"All struggles are essentially power struggles. Who will rule? Who will lead? Who will define, refine, confine, design? Who will dominate? All struggles are essentially power struggles, and most are no more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads together."~ Octavia Butler
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Tseng lingers in the candy aisle, waiting for the line of old people to shrink and the sound of bags shifting over the counter to stop. The beeps of the cash register in sync with the faint pulsation in his ears. Pressure builds up in his throat. No one knows this about Tseng, but he can be a bit of a nervous wreck when it comes to things he cares about. He cares a lot about Veld. The thought of him dying gives him the shakes and the shits. Veld's death is scarier than his own.
He peaks around the aisle when the last old man waddles away with his bag of prescriptions. Felicia has her back to him behind the plexiglass window. She is muttering something to one of the pharmacy techs.
A little longer he waits. Another unknown fact about Tseng—he can be quite lustful. Unlike Rufus, his desire is crippling, which is why he doesn't engage in the intimacy olympics. His tastes are oddly specific. He likes clear coated manicures. Clean fingernails. A certain type of blouse, hip to waist ratio, and straight teeth. Real straight teeth, not veneers.
The pharmacy tech nods and Felicia looks over her shoulder, with an inscrutable, mean face. Tseng's penis hardens. He especially likes his women unfriendly. Felicia is all the things he admires and wants in a person. When he walks up to the plexiglass, she pops her blue bubblegum loudly, flattening her palms on the counter. The beads and charms on her bracelet tinkle against the surface. A heavy set of keys dangle from the loops in her pinstripe pants.
"You couldn't wait outside?" Felicia smacks on her gum, her jaws working violently. She has a pixie-like face. Vulpine yet unwelcoming. Tseng rolls his tongue around in his wet mouth.
"Dogs wait outside." Tseng replies flatly, controlling his profound attraction. It strengthens over time. Felicia doesn't even like him. Somehow this simple truth is the key ingredient.
"That's what you are. A dog." Felicia snips. She has a beauty mark under her right eye.
Tseng rubs his chin. Their relationship (barely) is sporadic in nature. Tseng trusts Rufus enough to not fuck him over, but Rufus is unreasonably possessive when it comes to their partnership. Tseng has to be sterile and sexless on the surface. Otherwise, Rufus wouldn't allow him peace. He starts to sweat behind his ears.
Do you even remember your first love—Rufus had asked.
Tseng has never loved anyone on purpose. He understands Rufus' temperament because he has similar violent reactions to betrayal.
My first love is you—Rufus had said. Tseng didn't think it was all that fair to put that sort of burden on someone.
Felicia always regards him with voyeuristic rage because he got more out of her father than he deserved. This is a fact Tseng won't negate. Tseng knows Veld better than she will ever be able to and he'd done nothing to warrant Veld as a father figure.
"We close in fifteen minutes." She turns and walks away from the counter. Her keys jingle against her hip, her gait rhythmic. She runs her fingers through her short hair. The dark strands sprouted around her fingers. Tseng is struck with anxiety.
When she meets him outside, she has a bottle of cola in her hand and an unlit cigarette between her lips. She has her flats tucked under an arm as she struts towards him in pointy-toed six inch heels.
"What's the occasion?" Tseng wants her to approve of him badly.
She still wears her wrinkle-free white coat. The pharmacy sigil on the left sleeve.
"A free meal and hopefully getting laid." Felicia struggles to light her cigarette. Tseng doesn't act out of obligation to Veld. Felicia looks nothing like her father. He suspects the soft parts of her features belong to her mother. Veld never kept pictures of his family around the office. It was a boundary he never let anyone cross. Not even Tseng, who specializes in being invasive. Corresponding with Felicia is one of those lines. Tseng knows that she endures it to piss off her father.
Tseng is compelled to take the lighter from her hand, cupping his fingers around the cigarette and lights it for her. Felicia is unaware of how close they are. The friendly deed warranted proximity and that is exactly what he wanted. He can smell her coconut lotion.
"Thank you." She looks him up and down, in her usual caustic way.
"Getting laid huh?" Tseng drops the cheap lighter back into the pocket of her coat.
"I hope so. It's the least I deserve having to deal with unremarkable men all the time. At the very least I deserve to be fed and fucked." Felicia walks beside him. A thick gloom of smoke rolls into her face.
"There are a lot of very unremarkable men skittering around like roaches. I don't disagree." Tseng tries not to be so aware of her heels stabbing the cement. They've long walked past his car.
