Rude's Apartment, Edge, Thursday Afternoon

[raspberryturk]

Too much drinking. Toooo much drinking, and fretting, and getting the rookie in trouble. And nothing in the world made a guy feel like cleaning his mouth out with sandpaper than a night that started with Corel ale, and then headed into rum and ice-cream territory. And really, it was a wonder that Reno had managed to drag his sorry ass back home last night in the first place.

Eventually, it would occur to him that there were only so many places that Rude could have swiped that rum from, and he'd be suitably cranky about it. But for now he'd just content himself with ooozing over the edge of the lumpy couch, scraping the taste from his tongue with his teeth, and then fumbling about for his jacket, which had been ringing off and on for the past two hours.

Well, not his jacket. The phone in his jacket pocket. He didn't want to answer it. That ringtone was his boss, and he didn't have to be in until later, and Tseng could just go and kiss his own--

"Yo?"

"Reno." Oh, Reno knew that tone already, and was already wondering if he could get away with hanging up and insisting up and down that his battery had died. Tseng was not a happy man, by any stretch of the imagination. "Are you aware of the current situation regarding Elena?"

It wasn't a question. It was phrased like one, sure, but Reno knew better than to think that Tseng was asking him anything. Tseng phoned Reno when he knew damn well what he was going to say. And then Reno snarked right along with it, in the sort of counterpoint that usually ended in him pulling overtime with a salary cut.

Really, it was one of Reno's favorite hobbies. Between this and seeing exactly how long it took for him to get himself slapped by hot chicks in front of their boyfriends at the local drinking holes? Reno probably needed to find some better ways to pass his spare time.

"Aware, as in, aware, or aware as in you're gonna tell me what you want already, Boss?"

"She walked out last night."

... Huh. This straightforward stuff wasn't exactly how Reno had expected the verbal tapdance to go. Tseng liked his roundabouts and his figure-it-out-for-yourselfs, typically.

"An' you want me to do what about that, Boss?"

"She informed me shortly before doing so that you had been drinking with her. What can you tell me about that?"

"We were checkin' out Tifa's tits."

"Reno."

"And talkin' about gettin' Rude laid, yo."

"Reno." Reno could practically hear Tseng pinching the bridge of his nose and counting to ten in his head, in that statement.

"An' then talkin' about how she'd rather screw you than watch Tifa an' Cloud go at it like moogles in heat, yo."

Silence. Dead. Silence. The sort of silence that meant that there was something lurking in wait just around the corner, and it was going to jump out and tear at Reno's jugular at any given moment. Reno was insane. He liked these silences. It gave him an opportunity to figure out exactly how to parry whatever the hell was coming next.

"I should ask, then," Tseng finally said, his words even and calculated and practically dripping venom, "why it was that I wasn't made aware of Elena's affections sooner."

Again, not a question.

Again, Reno should have known better than to open his mouth.

"Well, Boss," he said, cooly, in that sort of tone that implied that he really did have better things to do, and if Tseng didn't mind, perhaps he could consider letting him hang up sometime soon, "I kinda figured that any competent Turk would be able to tell when the Rookie was trippin' over herself because of a crush, yo."

More silence. This wasn't the 'lurking in wait' silence. This was the 'Tseng is probably counting his bullets and calculating all of Reno's available escape routes' silence.

"Where is Elena now? There was no answer at her apartment."

"Oh, she left already. Figured she'd get one good day livin' it up around Gaia before takin' off for a while."

"Taking off, Reno?"

"I told her about this place where she could find herself a little piece of sky, zoto. Plenty of hot ass there that ain't gonna blow her off, even."

"I see."

"I even promised not to streak at her graduation ceremony."

Silence. More silence. Reno really, really wasn't going to like what was coming next, was he?

"Take the day off, Reno." ... Well. That had been unexpected. "As we're now down one Turk, you won't be getting another one for a very, very long time."

And then the line went dead.

Daaaaamn.


[NFB for distance, as usual. Reno's open for phone calls or what-have-you. Elena's whereabouts mentioned with enabling permission from findingelena, and I find Tseng's temper to be entirely too much fun to play. Entirely.]

Comments

[withoutverona]

Romeo had finally, victoriously, gotten the cable company to agree to come now, and was celebrating this feat with a phone call to Reno.

... no, he didn't have much to do with himself just now.

Ring, Reno's phone, ring!

[raspberryturk]

Ringing! It was ringing!

In a ringtone that suggested that there wasn't impending doom awaiting him on the other end of the line.

Reno was, however, still in a bit of a state of shock as he answered. Could anyone really blame him?

"... Yo?"

[withoutverona]

"Reno," Romeo enthused with absolutely no impending doom, "we're in Tokyo and I managed to convince the cable company to come without bribery or getting Yurika to shout at them. How are you?"

[raspberryturk]

Awww, Romeo sounded all happy, and junk! That was enough to make Reno grin a little, in spite of all the crap that had been flying around since yesterday.

"Better after hearin' a voice on the other end of the line that ain't gonna punch me in the face next time he sees me," Reno chuckled. "You got the cable company to show, huh? Speakin' in that fake-Wutai an' everything?"

[withoutverona]

"In real Japanese," Romeo confirmed. "It's not much, but I'll take my victories where I can find them for now. Who's going to punch you in the face?"

[raspberryturk]

"Tseng, if I stand still long enough," Reno mused, frowning and leaning backwards into the lumpy couch yet again. "Bit of a long story, there. I tried somethin' the other night that turned out to be a little less than victorious, an' he's got me pullin' double shifts from here on because of it, yo."

Reno had been planning on pulling the extra weight anyhow, but it seemed more like a sentence than volunteer work when Tseng told him that he had to.

