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The first time Reno saw her, the only impression he had was of blondeness and great big brown eyes, and of smallness. She looked especially short trailing along after Tseng through the crisp halls of Shinra Tower.
"Who's the kid?" he asked Rude, shifting the position of his aching leg where he'd propped it on the chair. Even with liberal use of magic, nerve damage was slow to repair, keeping him office-bound and cranky. He angled so he could look out the huge mirrored window, over the faintly smog-smudged city far below.
"Elena," Rude said. He passed Reno a cup of coffee. "The recruit."
"A little young, isn't she?"
Rude's lips pressed together into a not-a-smile. "Old enough to do your job."
Only a well-timed hasty swallow kept him from spewing coffee across his desk. "Excuse me?"
"While your leg heals up," Rude said.
"I don't need a—a rookie to do my job for me."
"You do," Rude said, "while your leg heals up." He took a sip of his coffee. He was enjoying this entirely too much, as far as Reno was concerned. "Her marksmanship scores are excellent. She's got no polish, but—"
Reno glowered. "You trying to get rid of me, partner?"
Rude managed a small smile. "Farthest thing from," he said. "It's just amusing to watch you get riled up."
"C'mon," Reno said, slamming the man up against the alley wall. The neon lights from the bar across the way (which advertised Live Girls! and made Elena wonder where in Midgar you found the dead ones) cast them both in garish pink-and-lime-green light. "We know you've got AVALANCHE connections. Where are they?"
"I don't know," he said. "I swear to—"
"Maybe he doesn't know," she said. Good cop, good cop. It was vastly different in reality than in theory. "I doubt even they knew they were heading for Rocket—"
Reno shot her an acid look. "Do you ever stop running your mouth, rookie?"
It had been a stupid thing to say, but it was too late for her to back down now. Especially when she still wasn't sure what she'd done to annoy Reno so much. "I could ask you the same thing."
The man was looking between them, back and forth and back and forth, like he was hoping this was his chance. Reno grabbed the man by the forehead and casually smacked his head against the cinderblock. "Haven't forgotten about you, friend," he said. "Where are they headed?"
"I. Have. No. Idea," the man spat. Elena was losing patience. She unholstered her gun and shot him neatly in the knee. He howled, his blood joining the graffiti on the alley wall.
Reno picked up smoothly, though he had jumped at the gunblast. "Better start talking before she works her way through more of your joints," he said.
Afterward, his only grudging comment was, "Can't fault your aim, at least."
He could tell Elena was embarrassed. Beyond embarrassed. Well, getting captured and tied up was pretty damn undignified, and though if you'd asked him a week prior whether he wanted to see the rookie brought down a few notches he'd've said hell yes, it was something else to actually see it. She was still a Turk, and he couldn't get a lot of pleasure out of seeing somebody in the suit embarrassed like that.
Not that he was going to tell her.
She ran a fingertip around the rim of her glass, and stared moodily off into space while he and Rude played cards; given Rude's (non-)penchant for conversation, there wasn't much sound at their table beyond the clink of chips against the bamboo tabletop and the rustle of cards.
"Sorry," she finally said. "You were right."
He looked at her. She looked like getting the words out had been an effort something like chewing her own hand off at the wrist. He could think of a lot of snarky things to say, but—well. He was willing to see almost anybody disgraced, but not a Turk. Even an obnoxious rookie Turk.
"It happens," he said. "—I mean, not to me, but, y'know."
Rude began to laugh.
"So," Reno said, "so then he said, 'Hey, that's not a pub—"
"—and then he turned around right when Rude brained him with the chair," Elena finished, waving her beer bottle demonstratively and nearly clipping the back of Reno's head. She felt giddy, not so much with the alcohol as with the outcome of the mission.
"I see," Tseng said, eyeing them both through his glass of wine.
"And then," Reno said, "and then he got up, right, and went for Elena—"
"—the girl, naturally—" she couldn't resist adding.
"—and grabbed her gun hand and twisted it up—"
"I'd like to point out that I let him," she said, and took a swig from her bottle. The bartender kept giving them dubious looks, but knew better than to ask too much about an unlikely crew of four in matching suits.
"I know, I know, that's the good part. Shut up, El, you're ruining the story. So he grabs her hand, and twists it up and says, 'Don't come any closer or the girl is history.'" Elena was gratified to hear a faint, well-bred snort from Tseng. "And then she presses her other gun—which of course he didn't even see—right into his goods, and she says, 'Oh, I was hoping you'd try something like that.'"
"And did he resist further?" Tseng asked.
"I wish," Elena said.
He wasn't sure that he wanted to until right up to when he asked her, but that was par for the course for Reno. They'd performed an assassination—they weren't usually assigned to things in pairs: she partnered with Tseng like he did with Rude, or they worked in threes or fours together—but Rude was in Junon and Tseng had a function he needed to guard Rufus through, so it fell to them.
