[ tseng makes it all the way back to hq before his number is up. in fact, what happens is this: he leans on reno, keeps his feet under him and a hand pressed to his abdomen, and feels himself bleeding out. they all know it. he can tell by the pinched look on his turks' faces that they all know, and yet none of them will say it aloud. you're gonna be okay, boss, elena says, and reno opens his mouth like he wants to say something but then closes it instead.
his own blood is hot and sticky under his palm. tseng looks down at his feet on the marble floor of the foyer and sees his own red bootprints; he's bled down the entire front of his slacks. ]
I'm afraid one of you is going to have to clean up after me, [ he says, and then the world goes dark.
from there it's a lot of nothing. black. silence. sometimes less silence, interrupted by the steady beeping of machinery or the hushed and unintelligible sound of voices. often there's pain; even more often there's a kind of hazy numbness that overtakes him, leaves him floating in oblivion. more than once, there's a burst of white light in the corner of his vision that tseng knows, instinctively, to be the lifestream; just as many times, there's the instinct to turn away from it.
don't walk into the light, reno had joked once, about something entirely unrelated. tseng hadn't thought that he would ever need to take such advice so literally.
it isn't that he's afraid to die. tseng hasn't been afraid to die since he was thirteen, since he signed his life away in service to the general affairs division. but he knows, vaguely, in some indefinable way, that he still has something left to do. something left to say. he can't quite grasp it; it has no fixed form, no definable edge. it's an impression more than it is a fact, even. but it's enough to keep tseng holding on for as long as he can, no matter how many times the blankness threatens to overwhelm him.
once or twice, he floats closer to the surface of consciousness. the first time, perhaps, when he comes out of surgery; he thinks something like closed me up, then, and then sinks back down into nothingness. the second time, perhaps, when he's moved to hq to recover, where the beeping is less obnoxious and the bed is much softer, but he still can't bring himself to open his eyes. he can hear the hushed voices of those around him, like listening to someone speak from underwater, but his eyes stay closed, and soon the voices cease.
little by little, he feels his body start to put itself back together. it hurts. it's okay. the hurt means he's still alive. ]
[He's lost track of time, ever since. The sun rises and sets. Hours bleed into days. None of it seems to mean anything, next to the constant that is Tseng lying still and pallid against sterile white bedsheets, refusing to wake up.
They'd tried to insist on keeping Tseng in the medical wing, once he'd gotten out of surgery. It was the better place for him, they'd said — round-the-clock care, Mr. President, they'd assured him. He's in good hands with our staff, they'd told him. But the medical staff hadn't been there in the helicopter while the world fell down and his blood turned to ice, listening to the senseless afflicted in their black hooded cloaks as they'd moaned and writhed, strapped in like cargo in the back. The medical staff hadn't heard Professor Hojo offer his services in assistance to Tseng's condition, already openly covetous of the prospect of another high-quality specimen.
He'd kept his voice even. Matter-of-fact. And the instant they'd landed, he'd ordered Tseng moved to secure quarters on the 69th floor — to the one place he could guarantee would stay within his own complete and utter control.
Tseng doesn't look any better in his old four-poster king than he'd looked in the hospital room. He'd thought that a little color would help, somehow — would make him seem more alive, somehow, more robust, less frail. Tseng isn't supposed to look frail, isn't authorized to lie there in bed like the man he is instead of the force of nature he's supposed to be. He's supposed to be on his feet, unconcerned no matter how much blood there is pouring down his suit. He's supposed to smile, sharp and secretive, and remark how it's mostly someone else's.
It was his. All the blood they'd bleached off the lobby marble, it'd all been his.
He — Rufus Shinra, president of the Shinra Electric Power Company, the singular most powerful man on the whole of the planet — has long since lost track of what day it is. He goes up to the 70th floor and works until he can't stand to stay away any longer, and when it gets to be too much he comes back down and sits in his old bedroom and listens to Tseng's monitors beep their soft and persistent cadence. Darkstar keeps vigil while he's gone, welcomes him when he returns; she waits only long enough for him to find his seat before pushing her head under his hand, resting her muzzle on his thigh, at a loss for how she is supposed to protect him from a deep-seated anguish she's wholly unable to sink her teeth into.
It's not that he regrets his orders. There's no burden of guilt or self-reproach for being the one who sent Tseng and his Turks into that temple. Given the choice, he'd do it again. He's not in the business of doubting his decisions, and neither is Tseng. Tseng isn't his father; he's never doubted him even once.
Maybe. Probably.
What it is, really, is that Rufus knows that Tseng would be content to die like this. All Tseng would ever regret were the loose ends — an unclear succession to the directorship, maybe, with Reno the next in line but Elena possessing more of the raw potential for it. Tseng would say he accomplished his mission, gave his life in service to the cause. Nothing else should have to matter, in light of that.
He knows the words he should've said to that: You do. You matter.
It's that Tseng could die right now in perfect service to Shinra, and that's what Rufus Shinra is supposed to want — Turks who will die for his cause, for his company. The problem is that Tseng will die for the company when Rufus needs him to live for him, and right now he doesn't know which one Tseng will choose.]
Have you been watching him for me, D?
[It comes out a little more hoarse than he means it to, as he sinks into his usual chair and strokes her sleek head with open affection, unable to help a weary, unguarded smile as she rumbles her pleasure right back. There's an indentation in the blankets on the far side of the king mattress, roughly hound-shaped, marring the expanse that Tseng's body isn't occupying; had she been curled up next to him, while he was gone?
Gods, if only. If only he could —]
Let's see if he wakes up today. He will if he knows what's good for him, won't he.
[ tseng continues to float, awareness sliding in and out of focus. it's warmer here than it had been before, this much he knows; sometimes there's a weight against his side, solid and reassuring, and sometimes he's left in a sea of cool sheets, bereft and alone. he senses, strangely, the presence of others, sometimes one, sometimes many. sometimes they linger. in a cycle, they come and go, but tseng can't track the timing of it, his mind is too fuzzy and his consciousness too thin.
when he finally rises to the surface of the sea of his own unconsciousness, for the first time in gods know how many days, it's to the low murmur of a familiar voice. he can't make out the words, but he knows the cadence of it, knows its tone: rufus, talking to darkstar.
the first thing tseng thinks is, absurdly, they wouldn't let darkstar into the hospital. so he isn't in a hospital. back at headquarters, then, maybe in the residential wing, in a room converted for medical use—but no. the second thing he thinks is, even more absurdly, general affairs doesn't have the budget for this thread count, and it's that thought which prompts tseng to finally crack open his eyes.
he knows this room, this four-poster bed. he knows it intimately, from the long evenings he spent in rufus' personal quarters during his house arrest. no wonder it was so comfortable. no wonder it felt so good, to be here, floating in a haze of nothingness and letting himself be tossed about in the currents of his own mind. he's not intubated—that's for the best, tseng could self-extubate but he doesn't want to—but he has an iv in his wrist and a pulse ox clipped to his finger, and there are monitoring leads snaking in through the front of his shirt, tracking his vital signs.
and to his left, sitting in a drawn-up chair and looking for all the world like he belongs there, is rufus shinra himself. he looks terrible. (that's the third thing tseng thinks.) he looks exhausted, in the way only someone like tseng would ever be able to recognize, someone who knows every inch of rufus and would know what to look for. the faint shadows under his eyes, the angle of his head as he props it on his fist. even the slow movement of his fingers as he strokes back over darkstar's head. the president of the shinra electric power company, the singular most powerful man on the whole of the planet, does not need to come sit vigil at tseng's bedside. not unless he wants to be there.
it doesn't feel real. tseng, for once in his life, isn't sure it is real. it feels so very much like a dream, whether that's because of the pain medication or however long he's been under. for now, he's content not to interrogate it too much. he swallows, which takes some effort, and then parts his lips. ]
Did they... [ his voice is rough with disuse, and it takes effort to get the words out. he has to pause mid-sentence to draw in a breath. ] ...get the... blood out?
[If it were anyone else, anyone else but them, then perhaps it would've taken until the first croaking words had spilled from Tseng's throat for Rufus to react — but it doesn't, because time seems to freeze from the moment he sees Tseng's throat shift as he instinctively swallows to wet it. All of a sudden, the dim ambient lights seem to halo far too bright; all of a sudden, there's a buzzing in his ears that seems to increase like the pressure behind his widening eyes. He forgets how to breathe, all of a sudden, when it slams into his lungs in the form of a quiet gasp and holds there, burning, like a hope or a prayer or an incantation against the possibility that what he'd seen was absolutely nothing at all.
