WHO:Yuffie Kisaragi & Stefan Salvatore with guest appearance from Anna of Arendelle WHEN: Backdated Jan 7th WHERE: UCI campus WHAT: Stefan's doing a favour for Anna and runs into Yuffie. RATING/WARNINGS: Zilch STATUS: Complete
It’d been a really interesting couple of weeks. Stefan wasn’t sleeping well, and he wasn’t eating much at all. He’d been suffering from some really horrible nightmares--the same ones over and over, plaguing his resting and waking hours. He’d been drowning, dying, resurrecting, then drowning again, all while locked in a safe at the bottom of the river. He woke coughing and choking, gagging on nonexistent water. Bolting out of bed, he feared falling back asleep again.
This morning his roommate, Anna, had sent him a text message begging him to deliver a book to her at UCI. He found the book easily enough, but when he got to the college campus, he had no idea where to go. He stood for a moment, squinting awkwardly up at one of the buildings, then headed toward the only familiar spot on campus--the cafe.
Yuffie was settling back into classes after the break fairly well. It wasn’t terribly hard and her dad had sent her enough money as a ‘sorry I forgot about Christmas, here buy yourself something extravagant’ gesture. Her extravagant purchase had been a new camera for her photography class, because she was enjoying it anyway and maybe she could do more fun things outside of class with one.
Between her lectures, Yuffie was hanging out at the cafe, fiddling with the camera and reading her instructions while going back and forth with a straw in her soda. Unfortunately she also happened to hit the ‘take picture’ button and snap a photo of the door, just as someone walked in, flash going off brightly. “Whoops.” Still getting the hang of that.
Stefan lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the flash. It was an impulse, something he couldn’t really control. His ridiculous, vampire speed meant that he almost avoided having an annoying blue spot in his vision. Almost. Vamp speed wasn’t quite the speed of light. He glanced up and saw the young woman with the camera sitting nearby and raised an eyebrow.
“I didn’t realize there were paparazzi in the cafe,” he attempted at a joke. Poor Stefan was suffering so much from his Dreams that he could barely brain to put sentences together.
“Oh, I’m sorry. My finger just kinda…” Well, it slipped, but Yuffie shrugged a little with a blush, because she’d been around a bunch of silly boys and innuendo happened now, it wasn’t something Yuffie used to notice, but she certainly did now. “I didn’t mean to blind you.”
She just nibbled her lip, but at least the place was quiet and not littered with people who could laugh at her. “Do you wanna sit down until you’re not blinded by my idiocy?”
“It’s okay.” Stefan said, breaking into a bit of a smile at the blush on the girl’s face. Even if his Dreams were shitty, and he was exhausted from not sleeping and hungry from the stress, it was nice to see a pretty girl smile and blush like that.
He glanced once around the cafe, then back to the girl and nodded. “Thanks.” He said, setting the book down on the table before slipping into the chair. “...you’re taking photography?”
Putting the cover on her lense, effectively making it impossible for her to blind more people with the absolutely awesome flash on this thing, Yuffie grinned with a nod, “Yeah, it’s like a cool hobby I picked up cause I needed to fill my schedule,” and because her father was forbidding a job to distract from her studies, which meant Yuffie needed something that didn’t leave her with so much free time she slipped into old bad habits.
“Are you a student?” She glanced at the book he popped down, maybe a TA or something? He didn’t seem too lively so that was utterly possible. Yuffie had seen her professor’s TA looking utterly dead on his feet before.
“No,” Stefan said, shaking his head with a little smirk. He’d done the college thing. A few times, actually, in his Dreams. He wasn’t all that keen to do it in this world. He’d probably feel like a lecherous old man if he went back to college now. If most of the students were like Anna, anyway. Speaking of…
“I need to send a text to my roommate. She asked me to bring her this book.” He said, and held up the book. Then he set the book on the table and pulled out his phone to send Anna a text message. He could still pay attention to the conversation, though, while he texted.
“Oh, that’s super nice of you. I know when I leave stuff behind I gotta dash back on my break and end up all a tizz.” Which really happened more often than Yuffie would really like to admit -she was a terrible one for forgetting things. “I’ll bet your room mate super appreciates you doing that.”
