The Conscience of the King
			Chapter 10 - I'm On Fire

"Sometimes it's like someone took a knife, baby, edgy and dull
Cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my skull
At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet
And a freight train running through the middle of my head
Only you can cool my desire
I'm on fire."
	-- Bruce Springsteen



	
	Sand, Rufus thought wryly, is very, very bad for the insides of
a laptop. This was one basic fact of life that would not change no
matter how expensive the laptop, nor how careful the user. That was the
only thing that kept him from kicking off his shoes, rolling up the pant
legs of his carefully tailored suit, picking up the laptop, and
wandering down to the beach to catch the last remnants of the first real
spring day.
	
	One benefit -- perhaps the only benefit -- to being outside
Midgar was that there was sunlight. Midgar's closest equivalent was the
occasional stray beam of light that made its way through the clouds. 
	
	"Mail drop from the home office, sir," his secretary called from
the other room. He turned away from the window and crossed the room,
leaning in the doorframe to the outer office.
	
	"Anything interesting?" 
	
	Keeping secretaries was hard when you were the most demanding
boss in all of Midgar -- until you found the one secretary who was the
perfect match. Beatrice Sayushi was that one secretary. She lingered in
the indeterminate valley between fifty and five hundred, lean face worn
and creased with years of experience; her greatest asset was the
capacity to keep up with even Rufus's worst demands without cracking
under the considerable pressure. She barely spared a glance up for him
as she sorted the mail. "Memo, memo, memo, budget request, Internal
Security report, invitations to various ridiculous self-congratulatory
social functions, funding request, and three new data disks from Midgar.
I expect that you only really care about the last of those."
	
	Rufus laughed. "I keep you around because you read my mind. Give
a look through the IntSec report and tell me if there's anything I need
to know, file the memos so I can at least say that I got them in case
the shit hits the fan in three weeks because I didn't read them, and
flip through the invitations to see if any of them are from people who
will be horribly offended if I don't stop in. Toss the disks over here,
would you?" He held up his hands, cupped to catch the CDs.
	
	Beatrice nodded, and flipped them over to him with a deft flick
of the wrist. "Yes, sir. Will you be needing me for anything after
that?"
	
	Rufus shook his head. "Nope. You're clear. Get out and at least
enjoy the tail end of the fresh air, hey? Just because I work myself
stupid doesn't mean that you should."
	
	"That's why you pay me as well as you do, sir." Beatrice didn't
crack a smile; her deadpan expression had frightened off even the most
determined of visitors in the past. "Which reminds me. You told me to
ask you about a salary increase." 
	
	With a theatrical groan, Rufus turned around to toss the CDs on
his desk. "I just gave you a raise last quarter, Beatrice."
	
	"Yes, sir, but you specifically told me to remind you about
/this/ salary increase last month, after I spent forty-five minutes on
the phone distracting General Heidegger so that you could finish up the
P/E ratio figures for the company's general fund in peace."
	
	"Good point." Rufus shuddered at the memory. "I don't deserve
you, Beatrice."
	
	"I know you don't, sir." She made a tiny shooing motion with one
hand. "Now go and do whatever you're planning on doing with those data
disks, and then go home and get some work done /there/, which you'll do
whether I tell you to or not, and then please attempt to get some sleep
tonight so that you don't show up tomorrow looking like death warmed
over, like you did this morning. I /will/ send you home to nap if you
do."
	
	"What would I do without you?" A small smile played around the
corners of his mouth.
	
	"Overwork, undersleep, drink too much coffee, smoke too many
cigarettes, and never be able to find your keys. Which are, by the way,
underneath the fourth stack of folders on your desk. The military
personnel report."
	
	Rufus laughed. "Thank you. Now get out of here and let me get
some work done in peace."
	
	"Only if you do the same. Shoo." She repeated the gesture, and
Rufus laughed again and turned around. The inner office lacked a door to
close, but in most other aspects, it was like a smaller, less lavish
version of his Midgar office. He ignored the disks on the desk and
wandered over to the window to look out of it -- then stopped when he
got there, turning back around, because it wasn't the familiar vista out
his window. From the anteroom, the sound of Beatrice's off-key humming
made its way back towards him; he half-smiled again. At least that much
didn't change.
	
	~One good thing about being stuck out here,~ he admitted to
himself, ~is that at least the pager isn't going to go off in the middle
of the night.~ Then again, the /bad/ thing about being stuck in Junon
was that even if it did go off in the middle of the night, it wasn't
likely to interrupt anything. There was no shortage of potential bed
partners; that much was clear by the number of veiled glances and
sideways looks he gathered in the course of a single day. Yet somehow he
couldn't seem to find a single one that came close to his usual
standards. 
	
	~You're getting old, Shinra,~ he chided himself. ~Last time you
were out here, you had a different lover every night. What's so
different about now?~
	
	Except he knew what was different, of course. 
	
	Reeve.
	
