All the world is green and resplendent. Every pasture is a promise, the open sky an eternity of solace. A comfort unlike any Tseng has ever known sinks into his skin. He hears the most beautiful aria, watches the most magnificent sunrise. And all around him are the whispers of arcane secrets, things that no one living will ever know again, answers to questions that men have lived and died for. If he holds out his hand, he can see all that ever was and all that will ever be dancing upon his fingertips. Everything, at his disposal, should he only choose to close his eyes and pledge to join it. He would never again know suffering. The grisly, morbid fate that brought him here will fade away just as surely as the faces he glimpses through the trees, ever evasive, never near enough. There is more of it, he knows, waiting just beyond the burning veil of light. If only he'd reach out—
Tseng crosses his arms. He has no time for this. The promise of paradise is a folly; somewhere else, on another plane, people are working and fighting and rushing and dying. It is as much an inextricable part of the planet as this place will ever be, so he stands, stark and still and straight, glowering at the light until it abates. He feels nothing as the horizon dims around him, flares once like a warning that this is the end, for real this time, he will not have this opportunity again. Good, he thinks, and stands his ground. As the world falls to pieces all around him, he thinks of what a disappointment it truly was in the end—
—and then cannot bring himself to remember why. All he knows is that he is devoid of something, as if he has spent forever searching but found himself coming up empty at the end of a long and arduous journey. Regardless, he has no time to dwell on silly dreams. He is standing upon a cliff, the very same one that staged his greatest regret and most excruciating failure. He has no idea how he got here, other than his stomach twisting sickly. Drugged, perhaps? The details of the previous night filter in slowly, one by one, until he is—
—settling upon the edge of the cliff, his boots swinging over a deadly drop, laughing until tears dot his eyes. Everything is hysterical. The bone saw. The bloody floors. Sephiroth's face. His face, which he can only picture, when that blade rent him in two. And Reno, Reno with his fists twisting in his guts and that cold look in his eyes, that's the funniest most miserable part of it all, because all along he thought that Reno was the one who would deliver him to paradise, when instead it was Tseng who would deliver him into a living hell. Oops. It's been a long, long time since Tseng's even had the occasion to fuck up like that, but in his defense, he never knew the rules. But now he does.
And now he's laughing even harder because this game has only just fucking begun.
Reno's waiting in the wrong spot. He's not really sure of it, to be honest, whether it'll be the same spot as where he woke up or someplace else. He's been there since dawn, searching, then just waiting. Will Tseng's body be laying there as if in deep sleep, to awaken at some particular time? Or will it appear at some point? Or does he have it wrong altogether? Rude is to remain at the safehouse and wait to see if the place they left his body to rest, uh, shows any signs of. Changes. Y'know, like if he fucking reanimates or something. Since no one could be sure what the hell was done with Reno's body (he could only surmise as far as where it laid on that couch in the office, then it's a mystery), these are the only leads they have to go on. As the sun comes up, he becomes a little more concerned with each moment that maybe Tseng won't appear at all. Could it just have been some kind of fucked up lucky break? Maybe he has nine lives, like a cat, or his soul tasted particularly bitter to the tastes of the Planet. He starts nervously chain-smoking again, even though he promised himself he'd save them for Tseng.
By sometime after nine AM his only update is that Rude says the body is gone. He fell asleep, so he can't say exactly when this happened, but it was between the late, late, late that Reno left and now, so that's got to be some kind of a fucking sign, right?! Rude is to remain there and wait, just in case. Reno stays put here. His eyes are starting, inexplicably, to well with tears that he quickly wipes away, and he's not sure why exactly they're there. Like, what specific reason exactly. He lights another cigarette.
Then he hears laughter.
Reno movement is a bolt that's less run and more lightning, darting along the cliffside, following the echoing sound. He doesn't wind up having to climb any higher, because he spots Tseng sitting down below and you better believe he god damn jumps down, springing dexterously from one precipice to the next all the way down, tucks and rolls at the bottom and trots the last bit of distance to meet him. Cigarette still lit, of course, clenched hard between his teeth so much that he's started to break the tobacco right out of it. He stands at Tseng's back, and then makes his way to sit down next to him without being invited.
"For fuck's sake, man," he says as if he isn't smiling too widely to be casual, too earnestly to be cool. "You're still on about that shit?"
What's funny now is how long Tseng has known Reno without ever really knowing him at all.
It is always a surprise. It was a surprise the first time, when Reno slapped those confidential reports into his hands and told him that he'd brought them all this way because he thought that Tseng would enjoy them. It was a surprise when Tseng held that gun to Veld's head and looked over his shoulder to see Reno, looking not at his director or the gun but at him, nodding and waiting. It'd been a surprise almost every day, every morning that Tseng woke up and thought this is it, it has to be, only to discover his visions of mutiny and betrayal had been trumped by the reality of Reno appearing in the office, every single day, maybe tired, maybe hungover, but forever prepared to be one of his Turks. Every time, it is a shocking, sobering surprise.
This time, even more so. Reno's presence is so familiar to him now, but he does not allow himself to believe it until he sees it with his own eyes. Jumping, rolling, gracefully scaling dangerous peaks and crumbling ledges. It isn't the acrobatics it takes to reach him that he is so confounded by, but the simple matter that he is trying to reach him at all, that he is here, that again he knew just where to find him.
His smile fades, but not completely. Reno takes his place by Tseng's side as if neither of them ever left their fated positions. Tseng isn't sure what happened after his death, but he gets the feeling now that it must have felt very wrong because nothing in this world feels so right as this. Such a dangerous thought, a perfect hook for a monster of a man like himself to sow suffering. But they have suffered, haven't they?
And here they are now, grinning at each other at the ends of the earth.
"You weren't there," Tseng says, plucking the cigarette from Reno's lips. He cannot help but to savor that first drag, his eyelids drawn low, his nostrils flaring as he breathes out twin plumes of smoke that drift and curl and threaten to cloud up all of Midgar.
He could've at least given him a fresh one he didn't bite to death, but that's alright. Reno's got more smokes. He's got more than that, too, but all in due time. Right now, he kind of wants to cry again. He doesn't, but he wants to. It's just that people don't really cry when they're happy, right? It's just—yeah, he's happy. He's just really happy. Relieved. Completed. Their family is whole again... more or less. It's been damaged and desecrated, but against all odds, they're here. That's a moment, at least for now, to feel good about. It's a reason to grin, and to want to cry but not cry. He'd put his arms around Tseng and squeeze him, but he's got other things to do with his hands right now. Maybe later.
"I'd say I wish I had been, but I don't think I would have liked it as much," Reno admits as he goes for his pocket. The pack of cigarettes, which he sets to rest on his thigh, lighter on top. Then his phone. He has yet to print out the image and blow it up to a size decent enough to frame and hang on his wall, but he'll get around to that. Or maybe just laminate it and keep it under his pillow, in a desk drawer next to his multitude of sex toys so his fingers can pass over it when he's looking for something to fuck around with, remember it's there, and feel just a little bit better. Yes, it would have been nice to have been there. Maybe they both would've died—probably definitely would have, if not right then, then the next morning in retribution. It would have been a thrill to dismantle such a high-price subject with Tseng. Priceless, in fact. That's a bonding moment that would've spanned beyond time for the two of them. An explosion in the universe, the kind that creates brand new stars. Would've been beautiful. But receiving his gift after the fact... that was the sweet thing. Like being tipped off anonymously that someone admires you, there's no room for bias.
Reno's wicked grin stretches wider and wider before he can even pull the picture up, and when he does he snorts hard, shoulders jumping, and offers it out to show Tseng. And then, in a theatrical display of a play-on-emotions that he doesn't truly, actually know how to express, he presses his cheek to Tseng's shoulder and pretends to bat his eyes at him as if in total adoration. Comical overacting to illustrate a point he doesn't know he's already made. Little does he realize that his total adoration is plenty apparent in everything he's said and done so far, running frantically to meet him here. Waiting for him all morning. And so on. "That was fucking beautiful."
Lord. Tseng quickly averts his eyes. Takes a very long drag from his cigarette and carefully forms a ring of smoke with his lips before he scores it through the middle with a breath and blows it all away. A fresh cigarette wouldn't be the same. He likes this one. It tastes like Reno, like blood and mischief and the sort of verve that he'll never, ever know.
He was never supposed to see this. Tseng would have loved to take a picture, but he didn't. The creation of it was what was important. His carving, Sephiroth helpless but to feel those markings burn into manifestation. It was supposed to be the last thing he would ever say to this world. Not only is it not that now, but Reno heard it. This isn't what he wanted at all.
He ought to push Reno off this cliff.
Instead, his fingers catch around Reno's wrist, steering the phone closer. He looks over his work with new eyes, and it's just as perfect as he remembers making them, but maybe there is a touch of the divine within them now. Reno has seen them. And that... That is something, a sort of excitement he has not known for years, one that has been all but forgotten. He can't even remember what to call it. All that he knows is it draws him in closer, under the pretense of scrutinizing his own craft, though what really happens is that he leans into Reno's shoulder and the two of them balance one another perfectly.
His own words come back to him.
"I thought you'd get a kick out of it," he says quietly. His head tilts, a little conspiratorial, the gleam in his eyes alight with just a little bit of mischief. "I suppose no one else shares our brand of humor, considering..."
Considering the lengths he went to in order to ensure that he died by the same blade as his colleague. This death has made him so transparent. As much as Tseng loves pain, as much as he reveres the act of suffering, this is not the kind of agony that suits his particular tastes.
He draws his thumb across his belly, clicks his tongue to make the sound of flesh ripping. Maybe no one else will ever get them. It hardly fucking matters.
This is as close as Reno will probably come to putting his arms around Tseng unless there's some drastic change in this meeting. This is more their speed, really. As tempting as it is to want to hang onto him and never let go, Reno knows as sure as anything that there are other ways to hold onto something dear. That is, you don't cling to it and smother it and try to hide it—you fight for it. You fight with it. This is how he's able to partner so well with Rude, because they defend each other. Because they make their commitment and dedication known in just how ruthlessly they'll smash skulls together to have each other's backs, even if it's over petty shit (Cloud fucking Strife). It's not really any different with Tseng, at its core. They do things in an even less conventional way, maybe. Definitely. But, y'know. It probably says enough that what suited Reno more wasn't cradling Tseng's face and holding his hand as he suffered and died, it was...
