Final Fantasy VII: School Days (Tseng, Rufus, Reeve cameo)

[karanguni]

Title: School Days (Are The Best Days Of Your Life)
Pairing: Tseng, Rufus, Reeve cameo
Rating: PG
Summary: Tseng's brilliant, but bored; Rufus is bored, but brilliant; Reeve just wants to build things and teach his classes in peace, damn it, so count him out of the Junon University ratrace, and he wouldn't mind them leaving off the world domination either.
Warnings: Written for roads_diverged over at IJ; theme of "college students". AU like an AU like an AU. This one's a lighthearted jaunt through the woods; don't expect anything too serious from the boys. *g* Set in a quasi-Midgar universe, contorted and then spat out again.

2393 words, with plenty of age!bending and Rufus in jeans.



'I've a problem case,' Reeve announced at lunch one day. A file was dropped onto the table, and Rufus picked it up with a bored sort of curiosity. Reeve cared too much about his kids; being a bachelor must have given him maternal instincts. 'He's got so much potential, but I get the feeling that he's underperforming.'

'He's not underperforming,' Rufus said, glancing through Reeve's student's records. 'He's bored. And you can't blame him, either - it says here he topped the level for his year. Now he's come into the city expecting stellar education, but what he's going to get is the unholy union of stupid jock boys and their rich, influential fathers.'

'You realise you could well be describing yourself,' Reeve said, wryly.

'They don't let stupid jock boys,' Rufus smiled back across the table at him, 'teach classes.'

'JU is as young a university as it can get,' Reeve shot back, saving his files from Rufus Shinra's prying, devious, student-stealing eyes. 'They were probably desperate.'

'They were desperate,' Rufus said genially. 'For money - which my father gave him - and for good Midgar U graduates - such as myself - crazy enough to sacrifice top jobs in any industry to come down here.'

'And now that you're here on exile, you're determined to rob me of every bright spark in order to construct some sort of complicated revenge against your cruel father, who buys you sports cars and expensive clothing and a penthouse suite.'

'Worldly goods aren't signs of affection, they're bribery,' Rufus shrugged. He checked his watch, then took his coffee from the table and saluted the older professor. 'Time's up for me. That student of yours looks interesting - I'll see you in class tomorrow, Reeve, to take a look at him. I trust you won't give me away?'

'I wonder if Midgar University let you out young because you were a genius, or threw you out early because you're incorrigible,' the professor for engineering sighed. Stopping Rufus was like trying to stop a tidal wave.

'Probably a bit of both,' Rufus grinned, and walked away to go terrorise the few business undergrads who'd been daring enough to sign up for his course.

Camouflage was easy: for one, the Business and Engineering faculties were on opposite sides of campus, so students from either side rarely recognised the staff members from the other. All Rufus really had to do was drop the ties and dress shirts and pull out the washed out t-shirts and vintage jeans. Ruffle up the fringe with some gel, sleep only two hours the night before and roll out of bed without showering: the typical male student, fresh from assignment hell.

Slipping into the back of Reeve's class was a matter of turning up half an hour before the lecture started: no one was there, because everyone was sleeping. Rufus saluted the professor from his chosen vantage point, and Reeve tried very hard not to sigh. It didn't take too much longer for the real student population to stream in: blonds and brunettes and redheads and all sorts from all over the place. Junon was hot territory: a couple of pretty major organisations had moved away from Midgar ten or so years back, frustrated by SEC - Shinra Electric Company's - grip on the energy and blue chip markets. The business migration was followed by a flock of nouveau rich who, tired of being small fish in a big sea, opted to port their families over in favour of cushy jobs in a smaller pond.

In an act of goodwill, Shinra'd extended a couple of energy agreements for the first two decades to help the city on its way, and the President also poured in a boatload of cash and investment into the rising universities and vocational institutes - even, charitably enough, allowing his young prodigy of a son to step down temporarily from his newly-acquired position of Vice President to go help further the knowledge of younger ones. Now Junon was rising, and everyone who didn't think they had what it took (brains, brawn, and a lot of money) to make it in Midgar came here to fight it out for the next best spot.