	He scowled, briefly, as he picked up the first of the three data
CDs and popped it into his laptop. It was just a casual fling with
Reeve. He kept trying to tell himself that. The trouble was, he wasn't
quite listening to himself. No matter how much he kept insisting that it
was nothing serious, thoughts of Reeve kept distracting him, demanding
attention at the least appropriate times. 
	
	"Sir?" Rufus jerked his head up at the interruption -- ~dammit,
I should have noticed someone was there~ -- to find Beatrice standing in
the door, a fourth CD in hand. "I ... think that this is for you."
	
	He frowned. "What is it?"
	
	"It was addressed to me, in the envelope with my latest pay
stub." She handed it over to him; written on the CD, in black marker,
was a simple sentence. 'Have I told you yet today that you look lovely,
Beatrice?' 
	
	Rufus turned it over in his hand; no further information was
forthcoming. "No other clues?"
	
	Beatrice shook her head. "No. But that's what Tseng says to me
every time he comes in to try and convince me to let him in to see you."
	
	"Hm." He looked up. "Thank you. I'll let you know if it's
yours."
	
	Among Beatrice's other shining talents was the knowledge of when
it was best to leave Rufus alone."All right, sir. I'll see you
tomorrow."
	
	Rufus nodded, absently, and ejected the CD that was currently in
the drive to replace it with the one that had been shipped from Midgar.
If Tseng had sent it, it probably meant that he wouldn't get much sleep
tonight at all.


	
			-- * --

	
	"I already fed you."
	
	Cait Sith didn't seem to listen; the tiny black-and-white cat
(no longer quite a kitten, but still small enough to fit in the most
inconvenient places) leapt up into the chair behind Reeve, mewing
pitifully and butting his head against Reeve's back. 
	
	Reeve sighed patiently and reached around behind him, picking up
the ball of fluff and settling him in his lap, scritching behind the
ears. "I fed you. I don't know why you're so upset." Cait Sith looked up
at him and mewed again, and Reeve couldn't help but laugh. "Great. Now
I'm carrying on a conversation with a cat. Someone wanna tell me how
absolutely insane that makes me? ...Except now I'm talking out loud
about how I'm nuts. I think that's probably a sign, or something."
	
	The cat put both front paws on Reeve's chest and butted his head
against Reeve's chin; Reeve laughed again, and scooped the cat up under
one arm. "Okay, okay, I get the picture. You're trying to tell me that I
work too much, aren't --" 
	
	His cellphone rang; Reeve sighed. "Or you were just trying to
tell me that I was about to have the rest of my evening spoiled, weren't
you. Okay, okay, I'm coming." He put the cat down and picked up the
phone from where he'd tossed it on the desk upon getting back from the
office. "Brannon."
	
	"Reeve, ya punk, where the hell are you? It's Friday." The voice
was very clearly a drunken Reno; the background noise was some bar or
another. Reeve glanced at his watch; it was just past ten. High party
time indeed.
	
	"I'm home, Reno. You know, getting some work done."
	
	"Oh, fuck a whole lot of that. C'mon down here; we're all
wondering where the hell you are."
	
	Reeve tucked the phone against his shoulder and got out of the
desk chair; the cat wound in and out of his legs as he walked into the
kitchen. "I, um, didn't know if I would be welcome or not. I mean, Rufus
is in Junon..."
	
	Reno laughed; the speaker on the cellphone turned the sound
tinny and brittle. "Oh, c'mon, you think we only invite you because of
the chief? Don't be dumb, Reeve. We let you get away with it the past
month because you've been busy, but if you don't get away from those
blueprints o'yours you're gonna start turning into one. You know the
place down in the slums? Lower Seven? Kyle's place? If you're not down
here in half an hour, we're comin' back up there and kidnappin' you by
force, okay?"
	
	"But --" Reeve opened up a cabinet and picked up the plastic jug
of cat food, shaking some of it out into the cat's food dish; Cait Sith
meowed again and pounced on it. Faintly, in the background, he could
hear someone -- Rude? -- singing drunkenly: "Oh, I wish I was back home
in Derry..."
	
	"Fuck 'but'. Half an hour, Reeve, or we'll be forced to
administratively research you. C'mon down; it's a good party night."
Click.
	
	Reeve rolled his eyes, and turned off the cellphone on his end.
Well, he supposed that solved the question of whether or not the Tarx
invited him to hang around with them just for Rufus. And it would give
him something to do, at least. 

	
			-- * --

	
	Kyle Moore had been a genial, mostly-unimportant middle manager
in Shinra's Building Services department. He'd put in his thirty years
of service, gotten the gold pen and the handshake, and then woken up one
morning to realize a few things. Namely: work sucked, meetings sucked,
and if one more person sent him an urgent memo demanding more chairs in
their office, he would probably snap and throw the chairs out the
window. In darker moments, he considered throwing the /people/ out the
window instead; it might have been a greater service to the company.
	
	He'd tendered his resignation the next day, cashed the entire
contents of his employee savings plan, and opened a bar up in the slums,
that being the only place he could afford the rent. Within three months,
his newly-opened bar had been a haven for just about anyone who cared to
wander by. The place was nearly always open, the party was nearly always
loud and energetic, and the rules were simple: no old grudges, no armed
conflicts, and no property damage unless Kyle was allowed to play. He
was turning a profit within six months, and making more than Shinra had
paid him within a year.
	
