raspberryturk | Rude's Apartment, Edge, Thursday Afternoon

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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Reno was going to sit and stare at these pictures for the rest of his life. Honest.

He was going to just sit there. And gape. And then howl with laughter for a good half-hour before finally typing in a text reply, actually taking pains to use proper grammar in the face of the fact that they were already bound to be teasing someone, and they didn't need fuel to poke at Reno, too, right?

Leto and pink birds? What did I miss?

And then, five seconds later, and with slightly less proper grammar:

also nice boots man

He is attempting some new kind of sport, Arthur texted back, Or he's lost his mind.

And about three minutes later (because this took him longer than Reno), My boots are very nice.

It would probably make more sense if he capitalized 'are', but being unfamiliar with the practice, he felt this held up.

maeby both? crazy letosports make 4 kickass pikturs tho

Yep. All effort at proper grammar had been tossed out the window already. Mostly because Reno got started on the message back, realized that he wasn't entirely certain on the proper spelling of 'maybe,' and then promptly gave up.

He could turn on that thing on his phone that automatically chose the word for him, but that had turned "fucked" into "ducked" last night, and so he wasn't going near it again. Ever.

Why is there a random 4 in the middle of that sentence?

It was a toss-up between whether Arthur would continue to mock him, or pick up chatspeak. Or both.

Both would be fun!

easier 2 type than spelin out for by using numbrs.

The same reason there was a random 2 in the middle of that last sentence! Silly.

Arthur squinted at his mobile. "Two," he said, out loud.

After a moment, he texted back, That's clever.

its cheatng

Well, it kind of was!

but if u ever saw a phone like this an had 2 hit the same numbr like 10 times to spel a word, ud do it 2 mr blackbery.

Even if the end result left him looking like a retarded ape using a cellphone, yes.

Edited 2009-07-02 19:12 (UTC)

Reno, you do realise that about one in five words you use actually makes sense.

Look what you'd done, Reno. Totally derailed him from Leto and his flamingos.

Reno would forward one of those pictures back to Arthur at a random moment someday far in the future, just to see what kind of response it would elicit. Really.

that aint no different from wen im talking out loud 2 tho.

And really, he did have a point, didn't he?

If he wanted an answer to that, he'd have to pick up the ringing phone.

Reno was laughing as he picked up said ringing phone, yes.

"Yo!"

"Remember that conversation we had about whether you'd been dropped on the head as a child?"

This was Arthur's variant of 'Yo', clearly.

"Not really, but I figure that's probably a result of them pickin' me up an' droppin' me again just to make sure."

Reno was clearly amused.

And damn, did he ever need the amusement.

"There could," Arthur speculated, "Even have been a third time."

"Naaah. The third time was them smackin' me upside the head after I joined the Turks," Reno said casually, leaning over to poke the sleeping ferret who had flopped over near the couch. "An' they pretty much never did stop doin' that, yo."

"Well, at least we know you're motivated," Arthur replied, eying the other end of his dorm room. "You wouldn't, by any chance, know how to get any of these to Romeo...?"

He'd catch on to the infinite-digital-pictures thing eventually.

Reno wasn't going to be a smartass. Reno wasn't going to be a smartass. He was going to resist. He would. For a half a second. That was a record!

"Well, how did you get 'em to me?"

That was mostly not smartassery!

Arthur eyed his phone. "It said send."

"So, look at the pictures and send 'em again?" Reno didn't need to eye his phone back. Reno was eyeing the ferret, instead. The one who was a little lump of sleepcoma on the floor. Awww.

"That doesn't make any--"

There was a short pause.

"Ah, there we go."

"Sent somethin' for Romeo to appreciate?"

Reno was all proud, now. He was hearing the sounds of progress! Of education! Of Arthur being too stubborn to read a manual!

It was a thing of beauty.

"I especially like the way the bird is tryin' to kill Leto in that one picture, yo."

"I keep looking at it and wondering how in God's name he didn't lose an eye," Arthur provided.

He had looked at the manual! It had just made little sense, so he'd tossed it.

"Well, if you were a freakish pink bird, would you try to stick your beak in an eye socket that was holdin' somethin' that looked like that? You never know what you can catch, man."

Spice eyes. Mako eyes. Seriously, bright blue couldn't possibly be healthy.

"You're arguing self-defense?"

"I'm just sayin', there's gotta be a better place to peck," Reno mused. "Go for the jugular, man. Go for the balls. You take out one eye, you still gotta get the other one, too."

Reno also had a very odd notion of banter, yes.

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