"Oh, a surprise!" Reno exclaims with sardonic glee. If glee can come out sounding the way his does now, as dark and humorless as it is just completely fucking tickled pink at the very idea. He relinquishes that knife as surely as if he'd picked it up specifically to give it to Tseng in the first place, lets himself be walked back, the movement not without grace. Not the clumsy pushing-pulling-shoving-staggering of some frantic, messy thing. Like that night in the bar. Before Rude, before Cloud, before Zack, before that blade piercing him clean through, there was the standard fucking bullshit, sloppy-drunk back alley quickies just because he never says no and why should he? What the fuck is the point of a party if not that? So he can feel something and have a little fun, because he's sure not getting it from anywhere that matters and doesn't want to (a lie). Except then he was. Too much. Way too much. And look what happened!

No. This isn't like that, it's goddamn art. Just as sure as Tseng finds his scar artful, and Reno finds Tseng's artful, and they both find the picture of what became of Sephiroth that night absolutely fucking breathtaking. And the state of this wretched, stained room—a lovelier landscape than the Promised Land by far. Just see how quickly they were willing to buck that shit off their shoulders and come straight here, for this. Reno shrugs away his torn jacket and shirt, grabs a handful of Tseng's hair but rather than pull, he cradles the back of his head the way he had that morning when it was soaked with blood, angling his head to give him a few more precious breaths that he now intends to take away from him entirely. "You've been on a roll with those lately," he says. Foreheads touching, noses touching, but not mouths. Not yet. All jokes, cold-hard dark humor, and then he comes out on the backswing with, "I've never trusted anyone else more."