10.

Title: How Rude

Rating: PG

Pairing(s): None

Word Count: 767

Warning(s): Nasty references to Heidegger and Rude. Gags

Summary: Reno just had to be rude.

Dedication: Alice! For brainstorming with me until I got this one just right!

A/N: Alice has become my drabble inspirer, and it’s thanks to her these are getting more CRACK-filled as I go along. How I still manage to stay in character is beyond me…

Song: Butterfly by Back-On

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Everything was perfect. Reno had his prey lined up perfectly, and nothing was in his way. One step, crouching low behind the distracted figure. Another step, and—he pounced! And in the chaos of flying papers and a startled shout from his bald co-worker, Reno triumphantly snatched up Rude’s sunglasses and scrambled to his feet away from the fallen Turk.

“Yes!” he cried enthusiastically, shoving the shades onto his face and grinning slyly at the frustrated hazel-eyed gaze now staring up at him from the floor in mild shock. “At last I can try these babies on! Lookie here, ‘Lena!” He twirled around, raising an arm to catch the blonde’s attention. “I can be Rude too!” He scrunched up his face, attempting to force a blank expression, and failing terribly at it. Try as he might, he could not master the bald Turk’s stoicism.

By now, Rude was righting his seat, glaring intensely at the redhead. “Give them ba—,” he began, but Reno had already stolen his righted seat, peering intently through the shades at the computer screen. “Ooo! An email to Heidegger! ‘…insurgents silenced with little to no trouble…’ blah blah blah. Rude, your report’s boring as Tseng.”

And suddenly the redhead was typing away at the computer intently, reading aloud his personal touch to the unfinished email. “ ‘Oh Heidi, how I love your resounding chortle! It makes me weak at the knees, and all I can think about are those lips—’ Hey! No touchy!” He dodged a grasping hand that seemed just as eager to strangle Reno as much as it wanted to retrieve the shades still perched on the irritating Turk’s face.

“Give them back,” Rude threatened, still after the ducking redhead. “Hell no!” shouted the other man, sticking his tongue out. “Oi! Rude! You try one more time and I’ll push Send!” That stalled the bald Turk’s efforts and he glared darkly at his co-worker. It was a tense silence, broken only by Reno’s devilish smirk as Rude sighed and turned away in defeat. Reno leapt to his feet gallantly and strutted back to his desk, smugly brandishing his compatriot’s shades.

Rude could do nothing but endure the pain of the remainder of the day without his trademark accessory. Reno was ready to remotely trigger the saved email upon a moment’s notice. Eventually, when they all checked out of the office for the day, Reno still bore the shades as proudly as ever, and vowed to send Rude’s unfinished email unless he let the redhead keep the shades for the remainder of the week. Rude bitterly allowed him to take them home.

LATER THAT EVENING…

A shadowed figure slipped under the eves of an apartment’s first flight of stairs. After seeming to make sure the coast was clear, it crept up the stairs of the several story apartment in utter silence until it paused upon the fifth floor in front of the last door in the hall.

It broke in with considerable ease and ghosted through the room, seeming to know exactly where to go. A door was left carelessly ajar, and inside sprawled a heavily snoring redhead. The darkling shadow approached maliciously, and as it stole silently through the yellow light coming in through a window, the gleam of a blade caught the dull glow…

THAT MORNING…

A terrible, gruesome scream shook the entire apartment building, waking every last resident, their hearts leaping into their throats at the blood-curdling wail.

AT THE SHIN-RA HEADQUARTERS…

Elena’s hands flew to cover her mouth, her eyes wide with shock, a scream barely muffled through her hands. Even Tseng blanched, his normally apathetic gaze overwhelmed with mingled repulsion and surprise. And Rude’s vacant expression was replaced with… a deeply smug smirk.

Reno glowered from just within the doorway and chucked the familiar pair of shades at Rude’s head with all the force he could muster, hoping they would shatter upon impact or at least draw blood. But they were better quality than he had anticipated and merely hit Rude without causing him to do any more than smirk wider.

Reno ground his teeth, jaw clenched, and if he could, he would have murdered the smug bastard where he sat. Instead he wrenched himself around, refusing to meet the gaze of anyone else in the room, and stomped loudly enough to his desk to nearly cause the floor to give way beneath his feet. The shoddy fluorescent lights gleamed carelessly off of Reno’s beautiful, shining bald cranium.

“You wanted to be Rude,” the satisfied and bald man called after his enraged co-worker.

“Shut up.”