At some point, Tseng, Reno and Cissnei had decided it was too hot in Tseng's apartment and so here the three of them sat on the floor around the glass table with their white collared shirts unbuttoned. Cissnei's black lace bra peeked out of her unbuttoned shirt. All three of them were on top of the world; three lines of blow would do that to anyone.
"Cissnei, Cissnei…I'm gonna ask you somethin' and you have to tell me the truth because I'm your friend, and the boss is sittin' right there…and ya' can't lie to the boss." Reno said taking a drink of red wine.
"Okay." Cissnei answered him.
"Is it true…that you…fucked Zack Fair?" Reno asked. Cissnei smiled.
"Yes, it's true." She answered him. Reno laughed in delight.
"Oooh my god, that's...the greatest thing I've heard tonight. Well done Cissnei, well done. You're…the coolest girl I've ever met in my life." Reno said.
"Where did you hear that from?" Cissnei wondered taking another drink of wine.
"You're queen of the SOLDIER floor now, just so you know. I heard it from Angeal Hewley." He said. That was probably the last thing on earth Tseng wanted to talk about right now but nonetheless Reno just had to know everything.
"Well, I have a question for you Reno." Cissnei said. "When are me and Tseng going to meet this girl you've been seeing?"
"Well hmm…whenever you want I guess. Things have been going really well." Reno said.
"Have you slept with her yet?" Cissnei asked.
"No." Reno answered laughing at her.
"Call her. We want to hear what she sounds like." Tseng said emptying his wine glass.
"Yes! Call her now! We want to hear if she sounds hot!" Cissnei said.
"Oh, she's hot." Reno said.
"Wait, wait, wait, wait….wait…is she 1st floor phone operator hot…or Cissnei hot?" Tseng asked.
"Boss, do you realize you just said wait five times and…and you called your subordinate hot in the same sentence? It's okay though, you've had three lines of snow, two glasses of Chardonnay and a glass and a half of red wine. She's not Cissnei hot…she's…lemme think." Reno stared at the ceiling and thought a moment. "She's like…hot waitress hot."
"Call her." Tseng said.
"Do it!" Cissnei insisted refilling Tseng's glass with red wine again. She proceeded to do the same with her own glass and Reno's glass.
"Fine, but you two can't say stuff and she can't know we're sittin' here trippin' on blow. She doesn't know we do drugs sometimes but I swear I'm gonna tell her soon." Reno said getting his phone out. He dialed her number and laid his phone down on the table. "Hey, it's me." He said. Cissnei and Tseng listened carefully. Tseng's phone vibrated briefly on the floor. How it got there in the first place was a mystery, it must have fallen out of his jacket pocket when he took his jacket off. He grabbed it to see who it was. It was a text message from Rude. Tseng laughed at it trying to silence himself but handed his phone to Cissnei. She too had to keep herself from laughing at it. Cissnei showed it to Reno. It read: IS RENO SNORTING COKE WITH YOU? Reno laughed silently and texted him back.
"Why don't you have text messaging?" Tseng asked Cissnei.
"I do." Cissnei said.
"Since when?" Tseng asked.
"Since…I don't know like…three months ago?" Cissnei said with question in her voice. Reno was having a conversation with Rude and his girlfriend simultaneously. Reno could text faster than just about anyone and Rude was slower than anyone.
"Do you think she sounds hot?" Cissnei asked. Tseng shook his head.
"She sounds like one of the phone operators that works for Shinra." He said.
"I was thinking she sounded like a librarian's assistant." Cissnei said.
"Where do you get the assistant part?" Tseng wondered.
"She doesn't sound smart enough to be the librarian so she has to be the assistant." Cissnei said.
"Oh…okay." Tseng said still trying to completely figure out Cissnei's logic. Reno threw Tseng's phone back to him as he continued his other conversation. Reno pointed at it for Tseng to look at the screen. It read: DO YOU WANT TO MEET ME DOWNTOWN TONIGHT? Tseng looked over at Cissnei. He hadn't replied yet. She didn't know he was looking at her. He replied to Rude: NOT TONIGHT. Reno hung up with his girlfriend shortly thereafter.
