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It's warm in the room, cushioned up all around him, amber-colored and muggy. It's the time of evening where nothing is urgent, like a summer spent drinking in the sun with days that never start or end.
It is the color of whiskey and calm, and Reno sometimes wonders what his reflection would look like if it could fit into a shot glass. But it's easy to sit with Tseng in the room and enjoy the tickless present, let invisible motes of dust float past, stare into space and only taste.
This shade of yellow is his favorite--it is the color of forgetting, of floating half-conscious, of warmth and lazy movement and lost trains of thought. Of hands that move as smoothly as a ray of sun slides across the floor, wrapping him up in a dusky glow.
"Quiet tonight, boss," he says, drumming his fingers on the table where he sits with a glass. He dips one in and licks to taste whiskey at its most suggestive and subtle.
"Savoring the last of it?" Tseng replies, looking at him.
"Yeah," Reno says, laughing a little bit, dipping his finger into his drink again, deeper this time, and swirling it around to hear the ice chatter. The last drink; the last bottle of whiskey still hanging around from more prosperous days, hiding in the cool medicinal depths of Healen.
"Does Rude know that you're finishing off his whiskey?"
Reno just laughs again and takes an economical sip. "Nope."
Tseng lets out a low "hmph" and crosses his legs where he's sitting on the couch, one hand on a knee, the other palm-down against the worn upholstery.
Reno undoes a button of his shirt one-handed, sighing, and then runs calm fingers through disheveled hair.
It's been a long time now that Reno and Tseng have known each other. Reno generally tries not to think about the past, although whenever he's in one of these moods, it does cross his mind that he's known Tseng and Rude even longer than his own parents. But those memories are scarce to begin with, so he can't be sure whether this fact should count as a blessing or a curse. Maybe it's both.
"You remember that kid, boss?" He says suddenly, and Tseng looks at him.
Tseng might as well be by himself in the room; Reno's presence is merely another piece of furniture. But Tseng doesn't think this unkindly; on the contrary, there are few other human beings that he could exist in front of the same way that he looks at a chair. Living things are troublesome, and even though Reno is very much alive, it's a different type. It's the same kind of alive that Tseng is, where gravemarkers are whimsical decorations to allow survivors to move on. When you put on the suit, existence is forfeited, and it is forfeited willingly.
"What kid? There have been a few."
Reno snorts a little, dryly. He takes another, longer draw of his drink, and the ice cubes collide noisily as he tips the glass. It tastes strangely sweet.
Butterscotch-flavored sickness
like slow sticky blood,
tacking afterward.
"The kid that lives with Cloud Strife. The one that had the stigma. The orphan." He says it all in the same flat tone of voice, but Tseng knows that something is eating Reno, even as he tries to lose himself in the dusky twilight. He's a good Turk, but stoic would be an antonym. Having Reno under his command has been like learning how to wield a gun that can never stop firing.
But Tseng's good at what he does, so he's poised when he replies, "Yes."
It's all in the tone for Reno; like an animal that doesn't hear words and reacts solely on body language, subtle movements, baritone, alto, soprano, vibrato. All of it says something to him that words never could.
"You know I killed his parents?" He laughs mirthlessly. "I mean, not that I remember everyone I've killed, that's for sure. But weird, huh?" The drink is gone, and Reno's still holding the glass a little too tightly. "Weird when a kid accuses you of being a murderer."
"He accused you of being a murderer?" Tseng asks, conscious of where every part of his body is, what it's saying, the tone of his voice that he intends to be neutral. Rude absorbs Reno's shockwaves; Tseng tries to shut them down, and sometimes he's even successful.
"He looked at me," finally comes the response, and the glass is returned to the tabletop where it was, gingerly, as if Reno knows his own strength and can hear the raw edge that is starting to clip his voice. But he doesn't know his own strength, and he can't hear himself clearly, not really.
"When?"
"Yesterday," Reno's gritting his teeth behind his lips as he says it, and Tseng can almost hear the grinding. "Passed him on the street. Told him, nice haircut kid."
"Nice haircut?" Tseng's mouth turns up a little at one corner, just a hint of humanity.
"Yeah. You know, after all that stigma bullshit ended...kid looks like a new person than when Kadaj and those fuckers took him and all of his little friends."
"Because he got his hair cut?"
"Yeah, Tseng," Reno says, fists tight, knee bent up tensely where Reno's leaned it on a chair rung, shoulders hunching, "because he got his fucking hair cut." Reno only ever uses that name when things are bad, so Tseng doesn't call him on it.
"No," he continues, "because he's not all covered with that creepy shit anymore, and you can see his face. Didn't even recognize him at first, until he stopped and started fucking staring at me like I'm his long lost dead mother."
"He probably remembers you from our good friends over in Edge," Tseng replies, which earns him a snort.
"Well, his mother is dead," Reno says, "I mean, whose isn't, right? But..."
"You killed her?"
Reno just nods, his expression blank. "I killed her," he repeats.
Dandelion-flavored bursting sickness
like air bending heat,
burning afterward.
"You killed her in Sector 7."
"Yeah," Reno's sector accent sounds like a rough recording of Tseng's smooth, uninflected timbre. "I killed her in Sector 7."
"And he called you a murderer?" Tseng asks, fighting the urge to hold his breath, not knowing what Reno is going to do or say exactly. He wishes there was more whiskey now.
"No," the response, surprisingly, is colored by emotion. "He just looked at me," Reno says, his eyes fixed on Tseng now.
"Do you feel guilty?"
