Chapter Text

-1641 (Wednesday)

It rained that day.

How long had it been since he’d seen rain? The real stuff, not the sheets of filthy uppercity runoff that came down between the plates every time it stormed, or the chemically-treated disinfectant sprays that drizzled down onto the slums once a fortnight. Real, wide-open-sky rain, the judgment of the gods cast down upon the small pathetic creatures crawling in the dirt.

He had felt cold for a while, but even that was gone now. When the droplets hit his eyelashes, he didn’t even blink. Dark shapes that may have been roiling storm clouds or the milling silhouettes of curious scavengers drifted across the snot-smear of his vision.

A silvery wisp of thought surfaced: At least I get to die outside.

A few hours ago -- days? weeks? -- even that would’ve seemed like too much to ask for. There’d been men with guns. Dogs. Bloated cloven-hoofed things with eyes that flashed in the dark like a cat’s, rows and rows of yellow, rotted fangs sinking into the soft parts of his arm. 

Sewage water gurgling over purple, mangled flesh. The ripe scent of fermented shit still clung to his nostrils. He was going to get an infection. Would he have to beg off of work tomorrow? Andrea was going to be so pissed...

A darker shape swam into view, blotting out the left side of his vision. Heavy patter of raindrops on vinyl. An umbrella. Not for him. Someone was bending over for a closer look, expensive wool suit, long black hair frizzing from the humidity.

He was reminded, suddenly, of his own nakedness. The dress he’d been wearing had been torn to shreds during his run through the sewers, ripped at by rapacious hands and claws, snagged in brambles of twisted, rusted metal. All his goods out on display. People usually pay good money to see these, y’know. But you’re special, Mister. I’ll let you look as long as you like.

“Yes,” said the dark-haired man. Not to him, to some gray brick phone held to his ear. “Please send a medevac to the edge of Sector Six. Past where the plate ends. And let the director know I’ve picked up something interesting.”

-3 (Wednesday)

Fuck, Reno thought as the elevator hummed to a halt on the 56th floor. I need a vacation.

Just 71.5 hours to go, not that he was counting. Three days until soft white beaches, jet skis, and drunken orgies. He could put up with nearly anything as long as that was on the horizon.

Midgar’s infamously hostile summer weather spared no one, not even those dwelling in the cushy upper-level floors of the Shinra Building. The delicate flowers in upper management simply wilted without their AC, which meant that the system shorted two to three times a week, as executive fuel-hogs competed with R&D over the building’s dedicated electrical grid. This left innocent, unsuspecting departments like, oh, say, General Affairs, and its innocuously-named Investigative Division, feeling like the inside of Ifrit’s armpit. Maintenance kept running box fans and swamp coolers around to ease the suffering, but all it did was make the place sweatier.

In light of that, Reno thought he was putting in a good effort, wearing as much of the Turks uniform as he was today: no tie, no jacket, no belt; shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows and all but two of the buttons undone. If the office ladies wanted to stare at his chest and blush, well, that was all they ever did anyway.

“Sennnnpai!”

Reno braced for impact as he left the elevator. Freyra, one of the department’s recent hires, was bounding over to him, looking like nothing so much as an excited puppy in a necktie. As she reached him, she began to pull off a salute and narrowly held herself back.

“Hey, rookie,” said Reno, without energy but not with any particular antipathy either. On paper everything about Freyra should’ve annoyed him -- rich family, cutesy personality, a competitive streak that put his own to shame -- but in practice he just found it hard to dislike her. Maybe it was all the murder. “What’s shaking?”

Freyra fell into step beside him. “Tseng just gave me my first big solo op!” she enthused.

“Yeah? Good work.” Reno could tell without looking over that she was beaming at this little off-handed bit of praise. “Where they sendin’ ya, Wutai?”

The jab flew right over Freyra’s head. “Oh, I wish!” she said, with a painful amount of earnestness. “It’s just over to the Corel region. Goods retrieval.” 

In Turk parlance, that could mean anything from intercepting a shipment to kidnapping. For her first time in the pilot’s seat, it was probably the former. A nice easy milk run for a baby agent, not that he would tell her that.

Freyra darted a few steps ahead and spun around, walking backwards to face him as they talked. She was sporting a new lapel pin he hadn’t seen before, the emblem of some regional hunting association he supposed she’d been part of back in Mideel. It was her one modification to the standard uniform, which she was somehow wearing completely buttoned up and neatly pressed despite the office’s sauna conditions. “They’re giving me a full security team,” she boasted. “Even support staff!”

“Nice.” That should help keep her out of trouble.

“I’m thinking of requisitioning something with more stopping power from the arsenal. Ooh! What do you think about sniper rifles?”

Reno shrugged. Realistically, to answer that question he’d have to know the details of her assignment, and Freyra wasn’t so green she’d spill that kind of information in a department hallway.

“Why not,” he said finally. The junior agents always exhausted him like this. “Hell, see if you can’t finagle Advanced Weapons into letting you take a few prototypes along while you’re at it.”

