InsaneJournal

Leon glared at the chocobo as it once again danced away from his attempts to mount it.

“I hate this fucking bird,” he grumbled. He did. He really did. You’d think that after three years together, he and this fucking chocobo would actually get along. But no. No, it insisted on being obstinate, and every single day they did this same dance. And even once he got on the damn thing, it was just an uncomfortable, bumpy ride, and he was pretty sure that she got some sort of sick pleasure at making sure he fell off any time they crossed a muddle puddle, and her feathers made him sneeze.

He couldn’t talk to her, either. If he could, maybe he’d be able to convince her that if she didn’t behave he’d turn her into chocobo steaks. He couldn’t talk to many animals anymore. Sometimes, when he managed to get particularly drunk from the homemade moonshine, he managed it, or if an animal had something extremely important to tell him.

But generally, he as as deaf to the natural world as he had been for the first twenty-six years of his life.

“I swear we’d be better off just walking.”

“Your legs are gonna get tired and then you’re just gonna bitch more,” replied Revy, not irate at all. Did she wish he would just hurry up and climb the feathery fuck? Sure, she wanted to get moving but watching Leon struggle brought some glee to the rotten blackness of her heart. Hence this terribly smug shit-eating grin here, hands smoothing up and down the neck of her own dumb bird. “Wanna mount mine? You can hold onto me from behind like a princess.”

Might be kind of cramped but it could work, and the imagery was fuckin’ golden anyway. The world was shit – all worlds were always shit, she knew in her bones this one wouldn’t ever be an exception – so she might as well find some kind of amusement in their struggles.

“I’ll give you princess,” Leon muttered darkly. His dumb bird didn’t move, and so Leon stepped forward and stuck his foot in the stir-up.

Which, of course, was exactly when the bird decided to dance sideways. Leon was pulled off his feet and landed hard on his back, his landing cushioned only a little by the grass under him, his left leg still caught in the stir-up. He cursed, loudly.

Revy could have cackled. She almost did. A couple years ago she would have bruised his ego even more just to be a shit, but – love, she guessed. What a crock of shit.

“Hold still, stupid,” she snorted, shaking her head as she dismounted her chocobo with ease. “Don’t start to squirm, you’re fucking old and you’ll break something.” Her approach to the chocobo was cautious – she didn’t want it moving and dragging Leon with it, so when she neared the creature without it jolting away from her, she held it firmly still with one hand and began freeing his leg out with the other.

“Have I ever told you that you’d be in trouble without me?”

“I’m definitely getting too old for this shit,” Leon grumbled. If someone had asked him when when he was younger what he thought he’d be doing when he was creeping up on fifty, his answer would not have been ‘getting fucked around by giant birds and trying to fight God.’

Not that Interitus was God, or that Leon was fighting him directly. Leon was just a human, there wasn’t too much he could do, all things considered.

Leon groaned in relief when Revy released his foot, and took a moment to himself before he clambered up to his feet.

“Pretty sure you get me in more trouble than the opposite,” he grumbled affectionately, grabbing her hand and pulling her close to him and away from the evil yellow turkey.

He was tempted to just call it a day. It wasn’t an especially auspicious way to start a day of hunting, and all his muscles already ached. Except for the fact that when you needed to hunt to eat, taking a day off wasn’t something you could just do because you felt like it. Especially not when they were feeding other people. The kids, everyone on Darla, were counting on their meat.

So instead of making the suggestion, he kissed Revy in a way that suggested that there were other things he’d rather be doing, and approached Big Bird again. He glared at her for a moment, and then his shoulders slumped. “Can you hold her while I get on?” he asked, embarrassed.

Revy had this amused, sultry look to her as she watched. That kiss was fucking nice. She’d been tempted to pull him back, have a little fun (what else did people do these days in between tasks for survival, let’s be honest) but duty called. Last time they banged it out on the dirt, fire ants happened. Certified boner killer.

