FF7-Post Game Pre AC Through the Barricades

Rating: Hard-R (M)

Warnings: M/M

II: Everything to go

The bar was nice and dark.

And full of alcohol.

And intact, which definitely made it an improvement over the rest of the city, smoldering in the aftermath of Meteor.

He savored the burn as the drink went down. Shitty cheap vodka that smelt like rocket fuel, unmixed, innocuously transparent, just like water…

He knew he was drunk when he thought like that.

Rufus would have turned his nose up at it.

He blinked at the insidious little voice, then mentally snarled at it to shut up. Where had he been? Oh yes. Water. Perfectly clear. Without even the ice cubes to mar it. He held the glass up to the light, admiring.

Rufus would have ordered it with a shot of crème de cacao…

"Shit," he cursed into the glass, knocking the rest of it back in a single mouthful. The fumes hit the back of his throat, sending him coughing. If only they would hit his brain as easily.

He was running out of money. Going home was the best idea at this point, except that going home meant facing Rude. And facing Rude in these post Meteor days had been just great, all the way until he'd called out the wrong name in the middle of the night.

They'd shared an embarrassed chuckle about it later, some spur of the moment quip about Shinra having way too many people whose names started with R.

'sides, he's dead.

I'm sorry.

Don't be, buddy. Wasn't our fault. Nothing we could do. Gotta just roll with the punches, you know. Now do that to me again.

And later, when they'd fallen back on the sheets, Reno had stared into the dark and wondered what the hell he was going to do with his life.

It's come to this. This is the end of Shinra.

"Why," he asked his glass, "Does the Company depend so much those dudes it's named after?"

"Because we're the brains," the glass answered back.

Given how drunk he knew he had to be, he wasn't really surprised when a ghost materialized to his right and dropped into the vacant bar seat. All white, just like the stories, except that he'd acquired a few more layers of black in death, and it was a button down, not a turtleneck, and he'd lost the long white coat…

"Did you know that even Rude's starting to get tired of your attitude?" the ghost asked.

He grinned humorlessly. "I bet it's because of last night."

"Actually, it's about you sulking around, moping about your failure to stop Weapon, acting like the world's generally over..." the ghost nodded at the bartender, ordering something.

Reno shrugged absently, and called for a top up. "See, it all boils down to that Huge Materia. If we'd nuked Meteor, he'd still have been there in Junon. If he'd still been there in Junon…"

The ghost wasn't listening. The ghost was running a finger around the rim of the glass that the bartender brought – something crystal clear and innocuously transparent – "You know, someone once told me not to speculate on past failures. Not in those words, of course. He had a rather more endearing manner of speech that I can't quite replicate."

Rather more endearing… Reno was dimly aware that his jaw had fallen open. If this was an alcohol induced hallucination, it was a damned good one. It certainly had that snide, cultured, I'm-so-damned-superior-to-you-and-don't-you-know-it tone down pat.

"I," Reno declared to the world, "am so drunk."

The ghost was standing in front of him now, all familiar blue eyes and gold hair a tad shorter than he had remembered it. The glass – one of those wide ones on a ridiculously thin stem – cradled delicately between thin fingers. Fingers that had been all too adept at removing buttons, amongst … other things.

And then Weapon had blown everything to hell.

"Reno, Reno," the ghost was saying. "Less retard and more focus, please." Fingers trailed across his face, lighting briefly on the mark below an eye.

"You're dead," Reno snarled, abruptly angry. "You're so fucking dead that you should stay dead. I don't appreciate being bloody haunted when all I wanna do is get fuckin' trashed!"

The gentle caress turned into an iron grip as fingers caught and held his chin. The ghost's stare was hard, cold as ice, and unwavering.

"Lemme the fuck go…"

"So that's the problem," Rufus said. "You think I'm dead. Let me show you otherwise."

The wall was hard and cold against his back as he slammed backwards against it, warm hands on his shoulders under his jacket holding him firmly against it. Somewhere, somehow, they'd ended up outside the bar, and if this was a ghost or a hallucination, then it was a damned good one, because its tongue was currently doing that swipe thing around his own. It tasted of vanilla vodka and crème de cacao as well, that snotty as hell drink that Rufus liked entirely too much…

"You always had a sweet tooth," Reno mumbled.

"Liar," Rufus said, eyes glittering in the glow of the distant street lamp. "You're the farthest thing from sweet."

His belt slithered away, falling to the floor and curling around his feet. Fingers made short work of the button, then the zipper, then found his length, cradling and running across it in a way that only one person ever knew how to do…

Electricity sparked up his spine and across his vision, and the ghost was smirking, damnit, and… "I never figured you for the dark alley kind…"

"Indeed," Rufus said. "Poor ambience." The fingers stilled as he adopted a slightly thoughtful look.

