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[FIC] FF7: Five Stages of Rufus Shinra (As Told by His Turks and Himself)
I am alive. I'm still writing. I'm just... really fucking busy. Due to lots of stuff that I'm not going into inside a ficpost.
But anyway! Fic! For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
yaoi_challenge, specifically for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ponderosa121 (Johnny Dread). It's post-Reveal, so I can post here!
Five Stages of Rufus Shinra (As Told by His Turks and Himself)
Characters/Pairings: Rufus, Reno, Rude, Elena, Tseng, with implications of Rufus/Tseng and Rufus/Reno.
Rating: PG-13
Words: 1528
Summary: Rufus Shinra is not his father – for one, his Turks are solely his. For another, he cared for them, despite what he might say otherwise. A five things fic for the yaoi_challenge Reverse Ficathon.
I; Reno
Reno really didn’t know what to make of the new Vice-President.
For one, he seemed like a typical rich brat on the surface, with his haughty demeanour, love of dramatic gestures and walk-in closet full of designer clothes. But no other rich brat other than Rufus Shinra had such a disdain for his own father, nor do any of them had the cold ambition and the complete lack of care for any human life that was not his own. At least, not any that Reno knew of, and Reno knew a lot of people despite the fact that he was only seventeen.
Rufus Shinra was a chip off the old block, with the same lust for power and the casual cruelty that both exhibit. But Rufus was a lot more polished, with raw ambition varnishing him into a gleaming varnished finish, resulting in a chip of wood that is beautiful, sharper and shiner than the original.
Everyone with a brain knows that wood polish was poisonous. Rufus Shinra was, figuratively (though sometimes Reno thought that it should be literally), dripping with poison from every pore.
Reno didn’t know what to make of him. His first reaction was to dismiss the boy as a ‘kid’, though he had planned to keep a watch on him. Rufus looked like some pampered prince with his lily-white hands and unscarred, porcelain white skin, and Reno tended to look down on people like that. But his instincts warned him of danger, and were even now sending him mixed signals.
But Reno knew one thing: He would follow Rufus better than he was now following Rufus’s father. It was the only choice he had.
For one thing, Rufus might decide to kill him himself if he decided to fool around and mess up something badly, instead of giving the order to someone like Tseng.
And Rufus would be able to do it.
(For another, sex with Rufus was way better than sex with Shinra Sr. Reno had been as surprised as fuck when the VP propositioned him, but he accepted (of course).
Rufus might just decide to kill him otherwise.
Plus, he was pretty damn sexy at age seventeen.)
II; Rude
Though most didn’t know it, Rude signed up to be a Turk for the adrenaline rush, to hunt for those that Shinra asked him to hunt, and to kill (though he mildly disliked this part) those that he was told to kill.
He didn’t sign up to be a babysitter for the seventeen-year-old Vice President. But he got the job anyway, mostly because Reno was out on another assignment, and Tseng was ‘busy’.
Truth to be told, it was ‘babysitting’, exactly; Rufus Shinra was no child, especially at the age of seventeen. It was just that it was hard for Rude to watch him constantly, since he seemed to be very proficient in the skill of ‘how to lose your bodyguard in fifteen seconds’. Rude blamed Reno for this. The redhead probably taught the boy this just for kicks.
Still, it made things much more interesting, which was always a good thing in Rude’s books.
(No, he wasn’t as straight-laced as he looked. Tseng had assigned him to be Reno’s partner, after all, and Tseng was far from a stupid man – a straight-laced man would be sent to an insane asylum after less than a week of Reno’s company.)
Working under Rufus Shinra meant that nothing was ever boring. The inspiration speech he had made when he became President was just the most public evidence of this. The amount of assassination attempts increased, and the job got a lot more interesting after Rufus took over Shinra Sr.
That, and the fact that Rufus was definitely a man worthy of respect (Rude respected ruthless men with ambition and enough talent to back up said ambition), was why he would follow Rufus to the ends of the world.
