Tseng came back to the bedroom, gave Cait Sith a scratch on the head, and began to dress. "What was that?" Reeve asked him sleepily.

"Huh?" Reeve sat up slowly, rubbing his eyes. "Tseng, what's going on?"

"...they're getting ready to blow the pillar up," Reeve finished, and Tseng squeezed his hand tightly.

"Okay, okay..." Reeve sighed. "I promise."

Reeve shook his head. "No...I'm okay." He settled back into bed, and Tseng pulled the covers back over him, pressing a soft kiss to his lips as he did. "Tseng...be careful."

Reeve smiled faintly, his hand brushing over Tseng's. "Love you too," he replied and rolled over onto his side; Tseng patted his shoulder, then he turned and left. A moment later, Reeve heard the front door open and then shut. With a sigh, Reeve snuggled under the blanket and tried to go back to sleep.

Suddenly Reeve wasn't quite so hungry anymore.

Reeve slowly sat down in the rather uncomfortable patio chair; he was a bit sore from the previous night's activities, but it was a good kind of sore, strange as that seemed. He set his soda on the little glass-top table that accompanied it, and lit up a cigarette. The sky was overcast but not too dark, and a chilly north breeze whipped at him...perfect weather. Not too hot, not too cold, not too bright, not too cloudy, just cool enough for long sleeves to be comfortable. With a sigh, Reeve settled into the chair and tried to relax, letting the cool breeze whisper through his hair...just as Tseng's fingers had the night before.

/That's all well and good,/ Reeve thought, taking a lazy drag off his cigarette and flicking ashes into the wind. /But this is another man we're talking about here...you know how fast this kind of stuff spreads at work, like that thing about Reno and Rude that was going around.../ It wasn't that Reeve was worried about losing his job, or about Tseng losing his. Shinra was one company that flat-out did not care who its employees shared a bed with. He simply did not like the idea of the details of his and Tseng's private lives being passed around the water coolers, especially after being filtered through the rather dirty minds of some of the staff and thus embellished with tidbits to make the story racier, just for the hell of it. But then again, Reeve thought he might not have that much of a problem with that...unlike Scarlet (the favorite rumor mill fodder by far), he did his best not to piss off his fellow employees, and perhaps that would finally work out to his advantage.

It took a minute...and then it clicked.

With this realization came another: the sound was not so much a rumble as a succession of singular /booms/, like someone banging on a giant bass drum. Only after the fourth or fifth /boom/ did a rumble begin to carry to Reeve's ears, and as he heard it, he began to feel an icy lump forming in his stomach, sending tendrils of cold up into his chest to squeeze his heart. /Don't turn around...just go inside...don't look.../

A relatively small chunk in the middle of Sector 7 vanished into a hole that spat smoke and flame; the hole widened afterward, sucking in buildings and vehicles and, no doubt--even though Reeve could not see them--people. And under the rumble, there was the sound of a high, thin keening, as of a person who has screamed himself hoarse and still can't stop screaming. /I'm not hearing that...that's impossible, I CAN'T be hearing that!/ Reeve thought in a panic, right hand balling up into a tight fist completely out of his control. A few of the taller buildings on the edges of Sector 7 toppled and fell toward the rapidly expanding maw. /Office buildings,/ Reeve thought grimly, /and there's a daycare in every one of them...oh god oh god no.../

There was a sound of something shattering, like glass, that seemed to come from deep inside him, then a sharp pain, then an attempt to cry out at that pain only to discover that he had no voice left. The scream he had heard had been his own.

Reeve did not know how long he sat like this. An eerie silence blanketed the world around him, broken only by the far-off wail of sirens, the soft cries of a kitten inside the apartment, and his own ragged breathing.

There were days when Tseng loved his job. There were days when Tseng hated his job. And there were days when Tseng just wanted to sell the car, burn his uniforms, and go live in a hut with a cute little coconut doorknob somewhere and eke out a living selling baskets of seashells. Today had started out as the second and had rapidly degenerated to the third.