Only it wasn't nothing, and through the blurry haze of his vision he knows Tseng's lips separate when they'd been pressed together before, and it isn't until the first consonant breaks the silence in the air that the weight in his chest dislodges, and all the breath he'd been holding leaves him in a rapid rush.
Tseng.
Darkstar whuffles, shoving her head up into the hand that had gone still mid-pet between her eyes; he realizes a little too late that the other one is gripping the armrest of his chair so tight that his knuckles have gone white beneath the trim of his black gloves.]
Two seconds back from the dead and that's what's on your mind?
[His own voice sounds strange to his ears, and not just because it seems like it's filtered down through water, distant and faraway and obscured by the cadence of his pulse beating in them. It's thinner than it should be, almost as frail as Tseng looks. His father would be ashamed of him.
His father has no place in this room. This room is only for the people he can't live without.]
Expense the damn suit, Tseng, I couldn't care less about it.
[ tseng hears the rush of breath that leaves rufus and it makes something ache in his chest, something entirely unrelated to the still-healing scars beneath his clothes. were anyone else in the room, rufus would never let himself react this way, with an audible and obvious emotional response—and somehow, the fact that he does so now makes it no easier for tseng to decide whether or not he's dreaming.
on the one hand, he would know rufus' voice anywhere, but even he doesn't think his subconscious could recreate rufus shinra in such beautiful, devastating clarity. on the other hand, it seems like a thing of dreams to think that rufus' rare, precious show of emotion could be because of him.
rufus was right about one thing: tseng would have been happy to die in the line of duty. he would have regretted the mess he left in the lobby and the disorganized state of his succession planning, yes, but he would never have regretted giving his life on rufus' orders. what rufus was wrong about, though, is that tseng would have been dying for the company. that's not it at all. he would have been dying for rufus—and rufus is now the company, so it's sort of one and the same, but at the end of the day rufus shinra is where tseng's loyalty lies. and if that means putting it all on the line for the mission, where the mission is to get rufus what he wants—what he deserves—then how could tseng ever regret it? ]
I'll remember... you said that.
[ he must be dreaming. either that or he's too high to tell the difference. surely this will matter to him at some point, but it certainly doesn't matter now. tseng closes his eyes again, then opens them, his head turning slightly to look at rufus and darkstar. moving more than that feels like too big a task, but he wants to look at rufus, really look at him. ]
Are you all right? [ he should ask about the others, too, and about the mission, the temple. he doesn't ask about them. it takes him a long moment to lick his dry lips and then add, ] Sir.
[It would be so easy to scoff at him for a question like that — to roll his eyes and huff his disbelief and insist that asking whether he's all right is the last thing Tseng should be inquiring after in a moment like this. Maybe it would be for anyone else. But even as injured and weary as he is (he can't say frail, he can't say weak, he refuses to think either of those things about a man who's fought his way back from the dead for him), Tseng moves to try to look at him anyway, like he's the only thing in the world that matters —
And that's why he's asking, Rufus knows. Because he is the only thing in the world that matters. Because there's no amount of reassurance in the world that will convince Tseng to have any sort of concern for himself if he doesn't let him first establish that he's all right.]
I am now.
[It's an admission. He doesn't try to hide it; he wouldn't succeed even if he did. He averts his eyes briefly instead, up and away, unthinkingly casting his face into profile in the soft lamplight when in fact he's just trying to make sure the heat rising in his eyes never escapes his lashes.]
They worked on you for nine hours. I'm going to buy your surgeon a house in Costa del Sol.
[After a long moment, he finally looks back, his gaze lingering on Tseng's face for what feels like an eternity before it occurs to him that he might've let it rest there a little too long, and it flicks away again, this time to the bedside table.]
Oh. Ah, there's — water, or chips of ice. If you — I can —
[ whatever reassurance tseng derives from the confirmation that rufus is okay is immediately destabilized by the magnitude of that admission. it takes a second for him to put it together, his mind moving at what feels like a snail's pace; at first, tseng thinks rufus must mean that something happened to him from which he's only just now recovered, but then his brain catches up to the rest of him and understands what rufus really means: that until tseng was awake, he wasn't okay. he's okay now, because tseng is awake.
the thought of it shakes tseng to the core. the thought that any part of rufus might be less than fine because tseng himself is less than fine—he can hardly breathe around the implication.
fortunately, there's water to think about. under any other circumstance, the idea of letting rufus feed him ice ships would be intolerable, but tseng has discovered that his limbs are not especially cooperative right now, and he's genuinely not sure he'd be able to manage it himself. so it's with some small amount of chagrin that he says, ] ...Please.
[ he tries to push himself up a little, to scoot up onto the pillows so that he's at least at a better angle for it, but the mere act of engaging the muscles of his core sends a lance of pain through him that makes him grunt quietly and drop back down to the mattress. which, to be fair, is not a far distance to drop, since he really only lifted himself by about an inch. ]
Do you...
[ ...no. he'd thought to ask rufus if he needed to call someone, the medical staff, a nurse of some kind to assist. and if rufus decides to do so, tseng won't stop him. but at least for right now, selfishly, he would like a few more moments to keep rufus to himself, just in case he is dreaming and he'll never experience this again. ]
[Not that it surprises him, that Tseng tries; he wouldn't be Tseng if he didn't. But something inside him still wrenches even at that soft noise of pain, because it's still more than Tseng would ever usually allow himself to begin with. They told him, his Turks told him, that even after being run through Tseng had still gotten to his feet and walked to them, prior to collapsing into their waiting grasp. That he'd mumbled something about needing to make his report. He pushes himself too much; even on the brink of death, that much is never going to change.
But there's one thing Tseng will listen to, Rufus knows, and he isn't above using that against him for the sake of the greater good. If he makes it an order, if he can bear to render it a command, Tseng won't defy him. Not when there's no competing priority to speak of, otherwise.
The real question is, can he make himself do it? To even consider it asks a...candor that they both usually avoid.
But if it means never hearing Tseng make that sound again, then it's really no question at all.]
...Don't move. Let me do it.
[And what a reversal that is, isn't it? But strangely, it isn't one he minds; after day after day of useless waiting, there's finally something at his fingertips that he can do about the situation. And so he eases Darkstar's head out of his lap and rises from his chair, moving the scant few steps to the small refrigerator concealed in the base of the nightstand and retrieving a cupful of ice chips from it.
There isn't much room on the edge of the mattress, but he doesn't need much to suffice. He settles down onto a sliver of it, about even with Tseng's elbow, and clutches onto the cup in his hands like a lifeline before digging in after one of the larger chips and catching it carefully between two of his fingers.
It feels — forbidden, somehow, the prospect of what he knows he's about to do. But he's Rufus Shinra, and he bends the world to his will, even when it's something so seemingly insurmountable as this: moving the already-melting bit of ice close to Tseng's mouth and letting the edge of it skim along his lower lip, wetting and cooling it until the frozen chip has warmed enough to melt and trickle past his lips into his mouth as mere cold droplets of water.]
[ it's only because rufus couches it in an order that tseng is able to allow himself stillness. don't move, rufus says. let me do it, rufus says, and still tseng can't imagine what "it" he might do—reach for the button to summon the staff? press the button that controls tseng's pain medication, such that he might be able to push himself up after all?
no. no, what rufus means to do is to sit at tseng's elbow on the mattress and press an ice chip to his lower lip, to let it melt until cool water trickles into his mouth and down his throat. he does it like it's nothing, like he isn't rewriting everything tseng has ever known about the delicate balance between them. there are things that tseng has never allowed himself to imagine, thoughts he has never allowed himself to entertain, because he knows that to do so would be ruinous—and here rufus is, enacting like fifteen of them all at once, completely unaware of the havoc he's wreaking in the process.
tseng parts his lips slightly and swallows. he focuses on the water, how it soothes his dry mouth, his parched throat. the fluids pumping into him through one of his ivs are certainly no replacement for the base pleasure of drinking after a long time without water. and so tseng is content to let his eyes close again, feeling the ice melt, feeling the water drip, trying desperately not to feel the brush of rufus shinra's fingertips against his mouth.
when he speaks again, his voice is steadier. still slow and a little hazy at the edges, and it still takes a little time for him to catch his breath, but it's much easier to form words. ]
Thank you.
[ sir. he should say sir. somehow he can't bring himself to shape his lips around the word. tseng blinks his eyes open again, focuses them on rufus, so much closer than before and so much more beautiful. brilliant. rufus has always been so brilliant; it's a privilege to see him this close. he can feel his forearm pressing against rufus' hip where he's settled on the bed. tseng doesn't remember the last time he touched rufus, if it wasn't to rush him out of some crisis or another.
something, perhaps the drugs in his veins, prompts him to say, ] I thought I was going to die. ...I didn't want to.