	Reeve had taken the time to change into a pair of old jeans and
a polo shirt before he'd left, and he was glad he had. The Seventh
Heaven itself was a neutral zone, respected by nearly everyone in the
slums (for the simple fact that it /was/ such a good party and few
people wanted to chance getting banished for misbehaviour). No such
guarantee existed for the space between the train station and the bar,
though, and it wasn't wise to advertise that you worked for Shinra
/anywhere/ in the slums. He'd perfected the art, on previous visits to
the under-city, of carefully failing to notice such things as drug deals
and weapons exchanges. It was just safer for everyone like that.
	
	The Seventh Heaven itself was a beacon in the endless
near-twilight of the slums; light and noise spilled out from the open
front door, and Reeve grinned as he walked up the steps, hearing no
fewer than three heated arguments going on at once. Okay, so maybe Reno
had been right; maybe he /did/ need to relax. And it was impossible to
avoid having a good time in the Heaven unless you were clinically dead.
	
	The bar itself was small, but not tiny; it could fit perhaps
fifty people comfortably, and was always packed to capacity. The usual
bar pastimes -- pinball machine, dart board, pool table -- were
scattered halfheartedly around the fringes of the clusters of tables.
The floor -- wood timbers, and how Kyle had managed /that/ in the middle
of nature-deprived Midgar, Reeve had never been able to figure out --
was always sticky underneath your feet, no matter how often it was
mopped. The spilled beer had probably chemically bonded with the wood by
now. All in all, it reminded Reeve of someplace that could have been
transplanted directly from his hometown of Gongaga, except that it had
more electricity and more rambunctious clients.
	
	Kyle was behind the bar, as always; the bar had been specially
built to accomodate his bulk. (Reeve wondered sometimes if part of the
reason why the Heaven was neutral territory was the fact that Kyle could
pick offenders up and break them in half; the man had been a wrestler in
his younger days, and had never quite lost the knack.) When he saw Reeve
slip in the door, he lifted a hand from where he'd been polishing the
bar to call over the noise, "Hey, Reeve. What, we're not good enough for
you? Haven't seen you in weeks."
	
	Reeve laughed, feeling the stress starting to drain from him,
and waved back. "Been busy. You know how it goes; they always want it
done yesterday." He picked his way through the crowd, passing the
Permanent Floating Poker Game (and noticing that Daveo had apparently
managed to bounce back from last month's setback; the piles of pretzels
in front of him were threatening to eat his cards) and waving to Jan
over in the Philosophical Debate and Beer Piss-Up corner, before making
his way up to the bar. "Reno called and told me to get my ass down here.
I'll have a pint of Guinness, if you've got it on tap this week."
	
	Kyle nodded decisively and took down a clean glass, flipping it
with a smoothness born of tending bar for years. "Sure thing. Tseng and
the boys are at the pool table in the back." He gestured to the back
corner of the bar, where the pool table reigned in lonely splendor; Reno
was bent over it, cue-stick in hand, concentrating on a shot, while
Tseng lounged against the wall looking bored. A quick glance showed that
Tseng was, unsurprisingly, winning. Rude was nowhere in sight. "You can
go on over and join them; I'll have the new waitress bring over your
pint once it settles, with their next round."
	
	"New waitress?" Reeve's ears perked up, and he cast another
glance over the mass of people; sure enough, a young girl in shorts and
a t-shirt was working her way through the tables, tray in hand. She
couldn't have been more than sixteen despite her ample figure, with long
brown hair in a braid and dark circles under her eyes. "Wow. You're
hiring 'em young these days, Ky. Sure she's old enough to be working?"
	
	Kyle scowled. "Get those thoughts out of your head. An old
friend of mine told me that she needed a place to stay and a job, and I
hired her. She's been sick, and she's new to Midgar. And I needed a
bouncer. I'm getting slow in my old age."
	
	Reeve blinked a few more times, wondering if Kyle were getting
senile in his old age, too. "Bouncer? Um, you /are/ just talking about
her, um, assets, right?" He could feel himself blushing, but the bounce
of said assets was probably the first thing that anyone would notice
about the girl. "She doesn't look strong enough to break a stick in
half."
	
	Kyle pointed to the back corner and made a shooing motion.
"You'll see. Now, go. You're taking up valuable bar space." 
	
	Reeve laughed. "Yes sir. Game of darts later?"
	
	"You're on."
	
	Tseng didn't seem surprised when Reeve made his way over to the
pool table, which probably indicated that he'd been watching the entire
time. "So good of you to join us," he drawled as he pushed off the wall
and leaned over the table to line up his next shot. "Reno, you have to
learn that while the point of eight-ball might be to sink as many balls
as possible, the /secondary/ point of eight-ball is to leave your
opponent without a shot." The balls clacked together; the four ball shot
directly into the corner pocket, while the eight careened into the
seven, glancing it into the side pocket. 
	
