Stealth Mission (Final Fantasy VII, Elena/Reno)
Title: Stealth Mission
Author: puella_nerdii
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Pairing: Elena/Reno
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 3,828
Warnings: language, violence, explicit m/f sex
Prompt: Rufus/Elena - It started as a regular job for her, and it ended as anything but; add in a blindfold, and the two of them had a party. Preferably pre-Dirge, or at least not overly dependent on its characters or plot. Smut would be delicious. (Alternate: Reno/Elena.)
Summary: Even the worst missions can have the best endings.
“So what’s the plan for this one?” Reno asks. He’s tossing his mag rod in the air, twirling it like it’s a baton. Elena follows its arc with her eyes-it hangs suspended in the air about a foot over Reno’s head for a few seconds, spinning a little in the listless wind-and snatches the rod before it gets the chance to return to Reno’s hands.
“Pay attention,” she says.
He glances down a grimy alleyway on their left; dingy scraps of corroded metal litter the cracked asphalt, and there’s one hell of a smell rising from the overflowing trashcans. It’s stronger than the usual background reek of burning mako and unwashed everything that clings to Midgar. Elena sniffs deeper and wrinkles her nose.
“Something died,” she mutters. “Or someone. My gil’s on someone.”
Reno scrambles over the sea of scrap metal to the nearest trashcan. He’s good at deadening the sound of his footsteps when he wants to; his feet barely tap the heaviest parts of the metal, the ones that won’t ring out when something collides with them, for just a second, and then he vaults over creaky rust spots and sharp edges like a cat until his shoes start to squelch in the debris spilling out from beneath the can’s lid. She follows a step or two behind him. Elena isn’t as fast as he is-she isn’t as much of a showoff as he is, either-but it doesn’t take her too long to figure out where her feet and hands should go. It’s something you learn in Midgar, unless you want ten heads turning to watch you everywhere you step.
“So that’s what happened to the poor bastards they sent before us,” Reno says cheerfully. “Here, catch.”
He tosses a mangled hand to her, its fingernails already black with creeping fungus. “Smells worse than a malboro.” She cradles the bloated thing in her palm for a second, but if it belonged to anyone she knew, she can’t tell. Not in this light, and not when the hand’s already well on its way to rotting.
“Tarrant’s on the third floor, right?” Reno eyes the fire escape clinging to the side of the building.
“Right,” Elena says. “We take out Tarrant-”
“I figured as much, after this.” Reno dangles what looks like an ear from the tips of his fingers.
“-and we take out any of his men that we find,” she continues. “It shouldn’t be guarded too heavily. Tarrant thinks nobody knows about this place except him. That’s why he keeps his son here.”
“Are we offing the kid, too?” Reno asks.
She shakes her head. “No. We take the son with us to make sure his wife behaves herself.”
Even in the murky light, she can see Reno’s grin flash. “You sound just like Tseng, do you know that? Only his voice isn’t as high-pitched.”
“Thanks,” she says dryly. “Give me a lift up to the balcony, would you?”
“You aren’t worried that I’m gonna drop you?”
“If you drop me,” she says, “I’ll land on your foot as hard as I can. Then you can try to climb the fire escape with broken toes.”
Missions with Reno are usually like this-he cracks jokes, speculates about the sex lives of their targets…
“You know what I can’t get, though?” he asks, lacing his fingers beneath her foot and giving her a firm push up; she grabs onto the rickety railing and heaves her legs over until she’s resting on top of the metal flat on her stomach.. She thinks she might have torn her jacket, but ShinRa pays the tailor’s bills, so that’s all right.
“What?” Elena dangles her arms down. He grabs her wrists and almost flips himself up. The platform starts to groan, protesting the weight, so she pushes herself to her feet and heads for the stairs, trying not to step on any rusted patches. In theory, this is a stealth mission.
In practice, they sent Reno. It’s going to get loud soon.
“I can’t get how Tarrant has a kid. I mean, I’ve seen pictures of the guy. He’s fatter than Heidegger, and his face looks like shit.”
“They’re burn scars from a fire,” she mutters. She releases the safety on her gun. One more floor.
“His face looks like shit,” Reno repeats. “It’s a giant blister. If I were his wife, I’d make him put a paper bag over his head before I fucked him.”
“If you were his wife, he definitely wouldn’t have a kid. And then we wouldn’t have anyone to take as a hostage.”
“You’re quieter tonight.” Reno leans against the crumbling brick wall.
“Stealth mission,” she points out. “Quiet’s supposed to be the point. Do you have your materia equipped?”
“Yeah,” he says.
Reno has to bleed off the energy before a fight begins by talking. Rude keeps himself absolutely quiet and lets it build up until he hits combat, when everything explodes out of him, his spells and his punches both. When Tseng’s on active duty, he sinks into a rhythm beforehand, a rhythm of breathing and walking; by the time the fight breaks out, the way he moves through is like the patterns repeating on fast-forward, patterns that he takes care to establish before the shots start to ring out and the blood starts to flow, sped up until every breath’s part of a dance.
