Tseng cut about five inches off of his hair the day he knew he would be wearing the suit. It had been something he liked once, a heaviness against his cheek and brow that made for a vain and inexplicable comfort. That day he traded one vanity in for another as he passed his hands over the tight seams in the blazer he'd be wearing for the rest of his life. He was certain this was something he was made for-a stupid thing to think being so young and so green-but he knew it, knew he could never do anything else.
And he was good at it, he had the right kind of sensibilities-which he knew in so many people's eyes were the wrong kind-but that didn't bother him, and neither did the blood, dirt or the calculation that always needed to precede it. Few thoughts were spared on what must have made him able to stomach it, and do all he had to do. He wasn't numbed, he felt it nights and some mornings, but he held a contented silence, a profound faith in his own power which he soon realized was the preferred drug of most who worked around him. He didn't even notice how few people he kept around him, and it was only in rare moments that he acknowledged—always in retrospect—things he had wanted. But want wasn't need, and he had all that he needed hanging blue on his shoulders, and slung cold on his hip.
And then-Zack.
Zackary Fair, sprung up from the Gongagan country side, five eleven, blood type O, and imbued with the kind of optimism Tseng has never known, and never actually wants to, considering how close optimism always is to naiveté, and a special kind of shortsightedness. It's not something any Turk can afford. It's exactly what he says to Zack when he asks with a smile, why he is so dour, that it's probably doing nothing for his pale complexion.
Tseng doesn't like small talk. Not because he isn't good at it, he is-he can cater it to any environment, just as a good Turk can when there are no other weapons left-but he doesn't like to talk when there is nothing important to be said. He doesn't like to talk to Zack because his arguments are irrational, unrelated and pointless. But that is as far as any dislike goes, because for the most part Zack is one of those effusive, terribly likeable people, and Tseng is not immune to his crude, easy charm.
"Well, you have to believe in something don't you?" Zack says, the Gongagan lilt only there in the barest traces.
"I believe in myself." Tseng answers, and the look on Zack's face is one he knows from the moments Cissnei had tried to feel him out, and come out with obvious failure. And he thinks he'd rather be unreadable than as open and obvious to the world as the both of them are.
Zack very soon becomes friendly with a girl he knows and has known for a while, and he watches from the tall shadows of the church as she looks on at the smiling soldier with suspicion, suspicion that is so quickly eclipsed by more tender things that Tseng is shocked. Zack's spirit is a contagion, and as magical as any cast he has ever seen, and he feels it, watching them, for she is perhaps the only place where his heart and waking life overlay. It's something he admits begrudgingly, in one of those rare moments when he is struck by something important he may have wanted.
"-And you know, I just get the feeling that she's special," Zack smiles and leans his chin on his knuckles. "different, you know?"
Tseng nods. It is another conversation Zack has seemed to pull him into without his consent, but he doesn't mind this one so much. It is absurd, the situation he is in all of a sudden. Sick, that by the connection he has to both Aeris and Zack, he is sitting here listening to this.
"Yes." Tseng says. Because he does know.
Zack often talks to him like this and Tseng partly regrets that the connected objectives of their jobs means one day Zack can ask for his phone number under the pretense of their professional relationship. He knows as soon as he gives it, that Zack will abuse it, and that is exactly what happens. He screens his calls, well, he always screened them, but now he is more vigorous with it, and he is a complete mixture of annoyance and amusement when Zack calls him out on it, as if he is somehow entitled to the ear Tseng only half wanted to lend.
"You're actually gonna make me disguise my number?" Zack says, smiling. Strangely unoffended by his avoidance.
"I'm not making you do anything."
"Sure you are. Why are you so anti-social anyway?" Zack says in the way that makes something potentially insulting sound anything but. "And don't pull the Turk card, we both know Reno and...yeah." he laughed. Tseng sighed.
"Reno, is a special case." He said and Zack laughed again, suddenly looked serious.
"But I mean it, you me and a couple beers. Wednesday?" Tseng looked him right in his too happy face.
"I have work."
"I call bullshit."
"That's fine, call whatever or whomever you want. But before you call me, ask yourself it's work related."
"And if it isn't?"
"Call someone else."
Zack only shrugged, seeming none too bothered about his words. Tseng was confident they would be disregarded, he even expected it. So he was surprised to find when on Wednesday night going into morning, he washed the blood from his hands, took his phone from his pocket and seeing no calls, didn't feel as relieved as he thought he would.
Everything continued to go well for Zack. Until one night when it didn't. Tseng was watching, Zack had been fast rising into the circle of Generals, just like he always said he would. His ambition to be a hero, to be a first, was no secret, and he took everyone's attention, excelled under it. It was around this time Tseng noticed Cissnei was also watching. He realized that she had been for a while, and he supposed Fair would never have a shortage of adoration, perhaps love. He dismissed thoughts of having been a mediocre friend-when had they become friends?-because Zack didn't need him anymore than he needed the validation. That was the only way he was solitary, simply content in the current of his own ambitions, dreams.