"Damnit, brat. You got this far, don't stop now," Reno growled, crushing golden strands of hair in his hands as he dragged Rufus' lips to meet his own. Warmth, mm, so much better than the sharp cold of the wind cutting past them, his skin lighting afire—

--a nip, teeth closing on his questing tongue in a silent gesture of warning. His grip slipped, the kiss broke, and Rufus was eying him calmly from a fuzzy one foot away. "Poor ambience, I said. Let's find some place better."

"You have got to be kidding." His dick was hanging out of his pants, his shirt half undone and his jacket half streaked with mold and dust from making its acquaintance with the wall…

"So impatient," Rufus teased, as he bent to retrieve the belt. Looping it through Reno's shirt collar, he tugged lightly. "Heel."

They probably traumatized the cab driver, with his growling attempts to get something more than just those teasing featherlight touches that the ghost was so fond of, but the generous load of gil that the ghost—that Rufus had shelled out probably ensured his silence. He had a mark on his neck to show for his pains, and the ghost had rather more, but he hadn't gotten what he wanted, damnit, and the moment they were through the door...

They made as far as the couch, and he grinned in triumph as he shoved Rufus over and straddled him. White suit against the elegant black leather of the couch. Perfect.

"You know, for a ghost, you're pretty good."

"Really," Rufus replied.

"Really." His fingers were working on shedding the layers, white black white black— and paused, confused, over the white of bandages enclosing that slim chest. "What…"

"Nothing of concern."

But it was of concern, because now he saw what he hadn't seen, in the gloom of the alley – the tell tale black poison lancing through veins in the back of a hand, spiraling in from the outer reaches to explode in a curling, blackened patch in the center.

"Geostigma."

Rufus was still beneath him, expressionless.

"Geostigma," and his voice cracked on the word. "By all the damned Ancients, why that? Why you?"

"Because." And there was no trace of emotion in that word. Simple acceptance. Simple statement of fact.

"I didn't get you back just to lose you again!"

It was the alcohol talking, a distant part of his mind said. Because he'd never, ever have said something like that when he was sober. But this wasn't real, was it? This was some stupid, extended nightmare…

But the nightmare was speaking again, its voice too painfully real to be anything but…

"Someone once told me not to thinking about the future. Not to speculate about death. Or failure." Rufus' voice was mirror smooth. Fingers reached up to cradle his face – and from this angle, he couldn't see the damage wrought by the Geostigma. "Someone also told me that I needed to relax." A soft chuckle. "And he had an interesting way of going about it."

Damn, but the brat had charisma. And an annoying way of turning one's words back on oneself. But Reno found himself grinning giddily anyway, caught up in the surrealism of everything, and he could hardly refuse an invitation like that, could he?

"I could do a repeat performance," he drawled. "If you ask nicely enough."

"I was thinking of going about it rather differently, actually."

He raised an eyebrow from where he was perched atop Rufus' chest, shifting his hips in a deliberate gesture. "Not gonna happen, kiddo."

Rufus raised an eyebrow. "Really."

He'd forgotten how slippery polished leather could be. They were suddenly on the floor in a jumble of limbs, and before he could untangle himself, there was—

There was a massive fuckin' flash of light as his train of thought derailed spectacularly.

By the time his senses crawled back, they were on the floor, and Rufus… Rufus…

Tongue sweeping down his length, devouring him to the hilt, kiss of cold air at the sudden withdrawal, only to fade to sudden warmth again, and he'd just gone totally boneless, and…

"Shit, Chief. You fight unfair," he managed to gasp.

Rufus' face loomed over his, a grin flashing across his features like lightning. "I just fight with my brains, Reno."

He groaned, and not all of it was in response to Rufus' words. "Shut up. You win. Happy?"

"Not quite. Not yet."

The kid was definitely real, Reno figured, even as he found himself with thighs locked around Rufus' hips, fingers clawing for grip on the carpet, heart and breath pounding in sync with Rufus' rhythm. No ghost felt this warm. No nightmare made him feel this good.

And no, not quite a kid. Somewhere and somehow he'd grown up, had taken over his damn philosophy and used it against him, had grown into the Presidency that he'd inherited too early…

Rufus' fingers slipping through his hair, nudging the restraining rubber band free, tangling in the strands. Smiling as he brushed his lips over his collarbone…

"So Chief, whatcha gonna do now that you're back from the dead?"

"Rebuild the Company, of course. Fall back to Midgar. Give them Hell." That smirk again. "The usual."

And there was nothing he could do but grin in response to that.

White and black. And innocuously transparent. That was his Brat all over.

Beta release: 0134 hours November 17 2005

Final release: 1654 hours November 17 2005

Final word count: 4,147

Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy Advent Children and their associated characters are property of Square-Soft/Enix.