“Can I kick in the door?” Reno asks. “Rude never lets me kick in the door.”
“Let’s use the window,” she says. “Look at the lock on the door.”
He whistles under his breath. “Nice. That shit’s not cheap.”
“Hand me your knife.”
She cuts away the screen in front of the window and slithers through. It’s tricky to do with her jacket on, and she’s really going to need a new one after tonight, but she manages well enough. She feels something sharp drag across her hand, but it doesn’t draw blood.
Two of Tarrant’s men are slumped over the kitchen table clutching empty beer bottles.
“You do it,” she whispers to Reno. “My gun’ll wake Tarrant up.”
She hears the rod hum-it sounds almost like it’s purring to itself-smells the ozone cutting through the air, and in the light filtering out from beneath the fridge she sees Reno grab one guy by his ponytail and yank his head back. His throat burns as black as charcoal. The other guy doesn’t even stir when Elena pads over to him and flicks her wrist; there’s a little bit of a silver glint shining from her knife, and then the silver’s dulled by red. She can feel some of the blood dribble down her hands, sticky and thick.
“Tarrant’s in the third room on the right,” Elena whispers. “His son’s in the room next to him. I’ll get Tarrant.”
“I’m on babysitting duty?” he whispers back. “Fuck.”
She nudges the door open slowly with the barrel of her gun. Through the crack, she sees thick lump sprawled underneath the covers, snoring gently. The hinges start to creak; Elena’s arm locks in place, and Tarrant snorts once before the bed creaks even more loudly than the door did and he rolls to his side. Both his breathing and Elena’s return to normal.
She pads inside the room the way Tseng taught her to, toe-heel, toe-heel. Tarrant’s patchy scalp shines in the light coming from his alarm clock. She smiles to herself. Easy shot.
The silencer muffles most of the noise from her gun, but she hears a few muffled thumps from somewhere down the hall and knows it wasn’t quite enough. Darkness wells from Tarrant’s head and oozes down his shiny burns slowly. He makes a noise somewhere between a gasp and a snort and seizes up for just a second; then his hand falls back on top of his covers, limp.
She hears muffled curses coming from beyond the door, followed by a low hum, the harsh snap of electricity being discharged, and a few cries of “Who the fuck taught you how to fight, your grandmother?”
Well, she thinks as she flings the door open, Tarrant’s dead. If Reno wants to make noise now, he can.
Three men are still standing, and Reno’s in the thick of them, cracking his mag rod around like it’s a whip. She can smell the singed flesh from where she’s standing, and brief flashes of light from the rod show just what it is that Reno’s doing: slamming the end of the rod into the back of a burly one-eyed man’s skull with both hands, sticking his leg out to trip the skinny woman lunging at him and jumping hard on her back to make sure she stays down, then sending his rod into the base of her spine with a flare of electricity so bright that it hurts Elena’s eyes. She tries to get a clean shot in on the remaining man, but he’s a better fighter than those two were, and he has Reno in a headlock. Reno’s thrashing around, smacking the guy’s knuckles with his rod whenever he can, but the man squeezes tighter and she’s not sure if she can hit him without taking out Reno, too…
A kid stumbles out from the room on the left, rubbing his eyes.
She grabs his tousled hair and presses her gun to his temple. “Drop him,” she says, taking all the warmth out of her voice. “Or I’ll shoot.”
The man lets Reno go almost reflexively, and Elena does shoot-not the kid, but the man, once Reno rolls clear of him. When he slumps against the wall, gasping, the kid starts to cry.
Elena keeps her grip tight on his hair. The kid tries to twist free, but he doesn’t fight as dirty as Elena’s siblings did, and it’s not hard to keep a hold on him.
“I’ve mentioned that I hate babysitting, right?” Reno grunts and tears off a strip from the bottom of his shirt. There’s something red welling up beneath it.
“You’re hurt?” she says.
“Nah. It’s not worth spending a Heal on.”
“Then have a potion.” She flings one his way, and the wound congeals before her eyes when he drains it.
None of this has done a thing to shut the kid up, of course, so Reno takes the strip from his shirt and threads it through the kid’s open mouth, gagging him. “There,” he says, knotting the fabric twice at the back of the kid’s head. “That should help with the noise.”
“You’re good at that,” she says.
“Hell,” he says, laughing, “I’ve had it done to me enough.”
A shiver runs through her when she thinks about that-Reno gagged and tied to a chair or bent over a desk or pushed up against the wall.
She looks behind her and realizes the kid’s stopped crying.
“Let’s get him to headquarters,” she says.
***
Elena’s never having kids. Ever.
