FANFIC: mutual-ism
25 December 2020 03:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyanoscarletWord count: 2,230
Lionheart and Juliette (Squinoa office-mates AU)
Part 1 - an accident of luck
Part 2 - mutual-ism (this one)
-
Once upon a time, a vivacious princess sleeps in a deserted space station, awaiting her prince to rescue her and wake her with true love’s heartfelt kiss.
This isn’t that story, either.
Rinoa is jolted awake by a notification from her work phone; apparently, she’d been drifting off at her desk for a good couple of hours now. The still-unfinished open file on her video editor stares back at her, and she manages a grumble before snapping her laptop shut.
To be fair, the last-minute office year-end gathering isn’t her idea. As much as she loves parties like the next person, she absolutely hates schmoozing with the bigwigs, and would do (already did) everything to get out of it for her own sanity, if nothing else. The only good thing she may have gotten out of it is mastering the art of flattery and faking smiles so well they appear real even to herself.
It was why she jumped at the first chance to get out of the house when Quistis contacted her about an internship at a small publishing company all the way in Dollet, for starters. Rinoa wouldn’t really call her sudden decision to leave home an attempt at “playing independent,” as her father would call it, but she’s well-aware that for all intents and purposes, it pretty much is. The embarrassing moment when she found herself a good twenty gil short at the office café made that very, very clear, and had her boss not come along and paid for her food in the nick of time, she would have packed her bags that same day out of sheer mortification.
Ah, yes, the Good Sir Leonhart, who’s probably still mad at her for nominating him as her assistant for the party planning, Rinoa thinks to herself when she unlocks her phone and finds a curt “Ok” to her request to help set the place up, sent around thirty-six hours ago. They don’t really get to talk much outside of work, apart from her first day on the job, when he accidentally ran into her in the hallway, causing her to spill her freshly-brewed coffee all over his shirt. (Granted, that was totally his fault, he later revealed, but still.)
Her doorbell rings at exactly five o’clock, and Rinoa remembers only then that she’d asked him to pick her up so they could drive to the co-working space they rented for the event. She opens the door only after a few minutes of fumbling around, and finds the Grumpy Meanie himself frowning at her— probably with arms folded, too, were it not for the coffee and sandwiches in both his hands. She only lets out a sheepish yelp in response, fingers hovering over the doorknob as she ponders whether to let him in or not.
Squall merely raises an expectant eyebrow at her for it, which is enough to send her into a packing frenzy— thankfully, not for home.
-
“You could have asked Tilmitt to do this with you,” Squall later mutters at her, taking a sip of black coffee as the car reaches a stoplight at the intersection. The vehicle buildup during this time of the year is especially horrendous, with people still out and about even in the evening for their last-minute holiday errands or whatnot.
Rinoa merely taps a finger on the steering wheel while humming in agreement. “That’s absolutely true, but then you would have been stuck at the office listening to the NORG mope about his non-existent love life.” She would have gotten Quistis out of that meeting, too, had the board memo not stipulated for all Department Heads to “ATTEND, NO EXCEPTIONS.” Squall was merely the Assistant Head, so convincing the top guys to let him go was relatively easier.
Convincing Squall himself to go along with it, however, was way more difficult. The man always prefers to work until the last minute, plowing through deadlines like it’s nothing on a weekly basis. It sometimes makes her wonder what kind of life he has led before landing this job, but she doesn’t want to make baseless assumptions, of course.
Seeing the grateful smile he now gives her, though, Rinoa considers this a victory in her book. Not that she has a lot of those to begin with, but it’s a start, at least.
They arrive at the venue half an hour later, with surprisingly much time to spare. Squall helps her unload the trunk of the heavier bags and boxes— mostly the props and decorations, plus the larger gifts. The department as a collective had decided on a cosplay-themed event, which meant that everyone would be shamelessly out-geeking each other, whipping out pop culture references left and right, from the very obscure to the most insane. People were already claiming dibs on various characters and personalities as early as two weeks ago, and Squall had to put up a form in the office to help keep track.
Rinoa herself wears a short, pimped-out lolita dress that ends just above her knees, her hair curled into sections of small ringlets tied together with white lace ribbons. She hasn’t put on the rest of her accessories, however, so they wouldn’t get in the way while she hung up the decorations. She takes off her sneakers and leaves them by the door, padding over in her stockinged feet to where Squall is.
He curiously eyes her up and down, before cracking a smile. “You look nice, Juliette.”
“Why, thank you, Romeo,” she beams, leaning down and pretending to flick his nose. That inside joke persisted even after she had come clean and told him her real name— for which he was utterly flabbergasted, and for a perfectly understandable reason. Fortunately, Quistis had managed to sit them both down and explain her less-than-ideal home circumstances in a much better way that she herself ever could, and the damage to their working relationship had been minimized, for the most part.
If anything, he seems to be a little more interested in her since then, if she does say so herself. Rinoa isn’t dense; she knows it when guys take a liking to her, and uses it to her advantage once in a while— all in good fun, of course.
She gives him a once over, too, taking in the leather bomber jacket and jeans he chose to wear tonight, and the lion-shaped pendant hanging from his neck, ending just above the deep neckline of his white muscle shirt. The unwanted attention makes Squall turn away uncomfortably, just a little. “What?”
