It's one of those summer days. Midgar always got a shit place to be in the summer, smog layer like a greasy plastic sheet laced over everything, even your lungs. You didn't wanna move. Failing that, you didn't want to be anywhere without the AC cranked to blast and plenty to drink, and enough cold shower water to steam off a mako cannon.
The younger Turks make days like this their bitch and don't step outside the lounge unless the sky is falling or the princeling needs a babysitter. They loll around in squashy armchairs and couches and enjoy the nice, icy fan blowing right in their faces and they shoot shit like they want to make a career out of it. Everyone's out of their jackets and going around in short sleeves, ties loose if they have them at all, nursing cold bottled water like a good scotch, and whoever the fuck brings up the elbow thing, it's Uri that really runs with it."You know," he says, grinning with his glasses slid down on his nose, "if you lick your own elbow you can change your sex."
There's a strange demonstrative curiosity that comes over people with statements like this. The kouhai eye their elbows speculatively and give it a test. They contort their arms, fold them and twist them in experimental angles, giving up with a grunt of discomfort or a small awkward "ow." They persist anyway, out of curiosity and for the most part boredom, a few of them making more progress than others until a few can nearly manage it, tongues stretched out taut and shivering and their arms folded in horribly unnatural ways. Then they stop, embarrassed, and do it again, someone murmuring that it's more interesting than balancing gil on their fingers anyway.
Rosalind, ever the girl for ceremony, greets Reno when he appears through the doorway. Their senpai has even less decorum than his juniors and doesn't even bother with a shirt, and whatever sort of drink he's carrying around, it isn't water. He casts a glance around the room and arches an eyebrow, drawling out the obvious question somewhat like a tomcat confounded by a weird human ritual.
"We're trying to lick our elbows, sir," Durman supplies, a true testament to months of intensive corporate training.
Reno seems at a loss. He hesitates in the middle of the floor, apparently on a mission for something and has now forgotten what it was. He tilts his head and squints an eye at them, still trying to pop their shoulders out of their sockets, and as boredom is a universal force and distributes its memes evenly, the redhead lowers his gaze to his own bony arm and gives it an experimental flex.
The rookies look up their from own arms to witness, in truly jaw-dropping awe and admiration, Reno stretch his long, shining wet tongue over the ridge of his elbow.
"Senpai," Rosalind exclaims. "Incredible."
The elder Turk blinks at them, still staring up at him as though he had done something supernaturally marvelous. They hang on their wonder until it degenerates into spectators' expectation, and Reno, arm still stuck up as if he's not sure what to do with it, asks, "What? Do I owe someone money or something?"
Samantha sighs in complaint. "Well, that's disappointing," she groans, and he never does find out what she means.
/
Glass Slipper
a fairy talePart One
/
The radio buzzes on the sundrenched nightstand. He'd opened up the blinds for the sunset, always enjoyed seeing the sunset from his corporate apartment; that was one good thing about this smog: it made for one killer evening show.
The radio announcer is reedy and twines something metallic with the interference, and he's onto the weather report now. He recaps the weather. Reno can never understand why he does that: don't people know it was hot like god's armpit today? And then the announcer says, tinny, that the people of Midgar can look forward to tomorrow being even hotter, record temperatures being set by the day, so keep cool, folks. And now here's Perry with the traffic update. Perry?
Reno keeps a spare undershirt specifically for the days when he does his hair. The stains are caked up four, five years now, that strong candy apple red, strawberry jam, splotched thick and fanned out in mutant butterfly shapes, a good enough sample that he knows if he ever gets hit on the head hard enough to forget what his color is, he can pick it out on the shelves by pigment.
This time the color hasn't really faded out, but his roots are darkening too fast, and he needs to bleach and start the job up again from scratch. He'd like to have longer hair but in the circumstances it's handy to only have this fluff on his head to deal with; it's a test of patience as it is.
He's only technically blond. It's more a dirty, dusty bottom-of-your-shoe color and if he never has to look at it again he'll be glad of it. But in the meantime it's too dark to take the dye without soaking it up and making him look like a five-day-old bullet wound, and that's a look he could do with avoiding too. So he bleaches it, and once his scalp stops smarting from that he busts out the dye and prepares to make an evening of it, his own special friend.
Samantha, the ballsy one, confessed she didn't know how Reno worked up the energy for this once a month. Here was a man, after all, who was documented by his kouhai as napping on every single stake-out operation to date, who spent meetings making bracelets out of the paper clips, and more than once just plain let an interrogation subject go because he was bored and had a headache. This kind of figure does not naturally negotiate itself into one that spends several hours in an evening drenching his hair with more chemicals than are dumped in the Jormungand River.
But Reno has time. It's his monthly mandatory leave, three days of blissful boozing, boning, and feeling miserable at the walls, and he does so love to see something else that stains.
His door buzzes when he's halfway through the second bottle and the announcer is talking about degradation of public education statutes, and Reno curses. He weighs his options and abandons the mirror to go find out who it is.
He sees the scowl through the eye hole and slides the deadbolts back. He doesn't let Rude in, but he slides the door open enough to get a look at him, frame his body in the door so Rude can't peak in but gets an eyeful of wet bloody-red hair.
"Yeah?"
"Oh," says Rude, awkward. He's been growing in his goatee lately, after Rosalind agreed it framed his face better. "So no drinks tonight."
"Not unless you want to hang out and paint each other's toenails and giggle about what boys we like," says Reno.
There's something else anyway. Rude never calls on Reno's apartment with only one thing to ask. He stores up reasons to release in batches, like salmon or some shit.
"Tseng wants you back on for Thursday. Big operation south of Kalm."
"Tell him to spin on it." And then he backtreads, "Or don't, but you know, that idea."
Rude shrugs. "Veld's offering overtime."
"Fuck no; previous engagement," Reno says, getting irritated now. He starts to close the door.
Rude's hand stops him. "Yeah?" he asks, like a challenge.
"Bleeding to death."
He shuts the door.
Rude stares at the paneling for a moment, blinking at the afterimage. He decides he's never going to get used to Reno's sense of humor.
/
Kalm is a big ugly failure, and when Reno comes in for shift on Friday Cyr's sure to let him know it. She sits on his desk with arms folded over her breasts and has him transcribe the report for her, word for painful word, with the occasional searing tangent about undermanned and lack of support until he's ready to throw the keyboard at her. She backs off and starts fresh after he's cooled off, rides his ass like this well into lunch hour when Rude comes by to rescue him, and ends up turning into a venting wall for the whole walk to the restaurant.
It's hot enough to melt the soles off their boots out here. Reno hugs to the shade of buildings as they walk, bound for some posh place a block or so down the street where they can go back to freezing their skin off under the AC. Reno's got a shirt on for once, in an odd show of deference, but he's only managed two buttons, done up in such a haphazard fashion that it almost looks like he got bored and promised to go back to it later.