	"Aw, boss, I was too busy lookin' at her tits." Reno flashed
Reeve a quick grin, even as his eyes stayed locked on the waitress.
"She's got nice ones, don't she, Reeve?"
	
	"I, uh, suppose." Reeve laughed, even as he fished around in his
pocket for his pack of cigarettes. 
	
	Reno nodded. "Yup. I'm gonna marry her someday. Decided that
about an hour ago." His eyes were bright and merry; Reeve recognized the
signs of second-stage drunkenness. "You wanna be an usher?"
	
	Reeve laughed again. "Do you even know her /name/, Reno?"
	
	"Nope." Reno grinned again and tossed Reeve a lighter from his
pocket.
	
	"Her name is Tifa, according to Kyle." Tseng looked up from his
shot. "And eight ball, back corner." 
	
	Reno sighed lustily. "/Tifa/. What a beautiful name." He picked
up one of the glasses that punctuated the rail-counter around the edges
of the room, draining the last of the beer in it with a single gulp.
"Oy, Kyle," he called, "we're out of beer over here!"
	
	Tseng closed one eye to line up the shot and pulled back on the
cue-stick; the cue-ball lazily bounced off two walls of the table before
clinking into the eight-ball with just a hint of a curve to it. The
eight meandered leisurely across the table, looking as if it would miss
the pocket, before seemingly throwing itself into the hole; Tseng
straightened up, with an aura of satisfaction, and dusted his hands off.
"That's another hundred gil," he said to Reno, almost smugly, and raised
an eyebrow to Reeve. "You in for the next game?"
	
	"Sure." Reeve wasn't the world's best pool player, but he didn't
play to win; he played to have fun. "Where's Rude?"
	
	Reno rolled his eyes. "Found a girl; he'll be back later. /He/
didn't believe me that I was gonna marry that waitress, either."
	
	"I have utmost faith in your ability to charm women, Reno,"
Reeve assured him, dryly. "Who breaks?"
	
	Tseng handed him the triangle. "You rack. I break. Reno can lean
against the wall and mouth off; he does it so well. Look sharp, Reno,
here she comes." 
	
	The girl made her way through the tables, tray held high, hips
swiveling to squeeze through the narrow pathways. "Evening, gentlemen,"
she said, giving them a smile; Reeve could see, though, that the smile
didn't reach her eyes, which were tired and far older than they should
be. "Someone hollered for more beer?"
	
	"That would be Reno." Tseng reached out to take the tray from
the girl, removing the pitcher of beer and Reeve's pint of Guinness; she
gave him a bit of a grateful smile. "Say thank you to the nice woman,
Reno."
	
	"Anyone who brings me more beer is on my list of okay people.
Hey, does Kyle let you out of here after your shift is done?" Reno
pushed off the wall and put an arm around the girl's shoulders; she
jerked, just a bit, visibly, and deftly slipped away from him. 
	
	"Sorry," she murmured, with a bit of a forced smile. "Kyle keeps
me locked up in the basement when I'm not chained to the bar. You'll
have to take the matter up with him."
	
	Reeve laughed as he put the last ball on the table. "Hey,
doesn't he know that slavery is illegal these days?"
	
	She looked over at him and raised an eyebrow. "Is it?" She
reclaimed her tray from Tseng, smoothly. Reeve noticed that her fingers
never brushed his. "If you gentlemen need anything else, just shout."
And with that, she was gone.
	
	Tseng watched her back as she went. "Hm. At a rough guess, I'll
say that she doesn't like Shinra very much."
	
	Reno watched her too, though his attention was fixed on
something a bit lower than Tseng's. "Huh. Ya think? She's cute as hell,
though."
	
	"Bit young for you, isn't she?" Reeve flipped the triangle up
from the table, leaving the balls perfectly racked. "Your break, Tseng?"
	
	Tseng nodded and leaned over the table again; the sleeve of his
jacket got in the way, and he scowled a little, taking it off and
tossing it onto one of the nearby chairs. He rolled up both of his
sleeves, then grabbed the chalk again. By now, Reeve didn't even notice
the other man's gun harness, though he could tell from the side glances
from the other tables and the subtle shifting away from the corner that
the rest of the patrons in the bar didn't believe in the truce enough
for it to mean that they could drink in the same bar as the Tarx and not
be nervous about it. 
	
	"Aw, it doesn't matter how young they are when they look like
that," Reno protested, grinning as he poured another glass of beer from
the pitcher. "Anyway. What was keepin' ya Upstairs, Reeve? More work for
th' old man?"
	
	Reeve shook his head as Tseng broke the formation of the balls.
"Nope, actually." He grinned a bit sheepishly. "I've been trying to keep
myself busy lately, so I picked something that I used to do in college
back up again." He reached out and snagged his pint of stout. 
	
	"Low ball," Tseng decided, after a minute of studying the table;
he'd sunk enough on the break to be able to choose. He walked around the
table a few times, and then leaned over for the next shot. "What did you
used to do in college, Reeve? Study?"
	