That, and the way they were so perfectly suited for their respective jobs, was the only way they were really similar at all. And Zack was made for it, he could see it in his eyes in the both in the figurative and most literal sense as his eyes began to lose violet under green, and look dangerous as he never had when he smiled, getting that far away look of a dreamer, too far away for anything ordinary to touch.
None of them were really ordinary. Tseng could feel it when screams that used to raise his skin began to seem like regular white noise to him. A splitting bone under his hand was like traffic, the wet sound of a jugular collapsing under his fingers, was just like running water from the tap.
ShinRa was a kingdom risen on soil full of blood.
And they both knew it, but Zack had been travelling a happy road upwards until one night something in a foundation cracked. General Rhapsodos was the first bit of an empire falling, and he hadn't known it then, and even at the time nothing in his file even alluded to a propensity to descend into utter madness. Reno insisted that all redheads were just a little mad, and that was why he didn't trust them, and Tseng sometimes wondered how Reno made such an excellent Turk.
Tseng began to see Zack more often. There had been a lag in which they were both busy rising towards positions they would eventually take, passing each other in the hallways, being polite and nothing else.
Then Hewley disappeared.
That was the beginning of the end for Zack, and he knew it. Tseng has his feet plainly on the ground, and he knew the trouble with wanting to fly was the eventual fall, he knew that if Zack ever fell-or in this case if the foundation fell from beneath him—he would fall hard.
They were making very slow progress, and he knew Zack could feel himself changing, the dynamics of their relationship shifting beyond smiles and invitations to beer. There was something on the line very important now, and they weren't strangers but it began to feel like it.
Zack was angry, frustrated with Sephiroth's refusal to do his own mission. Turks got to know the meaning of hierarchy much faster (ironically) than soldiers, mostly because they had a view from the top.
"Angeal was my friend too." He said one day, and Tseng couldn't really offer any real words of comfort. He said what he was supposed to say, he retreated to the shadows near the church to see Aeris alone, gazing for long moments out of the windows for her soldier. Zack very rarely came in those moments, Zack didn't really come much at all anymore.
And then one night, his phone rang. Zack hadn't called in months, but he saw the id ring up and listened to it ring for two more trills before flipping it open. He said nothing, just waited. Zack's voice sounded desperate, distant.
"This isn't a work related call." Zack's voice said.
"Then-"
"I don't want to call anyone else." It said, he heard a swallow.
"You have many friends Zack."
"No, no one I can...I just couldn't put this on Cloud, and Aeris...pretty sure I fucked that up and-"
"So I'm your last resort." Tseng said, holding the phone between his shoulder and head as he washed his hands.
"Uh...yeah. I guess."
"Hm."
"So, are you coming or not?" Tseng was silent. "Please, Tseng." And that was strange how he knew he had been bent into compliance, because not a soul on earth could affect 'please' in such a way that didn't either make him want to shut the source up, or simply ignore it. He'd heard the word couched in screams, sobs and whispers, and never once had he ever complied.
"Alright."
"Don't you need to know where I am?" Zack asked, and Tseng snorted softly and closed his phone.
Zack was seated in the back of a predictable bar, staring solemnly at the beer before him. He lifted his head as Tseng approached, smiling lopsided and halfheartedly.
"Thanks for coming." He said and Tseng nodded, didn't refuse the drink Zack pushed towards him, but didn't move to open it. Zack seemed interested in that and there was some humor in his eye as he looked down on his own unopened drink. "You don't drink?"
"I prefer not to."
"Reason?"
"My schedule is erratic, and I can't risk being out of my wits when I might be needed."
"And what if you aren't needed? Whadya, do then?"
"Drink water instead." Tseng said dryly and Zack smiled slowly.
"You're funny. I knew you were funny." Of all the things he'd ever been called, funny was never one of them.
"You haven't had any of yours either." Tseng said, scanning the bar, only to look up and see Zack doing the same.
"I don't really want it. But if you drink yours, I'll drink mine."
"I didn't know it worked that way." Tseng said, eyes catching the light so that they were visibly brown.
"Usually doesn't. You hungry?"
"No." Tseng said. Zack sighed.
"Me neither."
"Zack—"
"Have you ever seen anyone die?" To his credit, Tseng didn't even bat an eyelash at the sudden question. He suspected they were finally getting somewhere.
"Yes."
"Like right in front of you, you know you could see their eyes an' everything."
"Yes."
"What's it like?"
"Exactly how you think it is." Tseng said, and Zack's eyes narrowed.
"Don't fuck with me now, I-need to know." Tseng licked his lips, and with perfectly steady hands popped the tops of both their beers. Zack looked back at him.