“Because you asked so damn pitifully,” she grinned, taking some slow steps around the chocobo. Revy should offer to switch birds with him – this one alway gave him some trouble – but what was life without Leon having a hard time with what was supposed to be the easiest shit?

Once she got a firm grip on the rope, she nodded for him to continue. “Up you go. I’m not going to let the flightless banana bird hurt you. Not fatally, anyway. I’ll eat it if it kills you.”

“You know, if we just decided to eat them now, we wouldn’t have to go out hunting today,” Leon pointed out pragmatically, even as he slung himself up into the saddle and reached for the reins. “Our little secret. We could tell the Chocobo guys that ours got killed by thralls or something; who’d ever know?”

“You’d have to cry about it a little, make it real convincing,” she huffed, patting his thigh and stepping away once she was sure the moron she called her stupid fucking life partner (who would have thought, considering where she came from and the first Leon she had gotten romantically chummy with) wouldn’t fall off. As for being thrown off while they moved – still up in the air. His chocobo was moody.

Revy went back to hers, mounting it with practiced ease. “East.” She canted her chin towards that direction. “Pretty sure there’s a pack of hogs roaming. I saw their footprints, and my ass wants to have a fucking barbecue likes it’s the fourth of July.”

“Oh, shit, do you think that means bacon?” Leon asked, nearly drooling at the thought. It had been a while since the last time he’d had nice, crispy bacon. Longer than he’d like to admit. He didn’t like hunting wild hogs, not especially. The first time Leon had wound up in La Nina was because one of their tusks had opened him up from knee to hip.

That had been years ago though, and Leon had learned some lessons in the intervening time. Besides, bacon made all of that worth it. “Wanna see if we can kill enough to get bacon for the Outpost, too?”

“Gotta be able to drag that much back with us,” Revy hummed, thinking about it. The years had… chilled her out a little. She was less prone to flip into a raging, cuss-heavy rant about donkey dicks if someone tried her temper. Things were shit, but she didn’t mind how they lived – it was usually just them, and when they weren’t avoiding thralls (because fuck that, she’d seen some of the magic they could toss around, that was suicide) or killing off raiders, it was peaceful.

They had gotten good at tracking and hunting. It kept them busy, useful, and needed.

“But fuck yeah, might as well give it a go.” Clicking her tongue to give her chocobo a signal that they were about to move, she led the trot towards where she was sure there was some kind of water source. They couldn’t be too far from that. “Watch the bullets you’re spending though. We need to figure out where to get the next batch at.”

They weren’t trigger happy with their weapons – they couldn’t afford to be – but it always got her nervous when they were getting low. Not like ammo was in mass production anymore.

Leon but his tongue on what he almost said: They might not have to drag that it much back; there weren’t nearly as much of the Rebellion left as there had once been. That was the sort of thing that didn’t need to be said. Not really. What he said instead was, “We put out a call on the Network, and someone’ll probably come help us drag it back there.”

He winked at her. “Anyway, I’m sure once we bring them bacon, people’ll be more than willing to trade us all their bullets. I know I’d trade mine in for a nice blue rare steak, wrapped in bacon, served alongside a nice cold beer.” He’d have done a lot of things for a nice, cold beer. Moonshine was all well and good, but good quality beer, now that couldn’t be beat.

“Mm, big dreams,” Revy hummed, but fuck did she want all of that too. Gone were the days where they could just order that shit – because Vallo used to have a sick food delivery system, thanks to speedsters – and vegetate on the couch. They didn’t have to work for it like this.

Desperate for the basics.

The ride was slow. Couldn’t be too hurried and make that much of a ruckus, and in the distance she could pick up sounds of a small waterfall. Fresh water. “I almost forgot what a damn Heineken tastes like. This is the closest thing we’re getting to a retirement and it’s crap.”

Fresh water usually meant game, and especially game that had its guard down. If not immediately, then it would show up eventually if you waited long enough. Today, though, Leon didn’t think they’d be waiting. The signs of the passing of the herd of pigs was pretty clear – the trampled gound, the cloven hoof tracks pressed in the mud – and they were leading right to it.