She and Reno end up having to take turns carrying the kid on their back during their hike to the rendezvous point, because the kid refuses to walk. Whenever she sets him down and gives him a nudge in the right direction, he drags his sneakers against the ground and squeezes her hand hard. For a kid who barely comes up to her ribcage, he has one hell of a grip. Sharp nails, too.
Her shoulders are thoroughly sore and cramped by the time the kid starts making weird strangled noises in the back of his throat.
“Breathe in through your nose,” Reno calls. He’s still massaging his wrist-the brat twisted it hard and tried to bite him there earlier, and Elena had almost let Reno zap the kid then and there. In the end, they compromised: they tied his hands in front of him.
It sounds like the kid’s hiccupping though his gag now. His breath sounds uneven, almost like it’s stabbing through his chest.
“Aw, shit,” Reno groans. “I think he’s choking…let me get this damn thing off…”
As soon as he loosens the gag, the kid starts wailing at the top of his lungs. Elena’s ears start to ring. She grits her teeth and dashes into a side alley before people start to stare-even in Midgar, a screaming kid attracts too much attention. “Reno!” she hisses. “Cover his mouth!”
“He bit me!” Reno hisses back. “Just now. Stupid little-hey. Kid. Do you have a name?”
Elena dumps him off her back none too gently. Reno snatches him up and holds the kid in a headlock similar to the one he was in earlier. He winces when the kid’s kicks catch him right below his knee, but he digs an elbow into the kid’s side and the brat stops thrashing. Mostly. “Do you have a name?” Elena repeats. “And if you start shrieking-”
“-I’ll shove a cactaur down your throat,” Reno finishes. He moves his hand aside slowly.
The kid screws up his face like he’s about to holler, but thinks better of it. “Toby,” he says.
“Toby. Okay. If you’re a good little boy and don’t piss off Uncle Reno, he’ll buy you ice cream. Is that okay? Gods,” Reno adds.
“I’m allergic to ice cream,” Toby says, opening his mouth wide-but Reno clamps his hand hard over Toby’s jaw and he whimpers instead.
“Whatever. Just don’t piss me off. You’ll like where we’re going. There are magic rainbows and sparkly ponies and…what the hell kind of stuff do you like, anyway, kid? Don’t answer,” he says before Toby can respond. “Whatever you like is going to be there. So let’s just get ourselves fucking moving towards that happy place, okay?”
Elena snorts.
There’s no car waiting for them at the rendezvous point. Reno checks twice.
“Shit. We missed the car. Shit. Get Tseng on the PHS-no. I’ll call Tseng. You take the kid inside there.” He points to a ramshackle apartment building across the street, with boarded-up windows and a crumbling ceiling.
“Fine,” she says.
The door’s half-rotted and falling off its hinges; even with Toby balanced on her back, it’s not hard for her to kick it open. The front hallway’s covered with a blanket of dust and mold. Exposed pipes peek from the holes in the wall, and the staircase is just jagged splinters and patches of rot by now.
She ties Toby’s hands behind him this time and loops the tie through the pipes. They might be rusted almost clean through, but she still doesn’t think a kid as small as he is has the strength to break them. She picks at the tears in her jacket until the thick fabric splits open and gives her more ties to work with and gets to work anchoring Toby’s feet, too. She’s not taking any chances with this one.
“Now stay here,” Elena tells him. “And try to be less of a brat.” She pats his gag. He gives her a sullen look that’s really a more appropriate expression for a teenager to have, but he can’t holler at her, so she’s fine. He can give her all the dirty looks he wants, as long as he shuts up.
“Tseng says it’ll be another two hours, at least.” Reno stumbles through the doorway, yanking the end of his ponytail. “There’s some sort of snafu at headquarters. He won’t say what it is.” He eyes her handiwork and whistles. “Nice.”
“Thanks.” She holds up a few more strips of cloth. “Should we blindfold him, too?”
“Couldn’t hurt.” Reno shrugs.
Together, they make sure that Toby’s thoroughly trussed up. Elena tugs on the knots as hard as she can. They hold firm.
“Two hours,” Reno groans.
“At least he’s quiet now,” Elena points out.
“If he chokes on the gag again, I’m letting him suffocate. My fingers are bleeding. I know my damn fingers are bleeding.”
She takes his hand in hers and eyes it closely. It’s hard to make out how deep the teethmarks are in this light, but they don’t look too bad. “You’ll be fine. My hands are bloodier than yours.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. His grin’s slower than it usually is, like he’s really luxuriating in it. Reno brings her palm to his lips and draws his tongue in a line right up the center of her hand. It tickles in a way that sends sparks shooting through her arm. She’s forgotten how hot his mouth gets.
“The blood’s hot on you,” he says. “Makes you dangerous.”
She rubs the butt of her gun. “I don’t usually look dangerous?”
He grins again, and this time his mouth’s on the side of her neck, his teeth scraping along the line of her jaw. “Nah,” he whispers, his breath hot against her ear. “You’re plenty dangerous. Bet you could snap me in half if you wanted to.”
