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Rude stares at his hands. Several of his knuckles are cracked, purpling with new bruises. He flexes his fingers, his joints aching with the ghost of the violence he wrought.
He turns his hands over in his lap, inspects his palms. The skin is clean and dry, scrubbed nearly raw after a half hour under steaming hot water.
No visible evidence remains on his hands, but after today, they will never be truly clean again. There are no stains, but his hands are bloodied. Weapons for Shinra now.
You signed up for this. He reminds himself.
Strange. Rude had always enjoyed fighting, enjoyed danger. It gave him a sick sort of thrill, the rush of adrenaline singing in his veins. There was nothing more exhilarating than staring death in the face and daring it to make a move.
He had never considered how different it would feel to play the role of death. Which was stupidity on his own part, really. For a Turk, it was part of the job description.
“It’ll get easier.”
Reno—the lanky Turk Rude has been partnered with—lounges in the doorframe, a cigarette between his thin lips. He procures a cheap lighter from his pocket, flicking up a flame with a practiced motion. He takes a long drag, the tip glowing with embers as bright as his red hair.
“Doesn’t mean you’ll get used to it,” Reno’s voice is tight, holding the breath in his lungs as he speaks. He sighs out through his nose, smoke curling around either side of his face like dragon whiskers.
Rude stares at him, a bit surprised by how easily Reno read him after just one job together.
Reno taps his ashes carelessly onto the floor, watching after them halfheartedly to make sure he doesn’t ignite the breakroom.
He scowls at Rude, scratching at the back of his neck with his free hand. “You alright?”
“Yeah.” Rude looks back at his hands. Turns them over again. Still clean, despite how disgusting he feels. “I’m good.”
“Everyone feels shitty after their first.” Reno murmurs, taking another drag. “You’ll do just fine.”
Rude studies him. He’s young. Younger than Rude even. Something about the set of his blue eyes makes him seem older though, and Rude wonders what sort of life Reno has led.
What made him so cynical at such a young age? What led him to join the Turks?
Reno shrugs away from the wall, saunters closer to where Rude sits. Instead of sitting next to him on the worn sofa, Reno perches on the arm, which protests his slight weight with a creak.
“Wanna smoke?” He offers Rude the pack of cigarettes.
“Nah,” Rude waves him off. “Don’t need any bad habits.”
“Suit yourself.” Reno huffs an exaggerated sigh and brings his cigarette back to his lips. He haphazardly taps his ashes again, this time narrowly missing the shiny toe of Rude’s shoe.
“I reckon you’ll find your own brand of bad habit soon enough, Rookie. We all have a weakness. Gotta find some sort of coping mechanism for this shit.”
“Rude,” Rude corrects him.
“Eh?”
“It’s Rude. Not Rookie.”
Reno grins, catlike. “Ruuuuude,” he drawls, elongating the vowel in an annoying sing-song tone.
Rude glares at him, irritated. He’d prefer to be alone with his thoughts, and Reno’s very presence is loud. Once that mouth opens, he’s downright grating.
Of all the Turks to get paired with, Rude thinks, it had to be this one.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
Reno chuckles. “Ah, someone is living up to their name.”
Rude resists the urge to shove him off the arm of the sofa.
Reno leans forward, stubbing the butt of his cigarette out in an ugly green ashtray on the coffee table. “Fine. I’ll leave you alone.”
Rude grunts at him.
“Until next time, Rude.”
Reno gives him a mocking two-fingered salute and strolls out of the room, leaving Rude alone with his thoughts and his guilty conscience.
He stares at the thin line of smoke curling up from the ashtray and hears Reno’s voice echoing in his head.
It gets easier. Doesn’t mean you’ll get used to it.
__________________________________________
From the bird’s-eye view of the VIP section, Rude sips his drink and watches the mass of writhing bodies on the dancefloor below. The club scene isn’t where he likes to spend his free nights, but it’s one of Reno’s favorite ways to unwind, and where Reno goes, Rude follows close behind.
A package deal.