Mm, y'know? Let's just focus on this pretty, pretty picture, instead. Reno's expression twists into an even sicker sort of delight at this fucked up joke Tseng makes. He's almost tempted to ask on the spot if he can see it. The scar, that is. He's got one, too, right? Healed as if it's had plenty of time to recover, enough so that all there is is a lack of pain and an abundance of a reminder, one that won't ever disappear entirely. He may very well ask at some point, but he knows as sure as anything that if he asks to see that, he's going to want to see a whole lot more. Here in this particular spot is not really where he wants to start that bunch of bullshit. Instead, Reno cackles, "Bet yours is better than mine."
And then he realizes—that's right. Tseng hasn't seen it yet. So he lifts his cheek from Tseng's shoulder just enough to turn his body toward him. Typical wide-open uniform shirt, not like he ever wears anything else even when he isn't on the clock half the time. The cut of his suit hides some, but not all of the wide pierce through his chest. Tseng would've seen it when it was fresh and bloody and oozing, but it's a thing to behold now. It's as if a week passed since it happened, maybe a little longer. It's such a smooth, clean scar for such a vicious, ugly thing, Reno can't help but be impressed with it. That's how you know the blade is truly masterwork. And that the person using it is truly skilled. He's kind of a lowkey swords fanboy, you see, it's all that Wutaian anime. And when he was very little he thought someday he'd like to be a SOLDIER and swing a big fuckin' sword, too. As Reno tugs back his shirt to show off the rest of that scar, smirking, all he can think is that the only thing he wants to do with any sword anymore is take that big motherfucker Zack (and now Cloud) carries around, wrest it from their hands, and—
Not now. You see how he loses the color in his eyes when he gets to thinking like that? He's having a very difficult time maintaining control over this part of him. It'll get easier now, though. Or it'll get harder, because Tseng knows exactly what's going through his head, he's certain. Nobody else shares their brand of humor, after all. "I remember every second of it. Do you?" Wanna compare notes? Wanna fantasize about it? Wanna just fucking go apeshitt? Right now? Right here? Down there, in that city? Wanna just burn it all to the ground? Do ya, do ya, do ya?
Yes. Reno bares that lethal score upon his chest and the world Tseng left behind, that whimsical dream of blood and suffering and horror, slams through his senses like an opiate hit. The same soundless blaring starts again in Tseng's mind, the one that had been his constant companion when he was alone there on the floor with Reno's cold and lifeless body. But Reno isn't dead. He's here to enjoy the moment with him.
And what a precious fucking piece of time this is. What a work of art to wear, half-hidden, a secret everyone will want to know. It's so perfectly, absolutely Reno. He means it when his fingers sweep over the length of the scar, his lips curling as he pronounces, "It suits you."
But then he looks up, and the eyes that are there to meet him might as well have stayed in the great and dazzling beyond, because there is no life there to be seen. Or there is, but only the sort that others prefer not to believe in, the kind that makes them tremble in their beds when they picture monsters in the streets who know only endless hunger and tireless consumption. But Tseng can see it from a mile away, because he is the same.
He knows in his heart that if he was not a professional, if he hadn't prepared himself for that mission or something like it years and years ago, he would have killed Zack for standing in his way. Sephiroth lived because he wanted to make his grief a message. But now that they are together again, now that their tastes have been tempted and nothing, not even death, can stand in their way, the possibilities stretch up beyond the heavens. Even he is a little afraid of what they will become by the end of this.
What a laughable prospect. No, he isn't afraid. In fact, he doesn't realize how hard he's grinning, how wide his eyes have gone, as if Reno has just told him the most exciting news without ever speaking a single word at all.
"Tell me," he hisses, drawing Reno nearer by a fistful of his jacket. He has a sudden urge to feel every word that Reno says, this notion in his head that he needs to be branded by Reno's pain. It's just the most delightful thing that he can imagine, and considering all that they will demand from the world in the aftermath of their fleeting ends, it feels like very little to ask from him.
Suits him? Reno's not so sure. Maybe. The circumstances of how it came about don't thrill him, that's for sure. It wasn't his finest moment. If he's going to be run through and murdered dramatically in the middle of a party he initiated and hosted, it should be for a good reason, shouldn't it? Not that he quite literally flirted with danger and got the wrong kind of "impaled." Then again, it is stupidly fitting. Much as he wants to go in an absolutely spectacular blaze of glory, fiery and explosive and all-consuming, he'd never be so lucky, would he.
On the other hand, there's not a lot of folks walking around out there who've been cut down by Sephiroth and came back to spit in his face about it. If nothing else, it speaks to some odd quirk about him he's never really addressed, which is that he's always wanted to know what it would feel like to be one of his own victims, and now he knows. A katana through the lung isn't how he would execute someone, personally, but an ostentatious scar that says he crossed that bridge, burned it down, and still managed to forge a way back isn't something to stick your nose up at. He still remembers how perfectly fucking satisfying it was to strike before Sephiroth could, to hit him with explosive force and watch his eyes go wide and glassy for all of a half-second as he was stunned, then struck him again just for good measure... that felt good. What he wouldn't give, god, to have tracked him down after Tseng had had his way with him, when he was weak and bloody and vulnerable— give him more than just a shock this time— wrench his jaw open and force his baton down his throat and blow the amps with a Thundaga equipped for some extra juice—
His eyes refocus on Tseng's again as he's pulled in. Oh, he's really into this. That's good, because no one else really has been. Rufus saw it, but they didn't discuss it. Rude he couldn't bear to tell, knowing he was too raw about it. No one else he's felt like sharing anything with, let alone the details of what it felt like. But Tseng, it's different. "He stabbed me in the back. It went through my lung and twisted when it came out. He wanted it to be slow and painful, punitive, more insult than injury. I choked to death on my blood. It was a few minutes..." He lost track of time trying to report in. And then looking for Rude, god, that was the part he couldn't bear. He needed Rude. It's the only part of death he couldn't ever stand to face, not having Rude go down with him. If he could've at least been there to see him off, the last thing he ever thought he'd lay eyes on again, that would've been at least something. Reno considers, and then decides to tell Tseng that. "I wanted to see Rude. Besides that, it didn't hurt. It was like being held underwater, once my lungs filled up. Y'know, when the blood starts comin' outta every other orifice instead... that part was great."
No, really. It was great. The pain wasn't an issue, the suffocating wasn't an issue. It was just facing his worst fear in the world that he couldn't handle, after the worst had come. He would've been so much more fascinated. He would've thought so much harder on more pertinent things. He's bitter about dying that way, and it shows on his face. He doesn't care if Tseng can tell; in fact, he'd rather that he did. He'd rather Tseng know that even though the murder itself was a transformative experience, he is unbelievably fucking raw about it and wants nothing more than to unleash hell for it. The thought comes to him in the form of words that he murmurs darkly, almost as if to himself, instead. "Dying afraid, like that... it's not enough anymore. I think I've seen the light."
He will do so much worse to so many others from now on.
"When your body becomes a fount and you cannot stop pouring..." Tseng murmurs, and it's like a song, lilting and melodic and whimsical. That was the best part, wasn't it? No matter how he pressed his hands, no matter how he stilled his breaths, no matter what, there was no option but to let himself spill upon the floor, emptied until there was nothing left. He would have loved to go as Reno did, gasping, completely at the mercy of his failing vessel. Sephiroth was far too merciful with him.
Which is a sad thought. Perhaps he didn't suffer enough for Reno. He likely would have come to regret that, had his death proved permanent. But now, there is a lifetime of agony awaiting him, and he is sure that Sephiroth will spare him not one second that he is due.
The only thing that puzzles him, the one part that doesn't quite align when it feels like he and Reno are in each other's heads, feeding off the energy between them, is what it must have felt like to long for someone in those final moments. He cannot even contemplate the why or the how. The compulsion does not make sense to him at all. Reno is bound to Rude, presumably the same way that Tseng is bound to Rufus, but he wouldn't have wanted him there. He must be missing some fundamental difference between them.
And he should feel sad. Or horrible, perhaps? He was in the car when all this happened, speeding down the streets, counting seconds, cutting corners, breaking every traffic law along the way. And it still hadn't been fast enough. He hadn't gotten there in time, and he'd regretted it. Or had he? All that he can remember is the quiet calm of needing to cause hurt, the silent steps he took until it was done. Right now, in retrospect and with Reno sitting here beside him, the memory makes him smile.
"Good," he says, pressing his palm over that mark upon Reno's chest. Not to cover it from sight, but to feel the thing that unmade and reshaped him. Tseng has stood a thousand times before death's door, with steel beams piercing every part of him and Genesis's fire cooking his own flesh while he swallowed down his melting screams, and it's never been worth it to be afraid. That is how all the best parts pass you by. His thumb strokes along the raised ridge of scar tissue. "Now you will remember."
His gaze lifts. He's thinking now of Reno's hands working inside of him, that debt of perfect pain that he could never hope to repay. But Reno is... different now. Perhaps it is the opportunity that he needs to come as close to it as he could hope. His fingers close crushingly around the hand that burrowed through him, and he lets that anger darken up his eyes like smoke blotting out the windows of a burning building. "I will never let you forget."
Reno has at least enough good sense and sanity about him to know that he shouldn't be this way. That Tseng shouldn't, either. That nobody should. Deep down, in his heart that he knows does work, if not always kind of poorly, what he wants is something like peace. He wants to be happy, live a good life. Not everything has to be blood and dark, dirty shit and betrayal and heartache. In fact, there's quite a lot of good in the world. He's always been very pleased with the position he worked so hard to achieve because it afforded him an escape from a much darker place. Sure, sometimes he has to get his hands dirty—very dirty. Ain't no way around that. Even the plate incident, it was... just an unfortunate circumstance of his job. His job that he loves, with people that he loves, living the life he loves. There's so much to look forward to. There's so much to be happy about. He shouldn't be so serious. They should celebrate. They should try to put this behind them.
But this is so beyond anything he's ever dealt with before. It's like he thought when he was with Rude—he could put his own demise behind him now that it's over and done with. He would process, and heal, and contend with the at times burdensome emotional expectations of the other people in his life, and everything would be okay. What he wasn't counting on is just how deep, dark and bloody those rivers would run. Rude's pain, Rufus's grief, and the lengths Tseng went to for his sake. Reno's not sure why this is so stunning to him, so absolutely earthshattering. It's not as if he didn't realize they care, but just how much... how serious they took it. How seriously Tseng took it. It's easy to lose sight of now that he isn't dead anymore, to think but it's over now, it's okay.
It's not fucking okay.
