A Little R&r

A Little R&R: Ch 1: The Big Picture

Reno propped himself against one of the main support for the overhead outside the Shinra building. He flicked the flint on his lighter and touched the sparked flame to the tip of his cigarette, drawing the warm smoke into his lungs. He exhaled sharply and turned his attention to his companion and long time partner, Rude. Rude was generally the silent type and tradition stood Reno always initiated the conversation, usually with something inane. It generally didn't take much since Reno never really shut up when around others.

"So... still have that... thing? You know... for Tifa?" Rude blushed, a gesture anyone but Reno would have missed. Only the tips of his ears turned pink. Reno rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Man, what

is

it with her, anyway?"

"She kicks high."

"So she kicks ass. So what?"

"But it's

high

." He blushed more and made an outward gesture with his arms as if this would clarify everything. Reno cocked his head to the side and stared at Rude with questioning eyes.

"Soooo...?" He blinked several times for emphasis.

"...She's got nice legs." He pushed himself back a bit further in his lean.

"That's it. She's got nice legs, eh?"

His bald head cocked down a bit towards Reno.

"So what's it to you? Not like you don't have somethin' for Miss Ellie."

"Ellie? Whozzat?"

"Elena." Rude elbowed him a bit roughly to the ribs. Reno's brow furrowed thoughtfully as though he were seriously contemplating the idea.

"Nah. You got me confused with Tseng again. I just keep her from working herself to death."

"...but that doesn't explain all those pictures you've got."

Reno righted himself, leaned back against the support and brought one of his legs up, his heel resting on the smooth stone.

"What pictures?"

"Your pictures. The ones you think no one knows about and keep hiding

inside a tissue box." Shock played for a moment over his face.

"What ones... in particular?" He blinked hard, hoping Rude hadn't found anything more than just the pictures of Elena. He knew he hadn't left any of his

special

pictures in the tissue box. Those were all in an envelope hidden in his stand. Rude laughed heartily.

"You've always been one for the specifics," he chuckled, clapping him a bit hard on the back.

"No... really. What ones did you find?" His voice picked up a nervous tone and seemed a bit worried, something that was unusual for the Turks' resident trickster deity.

"...We were wondering if there were more of them." He chuckled again. "The ones with the sombrero-thing."

"So, uh, anyone

else

you found pics of? Or just her?"

"Well no one's brave enough to go near your laundry, so I bet those are still safe." Reno sighed with relief and flipped the switch on his usual charm.

"There aren't any in my laundry. Why would I keep anything in there?"

"I'll be sure to let them know that then. You do know that they're hauling your mattress out to burn it today, right?" His head snapped back in his standard casual gesture.

"Nothing under my mattress and there's nothing in it, either. I don't keep anything in there anyway." He stared out over the water spreading from the entryway fountain, watching the sun play gently across the ripples. A thought suddenly struck him. "Hey, wait... why are they burning it?"

"Because it smells, or so the cleaning ladies are claiming. From what I hear they take bets and the loser changes your sheets."

"They act like I never shower."

"I think it was when they went looking with the black light that creeped them out the most... I'm just tellin' ya what I've heard is all." He patted Reno on the shoulder.

"Heh, I warned them about that. Specifically told them

not

to." He shrugged jovially. "So they doin' anything else in my room I wanna know about? And why do they tell you this stuff and don't they tell

me

?"

"...Dunno. Orders came through Rufus by way of Tseng."

"Buhwha?"

"Yeah, last minute too. Also said something about..." He dropped off, scratching his head.

"No, what?" Reno was playing it cool, but he was slightly worried someone had found out about his hobby. Rude looked a bit unsettled.

"It's probably nothing..." He tried to give blank stare out to the street.

"Rude, there's no secrets like that with us, yo. We've been together too long."

"Look, all I know is I'm supposed to keep you out here until after 5 o'clock."

Reno's eyes narrowed, a thoughtful look playing for a moment over his features. If it was one thing he couldn't let them find, it was the nudes he had snapped and tucked away. They were potentially damaging not only to Reno, but to his subject as well. If it was one thing he wasn't about, it was allowing a bomb to drop before he was the one to light the fuse. It was one thing for him to expose someone's dirty habits or kinks and quite another to have them stumbled upon by chance, especially when the person damaged was someone he cared about. He took a long drag off of his smoke and exhaled slowly, dropped the butt and crushed it with the toe of his shoe before he strolled back into the building.

