Random ficcery #4
Mar. 2nd, 2003 12:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaTonight's entry is a sort of alternate scene from "The Dawn From Sixty-Nine Stories Up", my over-stylised little FF7 Tseng x Rufus noir number that reads as if it were written entirely to Depeche Mode, discounting the fact that I didn't have a single DM MP3 on my hard drive at the time. ^^; The outtakes to the thing run 3/4 as long as the actual fic; just scenes shot and reshot from all angles with script changes by the hour. It was all I did for four months. Eventually ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
supacat stepped in as beta and I wrote the last half of the fic in one go - a single take as it were. -_- So that's the story. I don't think even Cat's seen this part, though.
I edited it a bit tonight, mostly for verb tense which was all over the map.
***
“In all likelihood the oversight was intentional. The former General—” Rufus interrupts him.
“General? The former General?” Tseng does not pursue his sentence. Rufus laughs sharply, then quiets, gazing into the glass. The wine glows like red velvet, like his father’s tacky monstrosity of a boardroom downstairs. He should have those drapes taken down, he muses. They show up flesh for the pulsing pink horror it is. Only white would do: white, black, silver, General, your progress has been excellent, consistently excellent, your management of the Wutai campaign—
He shouldn’t have been watching that day. Masamune’s edge was less keen than Sephiroth’s eyes, and Rufus was a boy. Fourteen, rigorously tutored, the heir to the throne that is a minimalist recliner behind a desk in a room all marble and plush eggshell carpeting, perfectly sterile and ventilated, untold riches, power.
Power.
He must have given himself away somehow.
A minute sound: friction, weight being shifted from one foot to another on the carpet. Rufus smiles. Reno isn’t afraid of him; just uncomfortable with the silence. It is something of a novelty, but then fearlessness is an advantage in a brute enforcer, and Reno poses no threat. He is Tseng’s man. Tseng...
When he turns back to meet Tseng’s gaze, he finds it unreadable.
“You are mistaken,” he says easily. “The target is not the former General; he is not a war hero. He is, truth be told, not even a madman. You may consider him as one of Professor Hojo’s more... intractable subjects. It’s an annoyance having to clean up after that fool’s failures, but after all this is what I pay you for. I don’t care much for details of potential danger, or what you do when you catch up to him, of which outcome you seem confident. I want him dead. Am I understood?”
How I wish he were dead...
“Sir,” says Tseng tonelessly, echoed a moment later by Reno. Rufus lets his gaze linger briefly on the latter – half-tamed only, these Turks, did his father ever think to tighten his rein? – and makes a small gesture with his wineglass hand. “Dismissed. Not...” Glance back at Tseng’s ascetic bonze features -- “...you.”
He leaves his seat during the exchange of glances between superior and subordinate, refills his glass at the sideboard. Three-quarters full, as per protocol. The door slides closed behind Reno with a whisper of compressed air. “Wine, Tseng?”
“Not on duty, sir.”
“No. No, of course not.” Rufus sips, and his next smile shows teeth. “What do you want, Tseng? What’s your fucking problem?”
Not much reaction. Only those dark eyes narrow in seeming speculation. “I have a certain responsibility to the officers under my command,” Tseng says finally. “Sir.”
A curl of the lips. "To bring them home safely?"
"To make certain that I know what I'm doing."
Rufus stares at him, taken off-guard. The silence lengthens until it feels like a weight he has swallowed, and he has to look away. Strange toxin, sliding down his throat with the wine, deeper than skin... He turns, feeling Tseng's eyes on his back, and lays a hand against the glass wall behind his desk. He fancies he can hear the building hum below him: central air-con, the murmur of a meticulous workforce. Such the head office of Shinra Corporation – horizontally-integrated, cross-continental, energy defense entertainment technological monopoly, the greatest power in the world save--
One. Perhaps.
He gazes downward.
Midgar by night. Sprawl of never-night and morseled dreams, as all cities. Midgar is a great wheel laid on its side in the featureless plain of the Western continent, the Building at its hub, spokes supporting the sky-darkening plate, reaching out to the reactors that are Shinra’s pride. Eight reactors – utilitarianly numbered, manmade volcanos – spew the light of earthblood forges into the sky. Tumors possessed of cancerous beauty. The Building is soundproof. On this side of the window, the hum of climate control; on the other side there would be the machinal whine of condensing mako in the wind, just soft enough and high enough to stay beyond the common reach of hearing. It’s a sound for the bones not the ears. As the masses teeming beneath the plate do not brood on their surroundings – mostly – it does not drive them to madness. Even the minor employees of Shinra return content to their beds in the mako-lit slums, the night sky a fantasy for them above or beneath the plate.
Below the sixtieth floor of the Building, the reactors drown the stars.
Rufus has to make a conscious choice to disregard them.
Glass is not a solid, he thinks. Given enough eons it will sag, pull away from the framework, form stalactitic drips fantastically suspended. He imagines the Tower stripped of all the trimmings of inhabitation, seventy stories of stark beams and trusses rising vertical against a steel-grey sky. At its base a lake of glass will shiver, darkening under the sun.