Freyra furrowed her neatly-maintained brow. Not even a hint of perspiration. Amazing. Maybe she had sealed all her pores shut or something. “You really think they’d let me...?” 

For fuck’s sake. “Freyra, you’re a Turk. If you want a fancy toy, tell ‘em you want a fancy toy.”

She continued to look unconvinced. “And I just fill out the requisition form like normal?”

“Nah, it’s an interdepartmental request… thing. They’ll have it at the desk. Look, it’s field-testing. Scarlet’ll want you to have it.”

They reached the edge of the bullpen and he turned to wave her off. If he went in with a rookie hovering like this, the others would get the same idea and all start mobbing him at once. “Go on, go find yourself a nice rail gun or something,” he said. “I gotta check in with the big guy.”

At this, the spring returned to Freyra’s step and she bounced in place for a moment, a knowing quality to her look that Reno decidedly didn’t like. “All right, senpai,” she said, giving him one final glance before she disappeared down the hallway from which they had come.

“Sheesh…” Reno lifted a hand to run a few fingers through his hair, stopped, thought better of it. He was enough of a soggy trainwreck without messing up the small bit of product that hadn’t yet melted out of his hair. Reno stuck the hand in a pocket instead and resumed slouching in the direction of his desk.

The bullpen was a recent renovation, the result of the department’s hiring surge coming into sudden and violent conflict with Shinra Company’s tone-deaf corporate culture, which insisted open offices ‘promoted collaboration’ and ‘cut down on employee idleness.’ Reno missed the illusion of privacy afforded by his old office -- not to mention his old couch; they’d had some good times together -- but the upshot was this place had real fucking windows and it didn’t get nearly as stuffy. Most times of the year, anyway.

Reno dropped into his chair with a dramatic exhale, putting his boots up on the corner of a low filing cabinet. After a moment, he craned his neck to get a glimpse of the shiny head on the other side of the computer monitor.

“Mornin’.”

“Hm,” Rude answered, without looking up. He was typing, the glow off his screen dancing over bare, glistening forearms. Even he wasn’t managing the full uniform in this heat.

“Whatcha got there?”

“AAR from the Sector Five op.” Rude hit the return key a couple times, each stroke spaced out like its own punctuation. “Already filed yours.”

Reno started. “You didn’t hafta do that,” he protested, dropping his feet down onto the tile again. “I was gonna get to it today.”

Rude shrugged and kept typing. Compared with when they first became partners, Reno was pretty reliable about doing his own paperwork these days, provided no one asked too much of him (like that it would be on time, or properly formatted, or spellchecked). If Rude was taking over, it was usually because he couldn’t trust Reno to time-manage, or he was just being weirdly passive-aggressive about something.

Rude in a bad mood was going to make this shitty day so much worse. “C’mon, partner,” Reno said. “Lemme finish yours, then we’ll be squared up.”

“Almost done,” Rude said, by way of shooting down that proposal.

Reno slouched back miserably. Maybe it was fine, maybe Rude was just being anal about the state of their inbox. Nothing to worry about.

He checked the time: 9:18am. Reno sank further into his chair and pouted scowled at the ceiling, pulling at his shirt for airflow.

In the gap between their monitors and the desk, Rude could probably get a good glimpse of his partner’s chest as Reno fanned himself; smooth pale skin, a periodic flash of nipple. He grinned to himself when he heard a hitch in Rude’s typing. But it only lasted for a moment before the patter of keys resumed, and without so much as an awkward throat-clearing.

Reno let out another sigh and dropped his hand.

He didn’t know what he expected. More than two years as partners, and not once had Rude taken any initiative in this weird mating ritual thing of theirs. Sure, they’d fooled around a little -- a drunken blowjob here or there, a bit of adrenaline-charged necking in the back of a helicopter -- but every Monday morning Rude was back to business as usual, collar starched, tie on straight, like none of it had ever happened.

It wasn’t like Reno needed a lover. Turks worked better without attachments; he’d seen enough of Rude’s relationships fail to drive that lesson home. But it’d be nice to occasionally get some confirmation that they were actually mutually into each other, rather than one of them just being along for the ride.

Was it the tits? Reno thought he looked better this way -- lighter, streamlined -- but at the end of the day Rude was probably like any other hot-blooded male and lost interest as soon as the fun bags went away. Which sucked, but if Rude couldn’t see the appeal in Reno’s new-and-improved body, that was his problem.

Still…

Absently, Reno rubbed at his jaw, the little rough spot of bone that jutted out just a hair too far. His thoughts wandered to that bit of extra skin near his elbow he just couldn’t seem to get rid of; the knobby way his ribs stood out against his chest; his too-thin lips. If he took care of those too, maybe--

“Yo, what about those expense reports?” he asked, deciding that was one deep well of insecurity he couldn’t risk falling into today.

“Finished,” said Rude.

“Timesheets?”

“Already with payroll,” said Rude.