"I don't know anything about why they scheduled hazard training, and I certainly don't know anything about... um... I think I'll be over here for a bit," Rude muttered. Noticing Reno was gone, he raised an eyebrow, then tore down the hallway after him.

"Reno! Reno!" he huffed. "Can't let you go down there." Reno's pace slackened but he continued walking down the hall toward his room.

"Why not?"

"Because of... they're going to be fumigating down there." Rude held his arms up to try and block the way. He paused so the quirky redhead was only an inch from his own chest, forcing him to stop dead in the middle of the hallway, nearly bumping into him.

"Fumigating." He contemplated the concept for a moment, wrinkling his nose. "So why didn'tcha tell me that earlier?"

Rude raised a hand to rub the back of his head. "There was a lot to that memo," he offered with a sheepish grin. Narrowing his eyes, Reno leaned into Rude, their noses nearly touching.

"How come I never got a memo? No shitting me, Rude. What's going on down there?"

"You're asking me why you never got a memo. You? The king of missed messages..." Rude gave a nervous laugh: it was false and Reno knew it. He smiled, but it took on a rather dangerous hue.

"Rude...." he warned.

Rude cleared his throat and straightened back up. "Sorry, man... You're just going to have to stay out of there."

"Just tell me they're leaving the nightstand." Rude turned his head to the side as quiet squawking was heard over his shoulder.

"What's that?" He turned his head further as the squawking continued.

They couldn't find those pictures! Reno took a step back, shifted his weight slightly, and then darted around Rude.

"Like hell you do..." Rude pivoted on his heel and tackled Reno.

"You better be glad you snagged me, Big Man, 'cause y'

know

I'm faster than you," he taunted, wriggling in Rude's grasp.

"It's for your own good, man," he grunted, squeezing tighter.

"Like hell!" Reno twisted himself onto his back, his usually loose clothes twisting tightly around his body. Rude struggled to stay on top as his captive wedged a knee into his stomach, shoving hard against him.

"You don't ... understand ... what I'm ... losing!" His speech was peppered with grunts from the exertion it took to keep ahead of grasping hands.

"It's not about the flesh, man," he moaned. "There's something bigger... ow... you're gonna have to... guh!" Reno planted his hands on Rude's shoulders and shoved against him, attempting to free himself as Rude grappled to get a fresh grip.

"What do you MEAN bigger!?"

"Bigger... like beyond you and tissue time."

"I don't care about the Elena pics. There's something ELSE that I DO care about!" Reno argued, straining against his captor's embrace. Rude slowly lessened his strain so he could listen. "Just tell me they're burning it without looking inside." He was begging to hear the words. As long as they were just burning everything it wouldn't make a difference. Rude's jaw slackened slightly.

"But you said nothing was in there..."

"Yea, so I... fibbed... a little." To make his point, he grabbed the front of Rude's jacket and tugged. "Just tell me they aren't

looking

for anything."

"I don't know. Honest! All I know is they said to keep you out of their way until after five."

One of the many Shin-Ra employees wandered from one hallway to the next, not necessarily paying much attention to anything outside of the report she held in her hand. Catching movement out of the corner of her eye, she stopped and did a double take, eying them weirdly.

"Uh, excuse me," she murmured, stepping around them and continuing down the hall they had just exited. Believing she was out of earshot, she added, "And I thought the stories about them were false!" Reno looked up at his hands, startled a bit at how intimate it appeared and let go.

"Look, it's not me I'm worried about, alright? It's someone else. Someone

important

to me. Let's just hope they burn it," Reno murmured, a faint stain of crimson touching the tips of his ears. Rude got up, releasing Reno. He looked about and took out the ear wire, and with a heavy shoe, crushed it.

Reno leaned back against the wall and lit a smoke. He took a drag and slid down the wall, slumping to the floor and chastising himself for not paying enough attention to the details of the memos and made a mental note to be more observant. He did NOT want this happening again.

"We could always go check it out. You know my room's right down the hall..." Reno's attention shifted from the rug to Rude as he started to meander down the hallway.

"Hey, how long have you known, yo?"

"Known about what?"

"Why don't you tell me what you know about first? S'too open-ended for you."

"You know what I know... except... you know..."

"The hell you talkin' 'bout?" Although he had never been a cunning linguist, Reno had stopped attempting complete sentences.