Living on her own was nice in a sense, but Yuffie did rather miss out on other people being around for stuff like that, or just some company sometimes.
Stefan couldn’t help but break into a smirk at the use of the word ‘tizz.’ It was, for lack of a better word, adorable. He nodded, tapping his fingers on the cover of the book. “I hope she’ll appreciate it. I’m afraid she’s gone a bit crazy, she’s taking about a dozen classes.” He raised an eyebrow. “You’re not crazy like she is, are you?”
Yuffie’s eyebrows hit her hairline at that one, her head shaking almost instantly, “Oh no, well, I mean, I’m sure she’s not crazy, not that I think you’re lying, I just… you’re kidding right?” Humour was hard to gauge sometimes. But either way, “But no, I’m not. I mean, I think I would’ve if I could’ve, you know, taken more classes. I really like them. But my dad is paying my tuition, he’s not around much, and I think he thinks I’ll stay outta trouble like this. But he’s super strict about me making time to study and everything.”
Because Godo Kisaragi did not waste money, especially not on something like education. “I’m taking Mechanical Engineering and just like a few electives, so…” Plenty of time to not be crazy and sleep deprived.
“I have no idea exactly how many,” Stefan explained. “She’s out of the house twelve hours a day, four days a week. Works great for her roommates, anyway…” He smirked softly.
“Mechanical Engineering?” Stefan sounded impressed. There weren’t many women in that field, were there? Not that he was judging. He just hoped she didn’t catch a lot of slack from her classmates for being in such a male dominated area of study. “That sounds… interesting.”
He was joking again, right? Yuffie just smiled along, because it did seem like he was kidding -he’d brought a book across town, he clearly liked his roommate, it must’ve been a joke. “I’m sure she appreciates having great room mates who’ll bring her forgotten stuff to her too.” Because hey, that was helpful!
“Yup! I grew up around big mechanics, and I got to see how they work and stuff, I wanna get involved in those, you know. And creating things, I like that too.” And sure, it might’ve started at just showing her old man that she was going to be better than him, but it was more than that now too. “It’s hard, but I think I’m doing pretty good.”
“Well, I can’t argue the fact that I’m a fantastic roommate.” Stefan smirked a little, ready to take the compliment. Inflate his ego just a little. The Dreams forgotten momentarily, he relaxed down against the chair.
“You must be a really creative person,” Stefan suggested, tapping his thumbs against the fabric of his jeans. He wasn’t exactly nervous, per se, but he had some unsettling energy about him because ofthe Dreams.
Yuffie’s grin was probably plastered on her face, but it was just because she was a friendly person. Most of the time she just looked happy anyway, it worked for her pretty well. “I hope I am, I mean, I try to be. I’m not super smart all the time,” half of her classes needed you to be smart though, and that was where Yuffie really had to knuckle down and pay attention. “But I’m super awesome at math, so that helps.”
Provided she kept up with the hard stuff, hopefully. “I like photography, and art and I sorta wanna design stuff, so I really hope that I am good at it and I don’t just think I’m good at it, y’know?” There was a difference, but it wasn’t like Yuffie had those parents that just told their kids they were great when they weren’t, hell, Yuffie barely had a dad that showed up to things to see if she was any good at them.
The girl was smiling at him. Stefan had absolutely noticed, and assumed she was just being friendly. He didn't mind the smiles--on the contrary, he was happy for the friendliness. If he had to sit around and wait for Anna to show up and collect her book, it was nice to do it with someone who was so... pleasant. "Hey, if you're studying Engineering... you have to be pretty smart for that." Stefan said, shrugging one shoulder.
"You'll find out soon enough, I guess. Isn't that what college is for?" A chance to make mistakes, to learn things about themselves, a chance to be wild and crazy. "If you're enthusiastic and creative you can do nearly anything."
That was promising, and really, Yuffie liked the encouragement, even if it was from a stranger. That was definitely rather nice actually. Because it wasn’t just Tifa being nice to her again. “Yeah, it is, it’s exactly what college is for, right? I’m figuring this stuff out!” She was only twenty-one, she had time to work on this stuff after all. It wasn’t like her life was over if she flunked something.