"But you did fuck up," Rude points out, when there's a gap in the kid's ranting. "Anyone else woulda gotten off his ass."
"Fuck that shit; I'm not taking one for the team on my off day. You think that Cyr bitch would drag her fugly ass over to Kalm when she's on leave?"
"You forget what the women spend their three days a month doing?"
Actually that had been the point, in the beginning. When the Turks went equal-opportunity it wasn't long for orders to get handed down from executive mandating women employees in Administrative Research take some time for themselves and their ovaries, under penalty of sacking. Apparently the interrogatee death count got too high on those days and the Powers That Be weren't too pleased.
Eventually the men bitched and administration grouched and gave everyone the same leave, which at least it made the rule a polite fiction again. The women just had to tell the lieutenant their schedules and the men got to pick whatever was left over and everyone was happy. But it made weekly routines and special ops like Kalm a special kind of hell.
"Like that bitch even counts," Reno snarls.
"Pretty convincing tits," Rude observes.
"Please. Durman's got better tits than she does."
"Cyr's got a finer ass."
"You got a finer ass than Durman, but you don't see me gropin' it," Reno points out, skirting away a little.
/
At the restaurant the two get told that all tables have a half-hour wait and could they please consider coming back later. Reno leans across the maitre d's podium and taps his baton to the side of the guys head so he can see the company logo on the hilt, and says, sorry, Rude, did you catch any of that? And in two minutes they have their table.
Reno likes going to places where they stick out, where he can watch people try not to get caught stealing glances at them, see how the other diners fidget and leave in a hurry. But not too much of a hurry, because everyone knows the staff of ShinRa's Administrative Research department love to watch for that with wicked jackal smiles, and sometimes, the rumor goes, they've been known to follow people. Often into dark nondescript alleyways. With baseball bats.
Reno enjoys tormenting the waiters for the same reason. On the average day he might spend half their lunch hour ordering convoluted specialty items and sending them back asking what cumdump shit-for-brains they have working here and if they're going to have problems, until the boy's too close to pissing his pants to be fun anymore and Reno finally lets him give them their food.
Right after his off-time Reno can either be especially malevolent or strangely generous, and today it's fortunately the latter. Rude deduces that his back hurts ("too much fucking," Reno claims; "those whores are hell to wear out, you know?") and waits until Reno's happily poking at his alfredo to bring up the thing he's been meaning to bring up, the sort of thing you don't keep for some awkward meeting in a doorway.
"Reno."
"Yuh?"
"About what I was saying before..."
Reno peers across the table at him, slurping up a fat strip of noodle. He finishes, licks his lips and says, "Gee, you're so goddamn chatty, Rude, could you refresh my memory?"
Rude, when his throat rumbles, makes a distinctly leonine growl. If the lion in question were particularly taciturn and bothered, at least. "About going over to del Sol," he says. "For winter solstice."
"Go on vacation with my patrol partner. I'd have to be how much of a fag for that to work?" He reaches for his water glass, thinks better of it, and takes a chug of his lunch wine instead. "So what happened to Clarice?" he asks, like he's just been waiting for this.
"Assassinated."
"Bethany?"
"Fire."
"Penna?"
"Landslide." Pause. "And a stake through the heart."
He never quite understood the meaning to that one.
"Man," Reno says, flopping back again in his chair. "Your lays are gonna start thinking you're fucking cursed, yo."
Rude soldiers on. "You give up your days until New Year's, we'd have from Jol to Disablot. You hate winters here anyway."
"I hate the winters outside. Beauty of a modern age, man, I can choose whatever weather suits the needs of my fast-paced urban lifestyle. I'm not giving up my monthlies to play butt-tag on the beach and visit your mom."
"You'd like my mom." Rude shrugs and picks through his vegetables. Unlike Reno, he occasionally eats them. "I'll let you fuck my sister," he adds, for the extra enticement.
Reno makes a face. "Your sister's forty. You can keep her."
"I mean my younger sister. Maria. She's seventeen."
"She hot?"
Rude has photos. Reno says it figures, which earns him a look, but then Rude gets to the right picture and Reno nearly falls into his pasta, leaned so far across the table.
"Fuck, man. No way that chick's related to you."
Rude grins. "Something, huh?"
"Guess that's where all the good looks in the family went. She easy?"
"She's Soleil," Rude says by way of an answer, returning the pictures to his wallet.
"That's a no, then."
"You have her brother's permission to try."
"Do I got a shot?"
"Not really."
Reno heels, shrinking back into his seat. He seems to be weighing his options.
Rude tries not to look smug with the imminent victory.
It isn't, he thinks, that he has intentions. Reno's an annoying bastard, and it's not the sort of character you want to overexpose yourself to, particularly if you've got big strong hands and your partner resembles nothing so much as a day-glo red dandelion just begging to get its head squeezed off. At the same time, he's someone you build an addiction to. Like those sheezy day-time talk shows where it's more about the guests throwing chairs at each other than actually talking about their horrific white trash problems.
Well, all right. Reno looks a lot better than anyone who'd ever appear on one of those shows. He looks a lot better than most anyone. He even gives a lot of women a run for their money. Which is, Rude's starting to suspect sadly, an unhealthy thing to find amusing, but he can't help it. Reno sends the best, worst mixed signals on the Planet. It'd be wonderful to drag him around the beach in del Sol dressed only in swim trunks just waiting to get arrested for indecent exposure.
That and, in the end, Reno has consistently stuck around when all the women in his life have turned out to be spies, royalty, political enemies or the undead. If you had to introduce anyone to mama, it might as well be the one bastard fate won't let you get rid of.
Reno swirls his wine speculatively. He takes a sip, bottom lip lingering on the glass in a way unbecoming, or really too becoming, of him, and you can see him formulating some thought behind his scrunched-up eyebrows, inhaling to say--
--Something Rude never finds out, because at that moment a bomb takes out the northwest corner of the restaurant, right behind their table.
The first thing they hear, after the explosion has left to let their ears ring and people are screaming and the walls are on fire, is a voice on a megaphone shouting, "Free the veal! Free the geese that grow fat and helpless by the hands of their oppressors! Long live the proletariat against the bourgeois hogs controlling our world from their towers and meat plants which exploit the working class! Viva la resistance!"
Oh good lords.
Rude covers his eyes with a hand. By the thunking sound, he guesses Reno is banging his head on the edge of the table.
They have to call the office. Somewhere there's an "AVALANCHE: 6 Days Without A Terrorist Bombing" sign that needs to be reset.
"Better go handle this," Rude tells his partner, while dialing.
"We're still on our lunch break," Reno argues to the table.
Rude glances at his watch. "Ended ten minutes ago," he informs him. "You harassed the waiter too much."