	Reeve laughed. "Well, yes. But I sure as hell didn't need to
study all the time. I got into robotics a while into my sophomore year.
By senior year, I'd built a robot for my frat house. I mean, it wasn't
anything special, but it'd serve the drinks and pick up the used
underwear from the lounge, so they all thought that it was the greatest
thing in the world. One of the jocks told me that the frat had a long
history of accepting one geek at a time, just so they'd have someone to
do shit like that for them. And keep the house GPA high enough so they
wouldn't lose their charter." He laughed a little, slightly embarrassed.
"I guess I really was a geek back in college."
	
	Reno snickered. "What's this 'was'?" He lifted his hands quickly
to protest innocence as Reeve looked over at him, wondering if he should
be hurt or not. "Joking, joking. Robots, huh? That's cool. Ya gonna make
one of those cleaning robots for the lounge? It could use it."
	
	"The lounge," Tseng said dryly, as he sank another ball, "would
not need a cleaning robot if you didn't throw pizza crusts on the floor
when Rude wasn't around to eat them for you." 
	
	Reno laughed. "I don't throw 'em on the floor. I just miss the
garbage can now and then." 
	
	"Same difference." Tseng missed his shot and scowled, as if the
pool table had insulted his mother. "Your shot, Reeve."
	
	Reeve picked up the cue that Reno had been using and chalked it.
"Not like it'll make a difference; I stink at this game and you know it.
I don't know why you play with any of us; you're ten times better than
we all are."
	
	"Because no one else will play with me but Kyle. And he's behind
the bar." Tseng offered a little smile. 
	
	Reno laughed. "Aw, c'mon. I bet now that he's got the girl to
wait tables for him, he can take time off. Kyle!"
	
	Kyle -- in the middle of what looked like a long lecture to one
of the patrons at the bar -- stopped talking and looked over to the
corner. "Whattya want, Reno?" he called.
	
	Reno jerked a thumb at Tseng. "His ego's gettin' too big for
this bar again. C'mon over and knock him back down to size, willya?"
	
	Kyle laughed. "Yeah, sure. Just give me a second here." He
motioned to Tifa, who nodded and made a little shooing motion; he put
down the bar-rag and made his way over to the corner.
	
	"You don't mind, do you, Reeve?" Reno asked, belatedly. Reeve
shook his head.
	
	"Not at all. I only play because it's something to do; you know
I prefer to watch." He handed over his cue to Kyle; it practically
disappeared in the other man's huge hands.
	
	Kyle nodded a thank-you. "You taken a shot yet, Reeve?"
	
	Reeve shook his head. "Nope. You've got high ball."
	
	Kyle nodded again and studied the table for a few minutes. "So
how have you boys been lately? We haven't really had the chance to
talk."
	
	Reno rolled his eyes. "Busy busy. They got us runnin' all over
the world and back again, as usual. And we're always hip deep in
politics."
	
	Kyle grunted. "They ever get Third West open, or not yet? I
should probably ask you that, Reeve." He leaned over and lined up a
shot; one ball shot directly into the pocket he was aiming for, and
another just barely missed.
	
	Reeve nodded. "Yeah, a while ago, actually. It's about 85% full
by now, of course." He rolled his eyes. "If the plans had been done
/after/ I'd gotten there, I would have made it twice as big, but
Warner's notes on the blueprints make me think that the old man wouldn't
approve anything bigger."
	
	"Because there's all the budget in the world for advertising and
security, but none at all for the important things like whether or not
people have a place to park their asses while they work. Yeah, it's an
old story." Kyle rolled his eyes. Another shot, another ball sunk; Tseng
leaned back against the wall, sensing that it might be a while before he
had control of the table again. 
	
	"Hey, we have /our/ office space," Reno drawled, finishing off
his beer and pouring another. "Even if it isn't really /office/
space..."
	
	Reeve laughed. "More like --"
	
	He was interrupted by a shout of "Nobody move!" from near the
door. All four men's heads whipped around to see a thin, dirty man at
the door, holding out a knife in a hand that was shaking with what
appeared to be illness rather than nerves. Reeve froze. "Nobody move and
nobody gonna get hurt. I wanna see hands, right now, and I'm gonna go
and get the money from the bar and then I'll be gone."
	
	Conversation had stopped at the first shout; Reeve could
practically hear the universal groan at the man's words. Kyle had once
told him that there was an attempted robbery at least once a month; the
worst off of the slum-rats never learned. The Seventh Heaven, easily one
of the most profitable of the down-side businesses, was an easy target.
In unison, all eyes turned to the corner of the bar where Kyle stood,
grinning. Tseng, subtly, moved foward just a hair, readying to draw his
gun; Kyle, just as subtly, put a hand on Tseng's wrist to stop him.
	
	"You probably don't want to do that, friend," Kyle said, his
booming voice cutting through the bar easily. "Why don't you just put
down the knife and go try this whole routine somewhere else; it'd
probably be better for your long-term health."
	
	The man brandished the knife a little more threateningly. "I
said nobody move, and that means you too!" He edged a little further
into the room, his eyes jerking around crazily. 
	
