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Until Rude came to work with a row of rings in his ear, Reno had rarely given his partner's appearance much thought.
Rude's essential deal as Reno knew it: fists, effective assignment completion, a nice pair of sunglasses, and on his more indulgent days, maybe a starched shirt. But these new things were purely decorative, a word that Reno had never associated with his partner. He was curious, and anything about Rude that he didn't know or understand fascinated him.
Generally he didn't think about what Rude looked like, not even when they started fucking. A situation that was also not that eventful, just a better part of their lives, something to look forward to on days when even the job started to feel old. Maybe even started to feel...empty. Or the way it made Reno feel empty. Sometimes. He tried not to think about it much. Fucking Rude was a great distraction, not something they necessarily shared with the entire world (too many assumptions, too complicated for other people to deal with, even though it wasn't complicated for them).
Most human beings desired other people for a reason -- lust, sentiment, even desperation. It wasn't like that between them. It was just there, available, and it was good. Really fucking good.
So the day when Rude showed up with a row of silver rings in his ear, curiosity clamped down on Reno's mind like a bear trap. He knew he shouldn't ask, but if Reno had any fatal flaws, curiosity tended to be one of them.
"I was drunk," Rude had shrugged at the question. Reno had just rolled his eyes.
"How mysterious," he monotoned. "It gives you such a je ne se qua."
Rude didn't have to frown at him; instead he just looked dismissive. Reno raised an eyebrow, but didn't say anything else. What the hell. Oh well, he had better things to worry about.
But once he started thinking about it, he couldn't stop. Rude...who else wanted to fuck him? Who else had he fucked amongst their diligent Shinra co-workers? The only things that had ever mattered to Reno in his choice of partners: clean (in the purely chemical sense of the word) and willing. At least, that was, when Reno felt like fucking; it had never been too much of an event. Of course, one had to be a little more careful at Shinra, lest the political swarm drag you down and drown you; hence why "discreet" got added to the list. And Rude was all of those things. Reno didn't fuck for desire's sake; he did it because he needed to, just like everyone else with a pulse. It was an added bonus that it felt good, and that he liked the sound of Rude's voice.
On the other hand, he certainly wasn't oblivious when it came to the pretty people and the not-so-pretty people. If you didn't have a twisted-up mess of a face in the slums, well, you got some attention. And he had gotten a fair amount of attention himself; perhaps not as much as a cute trick would have, somebody preening themselves for the sake of their livelihood, but he had his audience. Not that he had ever asked for an audience, but it had been there occasionally. Unwanted, really.
But Rude... Yeah, he had a decent face. Nothing to write home about, but it was a good face as far as Reno was concerned.
Reno himself... he knew he was just a slum rat with a decent haircut, but it was the fact that he was an asshole that explained why people gravitated toward him. His rejection of their attention coupled with a certain likability is what earned him favor. For every Shinra employee that had ever looked his way though, there were four that ignored him. It wasn't that they were afraid of him, or even because he was a Turk. It was because they were afraid of Rude, and given Rude's proximity to him most of the time, what with them being partners and all, he didn't get a lot of warm or desiring looks on the elevator.
If Rude could be described as anything, it was still. Reno knew what Rude's body looked like--naked, clothed, sweaty, fucking, snoring, bloodied, killing. And when Rude killed, he was still. Tense, but completely unmoving, like a panther with a homicidal urge.
It was Rude's stillness that made people afraid of him. Most employees of Shinra Electric Power Company were already terrified of their co-workers in the Department of Administrative Research, but Rude held a particular morbid fascination. It was he that kept their reputation in tact; they were even exempt from most water cooler gossip.
Even Tseng, with his brutal efficiency and the legacy of blood that had been handed down to him, was cordial. People could pointedly ignore the terrifying rumors for a few minutes, like ignoring genocide happening very far away, and chat with him in the hallway. Polite. Professional.
