This fic is a Secret Santa gift to Midnight, over at the Genesis Awards. Were it not for this little incentive, I probably never would've taken the plunge and tried my hand at a slash pairing. So there's that.

As always, comments and concrit most welcome!

It's been a few days, but Yuffie's still getting used to her weird new company. She's been all over the place and seen (she likes to think) pretty much everything, but she's never seen a collection of more different people. Oh, and Red. People and... well, he isn't an animal, not really. Traveling with a group isn't even her style, but they're on this big epic world-saving (seriously?) quest, and Yuffie... well, Yuffie smells the possibility of loot, and that's all the encouragement she needs. If nothing else, they're getting plenty of practice with all that Materia. Now there's an investment worth tracking.

She doesn't question the wisdom of stealing from a group of people who all look like they can handle themselves in a fight. Nope. Definitely not. (Definitely not thinking of the damage the Buster Sword could ever do if Cloud ever caught her with it, no siree.)

Anyway, none of them are Wuteng princesses trained by the Four Mighty Gods, are they? No. Boom. Piece of cake.

Well, maybe none of them are princesses, but there is one member of the group that looks more like a princess than Yuffie ever has. She's still not sure what Aeris is doing with them all. She sticks out like a sore thumb, and with a group as rag-tag as this, that's saying something all right. It's not fair, thinks Yuffie, as they make their way to Junon and its extremely phallic cannon, how she can throw knives with pinpoint accuracy and walk a mile on her hands balancing a jug of water on her feet – but she's s still a jumble of arms and elbows and knees most of the time, whereas Aeris has this sort of grace to her, even when she's doing something that has no business looking graceful, like waking up and stretching. (Yuffie almost punched Vincent in the face today when she woke up and stretched.) She looks at Aeris with a critical eye: it's sort of a slow swing of the hips, like this... she tries to imitate it. She even feels like she's getting somewhere, until Barret abruptly turns around and says, "The hell's wrong wit' you, kid? You're walkin' all funny."

She sticks her tongue out at him and makes a face. He laughs gruffly as he turns back around, and she makes a mental note that when the time is right, she'll steal his stuff first.

It all starts with the walk. Then Yuffie starts noticing other things, too, like how Aeris puts her left hand on her right elbow and then slides it down her forearm until her hands are folded on each other whenever she's thinking. Her skin's the lily-white of the Midgar slums, the color of someone who's never seen the light of day; but instead of being pasty like most other Midgar denizens she's seen, it's smooth and silky looking. (Yuffie looks down at her own sun-weathered skin, a little too dry from time spent out of doors, and is jealous. It's just not fair – but really what she kind of really wants to do is run her hands down Aeris' arms and see if her skin is really as soft as it looks.)

She notices how Aeris gives a little bounce sometimes when she asks a question, and how she draws up her shoulders sometimes, when she laughs; and the tiny dimple that shows up sometimes when she smiles, and—

Aaaargh. Too much noticing, Yuffie, too much noticing! she beats her head dully against the metal wall of the ship, caught between alternating bouts of seasickness and whatthefuckisgoingon and feeling on the whole pretty miserable. Closest she can remember feeling this... weird about anyone is Shake, back when they were both little, but that mostly manifested itself as a desire to beat him up. She sure as hell doesn't want to beat Aeris up; more like... she thinks of the soft white skin at the back of her neck that her swaying braid sometimes reveals. It's like a secret that's only there if you look for it; she wonders if anyone else in the group's noticed it, too. She thinks, suddenly, of what it'd be like to run her fingers down the back of Aeris' neck, past the collar of her jacket and down between her shoulder blades.

Then another wave of seasickness hits her (haha, wave, like the sea 'cause it's seasickness, they should hire you to write jokes on TV, YuffiiieeohgodIreallydon'tfeelsogood) and she has no time for thinking of anything any more.

Yuffie has never been so thankful to touch solid ground as when they reach Costa Del Sol; at least, not since the last time she had to travel by boat. Once her legs have finally decided they can hold her weight again, everyone's already scattered around the town, so Yuffie does what she does best: whatever she wants.

She hits the beach in a bikini she snags from a busy storefront when nobody's looking; she dives in the water, she lies back and lets the sun kiss her dry; she steals drinks from unwary tourists. She runs into Tifa sunning herself at one point, and that's nice enough – Tifa looks tough, but she has a mothering streak a mile wide and got Yuffie some antiemetics on the trip over, so she's all right. She also runs into Vincent, looking extremely out of place sitting at a tiny, wrought-iron table under a cafe-front awning. She dribbles ice cream down the back of his cloak and it is hilarious.

She hits up the town proper to do a little browsing (and a little incidental purloining; not one to miss a good opportunity, nope, never); and then when the sun is finally slinking below the rooftops and the people slide themselves off the beach and into restaurants and bars, she goes to the appointed hotel where AVALANCHE is staying the night. As it turns out, Barret is the only one there; everyone else is either still out or has come and gone already, so Yuffie dumps her stuff in the room she's sharing with Aeris and Tifa and heads back out.

She could go to one of the less discerning dive bars and get a drink, no questions asked, but if she's honest with herself she's a little wiped, and doesn't want to spend time fending off the kind of attention she's likely to get in those places. There's only so many arms she can break before she starts to get tired.

So she goes to a busy bar on a busy street corner and insinuates herself into a table at the back. She's just scoping the other customers to see whose ID she could feasibly steal to get a drink – not an easy task; Wuteng people are a little thin on the ground in places like these – when a voice somewhere to her left exclaims "Hey there!" and before she knows it, Aeris slides into a chair next to her.

Shit. Shit shit shit, say something, Yuffie—

"Uh."