Her footsteps puncturing the air is a shudder inducing sound. Felicia hums in response. She is waiting for him to just ask about her father. It's a game to see how long he will talk or listen to her talk. It's never about the AVALANCHE intelligence. Tseng doesn't care about politics.
"None of you last long." She tuts.
"None of you?" Tseng guffaws. It's a very human sound. Felicia's jaws depress as she takes a long drag.
"None of you. Men. Eroticism is definitely a sport women excel at. You rub at clits like you're trying to rub a dirty spot off a windshield."
"You?" Tseng's lips wrinkle.
"You." Felicia blows smoke in his face.
"On what basis?" He swats at the cloud.
"Empirical evidence." Felicia ashes her cigarette, the wind catches the sparks.
"I don't have those sort of problems, Felicia," he says with a conspiratorial smirk.
"Pft. You have the personality of a rock. Nobody wants to fuck you." Felicia doesn't believe this entirely. There's always some desperate woman waiting for a boot in the face. Tseng has a big dirty boot and enough intimacy issues to make any heterosexual woman feel religious devotion to his cock.
"You don't want to fuck me." His teeth still feel buttery from his lunch.
Felicia stops walking. She stomps her heel on her cigarette. His guts twist when their eyes lock.
"I don't." She smiles cruelly.
"Not even if I fed you?" He licks his lips again. He has a wide open stare. She can't help the ripple of jealousy she feels in his presence. Veld talks about Tseng like he'd put in half of his DNA conceiving him.
"Fucking me won't make you closer to my dad." Felicia says icily. Tseng doesn't blink.
Naked rage. He wants to suck all the juice out of her neck.
"That's what I'm trying to do?" He tilts his head.
"I don't know what you're trying to do but I needed you to know that. I'm not one of his shirts for you to try on." The sweaty cola bottle makes her fingers slippery.
Tseng steps into her personal space. She leans her head back when she gets a potent whiff of his laundry detergent and sweat. They look meanly into each other's eyes.
"It's not my fault your daddy didn't teach you how to ride a bike." And when he says this, it comes out soft. Cruel but smooth like bad tasting medicine. Meant to make you feel better yet violent in the healing process. Swallowing it down is laborious for Felicia.
"Did you ever learn, Felicia?" Tseng's brows relax. Felicia slaps him across the face three times precisely in the same spot, then shoves him out of her way. Her keys hum against her hips as she struts off.
He won't be receiving any intelligence from her in a while. Tseng doesn't pick fights but when he is chosen, he rises to the occasion. So far, he is going undefeated.
Really, what does she expect, dangling his vulnerability in his face like a carrot? She gets off to his grief and he gets off to her bitchiness.
Tseng has a little time left over at the parking meter. He sits inside of his car in loud silence. Midgar's grimy humidity fogs up the windows. He unfastens his tie and the top three buttons of his shirt. It would be obtuse to shrug off his attraction to her as just that—attraction. It goes beyond his sexuality. Felicia is half of Veld. On some spiritual surface within himself, he believes Felicia will solve the absent feeling he can't move past. A therapist would say that he has severe abandonment issues. That part of his brain that regulates love and acceptance is underdeveloped. He can only think in extremities. Every act is severe. His aspirations are stringent.
A cluster of her cells in his mouth. The DNA in spit, her sweat, the shedding skin between her legs, her vaginal secretions. He rationalizes the want for clumps of her hair in his mouth. A wave of heat moves through his body. Tseng unzips his pants, sinks his hands beneath his underwear, then grips his hard penis. He caresses his thumb against the wet tip. In a moment of consideration, with his left hand, he rolls down the window.
This isn't the kind of person he wants to be (even though he is this person). He composes himself. The cool air rubs against the side of his face. Clarity happens. Though he is a Turk, someone who looks the way he does shouldn't jerk it in public.
Tseng turns the keys in the ignition. He drives around the city for hours, running up the miles on his car, obliterating his full tank of gas.
Be happy with what you have was his mother's favorite thing to say.
He thought that maybe it would stick the more he stepped up into age. It hasn't, to his shame. Tseng is always giving into capitalistic carnivorism. Like pulling up into a shitty fast food restaurant in the more modest, middle class part of the city (which is saner than masturbating on the median). He orders the biggest burger and cheesy fries with a thirty ounce soda.
Sometimes he wonders if he is too old to use trauma as an excuse. Adulthood is supposed to shed those insecure layers of skin, yet he hits the wall of his limiting existence every time. Who would he be if he weren't Tseng? Would he be Rufus? Would he be Felicia?
