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“I feel shitty.”
It’s probably the most straightforward thing Rude has ever heard Reno say. It’s definitely also one of the most dangerous, so he doesn’t reply. Tseng has long since abandoned them for a private office, not unusual on its own, but he didn’t even bother to snap at Reno about his volume on the way out. It’s not the volume that’s the problem, this time. Just the discomfiting quiet of unacceptable professional dissatisfaction.
“Like, I get it, yo,” Reno continues. He rolls out of the chair he’s been sprawled across, and the uncertainty in the way he moves is as uncomfortable to Rude as Reno’s one-sided conversation. It’s anathema to Reno, in Rude’s experience. “The job and all. But, fuck. Fuck.”
He turns, fingers flexing and tapping restlessly against the side of his legs. He watches Rude, watches Rude turn the page of the paper they both know Rude isn’t reading. Reno’s tattoos twitch as his expression sours.
“Fucking with some Corneo clown isn’t the same as ...” The same sour look flickers across Reno’s face, proof he’s keenly aware of how closely he’s toeing an uncrossable line. Aimlessly he drifts towards the conference table, reticence evident in how long it takes his long legs to cross the short space. Reno tries to shove a chair out of the way, which is normal, and does a clatteringly bad job of sending it skittering so hard into the next chair that the second one tips halfway over, which is not.
There’s a beat and he sits on the table anyway. “What do you do when you’re feeling shitty, huh partner?”
Rude turns another page. He can tell that Reno can tell he’s got something to say, which is annoying enough to Rude that he drags out the silence a little longer anyway. He doesn’t look up, but sees Reno’s fingers flexing again against the hardwood, increasingly uncomfortable.
Well. Rude isn’t that cruel, off the clock, so he finally indulges him. “Sit and reflect,” he says dryly. “Quietly.”
A scoff. “Go fuck yourself, yo.” There’s not much heat in it. Reno’s fingers flex on the tabletop again and his hand lurches across it towards Rude’s. It’s not an accident, which is one of those things Rude hates being able to notice. Another one is how hastily Reno pulls his hand back to his own thigh.
It’s quiet again. There’s the faint echo of two steps of footsteps down the hall, and Scarlett’s howling cackle. Rude can hear both of them breathing in the quiet of the conference room. He thinks about how labored Reno’s breathing was hours ago, laid out amidst the wreckage of the fight at the top of the Sector 7 pillar. The naked panic on his face and the shallow heaving of his chest as the helicopter went down in flames.
Rude thinks about the way Reno looked at him after he picked up his glasses. There’s a part of him that would love to write it off as inscrutable, but part of being a Turk means never getting to not scrut most things again. He closes the magazine and rests his hand flat on the table.
After a second, Reno’s hand slips again.
The door opens, of course. The small mercy is there’s only one set of flat footsteps so Scarlett isn’t there, but the problem is that means it’s just Tseng, and Tseng is one of the few remaining inscrutable things. Reno doesn’t move his hand away, and neither does Rude. It’d be insulting.
“We have an assignment,” Tseng says, tone as deceptively warm as ever. Rude’s facing the wrong way to look him in the eye, but he can still feel the room go several degrees colder when he adds, “Provided you’re amenable, of course.”
A warning, which is one more than anybody else would get. “Obviously.” Reno tosses his head, shaking his hair from his eyes as he flashes a winning smile. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world, boss.”
The door doesn’t shut, but Rude keeps a close ear on the sound of his retreating footsteps. Another pair joins him at the corner, sharper. Stilettos. With the door open, the chime of the elevator door opening and closing at the end of the corridor is barely audible. “Join me, Scarlett?”
There’s a pause, and the elevator chimes again. “Thank you.” That’s two in one day.
Reno is stiff as a board. His hand is still there, painfully close, and finally, against his better judgment, Rude touches it. He pats it once, and then after a beat lets his fingers curl around Reno’s wrist. Through the thin leather of his glove he feels the rapid fire rabbit thumping of his pulse.
“Wouldn’t have a job if other people wanted to think about stuff like that.” They’ve already hashed this out, several times, including hours before. It feels dismissive coming out of Rude’s mouth, which is the point, at least a little bit, and he hopes it helps take some of the sting off when he slides his thumb over the back of Reno’s hand and across the fragile skin of his wrist, tucked just beneath the rumpled cuff of his shirt sleeve. “I drink it off, usually.”
There are so many cameras. Reno is aware enough that his jaw quickly snaps shut from where it’s dropped open in surprise, and he sits up, drawing his hand from Rude’s feather light grip. This isn’t the first time the offer has been extended, but it’s usually Reno, with playful intent. Rude’s dry “no”s have certainly never been as surprising to either of them as his much more deliberate offer.
Rude pushes back from the table and tips his head up, watching Reno outright now as Reno watches him in return. “You get the first round, I’ll get you back.” Promises, promises. More bad choices, probably, in their own way, for colleagues. Turks.
Reno nods, then smiles for the first time in hours as he stands up, Rude following suit. In the split second before he remembers Reno watching him flip the switch to bring the plate down, Rude thinks about how nice it is. In the split second after, he decides to hold on to it.
Not like his choices can get any worse.