Disclaimer: Still not mine, damn it all.


I wonder if it was a dream
Remember how you made me crazy?
Remember how I made you scream
Now I don't understand what happened to our love
But babe, I'm gonna get you back
I'm gonna show you what I'm made of –Don Henley, Boys of Summer


"Thank all of you for actually showing up, not that it's a challenge when the meeting is here." Tseng rather had a point. Even Reno followed along when the destination was Costa del Sol. "I trust everyone's rooms were satisfactory?"

"Oh yeah, nice digs, yo. Though not all of us have a rich boyfriend to upgrade to a suite." He pointed a good natured glare at his partner.

Rude grunted. "Yeah, a townhouse suite. Sometime yesterday afternoon, we caught on that when you're downstairs, what you want is upstairs and when you're upstairs, what you want is downstairs."

"Bathroom?" Elena looked horrified.

"Nope, two of those."

"Oh, thank Gaia! But I'm sure my makeup would always be in the wrong one."

The men in the room shared a baffled look before Rude stated, "But our view is awesome. The lagoon."

"Fuck you, man. We got a rooftop and some maintenance shaft."

"Another building tower, here." Tseng visibly recalculated the worth of his position before going on with the meeting, and sighed. "Now, before going on with the usual team building exercise crap that we all dread and which usually ends with Reno booby-trapping something, I actually have something serious and useful to put on the table." Three sets of ears perked up around the table and whatever defense the red-head was about to offer died on his lips.

"Don't look like you're being chastised, Reno. For once, you're about to be recognized for effort applied to something besides being a pain in the ass. What Elena is passing out now is an outline of former cold cases. I say former because they have been reactivated by the President.

"They are members of the now defunct Science Research Division, men and women directly associated with the experiments on human subjects led by Professor Hojo. They are, to our knowledge, still at large. In the files you will find photographs if they existed, computer-aged to present day, and all aliases. Reno and Elena put this together out of their unhealthy fascination with archival files and it rather grew from there, so Rude, you may thank them if this vacation ends up being actual work. However, I plan to see to it that work waits for us back in Edge."

"Thank you sir." He attempted a glare at his partner but couldn't really pull it off. Motivation was hard to come by when the sun was shining outside and, as their director had pointed out, this really could wait.

"Well, that will be all. I don't want to keep you past lunch as I am sure your friends and families are waiting for you. I'll see you all back here in the morning, I trust?" He cast a particularly significant look at Elena.

"Sir, that incident with the Hand Grenade drinks last year will not be repeated, I assure you."

"It had best not. Tomorrow then. Rude, a moment?"

"You're in trouble now, partner!" Reno teased as he practically ran out of the room, eager to hit the beach or, more likely, the closest tropical bar.

"Sir?"

"I've already discussed this with Reno but I wanted to speak to you as well. If Vincent wants to volunteer on this we would consider his help invaluable, but I do not wish to cause him undue stress. He has been through enough and I for one do not wish to be part of ShinRa adding to his suffering. I will let you be the judge of whether or not to even bring it up."

Rude nodded, only slightly surprised. "I will consider it."

"Good. Now, enjoy the rest of your day. We have meetings tomorrow, don't forget, and then the rest of the week off."


"So what happened with the hand grenades, Laney?"

"It's some drink at a bar down the street. It's green and has four ounces of rum. I drank four of them and had the cups strung around my neck...well, I decided to make sure I didn't miss the next morning's meeting by getting dressed in my suit the night before and sleeping in the meeting room. Only, I didn't take the cups off. And slept on the table so I didn't get my suit wrinkled." The Director only shook his head at the memory.

"Haaaaaaaaaaaa! And he goes on like I'm the big actor!"

"Well Reno,"she said as she pulled out her cast iron chair at the patio bar. "I did sleep in the conference room to make sure I'd keep my meeting. That shows some dedication, even drunk."

"Speaking of drunk, who's up for Hussong's Parlor after this? They open at two."