It was a quiet assassination, which meant no bullets and no screaming. Tseng would have done it with poison; Rude would have broken the man's neck in his sleep. Neither was up-close and personal enough for Reno, and to his surprise Elena went along when he recommended knifing: "Clean cut through the windpipe and there won't be a sound."
"Right," she said, and checked the springs in her wrist-sheaths.
It went almost-smooth, with one hitch: while Elena was doing the job (with neatness and precision that he was sure she must have picked up from Tseng, because she hadn't been anything like so precise in the beginning), one of the target's guards came in at the wrong moment, and Reno had to . . . take care of the problem.
When he was done, he turned around, and Elena was there with the knife bloody in her hand, her eyes intent and dark and her pupils expanded—which was pretty much exactly how he felt—so he caught her shoulder and kissed her, hard, without preamble, catching her lip briefly between his teeth. He did it without thinking.
"You're pretty damn brave," she said, "to do that when I have a knife in my hands."
"Didn't think you'd object that much."
"What exactly does that mean?" she asked, twisting the knife so the blood dripped onto the floor rather than on her hand. Her eyes were still brilliant, her cheeks flushed—not, he knew, from his kiss, but from the killing.
"Does it have to mean anything?" he asked, then, rolling his head back and favoring her with a slit-eyed look, "Do you want it to?"
She hesitated. "You're sleeping with Rude, aren't you?"
Bingo. "Sometimes. Yeah. What does that have to do with anything?"
The look she gave him was entirely skeptical. "You just want to get me under you, like that's going to prove something."
"Who said anything about under me?" he said, and watched her decide that she didn't want to laugh and then do it anyway.
"Okay, you get a point for that."
"I get a point? What, we're competing?"
She gave him a sideways look as she cleaned her knife on the corpse's shirt and sheathed it. "We're always competing."
She didn't go to his apartment, but when—two nights later—he came to hers, she let him in.
"I'm taking you up on the 'not under you' part," she said. Better to just get straight to the point—otherwise she'd offer him a beer and then they'd stand around for a while feeling increasingly awkward and then one of them would have to be blunt anyway. Cut to the chase.
"Suits me fine," Reno said. "Be more interesting like that anyway."
"I'm on the birth control implant, and my blood tests are current," she began, and then stopped when she saw him grinning.
"I know. I've got access to the databases too, remember? I could look up how many cavities you have, if I wanted to."
"Yeah? How many cavities do I have?"
"Fuck if I know. I'm not all that interested in your teeth," he said, and two seconds later she had his back against the wall and his tongue in her mouth.
Two minutes after that she had him on her couch, pressing him against the back and straddling his hips. He tasted of cigarettes and stale coffee, but then, so probably did she. She wasn't going to complain.
"You that hard up?" he asked when she reached for his zipper.
"No," she said, biting his ear, "you?"
"Hah. Fuck no." He tugged her shirt loose and ran his hands up the back to spring the catch on her bra. She arched. "Been a while since it's been with a woman, though."
"Keeping it in the company?" She thought about taking his shirt off and decided not to bother. Instead she tugged the tie out of his hair and then wrapped the tail around her hand, used it to pull his head back.
"Hah. Yes. Usually." He was getting breathless, which was a good sign. Damned if she was going to be the only one hot and bothered—although the noise he made when she really tugged his hair made her squirm, her thighs rubbing against his.
"Surprised you waited this long to move, then," she said, and finally got her other hand on his cock, which made him hiss and tilt his head back; she put pressure on his hair to keep him there, biting at the line of his throat.
"Wouldn't've been nearly so interesting with a rookie," he said.
She hadn't been lying—she wasn't especially hard up for it—but it still felt good when he slid into her, pressing her cunt open and filling her fast and hard—he put a little force behind it, rough, which made it very unlike Tseng. She wanted to whimper, and didn't. Instead she tugged on his hair, and said, "Is that the most you've got?"
He laughed, picked up the pace. Her shirt was still just half-off, her bra loose, and he popped one button open and slid a hand in to rub his palm over her nipple and then squeeze, not hard but plenty firm. She bit his throat; he thrust up into her; she gave it back to him at a faster pace, her teeth bared against his shoulder, no softness. It wasn't going to take long at all, but that was okay. Better than okay. Just fine.
"Fuck," she said, at the first tremor, and he said, "Very observant," and then, when she was just about to yank his hair for that, reached between them and rubbed her clit, which made her forget all about his smart remark and his hair and, in fact, everything. She ground down, felt the electric-shock flash of pressure and then the throb of release, around him. He gave a smug-bastard chuckle, and before her orgasm was even over she did yank his hair. He made a high breathless noise, a shamelessly needy noise, and she almost resented him for being willing to make that kind of sound when she didn't feel she could—but not quite, because he made it again and she shuddered and then he came.
She leaned against him for a moment, smelling smoke and sweat, before the position became uncomfortable and the feeling of sweat plastering cloth started to chafe. He was giving her a measuring look. She slid off his lap, kissed him, and said, "Want a beer?"
"You got anything good?" he asked, and he was smiling, and she thought, Right answer.