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Blood smudges against the doorframe as Tseng keycards into his apartment, and he sighs and swabs at it with his forearm, wincing slightly as the edges of the cut he'd forgotten about scrape against each other underneath the wreck that used to be his second-favorite jacket. He only succeeds in smearing the blood more widely. There's a reason he came to this apartment tonight instead of leaving the Complex and returning to his actual home, and part of the reason involves janitorial staff that don't lift eyebrows at stains of suspicious rust-brown and an understanding that bleach is sometimes necessary for reasons other than whitening the linens.
The rest of the reason is harder to put into words, even in thought; but on nights like these, he is Shinra's blade, and to sheath himself in the tiny fragment of home he's managed to recreate halfway across the city would be too much an unpleasant reminder.
He strips out of the last remnants of his jacket before he's even three steps inside and takes a minute to stand there and be exhausted before doing anything else, even turning on the lights. He has the faint glow of the night-lamp spilling in from the kitchen to keep him from tripping over anything he'd forgotten to return to its proper place, and anyway, he doesn't need to see himself to know what he looks like: blood matted in his hair and stiffening the rags of his shirt, blood carelessly half-wiped away from his hands, blood sluggishly welling from the bullet graze in his shoulder and the knife wound on the outer edge of his right forearm. Less of it is his than one might think, but not all of it isn't, and right now all he wants is a shower and a Potion and eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.
"How much of that is yours?" The voice comes out of the darkness, from the living room, and Tseng startles so badly he'd start shooting before he even realized, were his subconscious not smarter than he is and had it not already recognized the voice.
He closes his eyes and fights back against the useless jolt of adrenaline. "Why are you sitting in my apartment in the dark?"
Useless to ask, really; Rufus's true answer to why is always, without fail, because I wanted to, even when Rufus constructs silk-spun, airy rationalizations out of honeyed words and scraps of misdirecting truths to justify his choices. Dangerous to ask, even: Rufus's temper, always chancy to begin with, has only grown more short-leashed in the two months since his school graduation and his ascension to the executive cabal, and answering question with question has always infuriated him. But Tseng has certain dispensations none other in this world has, and he has spent much of the last six years teaching Rufus a whole host of lessons, and one of those lessons is that there is a time and a place to avenge the tiny slights and a time and a place to let them go by.
Rufus has been learning (Rufus is always learning), because Tseng's weary half-snarl is not met with equal anger. Instead, Tseng hears the soft sussuration of expensive fabric whispering over the battered leather of his couch, and a second or two later, Rufus steps into the faint spill of light.
He's still dressed for the office, which used to be unusual at this time of night -- Rufus has always worn his bespoke suits like a second skin, but used to shed that skin, snake-like, the moment he was off the clock for well-worn workout clothes and threadbare casual attire. Tonight, though, the only concessions to the late hour are the missing vest and jacket and turtleneck, the rolled-up sleeves and the two buttons undone at his throat. His hair is slicked back sharply, in the style he adopted three days after his first board meeting. It should make him look younger, but the ice of his eyes and the blades of his cheekbones make him look ageless instead. Tseng has had a hard time lately seeing the child he'd helped shepherd through adolescence in this polished young stranger, no matter that he feels every second of the eleven years that stretch between them on nights like this.
Rufus is barefoot, at least. That much is familiar.
Rufus doesn't speak, only comes across the space between them to reach light fingertips up to Tseng's temple. They come away tacky with blood, which Tseng hadn't expected. He'd thought the blood itching on his face as it dried to be entirely his targets', but if it's wet enough to transfer itself to Rufus's skin, some of it must be his own, and not yet clotted. The minute Rufus takes his fingers away, pain flares to life, crawling over his skull and forehead as though Rufus's touch unlocked the wall between Tseng's conscious mind and the perception of the injury. The headache he's been ignoring for at least the past thirty minutes suddenly makes a great deal more sense.
"Because I knew you wouldn't bother heading up to the clinic to have any of this treated," Rufus says, five minutes too late to be a proper answer. "Drop the jacket. Lose the shirt. Go sit on the couch; I'll be there in a second."
Tseng has taught Rufus a whole host of lessons over the past six years, and one of them -- one Rufus hadn't needed much coaching in -- is how to answer a question in perfect honesty while at the same time giving nothing away. Tseng had mentioned nothing of this mission; he knows none of his fellow Turks would have either, and Verdot is one of the (vanishingly) few men in this company able to exit a conversation with Rufus without having given away anything Rufus wants to know. He knows he won't get a real answer from Rufus even were he to pry, though. Rufus has always had informational channels available to him that he has never given away, and Tseng has never asked. What he doesn't know, he can't be forced to disclose.
"That wasn't actually a request, Tseng," Rufus adds, over his shoulder, as he enters the kitchen on silent feet. The water clicks on a second later. Tseng stands in his hallway for a minute more, tired and aching and not at all in the mood to play the games that every conversation with Rufus turn into lately, but he is tired and he is aching and sometimes the easiest way to get out of an interaction with Rufus without getting entangled in Rufus's games is to just grit his teeth and give Rufus what he wants, no matter how bad a precedent it sets.