And then Tseng paid the price, and it became even less okay. And then Rude said he wanted revenge, and it was even more not fucking okay. Nothing is okay. This won't stand. Whether it's about vengeance, blood for blood, or just plain gruesome satisfaction because he knows as sure as anything that that's just plain fucking fun for him—doesn't matter, really. It's warped something in him. He doesn't think he can come back from it without making sure he hurls all he just had to bear right back at everyone and everything, like some really fucked up game of hot potato. Better yet, he doesn't want to come back from it.
Reno nods, his smile gone grim and feral. His fingers tangle between Tseng's and squeeze hard in return. "I'd be disappointed if you did," he says, and sounds for all the world as casually unaffected as he ever does. He doesn't have to sound as harsh as his face is about it, because Tseng doesn't disappoint him. Even in his spectacularly unnecessary death, he isn't let down. He's been shown something he desperately needed to see. He's well-loved, he's important, he matters. And he can handle so much more than he ever thought he could bear. "Let's go back to that place. I want you to walk me through it."
They are both changing, and it is an exhausting process. Tseng is only very freshly alive, and no matter how good he is at maintaining his composure, it is going to affect him. Things that he assumed to be true have become laughable fairy tales anymore. The bondage of his mortal frailty has been cast aside. (Not that he was ever any good at staying dead anyway.) There are so many things to consider.
Like how he is so mired in tradition, in his scripture and his stories, but was so willing to eschew his plans for death to share Reno's fate that night. He's known for a very long time how he is going to die—for good, anyway. Reno is going to do it. By now, it is as much a part of their organization as a coming of age ritual. The gun fires, and the cycle begins anew, even if some do not take it as seriously as others. It is the way things have always been and the way they are forever meant to be, for as long as men and women wear black suits and stalk the streets in the vague interests of public security. Tseng takes that tradition very seriously.
But Sephiroth robbed him of that, and it makes for a very tidy explanation for why he had to do what he did. If he was someone on the outside looking in, he would be satisfied with that and leave well enough alone. But that's not right either.
Even for Tseng, it is difficult to be honest with himself. Thoughts creep into his mind that make him doubt his sanity. There are unseemly urges that strike him blind, that cause him to worry if he is truly suited for the rank he carries. Often, he forgets what it was like to just be human, to feel angry and afraid and jealous and miserable and in love. They all bleed together into one silent flame that burns whenever his hands reach for anything but a gun. Here, though, that seems okay. Reno was there with him when he was still so openly, vulnerably, laughably normal. Back when Reno was the strange one, with his accent and his twisted perspective of the world, Tseng had learned not to judge. And Reno repaid him the favor by watching Tseng become what he is today, all the while remaining faithful, his partner-in-crime, his second in command, his friend—or something like it.
So Tseng lets the truth of the matter wash over him: the worst sin that Sephiroth committed was taking Reno's life, but only because Tseng believed that life was his. That Reno would put him down or Tseng would lay him out for not being strong enough to do him the honor. No one else was ever supposed to do it. They were supposed to fell each other or not at all.
Whatever emotion was always meant to blossom from the core of that compulsion, it's only ever grown into a hunger, and Sephiroth stole that first taste away from him. Nothing in this world will ever take away what Tseng lost that night, and he is going to raze this entire fucking world to the ground and count the souls until they equal out. Until balance is achieved. Beginning with Reno, because all he has ever wanted is what Sephiroth had, and there are no rules anymore. And now he can have that, over and over and over again, for as long as he likes, as bloody and dark and savage as he needs it to be.
Already, his mouth is filling at the thought. He could take Reno, right now, no one would ever know. He'd never tell. He could push him off this cliff, and maybe Reno would laugh and laugh and laugh as he plummeted, or maybe he would grab Tseng's hand and they'd go down together, but either way, it would be magnificent.
Or better yet, he could bring them back—
"—to that place," Reno says aloud, finishing the thought for him. "I want you to walk me through it."
Tseng's eyes narrow. A smile chews its way across his lips like a flame gnawing at a guttering wick. He uses the hand that he's holding to draw Reno up, to move with him to the very edge of the cliff. Like a pas de deux, he spins Reno toward the endless view of it, arms winding around his hips, laughter rioting in his shoulders even if it never makes it past his lips because he knows Reno will get a kick out of how the tips of his boots hang perilously off the edge.
"Shall we jump?" he asks. His teeth burn crescent imprints into Reno's jaw. The fluttering of his heart, the rush of warmth, the way his arms cannot seem to let Reno go, all of it makes what he is feeling so very simple to define: it is bloodlust, pure and primal, and he's never felt it like this before.
The casualty of their sudden ascent isn't the two of them, it's the pack of cigarettes and the lighter he'd fished out earlier and set upon his thigh. Reno doesn't even get the chance to watch both things plummet down off the edge of the cliff, but that might be because he doesn't take the time to look down at all. Even as the ridge of his shoe slides against the edge and threatens to nearly give way and send him slipping down, he only keeps his eyes up, up, on Tseng's face. All at once the evil is gone from his face, as if it was never there. He smiles at Tseng the way he did when he found him, when he came running frantically down the cliffside to follow the sound of his hysterical laughter. Like he's never been happier to see anyone in his entire life. Like all is right in the world and there's nothing but goodness and light and purity and harmony in the air around them.
It's not fake, but it is. It's only fake in the sense that he knows so much better now, but the sentiment is the same. He is really, truly happy to have Tseng back. His family, the only thing he has ever known that's worth knowing. Him, and Rude, and to some extent Rufus—they're everything. To have them granted back to him is the greatest gift he could ever receive, one he doesn't intend to take for granted. That's such a sweet, saccharine thought. He's capable of sweet and saccharine things sometimes, really.
Trouble is, not taking it for granted means a whole fucking lot of trouble.
They sway and Reno does what he wanted to do and puts his arms around Tseng after all. The way he does it, though, is frighteningly impulsive. Sudden and deliberate, as if he'd clapped his hands loudly in front of Tseng's face just to make him flinch, grabbing onto him with a quickness and letting their bodies lean as if to suggest that he's going to answer by throwing them right over the edge without a single word on the matter. But they right themselves and Tseng's lips are against his skin, teeth grazing against bone, and he laughs, eyes stinging and burning. No tears, though. Of course not. This is a happy occasion. He's so, so, so fucking (traumatized, disturbed, enraged, infuriated, twisted, afraid, mutinous, scheming, vengeful, hollow, sickened, hurt, lost) happy. "You wanna take the day off, again?" he jokes, and it's not even the most morbid thing he could say. That was the second of two optional responses. "Spend the night floating?"
That's as close as he'll get to describing what it was like after the end. At least for right now. Instead, his arms gentle only somewhat around Tseng's waist. One arm drops away entirely, and it's only because he's stricken by another impulse to touch his face. To lay his hand right where he had placed it before, yesterday morning, right on his cheek. Right where the handprint that Rude surely saw in the shape of his fingers was, an imprint of bloody, miserable comfort. Reno imitates pressing his fingertips there for the sake of taking himself back to that moment. Right before he plunged his hands wrist deep in Tseng's innards and wrung the last vestiges of life out of him, at his behest.
"We'll get another chance to try it," Reno says in that same low, soft reassuring voice that he used in that room full of blood. It's warm there. You'll be okay.
Reno's hands transport him to the most beautiful place. While he's caught up in the idea of really doing it, slamming his feet down and pitching them off this edge to see what it's like to float together, Reno reminds him of those hours before the darkness enveloped him, and it is no comparison. He'd trade all the trees and lights and music in the world for another chance to revisit that bloody floor, with Reno's hands twisting those vital pieces within him like he meant to reconfigure Tseng to perfection. And it was perfect, even though he can't quite remember in as much vivid detail as he would like. All he is sure of is that Reno knew just how to hollow him.
His eyes are drifting shut at the memory. For all that he should have suffered, he'd never known peace like it was that night. Even before the Turks, he'd never been offered comfort like that, not with hands smoothing over his face, with voices drawn soft and low and soothing. It wasn't anything that he longed for, not that night and never before, but Reno had offered it as readily as he had a quicker, more merciful end. Reno recalls it now, and just the memory of it lulls him into a place he's always been afraid to go, one where he is too comfortable, too serene, too calm. If they misstepped now and fell, Tseng doesn't even think he would open his eyes.
They're meant to go somewhere. And on top of that, there are duties that take priority over whatever it is that he feels, as if that ever was important anyway. But Reno pets and talks him into a fugue, and it's all that Tseng can do to blindly drift forward, his seeking of Reno turned automatic, instinctive, until their foreheads tip together and gently crash.
"I want all of it again," he murmurs from somewhere far away. A furrow of pain manifests between his brows, because the image in his head is turning the blood coursing through his veins molten in a flash. "I have so many regrets. If I'd come sooner—if you'd arrived sooner— I would have liked to spend those hours with you. It wasn't enough."
He catches Reno's wrist with a rough snatch, drags his fingers to his mouth and kisses the prints on them one by one. If he imagines it, he can almost taste the blood on his hands, and his tongue stabs greedily, searching.
"I want you clawing me apart inside," he says, the point of his canines sinking in when the memory of it is too much to stand. Every breath he takes becomes a low hiss. "I want to press my mouth to yours and swallow your blood until we drown together."
If it had been different... god, there are so many ways it could have been different. If Tseng had waited, or if Reno had acted faster, or—or, or, or. He'd been so tortured the entire day, the entire night, every minute after he had left Rude's side and gone home to be alone. After Zack called him, after he saw that picture and knew finally, fully, what Tseng had done for him. And it was for him. It had absolutely destroyed him, burning through those scenarios in his mind with nothing to do but wait and hope and even pray the way the flower girl prays in her bed of flowers sometimes, on her knees and hands clasped, ignoring him when he walked through the doors to check in, head bowed. When she told him what she was doing, praying, naturally he asked what she had been praying for, and she said, Nothing, really. I'm just looking for answers in the quiet. Honestly, he felt that. Not at the time. But later. Like last night. Looking for answers in the quiet, on his knees in the midst of the chaos he'd made of his apartment, broken furniture, shattered glass, destroyed drywall, filled with smoke from countless cigarettes—fucking praying like a tool for Tseng to come back like he had. And if he didn't, then he needed to parse out every situation that could've made it different. Could've given him more closure, more satisfaction. One of them would have to satisfy him, right?
Wrong. None did. Maybe he just doesn't have a good enough imagination.