Life would be too uninteresting otherwise.
III; Elena
It was only during her Turks Initiation that Elena first met Rufus Shinra.
Of course, she had seen him around in the building (who hadn’t?) and she had heard the many, many rumours about him (again, who hadn’t?). But she dismissed those rumours as mere secretarial tongue-wagging, and walking past someone in a hallway wasn’t the same as ‘meeting’ said someone, was it?
At least, Elena didn’t think it qualified
She knew, from the very beginning, that it would take something drastic for her to fill into Reno’s gap, so she simply didn’t try. She was ‘Reno’s replacement’, but she wasn’t the redhead, and she wasn’t about to try when she knew that she would surely fail and never gain the respect of the men she was now working with. Besides, she didn’t like pretending to be someone else. She was ‘Elena’, and anyone who had any problems with that can tell it to the mouth of her pistol, thank you very much.
But she was digressing.
Elena knew from the start that Rufus disliked her and distrust her, because she was, after all ‘Reno’s replacement’. She didn’t like him all that much either, especially when she realised that all those hushed rumours about him and Tseng-san were true. She would never forgive him for taking away her first real crush either, despite the fact that she was the one who arrived late. But Elena still obeyed him and protected him; it was only professional
She liked President Rufus a lot more now. Seeing him in a vulnerable state due to first the Weapon then Geostigma, talking to each other (honestly talking, and not just Rufus giving her orders) and see his true strength made her respect him as more than just a boss.
Elena would go anywhere for him now, if only to see his shocked expression when she did.
IV; Tseng
Tseng thought Rufus to be an arrogant brat when he first met him – it was no ‘love at first sight’, no matter what the wagging tongues of office secretaries might say – and that opinion had only changed slightly – Rufus was no longer an ‘arrogant brat’, but an ‘arrogant man’.
It had been almost a decade since they first met, after all.
It was sheer arrogance (and just a little suicidal tendency) that made Rufus not move during Weapon’s attack, or that was what Tseng told himself. The reverse was too much to think of.
The weeks waiting for Rufus to wake up, the subsequent months helping him regain his health only for him to fall prey to Geostigma, and the almost-year that he had to watch Rufus suffer through the seizures and spasms were simply the most painful Tseng had to live through amongst all of his years.
Still, this did not stop him from wanting to kill his President when the idiot jumped from a high building. It didn’t matter that he and Elena were there, ready with net-guns to catch him. What mattered was the fact that Rufus took a hugely unnecessary risk just to avenge something that didn’t need to be avenged in the first place.
Tseng was neither a man to be protected, nor was his pain a reason to punish others. He could do both of that just fine by himself.
He felt grateful for the sentiment, however (though he would never admit it); Rufus cared for him.
He couldn’t say that he would be all that ready to catch Rufus the next time he fell from a building, though. He might get the urge to just let him fall until the very last second.
He might.
V; Rufus
It had gravely hurt his pride when he had to admit that Kadaj and the rest of the shinentai were too much for his Turks. It hurt to admit that they weren’t the best. It hurt to admit that there were people physically stronger than they (and thus, he) were. But most of all, it hurt like crap to see his Turks injured and fearing that they were dead.
Rufus would never forgive Tseng for the scare (never mind, that it was neither fully Tseng nor Elena’s fault that they were captured) because it was the first time he felt fear for someone who weren’t himself.
Which was why, he told himself, that he made Kadaj suffer as much as he could. Jenova (or her head, rather) came to be useful for the first time. Kadaj had made him feel an emotion that he wasn’t supposed to feel for someone else, Kadaj had surprised him, and thus he must pay.
It had nothing to do with how much he valued his Turks, how much he appreciated their presences, especially when he was struck down first by Weapon than Geostigma. It had absolutely nothing to do with how Rufus was afraid that the few people he allowed himself to care about would die. Nothing to do with how much Tseng and Elena’s bloodstains on their cards had scared him. Nothing to do with how much the sight of Reno and Rude writhing painfully on the floor had made him worried and angry.
