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Tseng was only ever a fleeting figure before, something spectral and not entirely human. In a way, Reno lacked object permanence when it came to him, because it always seemed that as soon as he had left the office, Tseng would have remained frozen in time, or had ceased to exist, for he had roots that had grown and tethered him there and it never really crossed Reno’s mind that he, too, had a life. He was a mystery, and even that would be a generous description.
Still, Reno was mostly indifferent those first few years or so. Tseng was a coworker and nothing more, cold, calculated, and capable of felling any third or second class soldier squad armed only with the pen he tucked behind his ear and putting anybody in their place with a nasty gaze. Best kept at an arm’s length so as to avoid any possibility of accidentally venturing onto his bad side.
Then indifference grew into a strange fondness, almost one bordering on fascination and a desire to extricate some story of Tseng’s life. There would be the intimacy of lighting a cigarette on the end of the other, sometimes passing one amongst each other, smoke from their lips mingling and intertwining, with Reno internally amused by this childish prospect of an ‘indirect kiss’. A common ritual after a particularly gruelling mission, and easy conversation away from prying ears providing an amiable camaraderie.
One night, they sat there in the Kalm grasslands beneath a smoke-stained sky as the moon made her presence known, slowly from within the mass of clouds. It was an overcast night, presaging rain. They brooded and basked in their knowledge that they were really fucking terrible people, actually, as cigarette smoke lay heavy in their lungs and their bloodied shirts stuck to their skin, words that were commonly acknowledged amongst the Turks, but only ever indicated, never spoken. Murder had come to the both of them all too easily nowadays. Reno considered this with contempt as he took a drag of his cigarette, before he snuffed it out, no longer interested in the taste or sensation that it granted him.
Tseng let his cigarette hang loosely in between his fingers, seldom ever bringing it to his lips, his eyes vacant as they watched the passing by of the occasional car, yet funnily enough, it seemed to Reno at this moment that Tseng had never looked so human or so real. No longer the entity that drifted between rooms with the slow and subdued nature of a wraith, but somehow as solid and real as a Greek Corinthian post, his skin no longer so white it was translucent, but coloured with spots of pink and dried blood across his cheek. The lines where his brow furrowed slightly broke the unnatural smoothness of his forehead, his hair lay limp and untidy, wet with blood and sweat. He was as tangible as he was beautiful.
Funny how Reno only ever thought of things this way when he had just recovered from the high of violence. Otherwise he was numb and jaded, but Tseng wasn’t so bad to look at, there was some vague relief granted by that thought. Perhaps Tseng felt the same way, or was Reno just naive to believe that he ever thought of him at all outside of a professional workplace context? He mulled over this bitterly as he tossed away his cigarette, and thought the whole thing best to be dropped and left alone completely. No good could ever come out of a workplace relationship, not even a fling and nothing more, not in this line of work.
Several days later, the office was quiet and still, with a heavy atmosphere closing in from the four walls. Reno stood by the window idly, holding a mug of long abandoned tea on the sill just for the purpose of giving his hands something to do, staring out at the ugly grey cityscape of Midgar, busy with the sounds of traffic and the vague distant hum of the mako reactors. Occasional snippets of Tseng’s conversation on the phone entered his perception.
“What about Sector 7?”
“That’s absolutely ludicrous! Has he not considered the scale of this kind of destruction?”
“There is really no changing his mind, then? He’ll see it done no matter who does it?”
“Okay… Okay, I’ll run it by the others.”
Something was amiss, Reno could tell from the agitated spike in Tseng’s voice, which was enough of a foreign thing to be a cause for concern. He turned when he heard him put the phone down. Tseng was watching Reno’s general direction, but looking past him, with dulled eyes and a ghostly face, like he had turned intangible once again and if Reno reached out to him, his hand would pass straight through. He crossed the room to him, slowly, as one would a frightened dog prone to violence, and as he came closer he began to see all the lines on Tseng’s face forming something like… fear, anger, confusion, grief, all at once, like he beheld all the world’s despair behind his eyes.
“What’s wrong? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost,” Reno said, unhelpfully. For once he was at a loss for words, as worrying a thing as Tseng appearing so anguished.
“Weren’t you listening?” he replied flatly.
“Something about Sector 7, I wasn’t paying attention.”
“The president wants us to drop the plate.”
“No way he’s that stupid, seriously?”
“I do wonder…”
“What the fuck does he want to do that for? Can’t you just tell him where to stick it?”
Tseng shook his head. “It’s going to be done, whether it’s us, or somebody else, and it might as well be us. It’s our job to carry these kinds of burdens. Still, my God, I wish it didn’t have to be like this. It’s a wonder I haven’t… Hm, forget it.”
“Tseng…” His name fell heavy upon Reno’s lips and the small space between them, holding the weight of something both sacred yet taboo to speak of. The rest of his sentence fell away from him, and he didn’t quite desire trying to find it.
Instinctively he lifted a hand to brush against the small of Tseng’s back as he was about to turn away, and that one little touch, insignificant as a passing greeting flung to a coworker in the hallway, or a touch to the arm in quiet sympathies, for a brief moment, caused all the life on Gaia to come to a screeching halt for one fleeting second. A second that expanded into hours, years, an endless horizon of eternity, all while Reno stood there with his fingertips against Tseng’s back. The heat of the room became bitter and oppressive as cigarette smoke and the aftermath of a fire.
Tseng watched him, his expression shifting, softening just slightly. His fingers grasped Reno’s forearm, pulling him into him, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth and missing his lips completely with the clumsiness of apparent inexperience. He lingers for a moment in consideration, shallow breaths converging, and all the typical sounds of workplace chatter and footsteps along the corridor fading from awareness. Tseng kissed him again, ungraceful, greedy, almost boyish in nature. His hands fumbled about with a gauche manner, like he didn’t know what to do with them, holding onto Reno’s waist, then shoulders, then the back of his head, soon to be bruised flesh under his suit marking a map of where his fingertips have travelled.
How amusing it was, to Reno, that earnest, cool-headed Tseng would have found himself, or rather, willingly put him himself in this compromising position, pressed up against his desk and hot under the collar when any of the higher-ups could have walked in, their obsequious Turk who always wore his propriety like a badge of honour. In trying to prevent himself from laughing, Reno’s teeth ended up grazing Tseng’s bottom lip, nearly biting on the soft flesh, and it seemed as though that new touch had caused reality to fall upon him twice as heavy. Suddenly Tseng was upright and rigid, holding Reno at arm’s length by his shoulders, regarding him with a look of terror as if he had been, unbeknownst to him, replaced by a doppelganger, and it was a stranger who had been kissing him.
“Forgive me, that was unprofessional,” Tseng mumbled, brushing down imaginary lint on his creased shirt before coyly picking up his discarded blazer from the floor. “That should never have happened, at least… not here, not under these circumstances. No, what am I talking about? It shouldn’t have happened, that’s that.”
“Yes, it should have, you wanted it, so did I. What’s the issue with that?”
“We’re at work, that’s the issue, Reno.”
“You’re the one who started it. I think you rather liked the thrill of possibly being caught.”
“You probably did.” Tseng glanced at him, a small, just barely noticeable smile on his lips. “You’re about as subtle as a firaga to the face.”
Reno stared at him. A few seconds slipped away before he realised they were both silent, and seemingly awaiting some kind of retort from the other. In the end, with the pressure of being under Tseng’s scrutiny making it impossible to speak and every word die away on his tongue, he responded in the form of a kiss again, in which Tseng gladly indulged for just a while longer, during that brief, ephemeral moment in time where they could suspend their reality, and neglect from their minds what was to come.