[ 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}
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
[ 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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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...
no subject
[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.]
no subject
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. ]
no subject
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.