So he drops his (former) jacket on the floor, unbuttoning the tatters of his shirt right there and adding it as well. They both land with a thick and sodden sound, but his front hallway is tile and not carpet or hardwood for that very reason, and sooner or later someone will be along to mop up all the blood.
His eyes are still partially dark-adapted from the hours lying in wait, and so he switches on the tiny lamp clipped to the book-case, not the overhead lights that send the whole room into sharp and sterile relief. The leather of the couch is still warm from Rufus's body heat when he sits down upon it. The tumbler of whiskey sitting on the coffeetable -- nearly-melted ice cube slivers floating in the single swallow left unfinished, and of course it's sitting directly on the wood with no coaster beneath -- next to the bottle whose level is low enough to indicate it wasn't the first glass poured would confirm that Rufus has been here for hours, even if the casual sprawl of papers strewn everywhere, marked up in Rufus's neat hand, wouldn't.
Sitting is a mistake; the minute he does, the exhaustion settles over him, thick and heavy like a blanket, and the couch exerts its familiar gravitational pull upon him, urging him to lean back and relax into its embrace. (He despises what passes for furniture here, sometimes; it claims to be designed for comfort, when what it is designed for is sloth and indolence.) He does allow himself to close his eyes, at least, taking internal inventory piece by piece: nothing truly serious, simply annoyances. There's the wound at his temple (pistol-whipped by the one he hadn't seen while fighting the one he had, and he hadn't thought it had broken the skin, and he's going to hear a lecture in the morning when he makes his report), the bullet graze in his left shoulder, the knife wound in his right forearm.
None of it worth braving the first-aid clinic, even, much less the independent hospital in Upper Three the Turks always, always use instead of taking advantage of the company-subsidized hospital wing on the forty-third floor. (Tseng had wondered, at first, why Verdot always made such a point of it in his training, when all the world knows Shinra's medical advances are outstripped only by their weapons manufacture and their energy production. Then he'd finally met Hojo, and he'd never wondered again.) A shower, a Potion, eight hours of sleep. Maybe he'll add a shot or two of the whiskey Rufus has been drinking into the mix. It couldn't hurt.
Rufus moves near-silently when he wants to -- Tseng has not taught him all of Wutai's arts, they started far too late for that, but Tseng has taught him that much -- but this time Tseng can hear him stepping deliberately heavily, a courtesy they have extended each other for years when neither is actively trying to prove a point. Tseng often wonders if Rufus realizes how little Tseng needs the cues of sound to feel Rufus's presence in the air around him. Rufus has never learned how to keep himself still and silent in ways other than physical, and Tseng has never tried to teach him; he has never known a single one of Midgar's children to show signs of being able to sense the ebbs and eddies of the world around them. It's a talent he's deliberately tried to suppress in himself, here in this prison of a million souls moving blindly through the spaces between them and shouting their presence at the heavens, but when he's this tired, he could be blindfolded, deafened, and under Darkness and still be able to point unerringly at the thrumming life Rufus lights up a room with.
Tseng opens his eyes again in time to see Rufus sweep his papers off the coffeetable and onto the floor with an unconcerned hand. He's holding a bowl of water, and one of Tseng's kitchen towels is slung over his shoulder. He puts the bowl of water down on the table -- on bare wood again, of course, and Tseng stifles the sigh -- and comes to stand at Tseng's knee. Rufus reaches out two fingers -- clean now, Tseng's blood washed away already, and Tseng can smell the sharp clean scent of the soap he keeps at the sink, the only one he's found that doesn't stink to him of artificial and rotting flowers -- and places them under Tseng's chin, tipping it up until Tseng is looking up at him. Rufus has gained three inches of height in the last six months, and Tseng is certain he has not yet stopped growing. He meets Rufus's eyes, and whatever he's too weary to keep from showing on his face makes the corners of Rufus's eyes twitch at him.
The angle at which Rufus is holding his head and the way Rufus bends to the side make the lamplight shine directly in his eyes, and when Rufus holds the palm of his other hand briefly over first Tseng's left eye, then his right, Tseng realizes he's doing it deliberately. "No concussion," Rufus finally concludes. "I don't like the look of that impact, though. He got you right in the temple. You haven't hit the Cure yet, have you?"
Tseng shakes his head (and regrets it the minute he does; the throb of his heartbeat thickens until his head feels it might fall from his shoulders if he moves it again). "You know I don't keep it equipped," he says. (He has learned to use materia of necessity and has achieved an acceptable level of competence with all save Ice out of the basic elementals, but has never had any affinity with the healing materia; even a Full Cure cast by him is usually far less effective on someone than an X-Potion would be and even a basic Cure exhausts him until the cure is often just as bad as the disease.)
"Hmpf," is Rufus's only comment. He lets his fingers slip away, sliding them over Tseng's chin absently as he does, and turns away to dip one edge of the towel into the bowl of water. "This is probably going to hurt," he adds. "I'd apologize for it, but you'd know I was lying anyway, so."
