Nova Artino is your Worst Nightmare (littlenightmare) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2020-09-19 23:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, nova artino, tifa lockhart |
Who: Nova and Tifa
What: Mini-golf!
When: Before the Apokolips plot
Where: A mini-golf course
Ratings/Warnings: Low/none
Status: Complete
Nova had never gone mini golfing before. If she was honest, Nova had never really done anything just for fun before. Any of hobbies and games she had done as a child had had an ulterior movie - learning to juggle had been to improve her hand-eye coordination. Bird watching had been to increase her observation skills. Knitting… well, that had been so she’d have an excuse to carry around a very pointy weapon with her wherever she went when she was twelve, and she had never really managed to progress past really ugly scarves. Just about the only thing that had been just for her had been studying astronomy, climbing onto roof to stare at the stars in lieu of sleeping.
But now, now she was mini golfing. With someone she’d only ever met on the Network. She and Tifa got along well enough on the Network, but who knew if that would translate to real life? She had put a lot of thought into her outfit, but it might have been hard to tell from the end result, which was a pair of black jeans and a thin, black, hooded sweater.
“So, you just hit the ball into the hole?” Nova asked, looking across the dips and hills toward the first hole. “How hard can it be?”
Tifa leaned on her golf club, studying Nova and then the hole. It was the first hole, which should be easy, but it looked like Nova had never done this before.
She hadn't put too much thought into her outfit beyond being unsure if she should be more or less conservative. Since it might send a message and she wasn't sure what that message might be.
She'd eventually settled on a short black skirt and an old Greenpeace t-shirt.
And boots, because she did love her boots. So a little bit 'lets have some fun' a little bit 'save the planet' and a little bit 'I'm down if you are.'
"Why don't you try it and find out. This is the easiest one, though." She grinned.
This was the easiest one, which obviously meant that it wasn’t likely to be hard at all. If Nova screwed up here, well, that would just be embarrassing, so she had to make sure she didn’t.
She caught her tongue between her teeth, the tip poking out the corner of her mouth as she concentrated on getting the ball in the hole. Then she wound up, and, maybe not with quite all of her strength, she hit the little green ball. It sailed over the fence, hitting a car on the other side. The car alarm went off. Nova’s hand flew to her mouth.
That was adorable. Tifa grinned, though her smile faltered as the ball went airborne. And then the alarm went off and Tifa covered her mouth, though in her case she was trying (and failing) not to laugh.
“Okay moving on to the next hole...!”
Nova looked at the car for only a moment longer, but someone who looked like the owner was running up so she quickly looked away so that she didn’t look suspicious. “Does that count as a hole in one?” Nova asked with a bit of a smile.
“I’ll count it if you give me a free one since I missed my shot.” Tifa grinned at her. The next hole was a little more complicated, but it was a standard windmill setup with a straight line, so it might just be easier.
“Let me go first.” She stuck her tongue out, then bent over to position her ball before she got ready to putt.
“Watch and learn.” She eyed the windmill, figuring out the timing, before tapping her golf ball into the hole. “Easy!”
“Deal,” Nova said. She pouted good-naturedly when Tifa sunk her ball. “Well, obviously the only excuse is you come out here every weekend,” Nova teased.
She glanced around, and seeing no one watching one of the balls on the green next to her, she quickly hopped over and snatched it up, before setting it up for her own turn. Gauging the speed of the windmill wasn’t difficult, and she was sure that she would have been able to get it through on her first try if her aim hadn’t been off. As it was, the ball thunked into the side of the windmill instead.
From somewhere behind her, a male voice said “Hey, where’s my ball? I swear it was here a minute ago,” and she tried to look innocent.
“Maybe I’m just more coordinated than you,” Tifa retorted, pretending she hadn’t seen Nova steal anything. As a precaution, she folded her arms and flexed her biceps as she did so, just to intimidate anyone who might try to argue with them. She didn’t want to get into a fight today, but she certainly would if she had to.
Frankly she could probably suplex a car at this point.
“I’ll have you know, I can juggle five knives at once,” Nova said, a slightly competitive edge to her tone even as she gave Tifa a playful smile. She got ready to take her next shot when she was distracted by Tifa’s biceps. She stared at them for a moment, before her eyes flicked to Tifa’s face and then quickly back down at her ball. Luckily, she was able to get her next shot through the windmill onto the hole on the other side without another embarrassing incident.
“That’s… kind of hot,” Tifa replied, then coughed. She rested her club on her shoulder and started to saunter towards the next hole. She glanced back and winked, “Useless though.”
"You'd be surprised how often it comes in hand," Nova teased, because the truth was, juggling was never handy. Except, maybe if she needed some spare cash and had to pan handle, but that had never come up.
It did have other purposes though, like improving hand-eye coordination and accuracy. She was pretty sure the fact that she always hit the bullseye when she threw knives was at least in part from juggling them.
"You got any weird, useless skills?"
“I can juggle some glasses, but that's actually pretty useful for my job,” Tifa replied. “I can get all coyote ugly. Brings the tips.”
