"I can show it to you if you want."

That sentence, spoken with scathing, bored disdain, hung in the air until he thought that he might, perhaps, just stop breathing altogether.

"I beg your pardon?" Rufus politely inquired, putting his pen down, finding his breath again. The paperwork could wait. Inanimate objects had more patience than his temper-laden, red-headed Turk.

Reno was slouched in one of the plush chairs before Rufus's desk which were generally reserved for welcomed visitors and not his subordinates. Reno, however, had never sat anywhere else when the Turks were in the room, though his coworkers always lined themselves along the wall like civilized servants. He had his elbow propped on the chair's arm and his temple resting on his clenched fist. The cock of his head gave him a deceiving coyness that was erased at once by the rather jaded, unaffected, and utterly disinterested expression on his smooth face.

It irritated Rufus that his one Turk who did not meet the standard in etiquette, gentility, and presence was somehow his best in so many ways—so many that firing him was an outright impossibility, though it in no way precluded the occasional desire to have him murdered.

"Sit up straight in that chair, will you?" Rufus asked, schooling his features to show nothing, to reflect Reno's expression. "You look like an absolute wreck."

Reno smirked a little but made no move to straighten from draping his body in the chair. Head propped up, the other hand rapping a restless rhythm on the chair's arm, long legs splayed, he was the picture of careless indifference. But there was a danger there, too. A cat's cruel curiosity crossed with the reflex violence of a dog trained to kill. Those blue eyes, still half-lidded and sleepy, just watched Rufus as he started to nervously fidget. He would never admit to fearing any of his Turks—and, indeed, he didn't. Well, none of them except for Reno, and his fear wasn't of the conventional sort anyway. Turks were excellent at ferreting out secrets, and Rufus had no desire to see his own unearthed.

Especially since it dealt solely with the man who even now watched him with glittering blue eyes as if to say, 'I'll find out. You can't hide anything from me.'

It had started with such an innocuous statement. Rude had been driving, Reno had been avidly watching out of the passenger-side window for any sign of threats. For all of his lazy insolence, Rufus never could fault his attention to detail. They'd passed a couple of rather questionably employed women, and Reno had lowly whistled and said, "Fuck, one of them is a guy."

Rude had said nothing, as was his habit.

"Ten gil, I'd still fuck her," Reno commented, grinning at his bald partner, who'd merely rolled his eyes. "She pulls it off, yo."

"You'd sleep with anything that holds still long enough," Rufus had retorted, finding himself vaguely disturbed by his Turk's admission. He gave little to no thought about their sexual orientations or even the fact that they had lives outside of work—he only cared that they came when he called them and responded to his orders. Good dogs.

Reno had craned his head around to give Rufus one of his many indecipherable looks, his blue eyes dancing, and he'd said, "A hole is a hole, yo. You're horny and it don't run—fuck it!"

Rufus had rolled his eyes and silently activated the partitioning glass, but he'd still heard Reno's delighted sniggers and Rude's low, almost inaudible chuckles.

But it had gotten him to thinking. At first he'd been wholesomely appalled by Reno's easy, almost off-handed admission that he would sleep with a man if it seemed worth it, though his statement had indicated that he would, by no means, be anything other than the dominant one. The more Rufus had thought about it the more his brain had taken up the position of his enemy, supplying him with curious scenarios, just little wonderings that gradually grew into questioning his own absent interest in women and focusing more and more on his employee. He noticed things about Reno that he'd never dreamed he would notice, and the more affected he became, the more uncomfortable he became until it was nearly impossible to conceal…

"Seriously, yo, you keep staring at my crotch like I got an ax-murderer hiding in my pants and he's gonna pop out and tuck you," Reno said, yawning, not even having the good grace to cover his mouth. Rufus was momentarily stunned that so many of his sudden and unwelcome fantasies revolved around this ill-mannered, ill-tempered, and sloppy man. "You wanna check, yo? Swear to god it's just a cock, but you're fucking jumpy and it's getting on my nerves, so pull it back a bit."

Half of the time Rufus had no idea what Reno was talking about, having to dig through his slang and double-entendres and generally horrid sentence structure. He knew the Turk was capable of speaking like a civilized human being, he just didn't want to. ShinRa had educated him but Reno didn't care for that, either—death, blood, flying, drinking, and sex were the only things he needed to get by and he made no bones about it.

