Episode 16
Feb. 16th, 2009 07:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaded_grin16
“So then you ended up coming to Midgar?” Kadaj clarified, and laughed, shaking his head. “I don’t believe a word!”
“What? Why?” Zack asked, but he was laughing, too. They were in Zack’s suite, which seemed small and cozy compared to
“I’m saying you’d make a fantastic writer,” Kadaj informed him, and yawned a little, still smiling.
His yawn made Zack look at his watch and double take in a way that had Kadaj laughing again.
“Holy cow, we’ve been yakking for hours!”
“What time is it?” Kadaj inquired, his interest as mild as his voice. He didn’t give a damn about the time—he’d take all of the time necessary to get what he wanted.
“It’s two in the morning!” Zack said, incredulous. “It’s late and you’re yawning, you need to go get some sleep.”
“Are you trying to get rid of me?” Kadaj teased, and let his lids lower in a way that experience had taught him was very effective in winning him attention.
Zack seemed more startled than interested, and said, “No, of course not, it’s just that I’m getting a little sleepy, too…”
“Well…” Kadaj said, and traced circles on the plush coverlet—though the suite had been empty for months, every single room in
Zack froze, but his eyes got noticeably larger.
“Uh…”
Kadaj cocked his head, frowning a little. Since coming to this country he’d never once used his own charms to seduce someone—those people he slept with on
Not being successful wasn’t really something he’d planned for.
“What, do you like girls or something?” he asked, and did his best to keep the hiss out of his voice.
“Well, yeah, I like girls,” Zack said. “I like all kinds of people, Kadaj—but I don’t really know you.”
Kadaj gave him a flat look.
“So, you don’t think I’m beautiful?” he asked, putting a purr in his voice that always got
Zack shifted with discomfort but truthfully answered, “Kadaj, I’d have to be very old, completely blind, and mostly deaf to think you’re not sexy—you’re like a feast for the senses…” He gave Kadaj a pleading, almost apologetic look and softly added, “But where I come from, people don’t just tumble into bed together because they like the way the other person looks.”
Kadaj sat up, cheeks flaming from the rejection.
“I mean, if I thought I’d even have half a chance, I’d take you on a date,” Zack hurriedly said, pausing Kadaj in the act of angrily leaving the bed. “But look where you live…look who you live with! You’ve got a gorgeous gillionaire boyfriend who owns most of this city and I don’t even have a gil to my name. There’s no competition there, Kadaj.”
Kadaj just sat there, poised to stand, his head hanging.
“Money isn’t everything, is it?” he asked, and tried not to be embarrassed by what had just happened.
“Kadaj,” Zack said, and gripped his shoulder. “You’re a kid, still—despite what you’ve been through. You’re gorgeous and smart and driven, and someday you’re gonna be a Somebody. You deserve a lot better than a cheating mobster, and you deserve a hell of a lot better than a shady handyman.”
Kadaj was quiet for a long time before he looked up and softly confided, “He doesn’t come home to me like he used to. Most nights I just lay in his bed alone and cold, wishing I could go back and change things…”
He looked up at Zack and was touched by the genuine concern in his eyes, so large and blue and beautiful. He really was a nice man, and Kadaj hadn’t really met very many of those in his short, brutal life.
“Can I just stay here with you?” he whispered. “I won’t pull anything, I promise. I just don’t want to sleep in his bed tonight, not after seeing him with her.”
Zack smiled at him and said, “Yeah, of course. I’ve been a gentleman under more questionable circumstances.”
Kadaj laughed a little in relief and asked, “So…once you get your first paycheck, will you take me on a date?”
“That all depends,” Zack said, digging out a tee-shirt for Kadaj to wear to bed.
“On what?” Kadaj asked, unselfconsciously stripping out of his clothes and taking the offered shirt while Zack changed into his own pajamas.
“Will that mean I’m your mistress?”
Kadaj started to giggle in helpless response as he tugged the shirt on, the late hour and wine combining with his relief at not sleeping alone to make him a little slap-happy.
“Because I think I’d look best in blue, like my eyes,” Zack continued, pulling down the covers and clicking off the bedside lamp. “No ruffles, though.”
“Why not ruffles?” Kadaj asked, and wriggled into the bed in the darkness, finding Zack’s body and snuggling against him.
“Darling!” Zack teased, his voice haughty and full of laughter as he tucked them both in. “Ruffles are so last year!”
“Kitten? Is that you?”
Elena scowled to hear the fat fucker coo at her from the den. Who the fuck else would be coming through the front door?
“Yeah,” she answered, throwing her bag down on the corner table and angrily jerking out her earrings. She was still incensed about her run-in with Reno, still furious that he so easily dismissed her and spoke to her like she was just another of his whores.
