etrayalogs | ( closed ) let me wrap my teeth around the world

— let me see the heat get to it;
MISSION PREP.

[ the room reminds tseng of his old apartment in midgar, the one he'd lived in before he took up residence in the shinra building: bare, nondescript, nothing at all to indicate that a person was meant to live there. really, the only difference is the static on the television, and that's a difference mostly because tseng had never bothered to own a television in the first place—what was the point, when he was never home to watch it?

the good thing is that the size of the room means it's easy to clear, which in turn means he can push the door the rest of the way open to let rufus into the space behind him.

"first mission," and it's sitting in a room together? ]

I expected the stakes to be higher, [ tseng says, wryly.

if what aurora says is true, then the stakes have in fact never been higher—and yet, at the same time, there's no real sense of urgency to this. or maybe it's just that tseng has lived such a high-stakes life for so long that anything less than critical feels boring by now. ]

[It's entertaining to give Tseng grief, at times, about his strict adherence to protocol even in moments where it's almost certain to be unwarranted — it's a reasonably ordinary room in a reasonably nondescript hospital that hasn't tried to kill them yet, so why wait to spring a trap now? — but that doesn't mean that Rufus doesn't still appreciate the familiarity of it, on some level. There's a natural cadence to it, that way: they arrive in an unfamiliar circumstance, Tseng does his job, Rufus takes command. Strategy and execution, mind and arm. It's how they work.

He doesn't end up waiting as long as he might otherwise have expected, and sees why when Tseng finally permits him entrance — the room was easy to clear because it's small and empty, reminiscent of a holding cell or an interrogation room, but for the little touches of comfort furniture that understandably wouldn't be present otherwise.]

Well. We could always introduce house rules of our own.

[To say he's unimpressed by the chairs, table, and cot would be an understatement; he surveys them all a minute with the precise affect of an affluent matriarch disapproving of her daughter-in-law's manners, then pulls one of the chairs out and sinks into it before gesturing Tseng to the other.

There's a piece of paper waiting for them in the middle of the table; he reaches for it, idly curious.]

But let's see which ones our host has set out for us.

[ rufus can give him grief all he wants, but tseng knows too well how easy it is for a single lapse in caution to be a bullet in someone's skull, so even here, in a place where there's (probably) no one who wants to put bullets in rufus' skull (yet), tseng insists on clearing rooms and checking for bugs. there's a ritual to it that's appreciable in its familiarity, and a comfort from the knowledge that they're safe, the combination of which allows some of the tension to leach from tseng's shoulders as he joins rufus at the table. ]

I'm not sure there's a need for that yet, sir.

[ house rules, that is. depends on what the game is. rufus has never been one to back down from a challenge; neither has tseng, for that matter, but rufus approaches these things with the recklessness of someone confident that his back is being watched, and tseng approaches them with the caution of the one doing the watching.

he undoes the button of his suit jacket and sits in the chair across from rufus, back straight out of habit. there's no need to ask what the card says; if tseng needs to know, rufus will read it out.

instead, tseng casts his gaze around the room, no longer with the critical eye of a man looking for danger, but with the curious one of someone trying to figure out what the aim might be. after a second, he leans over to adjust the channel of the television; unsurprisingly, the static is the same on every frequency. ]

[He skims the note card briskly, letting the choicest words and phrases stand out and soak in to the degree that he almost laughs: time to get to know your partner, the note reads, and discuss your lives together, and moments that defined the person you've become. In other words, this could easily be the most brainless and phoned-in activity anyone could've possibly asked them to do — and, perhaps, precisely why they're going to have to be extra careful about it, lest the ease of it be designed to lull them into a false sense of security in their hubris.]

Hah. We're to chat over drinks.

[He tosses the card back onto the table with enough momentum that it skids, spinning lightly, across the surface to rest in front of Tseng. Let Aurora think he's already dismissive of it all, that he's deemed it beneath him. Making a spectacle of himself will keep eyes on him, and off of Tseng, buying him the time he needs to appreciate what they're evidently being asked to do.]

Indulge each other's burning questions, apparently.

[ tseng catches the flung card under one finger, his brow already furrowing faintly at rufus' summary of its contents. it's a look of bewilderment that stands out on his ordinarily-collected features—tseng isn't one to let his emotions reflect so clearly on his face, but the idea of their first mission being talking over drinks is... well, it deserves at least one frown. ]

"Time to get to know your partner."