Elena grabs the back of his head and nestles her fingers in his hair, pulling him closer. His tongue darts around the shell of her ear, warm and lithe. “Do you want to do this in front of the kid?” she asks.
He laughs again. “He can’t see shit, anyway. C’mon.” Reno clambers to his feet and leads her over to a little corner tucked behind the splintered stairway. The jagged remnants of a plaster wall block Toby from view. “Parents do this shit all the time. Or mine did, anyway.”
“If he gets loose, I’m telling Tseng it was your idea,” she says.
“He won’t,” Reno says confidently. “Forget about the kid. Wait.”
“Yeah?”
“Give me one of the pieces of your jacket.”
She hands a strip of fabric over. Reno holds it in front of him and snaps the thick material once. “This should be good. Close your eyes.”
“You think blindfolding me is going to help?” But she closes them.
“Well,” he says, and she feels the wool scratch and tug at her eyelids, “you really can’t see the little fucker this way.”
“You have a-” She stops there, because Reno’s tracing circles under her jaw with his tongue, and she tilts her head back, breathing harder. “You have a point.”
His hands slide under her shirt, tracing lines on her stomach. His touches are too firm to be ticklish; they leave aching imprints of his fingers behind instead, places where her skin longs to be touched again. “I always have a point. You know that.”
He stops talking then, mostly because he’s kissing her. His lips are rough against hers, and he catches her lower lip between his teeth and draws on it hard. Warmth spreads through her when their tongues slide together, hard and searing. She gropes around for the back of his head and crushes the two of them together until she feels his nose press into her cheek, his chest press into her breasts, his cock press into her thigh.
His weight lessens, and the pressure on her lips fades until it’s just a tingle. “Fuck,” he says slowly, drawing the word out until it sounds almost musical. “You really want this.”
“So do you,” she says. Her breath’s still coming in stutters and gasps. “I felt your cock.”
Reno’s-fingers, they must be his fingers, she can feel the calluses-press into her hips, massaging them in circles. “Yeah? You wanna feel it again?”
“Get me-ah.” There’s a sound like buttons popping free, and the underwire of her bra isn’t holding her breasts in place anymore; she feels a warm puff of air pass over her nipples and she strains up, trying to meet it. “Get me warmed up first.”
“Whatever you want, Elena.” His knuckles press into her hipbones, the cloth around her thighs pulls taut, and then she feels the waistband of her pants and underwear slipping down, down until something light and fine, some kind of powder, lands softly on her curls. “Tell me when you want more than just this.”
“I will soon…” She feels the pressure against her clit right away, hard and a little rough (but rough’s usually better), rubbing up and down in tiny fast strokes. Elena jerks her hips up, and then there’s breath stirring against her thighs, and then there’s something wet teasing her folds and making them-gods, making them even slicker, Reno’s mouth is a furnace and she doesn’t want it any other way, she doesn’t want the temperature to stop or the pressure to lessen-
“Yeah,” he groans, his voice muffled, “love seeing you go wild like this, love it when you want it this bad, fuck, you taste so sweet…”
Something thin nudges inside her, and then he’s rubbing, rubbing everything just the way she likes it and she can feel how slick she’s getting, she can feel the heat gathering between her legs, and she’s ready now.
“Do it,” she says.
“Yeah? You want my cock in you?” His voice is as hoarse as hers is.
“Ah-want to come like that, with-gods-with you in me…”
“Fuck, how can I say no to that?” And then she’s full, full until she almost stings from it, but she grinds her hips up and it’s good, he’s got-ah, those must be his teeth on her nipple, biting down hard just long enough to send spirals of fire twisting through her. He takes her hand and guides it between her legs. She trails her fingers over his curls and he groans low in the back of his throat; his hips roll against hers and he sinks in even deeper. She reaches her free hand up and stretches it out until she finds the bony ridge of his hips under her fingers.
“Faster,” she pants, “I’m close, I’m almost-”
“You’re…ah…driving me over the edge, damn, don’t know how you stay so tight…” He thrusts in faster and she bucks up to meet him, her fingers fast and driving against her clit. She feels Reno shift his hips just a little, and when he bears down on her again, he finds the spot that makes her keen high and hard until lights explode behind her eyes and it feels like she can see again.
“Fuck,” Reno breathes, “that’s…fuck-”He pushes in harder for only a little longer and then he’s as lost as she is-she hears it in his voice, feels it as he shudders deep inside her.
They rest there for a few moments, panting. Elena tugs the blindfold off.
“You ripped up my shirt,” she says once she’s able to survey the damage properly.
Reno shrugs and pulls out of her slowly. “They know better than to ask questions.” He leans around the wall. “And the brat’s still there. Wonder if he heard anything.”
“I’d be surprised if he didn’t,” she says. She tugs up her pants. “You’re loud.”