So Reno gets up and grabs his baton and Rude gets on the phone with the office line. He gets a busy signal, so he tries Rafe's personal line instead. Rafe answers after eight rings panting like he's been either jogging or fucking, and given his character Rude guesses it's the latter.
"Situation," Rude tells him. "Need you or Samantha down here."
"Sorry, man," Rafe says breathily. "All tied up here."
"Samantha?"
"She's-- uhn-- she's doin' the tying."
It isn't really the mental image Rude feels he deserves on his lunch break, and he lets Rafe go.
Reno has the bombers stalled on the stage fidgeting and wringing the handles of their megaphones.
"I don't know, this's been bugging me for years," Reno is saying, tossing his baton up and down in his hand like a juggling pin. "How exactly are we defining 'working class' here? Because see, I'm working class, and I don't feel very oppressed..."
"Well-- it--" the lead bomber stammers.
"Yeah?"
The leader blusters, "It-It's people like you growing fat on the profits of the common folk's suffering!"
Reno checks his waistline.
Rude dials Rosalind. He hates to, but she's the only other gunner on the force, and at the moment he'd take a polite sniper over none at all.
"I'm sorry, senpai," she says when she answers, voice a little disoriented, like she's been downing painkillers, and Rude remembers it's the start of her off days. "I'm afraid I can't. I'm bleeding to death."
Rude has an odd, clammy moment of deja vu as he apologizes and disconnects, and then he wonders why.
"Hoi, buddy," Reno calls over, apparently getting stuck and sick of ideologies now. "When's that back-up coming in?"
"Never."
"Never?"
Rude shrugs again. "Were you that hungry?"
/
It's not even an hour later that the door to Tseng's office bursts open, and Tseng looks up from the reports in time to see Reno storming in, face smeared with ash and eyes absolutely livid.
"What the fuck kind of support d'you call that?" he demands, going right around to Tseng's desk that Tseng has to lean back in his chair to keep a relaxed gaze, twisting a pen between his fingers. "A food joint gets blown out half a block from HQ and you can't even muster city-fucking-guards for twenty-five minutes?"
"I'm sorry," Tseng says calmly, "did you have a complaint? Because there are forms you fill out for that now."
"Don't gimme that shit. You had two guys on the ground for half an hour doing a job a sniper woulda taken care of in five minutes!"
"I was under the impression our accredited gunners were all unavailable?" Tseng reminds. He looks idly to his paperwork. "I have the phone transcripts here somewhere..."
Reno slams his hand with the baton on the desk. A few paperweights jump.
"It was your job as a lieutenant to step in!" Reno barks at him.
Tseng arches his eyebrow.
"Reno," he says, laying his pen down and standing up, "don't tell me my job. Of all people in this department I'd say you're the least qualified to even tell what day of the week it is, much less anything else." He leans close, and his hand slips the baton out from under Reno's grip. "While you were preoccupied on your extended lunch retreat, I was in a meeting explaining to certain officials why it is we didn't manage to halt the largest Kalman diamond heist in recorded history. Something, I'm thinking now, I should have dragged you in for."
Reno laughs scornfully, a short breath right into Tseng's face. They're close enough in height that Tseng stands almost nose to nose with him. "You gonna chew my ass out over a handful of fucking rocks--"
Here is the thing about Tseng. Tseng, for as reserved and formal as he so often is, especially around women, is not in fact a very nice person. He is particularly not a nice person around Reno, not at the best of times, and now is a long way from the best of times. Tseng is angry. And Tseng is a quick, strong motherfucker you do not want against you.
His left hand keeps hold of Reno's nightstick and his right moves lightning fast and grabs Reno hard by the crotch. He pushes in a finger.
Reno grunts, almost chokes, and his knees buckle and his skin flushes, and then Tseng lifts the hand to test the dampness against his thumb.
Tseng can also read your file.
"I'm sorry," the lieutenant says nonchalantly. "Did I stain your panties?"
"--You--"
"You're late this month," he says to his subordinate, offering the fingers to him to sniff; Reno jerks his head aside with a snarl, skin blushing so hard those tattoos on his cheeks don't even stand out. "If you're coming into work like this you could have joined us in Kalm yesterday."
Reno tears away from the desk. He backs away, almost tripping on the carpet, giggling and almost shaking in his anger, eyes the brightest Tseng's ever seen them. "Heh! Heh!" he says. "Am I mistaken, or is there a fucking sexual harassment suit on your hand there?"
Tseng smiles placidly. "Oh, how I'd love to see how you word the report on that one."
"I'll take this to Veld," he threatens. He utters the name like a god-call. Veld knows: he was the one to do the physical; he was the one to tell Reno it'd be all right.
"Go ahead," Tseng says, opening a wet towelette for his fingers. "I'm sure he'd love to hear about it, in his condition."
"You bastard."
"Don't want to? Nice to know you have some sense of propriety. And here I supposed your mother was too busy with her johns to teach you how handle things like a man."
Something behind Reno's eyes breaks. He swings a fist.
Tseng catches it easily by the wrist, quivering half an inch from his cheek.
"'Hell hath no fury,'" the lieutenant murmurs.
He forces the sergeant back. Reno stumbles, braces on the back of a chair. He manages to catch the nightstick when Tseng tosses it, reflexes still with him, dark glow to his eyes Tseng only wishes would come out more during missions.
"Get out of my office," he says. "Get yourself cleaned up. It's time for your patrol."
/
He isn't sure if it's that his shouting match was thrown in his face or the way Tseng did it. He knows he barks at no less than three secretaries heading back to his office, and that the first thing he does when he gets there is put a hole in the drywall.
"Whoa!" Cyr exclaims, startled right out of her chair. "Whoa, hey!"
She guesses that he was talking to the lieutenant. Not that Tseng and Reno often had arguments dissolve in this way, but Cyr isn't Reno's desk partner for no reason.
She asks if he's all right and he says fuck no, shut up. She lets it go.
She feeds him a status update instead. Gently, like spooning a baby. That they've cleaned up the situation down at the restaurant, for a start. She tries to cheer him up by mentioning he got a memo from the legal department saying that that lawsuit holding him for triple candlemaker homicide has been thrown out by every judge in the prefecture, but she tells soon enough it isn't having an effect and goes quiet.
He bets she knows, or that she guesses. A time like this he sees implication in the eyes of every son of a bitch that crosses him in the hallway and he wants to slug each and every one of them. Paranoia or his own shit job of covering or maybe it is true, maybe people do smell it off you, on some subconscious level.
If she figures it out, she'll tell the girls. Once the girls know they'll tell the guys, and the guys will tell Rude. Or maybe Tseng will skip the middlemen and do it himself in the name of policy. Gotta know who the bastard is you're fighting next to, right?
