心 ・ 战

——She snorts; it’s funny. Hilarious, even, and stupor tugs hazel eyes back in her skull.     On the cusp; fucking outstanding.         “I can’t even—” tittering so shallow, so bereft of breath, it could be sobbing—”I can’t even feel—        why would I?”     Ah— okay. Placated, even in this state, she repeats in a stunned whisper;          “Why would I hit you…”     No one ever carried her. Ashe made it quite clear, coded within ‘don’t fuck with me’ body language; you simply didn’t touch without permission. Last guy who tried was pinned to a wall and she was barred from the nightclub.     Whatever.         Tseng… Well, he could do what ever he damn well pleased, couldn’t he, and again Ashe is forced to confront tonight’s shit-show. With his barely-rough chin resting against her head. Ceder-kissed warmth warding against night air so determined to hasten her decline. Ashe couldn’t get enough of him.      She sloughed a bloody hand-print down his shirt.     ( don’t do this to me…. you bastard….. how dare you… )         Pushing his beautiful  fingers into the wound while she barely retained a grip on reality. Face-first in the dirt, forced to educe a past so sweet, longing bloomed beneath her ribs and forced breath from her lungs.     Ashe could have cried. She didn’t.          “S’not… I mean—” fingers grasp exquisite cotton and Ashe hopes his evening wear is rented, as her’s was–”It… it’s still… we’re still…” Jaw pulses against Tseng’s clavicle. Her grip tugs. “Two of us or no— we’re working.”     Ashe remembers. She never fucking forgot—                                                                                     —c é n g     “We’re still working. You’re my boss. I can’t—”                                                                                     —( ’have you.’ ) Words ripped from existence with sharpened teeth before they can form upon bruised lips. She refuses to throw it away. To wreck herself upon the man the boy had become. The Turk. Director Tseng.     ( bastard… )         Ashe falls silent and Tseng would be forgiven for believing she’d lost the battle. She hadn’t. Wishes she had. Wishes she could so she wouldn’t have to feel the fetid, aching hollow beneath splayed ribs. Each step towards safety is counted, measured and catalogued in an effort to deny nostalgic pining.     Their route to the car, however, seemed to plot against her.         Familiarity catches hazel eyes and for a moment Ashe is so overtaken, she forgets. Focuses wholly on the darkened glass front and seats upon tables. The canopy is tired and the paint worn. Sign peeling from sheer exposure to the harsh sea winds. Shabby, but charming.     “Look— it’s still there.” Vulnerable. Almost innocent. “Do you remember? Where we met… properly…”     Tears come but she doesn’t feel.         ( fuck this mission ) “…I can’t believe it’s still there.”

For something he’d meant as half a joke, he bears her answer with the chiefest of displeasure. She hadn’t laughed it off as though it were nothing. So that they could both pretend it was nothing. She’d answered him seriously. As if even the notion of their former familiarity were so utterly verboten that it was a sin to give name to it, much less endeavor to regain it. 

It’s a rejection that ought not to aggrieve him, given their line of work and the liability familiarity and affection can only bring. But it does. Not just for the protestation but the vehemence with which she committed it. 

It’s a moment in which he feels the devastation of a rebuke, where there is little more than the most stalwart professionalism at hand. “I know,” he accedes quietly, preventing any unnecessary or frankly disconsolate further explanation than is obligatory at this point. 

And then she speaks, with a rounded softness to her voice that he mistakes at first for debility, and finds a curiously bathetic maudlinness there, instead. 

The cafe. 

Where they’d shared petit fours and viennoiserie, demitasses of espresso and cups upon cups of black coffees over evening homework sessions and notebook perusals that sometimes felt like a shame to end that they’d find themselves on rooftops overlooking the glittering cityscape just to have a reason to not go home. 

How can she rebuff him and then remind him of what is easily the sweetest, most beautifully uncomplicated time in his life, of which she was such a seminal and significant part, nearly all in one breath? 

“Yeah,” he says through a short, rueful laugh, voice pitched low to amend the bitterness he’s trying not to let show. “Still there.” Along with a thousand other memories I cant forget. Even if I’d wanted to.

“I can still see you in that booth we always sat in,” he goes on, stealing a glance at the storefront sidelong as it passes just at his periphery and into the bleakness of unmemory. “Stealing a bite of my tart when you thought I wasn’t looking, scribbling things in the margins of my old notebooks whenever I had to step away from the table. Cheeky thing you were. And still are.” 

