that, he usually liked to take a tumble with people on occasion.
Rubedo was a weapon after all, wasn't he? Or was he just a 'wonderful boy', like Sakura insisted? Maybe it was because of her that he got into so few fights, now... She had gotten so upset whenever he had, even acted differently around him.
Was he going totally soft?
Scowling a bit at that idea, Rubedo finished fastening his pants as he stepped out of the shower and into the living area. His quarters were the largest in the ship--even bigger than Gaignun's, and more like a suite. But that was the plus to commanding a ship, after all.
He was just about to tug on the sleeveless turtleneck when he spotted Elena at a terminal. He couldn't really see what was on the screen from where he was, large as it was, but it was only natural to assume she was messing around on the Network.
"Anything new?" he asked as he finished yanking the shirt on. It was while he was trying to fold the collar down that Rubedo felt the initial light-headedness.
That was all the warning he got before the power slammed into him like a wall, knocking him flat off his feet and right onto the coffee table behind him. His force field activated instantly, shattering the glass table before he could even hit it, though it was hard to tell from how quickly it all happened, leaving him sprawled in a mess of broken glass.
Having showered herself after her little bout with Roy, where she had managed to get a workout out of it, Elena had promptly plopped herself down in front of her computer to see what she might have missed. She checked it often, but she had reasons to. Though her PHS, which had been stuffed into a box, long forgotten and recently dragged out again, informed her that none of the other Turks had posted anything at least. Still, there were other people and things going on in the City she liked to be informed of.
Elena, dressed casually with a regular shirt and jeans since she didn’t feel quite up to wearing a full suit quite yet, had only managed to get a brief understanding of what was going on before Jr. spoke up.
Just as she was about to answer, she felt the force that she’d only come to learn about herself. Elena wasn’t a Cetra by any means, but out of the Turks, she had the strongest affinity for materia. Which meant that she was the most sensitive to magic. However, her winces of pain were quickly forgotten when she heard a loud crash.
Snapping her head upwards, Elena’s eyes widen when she caught sight of the broken glass and Jr. body on top of it all. With a small cry, she quickly stood up, making her chair fall backwards, and rushed over to where he lay, not paying any mind to the broken glass.
“Rubedo?!”
His only response at first was merely a groan before his eyes fluttered open. When his eyesight focused enough for him to make out Elena, he flinched and held his arms up, eyes squeezing shut almost immediately.
"Son of a bitch! What the hell was that?! Lights off!" he croaked out, the last command recognized by the ship and instantly cloaking them in darkness. That was better. He still had a splitting headache, after all, and the nausea was no joke.
Opening his eyes once more, Rubedo moved a hand to rest against his stomach as he tried to sit up.
Putting one hand on his back and using the other to help him up as well, Elena paid about as much attention to the darkness as she did the glass or the small cuts she was getting. Her eyes would adjust soon enough and even if she still couldn’t quite see well enough to make too many things out, that didn’t matter too all that much right now. She was more worried about Jr. and how he was faring. Because if she used her own headache as any sort of base for comparison, it couldn’t have been very pleasant for Jr. in the least bit.
“Take it easy okay?” she said softly, voice gentle for his sake as well as her own. “There was a magical backlash and I’m pretty sure it just hit us.”
"Backlash? Well that's better than an attack, I guess..." Still, it had felt like one of Albedo's nastier attacks...although those sometimes rendered him numb. He would have preferred that over his stomach lurching inside of him.
Shaking his head to get a few small shards out of his damp hair, he staggered up to stand and clutched at his stomach. He was a bit cut up, which was somewhat annoying considering he'd just showered, but nothing a few small band-aids couldn't fix. Squinting, he glanced up at her.
"This is where Gaignun would rub my love for antique things in my face, I'll bet." He cast a look at the destroyed table behind him. It had been from the twenty-first century, and has cost him a damn fortune. "...Shit. How are you feeling?"
Like Elena really could have teased him about that when what he considered antique, she considered commonplace and normal. Not a fact that she really felt it was time to remind in about though. A glass table could be fixed one way or another. Either glue or duct-tape if a person was feeling creative. Or if they were lazy, they could just go out and get a new one.
