Archive of Our Own ^beta

“You need a hobby.”

Reno blinked his eyes open, staring up at the familiar dark suit standing beside him. He choked out a laugh and shrugged with one shoulder, flopped a hand atop his chest. “I’ve got a hobby, partner.”

Behind tinted glass, hazel eyes softened almost imperceptibly. “You need a better hobby,” Rude said as he squatted down beside the redhead. “Do you need a hand getting up?”

“Nah.” The slimmer man didn’t even really consider the offer, though he appreciated it. Reno decidedly wasn’t in a condition to stand up yet. “Think I wanna lie here a bit longer, yo,” he huffed dismissively, letting his eyes drop closed again.

They snapped open a moment later when he felt himself wrenched off the ground.

“The fuck you doin’ partner?!” Of course the larger Turk didn’t didn’t respond, dragging a pale arm up over his shoulder and looping his free hand around a slender hip like it was enough an answer. Reno snarled, tried to pull away only to find that grip tensing as leather-clad fingers curled around his belt. 

“Hey! I don’t need y--”

“Shut up.” The demand was quiet, barely over a murmur, but it silenced the redhead nonetheless. Rude huffed something that might have been annoyance, but his partner’s keen eye noted the fondness behind those expensive sunglasses.

It earned a scoff, but Reno didn’t struggle further as the larger man began leading them inside. “You don’t have to do this, yo,” he grumbled as they settled into the elevator. Rude didn’t respond to that, either; he keyed the code in which would take them to the internal housing for Administrative Research, passed his badge through the scanner to seal the deal. The older of the pair appeared entirely immune to the half-lidded gaze boring into his back from where he’d left the injured redhead leaning against the far wall.

“C’mon, partner, don’t gimme the silent treatment for this.” It came out as a whine, nasal and deliberately pitiful. The jerk of the elevator’s descent made Reno’s entire back ache and he scowled, tipped his head back against the glass. “You know it ain’t shit, I’m fine .”

“You’re not,” Rude’s voice was level but came with surprisingly little scorn. “But you will be.”

“Exactly, I will be-- hey!” Bastard.

His lips twitched into a smug little curl, the neutral mask he wore so often slipping just slightly in response to Reno’s exasperation. “I’m not judging,” he said at last in consolation, glancing up when the car chimed arrival to their floor. “Come on.” When the doors opened, Rude didn’t move to help his partner from the wall. 

“You’re a piece’a shit, y’know that, partner?” Reno hissed as he trotted to keep up with the other man’s longer gait. “You could at least carry me, if you’re gonna pull the doting act.”

“Did you want me to carry you?”

“Fuck no!”

“Hm.” Rude stopped in front of the door to his quarters to press his thumb against the scanner beside its lock.  Reno flipped the light switch on as he followed his partner inside. He didn’t bother to look around, simply dropped himself atop the chocolate-colored sofa forming one edge of the sitting room.

Their quarters were identical; the whole department’s were, so it didn’t take a genius to recognize that Rude had made his way into the bathroom based on his footsteps alone. Probably to grab a first aid kit, Reno mused as he sank into the leather and draped his arms across its back. Not that there’d be much in there useful to treat his injuries. They were superficial anyway. 

Okay, maybe they weren’t totally superficial, he noted as the pull of his shoulders sent a sharp spike of pain down his spine. He had shifted to bend over with his elbows on his knees by the time Rude returned, teal eyes lifting to watch his partner curl his legs under himself and crack the first aid kit open. 

“This is the third time this week,” that rich voice startled Reno out of his stare to instead meet his partner’s hazel gaze. It lasted only a few seconds before the shorter Turk looked away, brows furrowed. Rude sighed. “There’s healthier ways, you know.”

“Tch.” Of course he knew there were healthier ways to deal with stress, but the pain was the point . Not that he expected he could make his partner understand that. Still, it was… nice to have someone concerned about him. He guessed, anyway - that’s what this was, right? “Said I’m fine, yo…” Rude’s flat look made it clear he didn’t believe that for a second, and Reno’s posture withered even further under the scrutiny. 

“...But if y’really feel like patching me up, I guess… I won’t stop ya…” the redhead trailed off, glancing back over surreptitiously. He almost didn’t catch the subtle upward twitch of the darker-skinned man’s lips. It sent a strange flutter through his chest and he masked the sensation with a sneer, squeezing his eyes closed.

