#powerbled

        “  what do you want.  ”  doofus shinra,  the nickname people had given the man,  is barely held in  ---  but cloud doesn’t want to offer up any more words than necessary.  he’d already wasted enough of his breath.  still,  he’d taken up the order as if it had been any other,  completely unaware  ...  money is money.

        cloud inclines his head,  fingers drumming against folded arms.

   he imagines rain, if it could fall. acidic in taste and pelting outside the window his bare back faces. hair spilling over his shoulders, he becomes aware of the flaring of fingernails scratches on his spine, drawn like more ink strokes, spelling nonsense desires. the edge of the bed isn’t any colder than the middle, and he has done his fair share of shivering already. he can’t quite taste whatever is left in the glass he had set aside long ago, gently placing it on the nightstand again, punctuating rufus’ profession. 

   the claim, its irony, brings an amused hum out of him, a strange aftertaste. there is, he believes, a fundamental incompatibility between rufus and death— a denial, one tseng can’t relate to, nor wish for. even so, his resilience is remarkable: the body of rufus shinra refuses ceasing to exist without so much as taking the world down with him. 

   “  i would have hoped to strike you as a better turk than that.  ”  distantly, he remembers the sentence once placed to his name, eyes flickering to the man that spared it. gaze idly retracing the contours of his collarbone in the dark, he wonders what the opposite of rufus’ sentiment sounds like. worse: he wonders what his death would look like to the world. tseng has lived to see bodies were expendable⸺ and yet, for better or worse, rufus seems much too crucial. vital and vile. if nothing else, the only known heir, spiteful in his perseverance. 

   exhaling the contemplation, a hand combs through his own hair, all its length, still unknotted despite the tugging.  “  the real life at stake may be mine,  ”  he stops the motion. his hand falls atop the mattress, steady when he leans forward, closer to his breathing,  “  but i’ve never been one to deny your wishes.  ”

   he’s not one for parades. not at all. but he dislikes being out of the loop even more; in any case, his streak of luck had been much too poor to take up rude's offer to gamble at the bar. so, reno sticks to the ample shadows of the outside, close to where heidegger nags him to be, and amuses himself with the people’s gossiping, the whispers and gasps and hums.

   if they weren’t afraid yet, they should be.

   rufus’ suit is blindingly white and clean, an ominous star among seas of blue and grey, and that pleasant smile of his gives him chills. he bites the inside of his cheek instead, watches him enter the ship and shed a few layers of the agreeable front reserved for the public. he whistles, the high pitch dying down with his claps.  “  dunno what performance i liked best, boss, theirs or yours,  ”  reno teases, a bite of sorts to his apparent good humor.

   naturally, his light-hearted insolence earns him no less than a disapproving look  and a tug to the cheeks. hard. a little too hard. ouch.

   were he someone else, he would've bitten him⸺  so he simply limits himself to grimace and move his head back.  “  gah, that is to say, congrats, rufus. ya made it.  ”