"Then let's go back," Reno says, almost sighing the words. He wishes he hadn't washed the blood off so he could leave that mark on Tseng's cheek again, so he could taste it like he should've now. But then he remembers he doesn't have to wish, because whatever prayers he sent up were obviously acknowledged, and they can begin setting fate to rights. Starting with the moments they should've had, here and now, and then down in that diner, and then home, and then at work, and then forever and ever and never again. His fingers curl to press past Tseng's probing tongue, over his bottom lip, down his chin, tracing a wet trail there just like the blood that had run in rivulets from his mouth as he shivered and choked and died. Stricken, suddenly, by the look on Tseng's face, how badly he wants to give him a good fucking reason for it. This kind of emotional pain won't do without something to show for it.
He should know. He saw the picture. If only he could've seen the real thing. An hour or two beforehand he'd sat there on the bathroom floor and told Rude he loved him so fucking much and he does and always has and there's nothing that he feels more strongly than that, but he's not sure now about anything because he obviously didn't know the first fucking thing about what love is. He said that to Rude before he saw that picture. Tseng really put it into perspective for him. Really set that bar high, as he always does. As ever, Reno feels inadequate, because he'll never know how to perfectly express his feelings for another person that way. He's all wrong, a half-crafted thing, out of the freezer and into the frying pan way too soon. But he's good enough for somebody. He's good enough for Rude, and he's good enough for Tseng. His heart hammers against the inside of his chest, thinking about it. He tilts Tseng's chin up but doesn't kiss him, just fixes him with his eyes with their faces so intimately close and then tugs at his waist with his other hand, turning their bodies away from the freefall they both want so much but can't have.
"Let me take you back there. I never even cleaned it up. I took pictures before I left... but we're not gonna need 'em anymore, after today. C'mon, c'mon. Before we gotta tell them where we are." How he can sound so playful and energetic with eyes like that, with energy like that, with promises like what he's offering—it's a special skill. It's just, he's feeling good about giving Tseng what he wishes he'd had when he came back. It'll do them both some good.
Reno's energy never makes any sense to him. He's always run circles around Tseng, dizzied him with the constant flash of on/off moods and chatter and charm. Here and now especially, because Tseng feels like he's weighed down substantially by the things he thinks and anticipates. Every step is very rough, too far away from where they mean to go. He might just die all over again before they ever reach their destination, or snap and kill them both in the backseat of the taxi that takes them from edge of the city limits to their quiet home away from home. He comes close, but death, it seems, rewarded him with a half degree of patience more than he had before.
The taxi drops them off at the florist next door, and they take their usual time, checking phones and the scenery while their driver makes off to a safe distance away. The second he is out of sight, Tseng takes a few careful steps toward the back alley, traverses the dark path before them with bated breath, and pauses at the landing beneath the door.
It isn't fear that causes him to hesitate. Tseng isn't sure what it is, as out of touch with those fleeting feelings that crowd his mind as he is with anything that is a total waste of otherwise productive time. Worry, perhaps, that the memory of it won't live up to the too-ethereal image in his head. Reverence for all that has transpired here. And there is a healthy dose of caution, because bullheadedly they are returning to the scene of the crime, which is strictly against protocol, but Tseng finds that he does not mind these flagrant acts of negligence and disorder as much when the compulsion comes from that dark thrill he needs to feed.
He opens the door and flicks on the lights and Sephiroth is not crouched there in the dark, awaiting his moment to ambush them. (It is almost a disappointment.) Instead, all Tseng sees is disarray, instruments scattered, blades glittering on the ground, a table turned over on its side, and blood—so much blood, a veritable sea of it. He's almost stricken speechless by how much of this room is covered in it. Even in their wildest endeavors, it had never been quite like this before, a whole floor painted red, paused at its corners where it was frozen mid-creep.
His hands reach for Reno again, needing warm flesh to sink into, even if he can't pry his eyes away.
The door opens and the smell is intoxicating in a way that Reno knows all too well. Blood left to linger, congealed and dried where it could, coppery and sharp. His chest tightens as they walk in to behold the absolute mess of it all, but Reno finds himself strangely... disappointed is the wrong word, but it's close. It's just that it all seems like so much less without Tseng's body in the middle of it all. It's hard to even tell the shape of him in all the confusion, where the perfect halo around his positively angelic form begins and the smear of Reno collapsing into it, dragging him away to wrap his body in plastic ends. Because it is his job to, Reno notices his own tracking prints and the cast-off blood running from his clothes making their way out toward the door and tsks under his breath at himself. Sloppy work, Reno. He had meant to come back and scrub this place clean, but not right away. Maybe only if Tseng didn't come back. Now he's glad he didn't, but also—disappointed.
Tseng takes hold of him and Reno guides him in further, one hand at his back, not submitting to being held just yet. Not until they're truly standing in the middle of it, their tracks matching Reno's from the day prior, and Sephiroth's oozing trail along beside it. In retrospect, he shouldn't have upended the table like that. It'd be more perfect if he'd left it the way it was when Sephiroth was on it. But he was so... god, he can't remember. In his heart he knew he wasn't going to find anything good here, but in the moment, crashing into the room and flinging that table out of his way, before he saw just how badly Tseng was wounded, he'd thought, maybe—
Foolish, really.
Once they're center with the madness, Reno finds himself feeling strangely emotionless. It's not like him. He wonders if something is wrong. That's when he turns toward Tseng, finally, and says the only thing he can think of, which is, "I'm glad you didn't let me do it the easy way." Because he needed the fuel for the fire that's been lit in him now. It's only been embers, occasionally roaring up with a stoking wind or when it's prodded at, but it wouldn't have been enough. Now his kerosene is here, and together the two of them are going to build that flame into a roaring inferno, consuming everything around them. This he's absolutely certain of, and it's what brings him out of his temporary lack of feeling. His hand hovers, deciding, and rests on Tseng's stomach. He didn't want to go there back on that cliff, but now he has to. It's not a question. He'll go there if he has to force it there. "Lemme see."
There is no resistance here, save for the brief moment that Tseng hesitates to slide his fingers across Reno's cheek, his thumb tracing the curve of ink upon it. Strange how profound this feels. Tseng has bared skin in front of plenty of watchful eyes, but there's a touch of painful anticipation here, a flutter of something unsure. Like it needs to be perfect, like he will die if Reno's eyes do not light up at what he's about to show him.
Tseng hasn't even seen it himself. Not yet. It should have been a higher priority, assessing the damage and taking stock of this new thing that he has to live with inscribed upon his flesh, but it just wasn't. He could turn, maybe, and take that first glimpse for himself. But there is something about gifting that to Reno instead, trusting him to judge it before he ever really sees, that feels right in the culmination of everything he's done.
Tseng removes his jacket and lets it fall to the floor. Careless, but nothing matters more than those eyes upon him. His fingers make quick work of his buttons, top to bottom, and here is where he exercises caution, so that what lies beneath is not exposed until he drags both ends away to reveal it in full.
Perhaps the scar would have been as clean and neat and masterful as Reno's, but more was done to him than that. There was the force of his blood expelling, his palms smothering the wound to keep it all inside. And there was Reno's hands thrusting into him, careful and precise but not enough to escape lending vertical scores to the jagged, obscene mark that spans almost the entire width of his belly. It's that part that takes Tseng's breath away, the little tears where Reno's touches were too much for his flesh to bear, where they were the breaking point under so much pain and pressure.
Reno's eyes do in fact light up instantly, but not with glee and wonder and delight, like a child receiving a new toy. His eyes brighten with fascination, an alertness like a cat's when it spies a twitching string and begins to observe it, calculating everything it will need to do in order to calculate and execute a proper pounce. It's a force of habit, really. Been on the job too long. There's so much to take in and notate, file away, commit to memory for informational purposes, and it isn't just because it's oh-so very interesting, although it is that, too. This is information he needed in order to start down his path to achieving his due vengeance. You can't make a plan without knowing the facts, and this piece of the puzzle is imperative. Reno looks with only his eyes first, lips parted, head tilted, critical of what he sees. People come back when they're killed sometime the next day between four and ten AM. Regardless of what's done with their body, they awaken on the cliffs. And they're given a scar that is a perfect healed replica of the damage that was done to them, if any. Based on the scarring, and he's no medical expert here, but he'd guess this is maybe a week or so old, like his. Reno nods to himself. Okay. That's useful. That will be useful.
But it isn't enough, either. Two examples aren't enough to say you've found a pattern. He'll need more tests run to make absolutely sure before he begins laying down the groundwork for what it is he wants to do. What about TOD? What if the bodies are burned or made inaccessible (he still needs to find out what was done with his)? What about if they aren't wounded, but poisoned or suffocated or drowned, or...?
This is going to take more work. A lot more work.
It almost feels like he's coming-to from some kind of stupor when he reaches out and finally, finally touches Tseng's body. Not directly on his scar, at first, but just above it, his fingers trailing down the smooth skin of his side, then coasting inward to trace along the jagged edges of this unsightly ruination disturbing the otherwise perfect landscape of what was once a familiar body. He's seen it, although never so wholly and deliberately, so gorgeously presented just for him and only him. Reno feels along every inch from side to side, top to bottom, with the pads of his fingers and his thumb, his touch feather-light, his gaze never once leaving that all-important mark. It would've been much cleaner, much more perfect, if he hadn't—for a second he's sorry. Nauseous and guilty, hurt all over again, full of regrets and sadness and pain. Is that the sane or the insane part of his mind at work, actually? The part that wants to pull Tseng in and hold him, comfort him, make things "right" in the way happy, adjusted people feel is "right," by erasing all the horrible things from this world and "moving on, replacing the bad with "happy" memories...
That's the insane part, surely. Because none of that is real, doesn't exist, never did. This world is full of desperate, pathetic people that feel they need to hide from things like this, and Reno can't even say he feels sorry for them. It must be a miserable fucking life, being so blind.
His fingers probe deeper, curling, as if he means to tear Tseng open again right then and there. He could almost do it, the tips of his fingers find a ridge so obvious it's like a zipper-pull. But he doesn't. Instead he finally lifts his eyes to meet Tseng's, the green faded from them like the Mako-purged earth surrounding Midgar, the blue inky like the bottom of the sea. "You haven't suffered enough to call it justice," is his verdict, at last. "And neither have I."
For a moment, Tseng wholly believes that he will. His breath catches, not out of fear but excitement that ripples beneath his skin, pumps his heart in a wild blur of pounding kinetics. He wants to lean into those hands and whisper until he can't anymore for Reno to just do it, tear him open and hollow him right back out again. And Reno must be thinking the same thing too, because he speaks and all but affirms it.