All Tseng could think of was getting back to Reeve's apartment, and he hoped to God that Reeve had taken his advice and gone back to sleep. /He already works himself to a frazzle...if he saw that.../ He didn't want to think of what kind of effect seeing Sector 7 go down might have had on Reeve. Yeah...he really needed to get back there. Reeve was probably going to need a shoulder to cry on as soon as he woke up and looked out his window to see a giant wedge-shaped hole where Sector 7 should have been.

Tseng pulled up in front of his nice little house and left the engine running. Everyone knew who that little black sports car belonged to; that was better than the combined efforts of any alarm in the known world, the Club, and a back seat full of poisonous snakes and rabid pit bulls as far as theft deterrents went. He leapt out of the seat and through the front door, leaving a trail of uniform parts all the way up to his bedroom--shoes and socks in front of the door, tie on the hall table, jacket on the stairs, shirt hanging off the bedroom doorknob, T-shirt on the floor, and slacks in a heap on the bed--in favor of a pair of black jeans, a black turtleneck shirt, and a black leather trenchcoat whose pockets, both obvious and hidden, were full of the tools of his trade--even off-duty, Tseng liked to be prepared for anything. Just as hastily as he had undressed and dressed again, Tseng loped down the stairs and out the door, back into the seat of his car, and peeled out again, leaving two more long black trails behind him. A motorcycle cop pulled out from behind a large shrub and flashed his lights, then stopped flashing them when he remembered who that car belonged to. Tseng prominently displayed his middle finger at the cop. /I am NOT in the mood for this./ He sped off toward Reeve's building, impatiently blaring the horn at anyone who dared to get in front of him.

Tseng felt around in the pockets of his coat, at length coming up with a slim leather case from which he extracted two small metal implements. He stuck one in the lock and wiggled it, then the second. With some difficulty--Tseng himself had installed this lock on the door--he managed to pick it, and he slowly pushed the door open, expecting the worst.

"Reeve? You still asl--" The word caught in his throat when he realized that the bed was empty, and now he was beginning to panic. "C'mon, Reeve, you're scaring the shit out of me. Where are you?"

Broken glass was strewn about the patio; the bare frame of what used to be the patio table stood in the middle of the debris. A soda can lay on its side in a puddle of its contents in the same general vicinity. And Reeve sat curled in a ball, back against the railing, left hand clutching his right wrist, his right hand crisscrossed with streams of drying blood--/oh god oh god he slashed his wrists--/ Tseng's mind yammered, until he saw that the blood covering Reeve's hand and dripping onto the concrete originated from the /back/ of his hand. "Goddamnit, Reeve," he sighed, picking his way through the shards and sinking to the ground next to Reeve. "I /told/ you to stay inside," he said, his voice a soft growl, as he wrapped his arm around Reeve's shoulders and gently pried Reeve's fingers off his wrist. "Here. Give me your hand."

Tseng couldn't help but wince. As soon as he saw the wound in Reeve's hand, he had gotten a pretty good idea what happened to his patio table...the wide, jagged slashes across Reeve's knuckles and the slivers of glass still lodged in his skin confirmed it. "Goddamn, Reeve...that's gotta hurt like a bitch..." He felt around in his pockets again, this time pulling a fully-loaded pocketknife out of one. He gently laid Reeve's hand on his knee and extracted a tiny pair of tweezers from the end of the knife. "Why the hell did you do that?"

"That," Tseng said in the forced soft tones of someone trying his damndest to control his anger (or maybe his sorrow, or both), "is exactly WHY I told you to stay inside." He plucked a larger bit of glass out of Reeve's hand, and Reeve jumped slightly. "Sorry, sorry...I'm not trying to hurt you."