[ time to get to know your partner, and they've paired rufus and tseng together? for the past fifteen years it's been tseng's job to know everything there is to know about rufus shinra—his tastes, his desires, his inner workings, his aspirations—and tseng has always been very good at his job. he wonders how much there could possibly be for him to learn about rufus that he doesn't already have in a file somewhere in the back of his mind.

of course, the inverse is not entirely as true. there's plenty about tseng that rufus doesn't know, but it's never been rufus' job to know. tseng is the weapon and rufus is the wielder; he has no cause to know much about tseng the man, so long as he can use tseng the turk. ]

I see, [ is all he says. however straightforward the task seems, it would be unwise to be complacent about it. ] Should we start with the chat or the drinks?

The chat.

[Opting for the drinks first would imply stalling, he muses, or possibly the implication that there are things he wouldn't want to discuss without the benefits of a little liquid courage. And the thing is, there are, but admitting as much would be a sign of weakness. Not something he's willing to play into, so early in the game.

They are, after all, here as supposed representatives of their worlds of origin. And there's no indication of the selection process that went into this, for better or for worse — but anyone identifying Gaia as a world to save or destroy surely had to have heard of the Shinra Electric Power Company either way, and whatever they might've heard, he's not inclined to let their reputation be founded on other people's commentary and speculation.]

Though I'm not opposed to multitasking. Tell me about the day you were hired. Now there's a moment that defined the person you are, hm?

[ given how cognizant he always is of facts as well as appearances, it comes as no surprise to tseng that rufus chooses to start by talking. he's likely imagining how it would look to choose drinks first—like stalling? like gettingt he easy thing out of the way first? or perhaps there's a desire to put off the revelation of how well they actually know each other. whatever the reason, tseng nods once in response, acquiescing to rufus' orders.

that's not to say, though, that he's expecting the question when it comes. leave it to rufus to get to the heart of things, but the idea of discussing his past makes tseng shift almost imperceptibly in his seat. after all the pains he's taken to avoid this exact question coming up, it only figures that rufus would be the one to ask him right to his face. ]

I was thirteen years old. [ tseng speaks in the same tone he uses to deliver reports on turk missions: even, unsentimental. ] My file says I was surveilled for six months before recruitment efforts began in earnest.

[ of course he read his own file. it was the first thing he did, once he had clearance. tseng sits back in his chair and crosses his legs at the knee, his posture too casual. ]

They expected that I would decline, at first. I had never been to the Eastern Continent and they expected that the relocation to Midgar would give me pause. It was a surprise that I accepted on their first offer.

[He's read Tseng's file as well, of course; only an idiot wouldn't know everything he possibly could about the people tasked with the preservation of his life day in and day out. But it's one thing to see numbers and statistics on a page and another thing to hear it coming out of the individual's own mouth. It makes him wonder, idly, what the contingency plan would've been, had Tseng not defied expectations and taken the offer at thirteen damned years old. Come back in another few years? Abduct him outright? Whatever the playbook of options, one thing remains universal: if he'd been identified as a candidate, all roads were going to lead to Midgar eventually.]

You knew a good deal when you saw it.

[The irony is palpable.]

As did your recruiter. An eye for value.

[ another nod of acquiescence, this time accompanied by a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth, almost a smile. tseng does know a good deal when he sees it, it's true. ]

It was half practicality, half calculus. The job interested me, and I had very little to tie me to my hometown. And even at thirteen I understood that a company doesn't come to another continent to recruit face-to-face if they intend to give up easily.

[ whether it was then in that moment, or a year later, or two years later, or five, one way or another tseng would have made his way to midgar, by choice or by force. of course, the shinra electric power company hadn't been quite the behemoth in 1990 that it is today—but to anyone who knew how to read it, the writing on the wall was there.

tseng spreads his hands in the universal sign for "what can you do?" ]

I went through training and was onboarded just before my fourteenth birthday.

A meteoric rise.

[Now there's a figure of speech that a person can only use in good faith when taken from very specific canonpoints of critically acclaimed adventure hit Final Fantasy 7.]

Tell me you spent your first paycheck on something ludicrous and indulgent. I'd hate to think you were already forty years old by age fourteen.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint you, sir. My first paycheck had sixteen hours on it, and my second paycheck went to necessities.

[ by now, they've known each other long enough and are familiar enough with each other's features that rufus will surely be able to read the amusement on tseng's. ]

My third paycheck, however, I spent mostly on clothing, which at the time felt exceedingly indulgent.

[ a pause, and then, conversational, ]

Of course, it was only in retrospect that I realized it was unwise to spend so much on clothing only two months before I grew six inches and didn't fit any of it anymore.