Elena was not just a whore.
Knowing it was expected of her, she detoured to the den and loitered at the doorway, not wanting to get close enough to invite slobbering kisses or rough touches. Honestly, ShinRa Senior had the skills of a fumbling adolescent—no wonder his first wife had pissed off to a cloister.
“What’s wrong? You look angry, my love,” the older man said, his bushy mustache giving him the look of a corpulent walrus.
“Ronald, why do you pay
The man’s face flushed a dull, purplish-red but he didn’t flinch when he said, “Because that is the only way to have you, Elena.”
He sat back in his chair and gave her a smile that was both sad and gentle. “I am a practical man, my little dove. Though I may be the president of this glorious nation, while I have more money than most other developed countries combined, I am also overweight and far beyond my prime. I have long understood that no position or amount of money can overcome those things, so I made an arrangement with that degenerate slum-scum to have the pleasure of being with the most beautiful, cultured, and wonderful woman in the world.”
Elena frowned. She didn’t like it when he started to act like he was a person. She didn’t like the way it made her feel like a cold, malicious bitch.
“What if I told you I don’t wanna work for him anymore?” she asked, sticking to her guns, falling back to that rude manner of speaking which defined those born below the plate.
He was silent for a long moment before he softly said, “Then I should be a most unhappy man and miss you terribly, Elena.”
“Well, I don’t,” she told him, getting ahold of herself, remembering to keep her voice cultured and correct. “Don’t pay him another penny, Ron. As of right now, I’m off his books. I’ve stayed here with you for so long that we might as well just cut out the middle man.”
“What do you propose, then?” he asked, and his hope was clear in his cloudy blue eyes—he wanted her to say that she cared about him, that she would stay because she couldn’t be without him, that the money didn’t matter…
“You can put the money in my account,” she informed him, and withdrew from the den, adding, “I’m going to bed, my head hurts.”
He stared at the empty doorway for awhile before he sadly whispered, “Goodnight…”
He did his best to keep Rufus nominally coherent and substituted his drinks for plain water when he had the chance, but the man was still drunk off of his ass and ridiculous. It made Reno wonder just what kind of success he’d actually achieved, if this was his life and these were his friends—but, Rufus was the heir apparent to the presidency, and Reno was still a calculating animal. Besides, the dumbass was good for laughs and made an interesting companion.
It was four in the morning before
As always, his house was brightly lit and lively, shadows chasing each other on the drawn shades and faint music escaping through half-open windows. The front door was never locked and the guard posts were never unmanned—
He took the steps two at a time and went to the huge area dubbed “reception” where there was always someone on duty. The girl straightened from her magazine when she saw him coming and beamed a winning smile that he’d probably paid for.
“Kadaj come home?” he asked, short with her despite himself.
“Yeah, he came in about ten, just after you left with Mister Rufus,” she answered, pouting a little that he hadn’t flirted with her. “He was with that farm-guy he hired to fix shit.”
“Oh yeah? Crazy black hair and blue eyes?”
She checked her book and a little dry-erase mock-up of his house, saying, “Max capacity, Mister Reno. Anyone comes and I gotta turn them away, fire safety and all.”
“Good girl,” he said, and patted her head before he headed up the stairs, deftly avoiding girls and boy running through the house and screeching, occasionally doling out hugs and bottom-swats. They always got so excited to see him, and tended to crowd around him when he came home. It made him think about moving out entirely. After all, Kadaj could handle this house, he ruled it with an iron fist.
He got to the double doors of his suite and stopped, his fists clenching and a fierce scowl falling over his features.
The painting was facing him, a surreal picture of a woman with a parasol and huge, floppy hat. He’d always hated that painting, but Kadaj had loved it, so it stayed. But right now, he could’ve gladly torn it off of the door and smashed it because it was supposed to be flipped around. It was supposed to be facing into the door and showing its bare, ugly back to world as a sign that Kadaj was inside and the door was unlocked.
Trembling with anger, he tried the handle to confirm it was locked, and quickly unlocked it. He made himself look inside, but he knew—he knew—Kadaj was not in his bed.
“That little fucking shit!” he hissed, glaring at his empty bed.
When he left his room again no one approached him. The furious look on his face sent his babies scattering for the safety of their patrons and rooms, frightened of him. The people in his house lived in stark terror of his temper, simply because he showed it so little. But when he did, things got ugly and they got ugly fast.
Without even bothering to knock, he went to the only suite on his floor that hadn’t had an occupant for awhile and slammed open the door, snarling, “Kadaj, get your fucking ass out here now!”
Tseng waited in his car for the small private jet to disgorge its contents. He had done his best to calm himself after seeing Kadaj at the restaurant. Nothing soothed his nerves quite like dispassionate planning—eliminate the problem, solve the problem—so he had done just that. Whoever that man was, whatever he might be to his little Jewel, in a very short time he would be dead as dreams.