He grins. “Hey, you never said anything about this being a stealth mission.”
Author: puella_nerdii
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Pairing: Elena/Reno
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 3,828
Warnings: language, violence, explicit m/f sex
Prompt: Rufus/Elena - It started as a regular job for her, and it ended as anything but; add in a blindfold, and the two of them had a party. Preferably pre-Dirge, or at least not overly dependent on its characters or plot. Smut would be delicious. (Alternate: Reno/Elena.)
Summary: Even the worst missions can have the best endings.
“So what’s the plan for this one?” Reno asks. He’s tossing his mag rod in the air, twirling it like it’s a baton. Elena follows its arc with her eyes-it hangs suspended in the air about a foot over Reno’s head for a few seconds, spinning a little in the listless wind-and snatches the rod before it gets the chance to return to Reno’s hands.
“Pay attention,” she says.
He glances down a grimy alleyway on their left; dingy scraps of corroded metal litter the cracked asphalt, and there’s one hell of a smell rising from the overflowing trashcans. It’s stronger than the usual background reek of burning mako and unwashed everything that clings to Midgar. Elena sniffs deeper and wrinkles her nose.
“Something died,” she mutters. “Or someone. My gil’s on someone.”
Reno scrambles over the sea of scrap metal to the nearest trashcan. He’s good at deadening the sound of his footsteps when he wants to; his feet barely tap the heaviest parts of the metal, the ones that won’t ring out when something collides with them, for just a second, and then he vaults over creaky rust spots and sharp edges like a cat until his shoes start to squelch in the debris spilling out from beneath the can’s lid. She follows a step or two behind him. Elena isn’t as fast as he is-she isn’t as much of a showoff as he is, either-but it doesn’t take her too long to figure out where her feet and hands should go. It’s something you learn in Midgar, unless you want ten heads turning to watch you everywhere you step.
“So that’s what happened to the poor bastards they sent before us,” Reno says cheerfully. “Here, catch.”
He tosses a mangled hand to her, its fingernails already black with creeping fungus. “Smells worse than a malboro.” She cradles the bloated thing in her palm for a second, but if it belonged to anyone she knew, she can’t tell. Not in this light, and not when the hand’s already well on its way to rotting.
“Tarrant’s on the third floor, right?” Reno eyes the fire escape clinging to the side of the building.
“Right,” Elena says. “We take out Tarrant-”
“I figured as much, after this.” Reno dangles what looks like an ear from the tips of his fingers.
“-and we take out any of his men that we find,” she continues. “It shouldn’t be guarded too heavily. Tarrant thinks nobody knows about this place except him. That’s why he keeps his son here.”
“Are we offing the kid, too?” Reno asks.
She shakes her head. “No. We take the son with us to make sure his wife behaves herself.”
Even in the murky light, she can see Reno’s grin flash. “You sound just like Tseng, do you know that? Only his voice isn’t as high-pitched.”
“Thanks,” she says dryly. “Give me a lift up to the balcony, would you?”
“You aren’t worried that I’m gonna drop you?”
“If you drop me,” she says, “I’ll land on your foot as hard as I can. Then you can try to climb the fire escape with broken toes.”
Missions with Reno are usually like this-he cracks jokes, speculates about the sex lives of their targets…
“You know what I can’t get, though?” he asks, lacing his fingers beneath her foot and giving her a firm push up; she grabs onto the rickety railing and heaves her legs over until she’s resting on top of the metal flat on her stomach.. She thinks she might have torn her jacket, but ShinRa pays the tailor’s bills, so that’s all right.
“What?” Elena dangles her arms down. He grabs her wrists and almost flips himself up. The platform starts to groan, protesting the weight, so she pushes herself to her feet and heads for the stairs, trying not to step on any rusted patches. In theory, this is a stealth mission.
In practice, they sent Reno. It’s going to get loud soon.
“I can’t get how Tarrant has a kid. I mean, I’ve seen pictures of the guy. He’s fatter than Heidegger, and his face looks like shit.”
“They’re burn scars from a fire,” she mutters. She releases the safety on her gun. One more floor.
“His face looks like shit,” Reno repeats. “It’s a giant blister. If I were his wife, I’d make him put a paper bag over his head before I fucked him.”
“If you were his wife, he definitely wouldn’t have a kid. And then we wouldn’t have anyone to take as a hostage.”
“You’re quieter tonight.” Reno leans against the crumbling brick wall.
“Stealth mission,” she points out. “Quiet’s supposed to be the point. Do you have your materia equipped?”
“Yeah,” he says.
Reno has to bleed off the energy before a fight begins by talking. Rude keeps himself absolutely quiet and lets it build up until he hits combat, when everything explodes out of him, his spells and his punches both. When Tseng’s on active duty, he sinks into a rhythm beforehand, a rhythm of breathing and walking; by the time the fight breaks out, the way he moves through is like the patterns repeating on fast-forward, patterns that he takes care to establish before the shots start to ring out and the blood starts to flow, sped up until every breath’s part of a dance.