Reno just stares at him, helpless. His scars make him look like a grimacing figure trapped in the center of a cathedral portal, risen in the name of angry religion, harsh, unforgiving, and forever circling toward a hell made of stone. Tseng sculpted Reno, and Shinra had sculpted Tseng; and then somewhere in there, Veld had poured down some acid rain on all of them. So when he finds himself wondering what it feels like to be effaced, he realizes that he already knows.
"No," Reno finally says, and his expression is blank again. "I've been called worse," he adds, then swirls the melting ice cubes around with his finger, watching the golden color slowly turn clear as they melt.
"As have I," Tseng agrees.
"He didn't say anything," Reno says, his voice muted, finger in his mouth again as he struggles to taste any remnant of the alcohol. To Tseng, it just looks like water now.
Whiskey-flavored acetic sickness
like sizzling chemical burns,
stinking afterward.
"We do bad things, Reno," Tseng affirms, "by other people's standards."
"We do bad things by our standards," Reno says, laughing hollowly. Neither statement is made in regret.
"Sometimes," Tseng agrees. "The first time you're indicted by only a stare is..."
"It's been a long time coming," Reno just says softly, his voice hushed. Tseng isn't sure whether Reno is ashamed of his own weakness or for prior acts. Although in this world, Tseng isn't sure what the appropriate reaction should be anymore; so he's leaving it up to Reno.
"People used to ask me," Reno says, composed again, letting the glass sit where it is and turn the wood dark with condensation as the ice melts to its last drops. "The people I still knew, anyway, in the slums, they used to say to me, Reno, did you do it for the money?" He takes a breath. "Or for the power?"
Gold-flavored soft sickness
like mulchy dead marrow,
drying afterward.
"Slum residents always despised Shinra and the Turks," Tseng answers matter of factly, even though Reno knows, because he had once been one. "Even when I started, before all of the reactors were built, before the plate was finished."
"Well," Reno says, "you know what my answer always was?"
"A bullet between the eyes?" Tseng does know.
"Yup." The response is measured and carefully controlled. Reno has gotten better over the years at preventing his own meltdowns, and Tseng has gotten better over the years at not threatening to kill him when he starts talking about the past. Because for Reno, it's not about remorse, as Tseng had first thought; it's damage control.
Now Tseng is no longer sure where remorse belongs, if it belongs, especially with Rufus talking atonement these days. But he also knows that it's never been the Shinra family that dictates what the Turks will become, what they have become, or how they will die.
To Tseng, one of the most appealing parts of his job is that he can be his own executioner on the day of his death; and because he doesn't doubt Reno, Rude or Elena's loyalty, he knows that he'll let them decide too. Different than the necessary elimination of a defector, of a crack made by conscience; they have all earned their dues together. Company suspicion and politics, the necessity of rooting out traitors, died with Midgar.
It also occurs to Tseng that he might be going soft; self-doubt is as familiar to him as breathing.
"You ever miss the city, boss?" Reno asks.
Neon-flavored glowing sickness
like crackled electric skin,
adhered afterward.
"Becoming attached to places is unwise," Tseng says, and Reno watches as he casually places an arm along the back of the couch.
"Always thought Midgar was heaven and hell all wrapped up in one little nasty whore-infested package," Reno finally says. "But it was home."
Tseng offers him a dark little smile, and his eyes are unreadable. "If I was a different man, perhaps I might agree with you."
And then, when Reno moves away from his chair and stands up, Tseng doesn't; he just waits. The light is waning now, and cool dark hair cushions Reno's shoulder as he sits down and fills the space created by Tseng's draped arm.
"Been a long time, boss," he says softly, and Tseng watches those cold, wet fingers slide in between the buttons on his shirt. They glide along his skin as far as they can reach, before Reno flicks the first button open.
Tseng doesn't answer, just lets his eyes close. "Yes, it has," he agrees, as he feels Reno untuck his shirt, then let out a slow breath with a question hanging at the end.
"What am I, Tseng?"
Tseng just puts his hand on the back of Reno's head, feels the distantly familiar texture of his hair; it feels like it does in his dreams of Midgar, inconsequential trips into the past that leave him waking in the night.
Reno is kissing at his neck, hand inside Tseng's shirt now and rubbing at his chest. The room is going dark.
"A murderer," Tseng finally answers.
Reno bites him and lets out a low noise; Tseng doesn't move, and Reno shifts to put his legs on either side of Tseng's and straddle him, grinds his hips forward, and Tseng's body answers him this time.
"Tell me again what I am, boss."
Tseng's hands land on Reno's ass and he pulls him forward roughly, but slow enough that he's still in control. He doesn't look at him.
"A Turk."
Reno buries his face in dark hair, rests his head against Tseng's shoulder, feels only his own warm, moist breath in the small space between Tseng's neck and the back of the couch. The scent of whiskey is still on it, and he holds his breath to try and keep it there, inside, even as he is undressed and touched and then split open.
And between each moan as Tseng thrusts into him, he wonders who is to blame for ice, for making it melt whiskey, who is to blame for the darkening of yellow flowers and yellow light and yellow warmth and yellow metal. Who is to blame for all of it disappearing, as he comes, as he sees his reflection in the window, and his red scars and his red hair and the red bite marks on his neck, all of it effaced by Tseng's silhouette in the glass, Tseng's back to the window.
Tseng, who gave him the gift to be his own judge and executioner, and put blame in the only place where it belongs.
To say nothing when Denzel's eyes next meet his in the street.