That they shouldn't is—it's not a non-issue, but it is losing a very bloody battle in his mind. They need to move on, they need to go back to work, he needs to report to Rufus, there's so much that is mandatory and urgent and they are spitting in the face of it all by even coming here. He should not be encouraging this behavior. He also died last night too, which is no excuse for tardiness and never has been, but this is a part of their work now, and Reno is doing such a good job taking inventory that it would hardly be proper to discourage him.
"No," Tseng agrees. He is watching Reno, wondering how long it has been since he has been so bare before anyone. And was there ever a time when he let hands that were not his own roam so freely over his flesh uncontested? How strange it is, that that familiar revulsion is nowhere to be found, how he almost wants to sink into Reno's touch, no matter how cruel it turns. Especially if it becomes sharper, nastier, because maybe then this alien longing will be sated and they can go back to business as usual.
For now, he is captured in the throes of it, and it drives his fingers to stroke through Reno's hair, makes him content to stay locked within the passing of their lightless gazes.
"Do you want to suffer?" he asks, as breathless as anyone would be asking if they're wanted, if they're loved, if they're cherished. He wants to add that he could make it so sweet, that there is no one else in this world who could hurt him like Tseng could, but if Reno does not already know that doubtlessly, then there really is no point.
Oh, there's no question in his mind. The sort of pain that this—this fucking maniac has inflicted on him without ever even knowing the message would be received is so exquisitely perfect and fucked up and personal. He's almost scandalized by it. That Tseng would be the one to make him feel this way isn't a surprise. It's the feeling itself, how overwhelming it is, how it's the only expression of feelings he thinks he really understands and he knows something is wrong with him for that, but he can't help it and doesn't want to help it because Tseng just makes it so damn good. So good that it leaves him feeling like a liar when he says things like I love you and I need you to Rude because that's so fucking hollow and empty, isn't it? He doesn't understand. He just doesn't understand.
There's nothing wrong with the softness here, even if it's not really what it's used to. To touch somebody and not explicitly hurt them isn't wrong, it's just lighting a fuse. Reno tries to smile about it, to be fond and gentle and loving the way people are supposed to be, but even touching his other hand to Tseng's face the way he'd done in that pool of blood over yonder doesn't quite make it that. "I need it," he says, and it's just not a normal sentiment. Something is fucking wrong with him. But this makes the most sense. "I need it to stay focused on what I gotta do."
Surely Tseng can understand that. It puts the gentleness of his touch into context, how the sweeping press of his fingertips right up the center line of Tseng's body and back down again is meant to make him break out in goosebumps, tempting, beckoning, his most carefully-honed skill—an offering, but also a hint at what's going on in that fucked up head of his. What he's gotta do is going to be utter ruination, not just blood and thunder. He takes a half-step back. Just about—yeah, there. One of the blades that fell from the table scrapes on the floor under his shoe and he slides it closer, so that when he's good and ready he can kick it up and into his hand. Not yet, though. He wants the sound of the blade screeching on the ground to be its own sort of herald, because that's what gets the heart pounding. The touch isn't enough all on its own. Of course not, don't be silly. "I'll tell you when you've had enough. Then we get back to work."
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.
How tempting it is to just submit to impulse. It takes restraint he doesn't want to have to exercise not to suddenly hurl Tseng down to the floor, right into that slick mess of old blood where he lay a day prior, to hold him down in it, pin him with his hands and knees and bend him right back into that position of helpless languishing, to replay it again only better this time. Only right this time. And then just keep going, running high on the fumes of what that moment left him feeling, unleash it on everything. Everyone. Until there's nothing left and the screaming in his head stops.
But that'd ruin it. Instead he draws his thumb along the curve of Tseng's throat, pressing in, gripping at the side of his neck but never pushing quite hard enough to choke. Not enough to make him gag like he had that morning on blood and bile and pain and last words. His heel turns, twisting that knife around, so that all it takes is a hard step on the handle to flick it up into the air. Reno catches it by the blade, between two fingers, and lets it dangle loosely that way the way he'll lazily hold a cigarette sometimes. Not so much as a nick, because of course not. "For me? What is it?"
Their foreheads touch. Where he saw Rude kiss him down in that wine cellar, wondering if he can maybe absorb some of that sweet sentiment but knowing it won't ever reach him.
Reno hears screaming, Tseng hears deafening silence. It helped, back in the day, when he would shatter everything in his path to not hear it, because back then it would have terrified him, and thus he built this quiet, peaceful place inside his own head where everything moves a little slower, where color and commotion is too far away to be anything but heart-breakingly beautiful. And Reno is in the very same place, even if it's the stark opposite; he can tell by the hand grasping at his throat, crying out for something that only he knows how to fix.
For him, it seems slow, methodical, the way he swipes the blade from Reno's grasp at such a precise angle that even the over-eager quick of it doesn't so much as leave him with a scratch. In reality, it's a blur of motion that culminates with Tseng hovering the blade over Reno's throat as he tangles up their legs to get Reno walking farther backwards still. Back, back, until Reno has nowhere to go but bullied up against the wall.
Then, Tseng will start to undress him, to tear down his jacket and rip open his shirt, close just like before, pressed in until their foreheads touch. "Don't trust me?" he asks with a smile that doesn't quite touch the blankness in his eyes.
"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."
It's sweeter this way, the pair of them on the precipice of something they could never have. They could kiss, but it would be a farce; their hearts beat only because they are addicted to what it feels like to die. Or maybe Reno could have it, maybe one day and with enough care, Rude could pull him out of this sickness intact, and they could spend the rest of their lives together in a tentative recovery, some place far away from the offices and the politics and this place. It's not as impossible as it seems. Love—and he should know—drives people to crazy extremes sometimes. He's aware that it would probably be the best thing for all of them.
He's also aware, very suddenly, that he's plunged the blade into Reno's chest. It's a short blade, so it does not do much but bury beneath the top layer of his skin. No, the art of it was how slowly each stroke was performed, that careful calligraphy carved out layer by layer by painstaking layer. It is not a blade well-suited for a moment of passionate jealousy, but Tseng can make up for that. Whatever he was thinking before this moment is gone, deleted, erased from existence. He has inspiration now, because that little slip of the hand looks an awful lot like the first stroke of his name if he writes it in the traditional characters.
And Reno will love the rest, all straight lines that he has to go over and over and over again, precise and perfect, his brow furrowed in concentration. He remembers the old lessons, bending for hours over canvases of thin paper as he learned to match the curves of his brush to the work of masters. But that was never anything like this, lines that need to chipped away and carved and cut out, skin that needs to be flicked off his instrument, no more than detritus obscuring his vision.
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@ reno
Tseng crosses his arms. He has no time for this. The promise of paradise is a folly; somewhere else, on another plane, people are working and fighting and rushing and dying. It is as much an inextricable part of the planet as this place will ever be, so he stands, stark and still and straight, glowering at the light until it abates. He feels nothing as the horizon dims around him, flares once like a warning that this is the end, for real this time, he will not have this opportunity again. Good, he thinks, and stands his ground. As the world falls to pieces all around him, he thinks of what a disappointment it truly was in the end—
—and then cannot bring himself to remember why. All he knows is that he is devoid of something, as if he has spent forever searching but found himself coming up empty at the end of a long and arduous journey. Regardless, he has no time to dwell on silly dreams. He is standing upon a cliff, the very same one that staged his greatest regret and most excruciating failure. He has no idea how he got here, other than his stomach twisting sickly. Drugged, perhaps? The details of the previous night filter in slowly, one by one, until he is—
—settling upon the edge of the cliff, his boots swinging over a deadly drop, laughing until tears dot his eyes. Everything is hysterical. The bone saw. The bloody floors. Sephiroth's face. His face, which he can only picture, when that blade rent him in two. And Reno, Reno with his fists twisting in his guts and that cold look in his eyes, that's the funniest most miserable part of it all, because all along he thought that Reno was the one who would deliver him to paradise, when instead it was Tseng who would deliver him into a living hell. Oops. It's been a long, long time since Tseng's even had the occasion to fuck up like that, but in his defense, he never knew the rules. But now he does.
And now he's laughing even harder because this game has only just fucking begun.
no subject
By sometime after nine AM his only update is that Rude says the body is gone. He fell asleep, so he can't say exactly when this happened, but it was between the late, late, late that Reno left and now, so that's got to be some kind of a fucking sign, right?! Rude is to remain there and wait, just in case. Reno stays put here. His eyes are starting, inexplicably, to well with tears that he quickly wipes away, and he's not sure why exactly they're there. Like, what specific reason exactly. He lights another cigarette.
Then he hears laughter.
Reno movement is a bolt that's less run and more lightning, darting along the cliffside, following the echoing sound. He doesn't wind up having to climb any higher, because he spots Tseng sitting down below and you better believe he god damn jumps down, springing dexterously from one precipice to the next all the way down, tucks and rolls at the bottom and trots the last bit of distance to meet him. Cigarette still lit, of course, clenched hard between his teeth so much that he's started to break the tobacco right out of it. He stands at Tseng's back, and then makes his way to sit down next to him without being invited.
"For fuck's sake, man," he says as if he isn't smiling too widely to be casual, too earnestly to be cool. "You're still on about that shit?"
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It is always a surprise. It was a surprise the first time, when Reno slapped those confidential reports into his hands and told him that he'd brought them all this way because he thought that Tseng would enjoy them. It was a surprise when Tseng held that gun to Veld's head and looked over his shoulder to see Reno, looking not at his director or the gun but at him, nodding and waiting. It'd been a surprise almost every day, every morning that Tseng woke up and thought this is it, it has to be, only to discover his visions of mutiny and betrayal had been trumped by the reality of Reno appearing in the office, every single day, maybe tired, maybe hungover, but forever prepared to be one of his Turks. Every time, it is a shocking, sobering surprise.
This time, even more so. Reno's presence is so familiar to him now, but he does not allow himself to believe it until he sees it with his own eyes. Jumping, rolling, gracefully scaling dangerous peaks and crumbling ledges. It isn't the acrobatics it takes to reach him that he is so confounded by, but the simple matter that he is trying to reach him at all, that he is here, that again he knew just where to find him.
His smile fades, but not completely. Reno takes his place by Tseng's side as if neither of them ever left their fated positions. Tseng isn't sure what happened after his death, but he gets the feeling now that it must have felt very wrong because nothing in this world feels so right as this. Such a dangerous thought, a perfect hook for a monster of a man like himself to sow suffering. But they have suffered, haven't they?
And here they are now, grinning at each other at the ends of the earth.
"You weren't there," Tseng says, plucking the cigarette from Reno's lips. He cannot help but to savor that first drag, his eyelids drawn low, his nostrils flaring as he breathes out twin plumes of smoke that drift and curl and threaten to cloud up all of Midgar.