Tseng looked up sharply, searching Reeve's face for any emotion, any reaction, -anything,- and found nothing. Just the same unnerving blank stare. He plucked one last sliver and then inspected Reeve's hand for more. When he found none, he slipped the tweezers back into their home in the end of the pocketknife, slipped it back into his pocket, and then dug in the pocket one more time. His hand came out holding a small bottle, which he uncapped and poured gently over Reeve's hand. The liquid inside was cool and soothing, and as it flowed over Reeve's torn hand and rinsed away the tracks of dried and drying blood that stained it, it also washed away the wounds themselves. "There," he sighed, raising Reeve's hand to his lips and kissing it softly, his own hand trembling just a bit. "Good as new," Tseng said in a slightly shaky voice, and added, "You had me scared shitless, you know that?" /And you still do.../ Reeve's hand was still limp in his; Reeve's eyes remained fixed on the drops of blood staining the patio. "Come on, Reeve, don't do this to me." He slipped his free arm around Reeve's shoulders and shook him gently. /Oh God. What if he...what if he doesn't snap out of it...what if he really -did- lose it.../ "Reeve, please say something. Anything. Tell me how much Heidegger pisses you off when he picks on the troops, or tell me what you want for dinner, or tell me to go directly to Hell if you want to. Just tell me what's going on in your head, because I don't know and it's scaring me."

Tseng nodded. "Okay, I'll go first if you want." He drew Reeve close to him. "When I nag you about working too hard and not taking good enough care of yourself, it's because I get scared to death that someday you're just going to have a goddamn breakdown and end up in a padded room drawing stick figures on the walls or something." He rested his hand on the back of Reeve's head and smoothed his hair gently. "You think I don't notice you bottling all that shit up, but I do...and every day I wonder how much more you can take before you break on me." His arm was tight around Reeve's shoulders, his voice thick with rare tears. "That's what I am here for, Reeve. You know damn well if you have something bugging you, you can come fucking talk to me, and you /don't./ You just sit there in your goddamn office and stew, and then you wonder why the hell you get those headaches all the time." Tseng knew he probably sounded like he was doling out the mother of all ass-chewings, but he simply could not keep the sharp edge out of his words. "If you keep swallowing it back like that, and like you're doing right now, it is going to kill you sooner or later. You're going to have a heart attack before you're thirty, or you're going to end up with a drug habit, and you KNOW all the really good people end up overdosing when all the assholes just keep right on going, or you're just going to snap and kill yourself, which is what I THOUGHT you'd tried to do when I came out here and saw you all curled up there with your hand sliced open like that. "I thought--" Tseng choked on the word, swallowed, and tried again. "I thought you'd slashed your goddamn wrists or something, Reeve. Do you have ANY idea how much that scared me?"

"Then quit." Tseng held Reeve tighter. "Tell the old man to take this job and shove it. You're a grown-up, Reeve. You don't have to do anything that doesn't make you happy."

Tseng sighed, knowing he was not going to win this argument. "That is exactly why I nag at you. Don't get me wrong. It's good that you care so much about so many people...but there just comes a time when you have to remember to care about yourself...and you don't. And you don't know how much it hurts me to see you doing that to yourself." He laid a firm but gentle hand on Reeve's cheek, tipping the other man's face up so that he could gaze into those warm brown eyes. "You know me well enough to know that there are very, very few things in this world that scare me. The thought of losing you is one of them." A tear spilled unchecked from his eye, dropping onto Reeve's hand and following the same route that the blood had before. "I /can't/--lose--y--" Tseng opened his mouth to finish the sentence, and found he could not. So instead, he just tightened his arms around Reeve and pressed his cheek against Reeve's, sobbing softly against him.

"It's okay." Tseng nuzzled Reeve's forehead, then kissed it softly. "It's okay." He cupped Reeve's chin in his hand, gently pulling upward until he gained access to Reeve's lips again, brushing his own against them. "I love you so goddamned much," he gasped out before a wave of desire crashed over him and he claimed Reeve's mouth with his own, his hands finding Reeve's shoulders and tightening on them. Their mouths opened to one another, and their tongues twined gently at first, then passionately; Reeve's hands clutched tightly at Tseng's coat, pulling him closer--if such a thing was possible. "Let's go inside," Tseng whispered, breaking off the kiss. "You don't need to see this."