She knew her clientele well enough by this point. Wear the right shirt and there would be a nice increase in tips.
“Coyote ugly?” Nova asked, brows furrowing, not quite getting the reference.
“It’s a bar movie. Kind of.” Tifa shrugged her shoulder, “Bunch of hot women flipping glasses around and dancing on tables. It’s not that hard!”
The movie sounded a little familiar, and Nova furrowed her brow. “Didn’t that movie come out a million years ago?” she teased. “You like the classics, huh?”
“Listen, it’s required viewing for everyone in my profession.” Also, Jessica Alba was hot. Tifa suddenly wondered what Alba had gotten up to since then. Seemed like she’d dropped off the face of the earth.
“Most bar movies are pretty bad…” She put her arm around Nova as they reached the next hole. This one looked like a nightmare, and might require an advanced maths degree.
Nova’s shoulders tensed just a little when Tifa’s arm went around them, as if she were expecting an attack. To be fair, no one in her Family touched her if they could help it, unless they were training. It was probably telling that Ingrid was the person Nova’d had the most physical contact with in her life, and that was only because Ingrid had been teaching Nova how to fight since she was eight.
But no attack came, and Nova was able to relax, just a little, and without being quite aware of it, she was leaning into Tifa. Her eyes lit up at the sight of the next hole, taking in every detail, already trying to figure out how she was going to manage a hole-in-one - not that she’d managed to sink one yet. “Oh, this looks fun,” she said.
“Lets spice it up,” Tifa said, pointing her club at the hole. “A bet to see how few turns it takes for each of us to sink this one. We should be about even right?”
Honestly she could benchpress a buick but this would take more than brute strength. She’d have to finesse her way to victory.
“Oh, you’re on,” Nova said, grinning. Tifa might have had the biceps of a Greek Goddess, but it was physics that was going to win the day here, and Nova had been teaching herself physics since she was five years old.
“What do I get when I win?”
“What do you want?” Tifa asked. Dangerous words.
What did Nova want? Now, suddenly everything she thought about asking for seemed preposterous. When her and her Family made bets, it was usually for parts or some kind of weaponry. That… well, she had the feeling that wasn’t appropriate in regular circles, and asking for Tifa to take her to a movie or out for dinner or something, even if all she really wanted was to spend more time with her, seemed kind of desperate.
“What do you want?”
Tifa could think of a few things; if she'd been with Cloud or Aerith they'd be fairly bold and not entirely innocent. But that still might be fun and Nova was gorgeous, and she didn't think it was desperate when she challenged, "Loser buys dinner."
Nova's lip curled up. "Deal," she said, holding out her hand to shake on it. "I'll try not to order the most expensive thing on the menu after I win," she said with a wink, and lined up her shot.
Tifa’s eyes dropped to Nova’s lips for a heart beat before she took her hand and shook it. “Yeah, except you’re not going to make it.”
She stepped aside to give her room, though remained on her periphery and stretched.
Nova eyed up the course, mentally figuring out the physics and geometry needed for her shot, and got ready to take it. Normally, she liked to think that she had pretty good focus. She’d always been good at concentrating on long, monotonous tasks.
And yet, there was something very distracting about Tifa beside her, and the way her midriff peeked out from her shirt, and even as Nova’s golf club hit the ball, she knew that she’d screwed up her shot. “Sweet rot,” she muttered.
It could have been worse, she guessed, but it wasn’t the hole in one that she’d been planning.
“Oh, too bad,” Tifa said with so much cheerfulness she might as well have been copying Aerith. She walked up to where the ball had landed; it looked like an easy shot for two for the hole but here was a slope that might prove difficult. Tifa smiled at Nova. “I’m sure you can make it on two!”
She walked back, checking out the path and then set her ball down. It would be really easy to hit it too hard (considering she punched monsters in her dreams), so she toned down her strength.
The ball bounced twice, hit Nova’s ball into the hole, bounced off the wall and rolled back to sit right on the edge of the hole.
Nova’s eyebrows shot up as Tifa’s ball knocked hers into the hole, and then she turned to Tifa, looking more than a little smug. “So, I guess you owe me dinner then,” she said, grinning. She’d take the win, even if some might argue that she didn’t really deserve it. “I hope you like Filipino food.”
“Technically,” Tifa replied, eyeing the hole then gazing at Nova. “That was my shot, but I’ll give you the win. And I’ve had it before and liked it so I guess I’m lucking out then.”
“Not my fault that you helped me out,” Nova said smugly, swinging up the club so that it was resting on her shoulder. She looked around the mini-golf course, her face softening a little. “Thanks for this, by the way. I’ve never really gone mini-golfing with… friends before,” she said. Of course, it wasn’t like she’d exactly had friends to go mini-golfing with, but even she was aware of how sad that sounded, and she didn’t really think of it as something sad.
“I’m glad for it,” Tifa replied, leaning on her own club and smiling back at Nova. It had been pretty obvious to her that Nova wasn’t exactly the social type. Reminded her of Cloud in that way, though not so much in other ways. “Happy you had fun, too.”
Even if they had actually broken a car window, but don’t tell anyone.