"Reno, there are many things in this world which fascinate even a man of my position," Rufus said, haughtily aware of his superiority and trying to use it to rediscover that huge gap between them. He couldn't want to let this creature touch him! It was simply beyond the pale. "That disease-ridden joystick in your pants is not one of them, however. Please do not flatter yourself."

"I don't need to," Reno snorted, laughing. "You know better than to think I'm dumb, boss. Keep your eye off my prize, yo—you know I don't do queers."

Rufus took a steadying breath and steepled his fingers beneath his chin, sighing, "Reno, a prize is generally something special that is given in reward for good behavior or for winning at some particularly difficult task. It is then placed in a safe area and admired out of reach of other hands. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm certain that such a description doesn't match what is currently in your pants. It isn't special, requires no work to have it, and is shared with anyone who asks—it isn't a prize, Reno, it's a public service."

"Feelin' left out, boss?" Reno asked, his grin wolfish and cruel.

Rufus knew for a fact that Reno was trying to get a rise out of him, it was a game the Turk played when the conversation went somewhere he didn't want it to be. As a manipulative tool it was exceptional, but Rufus knew his ways too well after all of these years. He simply sighed a little and told him, "I don't have time for your idiot performances. If you want your ego stroked, go find Elena. I have paperwork to finish."

Reno's face fell into something dangerous and angry, faintly shocking Rufus. He'd never seen such a look on the man's face before, but he recognized it instantly and cautioned himself to be more careful where his Turks were concerned. They might wear clothing, eat food, and speak like normal people, but they were killers to the bone, wolves in sheep's clothing. They saw the world at an angle to everyone else, an angle where one life snuffed out was an acceptable price to pay for the continued comfort of their own.

"One of these days, Rufus, it's gonna come back on you," Reno told him, blue eyes bright with heat. "Choke chains only work so well for so long, yo. Dogs will hunt."

Rufus flinched a little, recalling his father saying that same thing standing in a room with his many Turks, Reno among them. They'd bristled silently at his words but he hadn't noticed, no, not that fat and remarkably stupid man. He'd assumed their loyalty and assumed the air of ownership, but every last set of shoulders had stiffened, and Rufus had known that if any threat came his father's way, he'd guaranteed its delivery with his arrogant, outrageous words.

"Well," Rufus lightly said, unwilling to let Reno upset him, knowing the Turk could read fear and that he would react to it like any predator. The Turks might not appreciate being compared to vicious dogs, but they behaved in a very similar manner, and Rufus had learned well. "I suppose there's always the crop. Get out, Reno. I finished briefing you fifteen minutes ago—shoo."

Reno's eyes narrowed but he laughed, a harsh and cold sound that still managed to be somehow compelling. Without another word, he flung himself out of the chair and slouched to the door, shoulders hunched over and hands shoved deep into his pockets.

Rufus watched him go, bothered and oddly exhilarated, wishing like everything that all of these recent, appalling thoughts would just vanish from his mind and give him a little peace.

He glanced back at the chair where Reno always lay sprawled out and had a sudden, unwelcome longing to kneel there before it between those splayed legs, to have those hard and relentless hands grip his hair, just for once to be out of control, to surrender the burden to someone else.

The thought was as startling as it was horrifying. He could no more relinquish control to someone like Reno than he could offer world-domination to Sephiroth—it would bring cataclysmic chaos, undo everything that he'd worked so hard for. Reno was an excellent Turk but he was also a careless and selfish bastard. If Rufus so much as breathed that he'd developed an odd sort of fascination with him, Reno would be just as likely to tear his throat out as to go along with it.

No, such a thing was better kept in the realm of possibilities, in the land of fantasy where no one got hurt, no one was the wiser. Rufus would continue to see a flurry of faceless nobodies, and Reno would continue to be his pest of a bodyguard.

Surely it could be no other way?

A/N: "Dog will hunt" is from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, it's also in a Primus song, but they use a clip from the movie so it's the same thing. I liked it, I thought it was clever in the movie so I ganked it—credit where credit is due! Hope you all liked this, it's been winging around in my head for a few days, feeding me dialogue and generally making me get up in the middle of the night to write shit down. There's more to come (I think) so let me know if it's off to a good start.