It does hurt, but Rufus's hands are more gentle than Tseng expected. He starts at Tseng's hairline, dabbing away the blood with tiny strokes, returning to the bowl to rinse the towel and wring it out over and over again. His bottom lip creeps between his teeth as he works, and there, finally, is the faintest hint of the boy he used to be. Seeing it actually doesn't put Tseng at ease any more than seeing the bare feet did; somehow those familiar flashes of Rufus on the frame of Vice-President Shinra make things harder rather than more comfortable. Rufus has been too mature for his age for as long as Tseng has known him -- in that, they were far too alike -- but seventeen is an age of transition here upon Midgar's heights when it would long since be manhood where Tseng reached that age himself, and Rufus has thrust himself into adulthood and staked his claim on the space around him with little thought to how rough it would be on those who were there to watch him create himself along the way.
So he closes his eyes again and submits to the near-tenderness of Rufus's hands against his face, the pleasure of Rufus's hands skimming over his hair, the quiet competence and neat efficiency of Rufus at work blended, as it has been for years, with the faint hint of easy sensuality Rufus can put on and take off when he wants and never quite loses when he and Tseng are alone in a room together. (Rufus has always hungered for touch and discovered far too early that sex would serve his purposes. Tseng spent years scrupulously not noticing; he would feel more guilty about having given in were Rufus not so fucking good at it in the first place, and so determined to get what he wanted. Rufus had said Tseng was his first, but Tseng has always known when Rufus is lying to him.)
"You still didn't mention why you were sitting in the dark," Tseng says, after a few more minutes of Rufus's ministrations. "Especially when you colonized my coffee table with what looks like an entire week's worth of paperwork."
The towel pauses in mid-dab, and the space between them takes on a rather embarrassed shade of silence. "I fell asleep," Rufus finally confesses. "Last thing I remember was thinking I should really turn on the light before it got too dark for me to keep working, and, well. Next thing I knew, the keycard in the reader woke me up."
It's a sign of how exhausted Tseng is that he actually laughs at that. He has spent the last few years being scrupulously careful of Rufus's prickly adolescent pride, has learned a thousand tricks to swallow his amusement at the occasionally-ridiculous lengths Rufus will go to to avoid losing face. But as he swallows the sound and opens his eyes again to see whether Rufus has taken his laughter in the wrong way, he sees Rufus looking down at him, the edge of his mouth tipped up wryly, and for the first time in a while he can see Rufus laughing at himself. (That's ... odd. A good sign. But odd.)
So he says, "You know you're always welcome. Although if you're going to fall asleep, I do suggest the bed, and not the couch. This couch is the least comfortable surface known to mankind."
He knows Rufus will hear what he really means, which is an equal blend: if you were tired enough to fall asleep over your work, it means you aren't sleeping well elsewhere, and that concerns me along with you don't have to ask; this place will always be a refuge to you. He isn't actually sure whether Rufus knows the extent to which he has placed himself into Rufus's hands, how completely he has pledged himself to Rufus's service and how thoroughly Rufus owns him. It's ludicrous to think it, of course. Rufus is seventeen years old, barely beginning his first steps towards claiming the power he will someday wield as easily as breathing, and the title of Vice President and the corner office just below his father's are intended as nothing more than a sinecure at the moment. But Tseng is not the only one in the company who has eyes to see which way the wind will blow, in no more than a year or three, and he thinks that even were it not for the shade of Rufus's destiny wrapped around those still-too-slender shoulders, he would still feel the same itch to drop to his knees and bend his neck to the boy who is becoming the man who will one day rule everything this city holds.
The boy -- man -- who is smirking down at him, soft and amused, before returning to tending Tseng's wounds with his own hands. And that is the reason -- one of the so-many reasons -- why Tseng would bend knee to Rufus without thinking twice while the President will never have anything more than the most cursory measure of Tseng's obedience. Jonathan Shinra has never shown a single sign that he understands the weight of what is owed to, rather than simply what is owed from, those who look to him. Tseng went out tonight to kill at Jonathan Shinra's orders and in Jonathan Shinra's name, but Rufus Shinra is the one here to do a liege's duty, and that is why Tseng is not the only one of Shinra's people beginning to turn his face towards Rufus's rising sun.
Rufus may be young, Rufus may be untried, but it is already clear Rufus will be the type of ruler who makes men more for having chosen to follow him, rather than less. Tseng has seen even the strongest-willed of men be willing to die for far smaller things.
"Tilt your head up," Rufus says, rather than answering what Tseng actually said or what Tseng meant behind it. (They have perfected, over the years, the art of saying everything with words that would sound empty to any listener and acknowledging what is truly meant by saying nothing at all. It's safer that way, for them both; the time has not yet come when it is acceptable for Tseng to be anything more than Rufus's over-stringent teacher or Rufus to be anything more than his annoying student.) Rufus's voice is soft, but there's enough unthinking command present behind it that Tseng finds his chin moving before the words have even finished registering.
The ease with which Rufus can summon that command when he wants to, the casual force of presence laced into his tone, makes Tseng's breath come faster in his throat. Some men equate power with volume, think orders must be delivered at the tops of their lungs, believe obedience must be browbeaten and harried out of their listeners. Somewhere in the past year or two, Rufus has learned the truth of power, learned the knack of obedience and how to evoke it. Rufus only has to meet your eye and speak, soft and controlled, and you find yourself yearning to obey. Someday, Tseng knows, Rufus won't even need eye contact at all.