"The smell. You know it instantly, as if it we were all born to know what it is before we could ever comprehend death." There was a markedly cold glaze over his eye and it would've startled Zack had it been any other circumstance. "A lot of young soldiers as well young Turks come with fanciful visions of what must be like. They soon learn, that it is more than hearts stopping, bloody running everywhere..." Tseng leaned his chin against his fingers, "It can seem...surreal. You might sometimes see yourself."
"Myself?"
"You know as they are dying, that it is something you will do eventually, and could do at the moment, just as easily. The gore and bones always disappoint, but you'll remember the sound of it, the smell. It can also depend upon who it is, someone you don't know can be just like passing a stranger on the street, but if it is someone you know, even love...you'll see things you wouldn't normally, maybe the beat of their breath, the way the eyes look." Tseng stopped. Zack was looking into his eyes. There was awe, and something like disgust that made Tseng exhale and look away.
He almost wanted to say, you knew, you had to always know, that I did these things.
"But that isn't all, is it?" Tseng asked. Zack swallowed and nodded. "Ask it." He said and Zack looked up at him, the image of conflict.
"What does it feel like...to kill someone?"
On the way back to the ShinRa compound, a light rain began to start. Zack walked in step with him, quieter than he'd ever heard him. It was eerie, and he could see the dark hulking shape of the compound in the distance. Zack stopped.
"What if...what if I just didn't go back."
"Zack."
"I could right now, right? Couldn't I?" Tseng stood in front of him, said nothing, for they both knew the truth to that. Tseng could no sooner leave the Turks then Zack could leave his title or dreams behind.
"You wouldn't even if you could, you know that."
"Yeah? What do you know, maybe I'm not-"
"I know you're from the northern county of Gongaga, where the medicinal plant phasmatis sermovas grows exclusively," Tseng said and Zack looked up suddenly, "I know you are approximately five foot eleven, you broke all the fingers of your right hand at thirteen," Zack looked totally aghast, "that you are blood type O, the universal giver," Tseng was beginning to have one of those rare moments, "and that you'd never run, even if it was the wisest thing to do."
"Tseng." Zack closed in on his space and his gut reaction was to step back, but Zack made up for that, extra steps slapping on the wet ground. Zack put his arms around him, and he smelled like salt and standard military issue shampoo. Tseng didn't embrace him back. But when the soldier moved his face in a slick slide of cheeks, to be close enough to his face for him to smell the sweet of the beer, Tseng did close in the space between them, he did kiss Zack's open mouth, feel his tongue against his teeth.
Tseng doesn't know how they found the alley, just that Zack's jacket flew and curled over a garbage can, and his shoes kept sliding against the wet ground when Zack started tearing through to his shirt, started kissing trails he could barely feel in the rain, but it was fine just to feel ghosts of them as thunder sounded off overhead, as he was breathless, and he needed this like his suit, gun and the blood on his hands. Zack's eyes were an electric green in the shadowed place they leaned into and against eachother, and though his nails were cut below his actual fingers, he had fingernails full of back and shoulder when his pants came down and Zack turned him around against the wall, and fucked him so hard, he couldn't make a sound.
He had never been so reckless.
He had never been so out of control, and he knew he never would be again as Zack was leaning over and licking the line of his spine, biting his ear, and saying in broken sounds that he needed it too. And Tseng couldn't see but even through the rain it sounded like Zack was sobbing behind him, but it was nothing he could do anything about. When he came, his hair had become loose, and lightening was still firing bright over head. Zack bucked him hard against the wall, and he saw stars.
He yelled out in the rain, and then stilled. Tseng looked back to see that he was looking forward at the ShinRa complex, which stood now like a steel behemoth against the sky. It was there, watching them.
After that, Tseng saw Zack very little. News of Angeal's death came some weeks later, and very shortly, Sephiroth, the final and most crucial part of the foundation, headed out on a lift towards Nibelhelm. He knew the case as intimately as his own personal thoughts. He'd been over it over and over. Sephiroth, Zack and a few privates had supposedly met their end there. But he felt different, even now standing at the window, he'd known that wasn't it.
He can't say if he's happy Zack and the private he's carrying around are alive. He knows at this moment there is a battalion headed towards them, and he knows he was right that night in the rain. It's just who Zack is, and he'd never run, even if it was the wisest thing to do. He would head straight in, fight, even if he knew he'd die trying.
Looking out passed the sinking empire, Tseng turns away from the window and lets his hair down. It's is long now. He thinks he prefers it that way.
Author's Note: Holy hell, this was kind of cathartic writing. I've never had a plot come into my heads like and been able to get it out so soon! I'm also kind of nervous because I'm uncertain how to approach Tseng's character, but I hope it was okay. And I also hope this developed alright. As always, I wanna hear what you think!