Happens just post-Advent Children, but assuming some Lullabye for the New World Order history.
Tseng was sorting his desk. An attack on the city always meant re-sorting his information, prioritizing the small fears and unrests that would always flare in the aftermath. The focus of the task was soothing.
Given the basic equation of fears and unrest, of course, it was predictable that he would be interrupted.
Rufus didn’t bang the door open. He opened and closed it behind him very precisely, the only sound a soft click of the latch. That was a far stronger danger sign than overt temper, and Tseng prudently laid down his files and pen, well out of the way. Rufus crossed the office with a measured step and laid a hand on the back of Tseng’s desk chair.
Tseng calmly tucked his knees back to keep from banging them on the desk as Rufus swung the chair sharply around and leaned over him. “Yes, sir?” he asked, leaning his head back to look up at the President. Rufus was steady on his feet, and the chair creaked under his grip; he looked entirely recovered from the Geostigma, and Tseng spared a moment of thanks to Aerith, wherever and whatever she had become now.
“You miscalculated the risk of going to the Northern Crater,” Rufus stated flatly. “Don’t let that happen again.”
“I will certainly endeavor not to,” Tseng answered dryly. Being tortured by broken fragments of Sephiroth’s spirit was not an experience he wanted to repeat.
“Do more than that,” Rufus ordered. “Understand me, Tseng. You do not have my permission to die.”
Tseng froze in his chair, staring up at Rufus. Even in this language, the words dove down into the center of him and rang there. Death, and the manner of it, were the final right of the humblest warrior. To safeguard his family and secure his honor, to deny the enemy, to choose his own end, all that was the right of any warrior whose determination did not fail him. To surrender it…
Protest struggled with a curl of hot response, wrapping around each other in his chest, and Tseng’s hands tightened on the arms of his chair.
Rufus caught his chin, burning blue eyes locked with his, fixing him in his chair sure as a sword thrust. “You do not have my permission, Tseng,” he repeated softly. “Not while I live.” Tseng could feel the force of Rufus’ will like the heat of a fire on his face, and the part of him that had waited so many years for Rufus to grow into his own soul couldn’t help but answer.
“I receive your command,” he murmured in his own tongue, measured and formal, acknowledging Rufus’ right. A corner of his mind remarked dryly that his family would have mass heart failure if they ever learned of this. A larger part was ruefully aware of how hard he was.
“Good.” Rufus’ thumb stroked along Tseng’s jaw slowly. “Then come here.”
Yes, Rufus had definitely noticed.
Tseng rose from his chair, and Rufus’ hands were on his belt, and as quickly as that he was bent over his desk with Rufus’ fingers in his ass. Tseng moaned low in his throat at the rough, slow stretch. The dry corner of his thoughts observed that the door was not locked and Reno never knocked. The part of him that was hot and hungry with his surrender to Rufus half hoped someone would come in, that someone else would witness the fire that Rufus was burning with and understand why Tseng offered his life and soul to it.
Rufus fucked him slow and hard, leaning over Tseng, hands running up and down his body. He could not have more clearly marked his possession without tattooing property of Rufus Shinra, do not touch across Tseng’s back. Possession… and protection. Even as Tseng panted with the hard, driving thrusts of Rufus’ cock into his ass, he could feel the gentleness in Rufus’ hands as they slid up under his shirt, careful of Tseng’s injuries even now they were healed. It was the care that drove a soft, unvoiced, “Lord,” out of Tseng, and when Rufus leaned down, chest against Tseng’s back, and whispered in his ear in the same language, “Yes,” Tseng came completely undone.
Rufus worked him through it and it wasn’t until Tseng was a limp, boneless mess sprawled across his desk that Rufus took his own pleasure. He had, Tseng reflected through the haze of satiation, learned a gratifying degree of control.
They rested against the desk for a while, quiet, and Tseng was content to stay there. He could feel the steadiness of Rufus’ heartbeat against his spine, and the easy heat of his body. Not fever-hot and not chilled. Healed and well again. The fear and fury that had, Tseng knew, kept him searching the Northern Crater long after the signs of danger would normally have sent him back to fetch reinforcements, finally eased all the way. He was relaxed enough to make a contented sound as Rufus’ fingers rubbed slowly up and down the nape of his neck.
“Remember,” Rufus said quietly.
“I won’t forget what I am,” Tseng returned, voice steady.