Rufus cups Tseng's cheek in one hand, his thumb stroking absently over Tseng's cheekbone in a gesture Tseng doubts he's even aware he's making, and turns Tseng's face to and fro to catch the light, inspecting the cuts and bruises at Tseng's temple now that the blood has been cleaned away. "Better," he decides, after a minute or so of careful scrutiny. Tseng expects him to move on to the other injuries -- the shoulder really is nothing more than a graze and he's had far worse and barely noticed, but it no doubt looks painful from the outside -- but instead, he dips the towel back into the pink-tinged water again and begins, methodically, rubbing it over Tseng's face: cheeks first, then nose, then chin, and finally along his jawline and down his neck to where his shirt collar had been.
Cleaning the drops of his targets' blood from Tseng's skin, Tseng realizes. No wonder the people he passed in the hallways on the way back to this apartment were giving him wide berth. Wider than usual, even for the Turks. The edges of Rufus's eyes, the corners of Rufus's mouth, are whispering Rufus's displeasure at something, but Tseng can't tell what, and he doesn't dare to ask.
He doesn't have to, though, when Rufus's next words are, "So, I'm guessing from the spatter pattern that the old man wanted it messier than a sniper bullet at two hundred yards, and that's why you're bleeding on my nice linen pants now?"
Tseng's eyes flick downward at that -- sure enough, there's a smear of slowly-darkening rust displaying vivid contrast across Rufus's right thigh, where he must have brushed against the part of Tseng's pants that caught the worst of the second target's death throes. He winces. "That's probably not mine. Sorry. Take them off and leave them here before you go, I'll soak them in saltwater overnight in the sink and bring them to the cleaners' with mine in the morning."
Rufus snorts, soft and contemptuous. "As if I give a flying fuck. I've got twenty other pairs. That's not the part of the statement you were supposed to answer. Which is worse, the shoulder, the arm, or the ribs?"
Tseng blinks. "Ribs?"
Rufus rolls his eyes. "Yeah, that's enough of an answer for that, then. I'm pretty sure that's your blood, at least; I can see the cut it's coming from. Do I need to give you the lecture about checking yourself over after a fight to make sure you didn't miss any injuries? Because I totally can. It was a good lecture. I memorized it just so I could give it back at you someday."
He already knew he was exhausted and stupid with it, so he's not surprised to find himself laughing again. There's something about the way Rufus says it, wry affection mixed into the light mockery, that draws the sound from Tseng's throat. Rufus's eyes warm to hear it. Rufus's ability to control his face and his reactions is unparalleled, but Tseng knows him better than anyone in this world save perhaps for Sephiroth his heart-brother, and that gives him advantages in the reading. Rufus has always preened to hear Tseng's laughter when it's because of him, not at him. "Brat," Tseng says, lightly. (It would not do to let the opportunity pass him by.)
"Eternally," Rufus agrees, with easy grace. He drops the towel back into the bowl of water, which is beginning to cool. "Hang on."
He disappears into the depths of the apartment, this time, bowl in hand, and Tseng hears the water in the bathroom click on a minute later. He takes the opportunity afforded by Rufus's absence to look down; sure enough, what he thought was just blood transfer from the wreck of his clothing is actually mingled with his own blood from another knife wound, this one more shallow than the one on his forearm but still making itself known as soon as he notices it. He must still be riding the tail end of the battle-fever, for him not to have noticed. And, Leviathan damn them all, that does cinch it for certain, where he'd been weighing the measure of risk he was willing to accept: he'll need to start in on another round of post-exposure prophylaxis. He's perpetually up to date on all available bloodborne pathogen vaccinations, even the Turks' recommended accelerated schedule, but while his primary target had access to the best of Shinra's medicine and his file pronounced him a clean bill of health, both of the bruisers who bled on Tseng were hired slum muscle, and Leviathan knows what they carried and he'd forgotten to pick up a blood sample while the blood was still fresh for testing. He suddenly wishes he'd been less merciful, or at least that he'd given into the impulse to kick the bodies at least once when he'd finished; he hates the way Shinra's drugs feel like they're poisoning him.
He's still grumbling under his breath when Rufus comes back in, holding the first-aid kit Tseng keeps under his sink -- it's a Turks first-aid kit, not the standard model, so it's too large to fit in the medicine cabinet -- and another two towels, these bath-sized instead of the kitchen towel he'd been using. They're still folded, but the top one is wet, and steaming slightly.
"You're conspiring to get me to bleed on every towel I own, aren't you," Tseng says. (You don't have to do this; I'm fine and you're overreacting; this is my job, and I am very good at my job.)
"Bite me," Rufus invites, cordially. "They're white for a reason: they bleach." (You're bleeding, and I don't care why; it may be your job but I'm not going to let you sit there and bleed without doing something about it. They understand each other perfectly.) He sets the bowl of water back down on the table, the first-aid kit next to it, and drops the dry one of the two towels on top of the kit. "Your shoulder's half-clotted and it's filthy under there. I'm not letting you into the shower before I clean it. I could just flush it out for you, or start with the scalpel instead of saving it for the worst case scenario, but silly me, I thought you'd appreciate me taking the gentle route first. Breathe."