"C'mon," Cyr says, going to his side. "Let's go do the beat."
He pushes her away. "How many times've I told you?" he demands. "Rude's my partner. Not you."
"Not since the last rota. He's not your playmate, you know."
"Right, and I totally saw you dropping by to lend a hand earlier."
"Want me to kick the gunmen out?" Cyr offers, spreading her arms. "I totally saw you dropping by to lend a hand yesterday too."
"Oh, shut up!" He's yelling before he can curb it. "Do I drag your ass out to work when you're on the rag?"
She slaps him. More accurately, she punches him, flushing hard and indignant, and then he can't help himself. There are a dozen punches from earlier he never got to land on Tseng.
Later, someone laughs about needing a bucket of water to separate them. Everyone but Reno and Cyr is amused. They're too busy nursing their respective jaws.
Durman administers the respective cure spells and Tseng, still smirking, descends from his mighty fucking throne to lecture, and notes that if this weren't an active summer for the derelicts of AVALANCHE he'd have both their badges, or at least suspend both sorry fucks until they come scraping back, and Veld Had Better Not Need To Hear About This. And then Tseng tells Rude to take Reno to the showers to wash up and go the hell home, and Cyr very well can do one more patrol with Erin, now everyone get back to work.
/
Rude holds Reno's shirt while Reno washes his face in the bathroom. His lip looks like it'll stop swelling by tomorrow and the cheek might bruise, but he can deal with that.
Cyr hit him pretty hard. He guesses maybe everyone doesn't know after all.
After the wreck of the day half the gel has broken up in his hair so he washes the rest out. His hands go pink from some of the residue dye. Red stains like that.
He wants to ask Rude to step outside a sec so he can check himself in the stall, but knows there's not a single way to ask it. Tseng's right on that count, anyway. When you're like this, nothing's simple to explain.
"I ain't letting you do the beat alone," he tells Rude, regaining his shirt.
"Think the bombers've had their fun for the day," says his partner. "Tseng thinks you're sick."
Tseng thinks I'm a freak.
"Well, he can suck my cock and let me know."
"Should I tell him that one?"
The shirt is bloody. Reno tsks at it under the florescent lights.
Rude stands upright and smooths the front of his own shirt. How a bruiser like that can come away always looking like a finely-groomed businessman, in the jacket or out, Reno will never know. It's something he takes a totally incomprehensible pride in.
Summer's good for one thing that way. It gets the whole department out of their business formals in the pure and unalterable necessity for employee sanity, and you get a small reminder that everyone has fleshy bits under there. This isn't such a great thing around Durman, but around Samantha or Erin, say? Fuck yes. Likewise, you never saw just how built Rude is, covered up head to foot; he's some artist's wet dream, a perfect study of muscles. You have to wonder if he has a side job modeling. You have to wonder how far those tattoos on his arms travel. Maybe you think...
Rude flicks Reno's forehead between the eyes. Hard thunk.
"You are sick," Rude tells him, accusing, though he has no idea how Reno takes the words.
Yeah. He is sick.
Really, really sick.
/
He stops by his apartment. He meets Rafe in the hall en route and Rafe can't manage to look him in the eye, probably figuring (rightly) that Rude shared the details of that phonecall earlier.
The Rafe and Samantha thing is something Reno will never understand or try to. He's not sure whether to be envious or pity the poor bastard.
"So, karaoke tonight?"
"Nah, man."
"Sure? Samantha's saying Rosalind needs a pick-me-up. We're dragging Tseng along."
It's so, so tempting. It really is. The Turks take their karaoke nights at this great Wutainese bar in the Sector 6 slums, a kitsch out-of-the-way place with the best food and booze to ever kill you slowly. And Tseng on the mic is just what Reno needs to keep him grinning at the fucker for the next week or two.
But fuck that. If Rosalind's there Rude will be there, and he needs time away from Rude. Doesn't want it, but for as much as his coworkers despair his lack of care for himself, he does know occasionally what's in his best interests.
"Naw. But hey, fuck, make him sing that Valentine's song. The one that hits the high notes at the middle."
"Shit, man, we'll get it on camera."
"Yeah? Sam's into taping?"
Rafe punches him lightly in the shoulder. More, Reno figures, for the nickname than anything else. No one calls her Sam. She chains Rafe up and puts a leash around his dick and fucks him with his handgun and he still doesn't get to call her Sam.
Not that Rafe shares this shit. But walls are thinner on this floor than ShinRa really likes to admit, and Reno's always been bad with letting well enough alone.
Which is why Reno puts the radio on when he enters his apartment, and runs the bathroom tap just to be sure. He undresses in front of the mirror and checks over his bruises and looks for any wounds that have escaped him and then he checks his underwear. Yeah. Relapse.
That bastard Tseng. Normally Reno'd wait another day but now he can't. He needs to go out and either fight something or fuck, preferably the latter. No matter what he tells the others, he's been cooped up in these rooms for three days and he hates the sight of them too much to stay another night.
He dresses again. Something clean and nondescript, and he takes the ID out of his wallet. He thinks for a second of taking a bag for the other clothes, just in case he's down there and things look up, but he doesn't feel like it. He's sure the boys won't feel like him, either.
/
He never takes his shirt off completely when he's with her. He doesn't take his boxers off at all. Natasha supposes loudly at the ceiling that he's shy, and he tells her, in a bit of a muted voice by then, to shut up.
She repeats for the tenth time that he's so wonderful, and her wispy little hand dances over his bare arm and his shallow chest, says not many men can wear a girl out like that, you know, traces her fingers over darkened pits of scars and asks if these are from his job.
He recoils, ticklish. "Shit no," he laughs, like it's the most ridiculous, surreal thing ever, like she's being naive at him on purpose. He lets her explore until she reaches the waistband of his boxers and then he stops her, grabbing her almost harshly at the wrist. "No, these are..." he says, easing her hand away, "these're from before that."
Natasha considers him with the kind of glass-eyed pity you keep for wounded animals and mumbles something gentle.
She lies on the bed with her breasts pooled against her chest, the way girls' tits sometimes do when they're flat on their backs, that they almost look like boys. She has long curly blonde hair and just the pretty kind of eyes you'd expect out of a young earnest whore, and she's always got room in her schedule for him. Everyone needs a patron or six.
Natasha's best quality is that she kind of enjoys it, hasn't had all the nerves in her cunt pounded dead yet. A girl who likes it is a girl who'll stick around for the overtime, when you've got something to offer. And he's heard it now a thousand times how rare, how exciting, to have a man who actually needs it more than once. It's like you're in my world, you know? she'll say with a giggle.
She's not that great at faking it. She thinks she is, and the other girls think she is, and probably most of her men think so too, but Reno knows better. He doesn't tell her this.
When she gets curious about his body he stops her hands and gets severe and she'll withdraw, frightened, but she never really learns.