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"I'd say I wish I had been, but I don't think I would have liked it as much," Reno admits as he goes for his pocket. The pack of cigarettes, which he sets to rest on his thigh, lighter on top. Then his phone. He has yet to print out the image and blow it up to a size decent enough to frame and hang on his wall, but he'll get around to that. Or maybe just laminate it and keep it under his pillow, in a desk drawer next to his multitude of sex toys so his fingers can pass over it when he's looking for something to fuck around with, remember it's there, and feel just a little bit better. Yes, it would have been nice to have been there. Maybe they both would've died—probably definitely would have, if not right then, then the next morning in retribution. It would have been a thrill to dismantle such a high-price subject with Tseng. Priceless, in fact. That's a bonding moment that would've spanned beyond time for the two of them. An explosion in the universe, the kind that creates brand new stars. Would've been beautiful. But receiving his gift after the fact... that was the sweet thing. Like being tipped off anonymously that someone admires you, there's no room for bias.
Reno's wicked grin stretches wider and wider before he can even pull the picture up, and when he does he snorts hard, shoulders jumping, and offers it out to show Tseng. And then, in a theatrical display of a play-on-emotions that he doesn't truly, actually know how to express, he presses his cheek to Tseng's shoulder and pretends to bat his eyes at him as if in total adoration. Comical overacting to illustrate a point he doesn't know he's already made. Little does he realize that his total adoration is plenty apparent in everything he's said and done so far, running frantically to meet him here. Waiting for him all morning. And so on. "That was fucking beautiful."
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He was never supposed to see this. Tseng would have loved to take a picture, but he didn't. The creation of it was what was important. His carving, Sephiroth helpless but to feel those markings burn into manifestation. It was supposed to be the last thing he would ever say to this world. Not only is it not that now, but Reno heard it. This isn't what he wanted at all.
He ought to push Reno off this cliff.
Instead, his fingers catch around Reno's wrist, steering the phone closer. He looks over his work with new eyes, and it's just as perfect as he remembers making them, but maybe there is a touch of the divine within them now. Reno has seen them. And that... That is something, a sort of excitement he has not known for years, one that has been all but forgotten. He can't even remember what to call it. All that he knows is it draws him in closer, under the pretense of scrutinizing his own craft, though what really happens is that he leans into Reno's shoulder and the two of them balance one another perfectly.
His own words come back to him.
"I thought you'd get a kick out of it," he says quietly. His head tilts, a little conspiratorial, the gleam in his eyes alight with just a little bit of mischief. "I suppose no one else shares our brand of humor, considering..."
Considering the lengths he went to in order to ensure that he died by the same blade as his colleague. This death has made him so transparent. As much as Tseng loves pain, as much as he reveres the act of suffering, this is not the kind of agony that suits his particular tastes.
He draws his thumb across his belly, clicks his tongue to make the sound of flesh ripping. Maybe no one else will ever get them. It hardly fucking matters.
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Mm, y'know? Let's just focus on this pretty, pretty picture, instead. Reno's expression twists into an even sicker sort of delight at this fucked up joke Tseng makes. He's almost tempted to ask on the spot if he can see it. The scar, that is. He's got one, too, right? Healed as if it's had plenty of time to recover, enough so that all there is is a lack of pain and an abundance of a reminder, one that won't ever disappear entirely. He may very well ask at some point, but he knows as sure as anything that if he asks to see that, he's going to want to see a whole lot more. Here in this particular spot is not really where he wants to start that bunch of bullshit. Instead, Reno cackles, "Bet yours is better than mine."
And then he realizes—that's right. Tseng hasn't seen it yet. So he lifts his cheek from Tseng's shoulder just enough to turn his body toward him. Typical wide-open uniform shirt, not like he ever wears anything else even when he isn't on the clock half the time. The cut of his suit hides some, but not all of the wide pierce through his chest. Tseng would've seen it when it was fresh and bloody and oozing, but it's a thing to behold now. It's as if a week passed since it happened, maybe a little longer. It's such a smooth, clean scar for such a vicious, ugly thing, Reno can't help but be impressed with it. That's how you know the blade is truly masterwork. And that the person using it is truly skilled. He's kind of a lowkey swords fanboy, you see, it's all that Wutaian anime. And when he was very little he thought someday he'd like to be a SOLDIER and swing a big fuckin' sword, too. As Reno tugs back his shirt to show off the rest of that scar, smirking, all he can think is that the only thing he wants to do with any sword anymore is take that big motherfucker Zack (and now Cloud) carries around, wrest it from their hands, and—
Not now. You see how he loses the color in his eyes when he gets to thinking like that? He's having a very difficult time maintaining control over this part of him. It'll get easier now, though. Or it'll get harder, because Tseng knows exactly what's going through his head, he's certain. Nobody else shares their brand of humor, after all. "I remember every second of it. Do you?" Wanna compare notes? Wanna fantasize about it? Wanna just fucking go apeshitt? Right now? Right here? Down there, in that city? Wanna just burn it all to the ground? Do ya, do ya, do ya?
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And what a precious fucking piece of time this is. What a work of art to wear, half-hidden, a secret everyone will want to know. It's so perfectly, absolutely Reno. He means it when his fingers sweep over the length of the scar, his lips curling as he pronounces, "It suits you."
But then he looks up, and the eyes that are there to meet him might as well have stayed in the great and dazzling beyond, because there is no life there to be seen. Or there is, but only the sort that others prefer not to believe in, the kind that makes them tremble in their beds when they picture monsters in the streets who know only endless hunger and tireless consumption. But Tseng can see it from a mile away, because he is the same.
He knows in his heart that if he was not a professional, if he hadn't prepared himself for that mission or something like it years and years ago, he would have killed Zack for standing in his way. Sephiroth lived because he wanted to make his grief a message. But now that they are together again, now that their tastes have been tempted and nothing, not even death, can stand in their way, the possibilities stretch up beyond the heavens. Even he is a little afraid of what they will become by the end of this.
What a laughable prospect. No, he isn't afraid. In fact, he doesn't realize how hard he's grinning, how wide his eyes have gone, as if Reno has just told him the most exciting news without ever speaking a single word at all.
"Tell me," he hisses, drawing Reno nearer by a fistful of his jacket. He has a sudden urge to feel every word that Reno says, this notion in his head that he needs to be branded by Reno's pain. It's just the most delightful thing that he can imagine, and considering all that they will demand from the world in the aftermath of their fleeting ends, it feels like very little to ask from him.
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On the other hand, there's not a lot of folks walking around out there who've been cut down by Sephiroth and came back to spit in his face about it. If nothing else, it speaks to some odd quirk about him he's never really addressed, which is that he's always wanted to know what it would feel like to be one of his own victims, and now he knows. A katana through the lung isn't how he would execute someone, personally, but an ostentatious scar that says he crossed that bridge, burned it down, and still managed to forge a way back isn't something to stick your nose up at. He still remembers how perfectly fucking satisfying it was to strike before Sephiroth could, to hit him with explosive force and watch his eyes go wide and glassy for all of a half-second as he was stunned, then struck him again just for good measure... that felt good. What he wouldn't give, god, to have tracked him down after Tseng had had his way with him, when he was weak and bloody and vulnerable— give him more than just a shock this time— wrench his jaw open and force his baton down his throat and blow the amps with a Thundaga equipped for some extra juice—
His eyes refocus on Tseng's again as he's pulled in. Oh, he's really into this. That's good, because no one else really has been. Rufus saw it, but they didn't discuss it. Rude he couldn't bear to tell, knowing he was too raw about it. No one else he's felt like sharing anything with, let alone the details of what it felt like. But Tseng, it's different. "He stabbed me in the back. It went through my lung and twisted when it came out. He wanted it to be slow and painful, punitive, more insult than injury. I choked to death on my blood. It was a few minutes..." He lost track of time trying to report in. And then looking for Rude, god, that was the part he couldn't bear. He needed Rude. It's the only part of death he couldn't ever stand to face, not having Rude go down with him. If he could've at least been there to see him off, the last thing he ever thought he'd lay eyes on again, that would've been at least something. Reno considers, and then decides to tell Tseng that. "I wanted to see Rude. Besides that, it didn't hurt. It was like being held underwater, once my lungs filled up. Y'know, when the blood starts comin' outta every other orifice instead... that part was great."
No, really. It was great. The pain wasn't an issue, the suffocating wasn't an issue. It was just facing his worst fear in the world that he couldn't handle, after the worst had come. He would've been so much more fascinated. He would've thought so much harder on more pertinent things. He's bitter about dying that way, and it shows on his face. He doesn't care if Tseng can tell; in fact, he'd rather that he did. He'd rather Tseng know that even though the murder itself was a transformative experience, he is unbelievably fucking raw about it and wants nothing more than to unleash hell for it. The thought comes to him in the form of words that he murmurs darkly, almost as if to himself, instead. "Dying afraid, like that... it's not enough anymore. I think I've seen the light."
He will do so much worse to so many others from now on.
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Which is a sad thought. Perhaps he didn't suffer enough for Reno. He likely would have come to regret that, had his death proved permanent. But now, there is a lifetime of agony awaiting him, and he is sure that Sephiroth will spare him not one second that he is due.
The only thing that puzzles him, the one part that doesn't quite align when it feels like he and Reno are in each other's heads, feeding off the energy between them, is what it must have felt like to long for someone in those final moments. He cannot even contemplate the why or the how. The compulsion does not make sense to him at all. Reno is bound to Rude, presumably the same way that Tseng is bound to Rufus, but he wouldn't have wanted him there. He must be missing some fundamental difference between them.
And he should feel sad. Or horrible, perhaps? He was in the car when all this happened, speeding down the streets, counting seconds, cutting corners, breaking every traffic law along the way. And it still hadn't been fast enough. He hadn't gotten there in time, and he'd regretted it. Or had he? All that he can remember is the quiet calm of needing to cause hurt, the silent steps he took until it was done. Right now, in retrospect and with Reno sitting here beside him, the memory makes him smile.
"Good," he says, pressing his palm over that mark upon Reno's chest. Not to cover it from sight, but to feel the thing that unmade and reshaped him. Tseng has stood a thousand times before death's door, with steel beams piercing every part of him and Genesis's fire cooking his own flesh while he swallowed down his melting screams, and it's never been worth it to be afraid. That is how all the best parts pass you by. His thumb strokes along the raised ridge of scar tissue. "Now you will remember."
