Disclaimer: I own nothing!

A/N: I'm actually not big into the Final Fantasy franchise, but I just love these two, and I couldn't resist. Anyway, this is slash, yaoi, Reno/Rude, Rude/Reno, whatever you wanna call it. I guess it doesn't have to be, if you...ignore some stuff, but why would you ever want to do that? :)

(Oh and it's a stupid title, I know.)

London Bridges

By

Norikio Na No Da

Reno felt cold pavement biting into his cheek and something he immediately identified as blood running in rivulets across his temple, past his hairline. He opened his eyes to a slate gray sky and saw a brownish blur, floating somewhere over his face. With a few blinks the blur resolved itself into his partner's hand. Wait. How did that work? Reno forced himself to focus, watching the straining fingers inch closer. Then he looked past the hand, up the arm, with its torn black sleeve, to the man himself. Rude seemed to be lying flat on his stomach, leaning over the edge of a broken ledge several feet above where Reno lay, and he was reaching for him. His expression was slightly pained and Reno wondered why.

Was Rude hurt?

Or was he?

"Reno," said Rude grimly, upon seeing the redhead open his dazed green eyes. "You with me?"

"Where else would I be?"

"You were out cold," Rude replied. He was still reaching determinedly for his partner, his fingers coming up about a foot shy of touching Reno's face. "I've been calling you for a few minutes, and you didn't respond."

"…That's not good," said Reno distractedly, turning his head a fraction – enough to cast a quick look at the situation before the pulsing pain in his skull forced him to shut his eyes. In the black of the back of his eyelids he registered what he saw and put the pieces together.

They were on a bridge. The bridge appeared to have…well, broken apart, cracking, rising, and shifting away like tectonic plates. He couldn't remember what had been the cause of that – a bomb? A monster? Elena in a helicopter? Any and all were valid possibilities. It didn't matter, because the little ledge he had managed to land on didn't feel very reliable, and neither did his grasp on consciousness, and there was a look of muted tension in Rude's features – that was never good.

There was a sound, too, repetitive, almost dull. After a minute he recognized it as his own name, being called in Rude's voice, and he snapped his eyes open, remembering where he was.

Rude grunted in exasperation and relief. "I don't know if you've noticed," he said, flexing his fingers, "but I've been trying to grab you for a while now."

Oh yeah.

"You and everybody else, yo," quipped Reno weakly, and he moved his arm to grab Rude's.

A sudden pain seized him around his ribcage and he cried out. "Nope, nope," he managed through gritted teeth as he wrapped his arms around the tender area. "I'm not gonna do that for a while."

"Not an option," Rude growled. "That ledge won't support you for – "

There was an alarming crumbling sound and Reno sat bolt upright. The pain was almost enough to drop him again, but Rude grabbed a fistful of his hair and tugged, and Reno managed to stay conscious.

"Grab my hand. Now," barked Rude, as the crumbling sound intensified.

Reno obeyed, forcing the nauseating pain out of his mind and seizing Rude's arm, just below the elbow; Rude returned the favor, just as what remained of the ledge fell out from underneath him.

And now Reno was swinging over a vast expanse of empty air between Rude's desperate, straining grasp and the black water below him. He yelped, but the pressure his position put on his damaged ribcage prevented him from screaming louder or longer. Besides, Rude was clearly in pain as well, his strong, built body pushed to its breaking point as he tried to keep a hold on his dangling partner. And if Rude wasn't screaming, then what right did Reno have?

"I don't like this, partner," said Reno breathlessly. "I'd really like to join you up there now."

"I'm...working...on it..." Rude grunted back. His body began to slide forward, and he had to release the grip of his left arm to anchor himself to the ledge he was on, leaving the totality of his partner's weight on his right arm. Reno tried to compensate by holding onto Rude with both hands, but the splintering pain struck once again and he had to wrap one of his arms around his middle. An idea struck him, and he was both horrified and a little intrigued by its clarity.

"Rude," he gasped. "There's no way we're both getting out of this, yo... I think I'm gonna hafta - "

"No."

"C'mon, man, you didn't even let me finish my - "

"No."

"Partner, I'm trying to be gallant here, would you just let me - "

"Ren, I don't have the TIME or the ENERGY to explain to you just now why that's a stupid idea," Rude ground out somehow. It was a mouthful for the stoic man. "So you can just shut up and help me, or else we're both going to die."

Reno exhaled noisily in frustration. "For once I try and be a hero, and you gotta stomp all over it," he grumbled. "Fine..." And he gave it another shot, slowly releasing his poor, aching ribcage in time to grab Rude's other arm, which Rude had looped around a jagged piece of pavement to steady himself. Rude pulled with all of his might, and Reno scrabbled at the pavement with his feet, until finally the bigger man dragged him up onto the ledge.

They lay there panting, side by side, for all of seven seconds.

Then

BOOM.

An explosion rocked the twisted remains of the bridge, and the foundations crumbled into the ocean. What was left, including the ledge the two men were lying on, followed suit. Reno and Rude, holding onto each other for dear life, were carried downward by the sudden rockslide. Rude was screaming - an extremely rare occurrence that was drowned out by Reno's hysterical "YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!", which was, in turn, drowned out by the tremendous sound of the world falling apart.

Everything was a gigantic, spinning blur of smoggy and fiery colors. It looked, to Reno, like an apocalyptic rinse cycle. Then the pavement ended and they were falling through space, and a wall of black water was rushing up to meet them.

& & &

He was exhausted.

His first thought was 'Can you really be physically exhausted from a nightmare?'

His second thought was 'Well, that wasn't your everyday, run of the mill nightmare. That was almost as crazy as the real shit we deal with.'

His third thought was '...Oh, that feels nice. I wish Rude would wake me up with a kiss every morning...'

But when something slammed into his chest with the brutal force of a sledgehammer, making him cough and gag and choke up foul-tasting water, those thoughts all flew out the window, replaced by one inarticulate 'OW!!!'

He felt his body jerked upright, into a sitting position, then bent over something - an arm - and then that sledgehammer force was hitting him on the back, repeatedly. That is, until he threw up a large quantity of murky water and began gasping for air.

Warm arms held him until he got a handle on his breathing. "Dammit, Rude," he said weakly, "I thought we were home in bed, 'til you hit me."

"It was CPR, dumbass." Rude's words were gruff, but the faint tremor in his body betrayed his lingering anxiety. "And why would we be soaked if we were lying in bed?"

"Depends on what we were doing in bed," Reno said without hesitation. He opened one eye, slowly, then the other. They were lying on the bank at the water's edge, surrounded by debris. The sad, slouched figure of the broken bridge was sinking gradually into the ocean, huge clouds of dark smoke trailing into a gray sky above it. A helicopter - probably Elena, looking for them - was circling the bridge. Reno was too relieved to be alive to worry about signaling her. Let her worry. She'd find them eventually. For now he was content to huddle against Rude and revel in the fact that while the rest of the world was out there in that madness and chaos, fighting for power, control, and money, here he was, more or less intact, with everything he wanted right beside him. How zen.

Rude tightened his hold, apparently thinking the same thing.

"Ow, yo! Be careful."

"Sorry," said Rude, but he didn't sound too apologetic.

"These ribs have really been gettin' it, today."

FIN