While Rude prefers to slowly nurse his drink, Reno is several shots in already, skin flushed under the pulsing lights and a wild grin plastered across his face.
“Better slow down,” Rude warns when his partner kicks back another.
Reno wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and flips him off. “Mind your own.”
“Well. I ain’t carrying your drunk ass home.” Rude threatens, despite knowing that he would, in fact, carry Reno’s drunk ass home if it came to that.
Reno hauls himself to his feet and goes to lean over the railing, staring down into the crowd. Scanning for his next meal.
Rude sighs, leans further back into the plush armchair. He finishes off his drink and decides he’s going to need another to get through this. Another long night of watching Reno drown himself in booze and sex. It had become their unspoken routine after particularly rough days. Reno’s preferred method of blowing off steam. Distractions from the world.
It was only a matter of time until he selected his next victim.
Although, “victim” wasn’t exactly the right term.
Reno had no trouble getting laid. He was attractive in a sharp, dangerous way. Enticing like the gleam from a knife’s edge. The suit of the Turks labeled him as something deadly, something powerful, something to be feared. And that, of course, only added to the appeal.
“Whaddaya say, Rude?” Reno grins at him over his shoulder, sharklike. Starbursts of pulsing color from the strobe lights dance in his pale eyes. “Hungry?”
Rude grunts, noncommittal. “Do your thing.”
For Rude, sex with strangers was merely that. A temporary fix, something that usually left him feeling guilty and hollow.
“Don’t be a buzzkill,” Reno gripes, shrugging away from the railing. He saunters past Rude, plucking his sunglasses off the bridge of his nose.
“Hey—!”
“It’s dark as shit in here,” Reno folds the sunglasses up and hands them back. “Quit brooding and live a little.”
Rude glares at him, the effect lost when he ends up squinting blindly in the offending brightness of the flashing strobes. He tucks his glasses into his breast pocket, mildly annoyed.
“See, you’ll get laid a lot easier with those big ol’ brown eyes of yours shining.” Reno bats his own lashes mockingly and smirks before patting Rude on top of the head like a dog.
“Not worried about getting laid.” Rude mutters, but Reno has already started down the stairs, the spiky silhouette of his hair disappearing into the crowd.
Rude wonders idly what variety of person will end up with Reno’s hands on them tonight.
When it came to types, Reno didn’t seem to have one. Men. Women. Anyone that tickled his fancy.
Like an orphanage: We take everyone in!
Somehow, there’s a third drink in Rude’s hand by the time Reno stumbles back up the stairs, a girl on each arm. His shirt has been undone by another button, and there’s already a telltale mark purpling on the side of his throat above his collarbone.
Reno turns his mouth against one of the girls’ ears, and she glances in Rude’s direction. She laughs a bright sound and covers her mouth with her hand, her eyes starting at Rude’s face and scanning down the length of his body with interest.
Which is how he ends up with her in his lap. He considers politely turning the woman down, but Reno sprawls in the chair across from him, dragging the other girl down with him, and his intentions are clear by the way his hand glides up her thigh and disappears beneath the hem of her skirt.
Rude decides it’s better to distract himself now and feel guilty about it later than be equal parts sad and creepy sitting in the corner drinking alone while Reno gets his dick wet 5 feet away.
“I like your eyes,” the girl in Rude’s lap says. She smiles and strokes his cheek, pressing her breasts against his chest. She’s attractive, with curly hair and full lips and a black dress that fits her in all the right places.
“I like yours too,” Rude lies, because he can’t tell what color they are under the kaleidoscope of flashing lights, and he doesn’t particularly care.
It’s easy enough to let her kiss his mouth, to get lost in her sweet smell and the taste of fruity alcohol on her tongue. Rude closes his eyes and lets his body’s autopilot kick on. He has her dress hiked up around her thighs and his belt undone in an instant.
Closeby, things are escalating. Reno’s girl is whining and his smoky voice answers her in a filthy drawl too low for Rude to make out. He catches himself listening to them more than the empty words murmured into his own ear.