Tseng either was the one who taught Rufus everything he knows about first aid or was there when Rufus learned it, so he isn't at all surprised when Rufus drapes the wet towel over the wound on his left shoulder. It's wet enough for a rivulet of water to trail down Tseng's back and hot enough Tseng is genuinely surprised Rufus managed to coax water that temperature out of his sink. Rufus wasn't lying when he said this was going to hurt -- the heat against the open wounds would sting like nettles even if the towel's weight didn't -- but Rufus's warning was enough for him to brace against it, and Tseng calls on old discipline to transmute the pain into breath and breathe it away.
He opens his eyes -- not sure quite when he closed them -- to see Rufus standing over him, a shade too close for it to be simply casual, and the way Rufus is hovering finally, finally makes him realize: Rufus may not be upset, but Rufus is at the least unsettled, to see these marks of Tseng's service written on his skin. He blinks up at Rufus, who is staring down at him with something unreadable in those ice-pale eyes and something adamantine in the set of his jaw, and thinks: he isn't upset I was hurt. He is upset I was hurt in his father's service, for a stupid reason.
It's a small distinction, but a critical one. One he hadn't expected to find, not here. Not after so long.
"Oops, sorry," Rufus says, patently insincere, eyes locked on Tseng's, and Tseng can't decide if he's seeing what Rufus wants him to see or if he's seeing the things Rufus can't hide. If Rufus wants him to see the protectiveness and possession underlying Rufus's reaction. If Rufus is deliberately trying to tell him something, the thing Tseng is desperate to hear: yes, I see. I see your loyalty, and I know I can rely upon it, and I will repay it with loyalty of my own.
Seven years, nine months, and thirteen days ago Tseng walked out of his rooms at the palace at the dark-night changing of the guard, through the gaps in the guardline he'd arranged for himself by the simple expedience of being the man who drew up the duty roster, with nothing more than the sword he'd been given at his manhood on one hip and the wooden box his mother had carved for him, stuffed full of every coin and gem he'd been able to hoard, tucked in the opposite pocket. It had taken him six weeks to make his way to Midgar, through nothing but his own skills and his own wits, and when he'd finally been taken to meet Jonathan Shinra, the man's first words (spoken over his shoulder to Verdot, not to him) had been so this is your new toy, eh?
The President treats him as a curiosity, as a propaganda-blessed sign of Shinra's might and Shinra's benevolence -- look; even the house of our enemy is unable to resist our lure; see how generous we are to the fallen, to take them into our confidence and give them our full trust -- or as a tool to be broken to hand, when he thinks of Tseng at all. Were it not for Rufus, had the President not been too dull to realize the amount of power he was placing in Tseng's hands with his attempt to humiliate, Tseng might well have walked out of his rooms at this palace (at the dark-night changing of the guard, and although he is not the man who draws up the duty roster here, he has more than enough information and more than enough access to arrange similar distractions for any who might look at him too closely, did his reputation not already provide him shield and cover) long ago as well.
But he does have Rufus, and the President did place that power in Tseng's hands, and were Tseng not so determined to turn his back on the gods, he would be on his knees in prayer daily that the hints of greatness he thinks he sees in Rufus's shade are not the frantic wishings of a man who cannot bear to think his talents will be forever used as ill as they are being used now.
"Hey." Rufus takes another half-step into Tseng's personal space, until he is between Tseng's knees (knocking his leg against Tseng's thigh, as deliberately careless of his finely tailored pants as he always has been, and Tseng thinks they're white for a reason; they'll bleach and realizes for the first time why Rufus has always just smiled that easy smile whenever he hears anyone calling his whites the affectation of a boy who will never need to get his hands dirty) and frowning down at Tseng in consternation. He curls one hand around Tseng's cheek again, and this time there's no pretending his touch is anything other than an attempt at comfort, at reassurance. Tseng just isn't sure which one of them it's designed to reassure. "You aren't hurt worse than you're admitting, are you? I left that one wide open for you."
Tseng pulls himself out of his thoughts, casts back and tries to see what cue he was supposed to have missed. Ah. Yes. "I thought you weren't going to waste the effort to lie to me with an apology." (A feeble effort at pretending normal, and they both know it for pretense.)
Are you all right? Rufus's eyes are asking him. Tell me what's wrong. Tell me what I can do. Place your honor in my hands with full confidence; I will wield the blade that is you with far more care that it not break. Or maybe they aren't, and Tseng is imagining it all, and all Rufus is doing is tending his wounds for him as any student might honorably do for his teacher. He can't ask. They cannot dare. Tseng was assigned to teach Rufus self-defense and the Wutaian fighting arts, and if Jonathan Shinra knew one scrap of the true scope of the lessoning Tseng has been giving, these six years and more, they would neither of them survive the discovery in the end.
"Tseng," Rufus says, low and desperate, that push of command infused into nothing more than a name, and Tseng tips his head back and looks at Rufus looming over him and thinks, despairing, he has realized I cannot deny him if he commands me; Leviathan's mercy, let him not think to exploit that.