It was just a matter of pride, that’s all.
End
But anyway! Fic! For
yaoi_challenge, specifically for ponderosa121 (Johnny Dread). It's post-Reveal, so I can post here!Five Stages of Rufus Shinra (As Told by His Turks and Himself)
Characters/Pairings: Rufus, Reno, Rude, Elena, Tseng, with implications of Rufus/Tseng and Rufus/Reno.
Rating: PG-13
Words: 1528
Summary: Rufus Shinra is not his father – for one, his Turks are solely his. For another, he cared for them, despite what he might say otherwise. A five things fic for the yaoi_challenge Reverse Ficathon.
I; Reno
Reno really didn’t know what to make of the new Vice-President.
For one, he seemed like a typical rich brat on the surface, with his haughty demeanour, love of dramatic gestures and walk-in closet full of designer clothes. But no other rich brat other than Rufus Shinra had such a disdain for his own father, nor do any of them had the cold ambition and the complete lack of care for any human life that was not his own. At least, not any that Reno knew of, and Reno knew a lot of people despite the fact that he was only seventeen.
Rufus Shinra was a chip off the old block, with the same lust for power and the casual cruelty that both exhibit. But Rufus was a lot more polished, with raw ambition varnishing him into a gleaming varnished finish, resulting in a chip of wood that is beautiful, sharper and shiner than the original.
Everyone with a brain knows that wood polish was poisonous. Rufus Shinra was, figuratively (though sometimes Reno thought that it should be literally), dripping with poison from every pore.
Reno didn’t know what to make of him. His first reaction was to dismiss the boy as a ‘kid’, though he had planned to keep a watch on him. Rufus looked like some pampered prince with his lily-white hands and unscarred, porcelain white skin, and Reno tended to look down on people like that. But his instincts warned him of danger, and were even now sending him mixed signals.
But Reno knew one thing: He would follow Rufus better than he was now following Rufus’s father. It was the only choice he had.
For one thing, Rufus might decide to kill him himself if he decided to fool around and mess up something badly, instead of giving the order to someone like Tseng.
And Rufus would be able to do it.
(For another, sex with Rufus was way better than sex with Shinra Sr. Reno had been as surprised as fuck when the VP propositioned him, but he accepted (of course).
Rufus might just decide to kill him otherwise.
Plus, he was pretty damn sexy at age seventeen.)
II; Rude
Though most didn’t know it, Rude signed up to be a Turk for the adrenaline rush, to hunt for those that Shinra asked him to hunt, and to kill (though he mildly disliked this part) those that he was told to kill.
He didn’t sign up to be a babysitter for the seventeen-year-old Vice President. But he got the job anyway, mostly because Reno was out on another assignment, and Tseng was ‘busy’.
Truth to be told, it was ‘babysitting’, exactly; Rufus Shinra was no child, especially at the age of seventeen. It was just that it was hard for Rude to watch him constantly, since he seemed to be very proficient in the skill of ‘how to lose your bodyguard in fifteen seconds’. Rude blamed Reno for this. The redhead probably taught the boy this just for kicks.
Still, it made things much more interesting, which was always a good thing in Rude’s books.
(No, he wasn’t as straight-laced as he looked. Tseng had assigned him to be Reno’s partner, after all, and Tseng was far from a stupid man – a straight-laced man would be sent to an insane asylum after less than a week of Reno’s company.)
Working under Rufus Shinra meant that nothing was ever boring. The inspiration speech he had made when he became President was just the most public evidence of this. The amount of assassination attempts increased, and the job got a lot more interesting after Rufus took over Shinra Sr.
That, and the fact that Rufus was definitely a man worthy of respect (Rude respected ruthless men with ambition and enough talent to back up said ambition), was why he would follow Rufus to the ends of the world.
Life would be too uninteresting otherwise.
III; Elena
It was only during her Turks Initiation that Elena first met Rufus Shinra.
