Rude bristled at the stench. The market was just as he had remembered it from his childhood – enormous, filthy, and chaotic. There were endless rows of produce and fresh flowers drying out under the angry sun. Rude winced at the huge hunk of fatty red fish one of the vendors was holding up. He hated the smell and look of fish, but doctors said Reno needed it for his bones to heal faster. Rude sighed and motioned for the man to wrap it up.
For the first time in years he had come home to the Costa del Sol without an assigned mission. He had no schedule, no target, and no base. Just a set of keys to the elegant Shinra-owned villa and an endless supply of potent rum he liked to drink straight-up. His only duty was to his partner Reno, whose last solo mission ended so disastrously that Reno was forced to take a month-long medical leave to allow for his injuries to heal. Rude had accumulated three years worth of sick days and it seemed proper that he should spend them with his friend.
"You never used to eat fish at my house!" Rude's sunglasses flew off his nose when a hot hand slapped him hard enough to blur his vision.
"Ma." There's a universal law that you always run into the one person you want to avoid. He felt idiotic for having nothing better to say, but that is all he could say to the stout, tan-skinned woman in a loud flowery dress. She stood in front of him like a general, her fists digging into her sides. Rude froze with the hunk of fish in his fingers, like a kid caught stealing.
"I almost died giving birth to you, you big bastard. And you gonna be living here at the Costa and never even come by to see us! Never even tell me you were coming."
"Ma, you know I don't live here."
"Hah! Nobody buys raw fish unless they intend to cook it someplace, and the kind of hotels snobbish Shinra assholes like you stay at don't have kitchens. You're staying in a house here. A villa, no? Guess we ain't good enough for you to stay with anymore, heh? What," the stocky lady demanded, impatient and inquisitive. "Cat got your tongue?"
Rude replaced his sunglasses, grateful for the shield they provided. He faced his share of monsters and dangerous men, but nobody could rake at his nerves the way his mother could.
"You got a whore here," the woman said. "Oh I know you done found a whore up there in Midgar!" Rude winced at the volume of his mother's voice. The entire market was listening, because at the coast the evenings were long and lazy and nothing went better with strong spirits than gossip. He sensed that every eyeball within hearing range was focused on him.
"Let's take a walk, ma," Rude said, grabbing his mother's upper arm as though she was under arrest and starting walking toward the ocean. "I was going to come see you, but-"
"I want to see her! The whore you brought here, the one that's making you ashamed to come stay with your own family."
"My partner is a bit loose, but I wouldn't go as far as calling him a 'whore," Rude laughed. When they were safety away from the prying eyes of the islanders he leaned down to embrace his mother Deidre. She hasn't aged a day since he last saw her on a stormy day a year and a half ago. "Let's take a walk," he offered again.
They walked side by side through the thick white sand of the beach, littered with palm leaves and seaweed. Swarms of tan children with flowers and braids in their hair splashed joyfully in the turquoise waves. There were no hotels on this side of the island, no helicopter landing strips, no intruders. Nowhere to hide. Rude escaped the prying eyes of the market goers, but inadvertently he had left himself no other means of escape from the one pair of eyes that he really wanted to avoid.
"You never call. It's been over a year. I was sure you were dead," the woman lamented, matter-of-factly. She came from a long line of islanders who lost enough children to illness and sharks to see life and death with practical detachment. "I ordered you a headstone."
"That's just wrong," Rude couldn't repress a quiet chuckle. "I wasn't gone for that long. I didn't come to visit because I'm here on business."
"Let me see your eyes," the woman snatched Rude's sunglasses off his face. "Liar!" she immediately concluded. "You'd rather we didn't know you were here. Sneaking in and out like a thief. Now let's get going. I want to see this partner of yours. I have a right to know who you're fucking!"
"Did I say anything about fucking?"
"You don't need to." Deidre winked at her son. "With a dick your size, you got to be fucking somebody! Nature, boy, you can't fight it."
She was impatiently tugging at Rude's muscular arm but Rude dug his bare feet into the sand and resisted. He meant to say that Reno and he worked together, but his mother, as always, smelled the truth before he ever had the chance to lie. They were partners, but they shared more than office space and there was no hiding it. Still, Reno was his secret. The kind of delicious dirty secret he wanted to keep from the prying minds of his relatives. There really was no way to verbalize how and why they became lovers. They weren't 'in love' in the romantic sense his kin would understand, but he dreaded the thought of having to answer questions about how he and Reno did "the nasty" and how often.
"No," he said flatly. "Now's a bad time." He winced at another hard slap across the face.
"Stonewalling me, you bastard!" Deidre finally exploded with impatience. "Be on your way then, or your fish will rot." She shook her fist at her son. "I'll get you later." She began to waddle her way through the sand back toward the market, with a wicked determination in her step and without saying good-bye. Rude started to laugh. They had an odd sort of understanding.