And before you realized you'd spend the rest of your life living out of the same suit. Poor Tseng. Your hubris got the better of you.

[But this, he muses, is a comfortable groove for their conversation to ride along in, for the moment. They're adhering to the requirements of the ask while giving up nothing of any particular consequence. This memory of Tseng's is certainly a moment that defined him; it's also utterly useless as leverage and lacks any influential value.

He'll have to be careful, when it's his own turn. Everything about being a Shinra carries leverage, in one way or another. Most people are just wise enough not to exercise it.]

I had a party for my fourteenth birthday. All of my father's business associates, plus a number of influential, acceptable families with children of similar age. I remember they ate in a separate room. I was put to my father's left.

[ they are learning little things about each other, following the letter of the instructions while also giving almost nothing away. it's a comfortable space to occupy, despite tseng's initial misgivings on the matter—the back-and-forth of it is familiar in its own way. this is how rufus has always been, impenetrable, putting forth so much while giving up so little. ]

Did you feel any older at fourteen than you had at thirteen?

[ tseng has, of course, memorized the timeline of rufus' life, marked the most influential events along its axis. it's one thing to read the words, and another entirely to hear rufus speak on it. ]

Almost exactly a year's worth.

[It's safer like this, in some ways. Tseng is deft enough to give diplomatic answers to questions he's asked when he doesn't like them — he wouldn't have lasted two weeks with the Turks if he hadn't acquired that skill in a hurry — but there's also the added complication of the fact that Rufus is the one asking. That requires a more delicate touch, so as not to make that carefully-choreographed dance any more difficult than it needs to be from adding in personal obligations to him as a factor.

The reverse, turning the questioning back onto himself, puts them both into their natural element. He was made to have a spotlight shined on him, to give perfect answers and represent all the values he's meant to. Tseng was made to stand in the penumbras of that spotlight, and to interrogate.

It's not an apology. It is something resonant with one. He's the one who put the burden on Tseng first, because it was the right play. Now that there's momentum, he's the one taking it back off again, as it always should have been.]

I use a different date, actually. When marking the passage of time.

[ it's a facetious response, which is more or less what tseng expected. it's also, at least by tseng's estimation, only partly true. he and rufus are different in many respects, but one of their similarities is this: that neither of them really had a childhood, the way that most people imagine a childhood. tseng's childhood was marked by conflict and loss, and rufus' marked by the weight of expectations; neither of them were ever really granted the gift of innocence.

at least for tseng, his birthdays stopped making him feel older around the time he reached ten years old—after that, he was so world-weary that his birthdays were little more than a convenient way of marking the passage of time.

speaking of. ]

Oh? [ tseng tilts his head slightly, but he doesn't voice the question: what date is that?

mostly because he thinks he knows, but partly to give rufus the option not to answer it, in case tseng is right and he'd rather not give voice to it. ]

[Strictly speaking, there are two dates now that form landmarks in the chronology of his life. Both are deaths, one considerably more recent than the other.

He should have new calendars printed as a joke, as part of his ascension. Forget εγλ 0007. The true year is 1 AR.]

My mother would have liked you, I think.

[It's one sentence that carries the weight of a thousand. The sort of thing people say when they're nostalgic, when they're vulnerable, when they're thinking about moments that defined them. Liked him? His mother would've recoiled to know her husband's corporation had scouted and recruited a child her own son's age to be trained as a killer in the service of her family. Likely she would've wept, though whether it be for Tseng or for her own impotence would surely be anyone's guess.

It's one sentence that an outside observer would assume is raw and significant, a real letting down of his guard in this environment of trust. He doesn't regret it; using your own family as tools and leverage is a time-honored Shinra tradition.]

People say I look like her.

[ by the time tseng joined the ranks of the general affairs office, rufus' mother was already long dead. tseng knows her only as a secondhand memory, someone who exists only in the recollections of the people around him who had met her and come to like her. he's heard stories—that she was kind, that she was gentle, that she was beautiful.

they all say that rufus is her spitting image. his delicate features certainly don't belong to his father, of that much tseng is sure—save for the color of his hair, not much of shinra senior had been reflected in rufus' appearance. it seemed that all the late president had been responsible for was rufus' personality, however indirectly—his ruthlessness, his stubbornness, his determination to see things through. ]

It's a shame I never got to meet her. [ rufus' comment wasn't meant in sincerity, and neither is tseng's response. in point of fact, tseng doesn't think that rufus' mother would care much for him at all. ] Verdot once told me you have her eyes.

[ that part is true. verdot really did say that, once. but tseng never knew rufus' mother, and so to him, rufus' eyes have only ever been his own. ]

Did he? What a gossip.