Tseng had planned it, and his plans very rarely went awry.
The door opened and Tseng gracefully got out of the car, waiting at the foot of the metal railing.
A woman emerged, small and delicate. Her glossy black hair was upswept and set with pearls and her slender, generously endowed body was clad in layers of embroidered silk and satin. She was a parody of a Dai Jiao noble-woman, a consumer’s stereotype of Tseng’s culture from the pins in her hair and the cast of her makeup down to her soft little slippers.
“Tseng-shifu,” she said, inclining her head and holding out her hand.
He took it and kissed the tips of her fingers—a Midgarian greeting that she wasn’t expecting.
“Mei Li,” he said. “Circumstances have changed.”
Her thin eyebrows lifted in an expression of innocent surprise.
“Tseng-shifu,” she said, and her voice was soft with a little-girl quality indicative of her station in life. “I have come at your request to do as you would have me.”
He led her to the car and settled her inside before sliding in next to her. While his driver gathered her bags, he explained, “I had intended to send you to your beloved wairen, Mei Li, and I still will do just that. He requires distraction and you have always succeeded where others have failed.”
She blushed at the praise and demurely lowered her face, smiling.
“However, I have another request to make of you,” he went on, and paused a long moment when the driver got back into the car, taking the time to activate the partition before picking up again. “I need for you to watch an individual for me. I suspect that you will find yourself with much free time in
She cocked her head and murmured, “I do as you will, Tseng-shifu.”
“He is a Cetran boy named Kadaj and he runs
She was quiet next to him, her dainty hands curled in her lap. After a long silence, she said, “I will attend to this matter for you, master.”
He smiled in the darkness, his dark eyes glittering, and purred, “Of course you will.”
Zack sprang from his bed when that deep, furious voice shouted its demand. Eyes already adjusted to the darkness, he immediately saw the form outlined by the hallway lights. A split second later the lights flipped on, practically blinding him.
“Get out of here!” Kadaj snarled, sitting up in the bed, flinging the covers off to stand up. The tee-shirt he was wearing barely reached the tops of his lean thighs, but the seductive quality of him didn’t at all detract from how scary he could be. His little fingers clenched into fists and his whole stance changed—Kadaj was clearly preparing for battle.
“This is my fucking house!”
“I was in bed!” Kadaj yelled, stalking up to stand toe to toe with him, as dangerous in his anger as
Zack tensed as
“I think you’re a little boy-cunt whose mouth is too big and whose attitude needs some adjusting,”
Kadaj cocked his head and gave him an evil smile, purring, “And I think you’re a two-bit loser whose cock is going to find him more trouble than his idiot brain can handle.” He gave
As he turned away,
In that same instance, Zack pounced and got a throttle hold on him. He wasn’t expecting
“Stop it! Stop it!” Kadaj shrieked, yanking at their arms, trying to wedge between them.
“Stop this right now!” Kadaj demanded, and managed to shove himself in between them, panting and furious.
“Pretty fast for a farmer,”
“I never said I was a farmer,” Zack breathed, too pumped with adrenaline to be afraid.
“Consider yourself fired,”
“Oh, shut up!” Kadaj screamed, truly furious. “You’re not fucking firing him! You didn’t hire him!”
“Who’s the fucking boss around here, you little bitch?”
“I do!” Kadaj snarled. He turned to Zack and shortly said, “Go back to bed and finish fixing the floor tomorrow. You’re not fired.”
“You’d better be gone by morning,”
“He isn’t going anywhere!” Kadaj said, and slapped his hand against
“I mean it,”
He let himself be tugged from Zack’s room and the man stared after them, waiting until he heard
And this was a dangerous arena to be fumbling around in like a novice.
Shaking, his anger gradually overtaking his surprise, Zack clambered back into bed where the faint, sweet scent of Kadaj’s body still lingered.
“I can’t believe you!” Kadaj fumed, tearing the blankets off of the bed and throwing them on the floor. “You’re insane,
“What the fuck was that?”
Kadaj sneered at him and hissed, “I don’t take orders from you.”
“You need to watch your fucking mouth, Kadaj,”
“You want me in your bed,” Kadaj smartly replied, and seated himself regally on the item in question before pointing a haughty finger at the pallet on the floor. “So you get to sleep on the floor—because I’m not letting you touch me fresh from fucking her.”
“Don’t start!”
Glowering, Kadaj crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the far wall, ignoring him.
“You know, you used to be a good boy,”
“You can’t keep it in your pants, for one,” Kadaj informed him, leveling a dark glare at him.
“You think I fuck every person you see me with in the papers?”