Smooth. That's her, Smooth Operator Yuffie. But something about Aeris' sudden appearance has made her brain a little loopy; or maybe it's the way the lights from the bar shine off her hair and throw her collarbone into relief.

"Now," says she with a knowing smile, "what could you be doing in a place like this? Oh, I know!" she continues without waiting for an answer. "Want a drink?" Her eyes twinkle in the dim light.

Yuffie blinks. Then grins. She has no problem with someone who both has skin that makes her look like she belongs in a magazine, and is willing to buy her drinks. "Get me something nice," she says. Aeris laughs as she heads toward the bar.

So, Yuffie tells herself. Aeris is getting me a drink. Herself confirms. Yep. That definitely happened.

Despite how crowded the place is, it doesn't take Aeris very long at all before she's back, wending her way through the throng with two violently purple cocktails in her hands. Yuffie bites down on a smile as she sits back down and slides a glass over to her.

"The hell is that?"

"I don't know." Aeris sounds slightly out of breath. "I told the bartender to get me two of something nice!" Her smile makes Yuffie's stomach flop, so she takes a long swig of her drink – and immediately starts coughing at the burning in her throat. Aeris laughs and pats her on the back, and on the last pat her hand stays there.

"All better?" she asks.

Yuffie nods and slides down in her chair a little, and Aeris gives her one last smile, small and secretive, before placing both hands on the table again. Yuffie sips her drink slower and tries not to feel too embarrassed. As she sips her drink, the burn turns into a warm glow that rushes to her head and makes her whole body feel light, and maybe it's because of that feeling or maybe it's something else, but then Aeris glances at her again and her eyes are so green and her lips are so red that Yuffie blurts out:

"You're really pretty."

For a second Aeris looks surprised; her eyes widen and her eyebrows raise and mouth forms a tiny 'o' of surprise. Then she smiles a smile that brings out the dimple at the corner of her mouth and says, "Well, Yuffie, you're very pretty too."

Yuffie huffs and tries awkwardly to laugh it off, or else mentally plan the best escape route (she could throw a smoke bomb, that would work – or maybe the Planet could be merciful and just swallow her up then and there) – but she freezes as Aeris leans in and softly presses a kiss to the curve of her cheek.

The rest of her drink and then another one aren't enough to cool the heat rushing in her blood, but they do make her more and more euphoric. It could just be the alcohol working, but Aeris' smiles take on a more mischievous turn, and she makes little comments that Yuffie finds confusing until the thought works its way to the forefront of her mind that maybe – maybe – Aeris might just be flirting with her. Spurred on by her victory, she calls up on all her scant expertise and flirts back as aggressively as she can.

Suddenly, she realizes her drink is gone. She barely hears what Aeris says as she stares at the ice at the bottom of her glass and wonders where all the booze went.

"Huh?"

"I said –" Aeris puts her mouth close to Yuffie's ear in order to be heard over the din of a crowd of drunk tourists – "we should probably leave."

"Oh. Uuuh – sure." She hoists herself out of her chair and immediately finds herself overbalancing backward. Aeris catches her with an arm around her middle, and stays that way as they unsteadily leave the bar.

The night's crisp and cloudless and cool, and the air clears Yuffie's head enough that she only stumbles a little as she leans on Aeris' shoulder and they make their way back to the hotel. They manage to make it back to the room – it's dark, Tifa nowhere in sight – when there's a sudden sideways tug and they nearly careen headlong into the bathroom. Aeris explodes into giggles, which she tries and fails to contain, and Yuffie can't help but giggle with her. She puts one hand on the wall and another on Aeris' midriff to steady her. "That time it was you," she says in the overly-enunciated stage whisper of the drunk. She's caught entirely unprepared when Aeris puts a hand against the back of her neck and draws her close.

"But you caught me," she says, and then she presses her lips against Yuffie's in a slow kiss. It's like someone put fireworks in her belly and set them off all at once; Yuffie gasps sharply and then, moving almost by instinct, turns so Aeris is between her and the wall. Her hands find Aeris' waist and she clutches the cloth of her dress as she pulls closer, until their bodies touch. One of Aeris' hands burns hot against her back, while the other threads into her hair. Yuffie kisses her back, a little harder, not exactly sure what she's doing, mind reeling with is this really happening? She runs one hand up Aeris' arm, tracing over her dress and coming to rest at the crook of her neck; her skin actually is as soft as it looks.

She draws back, exhaling shakily, heart pounding, but Aeris follows her, and suddenly she's walking backward, except one or both of them has forgotten that coordination isn't their strong suit right now (except in all the ways that count), and so Yuffie trips, grabs wildly at Aeris' dress, and ends up falling half on the bed with Aeris after her. She scrambles to get in a more comfortable position as Aeris leans back in, kissing first her throat and then her jaw and then finally her lips. It's so unlike anything Yuffie ever expected, all of it, and the combination of the alcohol and the adrenaline rush make her feel dizzy by the time Aeris eventually pulls back.

"Uh," she says, sitting up slowly. "Uuuuh. Wow."

Her heart is thudding and she can't quite believe just what happened, but one thought whirrs in her mind until it escapes through her mouth. "I thought you liked Cloud."

Aeris smiles a smile that is equal parts mischievous and wry. "I do," she supplies. "But I like you too." Her hand ghosts down Yuffie's leg to her knee. "Does that bother you?"

Before her hand leaves Yuffie's knee entirely, Yuffie catches her by the wrist. "Nope!" She finds the words tumbling from her lips. "No bothering here, nuh-uh, definitely not bothered."

And – well, maybe it does bother her a little... but then again, Cloud's the one who couldn't find Tifa's boobs with two hands and a map, and Yuffie's the one who totally just made out with Aeris. Suck on that, Cloud, she thinks as Aeris giggles and leans in again, eyes shining.