[There's something powerfully funny about the idea of Verdot, former director of the Turks, being branded a gossip. As though being close-lipped and lock-stepped isn't a fundamental part of the job description. But it's not as though Aurora knows that, and it's to be expected that average employees of a normal company would talk amongst themselves, particularly to their subordinates, particularly about their boss.

It's still a thought that gives him pause, though, regardless. His mother's eyes. Some people might find solace in that, maybe. Some might find the connection a catharsis of sorts. Odd how the only thing that sparks at the notion is a faint, suppressed bristle of resentment. Bad enough that everything he has still bears his father's fingerprints, his filthy legacy, too soon and too recent to have turned the page on the new beginning he craves. Bad enough that it's his in name, on a technicality, but not yet where it counts.

He's already had to live thirty years of everything being his father's. He's not about to tolerate the loss of his own eyes, on top of it.]

And whose eyes did you steal? Your mother's, or your father's?

[ there's a flicker of something unhappy in rufus' expression. tseng notes it, files it away to think on later—this is hardly the moment to bring it up, if such a moment exists between them at all. it gutters like a wick burned low and then vanishes in the question rufus redirects to tseng.

in reality, it's a question tseng can't answer. his memories of his parents are few and far between and so hazy they may as well not exist; he never knew them, not really, not in any kind of way that matters. but, he thinks, aurora probably doesn't know that, and so he thinks on it for a moment and then lies, ]

My mother's.

[ well, he has a fifty-fifty chance of being right, at least.

it's not a lie spoken with the intent of fooling rufus. at this point, tseng doesn't even know if he could fool rufus. it's for the benefit of whoever else might be watching, to make it seem like they're both engaging with the mission. ]

Would you like that drink now, sir?

I would.

[It's a good way of moving on from a topic neither one of them wants to dwell on, after all. A subtle way of pivoting the subject that still makes sense to the mission at hand, that saves them the trouble of both crafting a web of lies for the sake of keeping up appearances. Tseng would say that the best lie is the one that's closest to the truth. So much the better, to divert back to something they can both be reasonably truthful about, because there's nothing of consequence to it.]

I'm afraid I'm forbidden from telling you my favorite. You'll just have to guess.

Understood.

[ good thing that tseng is paid to know everything there is to know about rufus, then, isn't it? he stands from his chair in one smooth motion and walks to the minifridge, which he pulls open to reveal the contents. it's full of all kinds of things—milk, soda, something that looks suspiciously like an electrolyte drink—and, notably, contains a familiar bottle of luxurious whiskey.

in tseng's memory, whiskey neat hadn't always been rufus' drink of choice. at nineteen it had been midori sours, until one particular night of overindulgence had soured him on midori entirely; after that it was daquiris, and then cosmopolitans, and then sweet-and-sour amaretto drinks with skewered cherries floating on top. and then, one day—in a shift that feels as though it happened almost overnight, although factually tseng knows that can't be true—rufus started asking for whiskey and never asked for anything else again.

does it count as a favorite drink if it's something you've convinced yourself you like? tseng isn't sure. but there's no midori in the fridge, and no triple sec, so whiskey neat it must be. he pours two fingers' worth into an empty glass, caps the bottle, and brings it back to the table to set in front of rufus. ]

[He'd known, even before he'd laid eyes on what the challenge of this room was to be, that success was a fait accompli. That much was secured from the moment he and Tseng had established themselves as partners; what possible curveball could Aurora throw at them that the two of them wouldn't be able to handle effectively? The matter of the drink is no exception, and the lack of hesitation on Tseng's part comes as no surprise; if anything, it's curious that it takes him as long as it does (not long at all) to settle on the whiskey, which Rufus mostly chalks up to Tseng's predilection for thoroughness, unwilling to make a decision without at least an accounting of all his available options.

It's a shame that Tseng's drink of choice isn't whiskey in return, for all that Rufus knows full well he'll follow along with it if he's handed a glass. It'd make things a great deal less complicated, but even that is no great matter. He'll just have to do his own thorough overview, when it's his turn.

Speaking of. He picks up his glass, turns it lightly in one hand like he's admiring the color of the liquid filling it, and brings it up as if to drink — but then stops short and smiles faintly before setting it back down on the tabletop.]

Favorite or not, it's boring to drink alone.