They round the corner, and Tseng spots the vehicle. Pace quickens, and there’s a newfound exigency to his steps until he reaches the car and carefully sits her upon the passenger seat. “I’m just going to look,” he warns, but his hand is already upon his jacket’s bloody lapel, pulling it back to search for the source of the most prolific bleeding. 

It doesn’t take long to see the laceration upon her ribs, and Tseng swears under his breath, a word in his mother’s language so idiomatic that it doesn’t quite have a proper translation. Not that he wants to explain to her the intricacies of cursing a dead man’s family for exactly eighteen generations when she’s bleeding out.

He lowers her seat to a more comfortable recline and presses her hand to the wound over the jacket now replaced around her. “Ten minutes,” he promises, rounding the car and slipping deftly within the driver’s seat. “You know what to do.” He pulls out of the spot and guns it for the main road, his hand gripping the shifter until his knuckles go white with worry. “Just stay with me, yeah? Tell me about ...”

Why does he keep thinking about the cafe?

@fraxcxccl​

A man exhausted beyond mortal limits, he climbs iron steps. Crosses worn acoustic floors. To the sofa she guides, palms upon broad shoulders encourage respite. Removes tie. Smooths a thumb ‘cross sharp cheek as deft fingers relieve pearl buttons. Lastly, a hitch of plaid and she’s settled astride lap, bare thighs enshrouding. Engulfs Tseng within a rose-scented sanctuary. Buries slender fingers within rivulets of ebony and soothes, lips a gentle flutter over tired mien. “Tell me what you need…"

He lets himself be ushered to the couch, though his feet understand the direction that his mind cannot fathom. The enervation of his body and soul impairs any sentient thought from him. But he understands the weight of Ashe upon his lap, her warmth upon his chest, the scent of her skin that inspires an unbidden piquancy that surprises him. And even in the mist and miasma of his weariness does he understand the solicitude with which she asks him, demands of him, offers him to be a part of his recovery. To help. To be a bolster within his difficult times.

He can’t recall anyone ever having asked after him before. He can’t recall ever being the subject of anyone’s concern or interest. Not until her. And every single time she evinces a modicum of care for him, it never quite gets old. Never to be taken for granted. 

And neither is she. 

@fraxcxccl​

it's 2am. it's 2am and words blurred together. sat on the end of his desk, legs folded ( cramped ), she admits defeat. ( ow, they're stiff ) the files can wait. Ashe unfurls ( -real- stiff ) wordlessly settles in his lap, head against shoulder. lashes fall to kiss cheeks "I-- am gonna hug your brains out over this desk." she murmurs. 

He can feel the anticipation of movement, telegraphed in a nervous, unfocused energy that radiates from where she sits, alight upon his desk like a dove. And when she slips from her seat into the recline of his lap, with all the proprietary audacity of a cat, he smiles to himself in quiet victory of his prediction. 

“Well,” he says, his voice as quiet, as velutinous as any whisper. An arm enfolds her shoulder, the other one reaching around to circle her waist, and there is no doubt that she is welcome to this perch. And that it is where she belongs. So long as she wants to. 

@nowalive​

Catch Sephiroth just grabbing Tseng by the face for a whole ass kiss

Tseng runs through the standard litany of things to do before he leaves in the morning: breakfast warm on the stove for Sephiroth to wake up to; lunch for work is on the credenza by the door, alongside his keys and wallet. Tie’s straight, shirt tucked, everything’s in order.

His last order of business is always to kiss the sleeping Sephiroth just at the corner of his mouth. A bestowment he grants as feather-light as he’s able so as not to disturb him. So when he feels rough-hewn, furnace-warm hands grasp his newly-shaven cheeks, draw him down to be enveloped by a kiss that precludes every rational, quotidian thought he clings to.

There’s a serenity in the mindless, heedless euphoria, the bare-faced honesty and the splendid simplicity of that kiss. Of wanting that requires nothing more of him than to be present. To be nothing but himself. To be accepted and adored utterly, even in the ephemerality of an uncomplicated kiss. 

