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When Reno gets pulled into one of the meeting rooms on the top floor, the first thing he notices is that Rude isn’t there. The office is quiet. Eerily so. But the higher ups are looking at him expectantly. They slide a single manila folder across the large, mostly empty table. Reno leans back, crosses one leg over the other, and flips it open. What he sees has his brows drawing together, his jaw drops a little. A moment passes before he can speak.
“What is this?”
“We simply want you to take care of this for us.”
“You’re the best one for the job.”
“Wait a minute, Rude’s two-timin’...?” He’s met with nothing but cold, affirming silence. “Big man couldn’t tell me this himself, huh?”
There’s no getting out of, or around it. It just had to be his partner, out of everyone.
“We’ll be sending the two of you off on a mission, so to speak. Rude doesn’t know that he’s the mark. Take him out there, you’ll have three days.”
“Tch.”
Reno leaves the chair spinning and the file there on the desk. The one with Rude’s face and information typed up like a wanted poster. It’s everything they have on him, neatly, corporately, written up like a job application. Reno knows all of it already, down to the hour he was born, which ear piercing he got first, and the way he takes his whiskey.
He sure as hell isn’t waiting for some kill-your-buddy vacation to do the job. No, Rude deserves a chance.
Betrayal is nothing he wasn't prepared for in a line like this, working a job where he makes worse than just enemies. When it comes down to the wire, he's loyal to Shinra, loyal to their mission… So why do his fingers tremble when he nears Rude’s apartment that night?
As he approaches, his phone lights up with a single message, a silent order: Keep it clean. No witnesses.
Of course they already know he’s here, with the tracker and all. They must be aware of the spike in his blood pressure, the quickening of his pulse, and the… something else he doesn’t know what to call (it isn’t guilt, he knows how to turn that off).
He watches the light shine through the window of Rude’s apartment, watches the towering shape of him move through the kitchen with a comfort he doesn’t normally have on the job.
Rude has no idea, and it’s one of the few advantages Reno has over him. In terms of combat, he knows his odds hand-to-hand. While he’s faster and more agile, Rude beats him in size and brute strength. Hell, they’ve trained together. Rude outclasses him, Reno is a lightweight at best.
And they said clean. He almost wants to laugh.
“This is gonna be messy.”
The door is locked, but Reno has a key. Of course he has a key, he never questioned it. He thinks, briefly, about the fact that Rude has a key to his apartment too. Maybe it was stupid to have trusted him. After all, whatever he did was bad enough to get him this high on their shit list. Bad enough that they wouldn’t even say what it was.
Reno lets the question drop as soon as the door swings open quietly. It's dark, Rude has gone to bed. Reno can still smell the rice and the chicken he probably has packed away neatly in the fridge for his meal prep. He goes to check, goes to prove to himself that he does know this man, he isn't an idiot. But something stops him: a slip of paper on the kitchen table, in a manila folder, and a glimpse of red.
“Reno?” A tired, deep voice breaks him free of the distraction, and Reno has seconds, if that, to make a decision.
It’s either Rude goes down, or he does, and Shinra’s mission gets jeopardized.
In a flash, he kicks the chair between them in Rude’s direction. The man’s arms come up to block it and Reno’s weapon jolts to life, the air crackling with electricity. It always makes the hair stand up on the back of his neck pleasantly.
“Somethin’ you wanna tell me, partner? Now’s the time to confess.”
Rude’s eyes widen slightly, honey-colored and if Reno is correct, he has dark circles underneath them.
Despite his lack of armor or weapon, his fists curl, knuckles popping, bare this time. Reno will feel the sting of them against his cheekbones.
“Shit. Guess we gotta do this the hard way then.”
The first exchange of blows is quick. Rude blocks a kick, Reno weaves away from a jab. He needs to take him down if he’s going to do any substantial damage, so when there’s an opening, he narrowly dodges a solid right hook to dive in close. Rude’s not even pulling his punches the way Reno knows he does sometimes. It’s electrifying.
The EMR is just a distraction, really. It stuns him momentarily, and once Reno is close he can sweep out a leg. He uses his shoulder and knee to put weight on Rude’s heels and knock him back with momentum. As soon as they're on the ground, it’s a matter of technique.