The only sound that came from either of them for long moments was a quiet whisper of "Shh," from Tseng. One hand slid up softly over Reeve's back to rest on the back of his head. Reeve's body jerked slightly in Tseng's arms, probably from a sob, and Tseng held him even tighter. "Shh."

"I'm here." Tseng's hands stayed where they were, holding Reeve close, and even through two layers of denim Tseng could feel Reeve already growing half-hard against the curve of his hipbone; his own shaft stirred in reply. "I'm not going to leave you."

A soft, muffled moan vibrated against Tseng's lips, and Reeve quite suddenly grabbed hold of Tseng's shirt, jerking it up and free from the waistband of his jeans just enough to get his hands under it, just enough to reach under it and caress Tseng's chest with trembling hands. When his fingertips brushed over Tseng's nipples, Tseng drew in a sharp breath and his hands clenched on Reeve's ass, nearly clawing into it, pulling Reeve's hips even tighter against his own. Through the fabric of their jeans, Tseng could feel that Reeve was now more than just halfway hard...and so was he. Tseng brought his hand around Reeve's hip and brushed his fingertips over the hard ridge for just a moment, then he pressed his hand against it, massaging it through the denim while his other hand continued to push and claw against Reeve's backside. And throughout all of this, their mouths remained joined; their tongues caressed one another, tasting the salty flavor of tears in both of their mouths.

"God...Tseng..." The words were growled, dragged out of Reeve's throat. With one hand, he reached around and clutched at a handful of Tseng's hair and pulled back and down, a silent order for Tseng to lie down. Tseng complied with a soft growl of his own, and with trembling fingers Reeve fumbled the button and fly of Tseng's jeans open, then he pulled them down over Tseng's hips with a slight pause to remove Tseng's shoes before pulling the jeans and whatever underwear lay beneath them down past his feet, flipping the jeans aside with a little grumble. Now his undivided attention fell toward the man who lay before him and he knelt between Tseng's knees, running his hands up Tseng's legs, over his hips, and back to his chest while he gazed almost in awe (and with a half-registered thought of /Good God, how the hell did he get--THAT--inside me!?/) at the considerable length of Tseng's rigid cock for what seemed like forever before ducking his head down and taking it into his mouth.

This trick also had a rather pleasant side effect on Tseng. His eyes slammed shut, his head arched back, and his hips rose of their own will to thrust into Reeve's mouth as deeply as Reeve would take him. Reeve's hands slid down his chest, fingernails raking just enough to sting, to curl around Tseng's hips, and one hand continued even farther to mold itself around Tseng's balls and squeeze gently in time with his thrusts, one finger straying behind them to tickle the sensitive spot there. The hand at the back of Reeve's head clenched tightly, and Tseng's breath began to come in shallow gasps as Reeve pulled back to suckle at the head of his shaft for just a moment before taking him in completely again. A strong, convulsive shudder passed through Tseng's body, echoed in the slight twitching of his cock against Reeve's tongue. By sheer force of will Tseng untangled his hand from Reeve's hair, brought it around, and pressed it against Reeve's forehead, a silent request to draw back. "Get rid of those clothes and come here," he gasped, raising himself to a sitting position and leaning back against the sofa as he slid free from Reeve's mouth.

Reeve braced one arm against the sofa and leaned forward over Tseng's chest, his cock hot and hard and rubbing against Tseng's washboard stomach as his hips rocked with the motion of Tseng's finger sliding deeper inside him and then withdrawing. His other hand drifted back to Tseng's chest to tease his nipples again, pinching them with just a little more force than before. He bent his head down to suckle at Tseng's lower lip, drawing the soft flesh into his mouth to nip at it almost hard enough to hurt. Tseng returned the kiss just as forcefully, just as urgently, completely withdrawing his finger from Reeve only to replace it with the pressure of his shaft, still hot and damp, against Reeve's ass. He did not enter, did not press forward; he just lay there for long moments enjoying the sensation of Reeve's mouth on his, of Reeve's cock straining against his stomach, of Reeve's hand pulling at one of his nipples.

