Reno knew a dismissal when he heard it.

Or in this case, when he didn't. Elena finished her report and turned smartly on her heel and left the room, and Reno was left with Tseng and Rufus and a large invisible sign labeled "Third Wheel" hanging right on his ass. Nobody said anything, of course, but the meaning was crystal clear.

Tseng wordlessly ran his thumb over the ID card Rufus had just handed back to him, flaking his own dried-black blood off the laminate. Meanwhile Rufus made a point of intently studying a memo Reeve had sent him earlier in the week.

Under happier circumstances, Reno had been-- and likely would be again later-- more than happy to play a part, but he suspected the next scene that was going to take place in Rufus' office wasn't at all his kind of gig. Better to make a dashing exit while the scenery was still changing. He rattled the strap of his nightstick, and the sound was startling in the oppressive silence.

"If you don't need me, Boss, I'm gonna go back up Rude on patrol."

Rufus might have liked to pretend that he was still looking at Reeve's memo, but his icy blue eyes were instead focused just over the top of the page, on Tseng's hands as the Turk calmly replaced his ID card back in his wallet. "...Thank you, Reno."

Tseng said nothing at all, his own eyes on Rufus' wrist and the line of white, healthy skin showing under the President's watchband. It had been purple with advanced geostigma not a day before.

Reno, relieved, beat a hasty retreat.

The air outside of Rufus' office was like the first swallow of a cold beer on a hot July day after shift, and Reno drank deep.

He was all for passion, but sometimes Reno had to admit those two were too intense for his comfort. He liked relationships that were like his job: plenty of side benefits, exciting peaks broken up by long periods of contented boredom, and occasionally involving handcuffs.

The gravel under the deck below him crunched with booted footsteps, an ember glowed in the dim blue summer twilight.

Reno grinned. Speaking of which...

He ignored the steps completely, vaulting up and over the rail, landing two feet away from Rude and extinguishing the flame of the other Turk's silver cigarette lighter with the wind of his passage.

"Hey," he said, straightening. "You got one for me?"

Rude spared him a glance from behind his shades, and patiently struck the flint on his lighter again, attending to his cigarette. "This is my last one."

"Damn." Reno said, without any heat. It was too fine a night for that, and the light in Rufus' office had just winked out. "Where's 'Lena?"

Rude took a long deliberate pull, and sighed the smoke out through his nose before passing the lit cigarette to Rude. "I sent her back to the inn." Rude looked directly at Reno for the first time. "You know she had it pretty rough."

"She's tougher than she looks." Reno inhaled sweet tobacco warmth, the filter still warm from Rude's mouth. Rude didn't smoke anything fancy, but he didn't skimp on quality, either. "She'll be fine, just give her a little space."

"You know her so well, huh?" Rude took his cigarette back and leaned against the deck supports, looking up at a sky full of so many stars, it seemed to have been splashed with silver paint. Reno was still getting used to skies like that, but he was a city rat, and deep down, he missed the neon.

"I know if you act like Elena can't handle something, then she'll think she can't handle it, either." Reno shoved his hands in his pockets, following Rude's gaze upwards. "But if you act like it's not a big deal and she can take it, then she'll surprise you how tough you can be."

Rude made a noise that was somewhere between a cough and a chuckle. "Reno's one-date psychoanalysis, huh? Pretty good considering she dumped you after a week."

Reno put one hand over his heart, and fluttered his eyelashes at his partner. "I'm wounded, to this day. Our natures were too different, it would never have worked out. It was really better that way."

Rude's snort was more in evidence. "I thought it was 'cause you couldn't keep your pants on, buddy." He passed the cigarette back, and Reno's grin was white in the darkness.

"Yeah well, my version sounds better." Reno held the filter between his lips a little longer, thinking about the triangle of rough stubble under Rude's lower lip. "She worships the ground Valentine jabs his pointy gold feet into, anyway. If Tseng couldn't swoop to her rescue, then Mister Famous Fangs'd do just fine."

Rude tilted his head upwards, indicating the dark window of Rufus' room. "What about those two?"

Reno shrugged. "Too rich for my blood. But they've been through worse." His green eyes followed the fading tracery of a shooting star, and he let Rude take the cigarette out of his mouth. Rude's fingertips were rough and warm on Reno's lower lip. Maybe this kind of sky wasn't so bad, after all. "They'll be all business tomorrow, I'll bet you gil."