[He realizes then, as he sits there quietly coaxing that chip of ice to melt against the ambient heat of Tseng's lips and his own fingers, that one of the things that has always terrified him is inevitability.
There's a quiet horror in stagnation. In all his setbacks, in all his failures, in all his defeats, there was always the lifeline that his own ambition still burned hot, and that there were still paths to walk and hands to play so long as he still breathed. To surrender to the inevitable is to stagnate, to petrify. Accepting that something cannot and will not ever change, no matter how irresistible the force applied, is a sort of submission that would break him long before he were ever able to fully stomach it.
Looking at Tseng like this, with his usually-glossy hair a little dulled from days without washing, with a prickling shadow appearing on his unshaven chin, with his eyes closed and his breath even and his pallor fading with his newfound return to consciousness, Rufus comes to a second realization: that this is all he will ever have.
This moment, this tenderness, is equivocal. That he can move so close, that he can offer what little comfort his hands might bear, is all conditional on the precariousness of Tseng's present health. If he wants Tseng to never come so close to death again, then he must accept that he will never have this again, either — that he only even has it now solely because Tseng is in no condition to brush off or disallow it.
As the ice melts, and his fingers linger, Rufus arrives at a final recognition: that their respective feelings are — that they can only be — unequal. That Tseng is the impenetrable object that even his strongest ambitions can't move. It's fitting, really, that he so often relies on that old metaphor of lever and fulcrum; for the lever to have any efficacy, the fulcrum must stay constant. They must always be what they are to each other, nothing more and nothing less. To work, they cannot change; to change would eliminate their ability to work.
He will never have this again. This is the most of Tseng he will ever get.]
I thought about ordering you not to.
[The ice rattles in its plastic glass as he makes himself reach for another piece, because if he doesn't occupy his fingers with a fresh chip of it, they're going to stay resting feather-light on Tseng's mouth and on his chin, touching him with no excuse and no purpose.]
Then I thought it would be insult to injury. Not just to die, but to disobey a direct order while doing it.
[I thought I was going to die. I didn't want to. It was the unfinished business, then, that spurred Tseng to fight his way back. And when he was a child, he might've been petty about that — insisting that the reason for his miraculous recovery meant just as much as the practice of it. That having him back was somehow cheapened if he weren't doing it for him, specifically.
He's not a child. Tseng could have chosen to live for the damned mailroom clerks if that's what it took. It's all irrelevant, save for the part that he managed to live at all.]
I told myself you wouldn't. Then I realized...I couldn't name a single reason for you to stay, that wasn't outweighed by just as valid of one to go. I thought you might — [He swallows, fighting the rise of a lump in his throat.] — that you might do it. For Shinra.
[ rufus' fingers move away and tseng misses them instantly. gods, how is he ever going to recover from this? not from the injury, nor the surgery, but from the devastating realization of how warm rufus' touch is? it's rare that anyone touches tseng without intent to harm him. rarer still for that touch to come from rufus, who tseng has loved desperately and without reservation for half his life, and who has always been as distant and untouchable as lightning on the horizon.
he licks his lips unconsciously to taste the salt of rufus' skin, then swallows, because his mind is mostly soft cotton and if this is all he's ever going to have of rufus inside him then he may as well enjoy it. ]
No. [ he feels like he's moving through molasses, through a dream he can't quite control. this must be a dream, or at the very least it must be purgatory, to be tormented with the sweetness of something he'll never be able to grasp. he can practically feel the drip, drip, drip of morphine in his veins. ] I would have... obeyed, if you ordered me. But not for Shinra.
[ it's all but a whisper, hushed in the silence of the room broken only by the whir and beep of machinery. even in a dream, tseng still remembers that it's close to treason to admit that anything he does isn't solely in the best interest of the company he serves.
many, many years ago verdot had attempted to teach tseng this lesson: that the mission comes before the man, always. (very "do as i say, not as i do" of him, that.) he had taught tseng, time and time again, that his life—or indeed any turk's life—has meaning insofar as it's contributing to their mission overall. viewed from that angle, the noblest thing tseng could have done in that temple would be to die, and to go out knowing that he had given his life in service of a higher cause.
as it turns out, the lesson didn't take as well as verdot thought it did. ]
For you. I didn't... want to leave you. [ even dreaming, it feels like treason to admit as much. he should be afraid. but what fear can there be in him, when he's looked the lifestream in the face and turned away from it, all for this man sitting next to him? ] I'll go when you let me... not before.
[ tseng closes his eyes again, then blinks them open, looking up at rufus. blue like a summer storm. warmer than most people will ever know. tseng has always considered himself among the blessed few, to know what rufus' eyes look like when he smiles and means it. if he's dreaming—if all of this will vanish, when he opens his eyes for real—then tseng should grasp what he can while it's still here for him to wrap his hands around.
the fear, then: not fear of saying it, but fear of holding it back. maybe this was the thing he couldn't die without saying. ]
He almost wishes he could convince himself that Tseng is delirious, mumbling something like that. He almost wishes he could maintain it's the morphine clouding his thoughts, sending him off on idle flights of nonsense fancy that he won't remember long enough to regret later. The problem, though, is that he knows Tseng isn't — not least of which because he's monitored everything they've given him in every precise degree, that he knows exactly what the drugs they're administering can and can't do to the person who receives them. He almost wishes that he wasn't saying this with that guarantee of lucidity, with that modicum of clarity. It would be so much easier, however agonizing, to hear it and keep it and never speak of it again.
What that means, instead, is that he has to sit there and hear Tseng say you're the reason I fought to live and live with what that makes him. To press his lips together and choke on his own breath and still not know if that means anything other than that Tseng's loyalty rests with him and not just the chair he sits in. To bask in the bold, brash courage of the admission and be forced to ask himself if Tseng is braver than he is, or if he too is willing to risk his own secrets coming to light without the benefits of the painkillers to blame them on later.]
What if I never let you?
[He sets the cup of ice aside, placing it in the middle of the nightstand's surface because his coordination is abruptly poor and clumsy. Because his hands are shaking. He'd never hit a target with his limbs like this, with such an unexpected anxiety rising like a tide inside him.]
What if I say I have to be the one to go first?
[There's a different way he could've phrased that. It goes something like I'd rather die than live without you. But that's not precisely true, is it? If Tseng had died in that jungle, on the table, in this bed, Rufus still wouldn't have chosen death.
Wished for it, maybe. But he loathes leaving unfinished business just as much as Tseng does.]
[ tseng exhales something that might have once been related to a laugh, but now just comes out a quiet breath of amusement. it's not funny, to think about rufus dying—it's not in the slightest. but gods, it's so very like him to ask something like that. tseng almost wants to say, is that an order? but for once, for once in the entire breadth of his life, he wants nothing more than to leave aside orders and duty and talk to rufus. not rufus shinra, president of the shinra electric power company, but rufus, who he had been young with once, and next to whom he had grown into the man he is now.
with some effort, tseng lifts his hand from the bedsheets. there's a needle in one wrist and a pulse ox on one finger and he can do little more than lean it so his knuckles rest against rufus' back, right between his shoulderblades where the seam of his suit jacket sits straight and pressed. rufus looks so sharp, right now, like he could cut tseng open if tseng touches him wrong. ]
If you don't let me, then I won't go. [ what else is he supposed to say? tseng pauses, takes a long moment to consider the words. he isn't entirely sure how to give voice to the tangle of feelings inside his chest. ] Would I let you... Who lets a hurricane make landfall? I couldn't stop you, if you were determined. But I can promise I won't make it easy.
[ no, no, that's not quite right. it's all true, of course, but it's not quite right, it's not the crux of what tseng means to say. what he means to say is this: ]
And you should know that if you go, I'm going with you.
[ the company will endure, or it won't. the turks will endure, or they won't. but for tseng, whose very existence is wrapped up inexorably in the beautiful, inexorable man at his side, what else could tseng hope to do? he presses his knuckles into rufus' back and then lets his hand drop again, too tired to keep holding it up. healing from surgery sure takes it out of you. ]
So don't go getting any bright ideas until you're ready for me to follow you into the dark.