And either his grasp on his self-control is worn down after the night he's had or Rufus can read him straight down to bone even through every last one of his defenses, because Rufus sees something of what he's thinking: Rufus's lips thin further and he turns away, letting his hand drop. Tseng tries not to mourn the loss of that warm brand against his skin. The wet heat of the towel against his shoulder is starting to make him sweat, his skin damp and clammy, but the heat of Rufus's skin is different, somehow. More clean.
(It isn't the dirt and grime of his wounds that make him feel unclean, isn't the feel of his pants drying stiff and sticky with the dead men's blood he will need to clean off his hated couch, isn't even the spiritual uncleanliness of having meted out death and not yet purified his soul of the dead men's unquiet spirits. He has lived far rougher, for longer periods of time, since that night he crept from his gilded palace rooms and into his future. He has killed, again and again, at the command of the man he must accept as his lord, and death dealt by his lord's order will never plague him at night when he closes his eyes. It is the knowledge that the man he is said to serve is unworthy leaving him so unsettled, and the knowledge that the man he was brought here to serve, by the gods he will not give the satisfaction of acknowledging even long enough to curse, must join him in aping submission to that man's will until some unspecified far-future date.)
"All right," Rufus says, his back to Tseng, opening the first-aid kit and beginning to unpack its gear onto the table with neat and even motions. The clipped, even sound of his voice tells Tseng he's suppressing anger, but Tseng knows it isn't for him, and there is little in this world that could make him fear Rufus's anger. "You aren't going to tell me what's really bothering you, so let me try and you can tell me how far off I am. I know Verdot sent you out over protest and I know it wasn't his idea to send you out solo -- I'll show you the memo later, if you want, by the way. It's impressive. I didn't know there were that many ways to call someone a moron wrapped up in enough fawning to keep the old man happy. I know you were sent to retrieve the specs Sinclair ran off with, and I know intel said Sinclair hired himself some Wall Market muscle as bodyguard. The day you can't handle an ex-Science Department geek and a bruiser from the slums is the day you throw yourself off my balcony in abject horror, so I'm guessing it was more than one thug, and since I'm pretty sure that hit on your head was from the butt of a nine mil, possibly your own, and I count at least two knife wounds in addition to the bullet graze, you were in the thick of it instead of doing the sensible thing and sniping them from a distance. Spatter pattern I cleaned off your face says you got at least one of them while he was to your side and coming straight at you fast, which is probably also where you got that cut on your arm -- and given how many times you've lectured me about getting so used to fighting barehanded that you wind up using your forearm to block a knife strike, that tells me the fight was a lot closer than you'd be comfortable admitting. And since only a moron would send someone in solo to fight hand-to-hand when the file on where Sinclair was holed up all but said in 96-point capslock blinking letters, 'position sniper here, it is an excellent blind', and neither you nor Verdot are morons, I am guessing that somebody was backseat-flying again. How'm I doing so far?"
"I don't want to know how you know all that," Tseng says, wearily. "And please don't imply to me that you're reading your father's email; you know that's the sort of thing I'm supposed to be reporting."
Rufus slams the gauze he was unpacking down onto the table and whirls around to glare at Tseng. Part of Tseng wants to shrink away from the rage he sees in the depths of Rufus's eyes; a much deeper voice tells him to slide forward, until he is no longer sitting on this cuntfuck bastard of a couch but kneeling at Rufus's feet and bowing until his forehead touches them. "Do not give me that bullshit, Tseng," Rufus says. He isn't even yelling. It would be easier if he were yelling. "Do you really, honestly mean to sit there and tell me you don't have full and personal knowledge of the fact I would do ten times worse to find out all the things the old man is trying to keep me from knowing? Are you really, honestly stupid enough to believe I don't know I could tell you I was planning to walk into the old man's office tomorrow and shoot him in the face, and the only thing you'd do would be to remind me to disable the security cameras first and ask what I needed in the way of an alibi?"
Tseng's breath catches in his throat. Rufus's words hang between them, thick and heavy enough that Tseng can almost feel them lingering against his skin. Neither of them have ever dared to so much as approach that shared truth from a distance. This is Shinra Tower, where there is always someone listening and always someone waiting to see the powerful fall. The faintest hint that either of them bears anything less than perfect loyalty for Jonathan Shinra's regime, and the best they could hope for would be to never see each other again.
(Rufus could mean that he knows Tseng is as fond of President Shinra as he himself is, and would therefore not move to save the old man from a threat. That would be dangerous enough: the Turks are bodyguards as much as they are the solvers of Shinra's problems that cannot be solved by other means, and for a bodyguard to be so contemptuous of his charge's safety would be a death sentence waiting to be pronounced. But far worse would be for Rufus to mean that he knows Tseng's true loyalty is to him and him alone, because for all Tseng's soul cries out for his lord to know the weight of what he holds, it is not yet time for that knowledge to be made manifest. Rufus is seventeen, and Rufus has never been a child, but he is not yet man enough to seize power and hold it for good, and Tseng knows Rufus: were Rufus utterly convinced of Tseng's support, he would risk that power play far earlier than he should.)