Standing when he did, although Elena had to do it at a slightly different pace given the height differences, she didn’t remove her hands or move any distance away from him. She was worried and slightly chewing on the insides of her bottom lip. Brushing a hand through his hair and getting out a bit more of the glass, Elena just cracked a small smile and shook her head.
“I’ll survive. But I’m more worried about you,” she stated. Her head was pounding and her knees felt a bit weak, but those things were easily pushed aside to be dealt with later or ignored till they weren’t an issue anymore. “You can’t be feeling like anything but shit if you got hit as hard as I’m guessing you did.”
Shrugging his shoulders back, he slowly reached up to brush off his shirt, making sure nothing was stuck in his clothes. "I'll get...Mary to come in and help clean it up later. I think I'll...need a new one."
Rubedo had to step carefully out of the mess considering he didn't have shoes, but he kept a hold of Elena's hand to pull her with him. "Fuck, no kidding. I dunno though... My powers aren't considered magic where I'm from, but I guess I can see how it'd work that way here. I'm going to need to shoot up with something fast... Fucking migraine..."
He paused once he stepped outside the circle of shattered glass and turned, letting go of her hand and narrowing his eyes at the mess. "...I wonder..."
“Table later,” Elena stated firmly. They could clean up the mess and get whoever they wanted to help with it later. Once they both felt up to speed. But at least it was a sign that Jr. didn’t have a concussion if he was still able to think rationally like that. It was one less thing to worry about and one less thing to cause her wrinkles.
She was about to offer to get him something for his headache, and to get some for herself as well, when her words were cut short at his query. Raising a questioning eyebrow, Elena changed her train of thought and lightly cradled her arm. It acted up sometimes, not as much as it used to, but sometimes it still bothered her when she didn’t feel quite up to her normal pace.
“What are you wondering about?”
Elena's question actually startled him, he had been so lost in thought. "Oh. Well. It's just... I wonder if I can..."
Reaching up, he rested his hand over the right side of his chest and shut his eyes. Maybe they wouldn't need Mary's help after all, but... I guess you can't really help with this, huh Albedo? You aren't inside me anymore, after all...
Still, his own power should have been plenty enough. He just had to know how tap into it. So much of it was subconscious...just like the force field when he had been thrown through the table. If he could just learn to control it, and bring it to the surface when he consciously wanted it...
Ah. There.
Slowly, he opened his eyes, the blue shimmering with the crimson glow that began to surround his body as he held out his hand towards the table. Bit by bit, the pieces of glass trembled and lifted, and his brow furrowed in concentration as he tried to lift it all, including any pieces still sticking to the two of them.
He could probably put the table back together if he just concentrated hard enough. He knew how to meld items, after all...that was how MOMO's charm had been created. But this was quite a project, and as the shattered glass began to gather, it formed a slowly rotating sphere in front of them as he tried to picture how the table used to look.
The headache was getting worse, though, and Rubedo's hand shook as he tried to keep a hold on his power. Shit, shit, shit, what if I lose it?!
If she had any more questions about what Jr. was planning or was wondering about, she soon got her answer soon enough. Elena was pretty much stunned speechless by the sight of Jr. glowing the way he was and by the way the glass lifted off the ground and off them. It wasn’t like the times previously as there was a more than one color surrounding Jr. right then. And he was purposely controlling it.
Her feet were rooted to the ground as she watched, barely daring to breath, not that it was noticeable or necessary, but just the same. It wasn’t until she saw Jr. trembling hand as he continued on that Elena’s brain snapped back to focus.
Now biting rather than nibbling softly on her bottom lip, Elena took a few steps back, fighting with the urge to get out of the way and to help somehow. She might have been more familiar with the concept of magic than Jr. was, but she didn’t think that what he was doing right now would qualify. And even if it did, what could she do? Her skills weren’t of this nature. If anything, she had more control over ice than anything else.
Ice… Could she? The materia was already warmed up from her earlier bought with Roy…
Quickly turning around and going for the table where the Minerva band still sat, Elena snatched it up and turned to see if Jr. had lost his control yet or not.
It was too much to do at once. Maybe if he hadn't just been weakened by that backlash only moments earlier he could have done better, but as it was, it was a miracle he had managed just this much. Seeing Elena move out of the corner of his eye, he got just distracted enough to falter, and his weak grip on the power released.