But not Rude. No one even tried. There was no temper, nothing to make anyone think that he would just snap and kill them. But it was the reminder, the presence of death that he carried around with him. The bravest people called him a golem when he wasn't around, but it was stated with a sense of awe and terror. And it wasn't often said aloud.
Someone had the misfortune once of saying it near him, without realizing, whispering to some other dope that he had heard from his boss's secretary who heard from the janitor that cleaned the upper offices that, that one...the bald one... was the worst of the bunch, an inhuman killer with no conscience.
And when Rude had passed them, made eye contact for a scant moment, probably by accident since the truth was Rude didn't particularly care, the man's face went white. The blood seemed to drain from every part of his body (or so the grapevine said, though Reno didn't doubt it), and he resigned within the hour and moved away somewhere far up north in the icy cold. Probably shivering for the rest of his days, wondering if the Turk with the shadowed eyes would come and hunt him down.
Reno didn't know if the last part was true, but he thought it was hilarious. When he told Rude this information, the other man just adjusted his ever-present sunglasses and said, "Icicle Inn is a decent place to live."
Reno had just snorted. Poor schmuck.
They had been partners for a long time. Years. So many years that Reno could barely remember his life without Rude, without the Turks, without the suit. Often he didn't want to anyway, so it worked out.
And Rude had been wearing that suit for a while too, but unlike Reno, his was always pretty impeccable. Unshakable, inaccessible, closed. Neat and tidy. And if Rude could be called anything, it was neat and tidy, with his assignments as well as his appearance.
Reno got underneath that suit later. Way later, one day -- a delightful shock when Rude seemed to think that this was a really good idea. This whole sucking and biting and fucking and sometimes-maybe-kissing thing. Yeah, felt pretty good.
There wasn't stillness there. No, nothing about their time together could be considered "still." It was frenetic, sometimes a little desperate, more than a little violent. For them, it wasn't about comfort, it wasn't about completion, or something grand. No, this was about, "Wow, this is a really good idea. Your cock feels great inside of me."
But Reno still thought about it sometimes...Rude. Not undressed, but clothed, caught inside that crisp suit that often became dirty very quickly. A lot of blood and yelling, a lot of screaming and shots and cracking of bone and sinew. Rude could kill with his bare hands if he needed to; Reno had seen it. Not that he wasn't guilty of some unsavory behavior himself, particularly with his electro-mag rod, but he wasn't a big fan of literally getting his hands dirty.
Regardless of the less pleasant sides of his job, Reno had chosen this profession, liked this profession, and perhaps most of all, not exciting but sensible, liked having a steady paycheck. Steady paychecks were highly underrated.
He had grown up in the sector slums, under the plate. He was lucky too; nothing too bad had ever happened to him, and he had a knack for picking things up quickly. He was particularly fond of electricity. Not electronics, but electricity in general; its various uses, both for practical applications and unpleasant ones. And lucrative opportunities sprang up when he actually took the time to learn something about it. There was a lot of broken shit in Midgar, and when you lived in a place without much law and order and a limited amount of skilled workmen, you eventually got to be in high demand. It was part of the reason he was able to ascend into Shinra, rather than die alone and drunk, fixing random shit and living in some Mako pipe duct somewhere.
But back to Rude. Reno remembered when they had first met. That was one of the only times he had really given Rude's appearance any serious consideration, what his body might mean; mostly because Reno had spent most of his life sizing up the men around him. In the slums, unless you were a barrel-chested muscle freak, you had to be a little careful and pay attention. And Rude was big. Big broad shoulders, hairless, sunglasses hiding the thing that gave most people away. But Reno realized quickly that Rude wasn't hiding anything; those sunglasses were just another binding, another part of the suit that wrapped him up in a neat, lethal package.
They had an understanding very quickly, unspoken but acknowledged, and then it was smooth sailing for any assignment they did together. Reno liked it; it wasn't complicated, it wasn't stressful, it was just how things were. Even fucking, later on, didn't complicate it. Anyone else...it would have started fine. No complications, no drunk passive aggressive conversations about love or responsibility, no bullshit. But then it would have become all those things. But for Reno, there was just Rude every day, with the same look on his face, those same hands, ready to touch or to kill, depending on the situation.