“The TI-138s?” That was the ‘lost and damaged equipment’ form, a favorite around the Turks bullpen. Reno didn’t break as many of his special-issue truncheons as he used to, but the damned things still snapped like twigs when you beat dickbags over the head with them.

“Filed.”

Reno scrounged around the bottom of the mental barrel he reserved for office bullshit. “The… affidavit for that one lawsuit thing?” he asked. Turks were mostly indemnified from charges brought by the shambling corpse of Midgar’s old legal system, but every now and then some rich asshole tried to bring a civil suit.

“‘Wrongful death’ case,” Rude confirmed. “Signed and submitted.”

It occurred to Reno, much later than it should have, just what Rude was doing. He stood up.

“Son of a bitch,” he said. “You’re trying to clear my slate before next week, aren’t you?”

On the other side of their pushed-together desks, Rude finally stopped typing and leaned back in his chair, adjusting his sunglasses.

“Don’t know what you mean,” he said, with a poker face that was good but not perfect.

“Damn it, Rude!” This was worse than his partner going all pass-agg and weird on him; he was being nice again. “I said I was gonna get to it!”

“Just thought I’d take care of the small stuff for you,” Rude said. “Nothing too important.”

“You forged my fucking signature!” Never mind that they had both been doing that for each other for years now, and for far more important things than court filings. Bar tabs, for instance. “I got some pride, yanno; how d’you think it makes me feel, having a partner who runs around acting like my secretary all the time?”

“It’s not ‘all the time’--”

(“Ask him.”

“No, you ask him! He’ll kill me!”)

“Give me your report on the Ancient girl,” Reno insisted. “I’m gonna finish it.”

(“It was your question, not mine.”

“He likes you better!”

“Not that much.”)

Rude looked helplessly at his computer screen. “It’s only got two lines left.”

“Then fucking gimme your share of the kids’ performance evals too!”

(“You’re all being ridiculous. Look, I’ll ask him.”

“Emma, wait, no!”)

“Excuse me, senpai,” a crisp voice spoke up. “I had a question on behalf of one of my colleagues.”

Reno looked around. Then down. Emma was standing uncomfortably close to his shoulder, arms folded behind her, weight balanced evenly on her sensible shoes. Like Freyra, she didn’t appear at all affected by the heat of the bullpen, although she’d switched her regulation slacks out for the still-technically-regulation but rarely-seen pencil skirt.

“Uh,” Reno managed. “What’s up, sis?”

“Some of the… boys were curious about your service history,” Emma said, the only hint to her disdain coming through in a slight pause and a narrowing of her eyes. Behind her, Reno spotted a small huddle of her fellow rookies, looking like sheepish raccoons caught raiding the pantry. “As you know, I am a graduate of the Shinra Military School; Mister Maur is a former detective; Rude-senpai was a professional boxer…”

And former masked wrestler, although Reno didn’t volunteer that piece of trivia. Rude wouldn’t have appreciated it.

“...so some of us wished to know what you did prior to swearing with the Turks, Reno-senpai, sir.”

Reno made the kind of face usually reserved for a mouthful of sour milk. He knew exactly which one of the junior agents had been making inquiries into that. Behind Emma, he caught sight of Ruluf’s asymmetrical dark hair as he started beating a hasty retreat back to his own desk.

“Yeah, word of advice, don’t ask that kinda question around here,” Reno said, loud enough to ensure Ruluf heard, along with the rest of the bullpen. “You’re Turks now, get it? Doesn’t matter what any of us did before.”

Even Emma seemed unhappy with that answer, little encyclopedia that she was. Everything she’d just mentioned was technically classified information, the company having done its best to scrub all public records of an agent’s existence once they swore up. It wasn’t always possible to completely erase a Turk’s past -- Rude was a good example there, although given a few years even he would fade from Wall Market’s collective memory -- but it was gauche as fuck to ask about if you weren’t at least three drinks in or short a couple pints of blood.

“My apologies, senpai,” Emma said curtly. “I meant no offense.”

“I bet,” Reno said, with only a little venom.

She delivered a razor-sharp military salute of the type Freyra had narrowly refrained from earlier. “I’ll leave you to your work, sir.”

Reno clicked his tongue as she departed. He watched as she headed straight back to the remaining couple of Turks who hadn’t had the presence of mind to flee when Ruluf did -- one of them was Alvis, the dumbshit redhead who absolutely did not look a thing like Reno -- and corralled them back toward their desks, her voice low and reproving.

“Kids these days,” Reno muttered, dropping back into his chair. 

Beside him, Rude grunted in agreement.

“I keep tellin’ ‘em to cut it out with the ‘senpai’ shit. We never did that.” It would’ve been weirder if they had, given how their partnership had started off. But also Reno would swear all these Wutaian words hadn’t been so popular before the ceasefire.

“You love it. Admit it,” Rude said, with a trace of fondness anyone else would’ve missed.

Reno felt a stubborn warmth spreading across his cheeks and huffed. “Shut up.”

At the other end of the bullpen, the door to Tseng’s office opened. The deputy director stuck his head out, glossy black hair drawn back in that severe ponytail he was sporting these days.

