Spring Day in New Office
Jul. 9th, 2020 06:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seleniasTitle: Spring Day in New Office
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Characters/pairing: Zack/Tseng, almost not pre-slash
Rating: T, heavy conversations and implications
Word Count: 1500
Notes: Part ? of Retired From War, New Career in Circling. Will back-tag the other parts of the series.
AU. Zack Fair survives the end of the world. Despite trying to make things work with the WRO, Zack finds he's most comfortable working with Shinra's leftovers. And Tseng is not the exact same as the person he remembers, but he is the one who is left. Ft. Zack/Aerith, Zack/Aerith/Tseng, eventual Zack/Tseng.
-
Zack’s thoughts have a tendency to snowball so he tries to keep the upset at a minimum.
He kicks his shoes off the by the door, mindful of the rug Tseng had said some nice things about, Reno not so nice things about, though he came around later. The linoleum at the door is half-curled. A blue lounge chair is the brightest object in the room. There’s even a painting on the wall.
The place is starting to look like an office. Well. So he never spent a lot of time in auditing, but there’s a coffee pot, coasters, a sofa, and a fake plant, which he likes to think someone stole from the actual Shinra building as a nice platitude. He touches the fake strands around the edges, thinks about the real grass outside. Patches of it. Looks more like a shedding dog than a carpet but what matters is that it’s there and what is left of the snow is only under the rafters and the bases of tall, shadowy trees.
“If you’re here you’re on the clock,” Tseng says, “and I’m certain you’re supposed to be gone from this building for the next two weeks.” Zack stubs his toes on the single coffee table, curses, and moves around it.
“I decided I’ll start that tomorrow. Mr. Shinra won’t capitalize on me for the minutes I spend fixing the pipe. Just buy me some lunch later, maybe.”
Tseng’s giving him the look that says he’s disbelieving, that he didn’t sleep well and wasn’t expecting company so late in the day, and then Zack swings the bag up by the handles, the bells and whistles and bolts chiming back: well, no one can make a plan and stick with it.
He’s not exactly proud about getting caught. Fixing things with a sword was a hell of a lot simpler than whatever this is. Meddling. Pussyfooting. Succumbing to the trade world his folks had wished he’d been a part of, the one he enjoyed doing only once, almost a decade ago because he had someone to impress. This, Zack tells himself, is for practical reasons.
The facility, while old, is mostly functional and not without its perks. It just happened that its worst fault involved the plumbing. And he can work with that. The coffee pot on this floor has the quickest brew time. He’s forgiving.
Tseng’s still waiting for an explanation. He clears his throat. “The WRO,” Zack says, deadpan. “Hitting things with swords just became uninteresting suddenly -- but that’s my profession.”
“It’s more useful in other ways.”
“Yeah, especially for you, especially here. If you need a bully with a nice temperament.”
“Regardless, I’m surprised that you wanted to be a part of this.”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far. Wanting -- you’ve been here since the beginning. You trust Rufus, so. Knowing all that you do, there’s a reason you’re here and not there. But you may be more of a desk guy than me. I kind of hate it. Run it by Rufus maybe that before all our CV’s went out the window, I did have a high score for intelligence. I can sit.”
Tseng’s mouth twitched in the shadow of a smile. “You make me sound so confident. The room’s the way I like it, if cramped. No one likes sitting at the desk. What do you think the high pay is for?”
“...Did I ever see your old office? Can’t remember.” Zack crouched down in front of the cabinet doors and pulled cartons of coffee filters out of his way. “Things haven’t changed much for you. Just shifted. Geographically. Well. I guess the Turks strike a little less fear than they used to, but that’s probably a good thing.”
Tseng made a small noise and turned around fully. “No one’s letting you assimilate, are they. Reeve failed to get you in.”