	He utterly failed to notice Tifa stealthily creeping up behind
him, directly in his blind spot, until she tapped him on the shoulder
and cleared her throat. Startled, he whirled around, knife out to
attack; she brought the tray down on his arm smoothly, before he could
register her presence, with a resounding two-handed hit. 
	
	The knife dropped, and she didn't even pause, instead bringing
one elbow up into his face with enough force to break something. She
followed it up with a quick leg-sweep, knocking his legs out from
underneath him; he went down, hard, hitting his head on a table as he
went. Half a second later, and Tifa had hauled him back up to a standing
position, wrenching one arm up and around his back roughly; she
frog-marched him to the door, shoving him out of it, and closed the door
behind him. 
	
	That done, she reclaimed her tray and the knife, tucked the
knife into the waistband of her shorts, and offered an apologetic smile
to the patrons whose table the robber had hit on his way down. The whole
thing was over before Reeve could so much as blink. "Sorry about that,"
she murmured, to the people whose drinks were now on the floor. "Let me
get you a fresh round, on the house."
	
	The Tarx and Reeve were standing in the corner gaping; Kyle
laughed. "Bouncer," he said, satisfaction plain in his tone. "It's your
shot, Tseng."
	
	Tseng's eyes were locked on the girl's slender form as she
collected spilled glasses and made her way back to the bar. "She's been
trained in the Wutaian martial arts," he murmured, softly. "Where the
hell --" He paused, realized he was speaking out loud, and shook his
head. "Hey, Reno. You saw what she just did. Still wanna marry her?"
	
	Reno's mouth was open as he, too, stared. Tseng's words made him
shake himself all over, like a dog trying to shed water, and then grin.
"More than ever."
	
	Kyle laughed and clapped Tseng on the back. "And you boys
thought I hired her for her pretty face. I said it's your shot, Tseng."

	
			-- * --

	
	"Let me tell you a little story about the Ball of Ballynore..."
	
	"He's singing again," Reeve said, completely unnecessarily, to
Rude, who had showed back up looking rumpled and self-satisfied several
hours prior. 
	
	Rude smirked. "He does that."
	
	"...there were four and twenty Gongagans, lyin' on the floor..."
	
	"He's also draped over the bar. We should probably do something
about that before Kyle gets upset."
	
	"...singin' who had you last night, and who has you now..."
	
	"Nah." Rude glanced over from the table (they had both been
drafted into the Permanent Floating Poker Game when two of the
participants had left a while ago) to where Reno was lying on the bar,
messy red hair dangling off the edge of the well-polished wood. One of
his hands kept time, off-beat with his singing. "Ky doesn't mind."
	
	Reeve laughed. "Kyle might be the only one who doesn't, then."
	
	"...the man that had ya last night, he cannot have ya now..."
	
	"At least he's on key." Rude popped one of the pretzels being
used as chips into his mouth. 
	
	"Hey, that was my ante. Don't eat my ante." Reeve scowled for a
second, and then laughed. "Shit, I'm drunk, aren't I."
	
	"Yup." Rude flashed a quick grin. "Told you that you needed to
relax."
	
	Reeve leaned back in the chair and lit another cigarette. "Yeah,
I guess I did." He closed his eyes for a second, inhaling deeply and
feeling the headrush that he only got from nicotine when he was drunk.
"Yeah. I did."
	
	Rude nodded and gathered the cards to deal again; they were down
to three players, the third being another Shinra employee down from the
plate to go slumming. Reeve didn't know her, but she was good at cards,
and that was the important part. In the Seventh Heaven, it wasn't so
much who you were as how much fun you could have. Reeve wasn't sure, but
he thought that she was the woman that Rude had picked up earlier.
"Yup," Rude agreed, dealing out the next hand. Just as Reeve was about
to decide that the conversation -- such as it was -- was over, Rude
added, "You heard from the chief lately?"
	
	Reeve made a face and shook his head; he'd been trying not to
think about things. "No, actually," he said, with a bit of a sigh. "You
know how hard it is to get messages to Junon."
	
	"...the bride was in the parlor, explainin' to the groom, the
front door, not the back door, is the entrance to the womb...."
	
	Rude nodded, dealing out the second round of cards. "Heard
something in Heidegger's office the other day," he added, as if it were
an afterthought. "Heidegger's pissed about not being able to easily get
in touch with the military base in Junon. He's pushing to fund the phone
network out there." A pause, and Rude gave a bit of a smile. "Finally."
	
	Reeve could feel his eyes getting bigger. "Really?" He laughed,
feeling a weight on his chest ease. "That's great news! ...for keeping
in touch with the reactor employees out there, I mean," he added,
remembering at the last second that he had to be careful what he said.
	
	The little smile got larger, and Reeve could tell that Rude
wasn't fooled at all. "Yeah," Rude agreed, and pointed at the pile of
pretzels. "Your bet."
	
	"...the preacher's daughter, she was there, sittin' right up
front, a wreath of roses on her head and a carrot up her --"
	
	"Reno." Tseng's voice was patient and long-suffering as he came
out from the backroom, where he'd disappeared a while ago. "That's more
than enough. Come on, let's get you to bed."
	