“Nearly anything huh, well, okay. I can probably be enthusiastic about nearly anything.” Yuffie was, actually, enthusiastic about almost everything. “So, if you’re not a student, what’d you do? Other than being an awesome friend, I mean.”
Stefan smirked and was about to reply when his phone buzzed. “I…” He drew the thing from his pocket to check it while he answered her question. “I work at Disneyland, actually. I’ve been thinking it’s probably about time to find some new means of employment, but for the time being it works out well. I get to work with one of my best friends, anyway, so that’s good.” He checked the message (which was from Anna) and pocketed the thing again. “She’ll be here any minute for the book.”
“Disney! I love it there. I mean, I can’t really ride anything, but it’s super fun.” She’d been twice, attempted a few rides and found that most of them made her up-chuck in amazing psychedelic ways. “My old man, he runs a bunch of fairgrounds, and I grew up around them all. I love all the big mechanics.” It was less the rides and more how they worked that really thrilled her.
“But working with friends is probably good. I mean, you can get through some kinda poopy jobs if you’ve got good people, right?” Yuffie figured so, since that was really what kept Godo’s fairgrounds together, the people there.
“You can’t ride the rides?” Stefan asked, surprised. She didn’t look that short. Must have been some other reason--something he didn’t know from looking. But then he nodded at her explanation. “I guess when you grow up around it, it’s a little less exciting.”
Suddenly, a bright-eyed, red-headed girl came bursting into the cafe. She was slogged down with a heavy backpack and an additional bag of books and supplies, with a cell phone in one hand and a granola bar in the other. She spotted Stefan instantly, and bee-lined for him. “Hey! Stefan! Thank you for the--oh! Hi!” Her grin grew even brighter. “I didn’t know you were meeting someone!”
“I get some pretty crazy motion sickness.” Yuffie gave a shrug, because she’d come to accept that she was just going to puke any time her feet weren’t on the ground aside from when she was cycling. “It happens on almost every form of transport.” But she did enjoy the general atmosphere of fairgrounds still.
It was just a little expensive to go to Disney and not ride anything except the Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion.
Of course when Anna appeared, Yuffie just grinned as bright. “Anna’s your roommate? Why didn’t you say!” Of course now she felt bad about nearly blinding one of Anna’s friends.
“That’s pretty awful. I’m sorry.” Hey, there were shows and characters and parades and that kind of thing. Fireworks and whatever. But Stefan could understand. He wouldn’t want to go to a place that seemed obsessed with something that made him sick, either. “Oh… I didn’t know you knew Anna.”
Anna gave a laugh, then reached over to wrap an arm around Yuffie in an awkward, one-handed hug. “Are you two friends or something?”
“Oh, no,” Yuffie’s grin was probably going to split her face one of these days, the wide toothy smile as she returned what she could of Anna’s hugs. “Anna and I share a class,” because really, Yuffie was sure they were both pretty keen on soaking up everything they could, learning was fun. Yuffie just had a slightly better idea of what she wanted to do.
“We just met, I was goofin’ around and he is very kind not to mind crazy students trying to blind him.” Yuffie figured that he was totally cool if he was friends with Anna too. “Oh, I’m so sorry! I keep forgetting, I’m Yuffie. No, I don’t forget I’m Yuffie, I know that. I forget to tell people that I’m Yuffie.” Rambling powers, go!
And “share a class” meant “new bff” to Anna, didn’t it? Stefan smiled a little as he watched the girls interact. It was cute the way everyone seemed to love the redhead right off the bat. And Stefan thought it was hard to resist Yuffie’s charms, too.
“Hi, Yuffie,” Stefan said, smirking a little. “I’m Stefan. And this,” he lifted the book from the table and held it out to Anna. “Is Anna’s book. I should probably let the two of you go so you can get back to your next class.”
Anna accepted the book, grinning brightly. “It’s just about time. Ready, Yuffie? We can walk together.”
“Yes, all ready,” she’d finished up her drink a while ago, mostly killing some time before her next class and if Anna was there well yeah, they’d walk together. “It was awesome meeting you Stefan, I’ll try not blind you next time we run into each other.” Because yeah, that was still a little embarrassing.
Grabbing her own book bag and closing up her camera case to sling over her shoulder, Yuffie offered a nod to Anna and a small wave to Stefan.