"C'mon, baby, lemme see you. You don't hafta be shy."
"Just let it go, okay?" he says, and pushes her hand away when it drifts toward his crotch again. He starts to sit up and pack himself back in.
"Aw, honey, I've seen all kinds, you know," she drawls, and can't tell that he doesn't wanna hear it. "It don't matter if I see it 'gainst your legs, it don't change nothing. Lotsa women like a man who's kinna small."
He's speechless for a second, and his expression kind of freezes. Like water or a cold slap and then that pause where you realize there's nothing in world to be said about it, it's so beyond and below you all at once.
He gets up and starts to dress.
"Aw, hey, c'mon, baby, I didn't mean it-- Aw, baby-- Shug--"
"Left the money with Rosie," Reno mutters, buckling his belt. He always wears his pants too loose.
Natasha keeps pouting. "But you'll be back next week, right baby?"
"Whatever. Maybe."
"Aw, hon, I'm sorry, please tell me you're coming back..."
He buttons his shirt. "I need to piss," he says, not looking around. "Where's your bathroom?"
/
Rosalind on her off days is not half the shut-in that Reno is, and given painkillers, friendly company and good food is actually able to have a decent time. She makes Friday karaoke nights like this worth the department's while because she's too polite and well-meaning to ever be refused, and can even sucker Tseng into taking up the mic after a few beers.
It's an interesting phenomenon, karaoke. Uri, always the academic, has even been known to (in his soberer moments) muse aloud about its healing properties: get a group of people together, all to one degree or another inebriated, and make them suffer collective embarrassment, and the sensation will grow so strong it will envelope them and become totally undetectable. Forest for the trees, he says. It's the same with anything: anxiety, humiliation, hate, love. The human brain is designed to tune out anything too persistent.
There are reasons Uri only makes comments like this when everyone is drunk, because otherwise it'd be hard to meet him with a straight face the next morning. A lot can be forgiven when you're sitting around listening to your lieutenant sing Wutainese love songs with falsetto chorus.
Rude hangs near the back of the bar with his sake and three out of five times Cyr joins him, like tonight. Neither of them are the best of party people, and as happens with coworkers who are disturbingly well-suited for each other but are too diligent at their work to get to know each other on the clock, the two always seem to wait until occasions like this to drift into each other's company. It isn't the least bit romantic: Rude likes his women feminine and Cyr likes her men shorter than she is, but Reno is always a fertile middle ground for discussion. Even if that discussion is mostly conveyed through grunts.
When Rosalind and Samantha are coddling Tseng into another song, Cyr asks into her glass if Rude thinks something's up with Reno. Rude makes a noncommittal rumble in his throat, and Cyr rephrases herself, I'm just saying, the way he's such a bitch coming back from leave you'd think he was a real redhead.
She has a point there. Saint is hot-tempered often enough to make Reno the sagely niisan by contrast. But short fuses are common in the summer months, and Reno's always picked the worst moments to grow them, Rude points out.
"D'you think he's getting laid?" She's sure anyone who talks that much about fucking can't be getting much.
Rude stiffens defensively. Then he wonders why. It's not as if he's under some oath to protect the guy, or keep from gossiping about him, even if the second ain't really his style.
But fair's fair, a brother Turk's virility is being called into question, he's got a job to defend that. Rude says he knows Reno goes to some whorehouses over in the third district.
Cyr counters slyly that Rude can't say whether that's a hobby or a side job.
Rude indicates monosyllabically that he really doesn't want to dwell on it. That, for one, it isn't his business. A fact that has never stopped Reno from investigating his love affairs, but at least the latter comes with some sort of sick vicarious enjoyment factor. He just doesn't give a shit what Reno does when he's off on his own.
Really.
"I think you should follow him someday," Cyr maintains. "I'll help if you want."
Rude murmurs something vague. Cyr shrugs and lets it go.
There's a thing left unspoken there anyway, left implicit in what they don't fail to acknowledge is mutual dissatisfaction with their coworker Reno: he's fake. He's horribly fake. Which maybe everyone is, but Reno's the one they're curious about.
He's just that interesting.
"Senpai!" Rosalind is waving over at the stage, hand on the mic that Tseng has finally been allowed to flee from. "Senpai, it's your turn!"
/
A few days' distance does a lot for tempers all around. Reno and Tseng go back to being almost civil, Reno's buttons get a little harder to push, and there's more than enough AVALANCHE around for everyone to stay busy.
"You gotta wonder," Reno says one day, during their afternoon patrol of Plate 7. "What's backing these guys up anymore?"
"Animal rights groups?" Rude guesses.
Reno swings his baton by the strap around his forefinger. He's sweating enough that his shirt is transparent in places, which might be something to make a comment about if Rude wasn't aware he was roughly the same way. They'd stalled for a minute under the shade of a market stall but it wasn't doing a whole hell of a lot. Rude's sure his scalp is sunburned.
"I mean, they don't got a leader," Reno goes on, in that place now where he's focused solely on his own voice and isn't even hearing Rude talk. "Elfe's dead, isn't she? Nari, man, finito, took all her higher ups and left for the big tree in the sky."
Right, and her father their commander on the way to joining her. It was a nasty business, not the kind for thinking about much, and Tseng feels it the worst of all of them, Rude's sure. Not that Reno's in the mood to feel sympathetic for the guy yet. But Veld, man...
He'll be better out of commission, Rude says. A man like that has it owed to him to go out quietly, without a fuss. The doctors are saying he might even recover with enough rest, be able to enjoy a peaceful retirement out in southern Icicle, far away from Midgar and all its million problems. The higher-ups all say Veld's been too long on the beat anyway.
Tseng getting promoted is a problem, or rather a nightmare Reno doesn't really want to think about. But, he says, stepping back out into the sun and turning back to grin up at his partner, all sweaty and flushed with his shirt open down to the navel: that makes you next in line for lieutenant, don't it, buddy? Now that won't be so bad. You look out for me when you're up there, yeah? I put out for officers.
Rude smirks, humoring, and they continue down the street. He doesn't mention that Tseng's been in talks with him for a good two months now, hinting so heavily he may as well be overt, and it's a wonder Rude didn't see it coming sooner: Tseng wants to override Rude's seniority and promote Reno in his place.
Maybe it's to torture Reno. Maybe it's for kicks. Maybe it's simply that Tseng knows his team's strengths and knows Rude's better on the field than with paperwork and Reno is, if nothing else, damn good at spinning excuses to tell the board of directors. Although Rude still bets the wute's pettiness plays into it. He'd love to have a second-in-command he could run into the ground.
Anyway. That's the future. For the moment Tseng is a bitter lieutenant doing the job of a captain for a subordinate's wages and hasn't sacked or promoted anyone yet. And if this trend with AVALANCHE keeps up...