Neither of them speak another word as they grapple, too focused. It’s still louder than Reno wanted it to be; a fist through the plaster of the wall, the crash of a vase as they go toppling down a second time. The loud pop of an elbow as Rude gets him into an armlock and Reno bites through his lip not to scream. His eyes roll back, he reaches with his good arm for anything and feels nothing.
The strikes get a whole lot scratchier when Rude has him in his hold. That’s when Reno resorts to every illegal move he can think of, biting and clawing and going for the balls. He headbutts his partner when he gets close enough, and Rude doesn’t have much in his place, but everything they’ve knocked off the table and counters becomes a weapon. The tea kettle, a cast iron pan.
Reno’s EMR is knocked out of reach, but the knives from the knife block are what he really wants and soon he can feel them digging precariously into his back with the shards of broken ceramic.
Rude bears down on him with more of his weight, breathing heavy and bruising in multiple places. It’s an intimate arrangement, with Reno’s legs wrapped tight around his waist in guard position. As he catches his breath, Reno shifts to one side, to get his leg around Rude’s neck and his arm trapped up, the only problem is that Rude’s already grabbed his throat with the other.
Reno can’t tap out this time. He wheezes as his vision begins to blacken around the edges, and god damned Rude won’t look away from his face. He doesn’t see the knife coming up into his side with Reno folded under him like a pretzel. It sticks into his spleen, then again in his lung through his armpit. Reno drags the knife as far as he can, and Rude spits blood down onto his face as his flesh tears open. It rips as much as it slices, Reno can feel the tension of his muscle as it spasms against the intrusion, flayed open for him like an offering.
He grins maniacally and the blood gets in his eyes, his teeth. So warm and wet he almost forgets whose it is. Shame on you to keep a dull knife.
The only sound Rude makes is a low groan, and his hips shift, forcing Reno’s spread legs wider as he’s pinned. The loose pair of sweatpants hangs low on Rude’s hip, dangerously low.
“F-fuck,” Reno manages to curse, Rude’s grip loosening just enough, for just a moment as the blood from Reno’s split lip mixes with his own. In the dark it’s such a deep crimson it looks black.
The clock on the wall ticks and it can’t have been any more than ten minutes since Reno crossed the threshold of assassinating his best friend. Yet there they lie, bleeding, sweating, when he feels the faintest brush of something against the curve of his jawline, and then lower, unmistakably lips against his neck, the ghost of a kiss as the rest of Rude’s body starts to sag.
He pulls out the blade and his partner coughs wetly. His breath in quick, shallow pants against Reno’s pale skin. The pain becomes a looming pounding in his head. Breathlessness burns his lungs like fire and the dead weight of Rude doesn’t help. He’s going to suffocate, and the hand around his throat is tight like it’s already reached rigor mortis, like Rude is taking him with him if it’s the last thing he ever does.
Reno thinks, barely half-conscious and borderline brain damaged, that he wouldn’t exactly hate that.
See you in hell, partner.
When he wakes up, he's not sure if he's still alive. His body feels numb. Distant, somehow. Purgatory smells like antiseptic and formaldehyde.
“Rude?” is the first thing he mutters, and it's hardly coherent, a single, sloppy syllable. Not unlike all the times he's mumbled it drunk, hanging off his partner's shoulder as he insisted, ‘I can walk by myself!’
“Rude!” he calls out. Meaner this time, pissed off and demanding. He better answer. He better. Or else—
“Hey, calm down,” a voice says.
“He's awake,” interrupts another.
Reno growls, low in his throat like an animal. He supposes he is one, bruised and battered like freshly tenderized meat. Rude got it worse, he went at him like a butcher.
“Wow. You two really did a number on each other.”
“Where…w-where…” A coughing fit takes over.
“Not in this hospital. We were concerned you'd try to go after each other as soon as you woke up.”
Reno's head drops back onto the pillow. His brain feels like half of it died, but he can understand enough. Words have meaning. Rude is in a hospital, and that means he's alive. That means…
“I failed.”
His stint with the Turks ends here and now, most likely. Though he isn’t sure why he even woke up, why they didn’t just let them both die.
Tseng continues, “It was a test of your loyalty to the company. You two have gotten close and things have been… unstable.”
