Something had woken him up. He fought valiantly to force his eyes open, knowing full well that the monumental effort it currently took to move his body even an inch was definitely not worth the work. If someone was here to kill him - oh well, he guessed. Nothing much he could do about it in this condition. Still. Something had woken him up.
An eye finally cracked open and he realized he wasn’t in his bedroom. What… right. He’d almost opted to sleep in his bathroom so he could minimize movement, but he’d realized he could manage to move that far every four hours or so, even though it left him exhausted. He glared at the pool of dark fabric inches from his dangling arm where he’d taken it off when he’d stumbled home two days before. He’d thought maybe he was coming down with something all day and Rude had dragged him home at lunch, forcing him to take a rest. Really he probably didn’t want to catch whatever it was Reno had managed to catch, and it’d been a good thing he had brought him home, because Reno never ever left his clothes on the floor, not unless he felt just like he happened to at the moment.
He managed to turn his head enough to see the blinds on his patio window swaying gently. Either the air had just come on, or someone actually had broken in to kill him. Somehow he couldn’t motivate himself to care either way. He reached for his water - a fortunate forethought on Rude’s part - and sipped it slowly, narrowing his eyes at the blinds, forcing his mind to mystery solve. There had been something controversial happening at the morning briefing last time he’d been at work. Something that neither of the bosses wanted any part of. Something dull and super dumb, not that anything with the executives was ever worth the anyone’s time of day, and damn it, what had the whole almost argument between the two been about? They’d never seen Tseng argue with Veld like that before. Reno still half thought maybe in his state of getting sick he had hallucinated the whole thing. But he knew that he hadn’t, because Rude had been talking about it too.
His stomach turned just like he knew it might from just the water. Sometimes he could keep it down, but not other times. He was going to call Rude to have them send over one of the non-creepy doctors if this actually came back up instead of his stomach just feeling a bit off. Just the same he stumbled to the bathroom and turned on the light. He leaned against the sink to keep himself upright and realized his stomach had settled. Well that had been a waste of energy. He’d still better call Rude, this was getting ridiculous.
Reno crawled back to his couch and leaned up against it. He’d crawl back up to it once he’d taken a nap. But… the bathroom light had been off. He always left it on when he was sick - just to make it easy for people to find him if he slipped and hit his head or something dumb like that. He lay his head against the couch cushions and cleared his throat.
“What’re ya doing here, boss man?” He croaked out. Silence answered him for a mere few seconds before the soft footfalls on linoleum gave a second reply, followed by an actual third.
“I was beginning to think that you wouldn’t notice me.”
“Hmm. Indeed. It appears that Rude did in fact not exaggerate your state?”
“Perhaps it would be best to call in a doctor for you. Or take you in.”
“Nope. Hojo bojo wants to test me for a test. Always wants a test.”
“Not the word he uses, but close enough.”
“‘Kay. I’m still alive. You can go.”
“I… would rather not leave yet. You see, I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I didn’t even come with the intent of assessing your well being so much as to verify just how ill you were in the event that I too happened to contract it.”
“Boss, words are not words right now,” Reno grumbled back, squeezing his eyes shut as his head began to throb again.
“As unpleasant as this strain appears to be, I believe it preferable to attending a demonstration wherein the Turks are likely to preform poorly despite our training. One on one surely would not have been nearly so poor a showing, but they intended to put the two of us against the three first class in a public spectacle.”
“It was to be you and Rude, only you became ill the same day - admittedly one of the reasons we have not attempted to shorten the course of your illness. The match is meant to take place tonight, and yes, it was meant to be Veld and myself.”
“Was?” He croaked. This story was taking forever, and his head was hurting worse. He wanted to go back to sleep. On the couch would be nice, but the floor was fine. A moment later it seemed as if the boss had read his mind, because he felt his body lifted and Tseng swearing in concern over how light he was and fussing until the blankets were tucked in around him. He cracked his eyes open again, demanding that the face now hovering less than a foot away from him finish the story. Preferably before his headache or his loopiness got any worse.
“Veld has been coming down with something all morning, so have half of the department, and the board insists that one of the contestants be of a leadership role. With you and Veld out of the picture, that falls to me. That is why I am here.”
Reno frowned, stirring the entire discourse around in his mind until it made a slightly consistent soup - nah, not soup, his thoughts felt like oatmeal. Yeah, oatmeal. And he’d just added cinnamon and maple syrup and also some cream and finally made it make sense.
“Yo, if I did something like that you’d call me irresponsible.”
“Perhaps. But the board needs also to recall that we are meant to be a secret organization and not one to be flaunted with SOLDIER.”
“Come ‘ere so I can cough on ya, then.”
“No need. I drank from your cup twice already and I have been sitting near you the better part of two hours. You’ve been drifting in and out.”
“Bold, boss. Bold. Also, worst idea ever. This really sucks.”
“Better than having some part of my anatomy handed back to me by Sephiroth,” he mumbled, standing up from his crouch. “I had best return to work.” Reno nodded. Or thought he did. Maybe he just went back to sleep.
Despite his best efforts and frequent contact with Reno, Tseng still somehow managed to not get sick.
All three SOLDIERS of first class, however, were out for three weeks recovering from influenza.
The match was never rescheduled.
Apologies for any and all mistakes of a grammatical nature - I was in a rush and finished this all in one fell swoop to finish it (kinda) by the end of the first day. I mean, it was finished, just not posted.
I should get an AO3 account one of these days……..