	"I c'n get myself to bed," Reno insisted, focusing his eyes
blurrily on Tseng. 
	
	Tseng was used to that argument, and he didn't believe it one
bit. "All right, then, I'll just come with you and make sure you don't
get lost on the way. Come on." He looked over to the poker table. "Are
you two staying or not?"
	
	Reeve looked down at his hand (jacks high) and laughed, tossing
down the cards. "I'm losing like hell and I think I'm drunk. It's
bedtime, before Kyle has to lock me in and makes me wash dishes for the
rent." He stood up, stretching, and held onto the chair to stave off the
wave of dizziness this caused. "I think you win," he said to the woman,
who laughed and waved. "Come on; I'll help you get Reno to bed."
	
	"I'll stay," Rude said, quietly. "I'll help clean up."
	
	Tseng helped Reno off the bar with the resigned air of someone
who had done it far too many times in the past. Reno cheerfully slung an
arm around Tseng's waist and started singing again. "When I was a young
man I used to like girls, I fondled their bodies and played with their
curls, but me girlfriend ran off with a salesman named Bruce, you'd
never get treatment like that from a moose..." 
	
	"Where do you /learn/ these songs, Reno?" Tseng asked,
rhetorically. Reno focused his eyes blurrily upon Tseng and grinned
again.
	
	"There's this secretary down on 23rd who knows every single
dirty song you can think of," Reno informed him. "And she's got nice
tits. 'So it's moose, moose, I like a moose, I've never had anything
quite like a moose...'"
	
	"He's drunk," Reeve sighed, as he pulled a handful of gil out of
his pocket to settle his tab.
	
	Kyle laughed at him. "You think? Hell, at least he can sing.
Take care, boys; come down and visit again soon."
	
	"Sure thing." Reeve looked at Tseng and Reno, then sighed and
grabbed Reno's other side. "Come on, it's a long way home."
	
	"I've had many lovers, my life has been loose, but I've never
had anything quite like a moose..."

	
			-- * --

	
	"Aboard the good ship Venus, my God, you should have seen us,
the figurehead a whore in bed, the mast the captain's penis..."
	
	"Does he /ever/ shut up?" Reeve and Tseng propped Reno up
against the doorjamb while Tseng fished in Reno's pocket for his key.
	
	"When he's drunk? No. Just be glad that he isn't singing the one
about the one about the three whores from Nibelheim again; last time he
did /that/, he woke up the entire floor." Tseng found the key and
unlocked the door. 
	
	Reno, left unsupported against the door, slid slowly to his left
until he landed propped up against Reeve's shoulder. This didn't stop
his singing. "The captain's daughter, Mabel, though young was still
quite able to fornicate with the second mate upon the charting table..."
	
	Reeve laughed. "I haven't heard this one since college. Come on,
Reno, let's get you to bed."
	
	Reno blinked a few times and left off his song to focus on
Reeve. "Whazzat? Reeve? Oh, bed. Right. You came to put me to bed." He
grinned and slid bonelessly until he was pressed up against Reeve's
body. "You comin' to bed with me? Never asked you if you wanted to.
C'mon an' I'll keep you warm ... baby, it's cooooold outside..." He
laughed again.
	
	Tseng met Reeve's startled eyes over Reno's head and gave a
little wry smirk, as if to say "sorry about that". "Come on, Reno," he
said, patiently. "Bed is this way. Don't hit on Reeve; you're just going
to scare him."
	
	"I'm not scared," Reeve protested.
	
	"Your ears are on fire," Tseng pointed out, in much the same
tone that he would have used to say 'nice smog we're having, isn't it?'.
Reeve could feel his cheeks flame to join them.
	
	Reno laughed and stumbled ahead of them into the apartment, just
barely missing tripping over the piles of stuff on the floor. "The cabin
boy was chipper, that young and hearty nipper, he lined his ass with
broken glass and circumsized the skipper..."
	
	"One of these days," Reeve said, with a sigh, "I will train my
body not to blush at the slightest hint of anything, and then I will be
able to hang out with you guys without broadcasting whenever you manage
to embarrass me."
	
	Tseng actually grinned at that. "I seriously doubt it. Come on,
help me get his boots off."
	
	Reeve followed Tseng into the apartment, wondering as always how
Reno could manage to live in such a hovel. Reno fell sprawling over the
bed, staring up at the ceiling and grinning merrily at anything that
caught his eye. Tseng leaned over him to take off the first of his two
boots; Reno reached out and groped Tseng. Tseng politely declined to
notice. 
	
	"So. Um," Reeve said, trying not to notice the location of
Reno's hands. He cast about for a suitable topic of conversation, 
looking for something to do so that he didn't feel out of place. "Rude
said that Heidegger was bitching about communications to Junon again?"
	
	Tseng rolled his eyes. "When is Heidegger /not/ bitching about
something?" He cast a look at Reeve out of the corner of his eye. "But
you're asking for a reason, aren't you."
	
	"Well..." Reeve grinned sheepishly. "Yeah, I guess."
	