"You do... a lot more...

stuff

." He used quotation fingers and walked a little bit faster.

"Hey!" Reno leaped to his feet and sprinted down the hall after Rude. "What stuff?"

"You know... "stuff"... like how you got those pictures of Elena. She was only gone for 2 days, was that really what she was smiling about?"

"Eh, those," Reno shrugged, falling into step with Rude. "Can't say why I was taking them... not supposed t'have the copy. They were for... someone else..."

"And then there's the guy from receiving... there's things I'm not real sure about from his side of the story." He gave Reno a sideways look, his comment finally sinking in. "Who someone else?"

"...and she

knew

about them, so don't gimme that." Reno continued as though he hadn't heard a word the other man had said.

"Yeah, but... you must know something I don't because you've had more pu—" He stopped dead, flattening against the wall and careened an ear as best he could around the corner they had just come to, Reno following suit. Two office personnel breezed by them going across their way. Rude continued, "All I'm sayin' is you're damned lucky."

"Damned lucky 'bout what? You're actin' like I have something I shouldn't." He paused thoughtfully. "Well... more something I shouldn't."

"You do, don't you..."

"Why didn't you tell me they were doin' this?"

"I didn't know, man. Honest! I thought Tseng was off on another power spree!" Rude held up both hands in an act of submission. Reno blinked in his rather catlike way.

"Rude. You open your mouth and tell me what's goin' on." Rude's only response was to flap his lips like a fish. Reno deftly slapped him across the back of the head, knocking his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose slightly. "Hey, I'm the wiseass here, yo."

Rude readjusted his glasses with a pulled brow. "That hurt."

"Why'd ya take out the wire if you didn't know anything? You're tellin' me you seriously don't know anything?" Rude stopped walking.

"They got down to the mattress, now no one wants to touch it."

"How many of them are there?" Reno bobbled around Rude's back, trying to see around his massive frame. Rude shrugged.

"I remember hearing something about Third Division being up for training... thought it was a bit extreme, even for Tseng."

"Third Division?" Reno blinked hard. The Third Division was only called in for extreme cases, generally involving hazardous materials, bomb threats or suspected bugging. "Are you serious?" Rude nodded slowly. "And they're looking in my room...?" Rude nodded more. Reno laughed out loud, his eyes picking up their usual mischievous glee. "You're supposed to keep me out of there, right?"

"Well... yeah." He gave the shorter man a puzzled look.

"So you're incapacitated. Fall down."

"The hell? No way..."

"Rude," Reno chided.

"No."

"Then make like you did. Just trust me, will ya?"

"You did not just take me out." Rude looked at Reno with a hard eye.

"I got the drop on you! Come on, work with me here," he pleaded. Rude rose tall in his stance and folded his arms across his chest.

"Eh, your ass. Don't say I didn't try to save you." Reno shrugged and sighed, strolling around his friend and into the room. "Hey! What's happenin'," he called out to those assembled, Rude following along behind. The only solution he could see out of this situation was to sweet-talk using the old Reno Charm. He strutted into the room, looking around casually.

"Ah! Housekeeping finally got the idea, did they? Do I get new furniture out of this, yo?" Reno asked as Rude evaded death looks from both Rufus and Tseng, stooping his head into his jacket. "Cause if I do... y'mightaswell just burn all that. I don't think most of you wanna touch it. So what all are you getting rid of, anyway? Am I being evicted for being a bad neighbor? S'that why Rude fought so hard t'keep me out? Ah, that's it! You reported me, didn't you?" he chattered like a chipmunk, grinning at his partner playfully.

"Wha??" he questioned with a shocked look. Tseng gave a long blink and quirked his eyebrow at Reno.

"It looks like he barely did anything to you at all. We have our warrant for entering your dormitory."

"Yea... so... How long you tearing up my room, yo?" Reno's eyes lit on the nightstand. It was still completely in tact and appeared to have been unopened. If they had found where he stashed his pictures they wouldn't have bothered putting everything back in it. He relaxed a bit inwardly.

"That is none of your concern at this point. If you would do as you're told and have Rude escort you back out, you will be notified when you may return."

"Hey, I'll do you a favor if you give me one, eh?" Reno appealed, side-stepping Tseng. Rude raised an eyebrow.