"Hmpt." Rude let the smoke out of his mouth this time, and Reno couldn't help but watch it go. "What about us, then?"

Reno arched red eyebrows, uncoiling from his slouch like a stretching tomcat. "...Us?" His question was completely unguarded, which might have been why he sounded so much unlike himself. "What 'us'?" He struggled for his grin, talking uneasily with his left shoulder. "C'mon, Rude, don't pussyfoot arou--"

Rude swore softly, grinding his half-finished cigarette out under his heel as he stepped close enough to grab Reno by the disheveled lapels of his unzipped jacket, and hauled him forward until their mouths met.

Reno's knees, though the rest of him would never in a thousand years admit to it, went distinctly gooey. It had nothing to do with schoolgirlish tendencies or first kisses, and everything to do with the fact that Rude could kiss like nothing else Reno had yet encountered in his admittedly vast experience. And he was not the type to rush it, either. By the time he had finished with Reno's mouth, Reno was at a temporary loss for words, and could only moan faintly as Rude's lips moved down the vast exposed area of his throat and collarbone.

Night had settled in completely. In the long grasses behind the ShinRa compound, tiny frogs and insects chirped a boisterous, summertime chorus to the lush sky. The metal housing of the stairwell was damp with dew as Reno let Rude back him up against it, his hands fisted in the front of Rude's shirt, yanking it free of his belt.

Reno's fingers were eager for skin and found it, sleek hard muscle stretched tight over Rude's shoulder blades. He drug his nails down and the noise Rude made was worth every hour of the four months Reno had spent breaking himself of nail biting.

"Where?" Reno said, dragging his mouth away from the sweet acrylic point of the black thorn in Rude's earlobe. "It's not that dark out here."

Rude's stubble was rough against the dark line of Reno's scar. "The office is occupied."

Reno glanced around the small settlement, where the streets were clearly rolled up at six on a nightly basis. "Elena's at the inn." A patch of darkness caught his eye, and he squirmed in Rude's embrace to get a good look at it. "Hey. The chopper."

Rude considered this, a deliberation that somehow required him to shift his hipbone just so against Reno's crotch. "It'll be tight," he cautioned.

"Buddy," Reno said, grinding his hips hard against the sweet resistance of Rude's thigh, "you have no idea."

The passenger seat of the ShinRa helicopter was a far cry from a waterbed and mirrored ceiling in the Silk Pavilion, but Reno was long past charging for his services. Rude knocked the spare headset out of the way to get in the seat and Reno straddled him, the instrument panel nosing uncomfortably into his back as he pulled the door shut.

"Now might be a good time to settle on what you want," Reno said, eyeing the tiny space and Rude seeming to take up most of it in shoulders alone. "I hope you weren't planning on sixty-nining."

Rude's generous hands--so good at shattering kneecaps-- made a simple and eloquent statement on Reno's ass.

Reno's mouth traced over one dark eyebrow, his chin knocking sunglasses aside. "Unn, sweet Leviathan, I thought you'd never ask." His fingers tripped over Rude's belt buckle and the fly of his pants until the thick, hot weight of his partner's cock slid right into his hands. Surgical steel flashed under his fingers, and Reno made a soft, greedy noise of appreciation. A ring he had expected, but not that sweet array of metal warm from Rude's body, a line of bars and balls tracing the bottom curve. He sat back slightly in admiration, grinning lopsidedly. "Man, you are so. cool."

"One for every year in this suit." Rude tossed his head to the side, his sunglasses clattered against the window and off, hands too busy with the front of Reno's pants. "Let me guess, a pro's always prepared."

Reno laughed. "I gave up my pro status on this a long time ago." He rummaged in his jacket pocket for a foil packet, ripping it open in his teeth and spitting the corner out. "But this one I've been saving for a special occasion." Reno touched his fingertips to his lips, and then brushed the tip of Rude's cock with them before sliding down a sheath of slick, opaque black latex over it.

"Classy," Rude said approvingly, helping Reno slither out of his pants, leaving them in a twist on the floorboard. "I should have known you wouldn't use anything less."

"Black Odins, all the way." Reno laughed breathlessly; Rude's hand was between his thighs, fingers closing on Reno's heat. "Made for assfucking. Besides, I wouldn't do my grandmother with a Siren Gold."