	"Miss him, don't you." Tseng's voice was neutral, not giving a
hint of how Reeve should answer the question; Reeve blushed a little
more, and shrugged, looking down at the tips of his shoes. 
	
	"Yeah, I do," he said, quietly. "Pathetic, isn't it?"
	
	Tseng got the other boot off of Reno (who had mostly lapsed into
silence by that point, breathing deeply, eyes closed) and straightened
back up to look at Reeve. "...Not really, no," he said, after a long
moment. He looked down at Reno, apparently contenting himself that Reno
would be okay if left alone, and turned. "Come on, let's get out of here
before he starts singing the song about the sheep and the whiskey."
	
	Reeve just blinked a few times, having been expecting some
reaction other than that; it took him a second before he could nod. "Uh,
sure."
	
	Tseng locked the door behind him as they left, giving Reeve
another sidelong glance. "I'll probably get sent out there in a few
months to poke around for Heidegger's cable-laying thing, you know." 
	
	Reeve sighed, deeply. ~Yeah, and you'll probably wind up fucking
him while you're there, and I'm not going to see him until the old man
lets him back, which probably won't be for months, unless I somehow
magically find a spare 15 hours to drive out there and 15 hours back,
and ... I think I should just stop thinking about this, shouldn't I.~ He
managed to summon the energy for a noncommital "hmm".
	
	Tseng chuckled, lightly, and added, casually, "Probably on a
weekend. The helicopters seat more than two, you know."
	
	~Is he ... no.~ "Do they?"
	
	Tseng rolled his eyes. "That was an /invitation/, Reeve." 
	
	Reeve stopped short just before they pushed the button for the
elevator and looked directly at Tseng. "Was it?"
	
	Tseng smirked a bit more. "Yes. It was. I'll let you know when
I'm going, and you can come with me, and you don't have to tell anyone
where you're going if it's on your time off."
	
	"Why?" It was blunt, but Reeve had lost his patience with the
games. "You sure didn't seem all that happy with the idea six months
ago."
	
	Tseng reached out and hit the button for the elevator, both the
up button -- to his apartment -- and the down button, for Reeve to make
his way down to the street and back home. "Look, let's just say that I'm
good at recognizing the inevitable. He wants you, he's got you." Tseng
lifted a hand to push a lock of hair out of his face. "I'm not all that
thrilled about the idea, but you're a decent guy, and it's not your
fault that you're in this situation, and it's just better all around if
we all play nice, all right?" 
	
	~I think that might have been an apology. Closest to one I'll
ever get out of him, that's for sure.~ "Uh ... yeah." 
	
	Tseng smiled thinly as the up elevator dinged. "So I'll tell you
when I'm going, and you can go and see him and stop moping. And in the
meanwhile, for Leviathan's sake, Reeve, go out and get laid. He isn't
worth losing sleep over." 
	
	He stepped into the elevator and was gone; Reeve could feel his
cheeks flaming bright red.

	
			-- * --

	
	~I /hate/ this place.~ Rufus turned over in bed, punching the
pillow in an attempt to make it conform properly, and sighed for the
tenth time as he was presented with a view of the wall instead of the
city. ~It's dirty and ugly, and it smells bad, and there's never
anything to do.~
	
	He laughed, realizing what he'd just thought. ~You could have
just described Midgar, Rufus, except for that "nothing to do" part. But
still. I hate this place.~ He blinked at the wall a few times, then
sighed, gave up, and got out of bed, wandering over to the desk he'd
appropriated from the office and hauled into his extended-corporate-stay
apartment. His cigarettes were sitting there, and he fished one out and
lit it without bothering to turn on the light. 
	
	"It's too damn dark in here," he finally said, out loud, his
voice cutting through the silence. "And too damn quiet. And it smells
like fish." As if this were some great revelation, the simple act of
saying it out loud made him feel slightly better, but not completely.
"And I miss my city," he wound up, feeling stupid for admitting it out
loud, even to himself. 
	
	He sighed and settled down in the chair, reaching for his laptop
and waking it up from its sleep mode. It "wark"ed politely at him, and
he once more rolled his eyes -- Reno had installed the sound package one
day when Rufus had been sitting around in the Tarx lounge not paying
attention to what was being done to his innocent laptop, and Rufus
hadn't taken the two minutes necessary to kill the sound files yet. 
	
	~My laptop makes chocobo sounds. Somehow, this is just the icing
on the cake.~ 
	
	He sighed again, flicking ashes into a spare (empty) beer can
and making a mental note, for the thousandth time in the four months of
his exile so far, to buy a damn ashtray. The laptop popped up a dialog
box complaining once again about not being able to find the Shinra
corporate network; "Lick me," he pleasantly invited it, and dismissed
the warning. If he couldn't sleep, at least he could try to get work
done. He had encryption to try and crack. 







[All of Reno's bawdy songs, "The Ball of Ballynore", "The Moose Song",
and "Frigging in the Rigging", were taught to me at various Renfaires
and SCA events. No one can think up dirty songs like a SCAdian.]