haymaker
Tseng slithers out of the white habutai robe, tightens the straps of his gloves around his wrists, stalks onto the sprung floor. Reno stares at the crumpled fabric lying like a cast skin on the chair, looks around the dimly-lit basement room, shrugs his shoulders, follows.
This is the boss's preference. Things get bad, and it's time to drop a plumb line down Shinra HQ, to go down the spiraling stair, get way under the ground floor, into Goombah Basement: which Tseng has commandeered, retrofitted. It's not the Turks' clubhouse anymore, it's a bunker for one man, an intensely private space. Reno figures the rest of the top nuts get up to worse, a lot worse, when they blow off steam; Tseng doesn't bury people down here, just beats the hell out of them, and he doesn't hit just anyone. As far as Reno can tell, only a few people have ever been handed the key, expected to show, only just a few: some tiny handful of people who can stand up to him, who can fight.
After the first couple of bouts Reno got wise and slipped quarter rolls into his Protect gloves. Stuff that got broken down in the Basement was never too serious, but Reno figures he deserves the advantage. After all, Eric Tseng is a whole-body fighter, there's no special attack to cultivate, no Tseng-specific trick, no fatal flaw. Just punches that land where Tseng has a mind to put them, and a man gets tired of being knocked down.
Tseng took the pocket change on a cheekbone, that one night, and didn't bother to mako down the bruise.
Reno, stripped now to gray sweats and soft shoes and hard gloves, figures he has tried a lot of stuff, trying to figure out what the fuck is going on with his boss in the Basement. He has tried snarling, self-righteous anger. When that failed, he tried acting bored, and after that he tried manic, and manic almost works—a slightly stupid, slightly psycho giggle, for instance, will turn Tseng's crank, make him lunge like maybe a fractional moment faster than he should and give Reno a margin, a skinny-assed margin that he usually cedes with a dumbfuck mistake on follow-up, but a margin nonetheless.
Even though there's been no serious damage, not just as of yet, Reno never assumes he won't come out of the Basement on a stretcher.
Tseng is already up on the floor, gets right on him. Reno discards all the frills from his dodge, gets himself another one of those skinny margins, feels the blow graze his ear. Rolls out of the way to get a second to breathe, pivots on one foot and lashes out with the other. Tseng catches only part of the blow.
"Your hair is down," Reno observes. Tseng doesn't answer, closes the distance. Reno dodges just enough to clear the sudden fist.
"A nice look," Reno says.
Tseng chocks him in the temple with a potent left.
"You wear it like that," Reno says, when he can speak, "when you have sex?"
Tseng makes a twisted face, almost a smile.
"You a top," Reno asks, trying out the new angle, "or a bottom?"
The fist whips straight into his midriff and there is no dodge and no roll. He's on all fours, trying to breathe.
"Hey, man," he wheezes. He feels Tseng pacing around to his right, waiting for him to get to his feet. "It's cool with me. I don't care. I'm ecumenical. I think people should experiment. You ever try it on the bottom, Eric?"
The air changes around them, and Reno gets it. It's the intimacy of his first name: Reno gets it, sees it clear, the idea shiny and haloed like a headlight in the Midgar dark. That's what he needs.
"Eric," he whispers, and takes the kick.
"Come on, Eric," he says, on his back.
"Get up," Tseng says.
"Get me up," Reno whispers, his eyes never leaving Tseng's. He tries the split and tender edge of his lip with his tongue.
"Fuck you," Tseng says.
"You don't have the nerve," Reno says then, "to fuck me."
"Get up!"
"Eric," Reno breathes, "I think you want to fuck me. Or maybe," and Tseng is pale, he's white, "you are trying to fish around for a way to ask me to fuck you. Am I, you know, close?"
"Get off the floor," Tseng says.
He is close. Reno feels it.
"Sure, Eric," Reno says, taking care to enunciate. "I get it. It's not easy asking a guy to pop your cherry." And he's on his feet, and Tseng has flung himself right where Reno just was, and when he slews around, Reno is standing stock still across from him on the floor, grinning.
Then the grin goes away, like Reno has flipped a switch.
"I'll do it," he says, "exactly how you want it, Eric."
The next blow, on the other side of his head, sends him across the floor. There's a smear of blood where he hits the ground and slides.
It takes awhile to get up, this time.
Reno sees a half-finished wave of stars; it hangs, waits, in his left eye.
"Beautiful," he murmurs.
Tseng hits him again.
"You're beautiful. You're God's fucking gift. Anything you want, man. You just ask. You're beautiful, Eric," Reno whispers.
Tseng, flexing his hands spasmodically, shuts his eyes, and Reno, grabbing his skinny margin with both hands, gets inside his guard. He closes his fist around the quarters and lands a haymaker that puts and keeps Eric Tseng on the floor.
It's quiet for a second. Droplets of blood and sweat between them on the floor.
"You," Tseng gasps, "are a fucking fool."
Reno, reeling backwards, grins a little, bloody.