A pretty hand with dark-painted nails wraps around Rude’s cock and drags his attention back.
“Oh, you’re big.”
Rude huffs a quiet laugh, and gently tugs her back down into a kiss while her hand begins to pump him. It’s easier to do this without the shallow conversation.
Her hand speeds up, and the twist of her wrist is just right, making Rude’s breath heavy and uneven against her mouth. He gets a hand under her dress, pleased to find nothing underneath separating his fingers from the smoothness of her skin, the heat of her core.
Efficient.
Behind them, Reno grows increasingly louder, even noisier than his lover now. His voice pitches into a familiar whine that indicates he’s close.
Rude doesn’t know why he does it, but he turns his head and looks over at the other couple.
The woman is kneeling between Reno’s legs, bobbing her head while he runs skinny fingers through her long dark hair. His shirt is open, hanging off his sides so that his chest and abdomen are exposed, his pale skin shiny with sweat and littered with scars. The muscles of his stomach flex, his narrow hips rolling to meet her stroke for stroke. His face is flushed bright from alcohol and desire, his mouth open and red.
Blue eyes roll around and catch Rude watching. Reno’s lips turn up at the corners, and then he winks.
The tension in Rude’s gut releases without warning. His muscles lock and he’s still looking at Reno when he comes, much sooner than intended, spurting hot as blood across the woman’s fingers.
Dazed in the aftermath, he forces himself to move his own hand faster. It’s the least he can do after ending things prematurely. She whimpers something against his neck that he doesn’t hear, and a moment later she cries out and shakes on his lap.
It’s over as quickly as it began. Clothing righted. Meaningless words exchanged. A kiss to Rude’s cheek he doesn’t register until after the women are already descending the stairs.
Pupils blown and panting, Reno remains shamelessly sprawled in the chair with his pink cock softening against his thigh. His red hair sticks out wildly on one side, lipstick smeared across his mouth and his jaw. Totally debauched.
Rude tears his gaze away from him, still shellshocked. He fixes his pants, buckles his belt, buttons his jacket in the front to hopefully hide any incriminating evidence.
“We leavin’?” Reno slurs. “Already?”
Rude scowls at him, “Yeah, you’ve had enough. C’mon. Getcha shit together.”
Reno manages to get decent without falling over, and leans against Rude’s side as they exit the club. They collectively reek of booze and sex, and Rude is thankful for the blast of frigid night air that greets them, even if it’s acrid with the tang of Mako.
The cold is sobering, dampening the buzz in Rude’s head. It makes him hyperaware of Reno’s body tucked against his side, the way he shivers in the chill, swearing.
Reno digs in his pocket until he finds his cigarettes, putting one between his lips and cupping his hand around the flame as he lights up to keep the wind from putting it out. There’s still a smudge of dark lipstick on the corner of his mouth.
Rude watches smoke curl up from the tip of Reno’s cigarette, watches the orange glow of the flame reflect in Reno’s dark-ringed eyes.
He reaches for the pack and Reno looks at him, surprised.
“Since when have you picked up my bad habit?”
Since I’ve lost my mind, Rude thinks but doesn’t say.
He can’t get the memory of Reno out of his head. The sounds he made, his parted lips and long lean body. The way he winked at him.
What the hell was that? And why had it affected Rude the way it did? There was surely nothing healthy about busting a nut to the image of your best-friend-slash-work-partner in the throes of passion.
“Just trying to sober up,” Rude hasn’t smoked in years, but he needs to clear his head. Put those memories of Reno somewhere deep in his brain behind lock and key.
He puts the cigarette between his lips, and before he can ask for the lighter, Reno is flicking a new flame up, holding it for him.
They stare at each other for a moment while Rude inhales. Too long.
“Thanks,” He mumbles, turning away.
“Yeah,” Reno huffs a laugh, “Thanks for coming along.” He thumps a fist against Rude’s shoulder and flashes him a crooked grin. He is still very, very drunk.
