There's always been something wrong with them. Reno was there for all the nights Tseng spent in his rage-fueled fugues, ever-present at his side while the Turks broke him into what they needed him to become. Their transformation was not so much inevitable as it was explicitly mandatory, and now...

Now Tseng can see the whites of Reno's eyes when he tells him that he needs to suffer, and it's like when they were kids again, so small and naive and caught up in a big scary world with only each other to relate to. Only this time they are kings lording over a kingdom that has yet to realize how fragile it was all along, how long they have been protecting it from the dark and the terror and the savage truth.

Tseng follows forward as Reno steps back. The knife shrieks underfoot and god but he wants it, wants to take it in his hands right now and dig into Reno's flesh until he's nothing more than naked meat. But that would not be suitable; that frenzied flash of bloodlust was right in its time and in its place. If he was ever to have so lovely a specimen as Reno on his table, then the work he does would have to be special, singular, just as sweet and pretty as Reno can be sometimes.

His gaze wanders, lands squarely on where he knows Reno's heart is beating.

"I have something to give you," he says.