"Well, there she was." Reno said putting his phone away again.
"How did you meet this girl?" Cissnei asked.
"She lives in Rude's building so I met her through him." Reno explained.
"So, are you gonna go meet him with me?" Reno asked Tseng referring to the text message.
"Uh…no." Tseng said.
"Are you goin'?" Reno asked pointing at Cissnei.
"I don't even know what the fuck you're talking about, sooooo no." Cissnei answered.
"He sent you a message like…twelve seconds ago." Reno said.
"Do you realize that my phone is in my jacket and I took my jacket off somewhere and I'm not going to go looking for it right now?" Cissnei said.
"Oh yeah, hey…all three of our jackets are in a pile right there. You know, she's coming with me to the regatta." Reno said.
"She is? That's great." Tseng said.
"The what?" Cissnei asked.
"The regatta!" Reno said again.
"What regatta?" Cissnei questioned.
"Oooh shit…I kinda'…haven't told you about that. President Shinra is being honored and the Turks…okay well mainly me…have been responsible for planning the event. The budget for this bitch is 500,000 gil and it's at the Seven Seasons hotel in three weeks. I only have some minor details to wrap up." Tseng explained nervously.
"Let me get this straight…Tseng…there's a huge fuckin' party in three weeks to honor Rufus Shinra with a budget of half a million gil that you have been planning…and I don't know shit about it? Do you realize how much I could have helped you with this?" Cissnei scolded him.
"Don't feel bad Cissnei, the only thing he let me do was put the champagne order in. Rufus has to have the best and boss, I have no doubt that you're gonna' give it to him. Hey, I'm gonna' go. I'm meeting Rude downtown. It's been fun. I should…button my shirt." Reno said doing so and then picking out his coat from this pile of three. Cissnei was still a bit pissed over the fact that Tseng hadn't said a word to her about this regatta but she was also glad it didn't turn in to Reno wondering why Tseng hadn't said anything to her.
"Bye Reno, don't snort anymore coke tonight."Cissnei cautioned him.
"Yeah, see you Monday, Reno. Thanks for coming by." Tseng said as Reno put his jacket back on.
"Sure thing. Shit…my head is…wow. Bye, guys." Reno said closing the front door behind him. This would have been an excellent time for a lot of tense silence to occur between Tseng and Cissnei but it didn't. They could have moved from the floor where they still sat but neither of them offered to budge. There was a little bit of wine left in the bottle. As Cissnei sat there watching Tseng with snowed under eyes she knew that a situation was occurring...It just hadn't happened yet and Cissnei couldn't predict how it would play out. Coke was a different kind of high. There was no lapse in judgment here...okay maybe a little...but not much. That was the beauty of cocaine, the way it made you invincible yet preserved your rational and logical side. Not even two bottles of wine split between three could interfere with the flawlessness that was a cocaine binge. Cissnei was ready to get this conversation moving in the direction that it desperately needed to go.
"Why did you tell me that you felt filthy?" Cissnei asked turning sideways and swirling a small amount of red around in her glass. Her shirt was still completely unbuttoned and both she and Tseng had kind of forgotten about doing that.
"Because it's wrong." Tseng answered her. Cissnei put her elbow against the front cushions of the couch and moved herself away from him; letting her head rest in her palm. Now she was more beautiful than ever, with her white collared shirt pulled slightly open by the force of her elbow, the edge of her tie dangling toward her lace covered breast and holding a wine glass. SHe frantically swirled the purple liquid around.
"What's so wrong about it? I work with Zack too you know, so you can't use work as an excuse...boss." her adding that title to the end of her sentence sent chills all over Tseng.
"No, no it's not that...it's not work." Tseng said still making a conscious effort to keep his eyes off her.
"Well then, what makes you...so damn filthy?" Cissnei asked having no idea how he would answer this. Tseng reached for the wine bottle and poured the last of it in his glass. He finally turned sideways and looked at Cissnei. He didn't say anything for a minute, it was as if he had to rehearse it or remind himself of what the question was.
"I'm thirty-four...I...am thirty-four years old. You...you...are twenty-four. You see now? Better run, girl." Tseng said closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. Cissnei was confused as hell and she knew it wasn't the cocaine doing it to her.
