jaded_grin | Episode 44

Well, this week we get a little more WTF?! and I hope to advance the plot a little, but the bulk of it will have to wait for next week, I guess. I'm pretty certain of how I want things to progress and turn out for at least one story arc, but I still have to figure stories for the rest. If there are any suggestions on a story for Cloud, please let me know! And WTF am I going to end up doing with Kadaj? *sigh* Anyway, here is episode 44! I hope everyone enjoys, and happy Monday!

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44

Shaken from the hateful tone of that phone call, Yazoo put his phone down and retreated to his powder room to compose himself. He was still trembling, still stunned that the boy, Kadaj, would speak to him so viciously. He’d been a small child when he’d last seen Kadaj as Sojzha, and that toddler had been all smiles and giggles, full of life and promise.

How could that baby have become the young man Yazoo knew now?

He heard a soft knock that, luckily, drew him out of his chaotic thoughts, followed by the low purr of masculine voices. When he recognized Reno’s slurring, lazy voice, his heart leapt in his throat in mingled relief and happiness.

He hurried out through his bedroom to his parlor to find Rude looking down at Reno’s pale, strained face as if the big man was contemplating sending the other on his way. Without hesitation, Yazoo said, “It is quite alright, Rude. Please, go ahead and get yourself some lunch, I’m settled for the day.”

Rude’s head slowly lifted and it seemed he was staring at Yazoo, though it was hard to tell through those mirrored glasses. After a moment, though, he inclined his head and left the room, as silent as ever.

“I was so afraid for you!” Yazoo breathed, and flung himself at Reno’s chest, wrapping his strong, slender arms tightly around the man’s shoulders to hug him.

“No worries, Cateyes, I’m fine,” Reno said, his voice a little rough. His muscular arms lifted to embrace Yazoo, wrapping warmly around the other man’s slender back. “It was nothing, baby. Stress causes it sometimes, that’s all. No big deal.”

Yazoo pulled back enough to look up into his blue eyes and softly whispered, “I was so worried…”

Reno’s eyes softened and he cupped Yazoo’s cheek.

“I know you was, baby, but I’m okay. I wanted to come see you, make sure you was alright.”

Yazoo nodded, a tremulous smile curving his glossy lips. He tipped his head into Reno’s hand and hesitantly asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Reno shrugged a little and told him, “I don’t like talkin’ about it, yo, it ain’t normal. It embarrasses me.”

Yazoo was too polite to press further, and merely nodded before he said, “You seem unwell, still.”

“Yeah, I don’t feel so hot,” Reno said, and his eyes seemed even more blue for the shadows beneath them. “Look, baby, about Kadaj…”

Yazoo gazed up at him, breathless with anticipation, but Reno seemed strangely reluctant to continue.

“Is he a Jenova, Reno?” Yazoo finally, softly asked.

Reno’s face tightened imperceptibly and he said, “Look, Cateyes, I know what you’re thinking, but that baby your brother lost…Kadaj isn’t him, Yazoo. He’s just a Cetran kid far from home who I found doing public sex shows for some pretty rotten people right outside of the capital.”

Yazoo flinched, recoiling from that blunt truth. It horrified him to hear of the depravities of his own people, to be reminded that barbaric sex shows were held in giant arenas, to know that unwanted babies left by the way to die were gathered up and trained to please as whores the world around.

“I…I just…” he pulled away, flustered, his thoughts moiling. “I am sure he is Sojzha! I am sure of it!”

Reno softly shook his head, his face serious when he said, “He isn’t your Sojzha, Cateyes. He’s no more the son of Sephiroth than I am the son of the Banoran Mayor. It just ain’t workin’, yo.”

Yazoo gave Reno a lost look from over one shoulder and whispered, “He said he was given. When I told him he was taken from us, he said that he was given. If he is not Sojzha, then why – ”

“Wait, he called you?” Reno interrupted, and his features darkened with angry menace. He sighed deeply, and when he spoke to Yazoo his voice was sharp, clipped, and unkind, “Yazoo, you know how much a boy like Kadaj could milk out of you before it came out he wasn’t your family? He’s got nothing to lose by trying, and you’re too fuckin’ gullible for your own good. One conversation and he’s got you convinced he’s your lost nephew, for fuck’s sake.”

Yazoo flinched again from his tone, a sick anxiety settling in his chest. In the past there had been times when Reno had turned that vicious irritation on him, had made cutting remarks to him or made him feel stupid for being himself. He detested those moments, and knew they were born of a long-burning temper, but he hated them all the same when they happened. Rufus did a good enough job of making Yazoo feel worthless, he didn’t want his newfound lover to swing back to being absently cruel when he was distracted by other worries.

“You’re naïve and sweet,” Reno said, and exhaled lowly, his grim expression softening. He managed a slight smile and cocked his head, and Yazoo relaxed a bit when he saw the tenderness in the man’s eyes. “You wanna believe the best of everybody, Cateyes, and it makes it real easy to pull one over on you.”

