Work Text:
It’s well past midnight when they clear the perimeter, sinking back into the shadows that spread over the Sector. Midgar is never fully silent, even in the middle of the night – a feature that Rude appreciates about the city. A place that goes completely silent makes something between his shoulder blades itch with discomfort.
Next to him, Reno is uncharacteristically quiet, imperceptible except for his elevated breathing and the nervous movement of his hand, likely because he wants to light a cigarette but can’t yet. They can’t draw attention, even if it’s just the glow of a smoke.
The next few days are going to be crucial, but Rude feels cautious optimism. Reno did well so far, better than expected even. It’s been the tone for much of Reno’s training, and one of the cases where Rude doesn’t mind having been wrong. He’d expected Reno to flake out early, like most recruits. Veld and Tseng had plucked Reno from prison, complete with a reputation of a nuisance and troublemaker. Their offer to him had been fairly simple: work for Shinra and have your record expunged, or continue rotting in prison for the next fifteen years of your sentence. Midgar’s prisons being what they were, Rude’s not surprised Reno took the chance of getting out, though if he failed making it into the Department, he’d go straight back behind bars.
It makes for good motivation, Rude guesses, but Reno had bucked hard against authority at the beginning. Tseng let Reno mouth off more than Veld did, but Tseng wiped the floor with Reno for months straight to keep the balance. He’s a fair teacher, except that one time Reno hurled a Wutaian slur at him and Tseng dished out the beatdown it deserved. First and only time that happened. Reno doesn’t make mistakes twice, from what Rude can tell. Neither is he lazy in the way that Rude expected from Reno’s demeanour. When Reno is interested, he’s willing to put in the work; and most aspects of the job seem to interest him enough to learn.
Rude wasn’t overly enthused about getting Reno as a partner after Tseng put him through basic training, feeling like he got saddled with babysitting. Reno is actually only two years younger than him, though Rude wouldn’t have believed it at first, given how gangly and underfed Reno was when they got him. Despite their vastly contrasting personalities, Reno has grown on Rude. Like a fungus, but Rude is fond of the mouthy little shit anyway and he’d hate it if Reno fell at the last hurdle. Reno wouldn’t be the first promising recruit to obliterate all of their potential because they failed their first hit.
Well, the hit they got over with. And Reno handled himself almost perfectly, there was only the smallest amount of hesitancy before he pulled the trigger on the sleeping man. Rude himself had hesitated much longer on his first, and for him it had only been a smuggler selling stolen Shinra tech. Pretty clear cut, for them: a lowlife criminal fencing for profit was no loss. Reno just took out a former lab tech at Shinra, who’d threatened to make data proving the detrimental effects of long term mako fission public. A potentially much greater moral conundrum for a regular person, but if it had been for Reno, he hadn’t let it stop him.
The killing wasn’t everything though, it’s seeing how Reno deals with it in the next couple days. He could still come undone. Would be a damn shame if he did.
They reach their car, parked in a dark cul-de-sac fifteen minutes from their target location. While Reno secures his seatbelt, Rude takes the radio.
“B-1, you there?”
“You out?” Tseng’s voice crackles with static.
“Yeah, no incidents. ETA ten minutes,” Rude says. They’re keeping communication vague, even on the secure Shinra comm channels. You never knew.
“Roger.”
Rude starts the car and tosses Reno the pack of cigarettes from the driver’s door. Reno drove them earlier and left it in the door compartment, no doubt clamouring for one right now. The soft groan of relief from Reno tells him he was right.
“You okay?” Rude asks once they pull onto the highway towards Shinra Tower.
They have a hard drive to deliver. Thankfully, the mark hadn’t been smart enough to create several caches of the data before threatening Shinra with publication. Just the one hard drive sealed in a vacuum bag and hidden in the water tank of the toilet. People watch too many movies.
“Sure,” Reno says, mumbling around the butt of the cigarette.
Rude rolls down the window on Reno’s side far enough for the smoke to escape. Veld will flay them if they make the company cars smell like cheap tobacco. Reno earned his cigarette, though, so Rude doesn’t say anything.
He seems okay, as far as these things go. A little more subdued than normal, but Rude would be considerably more worried if Reno could cheerfully shoot a sleeping man in the head for the first time and not spend at least some thought on it. He doesn’t want a complete psychopath for a partner. Reno needs to find the thing that makes him keep doing the job. For Rude it’s fairly simple: he threw his lot in with Shinra, and he’s tasked with protecting the company from threats you can’t swing a sword at. So he’ll do it. As long as there’s some rhyme and reason to his orders, he’ll do his job. He trusts Veld and Tseng to steer them in the right direction.