All the atoms, cells, dark matter, stardust, waves of energy or whatever-the-fuck science and spiritual gurus say people are made up of, his very own is a jumble of garbage. No one can tell him otherwise.
The wind blows his hair around his face as he chews through the two thick patties, drenched in cheese and bacon. He accidentally eats some of his own hair. When he maneuvers the wheel with his knee to remove his hair from the gooey cheese, his phone rings. The bluetooth screen lights up on the dashboard.
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Reno tries not to feel some type of way about Ava not answering his phone calls. He and Rude are standing in line at the convenience store down the street from his apartment. An old lady holds up the cashier digging through her massive pocket book. She unfurls long receipts, three bottles of hand sanitizer, linty chapstick, baby wipes for god knows what. What would an old lady need baby wipes for, he thinks to himself.
"Have I told you about this book I'm reading." Rude chews on a toothpick, he's cradling an arm full of pork rinds and a two liter bottle of cola.
Reno picks up a cheap pair of heart shaped sunglasses. He puts them on his nose and the price tag dangles around his ear. They remind him of Ava even though he's pretty positive she'd never wear shades this tacky.
"Break off some of that knowledge you're accruing." Reno frowns when the old lady spills her change all over the counter. Rude starts on a long winded tangent about the importance of sleep. Reno is half listening. When the old lady finally moves on with her life, albeit at a snail's pace, Reno thumps the case of beer on the counter and asks for his pack of short cigarettes in the soft pack.
"Plaque builds up on your brain if you don't sleep—shit is wild as fuck."
"Plaque!?" Reno digs his debit card out the chest pocket of his Aloha shirt.
"Plaque!" Rude rasps, freeing his hands of the pork rinds. The dead-eyed cashier ghosts through their transaction, her bright green nails tapping against the keys.
"So what you're saying is if I decide to off myself all I gotta do is not sleep?" Reno buys the heart shaped shades.
"I guess the fuck so. Sleep is my drug addiction of choice unfortunately." Rude coughs up a wet laugh.
As the cashier bags up their junk food and beer, she smacks her gum before asking, "Would you guys like to donate a dollar for cancer research?"
Rude and Reno glare at her. She pecks her nail against the card reader—in bold black letters, the machine asks for a generous donation.
"You know most of that money goes to yachts and expensive hookers right? Not even five percent of those donations actually go to research..." Rude starts.
"Rude, she doesn't fucking care." Reno snaps his fingers in Rude's face.
"That's the problem, Reno! Nobody fucking cares! I care!" Rude sort of raises his voice.
"Yachts and hookers?" The cashier gawks.
"Capitalism strips everything of its meaning—" Rude brushes Reno aside. The cashier leans forward, nodding along to the beat of Rude's ranting.
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When Aerith sucks in her bottom lip, she looks like the twelve year old version of herself. She somberly inhales a cheesy fry, chewing with all the muscles in her face. Cheese squeezes through the corners of her mouth. Tseng sits a glass of tap water in front of her. Aerith's eyes darted from the glass to his face. Scooting back a chair to sit beside her, Tseng's wet hair ripples around his face in thick clumps, emphasizing the profusion of his pale ears.
"So what happened?" Tseng allowed her to sit in the car in silence. Her face was pale yet she had an eerie wakefulness about her. She'd tossed her expensive shoes in the back of the car and that was that. The please come get me sits awkwardly between them.
"Nothing happened." This is partially the truth. Rufus annoyed her. The entire evening was a pain in the ass. There's only so much stuffiness she can take, mix a little bit of alcohol, and suddenly there's a schism in her reality. Wealthy people disgust her, but what is more gross is her desire to LARP as one. The complexities of being disadvantaged while simultaneously privileged—long story short, she is annoyed. Her stomach is sort of raw from drinking. The cheesy fries don't help.
Tseng keeps his mouth closed. His eyes appear fuller when he isn't scowling, like two black saucers in the scare light of his bare apartment. If aliens were beautiful people, they'd look like Tseng. Lustrous with darkness. His eyes are glassy like onyx.
There's two types of childhoods. You have the kids who eat ketchup sandwiches for dinner and the kids who will never eat vegetables out of a can. Tseng has a nice apartment now. He keeps his space immaculate. There are times when he catches himself navigating through the world very much like the kid who went to bed with ketchup-y bread stuck between his teeth. One's living space speaks a lot to their past, present, and future.