[Even like this, exhausted as he is — even when he'd been told not to move — Tseng still finds the strength to reach for him, to touch him like no one has ever dared to or cared to or both. It's more exertion than he should be putting himself through, and for a wild moment Rufus considers what might happen if he were to catch Tseng's hand in both of his own, bring it up to his mouth and press it against his own lips in an echo of how he'd fed Tseng the ice, like against like. It'd be more trouble than it's worth, maybe, with the risk of the IV pulling or the pulse ox getting jostled and alarming the machines. But in a way, he's almost grateful for the tubes and machinery, too — for how they force him to be deliberate, and careful, and methodical in every choice that he makes right now.]
Is that what I am? A natural disaster?
[Has Tseng always been one for poetry? Or is metaphor just the only vehicle he finds appropriate for trying to put his feelings into something that can properly be conveyed? Either way, the comparison sinks into his soul and becomes a part of him; how funny, he reflects, that of the two of them he would've identified Tseng as the force of nature, not himself. Yet Tseng seems to see things the precise opposite way.
Though, if he is a hurricane, then Tseng is a man who chases them, and that much feels fitting indeed. Maybe this room, this place, this moment, is the eye of the figurative storm — ephemeral at best, but eerily peaceful while it lasts.]
I don't deserve you, Tseng. I never have.
[His hand comes up slowly, spurred on by a moment of courage of his own, and within a passing moment his fingers are sliding along Tseng's cheek, resting gentle against his face as the pad of his thumb strokes the prickling stubble on his chin.]
You could ask me for the world and I would give it to you. [He pauses. Smiles, a little rueful.] — Well. I'd share it, at least.
Mm. [ tseng shakes his head very slightly, more a shift back and forth than a proper denial. ] Not a disaster. A phenomenon. A force to be reckoned with.
[ astonishing and terrible and unstoppable. beautiful, too, especially to someone like tseng, who very much likes to watch rufus wrap his hands around the throat of the world. this boy-king of the entire world, no one could stop him if he wanted to wrap his hands around its throat. tseng would never try. he only wants to be there to support rufus in the trying.
of course, being told that rufus doesn't deserve him makes tseng's brow furrow and his eyes blink open again. his fixes rufus with a gaze that's half incredulity, half real confusion, all of it too apparent and unfiltered through the lens of the painkillers. (how many more times will he use the morphine as an excuse? just you wait and see.) ]
Deserve me? [ that there might be anything rufus wants that he doesn't deserve has never crossed tseng's mind. ] Of course you do.
[ rufus' fingers lift, touch gently to tseng's cheek. brush down along the line of his jaw and press there, unbearably tender. surely he can't know what it does to tseng for rufus to touch him like this. he's long since contented himself with the role he is allowed to play in rufus' life, and even the tiny spark of foolish hope in his breast is enough to make those boundaries ache painfully. ]
Don't... you'll get my hopes up.
[ all he needs is to be allowed to stay at rufus' side, as long as rufus will have him. be realistic, tseng; don't let yourself dream too big. you're too old for this. and yet, that traitorous little beat in his heart telling him that he's never seen rufus touch anyone the way he's touching tseng right now. ]
I don't need the world. [ that first part is true; the second, he'll blame again on the morphine. ] All I need is you.
[Even just one of the things Tseng murmurs into the tranquil quiet of the darkness would've been enough to stop his heart. He could've been content with the praise, the validation — the confirmation that someone who matters believes in him. It would've been enough to keep him preoccupied for days after this, seeking to unravel all the possible implications that might've been tangled up in of course you deserve me. Just one would have been more than enough, but Tseng doesn't stop at just one. Tseng goes on, and goes on, and each new layer leaves him a little more stunned, a little more breathless in his realization.
His fingers still, when Tseng says don't — not enough to make him pull his hand away altogether, where a lesser man might've jolted back like he'd been burned. The fact that he stops is testament enough to how seriously he takes Tseng's feelings on the matter, when most people wouldn't even warrant the blink of an eye before he'd gone on right as he'd pleased.
But it doesn't end with don't, and suddenly he's left to wonder just what hopes Tseng might be referring to, and the twisting dawning recognition that for all the morphine might be loosing his tongue, the things he's saying might be deep-seated truths, and not idle ramblings of nonsense fantasy.
It would've been enough, just to hear don't, you'll get my hopes up.
But then — then, then, then something slips out and the world snaps into focus and all of a sudden, all of a sudden a new possibility begins to blossom, a fragile little notion that he barely dares to look at for fear it might shatter between the weight of a single glance. Because there aren't a lot of ways to interpret a rejection of the world in favor of a man, and all of them leave his heart pounding in the cage of his chest.]
Then get them up.
[He draws in a slow breath, then lets it out again even slower still. Tseng looks almost beatific in the low lamplight, his features awash in the golden glow; Rufus finds himself unable to look away, even when Darkstar nudges against his leg as if in recognition that her master has found someone equally important to pet, and leaves his side in favor of padding around to the far side of the mattress, climbing up to resume her vigil right in the comfortable indentation she'd made before.
The humor of it doesn't break the spell of the moment; it just adds a note of clarity to it, like a dash of much-needed acid to cut through the cloying haze of his affection. Without taking his eyes off Tseng, he reaches over in search of the morphine drip and finds the button, patient enough that Tseng has ample time to see what he's doing before deliberately pressing it.]
You're surprisingly candid like this. I like it.
[Emboldened again, he runs his fingers through Tseng's long hair, around and back until he's cradling the back of his head, his hand nestled between Tseng's hair and the pillow.]
My Tseng. The world is so empty when you're laid up in bed instead of at my side.
[ it's an unexpected response, that. "then get them up." where to? how high? for a moment tseng can't conceptualize it, the idea of what rufus might be suggesting. that tseng might be allowed to hope, might be allowed to... to...
he swallows hard, watching darkstar pad near-silently around the bed to climb onto the mattress next to him. her body is a comfortable weight, warm against his thigh. how many days had rufus left her here to guard him in rufus' absence? how many days had rufus spent here in quiet observation, waiting to see how long tseng would take to wake up, if he ever woke again?
it's when rufus moves that tseng's gaze jumps back to him. there's something so purposeful in the movement as he leans over to press the button on his morphine drip, sending a little more flooding into his veins. plausible deniability. rufus has seen through him, tseng thinks—knows that tseng isn't saying what he's saying only because of the painkillers, and yet giving him that out anyway. an allowance, for tseng to be more forthright where otherwise he would hold his tongue. ]
It's the drugs, [ tseng says, but he knows rufus doesn't believe him, and it isn't true anyway. what else is he going to say? "you can ignore me if you like." of course rufus won't. he never has.
the way rufus' hand moves to cradle tseng's head puts them in close proximity, so that when tseng looks up it's directly into the storm of rufus' eyes. his hand lifts again, knuckles resting against rufus' side. the pain of it fades—that part is the drugs—and tseng draws a slow breath, then exhales, quiet like he's afraid to be louder in case he shatters this moment. ]
[In all the times he'd imagined what it might be like to have Tseng want him, he'd never envisioned a moment like this. All his fantasies of Tseng are powerful ones, bloodwhetted ones — Tseng moving like a coeurl through a room full of men, dropping each one dead with shots timed to every second; Tseng in his ink-black gloves putting him facedown into his father's desk, back when it was still his father's desk and ten times more scandalous for it. They're two of a kind, Tseng and Darkstar, both unfailingly loyal, both breathtakingly vicious, both with the barriers they throw up for the sake of keeping his coat spotless white.
He never entertained notions of Tseng like this, razor edges blunted by feather pillows and thousand-count sheets, reaching for him with his eyes hazy and the alibi of drugs in his veins. He can imagine himself vulnerable all too well; sometimes he loathes it, sometimes he resents it, sometimes he finds a terrifying eroticism to it. He's never imagined Tseng vulnerable, not like this. Part of him hadn't really thought it was even possible.
And he likes it.
He's looked at Tseng before and thought, mine. How he'd bought him amid that business with Verdot. How he's owned him ever since behind his father's back. But this particular brand of possession, he finds, runs so much deeper — a jealous dragonish thing appeased by the sight of Tseng in his bed, in his room, under his protection, whispering his name.
All I need is you, Tseng had said.
He knows the feeling.]
Making us say all sorts of things.
[He lets his gaze drift slowly across Tseng's expression, taking in every detail before finally searching out his eyes and holding steady on them. Any of the residual droplets from the ice chips have long since evaporated or been licked away from his lips, and he's barely had that thought in his mind for half a moment before he's leaning in to press his mouth against Tseng's, dampening them again with a careless swipe of his tongue.
It's the drugs, he'll maintain. Because that's just how painkillers work, clearly.]