Tried to picture who would stand where he stands now, to survey that scene.
He essays the syllables. Nothing harsh on the tongue, nearly all air and lulling sibilance and parting of the lips in deceptive surrender...
Se-phi-roth.
Some small sound snags his attention, and he looks down to find broken glass and a dark pool soaking into the carpet by his feet. Strange, it shouldn’t have shattered like that on such a yielding surface. And his hand is wet too. He’ll have to rinse it before the red wine becomes a sticky annoyance. There is water in the carafe—
--Which Tseng unstoppers with one hand, his other having caught Rufus’ wrist, and pours most of the contents over Rufus’ hand. He has come around the desk somehow, while the young President had his back turned. Winds a handkerchief around Rufus's fingers and palm, tying the ends together in an efficient tourniquet knot. Grip gentle but intractable.
It is only then that Rufus realizes he is bleeding, from cuts that do not pain him.
“Let go of me,” he says evenly. His mind has second-guessed his body’s instinct to pull away before it materialized. Never show... “I’m fine.”
Tseng does not release him. He is standing very close, and Rufus’ back is against the edge of the desk. To move would be to realize the implicit confinement – so he does not. After a moment something shifts in Tseng's eyes, edged with speculation. He leans in, moving slowly. His free hand trails up Rufus’ trouser leg, warmth in its wake, and Rufus feels himself becoming still. He cannot break his gaze from Tseng’s face. Desperately he thinks, the cameras.
Tseng’s voice, soft.
“What did he do to you?”
Rufus hears himself scream. The sound is clipped, and hits him like gun recoil. He lashes out with his fists – he never knew how to fight this – but at point-blank range he has no inertia behind the blows, and they go wild. Once, twice: then Tseng catches his wrists and pins them against the glass and kisses him on the mouth, hard. A stranger's heat.
A strange...
So sweet.
Rufus pushes away, violently, and the room pinwheels. His legs nearly give out under him, and he catches himself against the edge of the desk again, but Tseng has already backed away. He reaches up and loosens his tie, the gesture so absentminded and methodical that it takes Rufus a few seconds to realise its abnormality.
“So you can fight,” he notes, voice still low and a little thoughtful. “Sir.”
supacat stepped in as beta and I wrote the last half of the fic in one go - a single take as it were. -_- So that's the story. I don't think even Cat's seen this part, though.I edited it a bit tonight, mostly for verb tense which was all over the map.
***
“In all likelihood the oversight was intentional. The former General—” Rufus interrupts him.
“General? The former General?” Tseng does not pursue his sentence. Rufus laughs sharply, then quiets, gazing into the glass. The wine glows like red velvet, like his father’s tacky monstrosity of a boardroom downstairs. He should have those drapes taken down, he muses. They show up flesh for the pulsing pink horror it is. Only white would do: white, black, silver, General, your progress has been excellent, consistently excellent, your management of the Wutai campaign—
He shouldn’t have been watching that day. Masamune’s edge was less keen than Sephiroth’s eyes, and Rufus was a boy. Fourteen, rigorously tutored, the heir to the throne that is a minimalist recliner behind a desk in a room all marble and plush eggshell carpeting, perfectly sterile and ventilated, untold riches, power.
Power.
He must have given himself away somehow.
A minute sound: friction, weight being shifted from one foot to another on the carpet. Rufus smiles. Reno isn’t afraid of him; just uncomfortable with the silence. It is something of a novelty, but then fearlessness is an advantage in a brute enforcer, and Reno poses no threat. He is Tseng’s man. Tseng...
When he turns back to meet Tseng’s gaze, he finds it unreadable.
“You are mistaken,” he says easily. “The target is not the former General; he is not a war hero. He is, truth be told, not even a madman. You may consider him as one of Professor Hojo’s more... intractable subjects. It’s an annoyance having to clean up after that fool’s failures, but after all this is what I pay you for. I don’t care much for details of potential danger, or what you do when you catch up to him, of which outcome you seem confident. I want him dead. Am I understood?”
How I wish he were dead...
“Sir,” says Tseng tonelessly, echoed a moment later by Reno. Rufus lets his gaze linger briefly on the latter – half-tamed only, these Turks, did his father ever think to tighten his rein? – and makes a small gesture with his wineglass hand. “Dismissed. Not...” Glance back at Tseng’s ascetic bonze features -- “...you.”
He leaves his seat during the exchange of glances between superior and subordinate, refills his glass at the sideboard. Three-quarters full, as per protocol. The door slides closed behind Reno with a whisper of compressed air. “Wine, Tseng?”
“Not on duty, sir.”
“No. No, of course not.” Rufus sips, and his next smile shows teeth. “What do you want, Tseng? What’s your fucking problem?”
Not much reaction. Only those dark eyes narrow in seeming speculation. “I have a certain responsibility to the officers under my command,” Tseng says finally. “Sir.”
