unionized | ( psl ) for tseng.

[It happens on his birthday, because of course it does.

The old man has always liked to test him in cruel little ways like this, even since before he'd presented as the family disappointment. His father's flagrant biases on the basis of designation have never been a secret, not within the family and not to anyone outside of it; he's been told how alphas rule by birthright, and Shinra alphas most of all, for as long as he can remember. One can't even be considered for executive rank in the Shinra Corporation without sufficient documentation proving alpha status, and with all of the testing required to be performed internally, there's no chance whatsoever of hiding once one reaches that lofty a position.

Maybe that's why he's the vice president with no executive authority whatsoever. They pretend it's because he doesn't want it. His father withholds it because he'll never be worthy of it.

There's very little about Rufus that's truly private, or so his father likes to think. That's what he lets him think, anyway — trading the indignity of having his medical records and health data delivered in sealed envelopes to the old man's desk in exchange for the little things he is able to hide. He knows his heats are tracked and monitored. There's always a convenient excuse ready and waiting, a business trip or a personal getaway, to hide the days he spends shivering and aching in the dark and quiet of his nests. He loathes it, but he plays his part: learns to snarl like an alpha, learns to mask his scent, learns to perform when there are eyes on him in exchange for the luxury of being left alone otherwise.

It's a twisted sort of irony, that his next heat aligns so perfectly with his next birthday.

That should've made it all the easier to make an excuse. Let him run away on some personal vacation, jet-setting off to Shiva-knows-where, spending Daddy's gil with abandon in celebration of another year of life. Then the invitation had shown up, two weeks in advance, and his expression had gone as cold as his blood — that to show his satisfaction with his only son and heir, his proud alpha father would be throwing a gala in his honor, set for the very day of his birth. And of course, featuring him as the man of the hour, the one everyone would want to see — and who no one would leave alone.

It's a test, of course. A warning delivered in implication. Another year older, another year closer to potentially earning his rightful place at the head of the company — but only if he plays by the rules, only if he performs as expected. A Shinra alpha is what everyone will be expecting at that gala, and that's who will show up — or else.

And that's who does show up, for hours upon hours. Rufus Shinra, the perfect Shinra alpha. Rufus Shinra, whose clothes don't abrade like sandpaper on his hidden heated skin because alphas aren't oversensitive, who smirks and bares teeth instead of his throat. Rufus Shinra, who isn't overwhelmed by the commingling scents of all the alphas in the room, the heady musk, the spice and sandalwood and leather and pine so strong that he aches to purr for their attention. Rufus Shinra, having the time of his life on the day of his birth, rather than being enmeshed in his own personal private hell.

It's close to midnight when his eyes start wandering in ways he can't quite help, the combination of social exhaustion and alcohol and heat and sleepiness making his eyes and his thoughts drift to the way the guests stand, fleetingly considering the knots that might be hiding beneath the tailoring. He lingers a little too long in conversations, a little too flushed beneath the skin; he's been drinking all night, so no one thinks much of it, but fuck, it should be illegal for Reeve Tuesti to smell so good, to make him shudder from the clasp of the congratulatory hand on his shoulder. He wants to sit down, but if he sits he'll want to curl up in the plush cushions of the tastefully assembled furniture, will rub his cheek against it and he can't do that while they're watching, everyone's watching, his father is watching —

It occurs to him that he hasn't seen Tseng in what feels like forever, in the same moment that Reno pulls the fire alarm.

Everyone startles, looking for signs of smoke or fire, so no one sees the way leather-clad fingertips touch against his elbow from behind, or the way he shivers all over from the touch. The nightmarish screeching drowns out all but the loudest of astonished cries; no one hears the damning trill that rumbles in the back of his throat as his instincts all come alight with alpha. No one would be surprised that he wobbles as he's all but pulled off his feet in the direction of the VIP emergency exit; who wouldn't be, when being hustled out of such a venue by the Turks?

He just barely manages to keep his cries smothered in his throat until they've escaped to the sanctuary of the narrow stairwell, but once the door slams closed behind them, he can't keep them from spilling out and echoing off the cinderblock walls.]

Tseng.

[Alpha, his body whines, hot and aching and already growing wet from the maddening desperation, the need for scent and satisfaction and bite. It should have been Rude doing this and it would have been so much worse if he had, no scent, no sanctuary, alpha alpha alpha and his eyes all but roll back with it, the wanting, the need.

They're too far from home. He needs to hold on. And yet all he can do, all he can think, is that it's too many steps to go after the night that he's had, too much to bear, when his body is ready to give out and sell out to anything willing to give him a knot.]

[ 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. ]

→ sin city's cold and empty, no one's around to judge me;

→ and the pain comes in the long run;