Very, [ tseng says, and thinks i don't believe this deniability is plausible, and then stops thinking at all.
perhaps paradoxically, it's the press of rufus' mouth against his own that convinces him this is real. he had dreamed of kissing rufus once before, many years ago, and in that dream he had never quite managed to render rufus correctly—had woken up unable to remember the warmth of his body or the taste of his lips. for all the sharp-edged workings of tseng's mind he has never been able to fully capture the beauty and complexity of rufus shinra.
and yet in the here and now, he feels it. feels the warmth of rufus' palm against his jaw, the warmth of his body where he's leaning against tseng's elbow. the warmth of his mouth where it's pressed against tseng's, insistent and unhesitating. he can feel rufus' breath against his face and knows beyond a doubt that there's no way his drug-addled mind could come up with something like this.
which is, in a way, even more terrifying than the alternative. it makes it real, means that rufus is kissing him, means that rufus meant to kiss him—wanted to kiss him. the shock of it rearranges the tectonic plates inside tseng, a seismic shift of what he understood to be true between them. despite himself, his knuckles press to rufus' ribs, and then his fingers curl as best they can into the pristine white fabric of rufus' coat.
fuck it.
he can't press up into the kiss, but he does return it as best he can. his lips part, coaxing, his tongue meeting rufus' and then withdrawing. instinctively tseng knows he's too weak for anything more, but it's important that rufus understand that tseng wants this, even if this is all he will ever have. ]
[He wants more than this, of course, because he's Rufus Shinra and wanting more is encoded into his very genes. He claims one kiss and there's a part of him already thinking about the next one, and the next one after that; he can't help it, carried away on ambition and desire and the rush of finally, finally getting something he's coveted for so fucking long.
But there's a part of him, too, that recognizes this isn't something to be chased and claimed; it's the part of him that goes still and silent when Tseng's fingers twitch into a gesture that could almost be called clinging, and the way his lips part could quite easily be termed an invitation. And even now that part of him wouldn't have thought — wouldn't have hoped, wouldn't have dreamed —
He wants more, and yet in a rare moment of clarity he also realizes that it's all right if he doesn't get it, because what he wants even more than his own satisfaction is to focus on Tseng. Tseng, who seems to want this too; Tseng, too weak to act much but still determined to signal just how receptive he is to the outcome anyway.]
I need you to get well.
[He keeps his lips against Tseng's as he says it, not because he thinks they'll be overheard and not because he's telling secrets but because there's something exquisite about shaping words against the press of Tseng's mouth, about making his saliva-slick lips glide over his and wet them, too.]
You see, there are better reasons to keep you in my bed than all this.
[He wonders, idly, if the doctors will see an uptick in Tseng's heart rate when they check the readings later. Will they see that it leapt up and began to pound, just now? Fuck, does he ever hope so.]
I meant it when I told you to get your hopes up. Get well, and you can have them. Reclaim the strength to put your hands on me and I'll let you touch me however you want.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
→ and the pain comes in the long run;
his own blood is hot and sticky under his palm. tseng looks down at his feet on the marble floor of the foyer and sees his own red bootprints; he's bled down the entire front of his slacks. ]
I'm afraid one of you is going to have to clean up after me, [ he says, and then the world goes dark.
from there it's a lot of nothing. black. silence. sometimes less silence, interrupted by the steady beeping of machinery or the hushed and unintelligible sound of voices. often there's pain; even more often there's a kind of hazy numbness that overtakes him, leaves him floating in oblivion. more than once, there's a burst of white light in the corner of his vision that tseng knows, instinctively, to be the lifestream; just as many times, there's the instinct to turn away from it.
don't walk into the light, reno had joked once, about something entirely unrelated. tseng hadn't thought that he would ever need to take such advice so literally.
it isn't that he's afraid to die. tseng hasn't been afraid to die since he was thirteen, since he signed his life away in service to the general affairs division. but he knows, vaguely, in some indefinable way, that he still has something left to do. something left to say. he can't quite grasp it; it has no fixed form, no definable edge. it's an impression more than it is a fact, even. but it's enough to keep tseng holding on for as long as he can, no matter how many times the blankness threatens to overwhelm him.
once or twice, he floats closer to the surface of consciousness. the first time, perhaps, when he comes out of surgery; he thinks something like closed me up, then, and then sinks back down into nothingness. the second time, perhaps, when he's moved to hq to recover, where the beeping is less obnoxious and the bed is much softer, but he still can't bring himself to open his eyes. he can hear the hushed voices of those around him, like listening to someone speak from underwater, but his eyes stay closed, and soon the voices cease.
little by little, he feels his body start to put itself back together. it hurts. it's okay. the hurt means he's still alive. ]
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They'd tried to insist on keeping Tseng in the medical wing, once he'd gotten out of surgery. It was the better place for him, they'd said — round-the-clock care, Mr. President, they'd assured him. He's in good hands with our staff, they'd told him. But the medical staff hadn't been there in the helicopter while the world fell down and his blood turned to ice, listening to the senseless afflicted in their black hooded cloaks as they'd moaned and writhed, strapped in like cargo in the back. The medical staff hadn't heard Professor Hojo offer his services in assistance to Tseng's condition, already openly covetous of the prospect of another high-quality specimen.
He'd kept his voice even. Matter-of-fact. And the instant they'd landed, he'd ordered Tseng moved to secure quarters on the 69th floor — to the one place he could guarantee would stay within his own complete and utter control.
Tseng doesn't look any better in his old four-poster king than he'd looked in the hospital room. He'd thought that a little color would help, somehow — would make him seem more alive, somehow, more robust, less frail. Tseng isn't supposed to look frail, isn't authorized to lie there in bed like the man he is instead of the force of nature he's supposed to be. He's supposed to be on his feet, unconcerned no matter how much blood there is pouring down his suit. He's supposed to smile, sharp and secretive, and remark how it's mostly someone else's.
It was his. All the blood they'd bleached off the lobby marble, it'd all been his.
He — Rufus Shinra, president of the Shinra Electric Power Company, the singular most powerful man on the whole of the planet — has long since lost track of what day it is. He goes up to the 70th floor and works until he can't stand to stay away any longer, and when it gets to be too much he comes back down and sits in his old bedroom and listens to Tseng's monitors beep their soft and persistent cadence. Darkstar keeps vigil while he's gone, welcomes him when he returns; she waits only long enough for him to find his seat before pushing her head under his hand, resting her muzzle on his thigh, at a loss for how she is supposed to protect him from a deep-seated anguish she's wholly unable to sink her teeth into.
It's not that he regrets his orders. There's no burden of guilt or self-reproach for being the one who sent Tseng and his Turks into that temple. Given the choice, he'd do it again. He's not in the business of doubting his decisions, and neither is Tseng. Tseng isn't his father; he's never doubted him even once.
Maybe. Probably.
What it is, really, is that Rufus knows that Tseng would be content to die like this. All Tseng would ever regret were the loose ends — an unclear succession to the directorship, maybe, with Reno the next in line but Elena possessing more of the raw potential for it. Tseng would say he accomplished his mission, gave his life in service to the cause. Nothing else should have to matter, in light of that.
He knows the words he should've said to that: You do. You matter.
It's that Tseng could die right now in perfect service to Shinra, and that's what Rufus Shinra is supposed to want — Turks who will die for his cause, for his company. The problem is that Tseng will die for the company when Rufus needs him to live for him, and right now he doesn't know which one Tseng will choose.]
Have you been watching him for me, D?
[It comes out a little more hoarse than he means it to, as he sinks into his usual chair and strokes her sleek head with open affection, unable to help a weary, unguarded smile as she rumbles her pleasure right back. There's an indentation in the blankets on the far side of the king mattress, roughly hound-shaped, marring the expanse that Tseng's body isn't occupying; had she been curled up next to him, while he was gone?
Gods, if only. If only he could —]
Let's see if he wakes up today. He will if he knows what's good for him, won't he.