The sphere fell apart, and fortunately didn't explode like he feared. It merely dropped, a few pieces scattering here and there, but mostly it remained as a rather large pile of glass. With a weak sigh, he stumbled back and wiped at his brow.
"Ungh. Never mind. At least it'll be a lot easier to clean up now in the morning."
Relaxing and unclenching muscles that had been triggered to run or act as quickly as necessary, Elena grinned as she walked over; band slipped onto her wrist now, and placed a supporting hand on his shoulder.
“That was a rather impress little display,” Elena teased lightly. “Showing off much maybe? It’s not going to be fair if I don’t get the chance to do the same.”
Quickly leaning down to kiss his brow, part a sign of relief that he was all right and part because she had been impressed by what he’d done, Elena closed her own eyes and pulled at the materia that was fitted into one of the slots of her band. It was a familiar process, but Elena mentally twisted and altered the normally destructive spell, brows creasing in concentration. The green orb glowed faintly and then flared slightly as Elena opened her eyes and released the spell.
Ice 1 flared and surrounded the pieces of glass, but rather than shattered a second later, the ice remained behind, surrounded the sharp pieces of glass in smooth ice.
“It’ll melt soon, but at least this way we can pick it all up without slicing ourselves to pieces,” she explained, just a bit more mentally exhausted than before, only showing it vaguely in her tone of voice.
He relaxed when he felt her hand on his shoulder, then watched in an awe of his own as the room chilled a few degrees and the sharp pieces smoothed over with the glittering ice. Rubedo had seen Elena use materia rarely, so that was quite a treat. He really needed to learn more about that stuff... It seemed to have the same effects as using Ether, but totally different properties.
With a weak grin, he slipped an arm around her waist to give a light squeeze. "Niiice!" Pulling away, he moved over to the mess and kicked over a trashcan. It was old, too, but not nearly as fancy as the table had been.
Sinking down onto his knees, he began to push the glass into the metal can. The cold ice pricked at his fingers, but not nearly as badly as the sharp edges would have been. "Careful, though, or you might start to look all sexy."
“Ice is my specialty, and even I like to show off a little every now and then,” she explained, smiling slightly. Tucking some of the more errant strands of her hair behind her ear, Elena couldn’t help but feel a bit smug over her accomplishments as well.
Doing much the same as Jr., Elena picked up the pieces of ice and dropped them into the trashcan, not minding the cold much since it had less of an effect on her. Elena chuckled and tilted her head so she could get a decent look at Jr.’s face. Her hair fell forward, falling out from behind her ear, but it thankfully stayed mostly out of the way.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing when you’re concerned.”
Rubedo's hand paused to rub on his pant leg to warm up a bit, and he glanced up to her face. She really was so beautiful. Suit, jeans, or a dress...it didn't really matter what she wore.
He could remember what Tseng had said about her, and part of him panicked again. He trusted her, it was true, but how much did Elena trust herself?
With a dry swallow, he reached him a hand, still shaky from the backlash, and tucked her hair back again. His voice was soft and his gaze earnest and almost scared as he asked, "Are you so sure it isn't?"
Startled, Elena didn’t bother moving or reaching for another piece of ice as she tried to figure out just what it was that Jr. was asking her. Rather, she was curious about the meaning of his question. Why wouldn’t she be sure of what? That she minded or not if he thought her sexy? That seemed to be a rather silly question to ask.
But the look in his eyes made Elena hold her tongue and think her answer through. Apparently, even though she didn’t understand, it wasn’t anything to brush off lightly.
“Jr….” And then Elena sighed as she closed her eyes to lean forward to brush her lips against his. Firm and insistent, there wasn’t any hesitation to her kiss and there was still none in her eyes when she opened them again.
She might have been confused and troubled with her feelings for Tseng and for Jr. but she knew where she stood with the both of them. And recent events had, not only given her the time to think, but confirmed things she needed to sort through with her feelings. She might never say any of it out loud, but she knew and that was enough.
“Does that answer your question or do I have to spell it out for you?”
Rubedo's neck felt hot from how deep his blush was, and he was grateful that it was so dark all of a sudden. He took a moment to respond, considering he knew that if he did right away, it'd come out like a stuttering mess.
