The Turks Christmas Special : Four Long Binges

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Reno wasn't sure why he was taking this so badly; after all, he'd always silently considered her an annoying brat with too much power for her own good. On the other hand, next to the finger that said fuck everything in this world and to shoot him where he sat, he'd also silently called her his best friend in these two years. Rude was like a brother, but there were times when even he couldn't compare to a good conversation with the ninja.

No, he decided as he looked out over the sea, he knew why he was taking this badly. He was taking it so damn hard because it was a direct blow to him. No diversion of attention; he'd been tricked, lied to, and fuck if he wasn't the father of that kid. She didn't even have the gall to tell him that she was actually pregnant? Hell, he figured, she could lie about the father all she wanted, but she didn't even bother to be honest about having one at all?

That was low; in the world of Turks, a liar was lower than scum, and he wasn't anything if he wasn't a blue-suited ShinRa employee with the job title of a Turk. No two ways about it.

Rude hadn't said anything particularly in the form of "I told you so" yet. When there was a serious problem with Reno, he would respect that. It wasn't the fact that Reno was a guy most people didn't want to piss off, because the bald man could toss him ten feet and had done it on occasion, it was just that silent respect between two people closer than even the greatest psychiatrist can diagnose. He knew his boundaries, and that just meant he would turn on his comm radio and leave Reno in peace.

The redhead had tried sleeping the way there, but he kept seeing her. It was stupid, he knew, when he had walked right out of town of his own free will and left her with her royalty and lies, but he missed her already. Even so, the rules he'd lived his life on outweighed bending them for her, friend or not.

"Rude. . ." he croaked, looking like the most pathetic thing to ever sit side-seat with a Turk. Most pathetic thing that wasn't dead, anyway. Rude took off his headset and glanced at him calmly. ". . .Pick Scarlet up. Tonight, we're drinkin'."

He didn't object; just angled the plane a bit toward the left and obliged.

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If you frequent any bar, you know how Reno looked when he walked into What's His Name, the shadiest of the shady joints, but near his house.

He was the desperate man this time, flanked by a big Turk and their drinking buddy who was a good, accepting lay. He walked in and sat down the a look that universally means, "I've had a shit day. Load me up." The bartender wasn't his favorite, and he barely ever came here unless he was on a job, but the old man slid a scotch to him with an understanding nod, then gave his friends complimentary drinks.

"Fuck a designated driver," Scarlet had said. "We'll walk for all it's worth."

The redhead started drinking as any desperate man does. He slammed a few down to get himself in a better mood. Then he slammed a few more for good measure. But he didn't stop there; nearly the entire night, he was sucking down hard liquor, so fast that Rude wouldn't have been able to keep up if he'd wanted to. And if he did. . .well, the bald man had a feeling no one else's system could take Reno's alcohol poundings.

When the bartender says "Boy, I think you've had enough" within half an hour of your first step in the bar, everyone within a three-table radius knows you've had the shit day that's been plastered on your face since the first sip of brandy. When this particular bartender said that, a look unlike anything he'd ever seen was permanently imbedded into his mind. It was actually rumored that he quit the very next week.

Reno decided to start hustling again that night. He'd paid his way through college on money hustled from billiards, poker, and anything else he could get his hands on a lot of gil with. As drunk as he was, Reno still had his rare finesse moments, and when Scarlet managed to sneak in a game of pool with him, he sobered up, but didn't stop being so bitter.

That was another thing he'd noticed. Everything tasted bitter tonight, and that was coming from a man who considered hot sauce straight from the bottle to be a soothing remedy for the bile rising in the back of his throat post an especially messy job. He'd tasted it all before; the brand names weren't any different, the cans and bottles opened with the same popping noise every time. But it all tasted bitter, and he constantly was seeing Yuffie out the corner of his eye.

Scarlet smiled knowingly and broke the rack, sinking two solids. "Broke your heart, did she?"

The redhead's pool stick slipped from his grip for a moment, and he seriously debated picking it back up and ramming it through her stomach. "Piss off, Scarlet."

"I'm not playing the instigator tonight, Re," she said softly, and sounded like she meant it. "You know what I'm doing after we get out of here? I'm going to my apartment. I'm sitting up late with my cat and we're going to share a microwave dinner over a foreign film. That's it; no plan to end up in your bed tonight, no plan to spread this around the company. 'Know what I'll do tomorrow? Wake up, get ready for the company party at the building, go out for dinner again tomorrow night. No mocking phone call, no slipping up and telling everyone in the building. You hear me?"

"What the fuck are you getting at?" he ground out as she just barely missed the seven ball. He took his shot and knocked the twelve in with conviction. "That you're throwing your relaxed life in my face?"