“Not the first time, won’t be the last.” Rude says. Regardless of the night, he flips his sunglasses out of his pocket and sits them back on his nose. Better.
They lean against the cold, damp wall in silence, Reno still close enough for Rude to hear the rush of his breath when he blows out a long line of smoke.
Rude glances sideways at him, noticing how light from the street lamp halos Reno’s profile, highlighting his sharp features, shadowing the hollow of his cheeks. He looks tired and dejected in the sickly green glow.
Rude is thankful for his dark lenses—Reno can’t know he’s staring.
Like a damn fool.
He lets out a burning breath he didn’t realize he was holding, smoke fogging his glasses.
Reno flicks his cigarette onto the pavement and grinds it into nothing with the toe of his shoe.
He turns his hazy blue eyes on Rude, quirking a thin brow. “You good?”
Nope.
Having a crisis.
Might have feelings for you.
Is it normal to get off on watching your buddy get off?
Rude exhales the last of his smoke and drops the butt to the pavement. He doesn’t feel any less dumbfounded by the night’s unexpected, unfortunate development.
“Ruuuuuuude?” Reno protests because Rude hasn’t answered him. He gives the one syllable name about three extra.
“Yeah,” Rude finally replies, “I’m just peachy.”
_________________________________________
BREAKING: SECTOR 7 PLATE COLLAPSE
Rude watches the angry red headline flash across the screen and feels sick. Already, reporters are spreading the news that AVALANCHE is responsible for the devastation.
But Rude can still feel the button beneath his fingertips, his heart sinking into his stomach like a stone the instant he sealed the fate of the entire sector.
His conscience was something he should have forfeited the moment he joined the Turks.
Count that as mission failure.
Footage rolls of wailing mothers searching for missing children. Husbands and wives sobbing for their lost loved ones. Rioters in the streets chanting doom to AVALANCHE.
Wracked with guilt, Rude wonders if he’ll ever be able to close his eyes again without seeing those faces.
The video pans out, showing the entire sector reduced to heaps of smoking rubble and twisted steel.
I did this.
There’s a quiet groan from behind him. Rude whirls away from the TV screen, rushing to where Reno lies battered and bloody stretched out on the sofa in the Turks’ HQ.
“Hey,” Rude says softly when weak blue eyes focus on him. He squats down to Reno’s level, taking inventory of all the cuts and bruises, the clean bandages he placed himself.
“Tell me it was all a nightmare.” Reno croaks weakly.
Rude shakes his head. “Midgar’s in uproar.”
He glances back to the screen, still showing mountains of unrecognizable rubble, smoke curling from piles of what used to be homes, businesses, playgrounds.
“I pushed that button,” he says hollowly.
“Yeah, and I punched in the code,” Reno sighs, swearing under his breath. “We can’t look at it that way. We were just following orders.”
“Chief’ll be here soon to talk about what’s next.”
Reno groans. “Tell him I died.”
“That’s not even funny. Besides, he already knows you’re alright. I talked to him earlier.”
Reno holds a hand up, inspecting the dirt and dried blood beneath his fingernails. “Fucking Merc,” he sighs wearily. “Fucking... Shinra.”
“Careful,” Rude warns. Last thing they needed at this point was for the Company to discover where their loyalty truly was.
“Things’ll get better soon.” Rude says, as much for himself as for Reno.
“Maybe. I doubt it.” Reno closes his eyes, exhausted. “Thanks for getting me out of there today.”
“Wouldn’t dream of leaving you behind.” Rude says, and means it. He can’t imagine a life without Reno anymore. Without his partner.
What a fucked up little family the Turks were. But they were all he had.
Reno pushes himself up onto his elbows with a pained grunt. He scoots sideways, making room on the sofa next to him and patting the open space in a wordless request.
It’s not nearly enough room, but Rude carefully arranges himself next to Reno, hanging half off the cushions so not to crush him.
“You good?”
Reno scoffs. “Do we have a choice?”
Rude stares at the ceiling. He dreads Tseng’s arrival, the severity and intensity of his presence. He dreads more news, more turmoil, more work to be done.