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when he finally rises to the surface of the sea of his own unconsciousness, for the first time in gods know how many days, it's to the low murmur of a familiar voice. he can't make out the words, but he knows the cadence of it, knows its tone: rufus, talking to darkstar.
the first thing tseng thinks is, absurdly, they wouldn't let darkstar into the hospital. so he isn't in a hospital. back at headquarters, then, maybe in the residential wing, in a room converted for medical use—but no. the second thing he thinks is, even more absurdly, general affairs doesn't have the budget for this thread count, and it's that thought which prompts tseng to finally crack open his eyes.
he knows this room, this four-poster bed. he knows it intimately, from the long evenings he spent in rufus' personal quarters during his house arrest. no wonder it was so comfortable. no wonder it felt so good, to be here, floating in a haze of nothingness and letting himself be tossed about in the currents of his own mind. he's not intubated—that's for the best, tseng could self-extubate but he doesn't want to—but he has an iv in his wrist and a pulse ox clipped to his finger, and there are monitoring leads snaking in through the front of his shirt, tracking his vital signs.
and to his left, sitting in a drawn-up chair and looking for all the world like he belongs there, is rufus shinra himself. he looks terrible. (that's the third thing tseng thinks.) he looks exhausted, in the way only someone like tseng would ever be able to recognize, someone who knows every inch of rufus and would know what to look for. the faint shadows under his eyes, the angle of his head as he props it on his fist. even the slow movement of his fingers as he strokes back over darkstar's head. the president of the shinra electric power company, the singular most powerful man on the whole of the planet, does not need to come sit vigil at tseng's bedside. not unless he wants to be there.
it doesn't feel real. tseng, for once in his life, isn't sure it is real. it feels so very much like a dream, whether that's because of the pain medication or however long he's been under. for now, he's content not to interrogate it too much. he swallows, which takes some effort, and then parts his lips. ]
Did they... [ his voice is rough with disuse, and it takes effort to get the words out. he has to pause mid-sentence to draw in a breath. ] ...get the... blood out?
[ of the marble, he means. ]
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Only it wasn't nothing, and through the blurry haze of his vision he knows Tseng's lips separate when they'd been pressed together before, and it isn't until the first consonant breaks the silence in the air that the weight in his chest dislodges, and all the breath he'd been holding leaves him in a rapid rush.
Tseng.
Darkstar whuffles, shoving her head up into the hand that had gone still mid-pet between her eyes; he realizes a little too late that the other one is gripping the armrest of his chair so tight that his knuckles have gone white beneath the trim of his black gloves.]
Two seconds back from the dead and that's what's on your mind?
[His own voice sounds strange to his ears, and not just because it seems like it's filtered down through water, distant and faraway and obscured by the cadence of his pulse beating in them. It's thinner than it should be, almost as frail as Tseng looks. His father would be ashamed of him.
His father has no place in this room. This room is only for the people he can't live without.]
Expense the damn suit, Tseng, I couldn't care less about it.
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on the one hand, he would know rufus' voice anywhere, but even he doesn't think his subconscious could recreate rufus shinra in such beautiful, devastating clarity. on the other hand, it seems like a thing of dreams to think that rufus' rare, precious show of emotion could be because of him.
rufus was right about one thing: tseng would have been happy to die in the line of duty. he would have regretted the mess he left in the lobby and the disorganized state of his succession planning, yes, but he would never have regretted giving his life on rufus' orders. what rufus was wrong about, though, is that tseng would have been dying for the company. that's not it at all. he would have been dying for rufus—and rufus is now the company, so it's sort of one and the same, but at the end of the day rufus shinra is where tseng's loyalty lies. and if that means putting it all on the line for the mission, where the mission is to get rufus what he wants—what he deserves—then how could tseng ever regret it? ]
I'll remember... you said that.
[ he must be dreaming. either that or he's too high to tell the difference. surely this will matter to him at some point, but it certainly doesn't matter now. tseng closes his eyes again, then opens them, his head turning slightly to look at rufus and darkstar. moving more than that feels like too big a task, but he wants to look at rufus, really look at him. ]
Are you all right? [ he should ask about the others, too, and about the mission, the temple. he doesn't ask about them. it takes him a long moment to lick his dry lips and then add, ] Sir.
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And that's why he's asking, Rufus knows. Because he is the only thing in the world that matters. Because there's no amount of reassurance in the world that will convince Tseng to have any sort of concern for himself if he doesn't let him first establish that he's all right.]
I am now.
[It's an admission. He doesn't try to hide it; he wouldn't succeed even if he did. He averts his eyes briefly instead, up and away, unthinkingly casting his face into profile in the soft lamplight when in fact he's just trying to make sure the heat rising in his eyes never escapes his lashes.]
They worked on you for nine hours. I'm going to buy your surgeon a house in Costa del Sol.
[After a long moment, he finally looks back, his gaze lingering on Tseng's face for what feels like an eternity before it occurs to him that he might've let it rest there a little too long, and it flicks away again, this time to the bedside table.]
Oh. Ah, there's — water, or chips of ice. If you — I can —
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the thought of it shakes tseng to the core. the thought that any part of rufus might be less than fine because tseng himself is less than fine—he can hardly breathe around the implication.
fortunately, there's water to think about. under any other circumstance, the idea of letting rufus feed him ice ships would be intolerable, but tseng has discovered that his limbs are not especially cooperative right now, and he's genuinely not sure he'd be able to manage it himself. so it's with some small amount of chagrin that he says, ] ...Please.
[ he tries to push himself up a little, to scoot up onto the pillows so that he's at least at a better angle for it, but the mere act of engaging the muscles of his core sends a lance of pain through him that makes him grunt quietly and drop back down to the mattress. which, to be fair, is not a far distance to drop, since he really only lifted himself by about an inch. ]
Do you...
[ ...no. he'd thought to ask rufus if he needed to call someone, the medical staff, a nurse of some kind to assist. and if rufus decides to do so, tseng won't stop him. but at least for right now, selfishly, he would like a few more moments to keep rufus to himself, just in case he is dreaming and he'll never experience this again. ]
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[Not that it surprises him, that Tseng tries; he wouldn't be Tseng if he didn't. But something inside him still wrenches even at that soft noise of pain, because it's still more than Tseng would ever usually allow himself to begin with. They told him, his Turks told him, that even after being run through Tseng had still gotten to his feet and walked to them, prior to collapsing into their waiting grasp. That he'd mumbled something about needing to make his report. He pushes himself too much; even on the brink of death, that much is never going to change.
But there's one thing Tseng will listen to, Rufus knows, and he isn't above using that against him for the sake of the greater good. If he makes it an order, if he can bear to render it a command, Tseng won't defy him. Not when there's no competing priority to speak of, otherwise.
The real question is, can he make himself do it? To even consider it asks a...candor that they both usually avoid.
But if it means never hearing Tseng make that sound again, then it's really no question at all.]
...Don't move. Let me do it.
[And what a reversal that is, isn't it? But strangely, it isn't one he minds; after day after day of useless waiting, there's finally something at his fingertips that he can do about the situation. And so he eases Darkstar's head out of his lap and rises from his chair, moving the scant few steps to the small refrigerator concealed in the base of the nightstand and retrieving a cupful of ice chips from it.
There isn't much room on the edge of the mattress, but he doesn't need much to suffice. He settles down onto a sliver of it, about even with Tseng's elbow, and clutches onto the cup in his hands like a lifeline before digging in after one of the larger chips and catching it carefully between two of his fingers.
It feels — forbidden, somehow, the prospect of what he knows he's about to do. But he's Rufus Shinra, and he bends the world to his will, even when it's something so seemingly insurmountable as this: moving the already-melting bit of ice close to Tseng's mouth and letting the edge of it skim along his lower lip, wetting and cooling it until the frozen chip has warmed enough to melt and trickle past his lips into his mouth as mere cold droplets of water.]
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no. no, what rufus means to do is to sit at tseng's elbow on the mattress and press an ice chip to his lower lip, to let it melt until cool water trickles into his mouth and down his throat. he does it like it's nothing, like he isn't rewriting everything tseng has ever known about the delicate balance between them. there are things that tseng has never allowed himself to imagine, thoughts he has never allowed himself to entertain, because he knows that to do so would be ruinous—and here rufus is, enacting like fifteen of them all at once, completely unaware of the havoc he's wreaking in the process.
tseng parts his lips slightly and swallows. he focuses on the water, how it soothes his dry mouth, his parched throat. the fluids pumping into him through one of his ivs are certainly no replacement for the base pleasure of drinking after a long time without water. and so tseng is content to let his eyes close again, feeling the ice melt, feeling the water drip, trying desperately not to feel the brush of rufus shinra's fingertips against his mouth.
when he speaks again, his voice is steadier. still slow and a little hazy at the edges, and it still takes a little time for him to catch his breath, but it's much easier to form words. ]
Thank you.
[ sir. he should say sir. somehow he can't bring himself to shape his lips around the word. tseng blinks his eyes open again, focuses them on rufus, so much closer than before and so much more beautiful. brilliant. rufus has always been so brilliant; it's a privilege to see him this close. he can feel his forearm pressing against rufus' hip where he's settled on the bed. tseng doesn't remember the last time he touched rufus, if it wasn't to rush him out of some crisis or another.
something, perhaps the drugs in his veins, prompts him to say, ] I thought I was going to die. ...I didn't want to.