[It's his turn, then. Without preamble, he gets up and moves to the fridge himself, pulling the door open with already a fairly good idea of what areas to dismiss outright and which ones to scour more thoroughly. The milk is out, and so is the noxious-looking electrolyte drink. The soda might be useful if Tseng's drink of choice involved soda, but it doesn't. There are a few liquor bottles to the back, various shapes and sizes, but when he happens to glance up at the shelves above the fridge —

There's an electric teapot. Tea leaves. And for a moment, behind a mask of the same idle boredom he's worn as he's perused the other available wares, he considers.

Breakfast tea. Chocolate mint. Black with orange peel. Coffee.

It's a trick, and he's not careless enough to take it. He knows Tseng's private indulgence, what he opts for when he's alone and detaching himself from business — a difficult prospect, because observing Tseng at all implies his own biasing presence, and anywhere he is immediately becomes business — knows because of a box left behind in a back cabinet during his long lonely internment on house arrest, when he'd never quite been able to work out if it was there as insurance against the possibility that Tseng might someday want it, or as a subtle expression of sympathy for the imprisoned that Tseng would ever so rarely indulge.

The right one isn't there, and so much the better. Even if it had been, that memory isn't something Rufus is willing to relinquish, even with the planet on the line.

Fortunately, the gin is a little more conspicuous, and so are the fresh-cut limes. There's two bottles — another trick — and he takes a quick taste of both before choosing the more citrusy of the two and fixing a gin and tonic in one of the highball glasses, garnished with a wedge of lime.

Did he take too long putting it together? Hopefully not. If he did, it'll likely just get chalked up to the natural imbalance of power, the employer knowing the employee's drink of choice as a courtesy, but not as a matter of business.]

Been a while since I made one.

[He says, and returns to his seat, sliding the glass across the table with a dull wooden noise as the thick glass drags against the surface.]

[ it's a curiously... intimate thing, in a way, to watch rufus get up and make tseng a drink. the kind of thing that would never happen were they back in midgar—while it makes perfect sense for tseng to know rufus' preferences as a matter of course, the idea of rufus having memorized tseng's preferences sort of puts him on the back foot.

so, for a second, it actually comes as a relief that rufus hesitates—at least until tseng sees that rufus is hesitating because he's looking at the selection of tea on the shelf above the fridge. he's fairly sure he's never let rufus see him drinking tea—under torture, he's not even sure he would admit that there's a particular variety of loose-leaf green tea that he imports from wutai monthly to fulfill this exact indulgence. in every other way, tseng has severed all ties between himself and the culture of his birth, and the prospect of having the one remaining connection laid bare like this is... frightening.

but rufus looks away, looks to the gin instead, and tseng exhales a slow, silent breath he hadn't realized he'd caught. when the glass thunks against the wood of the table, tseng reaches out to take it to hand, turning the glass in a slow circle as if to examine it. ]

You wouldn't know by looking. [ that's... almost a joke, or at least as close as tseng gets to jokes overtly. obviously you wouldn't know by looking when both gin and tonic water are clear. ] Are we meant to toast?

[ to what? to gaia, may she continue to exist long enough for us to continue trying to undo her. something like that, maybe. ]

Why not? I'm certain we've done something to deserve it.

[He studies Tseng a minute, quiet and careful, as they both take up their drinks. There's a moment where, for just a fleeting instant, he wonders if he's made it to Tseng's liking — not from any wavering in confidence or lack of certainty in his choices, but rather just...

Well. It's a strange thing to wonder, anyway. All things considered, he should be far more interested in his own experience, in the quality of the whiskey he's about to enjoy.

He eyes Tseng a moment, tilting his glass to regard the liquid inside, before raising it just an inch or two in the suggestion of a salutation.]

After all this talk of yesteryears, I say we toast to the future. The promise of tomorrow. New beginnings.

[And maybe their enigmatic abductors, if they're listening, will take pleasure in that — but of course it's not for their benefit that he says it. There's only one future that matters, and that's the future of Shinra; their planet, and everything on it, is really just an mere extension of it.]

[ lucky for rufus, it's not easy to fuck up a gin and tonic—but also, tseng's not worried. rufus is fastidious to a fault in most things, he has no reason to believe that cocktail mixing would be the one area where he gets sloppy.

he lifts his own glass slightly in response and nods in acquiescence to rufus' words. ]

To new beginnings. [ or second chances. the future. the continued existence of their little blue rock in space. tseng lifts his glass to take a sip and is gratified to find that his assessment of rufus' drink-mixing skills was right on the money. ] You chose the less juniper-forward gin.

[ there's approval in his tone, just the faintest hint of it, although it's not tseng's place to approve of anything rufus does. ]

( closed ) let me wrap my teeth around the world

( march event ) — drinks

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