Unstable? Reno tries to open his eyes again but the light overhead is disgustingly bright. The cannula in the back of his hand tugs where it's taped to his skin and everything hurts. His broken arm is splinted. He realizes when he sees the stitches that bone must have pierced his skin.
“It was a test, Reno. It's over.”
Reno doesn’t know whether to roll his eyes, or roll over to the side of the bed and vomit. He does the latter and a nurse rushes over.
“You may be experiencing some nausea. You were hit so hard you had a brain bleed…”
He stares at the meager, disgusting concoction he left on the linoleum tile and forces it to make sense. Like an abstract painting turned to perfect realism. It’s what Shinra wanted and he believes in Shinra, because he has to believe in something.
“And we're supposed to just work together now? We tried to kill each other.”
“Surely you can understand why Rude would have—”
“Go to hell.” They couldn't even offer him a potion or two?
“Reno, it was a test and you both passed.”
‘And everything’s sunshine and rainbows and puppy dogs,’ it sounds like he’s saying. The drugs are making him delusional. Reno thought for a moment he was going to die. He thought for an entire evening that Rude was going to die. Then he thought he failed, and that everything was over anyway.
He needs to see him, but the nurses pump him full of more medicine until his veins are bulging with it and he's drifting back to unconsciousness.
He isn’t assigned any big tasks for a while after things cool down. Not even a stakeout, or a routine escort-the-payload mission. The office is dull and uncanny. He hates that he can hear the execs having their video conferences every time he passes one of the meeting rooms. Their voices grate on his ears, tinny and distorted.
It’s nearing the end of his shift when he bumps into Rude in one of the many bathrooms. It’s either a coincidence, or exactly as planned.
“And here I thought you were an honest man,” he drawls. “Turns out you’re just a loyal one.”
“I can say the same for you.” Rude sounds almost proud as he steps up to the sink to prudently wash his hands.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
“How are you feeling?”
Reno narrows his eyes at the way he changes the subject.
When Rude doesn’t get an answer, he does it again. “Next time, use a gun.”
“No way, not as fun.”
Rude pauses, drying his hands and tossing the paper. “You like stabbing me?”
“Well, I don’t not like it.”
Rude’s eyes linger on his neck, he can see it through his glasses.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” Reno continues. “You got it worse than me.”
Rude grunts, making for the door.
“Doesn’t it piss you off that Heidegger knew we wouldn’t talk about it? I don’t like it when people know me like that, Rude.” Anyone but you, that is.
“I tried.”
Reno’s green eyes flicker to him. “You stood there.”
“You didn’t give me time.”
Reno knows what he’s like when he’s pissed off and determined, kinda like a grenade you hardly have time to run from. He also knows how Rude is, a man of few words.
He softens, just a bit, because he does know Rude after all. “All I’m saying is, maybe you should have told me sooner. He came to you first.”
He taps his baton on his shoulder, and pushes off the wall to leave. They aren’t going to talk about it, so be it.
But Rude grabs his good arm before he can get out the door. He stops him, his hand slides lower, his thumb starts to trace slow little circles on his wrist as he slowly takes off his sunglasses.
Reno braces himself and swallows hard. “Come on, man. I’m fine.”
Rude just gives him this stony look that says, ‘I’m not stopping,’ but Reno kisses first. It’s all so fucking complicated, but this isn’t. This is just as natural as it was for him to be underneath Rude in his kitchen, figuring out through an adrenaline induced haze where would be the best place to stab him.
So Reno kisses him, and then he kisses him again, and just when Rude’s tongue swipes the seam of his lips he sticks the metal end of his baton under his chin.
Rude surges forward with more of his weight, he accepts the challenge, backing Reno up with his lips against his neck.
“Fuck,“ Reno breathes, just like he had that night, only this time there’s more air in his lungs, enough for his chest to heave with it.
Rude kisses like he’s worshiping him. He kisses like he wants to drink from Reno’s skin, and every time Reno groans, he makes his own low sound in response, like the sound of it alone is enough to make him come.
Reno’s EMR clangs to the ground so he can wrap one hand around the back of Rude’s neck and pull him down, the other fisted tight in the fabric of his suit jacket. Both of Rude’s hands are around his waist, pinning him to the wall effectively, holding him in a way that makes him feel like a doll.