A curl of the lips. "To bring them home safely?"
"To make certain that I know what I'm doing."
Rufus stares at him, taken off-guard. The silence lengthens until it feels like a weight he has swallowed, and he has to look away. Strange toxin, sliding down his throat with the wine, deeper than skin... He turns, feeling Tseng's eyes on his back, and lays a hand against the glass wall behind his desk. He fancies he can hear the building hum below him: central air-con, the murmur of a meticulous workforce. Such the head office of Shinra Corporation – horizontally-integrated, cross-continental, energy defense entertainment technological monopoly, the greatest power in the world save--
One. Perhaps.
He gazes downward.
Midgar by night. Sprawl of never-night and morseled dreams, as all cities. Midgar is a great wheel laid on its side in the featureless plain of the Western continent, the Building at its hub, spokes supporting the sky-darkening plate, reaching out to the reactors that are Shinra’s pride. Eight reactors – utilitarianly numbered, manmade volcanos – spew the light of earthblood forges into the sky. Tumors possessed of cancerous beauty. The Building is soundproof. On this side of the window, the hum of climate control; on the other side there would be the machinal whine of condensing mako in the wind, just soft enough and high enough to stay beyond the common reach of hearing. It’s a sound for the bones not the ears. As the masses teeming beneath the plate do not brood on their surroundings – mostly – it does not drive them to madness. Even the minor employees of Shinra return content to their beds in the mako-lit slums, the night sky a fantasy for them above or beneath the plate.
Below the sixtieth floor of the Building, the reactors drown the stars.
Rufus has to make a conscious choice to disregard them.
Glass is not a solid, he thinks. Given enough eons it will sag, pull away from the framework, form stalactitic drips fantastically suspended. He imagines the Tower stripped of all the trimmings of inhabitation, seventy stories of stark beams and trusses rising vertical against a steel-grey sky. At its base a lake of glass will shiver, darkening under the sun.
Tried to picture who would stand where he stands now, to survey that scene.
He essays the syllables. Nothing harsh on the tongue, nearly all air and lulling sibilance and parting of the lips in deceptive surrender...
Se-phi-roth.
Some small sound snags his attention, and he looks down to find broken glass and a dark pool soaking into the carpet by his feet. Strange, it shouldn’t have shattered like that on such a yielding surface. And his hand is wet too. He’ll have to rinse it before the red wine becomes a sticky annoyance. There is water in the carafe—
--Which Tseng unstoppers with one hand, his other having caught Rufus’ wrist, and pours most of the contents over Rufus’ hand. He has come around the desk somehow, while the young President had his back turned. Winds a handkerchief around Rufus's fingers and palm, tying the ends together in an efficient tourniquet knot. Grip gentle but intractable.
It is only then that Rufus realizes he is bleeding, from cuts that do not pain him.
“Let go of me,” he says evenly. His mind has second-guessed his body’s instinct to pull away before it materialized. Never show... “I’m fine.”
Tseng does not release him. He is standing very close, and Rufus’ back is against the edge of the desk. To move would be to realize the implicit confinement – so he does not. After a moment something shifts in Tseng's eyes, edged with speculation. He leans in, moving slowly. His free hand trails up Rufus’ trouser leg, warmth in its wake, and Rufus feels himself becoming still. He cannot break his gaze from Tseng’s face. Desperately he thinks, the cameras.
Tseng’s voice, soft.
“What did he do to you?”
Rufus hears himself scream. The sound is clipped, and hits him like gun recoil. He lashes out with his fists – he never knew how to fight this – but at point-blank range he has no inertia behind the blows, and they go wild. Once, twice: then Tseng catches his wrists and pins them against the glass and kisses him on the mouth, hard. A stranger's heat.
A strange...
So sweet.
Rufus pushes away, violently, and the room pinwheels. His legs nearly give out under him, and he catches himself against the edge of the desk again, but Tseng has already backed away. He reaches up and loosens his tie, the gesture so absentminded and methodical that it takes Rufus a few seconds to realise its abnormality.
“So you can fight,” he notes, voice still low and a little thoughtful. “Sir.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-03-02 02:21 am (UTC)I am your fan. *_*
Honto ni ne, The Dawn from 69 Stories Up is my favourite story of yours.
(Except, when you finish SSAE that may become my favourite).
Every time I read SSAE I think of Stamped Self Addressed Envelope.
Surprised you wrote Slayers!
(Were you planning a big long thing at the time that you wrote the Slayers snippet?)
no subject
Date: 2003-03-02 12:08 pm (UTC)I'm turning the corner on this one! I'm in the last stretch! *pantgaspwheeze* Am thankful you offered to beta it, because that means I can abandon some of the rough edges that would normally drive me to distraction. ^^;
I'm still waffling on the title. Shinjirarenai. I'm probably going to end up calling it "Rain" or something.
(Were you planning a big long thing at the time that you wrote the Slayers snippet?)
I... don't think I was, really. It was a narrative experiment. If anything I probably wanted it to go in the Calvino Thing.