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There's a quiet horror in stagnation. In all his setbacks, in all his failures, in all his defeats, there was always the lifeline that his own ambition still burned hot, and that there were still paths to walk and hands to play so long as he still breathed. To surrender to the inevitable is to stagnate, to petrify. Accepting that something cannot and will not ever change, no matter how irresistible the force applied, is a sort of submission that would break him long before he were ever able to fully stomach it.
Looking at Tseng like this, with his usually-glossy hair a little dulled from days without washing, with a prickling shadow appearing on his unshaven chin, with his eyes closed and his breath even and his pallor fading with his newfound return to consciousness, Rufus comes to a second realization: that this is all he will ever have.
This moment, this tenderness, is equivocal. That he can move so close, that he can offer what little comfort his hands might bear, is all conditional on the precariousness of Tseng's present health. If he wants Tseng to never come so close to death again, then he must accept that he will never have this again, either — that he only even has it now solely because Tseng is in no condition to brush off or disallow it.
As the ice melts, and his fingers linger, Rufus arrives at a final recognition: that their respective feelings are — that they can only be — unequal. That Tseng is the impenetrable object that even his strongest ambitions can't move. It's fitting, really, that he so often relies on that old metaphor of lever and fulcrum; for the lever to have any efficacy, the fulcrum must stay constant. They must always be what they are to each other, nothing more and nothing less. To work, they cannot change; to change would eliminate their ability to work.
He will never have this again. This is the most of Tseng he will ever get.]
I thought about ordering you not to.
[The ice rattles in its plastic glass as he makes himself reach for another piece, because if he doesn't occupy his fingers with a fresh chip of it, they're going to stay resting feather-light on Tseng's mouth and on his chin, touching him with no excuse and no purpose.]
Then I thought it would be insult to injury. Not just to die, but to disobey a direct order while doing it.
[I thought I was going to die. I didn't want to. It was the unfinished business, then, that spurred Tseng to fight his way back. And when he was a child, he might've been petty about that — insisting that the reason for his miraculous recovery meant just as much as the practice of it. That having him back was somehow cheapened if he weren't doing it for him, specifically.
He's not a child. Tseng could have chosen to live for the damned mailroom clerks if that's what it took. It's all irrelevant, save for the part that he managed to live at all.]
I told myself you wouldn't. Then I realized...I couldn't name a single reason for you to stay, that wasn't outweighed by just as valid of one to go. I thought you might — [He swallows, fighting the rise of a lump in his throat.] — that you might do it. For Shinra.
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he licks his lips unconsciously to taste the salt of rufus' skin, then swallows, because his mind is mostly soft cotton and if this is all he's ever going to have of rufus inside him then he may as well enjoy it. ]
No. [ he feels like he's moving through molasses, through a dream he can't quite control. this must be a dream, or at the very least it must be purgatory, to be tormented with the sweetness of something he'll never be able to grasp. he can practically feel the drip, drip, drip of morphine in his veins. ] I would have... obeyed, if you ordered me. But not for Shinra.
[ it's all but a whisper, hushed in the silence of the room broken only by the whir and beep of machinery. even in a dream, tseng still remembers that it's close to treason to admit that anything he does isn't solely in the best interest of the company he serves.
many, many years ago verdot had attempted to teach tseng this lesson: that the mission comes before the man, always. (very "do as i say, not as i do" of him, that.) he had taught tseng, time and time again, that his life—or indeed any turk's life—has meaning insofar as it's contributing to their mission overall. viewed from that angle, the noblest thing tseng could have done in that temple would be to die, and to go out knowing that he had given his life in service of a higher cause.
as it turns out, the lesson didn't take as well as verdot thought it did. ]
For you. I didn't... want to leave you. [ even dreaming, it feels like treason to admit as much. he should be afraid. but what fear can there be in him, when he's looked the lifestream in the face and turned away from it, all for this man sitting next to him? ] I'll go when you let me... not before.
[ tseng closes his eyes again, then blinks them open, looking up at rufus. blue like a summer storm. warmer than most people will ever know. tseng has always considered himself among the blessed few, to know what rufus' eyes look like when he smiles and means it. if he's dreaming—if all of this will vanish, when he opens his eyes for real—then tseng should grasp what he can while it's still here for him to wrap his hands around.
the fear, then: not fear of saying it, but fear of holding it back. maybe this was the thing he couldn't die without saying. ]
You're the reason.
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He almost wishes he could convince himself that Tseng is delirious, mumbling something like that. He almost wishes he could maintain it's the morphine clouding his thoughts, sending him off on idle flights of nonsense fancy that he won't remember long enough to regret later. The problem, though, is that he knows Tseng isn't — not least of which because he's monitored everything they've given him in every precise degree, that he knows exactly what the drugs they're administering can and can't do to the person who receives them. He almost wishes that he wasn't saying this with that guarantee of lucidity, with that modicum of clarity. It would be so much easier, however agonizing, to hear it and keep it and never speak of it again.
What that means, instead, is that he has to sit there and hear Tseng say you're the reason I fought to live and live with what that makes him. To press his lips together and choke on his own breath and still not know if that means anything other than that Tseng's loyalty rests with him and not just the chair he sits in. To bask in the bold, brash courage of the admission and be forced to ask himself if Tseng is braver than he is, or if he too is willing to risk his own secrets coming to light without the benefits of the painkillers to blame them on later.]
What if I never let you?
[He sets the cup of ice aside, placing it in the middle of the nightstand's surface because his coordination is abruptly poor and clumsy. Because his hands are shaking. He'd never hit a target with his limbs like this, with such an unexpected anxiety rising like a tide inside him.]
What if I say I have to be the one to go first?
[There's a different way he could've phrased that. It goes something like I'd rather die than live without you. But that's not precisely true, is it? If Tseng had died in that jungle, on the table, in this bed, Rufus still wouldn't have chosen death.
Wished for it, maybe. But he loathes leaving unfinished business just as much as Tseng does.]
Will you let me?
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with some effort, tseng lifts his hand from the bedsheets. there's a needle in one wrist and a pulse ox on one finger and he can do little more than lean it so his knuckles rest against rufus' back, right between his shoulderblades where the seam of his suit jacket sits straight and pressed. rufus looks so sharp, right now, like he could cut tseng open if tseng touches him wrong. ]
If you don't let me, then I won't go. [ what else is he supposed to say? tseng pauses, takes a long moment to consider the words. he isn't entirely sure how to give voice to the tangle of feelings inside his chest. ] Would I let you... Who lets a hurricane make landfall? I couldn't stop you, if you were determined. But I can promise I won't make it easy.
[ no, no, that's not quite right. it's all true, of course, but it's not quite right, it's not the crux of what tseng means to say. what he means to say is this: ]
And you should know that if you go, I'm going with you.
[ the company will endure, or it won't. the turks will endure, or they won't. but for tseng, whose very existence is wrapped up inexorably in the beautiful, inexorable man at his side, what else could tseng hope to do? he presses his knuckles into rufus' back and then lets his hand drop again, too tired to keep holding it up. healing from surgery sure takes it out of you. ]
So don't go getting any bright ideas until you're ready for me to follow you into the dark.
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Is that what I am? A natural disaster?
[Has Tseng always been one for poetry? Or is metaphor just the only vehicle he finds appropriate for trying to put his feelings into something that can properly be conveyed? Either way, the comparison sinks into his soul and becomes a part of him; how funny, he reflects, that of the two of them he would've identified Tseng as the force of nature, not himself. Yet Tseng seems to see things the precise opposite way.
Though, if he is a hurricane, then Tseng is a man who chases them, and that much feels fitting indeed. Maybe this room, this place, this moment, is the eye of the figurative storm — ephemeral at best, but eerily peaceful while it lasts.]
I don't deserve you, Tseng. I never have.
[His hand comes up slowly, spurred on by a moment of courage of his own, and within a passing moment his fingers are sliding along Tseng's cheek, resting gentle against his face as the pad of his thumb strokes the prickling stubble on his chin.]
You could ask me for the world and I would give it to you. [He pauses. Smiles, a little rueful.] — Well. I'd share it, at least.