His gaze lifts. He's thinking now of Reno's hands working inside of him, that debt of perfect pain that he could never hope to repay. But Reno is... different now. Perhaps it is the opportunity that he needs to come as close to it as he could hope. His fingers close crushingly around the hand that burrowed through him, and he lets that anger darken up his eyes like smoke blotting out the windows of a burning building. "I will never let you forget."
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But this is so beyond anything he's ever dealt with before. It's like he thought when he was with Rude—he could put his own demise behind him now that it's over and done with. He would process, and heal, and contend with the at times burdensome emotional expectations of the other people in his life, and everything would be okay. What he wasn't counting on is just how deep, dark and bloody those rivers would run. Rude's pain, Rufus's grief, and the lengths Tseng went to for his sake. Reno's not sure why this is so stunning to him, so absolutely earthshattering. It's not as if he didn't realize they care, but just how much... how serious they took it. How seriously Tseng took it. It's easy to lose sight of now that he isn't dead anymore, to think but it's over now, it's okay.
It's not fucking okay.
And then Tseng paid the price, and it became even less okay. And then Rude said he wanted revenge, and it was even more not fucking okay. Nothing is okay. This won't stand. Whether it's about vengeance, blood for blood, or just plain gruesome satisfaction because he knows as sure as anything that that's just plain fucking fun for him—doesn't matter, really. It's warped something in him. He doesn't think he can come back from it without making sure he hurls all he just had to bear right back at everyone and everything, like some really fucked up game of hot potato. Better yet, he doesn't want to come back from it.
Reno nods, his smile gone grim and feral. His fingers tangle between Tseng's and squeeze hard in return. "I'd be disappointed if you did," he says, and sounds for all the world as casually unaffected as he ever does. He doesn't have to sound as harsh as his face is about it, because Tseng doesn't disappoint him. Even in his spectacularly unnecessary death, he isn't let down. He's been shown something he desperately needed to see. He's well-loved, he's important, he matters. And he can handle so much more than he ever thought he could bear. "Let's go back to that place. I want you to walk me through it."
No. That isn't right. Well—it is, but—
"I want to know what it felt like."
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Like how he is so mired in tradition, in his scripture and his stories, but was so willing to eschew his plans for death to share Reno's fate that night. He's known for a very long time how he is going to die—for good, anyway. Reno is going to do it. By now, it is as much a part of their organization as a coming of age ritual. The gun fires, and the cycle begins anew, even if some do not take it as seriously as others. It is the way things have always been and the way they are forever meant to be, for as long as men and women wear black suits and stalk the streets in the vague interests of public security. Tseng takes that tradition very seriously.
But Sephiroth robbed him of that, and it makes for a very tidy explanation for why he had to do what he did. If he was someone on the outside looking in, he would be satisfied with that and leave well enough alone. But that's not right either.
Even for Tseng, it is difficult to be honest with himself. Thoughts creep into his mind that make him doubt his sanity. There are unseemly urges that strike him blind, that cause him to worry if he is truly suited for the rank he carries. Often, he forgets what it was like to just be human, to feel angry and afraid and jealous and miserable and in love. They all bleed together into one silent flame that burns whenever his hands reach for anything but a gun. Here, though, that seems okay. Reno was there with him when he was still so openly, vulnerably, laughably normal. Back when Reno was the strange one, with his accent and his twisted perspective of the world, Tseng had learned not to judge. And Reno repaid him the favor by watching Tseng become what he is today, all the while remaining faithful, his partner-in-crime, his second in command, his friend—or something like it.
So Tseng lets the truth of the matter wash over him: the worst sin that Sephiroth committed was taking Reno's life, but only because Tseng believed that life was his. That Reno would put him down or Tseng would lay him out for not being strong enough to do him the honor. No one else was ever supposed to do it. They were supposed to fell each other or not at all.
Whatever emotion was always meant to blossom from the core of that compulsion, it's only ever grown into a hunger, and Sephiroth stole that first taste away from him. Nothing in this world will ever take away what Tseng lost that night, and he is going to raze this entire fucking world to the ground and count the souls until they equal out. Until balance is achieved. Beginning with Reno, because all he has ever wanted is what Sephiroth had, and there are no rules anymore. And now he can have that, over and over and over again, for as long as he likes, as bloody and dark and savage as he needs it to be.
Already, his mouth is filling at the thought. He could take Reno, right now, no one would ever know. He'd never tell. He could push him off this cliff, and maybe Reno would laugh and laugh and laugh as he plummeted, or maybe he would grab Tseng's hand and they'd go down together, but either way, it would be magnificent.
Or better yet, he could bring them back—
"—to that place," Reno says aloud, finishing the thought for him. "I want you to walk me through it."
Tseng's eyes narrow. A smile chews its way across his lips like a flame gnawing at a guttering wick. He uses the hand that he's holding to draw Reno up, to move with him to the very edge of the cliff. Like a pas de deux, he spins Reno toward the endless view of it, arms winding around his hips, laughter rioting in his shoulders even if it never makes it past his lips because he knows Reno will get a kick out of how the tips of his boots hang perilously off the edge.
"Shall we jump?" he asks. His teeth burn crescent imprints into Reno's jaw. The fluttering of his heart, the rush of warmth, the way his arms cannot seem to let Reno go, all of it makes what he is feeling so very simple to define: it is bloodlust, pure and primal, and he's never felt it like this before.
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It's not fake, but it is. It's only fake in the sense that he knows so much better now, but the sentiment is the same. He is really, truly happy to have Tseng back. His family, the only thing he has ever known that's worth knowing. Him, and Rude, and to some extent Rufus—they're everything. To have them granted back to him is the greatest gift he could ever receive, one he doesn't intend to take for granted. That's such a sweet, saccharine thought. He's capable of sweet and saccharine things sometimes, really.
Trouble is, not taking it for granted means a whole fucking lot of trouble.
They sway and Reno does what he wanted to do and puts his arms around Tseng after all. The way he does it, though, is frighteningly impulsive. Sudden and deliberate, as if he'd clapped his hands loudly in front of Tseng's face just to make him flinch, grabbing onto him with a quickness and letting their bodies lean as if to suggest that he's going to answer by throwing them right over the edge without a single word on the matter. But they right themselves and Tseng's lips are against his skin, teeth grazing against bone, and he laughs, eyes stinging and burning. No tears, though. Of course not. This is a happy occasion. He's so, so, so fucking (traumatized, disturbed, enraged, infuriated, twisted, afraid, mutinous, scheming, vengeful, hollow, sickened, hurt, lost) happy. "You wanna take the day off, again?" he jokes, and it's not even the most morbid thing he could say. That was the second of two optional responses. "Spend the night floating?"
That's as close as he'll get to describing what it was like after the end. At least for right now. Instead, his arms gentle only somewhat around Tseng's waist. One arm drops away entirely, and it's only because he's stricken by another impulse to touch his face. To lay his hand right where he had placed it before, yesterday morning, right on his cheek. Right where the handprint that Rude surely saw in the shape of his fingers was, an imprint of bloody, miserable comfort. Reno imitates pressing his fingertips there for the sake of taking himself back to that moment. Right before he plunged his hands wrist deep in Tseng's innards and wrung the last vestiges of life out of him, at his behest.
"We'll get another chance to try it," Reno says in that same low, soft reassuring voice that he used in that room full of blood. It's warm there. You'll be okay.
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His eyes are drifting shut at the memory. For all that he should have suffered, he'd never known peace like it was that night. Even before the Turks, he'd never been offered comfort like that, not with hands smoothing over his face, with voices drawn soft and low and soothing. It wasn't anything that he longed for, not that night and never before, but Reno had offered it as readily as he had a quicker, more merciful end. Reno recalls it now, and just the memory of it lulls him into a place he's always been afraid to go, one where he is too comfortable, too serene, too calm. If they misstepped now and fell, Tseng doesn't even think he would open his eyes.
They're meant to go somewhere. And on top of that, there are duties that take priority over whatever it is that he feels, as if that ever was important anyway. But Reno pets and talks him into a fugue, and it's all that Tseng can do to blindly drift forward, his seeking of Reno turned automatic, instinctive, until their foreheads tip together and gently crash.
"I want all of it again," he murmurs from somewhere far away. A furrow of pain manifests between his brows, because the image in his head is turning the blood coursing through his veins molten in a flash. "I have so many regrets. If I'd come sooner—if you'd arrived sooner— I would have liked to spend those hours with you. It wasn't enough."
He catches Reno's wrist with a rough snatch, drags his fingers to his mouth and kisses the prints on them one by one. If he imagines it, he can almost taste the blood on his hands, and his tongue stabs greedily, searching.
"I want you clawing me apart inside," he says, the point of his canines sinking in when the memory of it is too much to stand. Every breath he takes becomes a low hiss. "I want to press my mouth to yours and swallow your blood until we drown together."
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Wrong. None did. Maybe he just doesn't have a good enough imagination.
"Then let's go back," Reno says, almost sighing the words. He wishes he hadn't washed the blood off so he could leave that mark on Tseng's cheek again, so he could taste it like he should've now. But then he remembers he doesn't have to wish, because whatever prayers he sent up were obviously acknowledged, and they can begin setting fate to rights. Starting with the moments they should've had, here and now, and then down in that diner, and then home, and then at work, and then forever and ever and never again. His fingers curl to press past Tseng's probing tongue, over his bottom lip, down his chin, tracing a wet trail there just like the blood that had run in rivulets from his mouth as he shivered and choked and died. Stricken, suddenly, by the look on Tseng's face, how badly he wants to give him a good fucking reason for it. This kind of emotional pain won't do without something to show for it.
He should know. He saw the picture. If only he could've seen the real thing. An hour or two beforehand he'd sat there on the bathroom floor and told Rude he loved him so fucking much and he does and always has and there's nothing that he feels more strongly than that, but he's not sure now about anything because he obviously didn't know the first fucking thing about what love is. He said that to Rude before he saw that picture. Tseng really put it into perspective for him. Really set that bar high, as he always does. As ever, Reno feels inadequate, because he'll never know how to perfectly express his feelings for another person that way. He's all wrong, a half-crafted thing, out of the freezer and into the frying pan way too soon. But he's good enough for somebody. He's good enough for Rude, and he's good enough for Tseng. His heart hammers against the inside of his chest, thinking about it. He tilts Tseng's chin up but doesn't kiss him, just fixes him with his eyes with their faces so intimately close and then tugs at his waist with his other hand, turning their bodies away from the freefall they both want so much but can't have.