“Can I kick in the door?” Reno asks. “Rude never lets me kick in the door.”
“Let’s use the window,” she says. “Look at the lock on the door.”
He whistles under his breath. “Nice. That shit’s not cheap.”
“Hand me your knife.”
She cuts away the screen in front of the window and slithers through. It’s tricky to do with her jacket on, and she’s really going to need a new one after tonight, but she manages well enough. She feels something sharp drag across her hand, but it doesn’t draw blood.
Two of Tarrant’s men are slumped over the kitchen table clutching empty beer bottles.
“You do it,” she whispers to Reno. “My gun’ll wake Tarrant up.”
She hears the rod hum-it sounds almost like it’s purring to itself-smells the ozone cutting through the air, and in the light filtering out from beneath the fridge she sees Reno grab one guy by his ponytail and yank his head back. His throat burns as black as charcoal. The other guy doesn’t even stir when Elena pads over to him and flicks her wrist; there’s a little bit of a silver glint shining from her knife, and then the silver’s dulled by red. She can feel some of the blood dribble down her hands, sticky and thick.
“Tarrant’s in the third room on the right,” Elena whispers. “His son’s in the room next to him. I’ll get Tarrant.”
“I’m on babysitting duty?” he whispers back. “Fuck.”
She nudges the door open slowly with the barrel of her gun. Through the crack, she sees thick lump sprawled underneath the covers, snoring gently. The hinges start to creak; Elena’s arm locks in place, and Tarrant snorts once before the bed creaks even more loudly than the door did and he rolls to his side. Both his breathing and Elena’s return to normal.
She pads inside the room the way Tseng taught her to, toe-heel, toe-heel. Tarrant’s patchy scalp shines in the light coming from his alarm clock. She smiles to herself. Easy shot.
The silencer muffles most of the noise from her gun, but she hears a few muffled thumps from somewhere down the hall and knows it wasn’t quite enough. Darkness wells from Tarrant’s head and oozes down his shiny burns slowly. He makes a noise somewhere between a gasp and a snort and seizes up for just a second; then his hand falls back on top of his covers, limp.
She hears muffled curses coming from beyond the door, followed by a low hum, the harsh snap of electricity being discharged, and a few cries of “Who the fuck taught you how to fight, your grandmother?”
Well, she thinks as she flings the door open, Tarrant’s dead. If Reno wants to make noise now, he can.
Three men are still standing, and Reno’s in the thick of them, cracking his mag rod around like it’s a whip. She can smell the singed flesh from where she’s standing, and brief flashes of light from the rod show just what it is that Reno’s doing: slamming the end of the rod into the back of a burly one-eyed man’s skull with both hands, sticking his leg out to trip the skinny woman lunging at him and jumping hard on her back to make sure she stays down, then sending his rod into the base of her spine with a flare of electricity so bright that it hurts Elena’s eyes. She tries to get a clean shot in on the remaining man, but he’s a better fighter than those two were, and he has Reno in a headlock. Reno’s thrashing around, smacking the guy’s knuckles with his rod whenever he can, but the man squeezes tighter and she’s not sure if she can hit him without taking out Reno, too…
A kid stumbles out from the room on the left, rubbing his eyes.
She grabs his tousled hair and presses her gun to his temple. “Drop him,” she says, taking all the warmth out of her voice. “Or I’ll shoot.”
The man lets Reno go almost reflexively, and Elena does shoot-not the kid, but the man, once Reno rolls clear of him. When he slumps against the wall, gasping, the kid starts to cry.
Elena keeps her grip tight on his hair. The kid tries to twist free, but he doesn’t fight as dirty as Elena’s siblings did, and it’s not hard to keep a hold on him.
“I’ve mentioned that I hate babysitting, right?” Reno grunts and tears off a strip from the bottom of his shirt. There’s something red welling up beneath it.
“You’re hurt?” she says.
“Nah. It’s not worth spending a Heal on.”
“Then have a potion.” She flings one his way, and the wound congeals before her eyes when he drains it.
None of this has done a thing to shut the kid up, of course, so Reno takes the strip from his shirt and threads it through the kid’s open mouth, gagging him. “There,” he says, knotting the fabric twice at the back of the kid’s head. “That should help with the noise.”
“You’re good at that,” she says.
“Hell,” he says, laughing, “I’ve had it done to me enough.”
A shiver runs through her when she thinks about that-Reno gagged and tied to a chair or bent over a desk or pushed up against the wall.
She looks behind her and realizes the kid’s stopped crying.
“Let’s get him to headquarters,” she says.
***
Elena’s never having kids. Ever.
She and Reno end up having to take turns carrying the kid on their back during their hike to the rendezvous point, because the kid refuses to walk. Whenever she sets him down and gives him a nudge in the right direction, he drags his sneakers against the ground and squeezes her hand hard. For a kid who barely comes up to her ribcage, he has one hell of a grip. Sharp nails, too.
