"Oh my god."

The words were not, generally, good ones to hear in the Turk office. There had never been much discussion of gods, no, but it was the scandalized tone that caught attention. Emma was staring at one of the old magazines that she'd been flipping through, trying to look up some old propaganda, but something else had caught her eye. "Oh. my. god."

"Is that good?" Cissnei ventured, edging her way. She peered over the blonde's shoulder and felt her eyes widening. "I… wow. That's…"

"It is!" Emma agreed, nodding quickly. "I just… I had no idea."

"That's… one for the record books," she managed, a slow smile curving her lips. "I'm pretty sure I should feel uncomfortable looking at this. He's practically my dad."

That got even more attention, as there could only be one person Cissnei meant after being raised in the Turks. Reno kicked off Rude's desk, riding his chair back over. "Lemme see, yo… holy shit. Partner, c'mere."

Rude sighed, giving him a briefly annoyed look over his shades before hefting up from his desk to come see. Regardless of their comments, he was not expecting what he saw.

The half-dressed, unblemished figure was at once strange and all too familiar, tan and leanly muscled. Why they had an old PlayGirl in the archives was a discussion for another day, no one could look away from the picture on the front. It wasn't even a sexual undertone, the whole cover was unapologetically charged with it from his posture to the look on his face, even the artful bed-head tousle of thick brown hair. He was standing with a hip cocked to the side, a hand resting there and the other letting his gun dangle from his fingertips in a way that was oddly suggestive. His jeans were slung low on his hips, cutting a dark contrast to muscle tanned an eye-catching gold, attention drawn low by the holster on his thigh. More than one person in the department would have thoroughly enjoyed that, actually, if it wasn't for the one glaring fact. For all he'd changed over the years, it was undeniably Veld.

"Oh my god," Emma repeated breathlessly.

"He will kill you if he sees this," Rude managed.

"I… yeah. Yeah, I'll just…" her eyes drifted to the shredder and she bit her lip. It seemed such a waste…

"This is so wrong." Cissnei tore her eyes away, covering them with a giggle. "Oh wow. Okay. Just… we won't mention it. Don't tell Tseng."

"Don't tell Tseng what?" The Commander paused in the doorway, looking the four of them over.

"It will break your brain," Cissnei warned. "It will."

"I am professionally concerned," he decided.

"Man, ain't nothin' professional about that." Reno shook his head, grinning. "Let the bossman see if he wants."

"You'll regret it," Cissnei said, stepping away as he came over to look. "Tseng, don't-"

Tseng made a quiet, somewhat strangled sound in the back of his throat, closing his eyes after getting a look at the cover. "I don't want to know. In fact, I don't know. Make sure I continue not to."

"Yessir, Commander." Reno grinned, plucking the magazine out of Emma's loose grasp. "I'll just take care of this contraband."

"Reno!"

"Talk t' me later, Em." The senior Turk winked, snickering all the way back to his desk. He wasn't sure how this would come in handy, but you just didn't waste this kind of intel. And he was pretty sure the boss wouldn't shoot him for it. Mostly. Still, better not leave it in the office. When there was an assignment shuffle and he was put on guard for the vice president, he stuffed it in his mission duffle without another thought.

Rufus was the special, spectacular kind of bored that came from being under guard and away from anything remotely enjoyable for several hours. It was especially annoying because generally when Reno was his guard things were more lively. But the redhead hadn't actually been on rotation, having to switch out with someone else last minute and tromping up to his suite with his go-bag before slouching down to mess around on his phone. "What do you even have on there?"

"Playin' Angry Chocobos, right now." Reno shrugged, not glancing up from his screen. "Decent time sink, don't feel like readin' right now."

"What, you actually brought something other than paperwork that you could?" Rufus scoffed, side-eyeing his bag. "Comics?"

"Got a graphic novel I'm gettin' through, don't knock it," Reno muttered, shifting a little to get better light on his screen.

"And how graphic, I wonder." Rufus got up, desperate for something, and unzipped the bag - lack of protest was practically consent at this point, as well as Reno knew him - and paused. "… well now, that's not the kind of graphic I was imagining at all."

Something in his voice had Reno looking up quickly, barely having a moment to think 'oh shit' as Rufus pulled out the PlayGirl he'd taken from Emma earlier in the day. The one with his boss looking much less professional than the old man would have ever okay'd Rufus seeing. "Uhh…"

Rufus took a moment to admire the magazine, smoothing a hand over the top. "Nineteen seventy-three… this isn't manipulated, is it? This is a legitimate magazine."

"Rufus…"

"And that's Veld, isn't it?" Rufus grinned, slow and wicked. "My, but he was always impressive, wasn't he? I don't think that pistol was the gun people were staring at. How did you get this?"

"Contraband." He licked his lips, not sure exactly how to work this out. Obviously he had to get the physical evidence out of Rufus' hands, but there was no taking the knowledge of its existence back. "You know he can make more'n my life hard, right? He is not a man you wanna bait, Rufus."

"I bet he made a lot of things hard." Rufus smirked, shaking his head. "So he doesn't know you have this, hm? And you'd really, really like to keep it that way."

"Yeah," Reno agreed slowly. "I would. That'd be the smart thing t' do."

"The smart thing, Reno, would have been to lock this away for a rainy day." Rufus made a thoughtful sound, looking at him a moment before looking back to the picture. "So, how much is my silence worth to you?"

It took three days, a damn good bottle of wine (for Rufus, never mind he had no business drinking) and some paint-peeling vodka (for himself because Rufus was even worse when he was tipsy) and some illegal activity that Tseng would chew him out for if the SOLDIERs he'd spied on didn't gut him themselves, but Reno had the magazine back in his hands and this time he buried the damn thing deep in his lockbox at home.