nonvoting | [ gp / inbox ]

I have some questions.

[fucking damn it rufus. to his credit, though, he's still got that "okay" from several months back living rent-free in his head, and one can almost hear the gold-plated hamster wheel spinning in his thoughts before a second text miraculously follows the first.]

If you've got a bit for a chat.

I always have time. What is it?

I've been thinking about when we were caught in that snowstorm.

...

I'm not sure how to phrase what I want to ask. But it has to do with the way you felt about it.

Phrase it however you think gets closest to the question and we can figure the rest of it out together.

[Ah. Workshopping. There's a bit of a delay here, but then —]

Which would you sooner repeat? That, or that time at the Smoked Egg?

[ that's on collaboration, baybee. ]

If I had to choose only one, you mean?

No, not if you were limited to only one. Just...on preference.

Did you like one better than the other?

I liked both, just for different reasons. I enjoy making you feel good.

What about the way I was...

Conducting myself.

I think we can safely agree I was...fairly different. Between the two.

[ that's the moment tseng finally puts two and two together. ]

Yes. Both were compelling, also in different ways.

[ taking a chance: ]

Are you thinking about what happened at the cabin?

I am.

[And then, with a certain deliberate care that probably only Tseng, knowing him as well as he does, could pick up on implicitly: ]

I remember thinking, at the time, about that assessment I had you prepare for me awhile back. I'm starting to think I understand it better now. If I'm right that what happened at the cabin was...?

Subspace, yes.

How do you feel, now that you've had some time to process?

I want it again.

[That much is confident. The next part comes with more of the :|a attached.]

I'm not sure if that's a good thing.

I do, too.

What makes you hesitate?

It feels like I only get one. That or my ambitions. I don't know how to have both.

I suppose that's my father's influence lingering still. Do you think?

You were raised by a man who only knew the kind of control an iron fist and deep pockets could buy, and that kind of control is tenuous... easy to lose. It makes sense that you would now find it difficult now to choose vulnerability.

That doesn't mean you don't deserve it or that you can't have it. Just that it may not come easy at first.

That's the other strange part about it. I know rationally it's vulnerability, but I remember feeling...safe.

At the same time, it wasn't from confidence. This wasn't putting my arm up knowing a helicopter strut would be there to support me. I'm not sure I can connect what I felt to that sense of safety. Why safety would've come from any of that.

[ 🤨 ]

You were safe. Your body knew that, even if your mind wasn't consciously thinking of it.

[ you are always safe with me, tseng doesn't say. rufus is going to have to put the pieces together on this one for himself. ]

[And he does, in fact, start to put those pieces together. It starts with typing of course I know that and deleting it again because that's not productive. Starts with typing it out again but really just looking at it glowing on the screen for a while, until it starts to seem bigger than just the five words it is. Until "safe" stops being something that dredges up thoughts of black suits and firearms and high walls and bravado, and starts resonating more with a waiting plate of eggy bread at a chair that's his despite no one ever naming it so, and with sleeping in as late as he wants, and with being led through a snowstorm by fingers laced through his own.

After a while, "safe" starts to look like a word that could be traded out for "happy", and the latter would fit just as neatly. Or maybe like one that wouldn't have to be traded out at all. Like maybe the two aren't mutually exclusive, and never were.]

There's something I'd like to try. Will you indulge me?

Of course.

[ as ever, the fact that rufus' eventual response is not a direct answer to tseng's last message indicates that there are cogs turning in that beautiful mind of his. ]

I like you, Tseng.

[How very strange, for just these few seconds, to feel like he's seventeen again with a gun in his hand, grinning from the pleasure of a secret.]

I like that you're mine. But I'd like you even if you weren't. It's just you. You're what I like.

[ this is—not the text he thought he was going to get, and so tseng gets to experience the frisson of pleasure up his spine at so frank a confession from someone so usually disinclined towards being honest with his feelings. ]

I like you too, Rufus. And I would still like you even if I wasn't yours.

I think I like this experiment. We should do this more often.

[ specifically the part where rufus says "i like you" :) ]

[It's at the sight of his name, rendered casually in text, that it occurs to him that Tseng hasn't called him sir even once this whole conversation. And for all that the text is an echo of his own words — or a mirror, maybe, by design — it still makes a delicious sensation crawl over his skin, the kind that makes him draw his shoulders in and curl a touch as if to better hold it inside himself.

And it solidifies something about the thoughts he'd been mulling over, doesn't it? Because this is safe, too. Because this is safety like a first tentative step onto ice, gauging whether it will suffice to hold his weight. Because it's not so much that he ever thought he wasn't safe with Tseng, as just that he wasn't seeing the whole bounds of what that encompasses, always focused on how far it could take him but never so much on how deep.

Safe. Yes, he is. Wanted. Yes, bizarrely enough, he's that too.]

We should. Lucky thing I still have a few more questions.

Did you mean it when you said I was a gorgeous little slut?

[It's an invitation, by implication. His own way of conveying that there's safety for Tseng, too. That it goes both ways. That yes is an answer he can give to a question like that at all.]

[ it's not as easy for tseng to read rufus in text as it is in person, but he thinks he knows rufus well enough by now to understand that the question is an opening, not a trap. ]

Oh, wholeheartedly.

Did you like hearing that?

[An opening, indeed — and maybe a little bit of bait, too, giving him his own opportunity to answer in kind.]

Yes. All of it, every part.

Although...

[He prompts, clearly wanting the subject pressed further.]

un: shinra | text

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