A low whistle leaves her lips a little too late before she could stop herself. “N-Nothing,” she tries to cover it up with a cough, but it only makes him all the more suspicious. They get back to work after that, putting up the rest of the decorations and setting up the tables before everyone arrives. All the while, Rinoa feels his telltale gaze boring right through her, and she ends up turning the air conditioning down to ease her mild nerves.
It is while she's back to editing the video to be presented later that she feels something warm dropped onto her back. The thick faux fur lining the leather jacket almost makes her sneeze, and she pinches her nose just in time to stop it. She gingerly looks over her shoulder, only to find Squall sorting through the boxes of props for the photo booth, the haphazardly-tied red bandanna around his neck going well with his white shirt. The sight of him trying on the pirate hat before the mirror makes the whole week she spent pestering him to include it despite their small budget, more than worth it.
“Hey, Squall,” she calls out to him in a half-whine, snickering to herself as he struggles to untie the bandanna with gloved fingers. “Could you do me a favor and watch this thing through for me? Hearing this song on repeat for hours on end is already driving me crazy.”
“You do realize no one will notice even if there are mistakes here and there,” he points out while successfully pulling the offending cloth out of his way, but comes over nonetheless. Rinoa scoots over and invitingly pats the chair next to hers before closing her eyes and plugging in her earbuds. She only hears the tail-end of Squall’s snort of disbelief, before tuning out the annoying earworm that starts as he hits the play button.
-
Everything went well, of course, despite Rinoa’s last-minute fretting and Squall’s irate misgivings about it. She may or may not have exaggerated that part in her mind, but this was one party she definitely cared about a lot, by far.
The solid pat on the back he’d given her to ease her haywire nerves certainly did the trick, but the strange calm turned out to be only short-lived, as those same nerves just-as-quickly short-circuited from registering his nasal voice rattling off half of the lines in her cue cards in his usual deadpan manner. She’d only managed to marvel in disbelief at him playing Party Host for a fraction of a second before he dryly reminded her to get her head out of the clouds and back in the game, so to speak.
That remark, she’d hissed at him midway offstage, was embarrassing as hell, but Squall only shrugged nonchalantly at her before going back up there to introduce the next parlor game. As much as Rinoa was unwilling to believe it, he was surprisingly good at the whole entertaining-people-thing, despite his usual demeanor at work being completely otherwise. “I have my ways,” was the only thing he had to say about it, leaving no room for further questioning.
She’ll probably find out what those “ways” are, sooner or later, Hyne-willing or not.
For now, though, they team up once more to clean the room together in silence, packing the props and decorations in their boxes and making sure everything is in their proper place. Everyone else had gone ahead to a bar on the other side of town for the after-party, while Quistis had excused herself much earlier, offhandedly mentioning a prior commitment that had most of them either turning heads or rolling eyeballs, depending on how close to her they are.
Both of them found themselves doing the latter, to both their surprise. “I thought you didn’t care about your co-workers’ private lives outside of the office,” Rinoa had cornered him as soon as Quistis was well out of earshot, but he only rolled his eyes more. Ugh, Meanie.
She decides to ask him about it again much later on the way home. “I didn’t realize you worry about her, too,” she observes, sparing him a brief glance before returning her eyes to the road. Squall gives no indication of having heard her, arms folded and eyebrows furrowed in deep thought. The ever-so-slight shift of the light in his eyes, however, tells Rinoa otherwise— that is, all she needs to know.
They’ve certainly come a long way since their first meeting a year ago, from coffee-spilling incidents and misunderstandings to party-organizing stints and surprisingly good teamwork. All small victories, really, but then again, anything that hasn’t ended in disaster this year is one, in her book.
“Speaking of books,” Squall breaks the silence, jolting her out of her reverie, “this one’s for you.” They reach another stoplight, and Rinoa takes the proffered item from his outstretched hand, suddenly becoming excited upon realizing it’s the next volume of the Phantom Thief graphic novel she’d been following for a few months now. “But isn’t this not yet...”
“The guest review you co-wrote with Tilmitt helped,” he explains matter-of-factly. “I… only pulled a few strings.” This time, he looks away, a very faint pink coloring his cheeks, as much as he tried his best to hide it.
Admittedly more amused than suspicious, Rinoa gives the book a once-over before opening to the inside cover. The author had signed it, as expected. “For Rinoa Juliette,” it said, and that is all it takes to send her laughing out loud in her seat until her jaws and cheeks hurt. Squall could only facepalm beside her in absolute embarrassment, and she absolutely didn’t care. The two of them are past keeping things from each other anyway, if today’s events are of any indication, and she looks forward to how far their odd friendship will go from here— to something more than that, she’s absolutely certain, making just as much known with a surprise quick kiss to his cheek before driving on once more.
“You’re fun to tease when you’re not mean, Romeo,” she preempts his question with a grin, sticking her tongue out at him. Squall could only sigh at that, mumbling his patented “Whatever” to her distorted reflection on the passenger-side window. As much as Rinoa finds that part of him cute as hell, she’s keeping that bit to herself for now. After all, what better way to nurture a growing crush than to keep him wanting and waiting?
Once upon a time, a vivacious princess sleeps in a deserted space station, but she awakens and escapes back to earth on her own, just so her prince would come after her instead.
For it’s actually this game of push-and-pull— the chasing after each other— that they really love, and they both know it.
