Out of the Ordinary

It seemed like a normal enough day. Not much out of the ordinary happened. I woke up, showered, drank my coffee while I shaved. I ate my breakfast as fast as I could while I raced against the clock and walked out the door while putting my blazer on.

Everything had to be perfect on the outside; professional. But I didn't feel perfect on the inside, and I slid on my shades as I left the building and decided that I'd keep them on. The world seemed better that way, shadier, less clear, and it gave me something to hide my thoughts behind while allowing me to reserve my real identity for those that earned the right.

Work was ordinary too. My partner drove me nuts and passed the buck whenever he could. He was what I silently referred to as a fire demon and he'd grown on me over the years. Our Director was quick to see through my partner's excuses and carried the same look of disdain that he carried day-in and day-out, which also added to the normality of the day, and Elena fumbled and talked too much around him because he made her nervous. Again, that was also normal.

In fact, the day was too normal that it left me realising, more and more, that I wasn't satisfied with the concept. For the last couple of years, things had been so hectic that I hardly had time to see the time go by. I had no time to indulge in my private life, which was something I kept about as private as private could be, and in a way, I liked the fact that I didn't have to deal with the fact that my private life was nonexistent, and as another down-side, I was discovering that I had too much time to realise that I was lonely.

The closest thing I had to a mate was my partner, Reno, and on the off days that I entertained the thought, I realised that I'd kill him if I was ever stupid enough to consider it, and then there was Elena. I liked her, but there were two problems that got in the way. One was that I'd already gone that route when she first started working for Shinra and I tried to hide the fact that I wasn't something that I was, and the other was that she was madly in love with our Director, a hard-assed Wutian named Tseng.

And to consider Tseng would be about as wrong as considering Rufus. Tseng would probably shoot me and Rufus would probably pretend to go for it before tying me up and leaving me to fend for myself as a lesson if I showed so much as an inkling toward the notion.

So that left the rest of the world; what was left of it, and as normal as the day was, I found myself wishing that it was far from normal, and I decided that I'd take a chance by doing something I hadn't done in years.

I decided it was time to brave a social life outside of work.

I knew how people viewed me. I was a large man, intimidating. I worked out and lifted weights nearly every day and the fact that I never removed my shades seemed to intimidate people even more. The thing was that I was probably more intimidated by the world than it was by me. I had the strength, but I lacked the one thing I always envied in most of the people around me – social skills.

The truth was that I didn't really know how to socialise, and no matter how hard I tried, my sense of humour was never perceived as humour as much as it was perceived as something that probably shouldn't have been done or said in the first place. It didn't seem to matter what I did, it always came across as socially awkward or intimidating, and in time, I eventually came to terms with the fact that I might as well go with the flow, which eventually led to the image I chose.

With all of that to consider, I started to question why I even decided to go out in the first place. Normally…

Normally.

Normally, I'd spend the evening with Reno and Elena, and sometimes the Director would join us when he wasn't out doing whatever else it was that he did with his spare time, and normally, I was more than comfortable to allow Reno to steal the limelight. It felt good to laugh too – he had a way that could reach down and remove all of my restraints just long enough for me to forget how self-conscious I really was, and in a lot of ways, I guess that I needed it.

But I figured since it wasn't our normal night to get together that no one would miss me or wonder where I was, and for some reason or other, I thought it was safe.

So I sat there at the bar of a pub I'd never been to before, three dry scotches later, which was a change from the usual rounds of beer that my partners and I would indulge in, and I began to wonder why I went out in the first place. There was no way anyone was going to approach me unless they were blind or crazy, and there was no way I was ever going to work up the nerve to approach anyone else unless I had orders to do so. To make matters worse, the scotch that I thought would loosen me up only seemed to make me focus more on my own insecurities in regards to my social awkwardness rather than the opposite and I wound up wallowing in my own failures while I ordered another.