Stricken by the undermining of his hopes – for he had so hoped that Kadaj was his lost little Sojzha – Yazoo merely watched Reno with soft, unhappy jade eyes. When the man moved close to lean against his back, Yazoo murmured, “Does that mean you are pulling one over on me, Reno?”

It was a purely Cetran response to the stress of the moment, an instinctual suspicion that had kept his line afloat in a sea of violent, bloody politics for over a thousand years.

Reno chuckled and sighed, “I already took all the advantage of you that I need to.”

He ran his warm hand possessively down the curve of Yazoo’s waist and hip, and the young man shivered in his embrace. Lifting his head, he tipped his face back to look Reno straight in the eyes, asking, “Would you take him, knowing he was ours, and not tell anyone?”

Reno somberly returned his gaze and said, “No, Cateyes. I ain’t that stupid.”

He turned Yazoo in his arms and held him close, flush against his chest and belly, and rested his chin on the shorter man’s head.

“You ready to drop this, Yazoo? Ready to let it go? He ain’t your boy, baby, and you got no choice but to trust me on this.”

“I suppose,” Yazoo breathed, bewildered and unhappy, a headache lurking behind his eyes.

“Then let’s don’t fucking talk about it anymore, alright?” Reno flatly said, forcibly reminding Yazoo that he was no purring kitten in the palm of his hand – Reno was dangerous and violent, and Yazoo would be wise to remember that.

He tucked his face against the smooth column of Reno’s throat and closed his eyes, curving against the press of his body, trying to lose his confusion in the spicy scent of Reno’s cologne and the faint smell of cigarettes that surrounded him.

But his thoughts returned time and again to the boy with those Jenova eyes, and that hateful statement, “I was given…I was given…”

“What in the name of all that is holy do you think you are doing?”

Genesis blinked innocently at Reeve and mildly said, “Darling, you’re near to pulling my robe off. If you wish to get naked, by all means we can, but this thing cost a fortune so the rending of clothes bit will have to wait for my less couture wardrobe.”

Reeve gaped at him and then looked down at his hand clenched in the voluminous material at Genesis’s wrist, and for a moment he wasn’t sure what horrified him more – the mention of clothes-rending or the fact that Genesis had paid a fortune for this eye-gouging monstrosity.

“That is simply horrifying!” he snapped, and jerked his hand back, casting an anxious look back at the door to Genesis’s room.

He’d dragged the stage diva back into his dressing room, thinking it was the door to the hall, and now he didn’t have the first idea of how to compose his various complaints.

A.) Strangers had seen him practically naked

B.) Genesis was wearing a color palette particularly unsuitable for a man with red hair

C.) Strangers had seen him practically naked

D.) Genesis had tricked him into appearing as if they were a steady item

E.) His Gala had become a success thanks to this infuriating man

F.) Strangers had seen him practically naked

“Reeve?” Genesis said, interrupting his mental list. “Will it take you a terribly long time to organize everything in your head? I’ve got a brunch with the editor of FLASH! Magazine.”

“I’m sorry,” Reeve ground out through gritted teeth. “It’s just that there are so many things I would like to murder you over!”

“Oh, darling! You’re so adorable when you’re incensed,” Genesis gushed, and patted his cheek, adding, “Just blurt them all out, dearest.”

“As if you would listen!” Reeve flared, rubbing his aching head.

“Oh, Reeve, my dearest, of course I would listen!” Genesis assured him. “I can’t commit to saying I would care, because let’s face it, darling, you worry over every little detail and I’m far too busy and far too important to truly get upset over the number of tines on a fork, so – ”

“I don’t worry about that sort of thing!” Reeve cried, flushing, because he had sent back a set of silverware on his mother’s behalf because the salad forks had not had the proper number of – he waved his hands in frustration that he’d distracted himself and hissed, “You’re pretending that we’re in a relationship and everyone will believe it!”

Genesis cocked his head and said with the studiously mild air of one addressing the criminally insane, “But, dearest, we dine together, I purchase you gifts, I make certain that you will be a success, and we’ve slept together twice.”

Reeve groaned and covered his face, knowing the coup de grâce was coming.

“That makes you rather like a…a…well, a mistress, I suppose,” Genesis thoughtfully concluded, and added with a happy chirp, “And this is the longest relationship I’ve ever had, Reeve, dear! So do be happy for me, won’t you?”

The flagrantly flamboyant director wrenched open the door of the wardrobe and vanished back into the room full of photographers, only to poke his head in a moment later and finish murdering Reeve’s sanity with, “And do try not to stay in the wardrobe all day, darling. I don’t think that’s quite healthy. Ta ta!”

Reeve stared at the closed door in bewildered shock, wondering how on earth he’d gotten to a point in his life where he was hiding in closets from reporters and fighting to get out of a relationship he’d never approved of in the first place.