“Not his fault,” Zack says, though maybe, Reeve hadn’t been pleased to see him; he couldn’t say for sure. The U-pipe has a steady drip into an old metal can. It’s chock full of rust inside. “The last time I tried to put contacts in the mako ate them. It does not feel good having dissolving plastic in your eyeball, let me tell you. People get a little freaked out when you fall off a roof and your bones rearrange themselves. I didn’t even know that could happen. SOLDIERs are freaky. I’m freaky. Director Tusseti had a point -- it’s not good for me to be there.”
“What about field work? Transports? Trades?”
Zack swivels his head to give him the stink eye. “Transports, seriously? Piloting was not in my training. Reno would kill me if I ever drove his copter.”
“You could learn,” Tseng mused. “Your friends? Your family?”
“Mom would love for me to be the cabinet maker for their new house. I would rather eat a knife,” he says cheerfully. Somewhere a door slams shut in the building. Footsteps stomp up the stairs in an adjacent room.
Tseng stirs his tea, which is starting to smell good if Zack is honest, and leans against the counter. The clink-clank of a spoon is far gentler than the boom when the lead U-pipe drops hard onto the cabinet floor.
“Wow, there’s duct tape in here. Usually depending on the age of the place there’s a number of wedding rings to be found in these things.”
“That’s a loss for expenditures. Do I need to write you up?”
“Do what you like. As long as it’s nothing terminal. Or illegal.”
Tseng doesn’t go away. Zack puts on the new fittings. His ass is in the air when he gets on his knees to crawl in closer. Tseng’s eyeballs are on him but he doubts it’s for any obvious reasons.
Zack can hear the debate going on. He’s certain it’s Tseng convincing himself not to throw him out by the collar -- or he’s considering the more evil tactic, which is calling Reeve to negotiate with him, a tiny bit -- though Tseng likely also knows that Reeve knows that Zack knows he’s been walking on pins since the end of the world and maybe, just maybe, it’s not a great idea for a former representative of Shinra’s army with a dizzying array of traumatic experiences to be doing field work with civilians who hate him and idolize him. He could never just be a pretty face. He had to be paranoid too.
He tightens the fastener, holding the clamp with his left hand.
What’s it going to be, he thinks. Where else am I going to go?
“Monitoring me isn’t going to bring her back.”
The clamp crumples in a pile of aluminum mess. He’s also sliced his hand open. There’s old shrapnel in his chest stirring like he’s been blown wide open.
“Shut up,” Zack says. “That is not why I’m here. Why would you say that?” He’s gasping for air.
“There is nothing here for you that you can handle in your condition.”
“You’re here,” he bites out, turning on his knees, hand above his head on the counter. Blood drips down into the porcelain sink. “You’re still here, so don’t be a hypocrite. You’re way more complicated than me.”
Tseng stares down at him from above; he should look cold and gray, washed out, though Zack’s looking at his eyes, which he’s an expert on. Murky waters. “I am,” he says quietly. “I’m well. Enough. Do you wish I wasn’t.”
“No,” Zack says, shudders because he has considered. What that could mean. A lot. “I just. I thought I knew you. I thought you loved her, too.”
“I did,” Tseng says. “I do. I have never stopped.”
“Fuck you,” Zack says. “That’s so much worse. You could at least pretend you’re a villain. Maybe I could do something awful like hate you. Aerith is -- gone. There isn’t a day I don’t think about you giving her away.”
He staggers to his feet and turns the sink on. Tinted water gushes down the drain and all over his feet. He’d never turned the valve off. He sighs. The sink is actually cursed. “Take the money for water damages out of my theoretical pension.”
Tseng nods; there won’t be any charges, Zack knows, because this building sucks and the water heater broke just last week. A lot of things keep breaking. Maybe the lodge should have been named something else. Tragedy Lodge for Hopeless Occupants.
Before Zack can exit the room to start searching for towels, clenching his hand to stem the bleeding, Tseng sets the mug down in front of him, blocking his path with his body. “The teabag’s done in the next sixty seconds,” he says, and disappears down the hall. A door closing and opening. Cabinets squeak on old hinges.
Zack’s left staring into leaf water he doesn’t know the name of and doesn’t particularly care for, wondering why Tseng allows him to make a mess but never makes him leave.