"But damn, cable's good. You watchin' messed up game shows as we speak?"

[withoutverona]

"Now I will be," Romeo said, clicking the TV on and flipping through channels until he found a grown man dressed like a firefighter and squirming through a pool of whipped cream. He was momentarily transfixed, and the line was silent until ... "What went wrong with Tseng? I have time for a long story."

He was, after all, watching adults play with their food. He could totally do that and talk at the same time.

[raspberryturk]

Oh, what Reno would do for television that was half as idiotic as that stuff, instead of news reports on radiation levels and deaths-by-monsters.

Television in Edge sucked.

"I bet you wouldn't be surprised if I started by tellin' you that I was drinkin' before it happened?"

[withoutverona]

If only fake-Wutai could export TV to another world...

"You were probably drinking before anything including brushing your teeth happened," Romeo couldn't resist pointing out. "But no, not at all."

[raspberryturk]

... Okay, so Romeo had a point.

"The Rookie an' I were at the bar," Reno replied, sticking out his tongue as though Romeo could actually see it. "Checkin' out Tifa to see if Rude would have any chance with her, you know, like I said we might do?"

[withoutverona]

"Because you think Tifa's heart still belongs to the chocobo fellow," Romeo remembered. "What did you decide?"

[raspberryturk]

"Iiiit kinda got put on hold 'cause I told Elena she should go tell Tseng she's liked him all along," Reno said, smacking himself in the forehead. You could hear the facepalm over the phone line, yes.

[withoutverona]

"It's not a bad idea," Romeo said, wincing because that smack sounded painful. "I will guess that Tseng didn't feel the same way?"

[raspberryturk]

"He's Tseng," Reno replied, as though that really explained it all, right there. "I dunno what was said in that office, man, but it's got the Rookie skippin' town, and Tseng sounded like he wanted to tie me up in the wastelands an' leave me for the monsters when he called to tell me I was gettin' all her shifts to make up for it, yo."

[withoutverona]

"Tseng's not exactly hugs and rainbows, is he?" Romeo said. "So she's off to do something else for a bit, and you get her work as thanks for your troubles."

There was a pause as Romeo sorted that out, distracted by somebody getting a bucket of orange jello dumped on her head on the television. "Things must have gone very badly."

[raspberryturk]

"She was packin' her bags when Rude an' I swung by to see her," Reno noted, frowning and wondering if a little hair of the dog would help him get over the last vestiges of the hangover he was feeling. "An' she snapped at Rude, yoto. Man, you gotta be pretty upset to snap at Rude."

Unless you were Reno. And then it was kind of the norm, really.

"So. Enough about that, man. Tell me about Tokyo. Does Doji got you eatin' weird raw dead things yet?"

[withoutverona]

"Do you think she'll be safe?" Romeo asked. It wasn't a stupid question to ask about a Turk when you considered dragon. He wandered over to get a drink, balancing the phone between chin and ear as he considered.

"Tokyo is ... the same as it was when you were here, all lights and noise. And I like weird raw dead things, even though I'm still making her do the grocery shopping until my reading is better."

[raspberryturk]

"Oh, she'll be safer'n any of us," Reno said, almost slyly, as he absently groped around the side of the couch for his rum. Where had his rum gone, anyhow? Ah well. He still had other stuff, too. He'd rummage around for it later. "You really think I'd let the Rookie take off without knowin' that she was gonna be okay, man? I'm hurt."

No, he wasn't. He was kind of laughing in spite of it all, now.

"You know, you let Doji do the shoppin' and you'll be livin' on instant noodles for the rest of your life, man."

[withoutverona]

"And if I do the shopping I might accidentally buy pureed octopus or natto or candies that taste like tuna," Romeo reasoned. "Have you ever had natto, Reno?"

Seriously. Fermented soybeans, sold to perfectly innocent Americans. That was just wrong.

"Instant noodles are the lesser evil. And I wasn't impugning you, just ... wondering. I hope she turns up once she's had some chance to calm down."

[raspberryturk]

"I saw pictures of the stuff on the internet," Reno noted, wrinkling his nose somewhat. "I think that's one of the few things you wouldn't get me to put in my mouth if I'd been on a binge and someone dared me, yo."

That really, really said something about natto, didn't it? All... slimy, and eugh.

"An' I'm sure whatever way the Rookie goes once she's wearin' a cooler head'll be the right one her her. Can't fault her for takin' off, really. If any Turk was gonna run away from here, now'd be the time to do it. Ain't like Tseng's gonna make me hunt her down, anyhow."

[withoutverona]

"I tried it once and then went through almost a bottle of mouthwash to get rid of the taste," Romeo said. "Don't make my mistake."

He found a beer and opened it, not sure he followed Reno's point. The last he'd heard, Turks weren't exactly popular, but that didn't make it a good time to quit. "Forgive a stupid question, but why is now the time to run away?"

[raspberryturk]

"If she took off back in October or before then," Reno replied, sounding kind of bitter about this deal, "we would'a been huntin' her down. We ain't technically Turks anymore. I don't gotta pretend to kill the rookie."

[withoutverona]

Romeo leaned against the fridge, feeling the coolness through his shirt. "Before October you might have had to do more than pretend," he said flatly. "Right?"

Whee, cheerful phone call.

[raspberryturk]

"Yeah," Reno agreed with a sigh. "Not a good time to be a Turk. So I can't really bitch that the worst I gotta do is take the missin' shift, man. Beats the alternative."

Reno was excellent at cheerful phone calls. Really.

[withoutverona]

"By far," Romeo agreed, almost easily. "And it'll give you something to do besides tending to your beans."