Rufus’ man. Life and soul.
There was an extra leash on what he could do in that cause, now, but that was all right. Fighting fate was already more or less Tseng’s job. He could add this to the list of things he tried to circumvent. And if that happened to cause a disagreement or two, or give Rufus reason to reassert his command…
Tseng smiled into the crook of his arm.
End
I could reread this for years, omg.
(Also, it totally inspired me to get back to Lullabye. I’m only about 30k words from being able to post part 2…)
*hearts* I am so all about the Rufus/Tseng. It’s just meant to be. I mean, Rufus/Everyone, but especially Rufus/Tseng.
(Eee! I was just re-reading part 1 and hoping that the world would un-crazy enough to let you write some more! *considers* Not that un-crazy is actually a precondition for the writing bug, god knows.)
Rufus/Everyone can exist pretty much because of Rufus/Tseng, because Lord knows that if Tseng hadn’t put in all that work with Rufus, Rufus would’ve been a lot more of a monster. I just love their vibe so damn much — I mean, setting aside the whole fealty kink (WHICH I HAVE SO FUCKING HARD) you have the whole power-dynamic-weirdness kink, especially in the early years. (I have about 5k words of the first time Rufus seduces Tseng written, although I haven’t come back to it in a while, and it is awesome playing with those dynamics. Then again, I also have about 10k words of post-Lullabye Tifa and Rufus beating each other bloody as foreplay written, and that’s just as much fun.)
But yeah, unf, Rufus and Tseng. Rufus is so very lucky; Tseng functioned as an external conscience for him through the years while Rufus was still growing his own, and it’s what kept Rufus from becoming a monster. And Tseng definitely did it deliberately: if he couldn’t find someone worthy of giving his fealty to, by Leviathan, he would create him. (There’s a bit in later Lullabye chapters where Tifa finally realizes that Rufus didn’t acculturate Tseng to Midgar, Tseng all but made Rufus into an imperial Wutaian, and she is delighted at the extent of Tseng’s revenge.) All the ways in which they’re bound together never fail to hit me right straight in the middle of most of my major characterization kinks. Heh.
Oh, Tifa is going to laugh and laugh. And then she’s probably going to rag on Tseng for not already knowing that this is what he’s done. Because Tseng really doesn’t seem to, yet. He keeps seeing the morals and manners he’s ingrained in Rufus and thinking “but he’s not Wutaian, so it can’t really mean that”. It’s adorably wistful and also a testament to how completely Shinra has fucked with /both/ their heads that he can’t trust those signs. They definitely need Tifa to be the outside viewpoint that can see that.
(Also, fealty kink ftw. Also for the unf. I keep finding myself wanting to write really really baroque and self-indulgent fealty porn for them, full of Tseng just laying his soul at Rufus’ feet. I mean… I so want to see how Tseng would respond to Rufus in Wutaian dress equivalent to his station; it would be so tasty and complicated.)
Oh my God it would break his brain. Because on the one hand, for all that Tseng has imbued Rufus with a ton of the morals and mores he himself was raised with, Rufus still doesn’t move quite right, so full court robes would still have that vague “bzuh?” sense of “something is not right here”. On the other hand, I’m not sure Tseng would notice; he’d be too busy tripping over his tongue. Or trying really hard not to wind up on his knees.
It’d be easy to get Rufus into them, too: Tseng shows up every year to the Shinra Yule ball — corporate prom — in full high court Imperial robes complete with the gold and silver embroidery and the ten-foot train. Mind you he’s got leggings and a tank top on underneath and has retailored them to be sheddable in 3.2 seconds if necessary, instead of needing the help of twenty attendants, but he does it purely to prove a point: he spends 364 days out of the year working to shed any slight hint of outsiderness and otherness, until he can appear a model son of Midgar and everyone around him starts to forget his heritage and his origins, and then one night out of the year he reminds them all where he came from and who he is. (He is so very careful to keep his true family name out of general knowledge, and even those who knew it once upon a time think he’s a distant cousin, not a member of the line direct, and nobody really knows what those robes mean anyway except Sephiroth, who was the only general in the war with Wutai who bothered to learn anything about the country and the culture, but still: it amuses himself to proclaim himself Imperial under the noses of Shinra’s best and brightest.) It isn’t as though he’s a tame lion, even when he wants everyone to think he is…
So yeah, all you’d have to do would be have Rufus let himself into Tseng’s apartment the night before the ball, and have him order or persuade Tseng into dressing him in the robes to see what they’re like…
And, ha, really. I think Rufus is painfully aware that Rufus has learned the Wutaian honor from Tseng; Tseng has done a lot of work to get it there and Rufus relies on it so, so very hard. (There’s a bit in section 8 of Lullabye, actually, where Tifa finally hits on Rufus’s most secret fear: that he has no true innate honor of his own, only borrowing Tseng’s out of long habit, and that something on this quest will outstrip his knowledge of what Tseng has managed to teach him and he won’t behave with honor in that moment. Being Tifa, she promptly turns around and declares that she isn’t going to fucking let that happen.)