Hands went up around the table. "What's at Hussong's?" Vincent asked.

"Eighty-nine kinds of the finest tequila on the planet," Reno answered.

"Well." His boss corrected. "More like about fifty decent tequilas, ten bottles of bottom shelf swill, and twenty varieties of pure distilled bliss, but that is simply my opinion based on previous visits."

"Secret is, you drink the good stuff first, then the decent stuff, then you don't notice the swill, yo."

"Which is why, as Elena was passed out at work already dressed for the next day with souvenir glasses strung around her neck, you were emptying said swill into the trash can via your stomach outside the hotel in the previous evening's clothing. Perhaps you should bypass Hussong's."

"Or save it till a non-school night."

"Or so, Reno."

"You love us, boss."

"Don't push it."


It was morning.

Vincent curled into the overstuffed, comfortable bed in their rental. "Mmm, it's kind of nice."

"Except for the upstairs, downstairs thing." This time it was the coffee they were sipping which had required an extra trip, it's rich roasted aroma filling the room and which Rude had just brought up; by some agreement they had reached, it was his turn. Rude sat on the edge of the bed and looked out the window. All of the fashionable district of Costa lay out before them, the lagoon sparkling in the background. It was a stunning view.

But not so much as the one inside. Vincent lay back in the damask covers, long hair spread around him like spidersilk. His worn t shirt might as well have been a gentleman of leisure's silk pajamas from the way he wore it; everything he did was touched with an old world elegance and beauty that Rude found himself unable to completely blame on his age. "What?" he purred around the rim of his coffee cup.

Rude slipped back between the covers with his own coffee. "Nothing. Just have some time before I get ready. How are you feeling?"

"Good. I slept well."

"I noticed. Blanket hog. Plans for the day?"

"Thought I'd join Cloud for a ride down the coast while you and the other Turks are in meetings. This morning Tifa is dropping Marlene off here and we're having cocoa in the lobby while we wait for Barret to pick her up. What...what are you doing?" he asked suspiciously. Rude had put his own cup on the nightstand and was trying to pry Vincent's out of his hand. It was never an advisable task with a caffeine addicted expert marksman, and he wasn't having any luck besides.

Giving up, he slipped his hand under the covers and started to stroke Vincent through his pajama pants instead.

Vincent put down his coffee. Laughing, he burrowed deeper into the covers and nuzzled into Rude's neck, wrapping his legs around his waist. "Now this...this is really nice."

"I'll give you nice." Rude kissed him, deep and long and by the time it was done he was aching with arousal, rubbing up into Rude's hip and biting back on a moan. A warm, calloused hand pulled at his shirt and he let it be yanked off him, then Rude was rubbing under the waistband of his pants, and then just as quickly, the pants were gone as well.

Finally, flesh met heated flesh in the warm bed covers and both men groaned. Rude ran his warm hand down Vincent's slender, muscular side and cupped one rounded buttock, pulling him in closer. "Oh gods, Rude..."

"Yeah." They went back to kissing, the sound of their lips and tongues meeting the only sound in the room. Rude broke away for one agonizing moment to open the bedside drawer and his lover collapsed in a disappointed moan into the pillows beside him. "Hush, you."

If Vincent had a response, it was only to thrust up against Rude's thigh as the man tried to stretch and prepare him. He wasn't going to last long and he didn't care, he knew he wasn't alone in that respect. "Now," he whispered, sounding rough to his own ears.

Rude nodded and pressed into him as slowly as their desire for each other would allow and he felt it almost too much, but it was so good, he threw his head back into the pillow as hard as he could and ground his teeth on a moan. Rude pulled nearly out and then thrust back in, hard. He was so close. "Fuck, you're tight," he heard Rude grunt before his motions became jerky and irregular. Rude grasped his hips hard enough to leave bruises, and it was all he knew before ecstasy claimed him without even having been touched.

He turned his head to see his lover, panting and sated. "Damn, babe, you okay?" Rude's face was painted with nearly comical concern. Well, it had been a little...quick.