Tseng doesn't have a lot of furniture because one day, this might not be his life. He keeps a lot of brand name goods in his pantry to satisfy the child within himself that
"Something happened." Tseng couldn't care less if she tells him or not. Asking is just the polite thing to do. He has no sympathy for Aerith. Aside from the lack of healthcare, Aerith's childhood, compared to his in the slums, wasn't that bad. Her clothes were always clean and she never went to bed hungry.
"It's just...there ain't no kind of retribution you know?" She gathers her hair over her shoulder, some of her curls rebel and spring back into place. In the backseat of Tseng's car she left all the hair pins in the cracks of the cushions.
Retribution is a big word for her. Tseng's face mildly softens.
"I used it right? Retribution?" She blushes with cheese on her chin.
"Yes." Tseng's lids dip slowly.
"Am I making sense?" Crumbs fly from her mouth and sprinkle onto the table.
"I get what you mean."
"People let him get away with saying whatever he wants." She sucks on her greasy thumb.
"You feel powerless?" Tseng licks his teeth.
Aerith has always had this desire to be somebody else. Nothing has ever been good enough. This great sense of deprivation is crippling. Maybe, her curse is to never be happy. Is she any better than Rufus? She did masturbate in public on a whim. She grimaces when she thinks about Sephiroth, how the downy hairs all over her body stood straight.
"Yes. That's how I feel." Today. She will be quick to change her mind when she can get her hands on a new pair of shoes.
"I bet." His personal philosophy is that none of this shit matters anyway. Life simply happens to him.
"I don't like how I feel right now." Aerith wipes her mouth with a napkin.
"Well it could be much worse. You could be a whore in a whore house. Whoring it up." Tseng doesn't crack a smile.
Aerith loses her appetite. She gives him a mean look, balling up the napkin then launching it at his head.
"My point exactly." He chirps as she removes herself from the table.
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Rufus didn't run down his call list to make himself feel better. Usually, he'd speed dial Scarlet because the kind of sex they participate in is infinite. Scarlet is ok with twisting her body in odd positions. She never dries up. Her body molds itself for whatever kind of mood he is in. Or he calls his drug dealer. If not his drug dealer, Tseng (who always picks up before the second ring).
He called nobody. Slept off the ickiness and woke up to his phone ringing. Tseng is calling him first—this is not how his mornings start often. He uncoils his naked body from a pillow.
"I had a dream about you." No, he didn't. His voice rolls from his throat, creeping out the dreamless vacuum of sleep.
"Unfortunate. Sounds like a nightmare." Tseng sounds like he's been awake for a long time. He never slips up and reveals anything human about himself.
Rufus grips his morning wood, gives it a gentle tug. His naked body is clammy with sleep.
"I should wake up to the sound of your voice more often, Tseng." The flirting never goes anywhere. At this point in their lives, it's an Olympic sport like javelin. Rufus swings his legs out of bed to take his morning pee.
"Do you know where your fiancee is?" Tseng clears his throat. He is drinking coffee. Rufus shudders at the thought and the cold tile licking the bottom of his feet.
"Have I lost her?" Rufus lifts up the toilet seat to pee. He isn't upset about their disagreement anymore. It didn't occur to him that she might not be in the house.
"Not necessarily, but dealing with marital problems is outside of my pay grade." Tseng chews on food.
"What are you eating?" Rufus sighs as he relieves himself. He winces as the pee slithered through his morning wood.
"My disappointment in you." Tseng volleys.
"Well what the fuck do you want me to do about it? Slap a stamp on her forehead and put her ass in the mailbox when you find her." Rufus flushes the toilet.
Tseng pauses. Rufus listens to the sound of silverware and dishes. He tries to imagine Tseng fresh out of sleep with crumbs of toast on his face.
"I'll meet you at the office." Then Tseng hangs up.
Rufus stands in front of the large bathroom mirror. He keeps the phone pressed to his ear, staring soberly at his reflection.
"I'm such a malleable little bitch." He tuts to himself. His reflection agrees.
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Aerith isn't beneath shame. She has been in a lot of embarrassing situations and is used to her body being under scrutiny without her permission. Though Tseng is beside her, she is the one enduring the curious glances of ShinRa employees. Her hair is uncombed. Her dress is wrinkled. There's crust of sleep in her eyes. She walks so fast to keep up with Tseng's long stride, her breast bouncing unflatteringly in the looseness of her dress. She wonders why the fuck she bought it.
The elevator ride is agonizing. The walk of shame past Scarlet's and Reeve's office, the journey to Rufus' large door—so debasing, it fills her with rage at Tseng, who is simply doing his job. That's all he is ever doing.