"I hope you wouldn't do her at all." Rude traced an appreciative fingertip over the flushed skin of Reno's tip, and chuckled. "Natural redhead, huh?"

"And you didn't believe me." Reno arched his hips up, and the wet, slippery tip of Rude's cock glided between his legs to nuzzle against his asshole. The slight touch was like a jolt of electricity up Reno's spine, and he had to swallow past a throat that was suddenly dry. "Ready?" The question sounded like they were getting ready to go out on stakeout together, nevermind Rude's undone belt was cold against Reno's inner thigh.

Rude rested his free hand on Reno's hipbone and made a delicate motion between his own legs. The pressure on Reno's opening was suddenly much more insistent, the unyielding small ball of Rude's Prince Edgar piercing pushing against muscle, hot through lubed latex. "Ready."

Reno took a deep breath, let it out, and sank down onto Rude's lap with a sound that was pure need. Rude's cock slid into him like a slow dream, each bar and ball a tiny ripple of sensation until Reno was down all the way, stretched taut around him, heavy and full.

"Shiva, that's good," Reno swore, breathing ragged through his open mouth, grinding against Rude's lap.

Rude had closed his eyes and leaned back against the headrest, his tongue flicking out to wet his lips. "Yeah."

Reno arched up and then down again, hard enough to make Rude grunt in surprise. It didn't keep him from raising his hips to meet Reno the next two times.

Reno braced his arms on either side of Rude's head, and winked at him. "Okay, partner." He bent down far enough to kiss him, long and hard and with their lips still touching when he added, "Fuck me."

Reno's hipbones went white under the pressure of Rude's hands, and the passenger seat squeaked protest under Rude's thrusts. He was not one to be hurried at any time, but Reno was mollified at the obvious urgency, at the unguarded look of pleasure on Rude's face. Rude reached up one hand to Reno's wrist, freeing it from the turbulence strap above the seat and guiding both their hands between Reno's legs.

"C'mon." He growled, their fingers wrapping together around the burning ache of Reno's sex. His eyes said everything else, and Reno's hand began to move in time, squeezing like he clutched Rude inside of him, pumping hard with the motion of his partner's hips. His hair had given up any pretence of staying up long ago, and limp red tendrils trailed in his eyes, clinging to his scars.

"...I'm not gonna make it long, pal."

Rude smiled in a way that Reno usually associated with, at the very least, a felony, and shifted subtly inside of him in a way that made Reno's knees go numb. "I don't want you to."

Reno did his best to shrug. "Okay, fair enough... just wanted to... let you..." Reno gave up then, and just rode him until the motion was too much, each apex of Rude's movement pressing just right inside of him until Reno could no longer think clearly and there was only the building pressure in his hands, the violent motion of Rude fucking him like Reno always knew Rude would do it, and just the thought of that had been enough to make Reno come into his hands more than once.

It was no amount of effort to do it now. Reno tensed, his head snapping back, throat tendons taut. He felt himself go tight even before he heard Rude's sharp intake of air, and knew there was nothing else to wait for. He got as far as the first syllable of Rude's name before the first warm wave of sensation rushed right up from where Rude's cock was rubbing inside of him, down to his toes and his fingers and he came all over himself, spilling out of his hands.

Rude swore in a way that Reno wasn't even sure the other man could, and for a moment neither one of them were touching the seat. Rude slammed up hard and then went perfectly still, and Reno felt the already hot latex go several degrees warmer. Rude let out his breath in a long slow sigh of satisfaction.

They fell down, Reno laughing in breathless astonishment, Rude with one hand tangled in the ragged pennant of Reno's ponytail.

"Easy, baby," Reno said, as Rude slipped out, and they sank back against the seat together. He rested his temple against Rude's, breathing in the scent of aircraft fuel and sex and Rude's cool spicy aftershave. "I'm gonna be walking funny tomorrow as it is."

"Not my fault," Rude demurred. "The helicopter was your idea."

"Well only you will know why the altitude indicator is branded on my ass." Reno settled down gingerly across his partner's thighs, and ran his fingertips over Rude's mouth. "We shoulda done this years ago," he said, softly.

Rude's lips puckered, just slightly, on Reno's fingers. "They might have fired us."

Reno considered this. "Yeah well, they might yet."

Rude laughed in a way Reno hadn't ever heard, and laced his arms around Reno's skinny middle, pulling him down. "They'd have to start paying us again, first."