He knocked down the nine ball and she sighed, frustrated. "I'm trying to say that I know where you're coming from. I've been in love, as strange as that may sound from someone like me, but I fell out of it not by choice. He ended it, and it fucking hurt, Reno, it really did." He didn't reply, just tapped his pool cue on the table and she got into position to knock that five to hell. "So tell me. She break your heart?"

He lit a cigarette and pilfered an ashtray from an empty table. "She didn't break my heart, and I ain't sayin' I never had one to break. She lied, though. She played my ass like a pinball machine and didn't even tell me about it. You know the Turk policy on liars?"

"Mm?" The five ball was being stubborn, and she glimpsed Rude chatting it up with some junkies, so she didn't feel too bad about leaving him there. She knew the Turk policy as well as the next executive, but talking was therapeutic and he needed to do it.

He took a long pull. "We kill the fuckers," he said, breathing smoke with each word. It was fitting; standing at the edge of a pool table, cue in hand, breathing smoke as his eyes were just out of the light. He looked like a real badass, and that's what he could be if the need arose. "We kill 'em and we watch 'em squirm when we do it. You know why? 'Cause the shit hittin' the fan ain't so bad once the shitter's fryin'."

"You can honestly say you've never lied to anyone since becoming a Turk?" questioned Scarlet. She took the cigarette out from behind her ear and leaned across the table for him to light it. A few men at his back gawked as her dress dipped low, but they were so high that neon signs were turn-ons.

Reno nodded. "Honestly. I'll twist the truth, but straight up lie?" He twirled his stick and it ended up around his back, and he shot from there. "Hell no," he said as the stick connected with the cueball, making fast work of two stripes in a line. "I say to somebody they'll be all right, I take their left hand and left foot. I say everything'll be fine in the morning, I make sure they die before midnight and everything's fine for someone that hates 'em. But never've I said I wouldn't kill somebody."

"What does your sadism have to do with Yuffie, then?"

His cue skipped off the felt of the table and he gripped it hard. Just when he'd gotten his mind on something else, as wretched as it was. . . "Seriously, Scarlet, you can piss off. She lied to me, okay? I don't put up with lying snakes like her once I've got 'em in their own lie, y'got me? And now I've got --"

He stopped. Neither Scarlet nor Rude knew just what had happened in Wutai, because they figured they were safer not asking him. And he wasn't about to tell them that there was a kid on the way that was probably his and he'd just gotten tricked into believing nothing of that sort was going on. Turks didn't get tricked; they got screwed over and then got their revenge. "I've got a problem, 'swhat I got," he mumbled.

Scarlet gave him a look, then she smiled lightly. "C'mon, Reno. I'll walk you home."

For once, he didn't object. He just got his coat, let Rude know they were leaving, and left with the blonde. No arm around the waist, no holding hands. Just two friends walking out of a bar into a winter night, seeing each other how they hadn't seen each other before: as people who identified with other people.

The Turk didn't know what possessed him to do it, but once they'd reached his house, he flopped down on the hood of his car and patted the spot next to him. "'Less the cat's gonna die of hunger, wanna hang around for a bit?"

She pulled her coat tighter around her as the wind kicked up some ice-snow mix at her face, and she wondered if it was worth freezing her ass off to make sure Reno didn't kill someone. He opened his jacket to expose a large bottle of something hard and she found herself giving in to a night of drinking with one of her better friends. The cat could wait, she decided as she climbed onto the hood and laid down on his arm, head instinctively sinking into his shoulder.

They both seemed to discover at the same time that they'd assumed the post-sex position automatically, and that gave them a genuine laugh. "So who're you seeing tomorrow night?" was the first thing he asked.

Scarlet thought for a moment and then smirked. "You'll meet my date at the dance. By the way, Rude told me that there's a killer out for us, so don't worry about being the one to break the news of my bounty to me."

"You can hold yourself," Reno said confidently, taking a drink and passing the bottle on. Anyone else would have made some comment about the stars being out tonight, but he was Reno and she was Scarlet. Neither one of them really gave a shit about the stars. "Besides," he yawned, "we're ShinRa execs with badass weapons. We'll take the bastard."

She lay there for a while, zoning out at the sky in a state that actually was inebriated. When she passed the bottle and he didn't take it, she looked up and was more than slightly amused to see he'd fallen asleep and looked rather peaceful. She didn't exactly know what was between them; they were fuck-buddies, which was the only way to put it. But any time they weren't in bed, they were something besides friends. She couldn't put her finger on it, but. . .she shrugged it off and curled up, closing her eyes.

The cat could wait; Reno was damned comfortable.