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Characters/pairing: Zack/Tseng, almost not pre-slash
Rating: T, heavy conversations and implications
Word Count: 1500
Notes: Part ? of Retired From War, New Career in Circling. Will back-tag the other parts of the series.
AU. Zack Fair survives the end of the world. Despite trying to make things work with the WRO, Zack finds he's most comfortable working with Shinra's leftovers. And Tseng is not the exact same as the person he remembers, but he is the one who is left. Ft. Zack/Aerith, Zack/Aerith/Tseng, eventual Zack/Tseng.
-
Zack’s thoughts have a tendency to snowball so he tries to keep the upset at a minimum.
He kicks his shoes off the by the door, mindful of the rug Tseng had said some nice things about, Reno not so nice things about, though he came around later. The linoleum at the door is half-curled. A blue lounge chair is the brightest object in the room. There’s even a painting on the wall.
The place is starting to look like an office. Well. So he never spent a lot of time in auditing, but there’s a coffee pot, coasters, a sofa, and a fake plant, which he likes to think someone stole from the actual Shinra building as a nice platitude. He touches the fake strands around the edges, thinks about the real grass outside. Patches of it. Looks more like a shedding dog than a carpet but what matters is that it’s there and what is left of the snow is only under the rafters and the bases of tall, shadowy trees.
“If you’re here you’re on the clock,” Tseng says, “and I’m certain you’re supposed to be gone from this building for the next two weeks.” Zack stubs his toes on the single coffee table, curses, and moves around it.
“I decided I’ll start that tomorrow. Mr. Shinra won’t capitalize on me for the minutes I spend fixing the pipe. Just buy me some lunch later, maybe.”
Tseng’s giving him the look that says he’s disbelieving, that he didn’t sleep well and wasn’t expecting company so late in the day, and then Zack swings the bag up by the handles, the bells and whistles and bolts chiming back: well, no one can make a plan and stick with it.
He’s not exactly proud about getting caught. Fixing things with a sword was a hell of a lot simpler than whatever this is. Meddling. Pussyfooting. Succumbing to the trade world his folks had wished he’d been a part of, the one he enjoyed doing only once, almost a decade ago because he had someone to impress. This, Zack tells himself, is for practical reasons.
The facility, while old, is mostly functional and not without its perks. It just happened that its worst fault involved the plumbing. And he can work with that. The coffee pot on this floor has the quickest brew time. He’s forgiving.
Tseng’s still waiting for an explanation. He clears his throat. “The WRO,” Zack says, deadpan. “Hitting things with swords just became uninteresting suddenly -- but that’s my profession.”
“It’s more useful in other ways.”
“Yeah, especially for you, especially here. If you need a bully with a nice temperament.”
“Regardless, I’m surprised that you wanted to be a part of this.”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far. Wanting -- you’ve been here since the beginning. You trust Rufus, so. Knowing all that you do, there’s a reason you’re here and not there. But you may be more of a desk guy than me. I kind of hate it. Run it by Rufus maybe that before all our CV’s went out the window, I did have a high score for intelligence. I can sit.”
Tseng’s mouth twitched in the shadow of a smile. “You make me sound so confident. The room’s the way I like it, if cramped. No one likes sitting at the desk. What do you think the high pay is for?”
“...Did I ever see your old office? Can’t remember.” Zack crouched down in front of the cabinet doors and pulled cartons of coffee filters out of his way. “Things haven’t changed much for you. Just shifted. Geographically. Well. I guess the Turks strike a little less fear than they used to, but that’s probably a good thing.”
Tseng made a small noise and turned around fully. “No one’s letting you assimilate, are they. Reeve failed to get you in.”
“Not his fault,” Zack says, though maybe, Reeve hadn’t been pleased to see him; he couldn’t say for sure. The U-pipe has a steady drip into an old metal can. It’s chock full of rust inside. “The last time I tried to put contacts in the mako ate them. It does not feel good having dissolving plastic in your eyeball, let me tell you. People get a little freaked out when you fall off a roof and your bones rearrange themselves. I didn’t even know that could happen. SOLDIERs are freaky. I’m freaky. Director Tusseti had a point -- it’s not good for me to be there.”