He wants to hunker down for a while. To take Reno somewhere safe and pretend the world isn’t going to hell.
He wonders about how different things would be if he had never joined the Turks. What kind of life would he have? Where would he be? Would he have ever crossed paths with Reno and the others?
If given the opportunity to go back and change things, Rude would do it all over again. Even knowing this guilt.
Reno turns slowly onto his side, resting his forehead on Rude’s shoulder. “This is bullshit,” he murmurs softly, “I’m so tired.”
“I know.”
“All those innocent people, and for what?”
Rude has never been a man of words, and so he simply wraps an arm around Reno’s thin shoulders, pulling him against his side, careful not to jar him too much.
Reno slots against him like he was meant to be there, and Rude’s chest aches.
The pair of them have always been too human for this job.
Reno raises his head, close enough that Rude feels the warmth of his breath over his skin.
“Hey, Rude, I—”
Rude turns his head to look at him, and then Reno is kissing him, just like that. He grips the lapels of Rude’s jacket and slots their mouths together, nothing tender about it. All tongue and teeth and desperation.
Reno kisses Rude dizzy. He tastes like smoke and ashes and mint, and something wholly Reno.
“You can tell me to stop,” Reno whispers in their shared breath, “But you gotta know, I’ve been waiting to do that for years.”
Years.
Rude thinks of how long he’s carried a torch for Reno, watching him when he wasn’t looking. Yearning from afar. Wanting him.
“Don’t you ever stop,” he says, and kisses him again, putting all his pent up desire into the press of his lips, the stroke of his tongue. Reno moves against him, chest to chest, hip to hip, and Rude thinks he might die, here and now.
He grabs Reno’s slender waist to roll him over, only to realize he’s being too rough when Reno whimpers.
“Shit, I’m sorry I—did I hurt you?”
“Nah, nah. I’m made of stronger shit than that.” Reno is half grinning, half wincing, clutching at his side. He nestles against Rude, stilling, “Just tired and sore. Little too eager.”
Rude tries to even out his breathing. Wills his heart to slow down. Stupidly, he’s grinning. Can’t help himself.
“We got all the time in the world.” He says, and hopes it’s true.
“Good. Because there’s a whole lot more I wanna do to you.”
Rude’s brain flushes like a toilet. A solid ten seconds of TV static sizzles behind his eyes before his memory coughs up the image of Reno in the club from a couple years back. His sighs and his moans, the look of pleasure on his face when he caught Rude watching him.
“I’m gonna hold you to that.” He says, shuddering with want.
Reno laughs a husky sound, rubbing at a sore spot on his chest. “I’ve created a monster.”
A chime sounds from Rude’s pocket and he groans, his fantasies shattered by reality. Because of course it’s Tseng.
“Chief will be here in twenty minutes.”
“Great.” Reno drawls sarcastically. He pats at his pockets, swearing under his breath. “Where’s my—”
Rude wordlessly picks up the pack of cigarettes from the table, passing one to Reno. He lights it for him, warning him not to burn himself or the sofa trying to smoke lying down.
Reno takes a drag and puffs out a wobbly smoke ring, watching it rise and dissipate into nothing. “Want one?”
“Nah, I only smoke when you stress me out.” Rude replies playfully. He turns and looks at Reno again, the brightness of his blue eyes, and bruise on his cheek, the bandage on his neck.
“Actually, you did stress me out today.” He decides, plucking Reno’s cigarette from his lips and taking a long drag for himself before passing it back.
Reno elbows him in the ribs by way of reply.
They stay snuggled side by side until the threat of their boss catching them is imminent, and only then does Rude move to the other side of the room to sit at the table.
Reno sits up, wincing, and stubs his cigarette butt into the same hideous green ashtray that he’s used since before Rude met him.
We all got a weakness. Gotta find some sort of coping mechanism for this shit, Reno had told him on their first day together.
Rude looks at Reno—his wild, fiery little Reno, his best friend, his partner—and decides he was right.