(no subject)
It's not the first time he's come home bloody, but it's one of the few times the blood belongs to him.
It was one of those missions you shed off when you clock out, when you strip off your uniform and remember that you're flesh underneath. It's the kind of job you do because you have to, and you don't think about it too much or ask too many questions. You just do it. You keep your hand steady, keep your eyes open, and squeeze the trigger. It's dirty work. It makes most people's skin crawl while they cling to disgust because it means they still have morals and humanity and all that bullshit.
Reno has no trouble pulling triggers. But tonight-- it was different. It was different, and that's why his shirt's stained red at the collar where blood blossomed from the cut just above his eyebrow and dripped a thick, sticky line down the side of his face. He touches his fingers to it irritably in the bathroom mirror, bares his teeth at himself in the dim light. Fuck. He should've just killed them in their sleep, or pulled bags over their heads before he shot them.
But he hadn't.
It had been an extermination, punishment from the corporate monster that was Shinra Electric. When you betrayed them, they paid you back tenfold, starting with a personal visit by Turk personnel to your family. He'd done it enough times before that the pleading wives and screaming babies didn't move him anymore. They became little twitches in the ruin of his conscience, vague discomforts that buried under more bodies, more bad deeds. But that night, when that boy had jumped out in front of his little brother, screaming for Reno to stop--
He'd been careless enough to let the kid catch him in the face before he'd finished him and his brother off with single bullets to their heads.
He shakes his head, goes to the shower and turns the knob. Strips. Runs his fingers absently over faint scars and tattoos and the shallow dip of his navel. He wants to crawl out of his skin and hibernate, a gently throbbing mass of veins and muscles, until the confused, tight feeling in him goes away. But instead, he steps under the water.
The spray runs cold, washing away the smell of blood and smoke.
It was one of those missions you shed off when you clock out, when you strip off your uniform and remember that you're flesh underneath. It's the kind of job you do because you have to, and you don't think about it too much or ask too many questions. You just do it. You keep your hand steady, keep your eyes open, and squeeze the trigger. It's dirty work. It makes most people's skin crawl while they cling to disgust because it means they still have morals and humanity and all that bullshit.
Reno has no trouble pulling triggers. But tonight-- it was different. It was different, and that's why his shirt's stained red at the collar where blood blossomed from the cut just above his eyebrow and dripped a thick, sticky line down the side of his face. He touches his fingers to it irritably in the bathroom mirror, bares his teeth at himself in the dim light. Fuck. He should've just killed them in their sleep, or pulled bags over their heads before he shot them.
But he hadn't.
It had been an extermination, punishment from the corporate monster that was Shinra Electric. When you betrayed them, they paid you back tenfold, starting with a personal visit by Turk personnel to your family. He'd done it enough times before that the pleading wives and screaming babies didn't move him anymore. They became little twitches in the ruin of his conscience, vague discomforts that buried under more bodies, more bad deeds. But that night, when that boy had jumped out in front of his little brother, screaming for Reno to stop--
He'd been careless enough to let the kid catch him in the face before he'd finished him and his brother off with single bullets to their heads.
He shakes his head, goes to the shower and turns the knob. Strips. Runs his fingers absently over faint scars and tattoos and the shallow dip of his navel. He wants to crawl out of his skin and hibernate, a gently throbbing mass of veins and muscles, until the confused, tight feeling in him goes away. But instead, he steps under the water.
The spray runs cold, washing away the smell of blood and smoke.