“What about field work? Transports? Trades?”
Zack swivels his head to give him the stink eye. “Transports, seriously? Piloting was not in my training. Reno would kill me if I ever drove his copter.”
“You could learn,” Tseng mused. “Your friends? Your family?”
“Mom would love for me to be the cabinet maker for their new house. I would rather eat a knife,” he says cheerfully. Somewhere a door slams shut in the building. Footsteps stomp up the stairs in an adjacent room.
Tseng stirs his tea, which is starting to smell good if Zack is honest, and leans against the counter. The clink-clank of a spoon is far gentler than the boom when the lead U-pipe drops hard onto the cabinet floor.
“Wow, there’s duct tape in here. Usually depending on the age of the place there’s a number of wedding rings to be found in these things.”
“That’s a loss for expenditures. Do I need to write you up?”
“Do what you like. As long as it’s nothing terminal. Or illegal.”
Tseng doesn’t go away. Zack puts on the new fittings. His ass is in the air when he gets on his knees to crawl in closer. Tseng’s eyeballs are on him but he doubts it’s for any obvious reasons.
Zack can hear the debate going on. He’s certain it’s Tseng convincing himself not to throw him out by the collar -- or he’s considering the more evil tactic, which is calling Reeve to negotiate with him, a tiny bit -- though Tseng likely also knows that Reeve knows that Zack knows he’s been walking on pins since the end of the world and maybe, just maybe, it’s not a great idea for a former representative of Shinra’s army with a dizzying array of traumatic experiences to be doing field work with civilians who hate him and idolize him. He could never just be a pretty face. He had to be paranoid too.
He tightens the fastener, holding the clamp with his left hand.
What’s it going to be, he thinks. Where else am I going to go?
“Monitoring me isn’t going to bring her back.”
The clamp crumples in a pile of aluminum mess. He’s also sliced his hand open. There’s old shrapnel in his chest stirring like he’s been blown wide open.
“Shut up,” Zack says. “That is not why I’m here. Why would you say that?” He’s gasping for air.
“There is nothing here for you that you can handle in your condition.”
“You’re here,” he bites out, turning on his knees, hand above his head on the counter. Blood drips down into the porcelain sink. “You’re still here, so don’t be a hypocrite. You’re way more complicated than me.”
Tseng stares down at him from above; he should look cold and gray, washed out, though Zack’s looking at his eyes, which he’s an expert on. Murky waters. “I am,” he says quietly. “I’m well. Enough. Do you wish I wasn’t.”
“No,” Zack says, shudders because he has considered. What that could mean. A lot. “I just. I thought I knew you. I thought you loved her, too.”
“I did,” Tseng says. “I do. I have never stopped.”
“Fuck you,” Zack says. “That’s so much worse. You could at least pretend you’re a villain. Maybe I could do something awful like hate you. Aerith is -- gone. There isn’t a day I don’t think about you giving her away.”
He staggers to his feet and turns the sink on. Tinted water gushes down the drain and all over his feet. He’d never turned the valve off. He sighs. The sink is actually cursed. “Take the money for water damages out of my theoretical pension.”
Tseng nods; there won’t be any charges, Zack knows, because this building sucks and the water heater broke just last week. A lot of things keep breaking. Maybe the lodge should have been named something else. Tragedy Lodge for Hopeless Occupants.
Before Zack can exit the room to start searching for towels, clenching his hand to stem the bleeding, Tseng sets the mug down in front of him, blocking his path with his body. “The teabag’s done in the next sixty seconds,” he says, and disappears down the hall. A door closing and opening. Cabinets squeak on old hinges.
Zack’s left staring into leaf water he doesn’t know the name of and doesn’t particularly care for, wondering why Tseng allows him to make a mess but never makes him leave.