"I could've at least brushed my teeth." She feels as though she is the one being punished for showing sanity.
Without so much as a 'sure' or 'enjoy the rest of your day', Tseng opens the door to Rufus' office without knocking. She steps inside and he closes it behind her.
Rufus is chewing on his thumb as he aggressively right clicks on his mouse.
"Did you sleep well?" He keeps his eyes on the computer screen.
Aerith doesn't answer the question. She sits in one of the chairs facing his desk, crossing her right leg over her left. Her mouth is still greasy from the fries. She smells like she tossed and turned all night in Tseng's bed. Hopefully his sheets absorbed all the sweat and dirt from her pores and he can never wash it out. He'd have to burn them and buy a new set. She'd left makeup on his pillow case too.
"We need to talk about last night." Aerith speaks loudly on purpose.
Rufus takes time crafting a response. He isn't so mad about it anymore, because he doesn't remember what caused the argument. A lot of drinking and bloviating happened. He didn't consume too much alcohol because he doesn't have a hangover. She looks dull in the face. Her mouth is slightly open and her eyes are big and wet. She's rolling her tongue around her mouth, waiting to be pacified.
"As far as I'm concerned, you left in the middle of the night." Rufus states this, not to hurt her feelings, but it is factually the case. He doesn't recall kicking her out.
"You told me to sleep on the couch." She presses her lips together, the flesh of her mouth wrinkles and reddens.
"That's where the bad spouse goes. On the couch." It's not like he said sleep on the couch forever. He wouldn't have made her leave the bed had she been a little more assertive.
"For fucks sake, we aren't married." Aerith scratches at her scalp out of frustration. She holds both hands up to the side of her face, tugging at the matted curls at her temples. The tightness in which she squeezes at her roots tugs at the corner of her eyes.
"We aren't and you're already misinterpreting me." Rufus closes out of his emails and reaches over for his coffee.
"I didn't misinterpret anything..." Aerith fights the timbre of a scream in her throat.
"You don't understand me. You could've just gotten in the bed." Rufus does this thing with his eyebrow. It twitches upward, like he is talking to a stupid-person.
Aerith lets go of her hair, but curls her fingers into fists. Rufus notices the vein popping out in her right hand.
"I do understand you. You're an asshole with too much money and have never been told to think about other folks feelings. To make up for not having much of a personality, considering you don't need one to score an inheritance, you act bad in public." Aerith bites back on calling him a whore for attention. He could easily call her a whore too.
But there is a clean cut difference between whoring for validation and whoring for survival.
Rufus laughs. Spurts of coffee get on the collar of his white shirt.
"I act bad?"
"Yes. You misbehave cos all that good schooling you got still didn't get the attention you wanted. You read all those damn books and you're still clueless." Aerith grinds her teeth together.
Rufus looks at his watch then back at her, still smiling demurely.
"I'm not all that clueless. You think I don't know you can't fit billions of gil into a casket?" He stands up from his seat. Aerith watches him walk around his desk. Rufus sits on the edge of it, putting a hand in his pocket. He sips from his coffee again with this fake look of heart brokenness.
This rage is shapeless and big. It happened so suddenly. She suspects it has always been there. Rufus was rude. Rufus was very annoying last night. Aerith's bitter resolve lessens in size—is she really mad at him for being a rich jerk?
Rufus didn't make this rage. This rage is powerlessness. Switching from an old pair of shoes to a new one didn't solve the problem.
He leans forward to give her a light peck on her forehead.
"When I'm done with this meeting, we can go home so you can shower. You're a little funky. After a shower you might feel better." Rufus taps her on the chin then leaves.
The shock of disillusionment wears off after ten minutes. She finds herself very alone, like loneliness had just happened and wasn't always a problem. Aerith snaps open her clutch to retrieve her dead phone with shaky hands.
She scours Rufus' desk for a charger port. After finding one, she closes the curtains so that the stupefaction of her face isn't visible. She plugs the little black box and cord into the wall, sits on the floor and waits for the screen to come alive.
Five unread messages Reno. She opens them but doesn't read the contents. Aerith sends Reno an unpunctuated, unerotic...
'gud mornin'
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.A/N: Thank you for reading my trash. I wonder if all you guys still on the Aerith/Rufus train are still riding it? LOL. Everyone here is an asshole, but the world is full of assholes. Some just smell worse the others. Sorry for the slow updates. Work has been beating my ass. I'm also preparing to go back to school to get my masters! I hope it wont slow down my writing but tbh I'm already a snail at updating. Thank you for reading again! I hope you enjoyed it!