Ah. Full circle.
"You 'spose they're organizing again?"
If it is, it's the shittiest organization ever mounted in the city of Midgar. The two've seen PTA meetings with more forethought than this bunch. And at least those don't often end up with favorite restaurants getting blown out.
Halfway down Short Street, Rude gets a call from his desk partner Erin saying she and Cyr could use some back-up with a riot down on Black Currant Avenue. Reno reminds that this is by no stretch nearby, to which Erin responds that, oh, any time you feel like it, we'll just try not to get mauled too badly in the meantime, and Rude and Reno are hitching the plate line over to Third before anyone can say "semaphore."
When they get there, they find to their dissatisfaction that Erin has once again miscommunicated the situation: it really isn't so much a riot as a student rally. To be fair, the two are often confused, like alligators and crocodiles-- both appear lethargic in contrast to their true leg-snapping power and both possess the ultimate IQ of around 14. However, unlike riots, student rallies are... well, mostly made of students.
"Mako energy is killing the Planet!"
"Impeach Shinra!"
"Hey, show us your tits!"
There's a handful of city guards the girls managed to pressgang into holding back the front line, in their short-sleeved shirts and biking shorts and whistles; Cyr had earlier called over to HQ who deemed the rally too close to satellite offices to be a peaceful demonstration and ordered an immediate disbandment, which is the appellation of the moment, but it isn't working too well. For one thing, whenever the girls try to shout at the students over the megaphone, they keep getting answered "take it off!"
A few of the kids break the lines and rush forward with signs and banners, their faces painted with holdover patriotism from their older siblings' days protesting the Wutai War. Some of them even look familiar to Reno. Same neon green peace symbols, Cosmo Canyon breath.
The line dissolves as the guards can't keep the students back and they pour on through, streaming on up the street like water from a busted dam. The Turks, up till then just directing city forces to do their goddamn job, suddenly find themselves trying to hold a line themselves, snagging kids around the waist as they try to rush by. Rude holds his own the best, almost making a wall out of fallen liberal arts majors as he swats them down to either side, but the other three are less equipped and soon find themselves overrun.
One of the girls Reno grabs twists under his hands and dares him to sign her amnesty petition, or, she threatens with her painted grin, she's gonna kiss him. Reno drags her down onto the asphalt hard and tells her that's a Soleil standoff he's gladly man enough for, and she's more than welcome to bring it on. Which only gets him kneed in the stomach, because apparently the kid had mistaken him for a chick. A great fucking show of sisterhood, he grunts, as he pins her and traps her arms behind her back. He shouts to Erin that it's probably time for the waterworks.
Erin tells it to Cyr and Cyr punches out the theater major she was fielding and gets on the phone with the fire brigade to tell them to bring the hoses.
In five minutes they have the streets washed down. The city guards bring their sirens and their detention trucks and Cyr and Erin wring the water out of their hair while Rude gets a statement from the nearest corporal. Most of the kids have the sense to scatter and the ones that lag behind get swept up by the guard, filed into the back of cars either politely or, mostly, dragged by their hair, and Reno finds Cyr's discarded megaphone and remarks from atop the barricade that some kids need to find a better summer hobby, like getting fucking laid.
As an afterthought, he entreats some of the girls to follow petition-chick's example and try out a little of that oldfashioned college experimentation, while they're at it. And to send him the videos.
"He's in a good mood," Cyr observes dryly, ponytailing her hair before it can cause her any more misery. Her shirt really is transparent now, something that makes Rude more than a little uncomfortable. "Had an itch on for a bath, I guess."
The water is evaporating off the streets almost too fast to enjoy it, rising as dank humidity to go join the dust clouds over their heads. Anyone that was within three blocks of the fire brigade is standing around dripping and watching it steam off their fingers.
It's officially too hot to live in this city, they all agree.
Some of the local press sneak in past the police barriers and snap photos of the last trucks as they're filling up and Reno spots them, shouts. Rude and the girls let him have all the fun he likes with this one and crouch in the shade of a patrol car while Reno chases the bastards off. He nabs one by the loop of the guy's belt and tackles him, straddling his knees and tears the camera out of his hands, waves the electrorod in the dude's face with the usual rat's sneer of threats, and his coworkers' eyes go wide.
"Wait!" Cyr shouts as Reno switches the baton on. "Reno--!"
/
All four of them take the local line back up to the ShinRa Building. Cyr, Erin, Rude, and Reno on Rude's back.
The paramedics recognized Reno the instant they smelled his hair. Apparently red dye gives off a distinctive odor when it burns. You pick up stuff like this when you work a defibrillator eight hours a day.
Reno came to quickly enough, which surprised no one, and left them plenty of room for condescending remarks. The paramedics that have Reno on a first-name basis gave him a hearty slap on the back and told him to take it easy on the way home, which is how Rude winds up having to carry him.
Water puddles around their shoes on the train and a few of the other riders eye them curiously, but Erin reflects aloud that, well, they'll all hear about it on the news in a few hours.
Reno mumbles something and Cyr cuts him short, adding that, by the way, you're an idiot.
"Yeah, yeah."
At the office, Tseng is too amused hearing about Reno to bother being strict with any of them, and sends them away to dry off before they stain the carpet.
Cyr offers to drag Reno off to his apartment but Rude says no, he'll take him, boy just needs to dry off and drink something and get back to his desk anyway, and Cyr should be starting on the report. Free to speak, Cyr might have contended that being Reno's desk partner she might be more effective in getting him back quickly, but Rude's seniority is an overriding factor and she defers without argument, even saluting him, albeit a bit petulantly.
Rude gets sick of carrying Reno about halfway down the hall on Reno's floor and gets him to walk instead, but this doesn't fly. He suffices to drag him till they're at the right door and Rude nudges him with the foot to pass the keycard, and suddenly Reno tenses.
"Nah, man, really, it's okay--"
"Hand it over."
"Serious, man, I can crawl my own ass in. Really. You don't have to--"
What, Rude challenges, is Reno afraid of the mess? Like he hasn't been inside his apartment before. The memories of the last time have done all the damage they can anyway.
Reno relents.
Nothing about Reno's apartment is all that surprising. It looks like one of those natural disaster zones the day after, everything strewn in strangely occult-looking ley lines that crisscross and blend together along the floor so that you aren't sure where the carpet ends and last week's Wutainese take-out begins. Rude only manages to find the bed by virtue of the fact that all corporate apartments layouts are identical; he has to clear two uncertain piles of clothes off the mattress until he can dump Reno on it, and Reno barely hits the sheets before he's palming onto his hands and knees and getting to his feet to wander to the bathroom, but not before turning the talk radio on.