Rude was quiet in response, his own gaze lowered to focus instead on the packet of gel he was rubbing between his palms. Once it was suitably liquefied, he pulled off his gloves and reached for one of Reno’s legs to tug on his slacks lightly.

“Get undressed, I need access to the embed sites,” he said, looking up in time to see another scowl cross the expressive redhead’s face. “Reno…”

“Yeah, yeah, cool your jets,” came the retort, though he did comply. Half-gloved fingers danced across the buckle for his jacket and down the buttons of his shirt, both shrugged off and tossed across the back of the couch a moment later. It wasn’t that he had any issue getting undressed in front of his partner - hells, Reno didn’t give a shit about being naked in general, regardless of the situation. 

Well. Not normally , anyway.

His frown this time was more due to being entirely conscious of the unearthly colors bleeding through his veins near the very sites Rude sought. Nakedness was one thing, but admitting he might have gone overboard? Bird of a whole different fucking color. Still, he wasn’t doing himself any favors by stalling, so his fingers moved swiftly to his belt buckle and fly moments later. Boots kicked off and down to just his company-issued black boxer briefs, Reno flounced back onto the couch with both hands half-raised in loose surrender.

In that time, Rude had torn the gel packet open and smeared it onto one palm. He looked the other man over with a frown, made mental note of every scar and bruise - none new - before he pressed a single gel-coated finger to the center of a glowing spot on the paler man’s calf. It earned a sharp inhale, a slow hiss of breath from the other Turk as he rubbed the balm in a slow circle around the implant. If he’d realized the bleed had gotten that bad, he’d have probably tried to reel Reno in sooner, but… Well. Hindsight.

A silence fell over the pair as Rude worked his way up Reno’s calf to his thigh, rubbing the chemical balm along every softly-glowing spider’s web of cracks spreading under alabaster skin. Blue-white like the lightning he wielded, over-warm like the shards of Thunder materia embedded at the heart of each. The marks were familiar to him, inasmuch as he knew the patterns that formed when he pushed his own implants too far, but Rude found himself committing the unique Lichtenberg-like branches to memory. 

He’d spent time as a masseur when he was younger, before joining the Turks and leaving the Costan island he’d grown up on, and had made a point of keeping those skills up to par. Over the years they’d come in surprisingly handy for a wide variety of uses, not the least of which included rubbing the tension and pressure out of his colleagues’ limbs after a rough mission. So Rude wasn’t particularly surprised when the atypical silence was broken by a soft groan from his partner as he pulled away to start on the other leg. 

“Fuck, Rude,” the redhead flexed his toes out, voice pitched down an octave and almost husky. “Got th’hands of a damn angel and you’re out here breakin’ necks for Shinra.” Reno smirked at the snort his comment earned, though it immediately turned into a gasp of pain when a thumb dug in along his still-sore calf. 

“You complaining?” Their banter came easily, and Rude didn’t need to look up to know Reno was rolling his eyes in response. 

“‘Course not, dumbass,” he often hid affection behind insults and sarcasm. The real sentiment, “who else would be my partner?” went unspoken, but Rude understood. He usually did.

“You let these get bad, Reno,” he chided instead, the next pass of his thumb earning another shaky inhale. “Some of them are starting to scar.”

Reno lifted one hand to look at the trails leading from the base of his palm down to his wrist, following the blood vessels and branching like a bolt of lightning. They were usually covered by his gloves; there was a good reason all of the Turks wore them. The hands were always the first shards to bleed, and gloves hid the mana-lines that could otherwise easily give their position away in the shadows. He huffed a laugh and ran his fingers through unruly crimson with a shrug.

“Chicks dig scars, yo.” It was a half-hearted excuse. Teal met hazel when the other Turk looked up at him over his sunglasses, and for the second time that night Reno found himself the first one to look away. “Whatever, I’m not afraid of scars, man.”

That seemed to be the end of the conversation for a time. Rude thinned his lips for a moment before returning to his work. It wasn’t until he had paused to warm up another packet of the medicinal gel that his partner saw fit to speak up again.

“What about yours?”

“Mine?”

“Yeah,” Reno sat up properly, holding his hand out to snatch one of Rude’s. He traced a fingertip across the underside of his partner’s palm, pushed the other’s sleeve back so he could see the burn-marks staining caramel skin even darker and feel the unnatural warmth of his implant. “They all look different, don’t they?”

Rude was quiet for a moment, his attention turned to consider the contrast between their hands. 

“... yeah.”