"No, no I...I don't get it Tseng...what are you saying?" she asked.
"It's filthy...that me...a man halfway in to my thirties is desperately attracted to you...a woman who is six years from thirty. It's wrong..." Tseng said. Cissnei couldn't believe that was his excuse.
"What the hell, Tseng! Yeah, you're thirty-four! Big fuckin' deal! What the...you...you're...that's not even old! That's nowhere close to being old! You talk like I'm sixteen and you're the creepy fifty-year-old perv that gets off in the high school parking lot after cheerleading practice lets out! That's why you feel filthy? Because you're thirty-four and I'm twenty-four! Shit, and to think I was bracing myself for some kind of...I don't know...some sort of actual filth. I shouldn't put it that way though, it sounds like it was really bothering you." Cissnei said. That was just the beginning though. That may have been why Tseng felt filthy but what about everything else? What about everything he had told her? They hadn't gotten to that part yet.
"You...don't think me being ten years older than you is a big deal?" Tseng asked her.
"No." Cissnei took a drink of her wine as she studied Tseng's expression. It was part relief, part sincere trust, and part cocaine rush. "Tell me...boss...do you not think a younger woman being with an older man has a certain sexiness to it? A kind of danger that...in your mind...seems forbidden when in fact it's not. You know maybe...boss...what you really feel filthy about is power. You...associate power with age...the older you get the more power you get. Well, now here you are confronted with a young girl...underneath you...we'll say...who has accumulated almost as much power as the man on top of her and that excites you to think that a woman is mature enough beyond her years to earn that kind of power in a male dominated workplace. That's what it is Tseng...it's not the fuckin' number...power turns you on. And you feel filthy when you think about how much power this twenty-four-year-old has." Cissnei finished. The tone of her voice was serious and almost seductive. "That about right...boss?" she said. He looked as if he were about to faint. Cissnei reached out and put her wine glass on the table. In doing this she moved closer to him even though he hadn't said a word yet. It was okay, Cissnei had a handle on this.
"Did you know...I also have the power to come on to you first right now? It's okay though...I think you'd like it that way." Cissnei said. She plucked his wine glass from his hand and sat it on the table beside hers before carefully putting one hand on his shoulder; pushing him backward slightly. She crawled her way onto his lap, putting her other hand on his opposite shoulder. Her touch was soft and reassuring. It was as if every inhibition Tseng felt were somehow instantly set free because he didn't hesitate to put his arms around her and pull her lips into his. It was a kiss that was soft at first but turned very hot very fast. Blame cocaine? Maybe…but maybe not. He had longed to hold her up against him like this, to let his hands get lost in her hair this way. Cissnei never dreamed in a hundred years that she would like this the way she did. She wished he would tear her clothes off and have his way with her right there on his dark walnut stained floors. Maybe the thrill of being with her boss was getting to her. She could taste experience in his tongue as black lace rubbed against bare skin. She pushed her hands underneath his shirt, working it off his shoulders and down his arms. The floor was cold and so Cissnei broke their intense kiss to get him to the couch above. It was a divine opportunity to shed her own shirt before pinning the boss underneath her again.
She loved the way Tseng touched her; hands of skill running up and down her back and to her hips. Cissnei found herself silently begging for him to unhook her bra. She didn't take the time to question why she wanted her superior so badly right now. It was different than the feeling of how badly she had wanted Zack. This was like…a strange fruit that you didn't realize you liked until you tasted it. She gasped slightly as she got her wish, feeling her bra come loose. She squirmed to get her straps off her shoulders as she began to move her lips down his neck, down his chest, lower…and lower as she pulled her hands in a trail behind her. Cissnei sat up and dropped her bra on Tseng's chest. She had never seen his dark brown eyes plead like that. She let her hands travel down his chest, shoving her bra to the floor. She let her fingertips tease the edge of his pants unhooking his belt in one motion. Her eyes burned into his as she tugged on the sides of his pants. Tseng watched as she licked her lips but then gasped at what she did next. She didn't hesitate to blow the boss.