“I always pictured my retirement with a lot more bikinis, maybe a nice, hot beach somewhere, and a lot less dead pigs,” Leon muttered.

He slowed his chocobo as they approached the water; if he strained, he could hear the distant sounds of animals playing and splashing. He held up a had to stop Revy, and then another few hand gestures that meant I’ll go around the long way and drive them toward you.

“Better be my fucking ass in those bikinis,” Revy shot at him darkly. But also in a funny way.

At his signal, she dismounted with caution - careful not to step on anything that could make a big crunch sound - and pulled out a rifle from the saddle of shit this big bird was carrying for them. Revy had a track record of being a better shot out of the two of them (but there were a few times he surprised her, rest in peace, Melog). She hardly missed, and that was a handy skill when every bullet they had needed to count.

She canted her chin towards some high foliage. I’ll hide there, she gestured, slipping through and crouching carefully.

Leon waggled his eyebrows at Revy suggestively – was it Revy in those bikinis? (Yes, yes it was. Leon had no wish to get shot in the ass. Besides, Leon couldn’t wish for a woman who filled out a bikini better than Revy did. She had the ass for them, and the tits, and the legs, and… well, pretty much everything else).

Leon left his dumb bird next to Revy’s. It might’ve been faster to circle around on the chocobo, but Leon would spend every step fighting it: he knew from experience that it didn’t like getting separated from its big yellow pal, especially not when Leon was on its back. He moved slowly and carefully to the far side of the herd, making sure not to cause any unnecessary noise, and so, it was several long minutes before he burst out of the bush on the other side.

He shot almost as soon as he presented himself to them – one of the pigs fell without a noise – and before the sound of the gunshot had even faded, he was asking, loudly, “Who’s ready to grace my breakfast table?”

Wild pigs could be aggressive, almost as likely to charge him as to run away from him, but with the loud noises and the sudden appearance from the brush, he thought he’d persuade them to run toward where Revy was camped out. He was relieved when they did exactly that.

“The dumbest one-liner,” Revy huffed out, but the smile betrayed the grumpy words. Leave it to Leon to just burst out and get dramatic. Their little ruse worked, and she pressed the trigger.

One bullet. Two bullets.

There was almost a third – but the rest of them got lost into the wilderness, and she didn’t have enough vision for a confident shot. She wasn’t going to waste the ammo to try.

That was three pigs down anyway. A good haul, albeit a heavy one to drag back.

Leon grinned wolfishly as he looked at their haul. One of the pigs would suit all of them at Darla for a while, he thought. Two of the pigs probably wouldn’t stretch very far at the Outpost, but he still thought there’d likely be a serving or two of pork for anyone who wanted it.

“Nice shooting,” he said, turning his gaze to her. He holstered his gun and knelt at one of the pigs, and with a skill born from plenty of practice, hauled it over his shoulders. “Let’s get these loaded up on our overgrown turkeys and get them dished out before they start going bad.”

“I don’t fuck around,” Revy said plainly, emerging from her cover. She hoped the gunshots didn’t glean any unwanted attention. That happened sometimes, and they couldn’t always find silencers for all their trigger happy weapons. They had rope in their inventory to tie these fuckers to them; they were practiced at hauling animal corpses to feed people.

But first.

She stepped over the fresh carcass of a pig and approached him, pressing a big fat kiss to his mouth. “We’re gonna find a bed tonight and get laid after we bring shit to people.”

Leon let the dead hog drop back to the ground so he could grab Revy’s ass in both hands and pull her tighter against him, kissing her hard. “Damn rights we are,” Leon said. “You always look extra hot when you’re waving those guns around.”

Revy kept her hand on the rifle like a responsible gun owner (or some shit) as she kissed him back, letting out a short stint of a cackle against his mouth. “Keep that shit up,” she grinned, her free arm wrapping around his neck. “That fucking bird ain’t gonna let you ride it with a boner. Now let’s tie those pigs up like you’d tie me up, for practice.”