This all seemed to contribute to the fact that normal was beginning to be a concept I couldn't escape, because wallowing over my social failures was about as normal as normal could get for me, which was why I often turned to working out or training as a tool for taking my mind off of things, and it was probably the real contributor and truth behind my physique – as hard as that may have been to believe.

Looking around and watching everyone else find someone to spend their evenings with wasn't helping either, and instead of achieving my goal of actually finding someone to spend a little time with, I decided to resign and call my fourth scotch my last. I drank it faster than normal - until he walked in - and I suddenly caught my heart jumping into my throat while I froze from the reality of the fact that there was nowhere to hide.

Of all the places I could have gone and of all the people I never would have expected, he walked in. I buried my head as quickly as I could and pulled my drink a little closer as I tried to hunch over and thought maybe it would be enough to make me disappear while he stood at the door and hesitantly looked around. Then he saw me and paused as I did the foolish thing and made eye contact with him through the mirror behind the bar and realised that there was no turning back.

He nodded at me with an uncomfortable expression and came to sit beside me while commenting that he never thought he'd see me in a place like that.

"Like-wise," I responded, and he sat down with his back to the bar. It wasn't a 'common' type of pub. Men didn't go there to meet women. They went there to meet men, and I must have spent so much time worrying about what he was thinking that it never occurred to me to ask the most obvious of obvious questions, which would have been, 'Why are you here?'

I didn't say a word though, and he took it upon himself to start the conversation while he ordered us both fresh drinks and commented on the fact that we were both drinking the same thing.

He thought it was amusing.

The next thing I knew we were both at some cheap motel and undressing each other like we were racing to see who could do it faster. He surprised me with things I never would have expected from him and he did and allowed me to do things that caught me off guard. All the while, I kept reminding myself that I shouldn't have been doing what I was doing – not with him.

Of all the people I could have screwed myself over with, definitely not with him.

I could have lost my job for what I was doing.

Oh, but Gods, he was doing things that I couldn't say 'no' to and offering himself to be devoured in ways that were too succulent to pass up. Not a thought passed my mind as to how it would change things. I didn't even think about how it would have affected the next day. All I really did think about was that it had been too damned long since I was last intimate with anyone, and that of all the people I could have messed up with, he seemed to be the most exciting and surprising – and available – that I just couldn't say 'no'.

I was right to think that I should have thought further ahead though. The next day was far from ordinary, either that, or it was in my head as I interacted with each of my coworkers and decided that the best course of action was to pretend that there was no reason to require a course of action. Nothing happened. No. Definitely not.

I was uncommonly clumsy though. I walked into a wall when I was leaving the coffee room while I was talking to Reno. I knocked over Rufus' secretary's coffee when he called me into his office, and I caught my blazer in the bathroom door when I came out and Tseng was washing his hands. He said nothing, as usual, he only quirked his brow when he heard the fabric tear when I tried to quickly free myself before I tried to pretend that nothing was happening and smashed the main door into Elena's face as I opened it when she was walking by.

"What the hell?"

"Sorry."

He seemed to have chosen the same path as we ran into each other off and on throughout the day. We bumped into each other in the coffee room, and he poured his coffee with the same tone of chit-chat that he always carried on with – nothing but business – and I did the same while we both avoided mentioning any of my public mishaps that morning, as well as what happened the night before. At lunch time, he was there, still acting as if nothing had happened, and I had to admit that by that time, I was starting to wonder if anything really did happen before I knocked my lunch onto the floor when Elena called my name and Reno decided to get up at the same moment and slipped on it.

Tseng quirked his brow and Rufus merely glanced.

I was also starting to grow offended, and by the time we met up in the training facility, I think it might have been starting to show, and for the first time since I could recall, Reno completely took me down in a one-on-one fist-fight, and Tseng yelled at me while Elena admired him from afar and Rufus watched. Everyone was there. Everyone was watching, and Tseng was standing over me asking me, "What the hell is the matter with you?"

All the while, Reno looked confused and proud all at the same time, and Rufus remained motionless as he watched from a distance. It was obvious that no one, not even Reno, expected him to win.