He ran his flesh hand over a series of rings in his lover's ear and chuckled dryly, wincing a little as he pulled away to get a cloth to clean them. "I'll live. It was worth it. Maybe I'll put off the riding tour until tomorrow, though."

He leaned back and was just starting to drowse when Rude bolted upright. "Shit, I'm almost late. Only two meetings but gotta be there." He ran to the bathroom, then out again and was dressed, leaning over the bed for a quick kiss.

"Love you."

"Love you too." And he was gone, Vincent reflecting that no one could go from post-coital nudity to clothed and out the door faster than Rude. It was probably the no-hair thing. Grumbling, he got up and dressed himself, though more slowly. He flipped the comforter and sheets back up—he loathed the sight of an unmade bed—and after leaning back on it to answer a few emails for Reeve, he prepared for the rest of his day.


"It's such a pretty townhouse!" Marlene twirled about the staircase, still having a young child's fascination with such things, and ran upstairs. "You can see FOREVER up here!"

"Child, you can see exactly the same thing you can down in the living room; it is only one floor higher. Though, while you are upstairs, could you bring down the coffee cups so I can rinse them? Maid service is not until late this afternoon and I will likely need more coffee before then." Smiling, she trotted back down the spiral staircase with a mug in each hand, and passed them to Vincent at the sink.

"Remember when you saved me in the fountain when I was little?"

Vincent smiled. At nearly ten, the girl was hardly ancient, but she was often wiser than her years. "I did not save you. The fountain was barely a foot deep, though I admit I did not know that at the time, and you were a rather tall six year old." It had not stopped him from tearing in after her, brass footwear and all, under the sheer terror that Barret's daughter would meet her death by drowning in the obsidian fountain outside the ShinRa Health Center under his watch. "As I recall, the only saving I did was to lie to your father and tell him you fell in, and not jumped in, so that he would not be angry about your new shoes. You still owe me."

"Does Dad know about Uncle Rude?"

He stood staring at her, agape. "Just what do you know about Uncle Rude?"

"You said he was here earlier, and both coffee cups were still warm. And he probably wasn't up there for the view."

Fuck all for Tifa letting her hang out at the bar so much. And the last thing he really wanted, especially on vacation, was an endless litany of Turk jokes from Barret. "We're even on the shoes, child. Let's go wait on your father."


"Cloud is on board." Reno stirred his over-sugared concoction of a coffee, his eyes a little cold and vengeful.

"Didn't talk to Vincent. Hasn't been feeling well and I'm trying to let him enjoy his vacation while he can."

"Anything we can do, partner?"

"No, it's the migraines. Says it wasn't a problem till after Deepground. There was a lot of damage that Hojo did, Chaos and the Protomateria kept him going but now things are falling apart. Drugs can only do so much and it's up to him to rest and take care of himself."

"Oh yeah, Cloud speaks that language about as well. Yanno...not at all. Good luck. He gets the same speech from the docs, rest, eat right, don't stare at the computer screen without glasses, take breaks, drink lots of water, coffee and half a danish is not breakfast." Reno picked up his pastry and washed it down with the rest of his coffee, not a trace of irony in his voice as he did so. "Uphill battle. I feel ya."

Rude chuckled, knowing there was as much chance of changing his partner as there was his lover and wondering, not for the first time, if complete intractability was a requirement in Turk recruiting. It wouldn't surprise him.

Tseng cleared his throat and put an end to Rude's reflections for the time being. "Picking up from where we left off yesterday. We have also brought the WRO and their operatives in on this, though in the interests of preserving the confidentiality of the known living victims, only those in this room know the identity of the patient numbers I have just given you. There are only two of them. Memorize them and hand them back to me to be destroyed by the end of the meeting."

Rude looked down at the paper with a deathly chill. It contained, as his director said, two lines.