——Knife abandoned, ripping replaces hacking and Ashe finds seams far more susceptible to brute force. Far less chance of cutting herself open, as well. No longer hobbled she could at least move.     Palm meets forehead; both notices and doesn’t the slick of sweat coating her skin. Vision would not focus upon a neck that felt barely adequate to the task of supporting her head.     Fuck. Adrenaline was wearing already.     ( you’re just drunk walk it off. you’ve done this hundreds of times )         Self-assured she wasn’t going to pass out, Ashe grabs her bag and heads for the door, only sheer bullishness keeping her upright and placing one foot before the other.     As for his offer—     To grab or not to grab; uncertainty saw her hesitate. Sheer frustration that this mission had utterly compromised a secret she’d kept buried since their night together years ago.      ( the lies I tell him crumble like a stack of cards )         Peevishness was no excuse, however, and in reality only a split second passes before Ashe grabs Tseng’s hand and allows him lead; they weren’t done yet. Now was not the time to analyse the shit-show that was her exposed and chaotic emotions regarding this man. Nor his actions towards her. Ashe adds beneath her breath;     “Y’might.. regret that offer soon…”

     How late was it? Ashe had little stamina left with which to discern something so trivial. Late. It was cold and late. Sweat-slicked skin chilled instantly and Ashe both felt it…and didn’t; there had to be a reason she had started trembling violently, right?     ( probably shock. ha ha haaaafuck… )         Tseng was forced to take more and more weight before the Grand Hotel was well behind them, the cover of Junon’s streets encroaching, cloaking their passing. Some of which were cobbled, which spelled disaster for heels. Sure enough, one slipped. Snapped. Ankle folded and down she went like a sack of potatoes.      Hysterical giggling was all Ashe could manage.         “Fu~ck… f-fuck it. S-sorry boss…” At least to any prying eyes, they were simply a dysfunctional couple staggering home after one too many. Darkness hid injuries well enough. Ashe examined her heel through glassy eyes.      “Broke. Piece a’shit.”         And with the dexterity of a three-year-old, Ashe begins removing her shoes.     “Just… a sec… might haff’ta gimmie a ride… ankle feels kinda busted… Sir. Boss. Uhh—”                                             céng —”…Sir.”     Giggling was better than sobbing, right?         At least she was still conscious, though Ashe was beginning to doubt that was actually a benefit at this stage.     And why was the front of her dress black and wet? She abandons her shoes. ( one off, one on ) Presses a palm to her stomach that comes away dark and slick. “….shit.”

It’s painful, watching her like this. Even when he reminds himself that she’s a seasoned agent, and it’s this exact fucking extraordinary mettle that makes her brilliant at what she does. He knows that. Implicitly and explicitly. 

But what he can’t forget is that skinny girl in the cafe so many years ago. Who formed his name so carefully upon sugared lips, who studied every stroke of his character with a voracious curiosity no one had ever shown him before. Or since.

He’d adored that girl. He adores this one still.

His immediate instinct is to take the knife from her hands. He can surmise what she’s doing, and under any other circumstances than being heavily drugged, she’d be trusted without hesitation to the task she sets herself to. But he has to respect her skill, demonstrated or not. Compromised or not.  And he does. So he lets her.

Fortunately, she escapes from the endeavor unscathed from her own doings, but he’s unsatisfied still at the state of her. But the displeasure is amended with the hand that grasps his, with the surety of his support, his inevitable loyalty to her safety. To her. 

They walk out into the night with hands clasped as lovers might. Though there’s no resignation or repletion in the act. Fingers grasp like vices, palms slick with the sweat of worry, and he holds onto the fading strength of her hands with a meeting fervor. A sudden tug, a swear hissed through an inebriate laugh and Tseng catches her around the waist to hoist her up, bolstered to his hip for safety. She’s abandoning her shoes, which draws a purl of his brows too unyielding to be anything but the utmost displeasure. “Here, let me—”

The offer halts upon his lips as his mouth falls agape to the sight of blood flooding the rents of her dress. “Fuck,” he swears under his breath, cursing himself for not checking her over for substantial injuries before he’d let her walk out of there. The likelihood she’s injured herself further with the exertion of walking gouges at him, and he berates himself with a thousand admonitions all at once.

“Do me a favor and don’t hit me?” he asks, wrapping the jacket firm around her. “And don’t resist. Please.”

Tseng scoops her up in his arms, making sure to cover every bit of her modesty he can, walking as carefully and quickly as he’s able towards the car, which is still too far for his liking. He’s nervous. Not that he expects her to be. But he pretends the small talk is for her benefit rather than his. “What was the point of asking me how to say my name correctly if you’re never going to call me by it?” he asks, though the question holds no accusation. Only the maudlin curiosity borne of a nostalgia lost to both of them. Of a halcyon time before Shinra. Before the war. Before the Turks. Before all of this.  

EXCUSE ME GAY ASS I LOVE YOU SO MUCH???