"Let me take you back there. I never even cleaned it up. I took pictures before I left... but we're not gonna need 'em anymore, after today. C'mon, c'mon. Before we gotta tell them where we are." How he can sound so playful and energetic with eyes like that, with energy like that, with promises like what he's offering—it's a special skill. It's just, he's feeling good about giving Tseng what he wishes he'd had when he came back. It'll do them both some good.
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The taxi drops them off at the florist next door, and they take their usual time, checking phones and the scenery while their driver makes off to a safe distance away. The second he is out of sight, Tseng takes a few careful steps toward the back alley, traverses the dark path before them with bated breath, and pauses at the landing beneath the door.
It isn't fear that causes him to hesitate. Tseng isn't sure what it is, as out of touch with those fleeting feelings that crowd his mind as he is with anything that is a total waste of otherwise productive time. Worry, perhaps, that the memory of it won't live up to the too-ethereal image in his head. Reverence for all that has transpired here. And there is a healthy dose of caution, because bullheadedly they are returning to the scene of the crime, which is strictly against protocol, but Tseng finds that he does not mind these flagrant acts of negligence and disorder as much when the compulsion comes from that dark thrill he needs to feed.
He opens the door and flicks on the lights and Sephiroth is not crouched there in the dark, awaiting his moment to ambush them. (It is almost a disappointment.) Instead, all Tseng sees is disarray, instruments scattered, blades glittering on the ground, a table turned over on its side, and blood—so much blood, a veritable sea of it. He's almost stricken speechless by how much of this room is covered in it. Even in their wildest endeavors, it had never been quite like this before, a whole floor painted red, paused at its corners where it was frozen mid-creep.
His hands reach for Reno again, needing warm flesh to sink into, even if he can't pry his eyes away.
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Tseng takes hold of him and Reno guides him in further, one hand at his back, not submitting to being held just yet. Not until they're truly standing in the middle of it, their tracks matching Reno's from the day prior, and Sephiroth's oozing trail along beside it. In retrospect, he shouldn't have upended the table like that. It'd be more perfect if he'd left it the way it was when Sephiroth was on it. But he was so... god, he can't remember. In his heart he knew he wasn't going to find anything good here, but in the moment, crashing into the room and flinging that table out of his way, before he saw just how badly Tseng was wounded, he'd thought, maybe—
Foolish, really.
Once they're center with the madness, Reno finds himself feeling strangely emotionless. It's not like him. He wonders if something is wrong. That's when he turns toward Tseng, finally, and says the only thing he can think of, which is, "I'm glad you didn't let me do it the easy way." Because he needed the fuel for the fire that's been lit in him now. It's only been embers, occasionally roaring up with a stoking wind or when it's prodded at, but it wouldn't have been enough. Now his kerosene is here, and together the two of them are going to build that flame into a roaring inferno, consuming everything around them. This he's absolutely certain of, and it's what brings him out of his temporary lack of feeling. His hand hovers, deciding, and rests on Tseng's stomach. He didn't want to go there back on that cliff, but now he has to. It's not a question. He'll go there if he has to force it there. "Lemme see."
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Tseng hasn't even seen it himself. Not yet. It should have been a higher priority, assessing the damage and taking stock of this new thing that he has to live with inscribed upon his flesh, but it just wasn't. He could turn, maybe, and take that first glimpse for himself. But there is something about gifting that to Reno instead, trusting him to judge it before he ever really sees, that feels right in the culmination of everything he's done.
Tseng removes his jacket and lets it fall to the floor. Careless, but nothing matters more than those eyes upon him. His fingers make quick work of his buttons, top to bottom, and here is where he exercises caution, so that what lies beneath is not exposed until he drags both ends away to reveal it in full.
Perhaps the scar would have been as clean and neat and masterful as Reno's, but more was done to him than that. There was the force of his blood expelling, his palms smothering the wound to keep it all inside. And there was Reno's hands thrusting into him, careful and precise but not enough to escape lending vertical scores to the jagged, obscene mark that spans almost the entire width of his belly. It's that part that takes Tseng's breath away, the little tears where Reno's touches were too much for his flesh to bear, where they were the breaking point under so much pain and pressure.
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But it isn't enough, either. Two examples aren't enough to say you've found a pattern. He'll need more tests run to make absolutely sure before he begins laying down the groundwork for what it is he wants to do. What about TOD? What if the bodies are burned or made inaccessible (he still needs to find out what was done with his)? What about if they aren't wounded, but poisoned or suffocated or drowned, or...?
This is going to take more work. A lot more work.
It almost feels like he's coming-to from some kind of stupor when he reaches out and finally, finally touches Tseng's body. Not directly on his scar, at first, but just above it, his fingers trailing down the smooth skin of his side, then coasting inward to trace along the jagged edges of this unsightly ruination disturbing the otherwise perfect landscape of what was once a familiar body. He's seen it, although never so wholly and deliberately, so gorgeously presented just for him and only him. Reno feels along every inch from side to side, top to bottom, with the pads of his fingers and his thumb, his touch feather-light, his gaze never once leaving that all-important mark. It would've been much cleaner, much more perfect, if he hadn't—for a second he's sorry. Nauseous and guilty, hurt all over again, full of regrets and sadness and pain. Is that the sane or the insane part of his mind at work, actually? The part that wants to pull Tseng in and hold him, comfort him, make things "right" in the way happy, adjusted people feel is "right," by erasing all the horrible things from this world and "moving on, replacing the bad with "happy" memories...
That's the insane part, surely. Because none of that is real, doesn't exist, never did. This world is full of desperate, pathetic people that feel they need to hide from things like this, and Reno can't even say he feels sorry for them. It must be a miserable fucking life, being so blind.
His fingers probe deeper, curling, as if he means to tear Tseng open again right then and there. He could almost do it, the tips of his fingers find a ridge so obvious it's like a zipper-pull. But he doesn't. Instead he finally lifts his eyes to meet Tseng's, the green faded from them like the Mako-purged earth surrounding Midgar, the blue inky like the bottom of the sea. "You haven't suffered enough to call it justice," is his verdict, at last. "And neither have I."
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That they shouldn't is—it's not a non-issue, but it is losing a very bloody battle in his mind. They need to move on, they need to go back to work, he needs to report to Rufus, there's so much that is mandatory and urgent and they are spitting in the face of it all by even coming here. He should not be encouraging this behavior. He also died last night too, which is no excuse for tardiness and never has been, but this is a part of their work now, and Reno is doing such a good job taking inventory that it would hardly be proper to discourage him.
"No," Tseng agrees. He is watching Reno, wondering how long it has been since he has been so bare before anyone. And was there ever a time when he let hands that were not his own roam so freely over his flesh uncontested? How strange it is, that that familiar revulsion is nowhere to be found, how he almost wants to sink into Reno's touch, no matter how cruel it turns. Especially if it becomes sharper, nastier, because maybe then this alien longing will be sated and they can go back to business as usual.
For now, he is captured in the throes of it, and it drives his fingers to stroke through Reno's hair, makes him content to stay locked within the passing of their lightless gazes.
"Do you want to suffer?" he asks, as breathless as anyone would be asking if they're wanted, if they're loved, if they're cherished. He wants to add that he could make it so sweet, that there is no one else in this world who could hurt him like Tseng could, but if Reno does not already know that doubtlessly, then there really is no point.
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There's nothing wrong with the softness here, even if it's not really what it's used to. To touch somebody and not explicitly hurt them isn't wrong, it's just lighting a fuse. Reno tries to smile about it, to be fond and gentle and loving the way people are supposed to be, but even touching his other hand to Tseng's face the way he'd done in that pool of blood over yonder doesn't quite make it that. "I need it," he says, and it's just not a normal sentiment. Something is fucking wrong with him. But this makes the most sense. "I need it to stay focused on what I gotta do."
Surely Tseng can understand that. It puts the gentleness of his touch into context, how the sweeping press of his fingertips right up the center line of Tseng's body and back down again is meant to make him break out in goosebumps, tempting, beckoning, his most carefully-honed skill—an offering, but also a hint at what's going on in that fucked up head of his. What he's gotta do is going to be utter ruination, not just blood and thunder. He takes a half-step back. Just about—yeah, there. One of the blades that fell from the table scrapes on the floor under his shoe and he slides it closer, so that when he's good and ready he can kick it up and into his hand. Not yet, though. He wants the sound of the blade screeching on the ground to be its own sort of herald, because that's what gets the heart pounding. The touch isn't enough all on its own. Of course not, don't be silly. "I'll tell you when you've had enough. Then we get back to work."
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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.
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But that'd ruin it. Instead he draws his thumb along the curve of Tseng's throat, pressing in, gripping at the side of his neck but never pushing quite hard enough to choke. Not enough to make him gag like he had that morning on blood and bile and pain and last words. His heel turns, twisting that knife around, so that all it takes is a hard step on the handle to flick it up into the air. Reno catches it by the blade, between two fingers, and lets it dangle loosely that way the way he'll lazily hold a cigarette sometimes. Not so much as a nick, because of course not. "For me? What is it?"
Their foreheads touch. Where he saw Rude kiss him down in that wine cellar, wondering if he can maybe absorb some of that sweet sentiment but knowing it won't ever reach him.
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For him, it seems slow, methodical, the way he swipes the blade from Reno's grasp at such a precise angle that even the over-eager quick of it doesn't so much as leave him with a scratch. In reality, it's a blur of motion that culminates with Tseng hovering the blade over Reno's throat as he tangles up their legs to get Reno walking farther backwards still. Back, back, until Reno has nowhere to go but bullied up against the wall.
Then, Tseng will start to undress him, to tear down his jacket and rip open his shirt, close just like before, pressed in until their foreheads touch. "Don't trust me?" he asks with a smile that doesn't quite touch the blankness in his eyes.
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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."
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He's also aware, very suddenly, that he's plunged the blade into Reno's chest. It's a short blade, so it does not do much but bury beneath the top layer of his skin. No, the art of it was how slowly each stroke was performed, that careful calligraphy carved out layer by layer by painstaking layer. It is not a blade well-suited for a moment of passionate jealousy, but Tseng can make up for that. Whatever he was thinking before this moment is gone, deleted, erased from existence. He has inspiration now, because that little slip of the hand looks an awful lot like the first stroke of his name if he writes it in the traditional characters.
And Reno will love the rest, all straight lines that he has to go over and over and over again, precise and perfect, his brow furrowed in concentration. He remembers the old lessons, bending for hours over canvases of thin paper as he learned to match the curves of his brush to the work of masters. But that was never anything like this, lines that need to chipped away and carved and cut out, skin that needs to be flicked off his instrument, no more than detritus obscuring his vision.
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YOU CUT ME OPEN AND I