“Rude. Reno,” he said. “Conference room.”

The conference room had the benefit of being fractionally colder than the bullpen, which was nice. With the blinds drawn and the lights dim, it made a pretty good napping spot during slow days, not that there were many of those lately.

When Rude and Reno arrived, Tseng was already there, pacing in front of the blank white board at the far end of the room. And he wasn’t alone.

“Uh. Sir,” Reno said, inclining his head toward Director Veld. Hierarchical bullshit had never come naturally to Reno, but he’d had a few years to learn to appreciate just how much power the director exerted within the company.

At the moment, however, Veld was hanging out near the back wall, arms folded, his already deeply-lined face creased with concern. He didn’t react when Reno addressed him.

“Take a seat,” Tseng said.

That nudged Veld out of his statue impersonation. “Lock the door first,” he rumbled.

Rude complied, then dropped into the stiff faux-leather chair next to Reno’s.

“First order of business,” said Tseng, halting his pacing finally to step forward, both hands braced on the edge of the conference table. “Reno, your PTO has been canceled.”

Reno sputtered. “The hell? You can’t do that. You already approved it.”

“And the director has reverted my approval.”

“What the fuck!”

“Reno,” Tseng cautioned.

“What the fuck, sir!” Beneath the table, Reno felt the toe of Rude’s boot touch the side of his foot, a quiet little warning he had no intention of heeding. “You guys are always telling me to take some R&R. I’ve been planning this shit for six months, got the hotel booked and everything.”

“Don’t misunderstand. You’ll still be going to del Sol next week.” Tseng tipped his head. “Think of it as a ‘working vacation.’”

“How about I don’t think of it like that and you let me go on my actual vacation in peace?”

Veld abruptly detached himself from the far wall, drawing focus with a single clearing of his throat. “We’re in need of two experienced agents for this operation. It’s too complex to send a rookie.”

“If it’s that big a deal, why not send the old guy?” Of the senior Turks still on the employment roster, the so-called ‘Legend’ was the only one not currently hospitalized or MIA. Plus, he already lived in del Sol, which should make him a gimme.

“He’s refused reactivation,” said Veld, like this was a normal-ass thing a Turk could just go and do. “Furthermore, I don’t believe he possesses the… specific skills necessary for the operation.” He reached Tseng beside the desk and half turned, deferring to him again.

Tseng dutifully picked up where the director left off. “We’ve received intel on a probable Ancient artifact that will be passing through Costa del Sol in eight days’ time. As you’re aware, the president has a vested interest in collecting materials related to the Ancients.”

“So just march some guys in and seize it,” said Reno. “What’s the big deal?” Costa del Sol was technically an independent province, but nobody that did business with Shinra Company was really independent anymore.

“For a variety of reasons, forceful procurement is not on the table for this one. It’s a politically delicate situation; several of the players have the private financial resources to, if not mount a serious threat, at least rattle sabers in a way the company would find inconvenient at this moment in time.”

In other words, with Shinra Company in peace-and-love mode following the treaty with Wutai, it couldn’t afford to be caught bullying some small-time billionaire over a museum piece. So the Investigative Division was getting called in for ‘plausible deniability.’

Reno let out a low groan as he slouched back in his chair.

“Sirs,” Rude said beside him. “Why two agents?”

“That comes down to the nature of the infiltration,” said Veld. “Our understanding is that the artifact will be changing hands at a private auction held next Wednesday at the Soluna Grand Hotel. We’ve managed to intercept an invite, but it’s addressed to two individuals.”

Reno snorted. “So what, you’re sending us undercover as a married couple?”

This was a bit of a running gag in the department. Reno had proposed it at virtually every mission briefing since he and Rude had been paired up more than two years ago, mainly just to see the kind of reaction he could get out of his partner -- and once Rude had gotten used to it, the exasperation he could wring out of Tseng.

Like right now. “For the last time, Reno--”

“No,” Veld interrupted. He stroked a hand over his chin. “That might actually work in this case.”

“Sir,” Tseng protested. “Please don’t humor him.”

“I don’t believe I’m known for my sense of humor, Tseng.”

Reno found that his mouth had fallen open and clicked it shut. He blinked. The air in the room suddenly felt several degrees hotter than the bullpen.

“Uh… I was just…” he fumbled. He was aware of Rude going very, very still beside him, and considering how he held himself usually, it was like seeing a person freeze down to the molecular level. “I didn’t mean…”

“The invitation is addressed to a ‘Ceci Magdalene Toast and member of their household,’” Veld continued, ignoring the wave of visceral discomfort coming off his agents. “The Toasts are an excluded branch of the Shinra family, which we assume is why they received the invitation: Ceci would have reasons to buy the artifact which extend beyond a simple collector’s interest.”

Rude asked the obvious question, probably sensing that Reno’s brain and mouth weren’t on speaking terms just then: “Why not just sell it to the president directly?” 

“Personal dislike for the company, perhaps, but most likely the seller believes the right private buyers would be able to outbid whatever the president might offer.”