"If you lose focus like that on the street, you'll get yourself killed!" Tseng reminded me.

"Sir… Yes, Sir…" I tried to proudly say. It sounded more like a sorry sob though. He glared at me a moment longer to get it to sink in, and as usual, it was effective. The amount of disdain in those eyes could reduce any grown man into the state of a guilty five-year-old. It didn't matter whether you actually did anything wrong or not. He'd make you feel guilty no matter what – it could be something as simple as drinking your coffee wrong, or for simply being born.

He shook his head then, and sharply glanced at Reno, who also looked guilty, before he ordered me to meet him in his office at sixteen-hundred hours. As he left, Rufus stood and stared at me for a moment more. At times, I could swear that they both took cues from each other, and I closed my eyes while still lying on the ground.

Gods…

"Y'Okay?" Reno finally asked. He waited until everyone left, including Elena, and then he hesitantly held out his hand as he stood over me, "I… uh… hope this ain't my fault," he said, and I shook my head as I accepted his hand and let him help me stand.

Later, I made it to Tseng's office and stood outside while I listened in on Rufus and him talking and started to feel that nervous feeling again.

"You can't possibly be blaming me for this," Rufus said while Tseng said under his breath that, "I didn't become the director because of my mundane skills at observation, Sir." Then Rufus paused on his way out to take a moment to regard me and I looked ahead through my shades. Then he left and Tseng called me in.

"Have a seat," he said, and he motioned to one of the chairs in front of his desk without bothering to look up. He seemed to enjoy dragging things out and took his time while he went over some papers in front of him and signed a few of them. Then he sighed, folded his hands in front of him, and looked up, straight at me with his typical, no bullshit look, "Rude."

"Sir."

"Given the personal nature of what I'm about to say. Would you mind if I closed the door?"

"No, Sir," I said, and inwardly cursed at myself for saying it with such a small voice, and for a moment, he simply stared at me with no expression whatsoever, and with each passing second, I felt like I was growing smaller.

"Hm," he muttered as if a thought he wasn't interested in sharing passed through his mind, then he got up and closed the door while I remained in my chair with the perfect posture I was trained to have, and I continued to stare straight ahead. "You probably overheard me and Rufus."

"Yes, Sir," I answered, and I inconspicuously noted the papers on his desk. He was changing my partner from Reno to Elena.

"Well, despite what I said, I'm afraid that some things do get by me." Then he walked up behind me with his hands clasped behind his back, "Like the events that led to last night."

A hard swallow and a cold sweat were two other things I hoped would also get by him as I felt my heart racing out of control and I tried my hardest not to loosen my tie in order to help myself breathe.

"I simply wouldn't have expected it."

"Last night… Sir?"

"Yes," he answered, "You do recall last night, don't you?"

"Yes, Sir," I admitted, and when he placed his hand on my shoulder, I caught myself jumping without meaning to.

"I see," he said, "So what are you planning on doing about it?"

"I… Haven't thought about it, Sir."

"Really?" he asked. Then he smirked while tapping his fingers over my shoulder in a way that intimidated me, "That's odd. I assumed you were more than preoccupied with it since Reno ran circles around you so easily. I must admit that it's the first time I think I've seen you unsuccessfully block every single hit that man threw at you – not to mention that you're not a commonly clumsy man.

"I'd hate to think that one night would reduce you so effectively, and I'm afraid that I'm going to have to encourage you to either get over it by separating your love life from your work by putting your focus where it belongs, or see to it that this never happens again."

"It won't happen again, Sir."

"That's a shame," he said, and changed his tapping to a subtle massaging movement that was slightly playful before he removed his hand entirely and walked towards the door. "I rather enjoyed last night and was hoping you would have gone with the first choice."

A bit of experimental fun and not a pairing I would have normally considered. Rude and a male pairing was requested and I decided that I'd go against the grain and choose something a little unusual for the big man. I think I like it - thanks to blueraven for the inspiration.