--
He secretly searched for her at the market the next morning, but her gaudy floral-print dress was nowhere in sight. When Rude returned to the villa with a fresh supply of oily fish and hard liquor, Reno was already awake. Rude's mother was there too. She was humming and tapping her foot as her quick fingers combined honey-saturated plantains, nuts, and a variety of dried fruit in a bath of boiling oil.
"It's no good to keep your boy skinny like that. That should fatten him up in no time."
"Skinny is his natural state," Rude groaned, amazed, horrified, and irritated at the same time. "How did you get in here? How the hell did you even know where to go?"
"I said I'll get you later. Think I let you off the hook that easy?"
"You sure you don't want to work for Shinra," Rude rolled his eyes in disbelief, "with your snooping abilities you'd make a damn good Turk."
"It's a small world out here at the Costa, boy. Everybody knows everything. Why? You think you can hide behind them fancy shades?"
"I let her in," Reno shrugged when Rude glared at him in frustration. The redhead was leaning against the kitchen doorway, sniffing the sweet aroma in anticipation. He was disheveled as always and was wearing no pants.
"Get your ass back to bed. You shouldn't even be up," Rude snapped. Reno grinned defiantly and stuck out his long pink tongue. Annoyed, Rude picked Reno up like a squirming child and carried him back to the bedroom.
"Get up again and I'll break your legs. Got it?" Reno rolled his eyes.
"We started out as partners, ma. Friends. Nothing more." Rude said, removing his sunglasses as he returned to the kitchen. He felt vulnerable again and was growing defensive. Deidre took a long hard look at her son.
"How long you been working together?" she asked, crossing her arms over her full breasts.
"Nine years."
"Mm-hmm." Dee impatiently pinched Rude's ear. "Nine years together, and this house only has one bed. You're a lying dog, just like your father. The way you handle that boy, you might as well introduce him as your spouse." Rude sighted. "I told your father, you know," Deidre added matter-of-factly, "he's coming to visit tonight." She stuffed the dish with a hunk of butter and sprinkled brown spice on top. Rude pinched the space between his eyes as he followed his mother into the bedroom.
"Here you go, dear." Dee handed the plate to Reno, who accepted the offering with an enormous smile. Reno was always uneasy around older women, perhaps because of his troubled relationship with his absentee mother, but he seemed at perfect ease around Dee as he consumed the fatty dish with gleefulness of a ten-year-old. Afterwards he even sat still when she examined his hands, taking a long look into his large lazy green eyes and smoothing his wild red tresses.
Rude figured that because Reno looked so different from the island boys his mother was deeply curious. She was grinning, as though she was caressing a beautiful tropical bird that has allowed her close. Rude was bracing for a catastrophe. Like the time he stole his first car, the time he spent his first night in lock-up, or the day he was paid to assassinate his first human target. He had crossed every other line already, had disturbed the family peace so many times. But nothing happened. Dee motioned for Rude to lean in closer and she embraced both him and Reno, resting her head over theirs.
"You called me when you killed for the first time, a pretty ballsy thing to do," Dee scolded. "But you couldn't tell me when you fell in love, you coward?" Rude groaned.
--
"Heeeey, partner," Reno yawned and stretched a weak arm to pinch Rude's bicep. "Do I look so fucked up that you were embarrassed to show me to your old lady?" He suggestively batted his lashes at the larger man.
"I was more worried about showing my old lady to you," Rude said without looking up from his newspaper. "Ma's got a mean streak. And since I'm the eldest son, nobody's ever good enough, you know?"
"That's touching, big man," Reno grinned, tracing circles on Rude's shoulder. "You actually worried about me?"
"That last mission that you fucked up..…I had my black suit dry cleaned for your funeral," Rude shrugged. "Changed my perspective a little."
"Fuck you."
"Maybe in a couple of weeks."
Reno spread his legs under the covers.
"C'mon already, it's fucked up to be neglecting your spousal duty," Reno's grin grew wider. Rude responded to the invitation by placing his hand on Reno's crotch. He firmly squeezed and massaged Reno's privates through the thin covers for a few moments, watching Reno press his eyelids shut and part his lips a bit. Reno craved Rude's masculinity, his frighteningly strong arms that could kill him so easily and could caress with such uncharacteristic tenderness. Rude's hands were so large and so hot. Reno sensed their warmth through the thin linen sheets. He wanted to lick Rude's skin, but he was slightly delirious with medication and his body was awkward and disobedient. So he just lay there, leaving his nude and hurting body at Rude's mercy.
"You're too messed up to fuck," Rude playfully rubbed Reno's belly with three outstretched fingers, "and you can't get it up anyway. Tseng ordered libido suppressers to be added to your prescription. You know, to keep you calm during recovery."
"Remind me to save some for Tseng's morning coffee," Reno snorted, "the one he drinks on Fridays before he goes in to give Rufus an oral report."
"Go to sleep," Rude picked up his newspaper with a mysterious half-smile, "my old man's coming tonight and I want you to look presentable."
"Fuck you."
"I said in a couple of weeks."