Five minutes before class started, and the student in question walked in. Rufus gave him the once over: neat hair (though it was rebelliously long), fresh clothes (unlike the stink of two-day-old shirts around him) and an expression of polite (if highly disinterested) attention on his face. Tseng settled somewhere in the middle of the hall, and paid close attention even before Reeve started the lesson proper.

By the time they were midway through the physics of some-such-suspension-thing-or-another, Rufus had to hide his smile behind his doodled-on notepad. Tseng was still paying rapt attention to what was going on, but the his fingers had been spinning a pen for ten minutes at least, and his tutorial lay completed in front of him even though every other student seemed lost in a series of calculations and soft swearing.

Rufus took himself on a toilet break sometime before the lecture's end, and didn't come back; he'd seen enough. Tseng was definitely bored. And definitely smart.

Reeve dreaded lunch, because when Rufus sat down in front of him and crossed his legs and smiled like that, nothing less than hell and brimstone was going to come. 'Oh, no, Rufus,' he held up a hand before the blond could even open his mouth. 'If you want to do any recruiting, do it on your own turf - leave my kids alone.'

'Did you really think I'd do that without actually getting to know him better?' Rufus raised his eyebrows. 'I've only seen him in one lesson.'

'You don't bother watching students unless you already know what you want,' Reeve muttered, stabbing at his salad with more force than strictly necessary. 'The admissions secretary let me know that you came poking again. Drew out a couple of files that you really don't need to see.'

'I liked that other secretary better,' Rufus said.

'You mean you liked that you could bribe the old one into silence.'

'You think so lowly of me,' Rufus said. 'Don't worry, Reeve. When everything is said and done and the world an oyster in my hand, I'll repay you with anything you want.' He laughed at the exasperation on the other man's face before going off and finding the TA who was teaching the elective class for Wutainese Classics and persuading her that no one would know or care if he covered her classes for the next two or three weeks.

'Good morning, class,' Rufus said brightly that Wednesday morning, and the first thing that was heard in the room was holy shit, that's Rufus Shinra! Pretending he didn't hear, Rufus drew out a stack of sheets from his folio and went around passing them out. The class was small - miniscule, really - just fourteen people seated around a loose collection of desks in an out of the way classroom. 'I'll be taking over this class for a few sessions until your old TA gets back from a course. Since you're starting on a new text, it shouldn't be too bad of a transition - and since you've probably all done your reading, here's a diagnostic.'

He could feel the lust for blood in the air the moment the words left his mouth, and he smiled and passed out multiple choice sheets to thirteen students, and an essay question about ethnic metaphors and ethics in verse to one.

Tseng caught his eye as Rufus walked past, and Rufus was pretty sure he knew that something was up - which suited him just find. Tseng also did not ask for another question paper, even though Rufus was certain that he'd seen how different his was from everyone else's.

Tseng's response was brilliant, which only made Rufus smile. That - and the comment at the bottom of the paper, which in neat, slash-like handwriting, said: what are you trying to do?

Rufus wrote back, treat you as intelligently as you deserve to be treated.

For the next few lessons he gave short, cursory lectures counter-pointed with long, intense sessions of debate; the students forgave him for the breach in university etiquette after Rufus decided to hold class in one of the cafes (suspiciously empty and apparently reserved) on the edge of campus one day, everyone talking so avidly by the end of the session that most of the free food was left untouched.

('You're putting a lot of effort into covering a class that isn't in your specialisation,' Tseng said to him, eyes narrowed and beautifully suspicious.

'I like looking after the welfare of students,' Rufus replied, smiling. 'It wasn't so long ago that I was one myself.'

Tseng gave him a look that might have been translated as do you think I'm an idiot? 'Shinra and welfare don't go hand in hand.'

'And potential is only wasted on building blocks and walls of text.'

'That sounds strangely similar to Shinra bureaucracy, professor.')

Whatever Tseng had to say about the matter, Rufus - having long been subject to the hell of private tutors in addition to his personal love for the subject - was as adept as their previous TA, and five times more involved; class became increasing complex. Whether he wanted to or not, Tseng went from saying nothing during the first lecture to arguing topics with Rufus that managed to leave everyone else baffled.