Elena had to admit, what little she’d overheard Rufus and Reno speak of regarding Yazoo was certainly some interesting stuff.

So, Rufus hadn’t taken Yazoo’s virginity? That was good info to have. To be one of the few who knew that Reno himself had slept with the ShinRa’s bride first was surely something that would come in handy later. And it had sounded as if they were plotting something where she was concerned, to get some kind of assets in Wutai.

“Well,” she whispered, and lit another smoke, leaning against the hallway wall as Rufus irritably took himself off to his meeting. “This place certainly just gets more and more interesting…”

She hurried to his study and quickly wrote down everything she could remember, all the while gleefully happy that Reno was just using that morally rigid Cetran woman. As far as she was concerned, if you were going to be that naïve and innocent, you deserved to be taken for a fool, because people like Elena needed fools to get by on. There wasn’t even a fleeting glimpse of sympathy for her so-called friend.

Women like Elena didn’t have friends, they had people who were good for things, people who got discarded when their usefulness was at an end.

But Yazoo’s usefulness wasn’t at an end quite yet. Elena still needed the money to pay Reno back, and since Rufus was about as likely to give her money as it was to rain diamonds in Midgar, she would have to try for a mark much more likely to be swayed by a carefully constructed sob story.

She folded the paper up nice and tight and taped it beneath Rufus’s chair, figuring that was the safest place for it since he went in his office about as often as Elena said prayers at the local church.

Smirking, she went to go take a long, leisurely bath in his huge tub and maybe find that little fucker Denzel to go fetch her some brunch.

Mei Li felt Tseng come into the sitting room of his condo and immediately dropped into a deep bow of respect.

“I should think we would not stand on formality at this point,” the man smoothly said, coming close to tip her face up with one strong hand beneath her small chin. Those cold brown eyes gazed down at her face, unblinking, like a snake’s. “What do you have to tell me?”

“He is no longer a threat, Tseng shifu,” Mei Li said, using her sweet, little-girl voice, reverting to her usual persona that she kept tightly wrapped around herself in Wutai. “I managed to engage him in Reno’s bed, and though he shared himself with the man, Zack, there is no connection. Zack Fair is no threat to you, Tseng shifu. He is not a man who takes love lightly, unlike your Jewel, Kadaj.”

“And Reno?” Tseng asked, and if he was surprised at her news, he did not show it. The hand beneath her chin was starting to make her nervous, but she had trained herself to never show him fear. One after another, those close to him had fallen to his temper and his cruelty, all but for Mei Li. And in the moment that she had looked emotionlessly down at her best friend and meekly said, “Yes, Master Tseng,” when he told her to dispose of the body, Mei Li knew she had managed to reach a point where he would not destroy her. They were alike in too many ways.

And that aside, what else was family for?

“He will never leave Reno,” she told him, her eyes limpid, everything about her appealingly languid. “He is attached to my wairen in ways I cannot fathom. Nothing short of death will take him from the grasp of your friend.”

“Death,” Tseng mused, and dropped his hand, looking at her with cold calculation. “But whose death, Mei Li?”

She blinked slowly, a living doll until he said otherwise. She was smart enough to keep her silence when he hit these moments, knowing that to speak would invite retribution.

“What if he were to commit a crime, my little Mei Li?” Tseng purred, and stroked his hand down her throat. “What if he was to kill someone? Would Reno protect him?”

“I cannot help but think so, Tseng shifu,” Mei Li breathed.

“And what if someone who Reno would not protect committed a murder? Someone whom he had strong feelings for? What would he do to keep them safe?”

“I truly could not say, Tseng shifu,” she answered, and felt the fluttering beginnings of nervousness.

“Mei Li,” Tseng said, his voice low and velvety. “Exactly how unattached to Zack is my Jewel, hm?”

She blinked again, not liking the direction this had gone. Through wiles and harsh truths, she’d maneuvered Zack out of Tseng’s deadly grasp and had foolishly thought him safely out of reach.

“Were Zack to kill someone, do you think that he would…run to me for help?”

She swallowed hard and whispered again, “I truly could not say, Tseng shifu.”

A slow, cold smile spread over his thin lips and his lids lowered to half-mast over his glittering, dark eyes.

“Mei Li,” he whispered. “I would like you to orchestrate a death for me.”

“Whose, Tseng shifu?” she asked, but she already knew the answer.

Tseng laughed softly, but his voice was without humor when he said, “Why, yours, of course.”

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From:

neurotoxia.livejournal.com

I wonder if Yazoo is really not going to investigate Kadaj's background any further. He probably doesn't like to go against Reno's will but I think he just can't foget about it, even if he wanted to.

Reeve should stop fighting, there's no way he could get out of this lol. I love how they're fighting like an old couple.

And something tells me that Elena + secret information = No good.

Tseng is pretty much the definition of evil. Looks like this is going to be really, really bad. I feel already sorry for Mei Li and Zack.

...lovely episode. <3

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Episode 44

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