Of course, she had seen him around in the building (who hadn’t?) and she had heard the many, many rumours about him (again, who hadn’t?). But she dismissed those rumours as mere secretarial tongue-wagging, and walking past someone in a hallway wasn’t the same as ‘meeting’ said someone, was it?
At least, Elena didn’t think it qualified
She knew, from the very beginning, that it would take something drastic for her to fill into Reno’s gap, so she simply didn’t try. She was ‘Reno’s replacement’, but she wasn’t the redhead, and she wasn’t about to try when she knew that she would surely fail and never gain the respect of the men she was now working with. Besides, she didn’t like pretending to be someone else. She was ‘Elena’, and anyone who had any problems with that can tell it to the mouth of her pistol, thank you very much.
But she was digressing.
Elena knew from the start that Rufus disliked her and distrust her, because she was, after all ‘Reno’s replacement’. She didn’t like him all that much either, especially when she realised that all those hushed rumours about him and Tseng-san were true. She would never forgive him for taking away her first real crush either, despite the fact that she was the one who arrived late. But Elena still obeyed him and protected him; it was only professional
She liked President Rufus a lot more now. Seeing him in a vulnerable state due to first the Weapon then Geostigma, talking to each other (honestly talking, and not just Rufus giving her orders) and see his true strength made her respect him as more than just a boss.
Elena would go anywhere for him now, if only to see his shocked expression when she did.
IV; Tseng
Tseng thought Rufus to be an arrogant brat when he first met him – it was no ‘love at first sight’, no matter what the wagging tongues of office secretaries might say – and that opinion had only changed slightly – Rufus was no longer an ‘arrogant brat’, but an ‘arrogant man’.
It had been almost a decade since they first met, after all.
It was sheer arrogance (and just a little suicidal tendency) that made Rufus not move during Weapon’s attack, or that was what Tseng told himself. The reverse was too much to think of.
The weeks waiting for Rufus to wake up, the subsequent months helping him regain his health only for him to fall prey to Geostigma, and the almost-year that he had to watch Rufus suffer through the seizures and spasms were simply the most painful Tseng had to live through amongst all of his years.
Still, this did not stop him from wanting to kill his President when the idiot jumped from a high building. It didn’t matter that he and Elena were there, ready with net-guns to catch him. What mattered was the fact that Rufus took a hugely unnecessary risk just to avenge something that didn’t need to be avenged in the first place.
Tseng was neither a man to be protected, nor was his pain a reason to punish others. He could do both of that just fine by himself.
He felt grateful for the sentiment, however (though he would never admit it); Rufus cared for him.
He couldn’t say that he would be all that ready to catch Rufus the next time he fell from a building, though. He might get the urge to just let him fall until the very last second.
He might.
V; Rufus
It had gravely hurt his pride when he had to admit that Kadaj and the rest of the shinentai were too much for his Turks. It hurt to admit that they weren’t the best. It hurt to admit that there were people physically stronger than they (and thus, he) were. But most of all, it hurt like crap to see his Turks injured and fearing that they were dead.
Rufus would never forgive Tseng for the scare (never mind, that it was neither fully Tseng nor Elena’s fault that they were captured) because it was the first time he felt fear for someone who weren’t himself.
Which was why, he told himself, that he made Kadaj suffer as much as he could. Jenova (or her head, rather) came to be useful for the first time. Kadaj had made him feel an emotion that he wasn’t supposed to feel for someone else, Kadaj had surprised him, and thus he must pay.
It had nothing to do with how much he valued his Turks, how much he appreciated their presences, especially when he was struck down first by Weapon than Geostigma. It had absolutely nothing to do with how Rufus was afraid that the few people he allowed himself to care about would die. Nothing to do with how much Tseng and Elena’s bloodstains on their cards had scared him. Nothing to do with how much the sight of Reno and Rude writhing painfully on the floor had made him worried and angry.
It was just a matter of pride, that’s all.
End