"Favors? Do you really think you are in a position to make such an offer? From some of the rumors I've heard, and no doubt some of the loose pieces we've unearthed, you stand to lose an awful lot as it is."

This was a bit trickier than Reno had expected. There had to be a way to get his hands inside that nightstand for only a few moments. He looked near frantically around the room.

"Mister President, I have a proposition," he challenged as he jaunted across the room toward Rufus Shinra, the president of the company. Rufus turned and looked between the two.

"Tell you what... If it's alright with my partner, here," he turned and patted Rude in the center of the chest, his fist against the drum of his chest making a dull noise like a full wine barrel. "I'll grab a clean suit, a blanket and I can bunk with him until you've finished here."

"I assure, you, Mr. President, it won't take us much longer," Tseng assured him.

"Man, are you blind? Just look at that mattress! Unless you are proposing to be the one to open 'er up, I suggest we take into consideration more long-term plans."

"

Clean suit

," Rude snorted, muttering under his breath.

"Hey, I own one!" Reno turned and grinned up at Rude, playing off of his joke. This was not the time for Reno to lose his head, that was for sure. He kept himself in check. Rude always made remarks like that. All he had to do was get at the nightstand and he would be home free. He kept a blanket and a suit under the stand, just for an emergency and to hide some private possessions. "And I thought it would be nice if I got, you know, clean, especially if we're going to be rooming together." Seeing the look Rude was trying so valiantly to cover, he wagged his finger in Rude's face. "Don't... even."

"Who are you and where's the real Reno?" Rude boggled slightly.

"Didn't I say ' don't even'?" He turned back to Rufus expectantly. "Whaddya say, eh? I swear. Only take a minute."

Tseng was now extremely uncomfortable.

"I... um.... errr... I'm not touching that thing. Fine, let the man have his blankie and everyone else clear out for Third Division!"

The tissue box was still sitting on the corner of the stand, apparently untouched as well. The wheels in Reno's mind ground against one another to figure a way to get Elena's pictures safely out of the hands of the Third Division. He snorted softly to himself. Elena would kill him if he had given the pictures to their intended recipient, but it was either this or her reputation would be completely tarnished. He was too fond of her to let that happen. Reno flipped his head back toward Tseng.

"Hey, Tseng. Come're a sec." Tseng, miffed, sauntered over proudly. Reno ambled to his nightstand and picked up the tissue box and held it out. "I borrowed these from you without your permission awhile back. Take 'em back now." He eyed him seriously, hoping he took the bait, seeing the wheels turning in Tseng's head.

Tseng squinted his eyes, trying to read Reno's face. He knew the guileful Turk had something up his sleeve, he just wasn't sure specifically

what

he had planned.

Undiscouraged, he dropped his voice and leaned in slightly toward Tseng, making sure he got his point across without raising suspicions. "You don't want the Third Division with these." He pressed them against Tseng's chest with emphasis before raising his voice and turning on the jovial charm. "You should use one of them, yo. You have brown on your nose, there."

His cheap shot to Tseng's ego successfully delivered, he bent low and pulled a clean suit and a blanket from the cupboard of the nightstand. Tseng's hand popped to his nose and he eyed the tissue box like it might explode. Rude snickered as Reno tucked the suit and blanket under his arm. "Come on, Rude." He tapped Rude on the chest on his way to the door.

"What are you laughing at, Rude?" Tseng flashed him a sharp look. "You're getting a write-up up for not doing your job." He continued to holler at them down the hallway.

"Oh, is he gonna spank you next." Reno snickered.

"Who's gonna spank me next??"

"Didn't ya hear 'im? You're 'written up'." He stopped outside the door, rolling his eyes.

"Only 'cuz of you." Rude elbowed him.

"Hey, I got what I needed. Y'gonna let me in or y'gonna make me sleep outside your door like a dog?"

"Fine... Welcome, Master of Trickery." He bumped the door open with his ass.

"Master now, eh?"

"Don't let it get too far to your head."

Reno waved his hand in dismissal. "I did that an' I'd be Tseng. Course I'd also turn coal to diamond in my ass..."

"Only one of his many special hidden talents," Rude chuckled.

Although it was decidedly cleaner than his room, Rude's was just as sparse. Reno's grip slipped on his bundle and the manila envelope he struggled so hard to keep secret slid from inside the blanket and skidded across the floor, landing just under the tip of Rude's shoe. Rude raised an eyebrow and bent to pick it up.