Her shoulders are thoroughly sore and cramped by the time the kid starts making weird strangled noises in the back of his throat.
“Breathe in through your nose,” Reno calls. He’s still massaging his wrist-the brat twisted it hard and tried to bite him there earlier, and Elena had almost let Reno zap the kid then and there. In the end, they compromised: they tied his hands in front of him.
It sounds like the kid’s hiccupping though his gag now. His breath sounds uneven, almost like it’s stabbing through his chest.
“Aw, shit,” Reno groans. “I think he’s choking…let me get this damn thing off…”
As soon as he loosens the gag, the kid starts wailing at the top of his lungs. Elena’s ears start to ring. She grits her teeth and dashes into a side alley before people start to stare-even in Midgar, a screaming kid attracts too much attention. “Reno!” she hisses. “Cover his mouth!”
“He bit me!” Reno hisses back. “Just now. Stupid little-hey. Kid. Do you have a name?”
Elena dumps him off her back none too gently. Reno snatches him up and holds the kid in a headlock similar to the one he was in earlier. He winces when the kid’s kicks catch him right below his knee, but he digs an elbow into the kid’s side and the brat stops thrashing. Mostly. “Do you have a name?” Elena repeats. “And if you start shrieking-”
“-I’ll shove a cactaur down your throat,” Reno finishes. He moves his hand aside slowly.
The kid screws up his face like he’s about to holler, but thinks better of it. “Toby,” he says.
“Toby. Okay. If you’re a good little boy and don’t piss off Uncle Reno, he’ll buy you ice cream. Is that okay? Gods,” Reno adds.
“I’m allergic to ice cream,” Toby says, opening his mouth wide-but Reno clamps his hand hard over Toby’s jaw and he whimpers instead.
“Whatever. Just don’t piss me off. You’ll like where we’re going. There are magic rainbows and sparkly ponies and…what the hell kind of stuff do you like, anyway, kid? Don’t answer,” he says before Toby can respond. “Whatever you like is going to be there. So let’s just get ourselves fucking moving towards that happy place, okay?”
Elena snorts.
There’s no car waiting for them at the rendezvous point. Reno checks twice.
“Shit. We missed the car. Shit. Get Tseng on the PHS-no. I’ll call Tseng. You take the kid inside there.” He points to a ramshackle apartment building across the street, with boarded-up windows and a crumbling ceiling.
“Fine,” she says.
The door’s half-rotted and falling off its hinges; even with Toby balanced on her back, it’s not hard for her to kick it open. The front hallway’s covered with a blanket of dust and mold. Exposed pipes peek from the holes in the wall, and the staircase is just jagged splinters and patches of rot by now.
She ties Toby’s hands behind him this time and loops the tie through the pipes. They might be rusted almost clean through, but she still doesn’t think a kid as small as he is has the strength to break them. She picks at the tears in her jacket until the thick fabric splits open and gives her more ties to work with and gets to work anchoring Toby’s feet, too. She’s not taking any chances with this one.
“Now stay here,” Elena tells him. “And try to be less of a brat.” She pats his gag. He gives her a sullen look that’s really a more appropriate expression for a teenager to have, but he can’t holler at her, so she’s fine. He can give her all the dirty looks he wants, as long as he shuts up.
“Tseng says it’ll be another two hours, at least.” Reno stumbles through the doorway, yanking the end of his ponytail. “There’s some sort of snafu at headquarters. He won’t say what it is.” He eyes her handiwork and whistles. “Nice.”
“Thanks.” She holds up a few more strips of cloth. “Should we blindfold him, too?”
“Couldn’t hurt.” Reno shrugs.
Together, they make sure that Toby’s thoroughly trussed up. Elena tugs on the knots as hard as she can. They hold firm.
“Two hours,” Reno groans.
“At least he’s quiet now,” Elena points out.
“If he chokes on the gag again, I’m letting him suffocate. My fingers are bleeding. I know my damn fingers are bleeding.”
She takes his hand in hers and eyes it closely. It’s hard to make out how deep the teethmarks are in this light, but they don’t look too bad. “You’ll be fine. My hands are bloodier than yours.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. His grin’s slower than it usually is, like he’s really luxuriating in it. Reno brings her palm to his lips and draws his tongue in a line right up the center of her hand. It tickles in a way that sends sparks shooting through her arm. She’s forgotten how hot his mouth gets.
“The blood’s hot on you,” he says. “Makes you dangerous.”
She rubs the butt of her gun. “I don’t usually look dangerous?”
He grins again, and this time his mouth’s on the side of her neck, his teeth scraping along the line of her jaw. “Nah,” he whispers, his breath hot against her ear. “You’re plenty dangerous. Bet you could snap me in half if you wanted to.”