Reno often told himself that he was an idiot when he thought about this shit. Who cared what Rude looked like with his clothes on or off; he had seen it a thousand times. But it stuck in his mind, wouldn't stop coming up, wouldn't stop occurring to him at the most inconvenient times. It was distracting. It was...those rings in his ear. Those motherfucking piercings. What the hell were those?
"Why the fuck did you get those things?" Reno had asked, borderline belligerent. His own voice had surprised him.
And Rude had looked at him like he was losing his mind, a little surprised.
"I told you, I was drunk," he replied. "Does it really matter?"
Reno had clenched his teeth, looked at his hands, wished desperately for a cigarette.
"No," he shook his head, mouth tense, "it does not matter."
"So why do you keep asking me about it?" Rude rarely posed questions when subjects like these could effectively be dropped, so he must have been really curious. Maybe even a little worried, taken aback, wondering what the hell was going on with Reno. Then he added, "You're one to talk with that hair."
Reno didn't like this conversation, and he had started it. He cursed himself and his overactive mind, wishing he had the good sense to shut up when he needed to. That was one skill he had always lacked, though.
"It's for the ladies," he flipped the long hair over his shoulder flirtatiously and ambled away.
"Uh huh."
Then there was a body behind him, very close. They were alone, but whatthefuck. Rude never got this close to him unless he wasn't wearing pants.
"What?" Reno said huskily. "You jealous?" No, shutting up had never been his strong point.
No answer. There was an odd tension running through Rude's body that Reno could feel just as sure as he could feel his own legs. And then there was a hand in his hair, a little too rough and a little too personal to be anyone but Rude; a thumb that ran from the nape of his neck down to the tendons, pressing in lightly and rounding to graze his collar bone just inside his shirt, underneath wrinkled white fabric, and then a lick and line of teeth against his ear.
"Do you want me to be?" Rude's deep voice was neutral. Sarcasm? Even Reno couldn't tell right then.
He shivered, and clamped his mouth shut.
Tseng cut the bizarre exchange off, and before he even opened the door Rude wasn't there anymore. But it was obvious that he knew, looking back and forth between them, dark eyes evaluating the situation. Reno just shot him a smile and a wink.
"You two," he said, "need to go clean this up. Sector 4. Mako spill. Eliminate any survivors."
They went, and they did.
And then they're back at Reno's place, end of the day, drinking already, drunk already. Cock inside of Reno (one day I will be the top) moving together with easy, wordless sounds and then it's over and they're there together, and the prior conversation seems like it didn't even happen.
Rude snores, lying in bed amongst the sheets that aren't exactly fresh, his back to Reno who's still drinking what's left of the whiskey.
And Reno studies the broad shoulders there next to him, naked, his eye caught by a bit of light that hits silver rings, the surface of sunglasses abandoned on a nearby table, the sheen of sweat on skin. Muscle and bone that shape the contours of Rude's body, one leg tossed to the side, the other pressed against whatever part of Reno happens to be nearest.
A final gulp, empty bottle dropped onto the floor where it rolls away, dragging a question left unasked, and Reno tells himself to stop staring. A deep rumble sounding suspiciously like laughter shakes him out of his reverie as Rude rolls over lazily, opens his eyes, and says, "I know you think they're hot."
No time to answer as he pulls Reno down and against him. Then says low, right against the side of his face and into his ear, "And you can't bite them until they're healed."
He settles back against the pillow again with a strong embrace around Reno that leaves no room for questions. Then an absent hand resting against Reno's hip that doesn't move, even when Rude sinks back into sleep, mumbling something about needing more ammo as his breath evens out.
Reno can see Rude's suit on the floor, cast off in a hurry and twisted up, starched shirt rumpled and creased, like a shed skin. He bites his own tongue lightly, and imagines silver rings in his mouth as he finally shuts his eyes.