Disclaimers: I own nothing.
Mystery
You woke up screaming aloud
A prayer from your secret god
You feed off our fears
And hold back your tears, oh
Give us a tantrum
And a know it all grin
Just when we need one
When the evening's thin-Sarah McLachlan, Building a Mystery
Reno had been asleep roughly an hour and a half when the ghost entered, and exited, the loft.
The first noise he heard, drifting on the edge of an antihistamine induced slumber, was a vaguely feline scratching on the closet door. His sleepy mind initially accused Marlene's cat Beetle, who they were taking care of that week. But no, the developmentally arrested beast sat at the foot of his and Cloud's bed, studiously licking its own asshole.
Useful talent, that.
He sat up and stifled a cough. The space in the bed next to him was empty. Where was Cloud? Footsteps sounded in the hallway, quick and furtive like a child playing hide and seek. Wind blew outside, even though the weather was calm, and there was a chiming sound, as if someone had plucked one of the strings in the old fashioned doorbell outside.
He grasped the EMR more tightly, feeling both foolish and comforted as he did so. It wasn't the cat and he knew in his heart it wasn't Cloud; it was the swordsman's nature to be either there or not, there was nothing of this hiding on the edge of sight and hearing.
Reno crept down the hallway in silence to the kitchen. He flattened against the wall in an instinct honed by training, peering into a kitchen that appeared to be totally empty and…
"HOLY MOTHERFUCKING IFRIT'S BALLSACK! What the seven blazes FUCK are you doing in here?" When he was done cursing, Reno pressed his hand to his chest as if trying to stuff his heart back in there, dropped the EMR back to his side, and crossed 'electrocute boyfriend' off the evening's activities.
"I live here. Coincidentally enough, so do you. What's wrong?"
Bless Cloud, really. He never assumed Reno was being an idiot, even when he was. Just asked what was wrong and got two beers out of the refrigerator. He pulled up a couple of chairs to the kitchen bar and led a still shaken Reno to one. "Heard noises and well, it wasn't you and the cat was licking its ass. Something else was here."
"Yeah, you know, I couldn't sleep. But I didn't hear anything. What was it?"
Reno told him and took a deep drink from his beer, slowly coming down from the adrenaline high of having the living shit scared out of him.
"Wonder if something is going on in the area. Should we call Tseng? Speaking of, you should get that cough seen to. I'm betting he has something stronger than Nyquil."
Reno blew his nose and glared over the tissue. "Little late in the evening to be calling my boss over things that go bump in the night, babe." About that time his cell phone trilled. "I'll be damned."
"Most days, you are."
"Boss, we were just talking about you. Nooooooo…in a good way. Honest. Oh no, we are up, trust me. Yeah, that sounds about right. Thanks for the heads up." He met Cloud's questioning gaze. "Sweet. Seems the local gangs have some new tech. Details in the morning but basically it's a high tech noisemaker and we didn't even get the newest model. It's designed to separate and confuse troops. Tseng thinks some kids got hold of some older ones and were just out fucking around with them. Nuisance reports are in all over this sector, apparently."
The cat wandered out and made quick work of chasing down a dust bunny.
"And a fat lot of good you were in a crisis, ass-licker." Reno just wasn't letting that one go.
"You look like shit." Not one to use many words, Reno supposed his partner couldn't be bothered to mince them.
"Thanks." Only it came out more like "Thaggs." Reno mused that at least the lack of sleep got lost in the list of miserable illness symptoms. He claimed his place at the table with a box of lotion tissues and a bag of cough drops, and went outside with his mucous to grab some hot tea.
Cloud was right, he needed some drugs.
The Turks gathered around their commander to hear the latest bad news. Tseng dimmed the lights and clicked on the first slide; it looked for all the world like a shredded rubber ball or maybe a piece of wadded up trash.
"It's called a Screamer. Reno, I understand you had some experience with one last night?"
Everyone in the room paused to let the sentence "Reno had a screamer last night" pass through the twelve year old boy in their brains. Including Reno. Elena gave a very unladylike snort.
Sigh. He recounted the events of the night before and when done, Tseng nodded. "Random noises, then? Well, that was last year's model so to speak. The one they are using now on military and government personnel is much nastier. It stimulates an area of the brain that concentrates on memory, and so we hear voices and sounds we recognize. Loved ones, family members, friends, for example. Even if you know consciously that your dead Aunt Edith can't possibly be on the battlefield, the split second it takes for you to process the 'What The Fuck' thought can be fatal, for you and your cohorts. Does everyone understand the importance of this?"
Nods went around the room. Reno winced inwardly; the last thing they needed in their lives was Cloud pelting off after the voices of Zack and Aerith. Or, Gaia help them all, Sephiroth. Much as Reno loved him, he was a realist and knew that Cloud's ties to sanity weren't quite what every one else's were.
Best yet, he got to go home and explain this without sounding like a condescending asshole. He blew his nose again and wished for the meeting to be over.
Two shots in the ass later, Reno felt moderately better but held onto his tissues and cough drops. The antibiotic shot had hurt, despite Tseng's assurance that it wouldn't. The commander had insisted on it however, after Reno's temperature had popped out at nearly 103.
And then to complete the dumbfuckery trifecta, Reno disobeyed a direct order to go home and rest. He decided to be a chicken shit and email the information on the Screamer to Cloud, hoping to come up with tactful wording for "And honey please keep in mind that all your dead people are actually dead, ok?" in the meantime.
He wasn't counting on it, though.
Another coughing fit brought a faint sheen of sweat to his forehead. He didn't even notice Rude standing in his office door until the large man picked him up bodily from his chair.
"I am taking you to your home. You will not leave there until you are well."
And that settled that. Once he had driven Reno back to the loft, Rude made sure he was in bed, brought him his laptop and phone, and poured him some juice. He obviously called Cloud on the way back to work because the blond tore back into the loft seemingly seconds later, full of piss and vinegar. Reno endured a lecture on going to work with an infection and so on and so forth, and went back to sleep.
Criminals were really going to have to come up with new technology when he got better. Really. He just didn't have the energy for this shit right now. He burrowed into the sheets and let the narctotics ease the cough out of his chest for a little while, stealing the wakefulness from his brain. But in his dreams, the Screamer sang.
X