Cloud Strife 21682000247254

Vincent Valentine 21682000228486

He instantly committed them to memory and handed back the paper. Tseng went on, "These were the tracking numbers they were assigned when they 'entered' the labs and so any information that we find in archived files will likely be associated with those numbers. We will use them for the sake of simplicity when relaying information."

"But only we will know if..."

"Yes. Their secrets will rest with us. And if anyone is alive still, they will pay dearly for what they have done." Elena squeezed both their hands sympathetically but Reno still looked a little pale and Rude could not shake the image of the slender, dark haired man he had left resting comfortably in the bedcovers that morning, blissfully unaware.


When they met for lunch, Cloud and Vincent were still with Barret and Marlene, the latter two having decided to stay in the city and go shopping. Marlene was babbling about her new outfits while Vincent just shrugged. "I ordered the same thing I usually do and had it shipped back to the suite."

"Did you go for a ride, babe?" Reno asked as he leaned in for a kiss from Cloud.

"A short one. We got a late start and then Barret and Marlene wanted to come with us so we made it a group city outing. Marlene had never been down to the fish market."

"It stunk!" They all laughed and ordered their lunches, mostly fish, and wine.

"Did you have a nice day?" Rude asked when they had a quiet moment.

Vincent nodded. "Hectic but nice. Nothing went according to plan, of course, it never does. Marlene is on to us and is temporarily blackmailing me."

"Great. Only a matter of time before I get death threats from Barret. Cid is the one that scares me, though."

"Cid? Why?"

"He's your best friend, he's your oldest friend, he carries around a sharpened phallic symbol taller than he is and has no problem killing me with it if you show up with so much as a hair out of place. And he doesn't like Turks. Thank Gaia he lives on another continent." Truth was, he was only half kidding. If he really examined it, he wasn't sure he was kidding at all. "And don't act like it's no big deal, you were scared to tell him too."

"Not scared. It was merely an awkward conversation. What's in the file?" He nodded at the folder on the table.

"Another awkward conversation. We'll talk about it after lunch." Vincent gave him the kind of nod that said yes, we damn sure will, as their food arrived and they all turned their attention toward eating.


"So, what's in the file?" The door hadn't even shut behind them.

"All right, I didn't want to say anything in front of Marlene, especially, but also because it's classified info to anyone that isn't a high level Turk or a surviving victim of the Science Research Division."

"Basically, me, Cloud, you, Reno, Tseng, Elena."

"Yes. Anyone else, the info will be severely filtered when they know at all, and they don't yet."

"So what is it?"

"Anyone that had anything to do with the Science Research Division's experimentation on humans, if we don't have proof of a body, it is no longer a cold case. What you are holding is a very well organized and cross referenced list of anyone who may be alive that had anything, anything at all to do with Hojo. And they are now classified as war criminals."

"And they want my help?"

"It would be handy but by no means expected. Tseng made that very clear. You have to volunteer for this, no one is even asking."

Vincent sat down at the kitchen bar and opened the cover. Rude shut it. "Think about this, Vin. You could be opening up..."

"I could be opening up the chance to bring the bastards to justice who tortured me, and Cloud, for years of my life, Rude. I'd like to open this folder now."

Rude moved his hand.

A few minutes later, Vincent shook his head. "I'm sorry. I guess I was just too much of a peon to really get out much. One guy looks familiar but the rest...maybe they were in other labs, or too high up."

"Who looks familiar?"

Vincent pointed. "Enrico Belzec, Grants Manager."

"Held the purse strings for Hojo. Sounds pretty lofty to know a low level Turk like you," Rude teased.

"Maybe he pinched my ass at some cocktail party?"

"Who knows, I'll let Tseng know you recognized him." He drew Vincent into a loose hug. "Enough work, we have the rest of the week off. Wanna hit the pool for a bit?"

"Sounds good. You don't have to be back until Monday?"

"Nope."

"I'd like to hit more than the pool."

"We can work that out."

Rude put the folder in his suitcase, where it lay forgotten, buried in memory and dreams until events called it forth.