He looked up at you, surprise writ all over the pale skinned face. He hadn't expected the blow you'd just dealt him, one would imagine, as he rubbed the red spot on his chin, chest heaving in a startled reaction to the pain. You began to wonder when it started mattering to you, when his feelings and thoughts started to be important to you, when you'd stopped thinking of him as a lapdog and a killer, and had started to see a human being. He doesn't speak, he doesn't say a word as he just climbs to his feet, pushing past you and out the door, red hair waving like a flag behind him.
You grab his arm, turning him around, and those eyes widen, surprised. Again, you wonder why you even care. You peer into those eyes, and somehow find yourself being drawn in. You had expected them to be cold, lifeless, pits, but instead they are warm with color and life, a beautiful gleaming aqua, one that said he'd been given Mako at some point or another. You want to say something, anything, to make the joyful flame dance in those eyes again as it had earlier while you watched him writhe and move to the music under the colored lights.
But instead you shrug when he asks you what the fuck is wrong with you, as if you don't know how to answer, or as if you don't know the answer, which I suspect is really closer to the truth. Reno has a tendency to do that to people, I know. He makes them question their own motives and even question the reasons for their own existences sometimes. He's that passion, that bright flame that burns you when you get too close, but you know no matter how hard you try, you can't stay away. I've been there, I know.
Finally, he just shakes his head with a sigh, and you apologize for hitting him, as you always seem to do. Reno provokes, you retaliate, then apologize for doing it. I wonder how the two of you manage to stay together sometimes, but somehow you both make it work. This time, you lift his bruised face up, your mouth covering his, and I realize that the only reason I don't hate you for what you do to him is because I know you love him, it's just that the two of you together are like mixing oil and water a lot of the time.
But someday I wonder if he's going to push you too hard, and you'll end up going too far, and what that will mean for the relations between AVALANCHE and what's left of us if it happens. I hope we never have to find out. But oddly enough, Cloud. . .the fact that my partner loves you is enough for me to let him have what he wants. Even if it's not healthy for him. I love him enough to let it happen.