"Get me something outta the fridge, huh?" Reno calls from by the sink, getting pills from his little orange bottles, not half the strange sight it shoulda been. "Think I got me some scotch left in there from Saint's birthday party."
He does, although Rude takes a while to find it. He turns the bottle over in his hand and thinks about what people say about booze plus meds and contemplates saying the stuff's gone off, which is true of half the shit in Reno's fridge anyway. Then again, he isn't sure scotch can expire.
In the end Rude decides he really is too much of a pussy to not want his partner to die of polite negligence and dumps it into the sink. He hides the bottle behind the pickled artichokes, reasoning that by the time Reno uncovers it he'll have long forgotten any reason to feel had, and gets the guy some water instead.
As he's rinsing out the glass Rude notices something out of the corner of his eye. It's a ratty standard-issue calendar, the kind with all the months numbered out in neat little boxes to mark federal holidays, tax due-dates, Rufus Shinra's birthday, and all that other junk. Reno's handwriting, which in many ways reflects the character of his apartment, is scrawled in places in red, felt tip bleeding the letters incomprehensible to just about everyone except their author. Here and there he's circled dates, marking his off days right up to the end of the page, and just under the black printed star denoting New Year's there's the scribble of someone's phone number.
Reno has the bathroom door closed when Rude gets his water to him. Reno can't hear him over the radio guy prattling on about power cell price hikes so he knocks, waits till the door opens a tiny sliver and passes the glass through the gap. He catches sight of Reno's bare shoulder and the curve of his clavicle and guesses he was about to start a shower.
"Thanks, hey, I'll see you back at the office, yeah?"
The tone's clear that Reno doesn't want him to stick around. Rude wants to wait until the pills are working or he falls over again, and besides that he wants to ask,
"Who's Jose?"
"A pimp," Reno answers, face visible in the mirror as he swallows down the pills, chin up and throat constricting, showing the tight lines of his neck.
"Why not a girl's?"
"Duh, cuz the pimp knows the girls."
His skin is still flushed from the water blast. From the part in the doorway Rude can see his chest reflected in the mirror, hairless like a teenager's, mottled and streaked from old scars. You hardly see them usually, Rude thinks-- they're immune to the sight in the department, all have enough of their own to share, but you have to wonder how someone else sees them. Most of the women Rude dated were frightened of his, except for Penna, but then Penna had other skeletons in her closet. Literally.
The mirror cuts off at mid-bust and Rude's eyes follow the curve of Reno's spine instead, the curve of his ass. There's still the odd scars here and there but no one could ever have complaints about the shape.
And who the hell has the number for their pimp over the kitchen sink?
Reno half turns away from the mirror, freezes, and twists torso-up to push the door shut. "You gonna hang around like that, do it on the couch. I'll be out in a second. And don't turn off my radio," he adds loudly, before Rude can even move.
Rude scowls at the door but does as requested. He picks his way across Reno's floor to his couch and takes a seat just as the cymbal crash of the shower starts up and the radio show is welcoming on a guest talker.
"What do you feel-- Mister Chairman, what do you feel i-is the real issue here? The real weight of the situation. ShinRa's new global economy in the wake of the war."
"I understand this concern on the half of the taxpayers. People want value for money. That's why this administration is dedicated to its policy of gradated economic development. It is perfectly right and fair that those at the epicenter of the world's finest technological advancements reap their benefits straight from the word go, before those ungrateful wops get their filthy hands on them."
"Mister Chairman, I don't believe I've worded, don't believe I've phrased myself accurately. I'm speaking of the, of the tripled, the actually tripled global reliance on mako technologies in the shadow of the Wutai conflict, new principalities suddenly striking wells, founding refineries, forcing out fossil fuel industries is just a, just a negligible fall-out, a side-effect compared to the impact people are saying this industrialization is doing to natural mako reserves."
Liberal talk radio. Reno just keeps coming up with new ways to surprise him.
"Now, son, we're not getting our statistics from the, ah, the unaccredited press? Independent researchers funded by Odin knows what, basing themselves out of the middle of a boiling desert--"
"Pretty boiling right here in Midgar, wouldn't you say?"
Rude shifts on the couch. Standard employee issue seats three people easily but Reno only has the space cleared to park his own ass, which is a lot skinnier than Rude's. He digs out whatever's jabbing him in the flank and holds it up to the light filtered through the blinds.
A porn disc. Nothing funny about that. Some sheezy painted backdrop production with O-mouthed blonde starlets and long pink nails, poses so contorted it can't possibly come across as erotic. On this one the chicks are even dressed, sprawled over some ornate plastic throne in cheap shimmering princess gowns and tiaras.
Fuckerella, the title says. Well, that's cute. He turns it over to read the back.
"Ahaha, yes, yes, another scorcher today isn't it, yes well we all know that the effects of global warning, the real effect, you know, irregular revolution around the sun with increased, ah, centripetal force..."
"Mister Chairman, you can't expect us, you can't expect the intelligent people listening to this broadcast to not understand the well-documented effects of air pollution, of the ghastly smog layer that's trapping heat, trapping poison in the atmosphere our children breathe--"
"A low blow, Jeffrey, a low blow, shame. Inducting your pseudo-science into this discussion and advancing your agenda with an appellation, such a base appellation to fear and paranoia--"
"But Mister Chairman--"
"Yeah, that's a good one," Reno breathes near his ear.
Rude is not a man known to jump. So he doesn't jump now, although he does twist around sharply and nearly smash into Reno's nose.
Reno grins. The expression fades slowly, his whole posture seeming languid and loose, leaned over the back of the couch. His skin damp all over again but this time warmed by the shower water, and he's naked at least to the waist.
Rude frowns at the glazed quality to Reno's eyes. "What the hell did you take?"
"Relax. Tseng signed the release for it and everything." He comes around the edge of the couch --towel around his hips, that's some saving grace at least-- and clears away some of his junk to flop down next to Rude. He takes the box from him. "Next time us guys do a porno night I'm so bringing this one over. You'd love it. It's that chick from that From Wutai with Love series, look-- Oh, ehh, I guess you don't do a lot of softcore, eh?"
"Not since grammar school," Rude says dryly.
"S'cool, s'cool."
"This's softcore?" he has to ask. That would explain why there's no tits on the cover.
"Oh hell no," Reno says gleefully, the sound of a fanboy just gearing up for an explanation of his plastic robot model's twenty-three points of articulation. "It's great, the whole thing's like on crack. This bitch is like abused by her two hot stepsisters, and they take off to go to this ball where this prince is looking for someone to make his bride, but he's gotta like audition them all first, yanno? And he bangs all the girls there and he gets his servants to like bang the ones he rejects until he's gone through every one of them, but none of 'em are hot enough and the prince is like, damn, where's that perfect pussy I'm destined for, or some shit. And then--"
/
"You think he's gay because he watches porn?"