Reno fiddles with the radio, sticking no longer than twenty seconds with any of Midgar’s near countless stations. Jazz becomes an ad for Banora Apple Juice, changing to folk, to debate radio, to citypop, an ad for a furniture clear out sale in Sector 5, an SNN Radio anchor reading off tonight’s chocobo race results. Rude is ready to smack Reno’s finger away from the console when the other makes a derisive sound in the back of his throat, turns the volume down and slides back against the seat.
Rude is happy to let the news anchor fill the silence for the last five minutes, since Reno seems disinclined to talk beyond muttering to himself about the races while he looks out the window.
They pull into the underground parking garage where Rude finds the car’s reserved spot. He reminds Reno to take his smokes before they exit the car, and checks his breast pocket one more time for the vacuumed hard drive. That’ll have to go to Veld before the data is expunged and the drive securely disposed of.
Their floor is just a short lift ride up, uninterrupted by others thanks to the Turks having their own set of lifts not found on any blueprints. If one has to get a secret prisoner in and out of the building, you can’t just ferry them back and forth anywhere with public access. Reno leans back against the aluminium walls, still not really talking, but Rude has always paid more attention to body language than what comes out of people’s mouths. His shoulders are
a little tense under the line of his jacket, but he’s not tapping his fingers or clenching his jaw -- Rude knows by now that those are signs of Reno feeling inner unrest and discomfort.
They pivot left from the elevator, away from the security door with the holding cells - the Admin Research Guest House, as they call it - and along the deserted corridor to the bullpen.
A single desk is still illuminated, the white-blue lamp washing out Tseng’s complexion to ashy. Even this late, Tseng doesn’t just kick back reading the paper to while away the hours of night shift. Not even Veld would expect you to be actually productive.
Tseng turns away from the keyboard and screen when they enter.
“Everything went well?” he asks, speaking to Reno directly rather than to Rude or in their general direction.
Rude watches Tseng assess Reno with a quick glance, looking for the same tells that Rude did earlier.
“Yep,” Reno agrees with some attempt at levity. “Done and dusted.”
Generally, Rude isn’t part of the newbie support squad, but Tseng is. In that, he makes sure the newbies get what they need and that nothing blows up in the department’s or Shinra’s face. But like Rude, Tseng appears to have picked up on the feeling that there’s something different about Reno, something promising. It’s not a vibe that Rude gets from a lot of rookies that get funneled through the narrow pipeline towards a position in the Turks. They haven’t talked about it in so many words, but if Tseng beats you into shape personally three times a week, it’s a sign he thinks you’ve got potential.
Rude tosses Tseng the hard drive from his pocket, and Tseng catches it with ease, turning the palm-sized casing in his hands. He nods, then carries it over to the safe embedded in the wall to his right and locks the device in there before returning to his desk.
“Well done,” he says, again more to Reno than Rude.
“Just did my job.” Reno shrugs.
“Nevertheless,” Tseng says. “It was your first serious mission”
“Report will be in tomorrow,” Rude adds. “I’ll do this one.” For doing well tonight, Reno gets a freebie on paperwork from Rude.
“Anything you want to get off your chest that’s not for the report?” Tseng asks Reno and fixes him with an analytical gaze.
Reno squirms a little under the stare. “There’s one thing.”
“What’s that?” Tseng asks and Rude mentally braces himself a little. Just in case he got this whole thing completely wrong and Reno wants to hand in his notice right now.
“I don’t like guns,” Reno says and Tseng frowns, the mark on his forehead creasing with it.
“Guns are part of the job,” Tseng states, stapling his fingers together.
“I ain’t against using ‘em,” Reno says and shrugs. “Just don’t think I want ‘em to be my regular weapon. Not the first thing I grab, ya know.”
Tseng makes a pensive sound. “Well, you are not required to use guns exclusively.”
“You do,” Reno points out and crosses his arms in front of his chest.
“It’s my weapon of choice,” Tseng agrees. “But not the only one. And Rude here prefers hand to hand combat to shooting, if the situation allows.”
Which is true. Rude prefers an honest fist in someone’s jaw before he goes for a weapon, but not every mission is a brawl. They all carry handguns, but some use them more than others. Reno’s ratings in sniping were exceptionally high, so he and Tseng had expected Reno to gravitate towards guns and rifles of all kinds. And perhaps, so did Reno, since he hadn’t really tried any other weapons in earnest.