He still felt unsure about certain things...but he knew that if he couldn't trust where they were at in their relationship, he wouldn't be able to be productive. And there was still the issue of how distant she had been regarding...certain things, and he just wasn't one to push those. But kisses, at the very least, he could tease about.
When he finally spoke, though, a smile had replaced his frown, and there was a playful twinkle in his eyes as he leaned back up. "Gee, I dunno. Does spelling it out get me extra kisses and cuddles?"
Laughing, Elena swatted at his head, but then she was taking one of his hands in hers and smiling at him. It wasn’t a small, half smile, or a contained and controlled one that she gave everyone else, but a full real smile that she gave to those she was close to. Jr. really could be very charming when he wanted to be. Or maybe she was biased, but did that really matter?
“You can get all the kisses and cuddles you want after we clean up this mess!” she teased back. “Although…” And here her eyes took on a more slanted and mischievous look. “Being in bed with a human-sized body pillow does sound nice right about now.”
That made him infinitely quicker in cleaning up the mess, and the glass clinked as he tipped the trashcan back upright and pushed it back over against the wall. "Look at that! All done!"
The promise of kisses and cuddles in bed did energize him, but he just started to race over to the bed before stopping again to tip his head back and think. "Ah, wait, if we're actually going to sleep, I should probably change..."
He had just changed, but since it was still somewhat early in the night, he hadn't thought that he'd be going to bed already.
“My, but we did recover from that backlash rather quickly, didn’t we?” she said with a laugh. Truthfully, she was glad to see him energetic again, even if Elena was pretty sure neither one of them had fully recovered from it quite yet. But laughing helped. As did thinking more about other things and enjoying the banter.
Getting up and brushing off her pants, more out of habit than anything, Elena stretched her back for a moment, lifting an arm above her head and holding onto her elbow with the other, and then smirked as she felt some of her exhaustion fade. “We could sleep now, but it is still early…”
He should be able to pick up on that one.
That made him turn so quickly that he nearly stubbed his toe on a chair. Oh, yeah, he still felt like he wanted to hurl, he had a headache, and he was sore from being thrown through a glass table...but hey, he'd dealt with far worse on a daily basis when fighting U-TIC, Ormus, and all the rest of them.
Besides, if it got too bad, he could always just use healing Ether on himself. And right now her suggestion was far too much for him to pass up.
"Oh really?" He grinned and rested his hands on his hips. "I might need you to spell that one out for me."
Had she been feeling more up to speed, Elena probably would have demonstrated personally what she was trying to spell out, in a manner that would have left Jr. flat on his back. But she wasn’t so Elena would have to pick a different method of getting her message across.
Walking over and then laying her arms across his shoulders, Elena smirked and leaned in close, so that their lips were barely touching, but there was still a hair’s breath of space between them. “Is my spelling getting through to you yet or should I think of it as a lost cause?”
With his eyes widened considerably, Rubedo was certain his heart rate had just doubled in speed. He had partially been joking, honestly. It had been so long that he just hadn't been sure if she was joking. He couldn't even remember the last time they had done-- Oh, right. Before Tseng arrived.
But she was making it pretty clear now, and his headache be damned. Reaching up, his hands settled over hers before sliding up along her arms. He was blushing again, but hey that could always be blamed on the sick feeling, right? "Nope. Pretty sure I can spell this one out."
He didn't want to be standing anymore, though, and he was pretty sure she didn't either, so he was quick to take another step back before turning with her and pushing her down onto the bed, intending to kiss Elena breathless before doing anything else.
Elena would have thought that Jr. would be weaker than her at the moment, so she didn’t put up any sort of resistance to being manipulated towards the bed. In fact, it actually felt nice to be lying down, although her exhaustion did hit her like a sack of bricks. It wasn’t enough to deter her from snaking her arms around Jr.’s neck and pull him down towards her though.
They really hadn’t done more than kiss and cuddle since Tseng and the other’s arrival, and only a few really simple ones lately. But Elena would have felt too guilty to even really entertain the idea of doing much more than kissing with Jr. until she wasn’t so confused.
Now, however, she was more than ready and willing to do more than entertain the idea of doing more.