That made no sense for a company with more money than the gods, but fine. Maybe the guy really did just hate Shinra Company that much. So if they couldn’t obtain the artifact legitimately, and storming in and stealing it was out of the question, that left… more Turklike solutions.

“So you want me to go as some fancy rich bitch,” Reno concluded, “buy the Ancient rock, and bring Rude along as my husband.”

“Doesn’t have to be husband,” Tseng said, with a ghost of a smirk he would deny ever existed. “We could say he’s your boyfriend, paramour, fiance…”

“Adoptive brother. Fraternal twin,” Veld proposed, like he was extending an olive branch. “I leave the details to your discretion. The Toasts are not themselves regular participants in the art world and no one attending the auction will know what Ceci looks like, nor have any idea about their personal affairs. Furthermore, because the Toasts are an excluded branch family, no one will assume you are acting on the president’s behalf. If anything, it will be presumed everyone at the auction is in one way or another his political opponent.”

Tseng said, “You’re also permitted to secure the artifact by other means, if you can do so without casting suspicion on the company. Afterward, the artifact will be passed onto our naval forces who will arrange for the rest of its transport. We anticipate you’ll be in the field no more than five days. Factor in three days of prep time here in Midgar, and another day for cleanup, and you’ll be back at your desk hardly any later than you would have anyway.” This time he did let the smile show plainly, just the meanest little upward curl of his lips as he savored the look on Reno’s face.

Reno rocked back in the uncomfortable conference chair and seethed at the ceiling. More than Tseng, more than Veld, the thing he resented most about this situation was his own fucking brain. He was already seeing how it all fit together, the little moving parts, how to turn this pitch into an actual, functional plan.

“I got two questions,” he said finally.

“Very well,” Veld allowed.

“One: what’s the spending limit for this thing?”

There was a brief pause, as Tseng backed off from the conference table and exchanged a pregnant look with the director. Then he said, “The president has authorized considerable funds toward the artifact’s acquisition.”

That was management-speak for ‘we don’t care, as long as you don’t invoice something you can’t justify.’ And there was always a way to justify it. Reno nodded.

“Question two,” he said. “How do you guys feel about outside consultants?”

-2 (Thursday)

“I never imagined I would hear from you again,” said Andrea Rhodea as he watched from an appreciative distance, knuckles tracing his jawline. “You’re lucky that I had a last-minute cancellation today, or I might have missed your call. I don’t often accept invitations from Shinra, you know.”

“You’re pretty happy to take money from its employees,” said Reno. Then he clenched his teeth as the tailor lifted and repositioned his arm without warning again, little white tape measure going everywhere. If Reno felt lucky about anything, it was that he’d remembered to shave that morning. “Whatcha got now, like five clubs?”

“Four. I sold the Good Luck to a dear friend of mine. Hated to part with it, but the Honeybee Inn really is taking up so much of my time these days.” Andrea’s dark eyes narrowed as they scanned up and down Reno’s body. “That was one of your old haunts, if I remember correctly.”

Ugh. The sense-memory of stale beer and sticky floors came back to Reno. He’d been a top earner there for three months in a row, before he’d smashed a glass in a customer’s face and even Andrea couldn’t persuade the manager to keep him.

Come to think of it, that was how he’d gotten onto Chocobo Sam’s radar too. Reno could still recall the bristly red-lipped smile as Sam told him that Don Corneo ‘likes girls who bite.’

“Are you cold, sweetheart?” the tailor asked near his shoulder, seeing the goosebumps going up along his skin.

“No, but if you call me that again I’m gonna jam that little pencil straight into your eye,” Reno snapped. “Why don’t you shut up and quit sticking that thing in my pits?”

Andrea chuckled, a deep, silken sound like chocolate or whiskey or whatever food his legions of admirers liked to compare it to. “Remind me what I should be calling you these days?”

“It’s Reno now.”

“‘Reno,’” Andrea repeated, like he was appreciating something rare and delicate on his tongue. “What a luxurious name. It fits you. I think an asymmetrical look,” he added to the hair stylist setting up near the vanity mirrors. Veld had agreed to let Reno commandeer the (gloriously air-conditioned) green room the executives sometimes used before TV appearances, on the promise that Scarlet never found out about it. “Perhaps a loose perm, something with volume. Effortless, beachy, chic.”

Well, that sucked. Reno might’ve expected Andrea to say no to his usual gelled look, but dammit, he looked small with his hair down. Rude was just gonna tower over him now.

“What about the red?” the stylist asked, mirroring Andrea’s squint but with far less subtlety.

“We’re not changing the color,” Reno said at once.

Andrea tipped his hand, conceding. “We’ll keep the red. However, let’s touch it up before we do any styling. I’d never forgive myself if ‘Ceci Magdalene Toast’ appeared at a Costa del Sol social event with dark roots.”