“I don’t care anymore, just shut up,” Kadaj told him, and shot up to go to the bathroom in a huff.
“You gotta stop that shit!” he cursed, and smacked him back, shaking him a little to take the sass out of him. “You ungrateful little fucker—I give you this place to live, I give you money and a job, I give you everything you could ask for—”
“But not the one thing I have asked for,” Kadaj reminded, and gave him another vicious, unhappy smile.
“I’m tempted to fucking turn you out on your ass and see how you do,”
“I don’t live here with you,” Kadaj laughed. “I live here alone! Turn me out, see if I care! I’ll burn this fucking house down behind me and leave you nothing but ashes! I’m tempted to just go anyway!”
“Go fuck yourself,” the youth suggested, and laughed. “I’m not afraid of you,
“Don’t fucking tempt me to knock you off, Kadaj,”
The boy laughed, the sound musical but still unhappy. With a sly, wry look at
He headed off again, and
Without warning,
It was biting teeth and cruelty, hunger and fierce need, both of them struggling to win the upper hand, to be the one in control.
“You can’t leave me,” he said, sucking at Kadaj’s willing mouth.
Kadaj kissed him back, biting his plunging tongue, and managed to demand, “Don’t see her anymore.”
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 02:35 pm (UTC)Zack is obviosly getting himself into more and more trouble, I'm curios what happens next to him. He needs to ask Kadaj our for a date...just to piss Reno off ;D
Great episode <3
(I hope you don't mind me adding you ^^)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 05:48 pm (UTC)The scene between Kadaj and Zack soooo .... *sigh* perfect. The follow through with Reno; scary, tense, real and exciting. Zack's realization that he may have gotten himself in a leeeetle bit of doo-doo by being nice to Kadaj. uh, yup!
I know Reno's a killer and a control freak and all that, but why does Tseng's silent stalker persona seem the more frightening? He gave me shivers.
Elena's a skank, and if she keeps up with the attitude the old-man's gonna toss her and get a new model from Reno. Maybe Tseng will do womthing to piss Reno off so Reno will give the Prez that Mei Li. What would Tseng do? He now has a spy in the president's house which is definately a great opportunity, but he'd've lost his Kadaj watcher.
Gonna have to go back and re-read this from the beginning pretty soon.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 08:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 06:57 pm (UTC)And I´m almost sad for Shinra senior. Almost.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 08:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 07:54 pm (UTC)Hmmm, Reno and Kadaj were totally epic here writing wise, like watching a real soap and yet so in character. Wow. Wonder what happens when Reno goes on with his stupid plan.
Zack, oh my, he was great. This was a good eye-opener for him though, and I have a feeling that his confrontation with Tseng's assassins might just surprise Mr. Creepy. (And hopefully we get to see more of Zack's background, yup.)
And one more thing. You actually made me feel sorry for the Pres! I'm undecisive how I should feel about that right now, but... poor man. Elena is such a bitch.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 09:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-17 11:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 09:09 pm (UTC)And Zack, my poor innocent sweet Zack. He may be a noob right now, but he wasn't First Class just because of his good looks...
Does it show that I'm enjoying this inmensely??? :D
no subject
Date: 2009-02-17 12:00 am (UTC)And I LOVE Zack, he's a dear, but he's got a past so Reno really shouldn't just write him off as a farmer...But I guess we'll just have to see :D
Glad you liked it!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-17 06:59 am (UTC)Best chappy ever, this is where the good shit starts!
*slaps Kadaj for leaving Zack*
no subject
Date: 2009-02-17 12:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-17 05:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-17 06:11 pm (UTC)XD
Date: 2009-02-20 04:05 am (UTC)Sorry-- Random comment. My bad. (Obviously...)
Re: XD
Date: 2009-02-20 12:26 pm (UTC)Re: XD
Date: 2009-03-28 04:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-21 10:12 pm (UTC)Also, I've always thought that you write particularly good sex scenes (in that they are unabashedly smutty, a sorted of smeared perfection) and I am glad to see this trend continue in your rated X soap opera. Keep up the good work!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 01:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-23 02:58 pm (UTC)I wrote earlier that I missed liking Reno. Damn, I don't like him, I fucking worship him in this. He's so mean and cruel and deliciously self-confident and unreasonable and... SEXY!!! And Kadaj... *sigh*
Can't wait to find out more about Zack and ooooh the drama!!!
Oh this was epic! Like I said, the best episode yet! I'm in awe, woman! Completely hooked!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-24 02:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-07 10:18 am (UTC)OHMYGAWD! You just made me CRY for ShinRa Senior. ;_; Elena is such a cold hearted cunt!
no subject
Date: 2009-03-07 02:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-07 07:07 pm (UTC)