Elena grabs the back of his head and nestles her fingers in his hair, pulling him closer. His tongue darts around the shell of her ear, warm and lithe. “Do you want to do this in front of the kid?” she asks.
He laughs again. “He can’t see shit, anyway. C’mon.” Reno clambers to his feet and leads her over to a little corner tucked behind the splintered stairway. The jagged remnants of a plaster wall block Toby from view. “Parents do this shit all the time. Or mine did, anyway.”
“If he gets loose, I’m telling Tseng it was your idea,” she says.
“He won’t,” Reno says confidently. “Forget about the kid. Wait.”
“Yeah?”
“Give me one of the pieces of your jacket.”
She hands a strip of fabric over. Reno holds it in front of him and snaps the thick material once. “This should be good. Close your eyes.”
“You think blindfolding me is going to help?” But she closes them.
“Well,” he says, and she feels the wool scratch and tug at her eyelids, “you really can’t see the little fucker this way.”
“You have a-” She stops there, because Reno’s tracing circles under her jaw with his tongue, and she tilts her head back, breathing harder. “You have a point.”
His hands slide under her shirt, tracing lines on her stomach. His touches are too firm to be ticklish; they leave aching imprints of his fingers behind instead, places where her skin longs to be touched again. “I always have a point. You know that.”
He stops talking then, mostly because he’s kissing her. His lips are rough against hers, and he catches her lower lip between his teeth and draws on it hard. Warmth spreads through her when their tongues slide together, hard and searing. She gropes around for the back of his head and crushes the two of them together until she feels his nose press into her cheek, his chest press into her breasts, his cock press into her thigh.
His weight lessens, and the pressure on her lips fades until it’s just a tingle. “Fuck,” he says slowly, drawing the word out until it sounds almost musical. “You really want this.”
“So do you,” she says. Her breath’s still coming in stutters and gasps. “I felt your cock.”
Reno’s-fingers, they must be his fingers, she can feel the calluses-press into her hips, massaging them in circles. “Yeah? You wanna feel it again?”
“Get me-ah.” There’s a sound like buttons popping free, and the underwire of her bra isn’t holding her breasts in place anymore; she feels a warm puff of air pass over her nipples and she strains up, trying to meet it. “Get me warmed up first.”
“Whatever you want, Elena.” His knuckles press into her hipbones, the cloth around her thighs pulls taut, and then she feels the waistband of her pants and underwear slipping down, down until something light and fine, some kind of powder, lands softly on her curls. “Tell me when you want more than just this.”
“I will soon…” She feels the pressure against her clit right away, hard and a little rough (but rough’s usually better), rubbing up and down in tiny fast strokes. Elena jerks her hips up, and then there’s breath stirring against her thighs, and then there’s something wet teasing her folds and making them-gods, making them even slicker, Reno’s mouth is a furnace and she doesn’t want it any other way, she doesn’t want the temperature to stop or the pressure to lessen-
“Yeah,” he groans, his voice muffled, “love seeing you go wild like this, love it when you want it this bad, fuck, you taste so sweet…”
Something thin nudges inside her, and then he’s rubbing, rubbing everything just the way she likes it and she can feel how slick she’s getting, she can feel the heat gathering between her legs, and she’s ready now.
“Do it,” she says.
“Yeah? You want my cock in you?” His voice is as hoarse as hers is.
“Ah-want to come like that, with-gods-with you in me…”
“Fuck, how can I say no to that?” And then she’s full, full until she almost stings from it, but she grinds her hips up and it’s good, he’s got-ah, those must be his teeth on her nipple, biting down hard just long enough to send spirals of fire twisting through her. He takes her hand and guides it between her legs. She trails her fingers over his curls and he groans low in the back of his throat; his hips roll against hers and he sinks in even deeper. She reaches her free hand up and stretches it out until she finds the bony ridge of his hips under her fingers.
“Faster,” she pants, “I’m close, I’m almost-”
“You’re…ah…driving me over the edge, damn, don’t know how you stay so tight…” He thrusts in faster and she bucks up to meet him, her fingers fast and driving against her clit. She feels Reno shift his hips just a little, and when he bears down on her again, he finds the spot that makes her keen high and hard until lights explode behind her eyes and it feels like she can see again.
“Fuck,” Reno breathes, “that’s…fuck-”He pushes in harder for only a little longer and then he’s as lost as she is-she hears it in his voice, feels it as he shudders deep inside her.
They rest there for a few moments, panting. Elena tugs the blindfold off.
“You ripped up my shirt,” she says once she’s able to survey the damage properly.
Reno shrugs and pulls out of her slowly. “They know better than to ask questions.” He leans around the wall. “And the brat’s still there. Wonder if he heard anything.”
“I’d be surprised if he didn’t,” she says. She tugs up her pants. “You’re loud.”
He grins. “Hey, you never said anything about this being a stealth mission.”