Rude flinches.
This is the first time in his entire career as a Turk that he's asked someone besides Reno out for drinks after work. Cyr isn't half as loud as Reno can be, but that isn't saying much on the grand scale. The bar isn't that crowded.
It took him three days to get to this. He mumbled a few things at work about needing to discuss something with her but Rude is universally shy with this sort of thing, even the women for whom "a drink to talk about our mutual favorite coworker" really is nothing more than it sounds.
"You don't understand," Rude rumbles, staring hard at his drink. "It had a plot."
"Porno has plot!"
Yeah, girl walks in the door to find her husband banging the maid and immediately strips and joins them. Not characters with dialogue and dramatic tension, he says, or at least he indicates, because it's all kinds of awkward trying to convey the magnitude of A Pornographic Film With An Identifiable Storyline to a female coworker.
"Okay, maybe the cheap stuff is lame," Cyr sniffs. "But most of it is middle of the road soppy romance where the bottom has a sobbing love confession and it's really artistic when they fuck, right?"
"...'Bottom'?" What the hell kind of smut did she grow up with?
"Nevermind," she says quickly. "So, what, you're gay if you want real human relationships to your hardcore fucking?"
"Quieter," he warns.
"Sorry."
"And it's Reno."
Cyr weighs this point carefully.
Reno, Mister The Whores Called The Union On Me. Mister Hey Baby Did It Hurt When You Fell From Heaven Into My Pants. Mister Wanna See How Flexible My Tongue Is.
Getting into porn for the story.
Cyr's eyes widen.
"My god, he is gay."
/
Waiting like this was a bad idea. He should have been down here on Monday, but he wasn't so stupid he'd go try to pull something like this off fresh back from the dead. Even if Rude had started the craving up all over again. He's so horny now his leg is shaking, rubbing, squeezing his thighs together trying to drown out an itch that only nags worse for the attention. If it drags on much longer he'll have the whole bar noticing. Not that the whole bar doesn't notice him anyway.
He passed a lot easier when he was younger. When he still had his baby fat to him, when the wear of work had yet to roughen his body so much. He could wear anything he wanted to in those days. Kimono were a favorite.
These days it's hard to fake what he isn't so he can only advertise what he is, which is fine because this is one of the few places in Midgar where no one minds it and for some it's just what they're looking for.
This is the Sector 3 slums, the shadier back streets with the lamps down low and its people walking either with eyes averted or with a fresh new love for life in their face. The place for freaks and the ones that love them.
He wears a wig when he's down here. A nice one, not too fancy, a pale northern blonde, wavy locks down to the middle of his back. He covers the marks on his cheeks with foundation and powder and dons eyeliner and mascara and lipstick, mild, tasteful. He's not some ugly queen. He's not some cheap tramp, he's not a whore. He wears a short skirt that says exactly what he is and sits with crossed legs in the corner of the bar, smokes a thin cigarette and plays with the bracelets around his wrist and the common consensus is that he's way too fucking beautiful to be here, even if he's not girl enough to be anywhere else.
Jose comes around after work. He enters the bar and goes straight to Reno's side, sits down next to him and says "Hey, you. Missed you on Monday."
"Sorry. I couldn't get away." And the answer is light, and sultry, and melodious, the way he never lets it go.
He closes his eyes when they kiss and he responds readily, always so different with a man's tongue, man's lips. Jose slips an arm around Reno's waist and draws them both up out of their chairs.
At the hotel they're barely inside the door before Jose is kissing his neck and Reno whispers softly, no, no don't leave any marks and Jose pins him against the wall, gets his hands up beneath Reno's shirt, runs fingers over the curve of his spine, the dip of his shoulder blades, his tight, hard little nipples.
"God, you're so hot tonight," Jose murmurs, licking at the line of his throat. Reno feels the erection starting to warm against his leg and the itch in his own body is driving him crazy and he kisses Jose hard so he can guide his hands down, under the skirt. Let him feel how wet he is, how sticky his thighs are. How hard he is.
Jose leads him down onto the bed. He pushes the skirt up to Reno's waist and peels away his panties and Reno spreads his legs wide, fishnet up to the middle of the thigh, heeled boots digging into the mattress and Jose climbs down and kneels there, between those pleading legs. He licks the swollen inner folds of his cunt and Reno shudders deliciously, oh, you need it bad, don't you, babe, and Reno gasps, yes, god yes, and Jose's tongue trails up the ridge of Reno's cock, his cute hard little cock. Takes in the head and sucks and moves down its length in easy motion, moans and the vibrations go right into Reno's spine and he's arching his back, thrusting up, hands in Jose's hair, yes, oh, do it harder, fuck, yes, Jose sticking in a finger, first one, then two, moving so effortlessly, stroking right against that spot that feels so good--
Reno comes fast the first time, too quick to even warn him, thrusting deep into Jose's mouth and clenching tight around his fingers and crying out so weak and quiet in the hotel air.
Jose swallows everything he has and laps his tongue along the sides, greedy for his taste, aw baby, you came so hard, look at you, runs his tongue over the folds of Reno's pussy, dips it into the tight shivering ring of his vagina still clenching and unclenching with the aftershocks. He flicks it around inside the hole and Reno moans, keens, spreads his legs wider and pushes his hips off the bed.
Fuck me, he begs, panting, stroking at his dick. Harder, he says; I need it harder.
This is the part of Sector 3 where the freaks come. The freaks and those that enjoy them.
Jose has a wife and kids. Reno knows this. He checked the guy out thoroughly before he even opened his legs. He knows more about Jose than Jose will ever know about him. Jose doesn't even know his real name. Or what he does, or where the scars come from, although down this way a lot of the folks have scars. And though the wig usually comes off and the make-up runs Jose always thinks of him as a 'her.' It's just easier for Reno to get what he wants that way.
He's studied it, he knows what he is. Veld was the first to give it a real word and since then Reno's been a collector of little medical facts. Like that this is rare. Exceptionally rare. And that some people fantasize their heads off thinking that it's great, because they've never had to live it.
Reno knows that there's a chemical, an actual chemical that makes men tired after orgasm, and that he doesn't make enough of it. And this is the same chemical that suppresses arousal and winds you down, it's that shot of ecstasy after spinning hot agony and it takes him forever to get to it, even when it starts to hurt, even when his whole body starts to ache. Take that, and match it with an overactive libido. And the fact that most women and men alike would sooner fuck their cat.
Jose pushes into him, slides so easily, so frictionless, and he hits that spot inside Reno that makes his skin burn and the air taste hot and Jose braces himself on the bed with one hand and rubs Reno's cock with the other, loves doing it both at once, loves doing him so much, the only thing he could ask for, because this is some people's fetish, and Jose is a person Reno would never want to have to meet, but at least he doesn't care.
/
End Part One
/