The joke there was, well, who knew what Ceci Magdalene Toast would do in any situation, social or otherwise? There had been precious little in the Toasts’ dossier: well-off, reclusive, on the outs with the main Shinra family since several generations before the president’s rise to power. They didn’t do public events or charity, and though they kept a decently-sized estate in Sector 3 they normally lived out of a large country mansion near Kalm, the type rich people obnoxiously referred to as a ‘cozy little cottage’ despite having two stables and a full-time kitchen staff.

Of Ceci themself, there was even less information. Late 20s, heir to whatever constituted the Toast family fortune, a bit of a painter, and a hobby-breeder of Mideel dwarf chocobos -- which were about the size of a small dog and had long, luxuriant feathers, like shih tzus with beaks. The only photo of Ceci included in the file was of a pudgy three-year-old in a long, genderless white shift and thick blond curls. Reno had accidentally imagined newly-minted VP Rufus Shinra in the getup and had needed to leave the bullpen for some air because the laughter was making him dizzy.

Back in the present, Reno jumped; the tailor had moved on from measuring his arms to his chest, the long slender measuring tape skittering ticklishly down his ribs. Reno bent an arm to grab the man by his shitty fake hair piece and narrowly restrained himself.

Andrea saw it, of course. He hummed to himself, stroking his bottom lip with the corner of his thumb as he circled Reno on the little raised platform.

“So much work you’ve put into yourself these last few years. Beautiful,” he said, and despite himself Reno did feel a small tug of pride at the compliment. If anyone could appreciate good craftsmanship, it was Andrea Rhodea. “You know that it broke my heart when I heard you’d been taken. So much promise, snatched from us in an instant.”

He said that, but last Reno had heard, Andrea was on his way to earning a seat in Don Corneo’s private box at the coliseum. Another petty lord of Wall Market, farming bridal candidates for the don. Reno wondered how many of Andrea’s ‘promising’ young dancers and hostesses would win a one-way trip into the fetid bowels of Corneo’s mansion.

There was no use dwelling on it. Reno and Rude had tried taking down the don over two years ago and had fucked it up so royally, it was amazing they hadn’t gotten liquidated over it. The only good thing to come out of that time was some hot and heavy making out with his partner, and even that hadn’t gone anywhere.

Andrea stepped up onto the platform beside Reno, slipping an arm around his waist with such confidence and ease that Reno forgot to flinch. “The life of a professional killer would seem to suit you,” he purred close to his ear, “but show me that artist again, the sensual grace I know I taught you.”

And then, before Reno could scoff or argue, Andrea was taking his hand, guiding him into a spin. He moved, and Reno moved with him. It came naturally, old muscle memories unlocking with each step and twist and bend, fluid and easy, some hardwired reflex anticipating how Andrea would lead him before he did it.

Andrea lowered him into a dip, Reno’s balance held literally in his hands as he dangled off the edge of the low platform. His head tipped back, throat exposed while Andrea ran light fingers from his clavicle down the opened front of his shirt, over the ghost of his chest scar, to the hollow of his belly button and the little metal stud there.

“Magnificent,” Andrea murmured, like they were the only two people in the room, and fuck, Reno could understand why clients creamed themselves just hearing this guy talk. “Are you sure I can’t persuade you to come back and dance for me?”

Reno forced out a laugh. “Sorry. Turking’s a lifetime appointment.”

“Is that so? More’s the pity.”

There was a soft sound, the swish of the green room door sliding open and closed. Reno, still hanging halfway off the platform, saw a pair of dark boots coming around the corner of the privacy wall and felt his heart stutter.

“Am I interrupting?” Rude asked, in that careful, dispassionate tone of his.

Reno fought past the blinded-prey-animal paralysis and squirmed to right himself. Andrea, to his credit, responded smoothly and straightened up, seeing to it that Reno was all the way back on his feet before relaxing his grip. He kept an arm wrapped loosely around Reno’s waist, hand resting at his hip.

“Not at all,” Andrea said mildly, back to his normal levels of seductive. “Rudolfo, yes? Jules asked me to pass along his regards.”

Reno, faced with either hopping off the platform or possibly exploding, chose to peel out of Andrea’s embrace and onto solid floor again.

“Heeey, partner!” he said, smoothing down the front of his shirt but hesitating on fixing the buttons, like it would be an admission of guilt or something. The tailor was already sweeping in with his tape measure and little notebook again. “Y’know it’s bad luck to see each other before the wedding.”

If Rude batted an eye, there was no way to tell. “You want me to ignore you for the next two days?” he asked.

“Wh -- No, I was just -- Would you take that outside?” Reno pleaded finally, indicating the takeaway bag Rude held tucked against his chest like a sports ball. “I’m not gonna eat lunch in the same place Heidegger gets his beard groomed.”

Rude shifted his weight on his feet like he was ready to comply, but his gaze drifted back to Andrea, who was observing them both now with interest. Reno didn’t know how much Rude knew about his time in Wall Market -- hopefully, very little -- but he had to know enough about Andrea Rhodea not to take what he’d just seen seriously.

And even if it had been real, what could Rude say about it? He’d had a million chances to make a claim on Reno and he hadn’t gone for it once.