He’s never before wanted to belong to somebody.
He hopes that his blood is still in the hard to reach places of Rude’s kitchen.
“Rude,” he moans.
“I know,” his partner says.
Do you, he wonders. Does Rude know what he’s thinking about when he traces the scar where he stabbed him? Does he know what he thinks about how they had each other’s lives in their hands? Reno might as well have reached into his rib cage and grabbed hold of his heart right then and there. It’s what he wants, isn’t it?
God. Rude’s loyalty is sexy.
“Fuck me,” Reno demands.
It earns him another one of those low rumbles, and he can feel it in Rude’s chest, pressed against his own. He can feel everything, the body heat and the tension in his limbs. The imposing line of his cock through his slacks.
They owe this to each other.
Suddenly, Rude’s hands are lower and he’s pulling Reno’s own pants down his thighs, tugging his glove off with his teeth and then there’s bare flesh against bare flesh and Reno throws his head back against the wall painfully to hiss. His cock throbs in Rude’s fist.
“Beautiful,” he murmurs.
“I know,” Reno parrots his line from before, more smug than he should be when he’s this desperate just to be had.
The door could swing open at any moment. They aren’t in a private stall. But Reno doesn’t give a shit and Rude clearly doesn’t either. Soon Rude’s pants are down to his ankles, and Reno’s are completely gone, his shirt and blazer wide open, letting his cock dribble neglected and useless.
Rude sucks two of his fingers instead, getting them nice and wet. He’s certain Reno can take it like this so he doesn’t ask. Reno doesn’t even jump when they prod between his cheeks, circling the sensitive muscle there and daring to push inside.
He hikes his leg up over Rude’s hip to give him better access, and Rude hums at the sensation of Reno’s body struggling to accommodate him. Needy curses echo the polished walls of the restroom.
“You’re gonna break a sweat,” Rude goads.
“Shut the fuck up,” Reno snaps, his teeth gritted while Rude pushes deeper and works him open. “I thought you died.”
Rude curls his fingers and finds that spot and Reno yelps.
“I wanted you to.”
Rude sighs in that full-bodied way that takes all the air in the room with it. “It was for Shinra.”
“For Shinr- ah!”
Rude’s different in a way that Reno can’t place, almost like a weight has been lifted, now that he knows that if it came down to it, Reno wouldn’t hesitate. Or maybe he did, maybe when he thought he was choosing the company, he was really choosing himself. Maybe there isn’t a line between those two things anymore. Maybe if he never attacked, Rude would have chosen him too. It makes him dizzy.
Before he knows it, he’s being hoisted up further, both legs wrapping around his partner instinctively as something solid and wet nestles against his ass, and Rude slowly sinks him down. This time it’s Reno’s turn to cling, to hold on to something so he doesn’t float away. The burn makes him hiss and whimper when he’s seated. Rude gives him little time to adjust before he’s fucking into him, and they’re hurriedly kissing again.
He swears he hears the door open, just a creak, but it’s lost to him just as quickly and he cries out. “Fuck! Rude, fuck! ” he gasps.
The fact that Rude can even hold him up against the wall, bare his weight after nearly dying not long ago… It reduces his vocabulary to one pitiful word and all he can do is hang on while Rude bounces him hard against the wall, drilling into him with the kind of focus people usually have to train for.
“Say it.” Rude’s breath is suddenly hot against the shell of his ear and he feels so, so alive. “Tell me.”
“I want to hurt you,” Reno babbles. “God, I love it when you bleed. I love how you looked—”
It makes him want to say something stupid. But he won’t. He barely touches his cock before he’s coming all over the both of them, ropes of white on his stomach and Rude’s chest. Rude doesn’t last long either, especially after Reno bites. His rhythm stutters and he fucks him through his orgasm until he goes completely still and Reno feels him inside.
He smacks him for it, a palm to his cheek, because he still has to go back to work, that asshole, and now he’ll be leaking.
Rude though, looks more satisfied than guilty, and when Reno catches his breath enough to rasp, “Whaddya say we still take that vacation?” Rude snorts.
“Morbid. I’d like that.”