#nasdack

Answering in reverse: oh god are there a lot of deleted scenes. There are tens of thousands of words of missing scenes – we (i.e. pendency/nyx) and I were aiming to wrap it up; had timelines and everything in a thousand emails that were written semi-incoherently. We had a private comm to dump it all out; I’m actually not sure whether nyx took that and published it on AO3 – I had little to no part in that organisation ‘cause my head was falling off of my neck from school and such. BUT if you’re interested, I will go look!

Re: how I thought it up – I don’t even really recall the granular details, only that it was October of 2008, the markets were crumbling to pieces, and it seemed fitting that while the financial world blew up around us to shove Rufus and –

Well, let’s be real. Balthier and Tseng are hot as fuck. And so we threw Rufus in, and suddenly we were dealing with two drastically different “empires” of sort, and ideas of financial mastery versus practical mastery; negotiating relationships when those involved can’t bear to be in anything approaching societal-typical standard; contrasting silver-spoon wealth with bootstrapped capability while flipping the trope around so that the poor-as-shit Tseng was the one with his hands on all the strings; twisting around inheritances both monetary and genetic; and doing something almost poly-like when that wasn’t really quite a thing in the fandom. 

Hahaha, what got me to chuckle is the “I’m...

This part is really all pendency in the best possible way. I DON'T KNOW; JUST GO READ THE WHOLE ENORMOUS THING. It is about Rufus and Balthier and Tseng in the world's weirdest maybe-not-quite bizarro polyamorous relationship (?).

"I didn't make the world, Rufus." Balthier grins over the rim of his whiskey. "I merely try to live in it."

"In only the best parts." Rufus sits on the sofa with his legs apart. Tseng mentally measures the distance between his knees.

Balthier shrugs and settles back into the sofa. "I have the means. A fruitless kind of denial to wander the world slumming it." Balthier's eyes flick to Tseng as he uncrosses his legs. Balthier's smile is sublime: he slides his knees apart. Mimicry in this case is not a form of flattery. "At least, all the time. A man likes a little decadence."

"Or a lot," Rufus says, "or so I hear."

"I wouldn't believe everything you hear. Especially considering where some people's mouths have been."

Tseng clears his throat. "Just so you know, Rufus's cock is bigger."

Balthier chokes on his mouthful. Rufus starts, his eyes suddenly wide.

Throw some fun sentences/paragraphs at us, if you like! :D

I sat trying to answer this and realised that I'd practically copy/paste half the thing.

'You're a cruel man,' Balthier informed Tseng as they dressed. Tseng's reply was a non-committal noise. Tseng's shirt was another matter altogether. It caught Balthier's attention far more readily for how it was, for one, something worth less than a hundred dollars. 'You're from Shinra, aren't you?' He handed Tseng his jacket and noted, again, the quality and cut as both competant and particularly generic. 'And they dress you in that?'

'I dress myself,' Tseng said, mildly. He shot Balthier a glance as he flipped up his collar and reached for his tie. 'You'll excuse me if I prefer not to waste the wealth of small nations on my wardrobe.'

'But a man's clothes say so much about him,' Balthier sighed.

'Yes,' Tseng nodded, finishing off his knot. 'They do, don't they?' If there was irony in his voice, he didn't let it show. Not in so many words. Finished, Tseng leaned against the wall and watched Balthier. 'You are a rich man. You should know. Yours is the breed that invented multiple ways of tying a noose.' He threw Balthier's tie at the man. 'Poor men like myself would rather it just over and done with. I'll be going.'