“Did you have anything in mind?” Tseng asks, leaning back in his chair.
“I liked those quarterstaff things we used for training sometimes,” Reno says and shrugs. “maybe somethin’ like it, just more oomph?”
Rude can see it, if he thinks about it. Maybe Reno prefers a more personal, up and close style of fighting, much like Rude does. Reno is a straight shooter, as far as personality goes, but he is a sneaky bastard. Add some Materia into the mix, and you’d get a lot of oomph.
“I’ll take you down to weaponry tomorrow,” Rude offers. “They’ll have something.”
He needs a couple more explosives anyway, there have been some bomb ideas on his mind that he wants to try. Might as well drag Reno along and get him a new weapon.
Tseng nods in agreement. “Try not to blow the Tower up,” he says to Rude with a slight smirk.
Well, it’s not like Rude keeps his love for things that go boom on the down low. Tseng’s remark makes Reno cackle, and Rude stares at him with reproach through his sunglasses.
“What?” Reno asks with a grin that very much makes him look like a fox. “I was there when you nearly took a chunk out of that mountain last month.”
A tiny miscalculation on Rude’s part. And still everyone in the office is giving him shit for it. He didn’t take a chunk out of the mountain, after all.
“All that aside,” Tseng injects before the conversation gets completely sidetracked. “It was your first senior mission, Reno. That deserves some acknowledgement.”
“Like?” Reno asks, eyes narrowing.
If there weren’t a million other tells, you’d know that Reno crawled up from the slums just by how he reacts to offers of reward. He doesn’t trust it. There must be a catch somewhere. Rude still has to work on making Reno lose that. Though not ‘lose’ precisely, since a healthy amount of mistrust is necessary for their job. It keeps them all alive. Trust in the team, though, that keeps them alive as well. You can’t be working a job and wonder if the other one has your back. It takes a minute to understand that the Turks can and will rely on each other a hundred percent, particularly if that concept is foreign to you.
“Up to you,” Tseng offers. “Some want to have drinks, some want dinner, and some just really want to work off some energy in the gym with a willing human punching bag.”
Reno considers his options for a moment, his eyes darting between Tseng and Rude.
“Anyone ever asked for all three?” Reno finally says and Rude can’t help but snort with amusement.
Even Tseng’s eyes crinkle with mirth, one corner of his mouth twitching up. Rude always notices that it shaves years off Tseng’s perceived age when he’s not looking stern or scowling. Some days, Rude has to actively remember that they were born in the same year.
Tseng leans to the side, over one of the armrests of his chair and comes back up with a six-pack of beer in his hand, settling the bottles onto his desk with a quiet chink. It’s the standard vintage of the Turk’s regular watering hole down in Wall Market, Leviathan’s Lager. The glass is damp with perspiration, and Rude itches to take the cap off one of them. It’s not even his favourite beer, but no doubt the one he associates with relaxing after work.
If they’re being precise, they have another three hours on the clock, but that clearly just went out the window. Tseng gets up from his chair, not bothering to close his suit jacket like usual.
“What a fortunate coincidence that I know the gym on B-3 is empty at the moment,” he says, grabs the six-pack and checks his watch, “and if we’re lucky, a pizza delivery might stumble in in about twenty minutes.”
Let it not be said that Tseng isn’t prepared for all eventualities. Pizza sounds really damn good right now.
Next to him, Reno guffaws and Rude can see him relax, shoulders finally slumping into their usual position. Rude is surprised by the relief he feels about seeing Reno unwind from his tension. They’re not quite out of the woods yet, it’s too early, but the signs are there.
“Fortunate coincidence indeed,” Reno snorts and grins. “And you wouldn’t happen to know two guys willing to be punching bags, huh?”
“This punching bag hits back,” Rude announces and raises an eyebrow at Reno who continues grinning.
“So does the other,” Tseng hums and hits the button on his monitor, the blue light illuminating him disappearing.
“I’m counting on it,” Reno laughs and leads their trek from the office back down the corridor to the lifts, stopping once at the vending machine to grab a can of the horrid, neon-blue energy drink Reno loves to guzzle the way others do water.
At this rate, he’ll bounce off the gym walls like a squash ball, all hopped up on caffeine, sugar, carbs, and adrenaline. Rude is looking strangely forward to it.
He’s a good one, Rude thinks as he steps inside the lift after Tseng. He’ll make it.