“It’s fine, okay?” Reno insisted, when Rude didn’t budge. “We’re almost ready to break. Probably.” He kicked a leg when the tailor’s hands got too close to his inseam. “Just go wait outside, will ya? You’re making this weird.”

Something passed over Rude’s expression that looked an awful lot like a wince.

“Hurry before it gets cold,” he said finally, throwing one last glance toward Andrea before he excused himself.

The door had barely shut before Andrea was drifting over again, a devilish sparkle in his eyes.

“So,” Andrea said, all his careful poise unable to hide the underlying glee of a teenage gossip. “When did this start?”

“Shut up,” said Reno. And then, on the remote chance it would successfully derail him, “You signed the fucking NDA.”

“Oh, I’d never tell a soul.” And maybe that was true, insofar as Shinra’s NDAs came with some pretty lethal terms. “But to think. Corneo’s old prize fighter and ‘the bride who got away’...”

Reno flared his nostrils, bunching his hand into a fist. “If you were anyone else, you old queen--”

Self-preservation instinct kicking in, Andrea declined to finish his thought and offered a polite smile instead, backing subtly out of arm’s reach.

“It’s not my business, of course,” he said. “I’m only here to make you lovely. The rest is up to you.”

-1 (Friday)

Three days wasn’t actually a lot of time to prep a fake identity, even going off a sparse profile like Ceci’s. Reno knew the broad gestural strokes he had to follow -- any spy worth their paycheck knew how to wear a tux, how to navigate a fancy party, how to bullshit their way through a conversation -- but filling in the details was killing him.

The art thing was a good example. Ceci’s dossier said they were an artist, but it had no examples of the kind of art Ceci made, what styles they painted in, the whitebeards they studied under. A database search turned up the names of several local galleries and a one-paragraph mention in the Kalm Daily News about ‘tender domestic portraits,’ so Reno could at least extrapolate on the paintings’ contents, if anybody asked. Would anybody ask? Probably not; the people at these parties all wanted to listen to themselves talk way more than they wanted to hear about someone else. But the last time Reno skimped on the hobbies part of a cover story he got a target prematurely murdered and a two-week suspension, so best to do this by the book. He never wanted to hear Tseng utter the word ‘unprofessional’ again.

Then there was the matter of Rude’s cover. Tseng had vetoed the siblings angle pretty much immediately, saying Rude and Reno could never pull it off. He was probably right, unfortunately, but that meant spending their last prep day working out how to sell the whole ‘couple’ thing.

“Come on,” Reno said, almost shouting when Rude bumped his foot for the fifth time. “It’s a stupid basic two-step dance; any greasefaced teenager knows how to do this!”

“Sorry,” Rude muttered, avoiding his partner’s gaze in a way that made Reno desperately want to kick him in the shins. He held his hands aloft like something was physically preventing him from touching Reno’s waist whenever the music stopped playing. “Just can’t get the rhythm down.”

“Bullshit, it’s not the rhythm. Emma! Get over here for a sec.”

Emma, who had been seated quietly and staring at a book when not managing the boombox, rose dutifully from her chair. She crossed the training room to them.

“Yes, senpai?” she asked, stopping to stand at military ease.

“Just say ‘sir,’ will ya?”

Emma’s eyes flicked up and down her superior’s current outfit, lips poised like she was about to argue that her word was unisex, whereas Reno’s attire did not remotely cue ‘sir.’ To be fair, it didn’t especially cue ‘ma’am’ either; for all that Andrea rambled on about high-handed gender theory shit, if you gave him a note like ‘androgynous’ he sure could build a great wardrobe around it.

Being one of the department’s smarter new hires, Emma managed to hold off comment entirely. Instead, she prompted, “What can I do for you, sir?”

“Trade places with me,” said Reno, and rolled his eyes when both Emma and Rude had the gall to look startled. “It’s one set! I’m trying to prove a point here.”

He backed up, waiting for Emma to switch whatever mental gears she needed to adjust before shaking her hair back and stepping neatly into Reno’s old place, hands up and ready to place them on Rude’s shoulders. Rude cleared his throat -- twice -- and started haltingly bringing his hands to her waist, arms twitching like she might electrocute him on contact.

How a guy who had dated so much could be this bad around people, Reno had no idea. You’d think a couple years in this job would burn the gentleman out of anyone. But here Rude was, acting like a virgin going to his first social. 

Reno ran the boombox and watched the dance unfold. It wasn’t especially complex, just the sort of bare minimum polite-society-ing a Turk would be expected to know in an undercover situation or a mandatory appearance at the office solstice party. If they’d really had prep time, Reno would have insisted on practicing something more complex -- maybe something like he’d done with Andrea yesterday -- but as it was he’d settle for just curing Rude’s two-left-feet problem.

“Okay! Stop!” Reno punched a button on the ancient plastic boombox and headed back over to Rude and Emma, who detached from each other as soon as it was appropriate. “Look at that, not a single mistake. So mind saying what the real problem is, partner?”