Reeve just nodded. "I need you," he whispered again in reply, and Tseng tightened his grip around Reeve's waist. He rocked his hips up while pulling Reeve down, and entered him carefully. Reeve was still a little sore from the previous night, and he cried out sharply as Tseng slid into him; his fingers clawed at the sofa cushion with a steel grip and his jaw clenched tightly against the pain. Tseng curled his hand around Reeve's shaft again, stroking it to distract him from the uncomfortable sensations. The cry tapered off into a soft shuddery groan as Tseng sank deeper into Reeve; after long moments Tseng loosened his hold around Reeve's waist a little. His other hand continued to stroke Reeve, slowly, keeping Reeve's attention off the pain and on the pleasure where it belonged.

A small moan escaped Reeve's lips, and as they parted to let it pass Tseng's thumb slipped between them; Reeve murmured softly and suckled at it, his tongue flicking at it with a feathery touch. The sensation, and the images it brought to mind, spurred Tseng's body into motion; he shifted his hips up, once, and even that small movement brought forth another cry from Reeve's throat. He let fall his right hand from the sofa, bringing it back to Tseng's chest to pinch at his nipple again, more roughly this time. Tseng growled again, louder now, and thrust into Reeve again, harder. Reeve yelped again, softly, but the lingering pain didn't stop him from meeting Tseng's stroke with one of his own. His hips jerked forward, almost as if out of his control, both driving himself into Tseng's hand and drawing Tseng's cock deeper within him.

Reeve cried out again, louder. Unable to keep up with the rhythm of Tseng's hand, he just ground himself against Tseng's hips, hungrily meeting his thrusts. He opened his eyes, just a little, taking in the sight of Tseng's exquisite face--eyes shut tight, jaw slack, forehead creased in intense concentration--his hair spilled down over his shoulders, a blue-black waterfall cascading over his chest, just barely reaching his nipples. He leaned back against Tseng's thighs, rocking his hips against Tseng's; his inner muscles tightened uncontrollably around Tseng, and he knew he wasn't going to last much longer.

"Oh, God!" Reeve cried, gritting his teeth as the sensation of Tseng's climax gripped him. Tseng's hand was tight, motionless around his cock, and Reeve wrapped his own hand around it, trying to coax Tseng into stroking him again to no avail; Tseng's muscles had simply locked up and refused to move.

The spasm passed as suddenly as it had come, and Reeve's body dropped limply back to the carpet. His eyes were closed, his breathing rapid and shallow. Tseng crawled up, carefully, to rest his head on Reeve's chest.

Tseng smiled, nuzzling Reeve's chest just a little, then he gave a rather sheepish little laugh. "Shit...I was going to let you be on top this time, wasn't I?"

"You know what I meant," he laughed, his breath fanning over Reeve's slightly damp skin. "Reeve?"

"Let's go back to bed."

Neither of them moved. Not even the slightest twitch of a leg accompanied the utterance of "three."

Tseng nodded. "Same here." He reached over and dug in the pockets of his coat again, this time fishing out a handkerchief and quickly cleaning himself with it, then handed it to Reeve. Reeve accepted the hanky and cleaned up a bit himself. "Good thing we have this nice soft pile of clothes here..."

Tseng chuckled a bit, pulling his trench coat over their bodies. "Then don't." He snuggled back against Reeve's chest and sighed...then he lifted his head up a bit. "Reeve?"

"Where's your cat?"

Tseng laughed a bit more. "You better let him in. He might get hacked off and decide to whiz on the bed."

"Okay, okay." Tseng stood up on wobbly legs. "I can take a hint." He picked his way to the bedroom in a similar fashion and flopped onto the bed. "Sleepy?" he asked, and got no reply...or rather, he got a reply that left no doubt as to Reeve's answer to that...a very soft snore.