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[ astonishing and terrible and unstoppable. beautiful, too, especially to someone like tseng, who very much likes to watch rufus wrap his hands around the throat of the world. this boy-king of the entire world, no one could stop him if he wanted to wrap his hands around its throat. tseng would never try. he only wants to be there to support rufus in the trying.
of course, being told that rufus doesn't deserve him makes tseng's brow furrow and his eyes blink open again. his fixes rufus with a gaze that's half incredulity, half real confusion, all of it too apparent and unfiltered through the lens of the painkillers. (how many more times will he use the morphine as an excuse? just you wait and see.) ]
Deserve me? [ that there might be anything rufus wants that he doesn't deserve has never crossed tseng's mind. ] Of course you do.
[ rufus' fingers lift, touch gently to tseng's cheek. brush down along the line of his jaw and press there, unbearably tender. surely he can't know what it does to tseng for rufus to touch him like this. he's long since contented himself with the role he is allowed to play in rufus' life, and even the tiny spark of foolish hope in his breast is enough to make those boundaries ache painfully. ]
Don't... you'll get my hopes up.
[ all he needs is to be allowed to stay at rufus' side, as long as rufus will have him. be realistic, tseng; don't let yourself dream too big. you're too old for this. and yet, that traitorous little beat in his heart telling him that he's never seen rufus touch anyone the way he's touching tseng right now. ]
I don't need the world. [ that first part is true; the second, he'll blame again on the morphine. ] All I need is you.
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His fingers still, when Tseng says don't — not enough to make him pull his hand away altogether, where a lesser man might've jolted back like he'd been burned. The fact that he stops is testament enough to how seriously he takes Tseng's feelings on the matter, when most people wouldn't even warrant the blink of an eye before he'd gone on right as he'd pleased.
But it doesn't end with don't, and suddenly he's left to wonder just what hopes Tseng might be referring to, and the twisting dawning recognition that for all the morphine might be loosing his tongue, the things he's saying might be deep-seated truths, and not idle ramblings of nonsense fantasy.
It would've been enough, just to hear don't, you'll get my hopes up.
But then — then, then, then something slips out and the world snaps into focus and all of a sudden, all of a sudden a new possibility begins to blossom, a fragile little notion that he barely dares to look at for fear it might shatter between the weight of a single glance. Because there aren't a lot of ways to interpret a rejection of the world in favor of a man, and all of them leave his heart pounding in the cage of his chest.]
Then get them up.
[He draws in a slow breath, then lets it out again even slower still. Tseng looks almost beatific in the low lamplight, his features awash in the golden glow; Rufus finds himself unable to look away, even when Darkstar nudges against his leg as if in recognition that her master has found someone equally important to pet, and leaves his side in favor of padding around to the far side of the mattress, climbing up to resume her vigil right in the comfortable indentation she'd made before.
The humor of it doesn't break the spell of the moment; it just adds a note of clarity to it, like a dash of much-needed acid to cut through the cloying haze of his affection. Without taking his eyes off Tseng, he reaches over in search of the morphine drip and finds the button, patient enough that Tseng has ample time to see what he's doing before deliberately pressing it.]
You're surprisingly candid like this. I like it.
[Emboldened again, he runs his fingers through Tseng's long hair, around and back until he's cradling the back of his head, his hand nestled between Tseng's hair and the pillow.]
My Tseng. The world is so empty when you're laid up in bed instead of at my side.
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he swallows hard, watching darkstar pad near-silently around the bed to climb onto the mattress next to him. her body is a comfortable weight, warm against his thigh. how many days had rufus left her here to guard him in rufus' absence? how many days had rufus spent here in quiet observation, waiting to see how long tseng would take to wake up, if he ever woke again?
it's when rufus moves that tseng's gaze jumps back to him. there's something so purposeful in the movement as he leans over to press the button on his morphine drip, sending a little more flooding into his veins. plausible deniability. rufus has seen through him, tseng thinks—knows that tseng isn't saying what he's saying only because of the painkillers, and yet giving him that out anyway. an allowance, for tseng to be more forthright where otherwise he would hold his tongue. ]
It's the drugs, [ tseng says, but he knows rufus doesn't believe him, and it isn't true anyway. what else is he going to say? "you can ignore me if you like." of course rufus won't. he never has.
the way rufus' hand moves to cradle tseng's head puts them in close proximity, so that when tseng looks up it's directly into the storm of rufus' eyes. his hand lifts again, knuckles resting against rufus' side. the pain of it fades—that part is the drugs—and tseng draws a slow breath, then exhales, quiet like he's afraid to be louder in case he shatters this moment. ]
Rufus...
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[In all the times he'd imagined what it might be like to have Tseng want him, he'd never envisioned a moment like this. All his fantasies of Tseng are powerful ones, bloodwhetted ones — Tseng moving like a coeurl through a room full of men, dropping each one dead with shots timed to every second; Tseng in his ink-black gloves putting him facedown into his father's desk, back when it was still his father's desk and ten times more scandalous for it. They're two of a kind, Tseng and Darkstar, both unfailingly loyal, both breathtakingly vicious, both with the barriers they throw up for the sake of keeping his coat spotless white.
He never entertained notions of Tseng like this, razor edges blunted by feather pillows and thousand-count sheets, reaching for him with his eyes hazy and the alibi of drugs in his veins. He can imagine himself vulnerable all too well; sometimes he loathes it, sometimes he resents it, sometimes he finds a terrifying eroticism to it. He's never imagined Tseng vulnerable, not like this. Part of him hadn't really thought it was even possible.
And he likes it.
He's looked at Tseng before and thought, mine. How he'd bought him amid that business with Verdot. How he's owned him ever since behind his father's back. But this particular brand of possession, he finds, runs so much deeper — a jealous dragonish thing appeased by the sight of Tseng in his bed, in his room, under his protection, whispering his name.
All I need is you, Tseng had said.
He knows the feeling.]
Making us say all sorts of things.
[He lets his gaze drift slowly across Tseng's expression, taking in every detail before finally searching out his eyes and holding steady on them. Any of the residual droplets from the ice chips have long since evaporated or been licked away from his lips, and he's barely had that thought in his mind for half a moment before he's leaning in to press his mouth against Tseng's, dampening them again with a careless swipe of his tongue.
It's the drugs, he'll maintain. Because that's just how painkillers work, clearly.]
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perhaps paradoxically, it's the press of rufus' mouth against his own that convinces him this is real. he had dreamed of kissing rufus once before, many years ago, and in that dream he had never quite managed to render rufus correctly—had woken up unable to remember the warmth of his body or the taste of his lips. for all the sharp-edged workings of tseng's mind he has never been able to fully capture the beauty and complexity of rufus shinra.
and yet in the here and now, he feels it. feels the warmth of rufus' palm against his jaw, the warmth of his body where he's leaning against tseng's elbow. the warmth of his mouth where it's pressed against tseng's, insistent and unhesitating. he can feel rufus' breath against his face and knows beyond a doubt that there's no way his drug-addled mind could come up with something like this.
which is, in a way, even more terrifying than the alternative. it makes it real, means that rufus is kissing him, means that rufus meant to kiss him—wanted to kiss him. the shock of it rearranges the tectonic plates inside tseng, a seismic shift of what he understood to be true between them. despite himself, his knuckles press to rufus' ribs, and then his fingers curl as best they can into the pristine white fabric of rufus' coat.
fuck it.
he can't press up into the kiss, but he does return it as best he can. his lips part, coaxing, his tongue meeting rufus' and then withdrawing. instinctively tseng knows he's too weak for anything more, but it's important that rufus understand that tseng wants this, even if this is all he will ever have. ]
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But there's a part of him, too, that recognizes this isn't something to be chased and claimed; it's the part of him that goes still and silent when Tseng's fingers twitch into a gesture that could almost be called clinging, and the way his lips part could quite easily be termed an invitation. And even now that part of him wouldn't have thought — wouldn't have hoped, wouldn't have dreamed —
He wants more, and yet in a rare moment of clarity he also realizes that it's all right if he doesn't get it, because what he wants even more than his own satisfaction is to focus on Tseng. Tseng, who seems to want this too; Tseng, too weak to act much but still determined to signal just how receptive he is to the outcome anyway.]
I need you to get well.
[He keeps his lips against Tseng's as he says it, not because he thinks they'll be overheard and not because he's telling secrets but because there's something exquisite about shaping words against the press of Tseng's mouth, about making his saliva-slick lips glide over his and wet them, too.]
You see, there are better reasons to keep you in my bed than all this.
[He wonders, idly, if the doctors will see an uptick in Tseng's heart rate when they check the readings later. Will they see that it leapt up and began to pound, just now? Fuck, does he ever hope so.]
I meant it when I told you to get your hopes up. Get well, and you can have them. Reclaim the strength to put your hands on me and I'll let you touch me however you want.