“It’s just different,” Rude said, with obvious reluctance. Reno briefly missed rookie Rude before the sunglasses, when he couldn’t poker face his way out of a conversation to save his life. “I get distracted.”

“All right, so what the fuck is so distracting?”

“You’re--” Rude fidgeted, gesturing helplessly at Reno’s everything. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Try me.”

“Send Emma out first.”

That took Reno aback. Getting Rude to be candid about anything was like pulling teeth -- a practice actually not recommended in the Turk training manuals, because it took a lot of upper body strength and made interrogation subjects harder to understand -- so having him admit that something he was about to say was not for a rookie’s tender ears was pretty wild. Unprecedented, actually.

Reno looked over to where Emma had slunk off to studiously pretend to read again. “Hey, sis. Take five, will ya?”

She didn’t need telling twice. But she did look back over her shoulder as she retreated to the locker room, appraising, like she had an insight into Rude’s thinking that Reno didn’t and knew roughly what the fallout from this was going to be.

When the door was completely shut behind her, Rude cleared his throat again. He adjusted his shades, keeping his gaze fixed on the training room tile.

“I know what you’re trying to do,” he said, quiet and deliberate. “If you’re that pent up, you oughta just ask.”

“You think I’m--?” Now that would be a hell of a long con, making the same stupid joke for two years on the off-chance that one day Veld would say yes. What a cunning plan to seduce his coworker. “I don’t wanna play fucking honeymooners with you, man!”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“Bullshit, you know what I’m about. And obviously you aren’t into it. Guess that’s what I get for chopping my tits off, huh?”

Rude blanched. “I didn’t mean--”

“It’s fine, I get it!” Reno yelled, hating the burning sensation building behind his eyes. “But would you stop being a fucking child and just do your job already?”

He didn’t know at what point Rude got him against a wall, when he closed the distance between them. Suddenly Reno was boxed in, one powerful arm braced right beside his ear, Rude just looming over him, a solid wall of muscle and rich cologne and the earthy scent of those imported cigarettes he liked to smoke after his shifts.

“I am doing my job,” Rude said, in a quiet, lethal half-murmur that Reno felt more than heard. At this distance, he could see past the dark glasses of Rude’s shades to the faint shapes of his eyes darting back and forth, scanning Reno’s expression like he was waiting for him to toss up a last-minute white flag. “If I wasn’t, you’d know.”

He was right about that, at least. There was absolutely nothing professional about the way Rude closed the remaining distance between them a moment later, the way he crushed their mouths together in a deep, possessive kiss like he was trying to swallow up every sound and ounce of breath Reno had. There was nothing joblike in how Rude grabbed Reno harshly by the arm to hold him up when his knees started to buckle, or how he wedged a thigh between Reno’s legs.

There was something a little bit gentlemanly about the way he finally eased up to let his partner breathe, but the huff of amusement seeing Reno dizzy and flushed undercut it a little. Rude brushed a few strands of loosely permed curls from the corner of Reno’s mouth.

“That clear things up for you?” he asked.

“No. What the fuck?” Reno exclaimed, still breathless and annoyed about it. “You can’t just pull something like this right before a mission! What the hell am I ‘sposed to do about it?” Apparently he’d been so off-base on Rude he’d practically been playing on a different field. 

Rude shrugged, already extracting himself and smoothing down the front of his jacket, satisfied he had made his point. “Try to stay professional,” he suggested, with a half-smirk that bordered on cruel.

“I’d like you to professionally get on your knees and--”

There was a fastidious knock from the locker room door, the sound of the world’s fastest five minute break coming to an end.

Reno growled, hitching and adjusting his drapey robes into some semblance of decency. Fine. If that was how it was going to be, he’d show Rude he could give as good as he got.

“Hey, Emma,” he said as the junior Turk popped her blonde head in. “Rude was just saying we oughta try a tango.”

His partner’s eyebrows shot up toward what would be his hairline. He looked between Reno and Emma, like he was hoping at least one of them would call the prank. But Emma simply nodded and went to change the tracks on the boombox.

“You wanna play this game on hard mode, buddy?” Reno said to Rude, low enough for just the two of them to hear, as the violin intro picked up and he slithered an arm up over his partner’s shoulder. “I can outlast you no problem.”

Scowling, Rude hooked a hand around Reno’s waist, squeezing a lot tighter than he strictly needed to. They’d never practiced this one with each other, but it was still part of Turk training, albeit more of an advanced module. Reno had even studied both roles, on the off-chance Rude felt like doing it backwards and in heels.

“This isn’t how I wanted this to go,” Rude muttered, less like a confession and more like he was making a complaint to management. He took his partner’s right hand in his left, lacing their fingers together so snugly Reno could feel his knuckles creak.

“Too bad, so sad,” Reno said. He leaned up to press a lingering kiss along Rude’s jaw, letting his lips trail down a line in his throat as Rude led them into the first movement. “Enjoy your fucking blue balls, partner.”

Although truth be told, Reno wasn’t sure how he was going to survive these next few days now either.