('You spend too much time researching these things,' Rufus said, flipping through some of Tseng's references.

'I prefer to be thorough,' Tseng said, dryly, 'instead of playing bluffs all the time.')

On the last day, Rufus packed up his things, and as he was about to leave commented briefly to Tseng, 'You should really consider taking more credits in something other than engineering. There's no challenge in arranging bricks. Drop by the Business faculty sometime. You never know, after all.'

'Never know that you have something up your sleeve?' Tseng asked, just as quietly.

'Never know what might happen if you let yourself see what it is I'm hiding there.'

Tseng didn't turn up the next week to any of Rufus' classes, nor the week after that. But he did hang around the faculty, sitting in the student lounges where he could blend in and watch the crowd, and note the faces as they went by.

There was a redhead that kept going into Rufus' offices, and a petit blonde, and one or two other students who looked like they had nothing to do with Business and everything to do with whatever Rufus was playing at.

He cornered the redhead in a cafeteria one night, the bustle of laughter and voices around them allowing Tseng to come right up and ask, 'Excuse me. Do you know professor Shinra?'

'Who, Rufus?' the redhead said, turning to look at Tseng. The grin that spread over the guy's face was singularly irritating; it was as smug as Rufus' own. 'Oh,' he said. 'You're the new kid. The one that won't bite. I'm Reno.'

Won't bite? 'Tseng.'

'I'd shake your hand, except that I'm not that sort of guy,' Reno grinned, cocking his head towards an open table. 'C'mon. Let's see what you have to say about the resident faculty megalomaniac.'

'Does he have some sort of plan for the university?' Tseng trailed after Reno, feeling vaguely annoyed at how out of the loop he was.

'For the university?' Reno's grin upgraded itself to the category of shit eating. 'The university's too damn small for Rufus Shinra.'

Tseng did, however, turn up in Rufus' office on the third week, after consultation hours, seated in the visitor's chair and waiting patiently.

Rufus opened the door, and stopped short for a moment. 'How did you get in?' he said, pulling off his coat and trying to hide the smile in his voice.

'Locks are there to be picked,' Tseng replied, turning in the chair to look at Rufus. 'Is that something you'd say? There are four different third and fourth year students whom you have lined up for jobs immediately post-graduation, all of them somewhere in Shinra's Junon offices, and all of those offices report to a vice presidency which belongs to a man who seems to share your name.'

(Oh, he had been right, he'd been so fucking right; Tseng was wasted on university, Tseng was made to be so much more than a bored undergraduate; Tseng was made to shine, and he'd be damned if he'd let this diamond in the rough go.) Rufus' eyes were bright, ambitious blue. 'Shinra isn't being run the way it could be running,' he said. 'Right now it's a bumbling mega-structure just waiting to topple. But we could change that.'

'In university offices through underground recruitment?' Tseng raised his eyebrows.

'Is that a yes?' Rufus raised his own.

'Where would you put me?' Tseng retorted.

'Where do you want to be put?' Rufus said right back.

Tseng smiled, and Rufus realised he'd asked a very, very stupid question. 'I have terms,' the student in his chair said.

Rufus closed his eyes, and decided that the price for a man like this was definitely going to be worth paying.

'Rufus,' Tseng said, 'there's someone whom I'd like you to hear out.'

'What is it?' Rufus said, adjusting his cellphone against his ear and tapping at his computer. He was very busy, these days. 'Better yet, who is it?'

'I think,' Tseng said, his unruffled pitch the result of the last few years' worth of practice pulling of miracles and pushing Shinra to the top of the goddamned world, 'you had better hear it from him.'

'Rufus,' Reeve's voice came through, 'I want in on the urban planning for Midgar's restructuring.'

'Reeve,' Rufus smiled into the receiver, 'what a pleasant surprise.'

'You stole my problem kid and made him the second-richest man on Earth. I'm going to build bridges, Rufus, and lots of useless architectural and engineering "blocks", and you're not going to say no.'

'I'll contact you with the details,' Rufus said politely, and as Reeve was switched back to Tseng, Rufus could swear he heard silent laughter. 'Tseng?'

'Yes, sir?'

'You're one hell of a bastard.'

'I learnt from the best, professor.'