I think you’re right and Tseng doesn’t realize it as much, though; after about fifteen years or so in Midgar, in the positions he’s in, Tseng has lost so much sight of what Wutaian honor truly encompasses — not that he’s forgotten it for himself, but he has trouble seeing it in others, especially when it’s not surrounded by all the external cultural cues. And Rufus has a few of the external cultural cues that he picked up from Tseng, but not enough of them for Tseng to be able to say, decisively, that yeah, Rufus is more an antique Roman than a Dane. He doesn’t want to hope, so he keeps biting his lip and thinking, it can’t be that, it can’t be that…
…aw, hell. Want to see the draft bits? I will totally show you the draft bits if it will inspire you to write more baroque and self-indulgent fealty porn for them, because I love the way you write them omg.
*makes pathetic little sounds* You’re going to get me to write this. The external cues, that’s so much the hook for the, erm, well costume porn. Because, yeah, a lot of them would still be missing, but I have to think that for Tseng to see Rufus with even just the external cue of the clothing would be a punch in the gut, a moment of “omg, he is, he’s what I need”. A moment when the cue of the clothing brings the rest into focus. And, well, then we’re back to Tseng on his knees (with his tongue hanging out).
Yeah, gimme draft bits. Food for the porn bunnies!
And oh, man, it would totally fuck with his head. Because on one level he knows he’s been trying to create his own liege lord for years, because he’s self-aware enough to know that he’s the type of person who needs something to put his faith in, unassailably, instead of being left to hold his honor on his own … but he never quite expected Rufus, and Rufus has exceeded every hope he had. And along with Tseng’s essential fury at the gods for how They have used him (he’s trying to be an atheist, dammit; he’s trying really fucking hard), another defining characteristic is that he’s so, so very bad at having hope, because it always, always fucks him in the end and he can’t make himself stop.
I am totally going to get you to write this, yes, if I can. *G*
Probably easiest for me to just pop you on the draft filter. Lemme clean some stuff up (I haven’t updated the compilation posts in a while) and I’ll PM you with the basic guidelines (essential rule is, nothing critical about anything while it’s still in draft, squee and thoughtful commentary only) and the links.
*thumbs up* I’m totally good at squee.
Well then, I have /another/ reason to thank Branch for this!
hee hee hee hee heeee
(She and I are totally egging each other on now.)
Ooo, hot. I love submission in the context of a really complicated power dynamic. I love that Rufus knows that he asks Tseng for more than any man has a right to. Tatooing a barcode on him is purely redundant, it’s written through Tseng in rings, but it’s not a one-way street. Even when Tseng is a pile of disconnected nerves, he’s smug about of his achievement in Rufus.
<3 that Tseng finds conflict with Rufus another tie that binds them together. One suspects that a chess match between the two isn’t something you could let children watch by this point. Oh, and speaking of voyeurs, I doubt that Reno walks in on them by accident, but if the Turks are half the detectives they’re supposed to be, the hell they don’t know Rufus owns Tseng.
*hearts* these two are just /made/ for the loyalty porn, they really are. And it’s always complicated, but somehow they navigate it without a blink. I’m a sucker for characters like this.
(I’m seriously convinced Rufus is considering hanging a sign on Tseng that says “trespassers will be prosecuted” after Advent Children. Totally redundant, but yeah.)
Hnnnnnngh, most fantastic. *chinhands* And delicious. LOYALTY KINK: THOROUGHLY SCRATCHED.
*sparkles* Thank you! Seriously, these two are made for the loyalty kink.
That. Was incredibly hot. Whyy am I such a sucker for loyality and power dynamics?
*hearts* Because it’s a wonderful kink!