"Stop looking at me like that," Rufus says, suddenly sounding weary beyond all measure. He drags a hand through his hair, and Tseng can see the smudges of secondhand blood Rufus leaves behind, dark against those golden strands. "I'm not a moron any more than you are. I killed the surveillance in here over two years ago and I check again every time I come over, and yes, I am good enough to find everything and disable it in a way they won't notice."
"You can't know that for sure," Tseng says. He can hear the desperation in his voice, the soft plea: not now. Not yet. Do not force this issue yet; we are not yet ready. But Rufus lives to force the issue, no matter what the issue might be, and Rufus may be capable of playing a long game but when Rufus is ready for that game's final moves, nothing on this earth will stop him.
(Tseng knows that far too well. He is sitting on the couch where, last summer, Rufus knelt between his thighs and unbuttoned his pants and took him apart, and the whole time he had been thinking this is the stupidest thing I have ever done, and not once had he said no, because he hadn't wanted to and he hadn't wanted to know what Rufus would do if he had.)
"Yes," Rufus says. "I can. I would tell you how I know, except you just finished telling me you don't want to know it." As good as a confession, that is: Tseng has long since suspected there are few electronic locks in this company Rufus cannot walk through when he sets his mind to it, but for Rufus to be that confident, his skill must be greater than even Tseng guessed. He isn't sure how he feels about that; until this night, Rufus has never admitted that skill save in the most oblique terms, and if Rufus has been capable of concealing that much, what other skills of his does Tseng know nothing of? He can't decide if he's upset that Rufus acted unilaterally in disarming the cameras that watch them all or annoyed that he did not know the freedom he has been living with all unaware. (But isn't that a metaphor for the world he moves through, now?)
Or maybe he's just glad to finally know the reason why Rufus was willing to throw caution to the winds, last summer, instead of waiting for a more defensable position. He'd thought it a gambit in one of Rufus's endless battles. (His life has been a game of go for decades, but Rufus learned chess at his father's knee. The differences will never fail to fascinate him.)
The anger gone, now -- blown over as quickly as it rose, the way Rufus's temper always flares; it is only the true rages that set in and can't be shaken -- Rufus abandons the first-aid kit and re-crosses the three steps between them, and before Tseng can react to the heat of Rufus's body crowding in against his between his knees, Rufus has taken Tseng's chin in his hand and tilted Tseng's face up to take command of his eyes. "Listen to me, Tseng," Rufus says, and Tseng tells himself the way his lips part is because of the grip Rufus has on him and has nothing at all to do with the way his breath is coming faster at the magnificence of this man before him. "Because I'm only going to say this once, because you're right. It is dangerous. Not because I believe for an instant that you would ever do anything that would hurt me, but because we still have our roles to play, for another few years at least, and the game isn't a game and we're playing for stakes that are too fucking high. But I will be fucked if I let you think I can't see what I have, in you, and I will not throw that away. And I'm damn well going to be furious when the old man looks like he might be trying to. You will never again try to pretend to me that it doesn't infuriate you when the old man treats you like nothing more than a hired gun. Because I'm the one person in this world you don't have to pretend for, and you damn well deserve to have somebody with a little bit of power on your side." His lips twist. It isn't a smile. "A very little bit of power. But that's changing. And don't think I don't know how hard you're working to make sure it changes more quickly."
Tseng's heart surges to hear Rufus's words, promise and command twined inexorably together. He can't look away, even did he want to. Even did Rufus's fingers on his flesh not clutch him tightly enough to bruise. The words he cannot allow himself to say catch on his lips, so sharp he would not be surprised to find himself bleeding from them, the language of home that no one in this new not-at-all-home comprehends: my Lord, your will shall be as mine. He swallows them down, and they are razors the whole way. He licks his lips, startled to find they do not taste of the things he cannot speak, and picks through everything he knows of this flat and graceless tongue to piece together something that will not make Rufus think he is throwing that gift back at Rufus's feet.
"I beg of you," he says, his eyes steady on Rufus's even as he's plunging headfirst towards a crossroads he'd hoped would not yet come, "do not force me to speak of it aloud. Not until the day comes when I will be able to speak all, and never guard my tongue again save at my Lord's command." He breathes in. Breathes out. That is as explicit as he has ever been, and were he speaking to a fellow countryman it would be a declaration as bold as the declaration of war and a demand as plain as any squalled in an infant's cry, and he does not, cannot allow himself to hope that Rufus hears the desperate plea.
Surprise -- no; shock -- flashes over Rufus's face like a Corel sandstorm. It vanishes just as quickly, locked down into a familiar nothingness. Seeing that expression (lack of expression) on Rufus's face so soon after such naked emotion makes Tseng finally realize that sometime in the past year, Rufus has finally perfected his ability to give nothing away when he does not want to. (And that makes him realize -- and oh, he hadn't, and how much more has he been missing; how many more secrets is Rufus keeping and how many roles has Rufus learned to play? -- that Rufus's legendarily-chancy temper over the past two months has never, not once, been unleashed in the presence of anyone not his father's loyal lackey, and never once not been used to advance the image of Rufus as a spoiled, squalling brat with talent just barely sufficient to be worth giving a chance but not skill enough to yet be a threat. And he and Rufus have had the conversation about hiding in plain sight a hundred times, but oh, so much of what Tseng has seen tonight tells him they desperately need to have as frank a conversation as possible about need-to-know bases and who fucking needs to know.)
One thought follows on the heels of another like stone clicking against stone on wood-gridded battlefield: if Rufus has learned how not to show that which he does not want another to see, if Rufus has learned the trick of performing those emotions he wishes his observers to see in him, that Rufus has shown him now could mean one of two things: either his control is slipping, here among the familiar and the safe (for Rufus will always believe Tseng to be safe for him, no matter what wisdom or paranoia would dictate, and that is part of the reason why Tseng always will be), or Rufus wanted him to see. And there are so many reasons why Rufus could have wanted him to see, and there is nothing proclaiming Rufus's performance to be genuine. (No. He will, must, believe Rufus to be genuine. He has always known when Rufus is lying to him. He will not allow that to change.)
Rufus's fingers, long and elegant and perfectly manicured to disguise the calluses he should not have, press into Tseng's jaw and hold him in place. For Rufus to study him, pin him out with that too-penetrating gaze, and he feels -- he feels weighed and measured, judged, assessed by the mind that cut its teeth on arcane business spreadsheets and learned opportunity cost out of self-defense long before Tseng even walked into his life. Rufus is looking for something in him, the way Rufus has learned to glance over the P&L and balance sheets and the GAAP statements of a company that has come to Shinra for funding and know with nothing more than a flick of his eyes over red and black ink whether their accountants are telling him falsehoods. (Or, rather, how many falsehoods their accountants are telling him.)
Rufus's lips part, he inhales to speak, and Tseng braces himself to hear something he does not want to hear. (There are so many things it could be. Apology. Arrogance. Acknowledgement. Just about anything he can think Rufus likely to say could wreck this entirely.)
But his fear must show in his eyes, because Rufus pauses before he puts that breath to use. The hand gripping Tseng's chin eases, suddenly and without warning, and Tseng can feel blood rushing to the points Rufus's fingertips have left behind. And then Tseng can feel his heart stop, because instead of dropping that hand Rufus slides it over Tseng's chin, around the curve of his jaw, and cups the back of Tseng's neck, light and tender and too fucking perfect. Tseng drops his head to the touch without thinking twice and can't breathe with the sudden desperate need to know whether Rufus is aware of the meaning that gesture carries. Might carry. Could. Should. (Someday.)
"My father built a company, Tseng," Rufus says, his voice nothing more than a bare breath coming from atop Tseng's bowed head. Not an answer: a promise, lulling and reassuring. "I intend to someday build an empire."
The moment holds between them, spun out like sugar candy and twice as sweet for the sheer, unadulterated confidence in Rufus's voice. (So many call it arrogance. But arrogance implies implausibility, and there is nothing implausible in Rufus's vow.) Then Rufus's hand slides away (from its rightful place) and Tseng gasps for air as though they've just run a marathon together. (Perhaps they have.) Tseng can still feel the weight of Rufus's palm against the knobs of his spine, lingering there, and now he has felt it he knows he will be able to conjure up that sense-memory as often as he needs. "That towel must be cooling off by now; let me finish cleaning out the shoulder, then throw yourself in the shower and I'll bandage you up," Rufus says, and Tseng picks his head back up and looks up to meet Rufus's eyes and sees, written there in the language they've learned to speak to each other in faintest whispers beneath the roles they still need to play, the quiet promise: you've asked me, and I've answered; we will never speak of this again.
Still. Tseng knows, now. What Rufus's plans are. What Rufus intends to do. That six years of frantically cramming as much as he could of his own training into the muscles and mind of a boy who was never allowed to be a boy, who should have started the learning at least six years earlier than he had, has succeeded in at least partially counterweighting the mingled neglect and excessive expectations of the rest of Rufus's upbringing. That Rufus has learned ambition, and discretion, and has learned to see potential in the arrangment of the pieces on the board and to solve semeai in flesh far more readily than he solves them in the games he laughingly loses to Tseng again and again.
That Tseng has not failed. That Rufus may not read the finest intricacies of Tseng's honor nor know the true depths to which Tseng has placed it in Rufus's hands, but he can see enough, and the challenge Tseng has been wordlessly throwing in his face for six years (make yourself worthy to hold what you have been offered; make something of yourself greater than anything anyone else expects you to be) has been accepted and taken to heart, infused with life and used as the foundation for all Rufus's machinations that are and will be to come.
Tseng has never seen Rufus back down from a challenge in his life. And it may not be the way Tseng would himself do it (it will almost certainly not be the way Tseng would himself do it, and that is why Tseng is sitting here in the stronghold of House Shinra and not standing three steps behind his brother's throne), but in the set of Rufus's chin and the strength of Rufus's shoulders, Tseng can finally see the future spinning out before them: Rufus will stretch out a hand to conquer the world, and the world will smile and show its throat and invite him in.
So he keeps Rufus's eyes, inclines his head and straightens his spine, and waits for his lord to tend the wounds that enrage him so. And for the first time, he says it without irony: "Yes, sir," yes, Lord, and he hopes someday Rufus will have ears to hear it for what it is meant to be.