[ Watching Rufus and Dark Nation go before him softens the sharp edges of Tseng’s expression. When Rufus speaks though, his tone riding that fine line, his attention shifts back with a precision honed over years of service. It can’t be helped.
Tseng lets his gaze drift over the path Rufus has cut through the suite, each piece of clothing a breadcrumb leading to the bathroom. He doesn’t follow it immediately, though he goes to the sink there, too. His gaze lingers on Rufus, undressing.
Then, he wets a towel, squeezes out the excess water, goes to wipe Dark Nation’s muzzle with it. There’s a brief exchange of low murmurs and a gentle hand guiding her great muzzle. Her skin may be too dark to show the difference well, but by how stained the towel eventually becomes Tseng can say when he’s cleaned her up enough. Kneeling by her bed, with her nose pushed into his palm once more, Tseng dispenses a little more praise. He’s really not too unhappy to have gone without seeing the trophy of her kill.
He goes back into the bathroom, rinses the pink water from the dirty towel, and puts it in the hamper. This time along with each item of clothing he’s picked up, having followed the trail almost to the shower. Tseng lets Rufus’ tie, the last piece, weave between his fingers. Steam curls at his feet. His hand and glove are still bloody. Tseng washes them in the sink also. There’s no point putting it back on, so he resolves to leave both of his gloves as a pair on the countertop.
With forethought, too, he turns on the tap on the bathtub. The pipes can surely handle pumping so much water, even up at the altitude of the 70th floor. He dips his bare fingers into the shallow pool that’s collecting quickly, testing the temperature. Over the sound of the shower: ]
I’ll be back to join you when you’re ready.
[ In dutiful wait of an answer, Tseng stands on the other side of the fogged up glass. He looks at Rufus’ silhouette. ]
'When I'm ready'? ( --comes the lofty, almost amused response, though he leaves it there to linger in the air between them. tseng's started up the bath, all the same, and there's some kind of comfort in hearing all the noise, as though it helps to muddle anything he worries about between them. )
I'm surprised you're not more hands-on, Tseng.
( but this is the game that they play, the lines that they dart back over and hide behind, as though blurring them is not quite as fun as deciding when and how they'll come into play. he could easily command tseng to strip him of his shirt, unbuckle his belt, drag all of his clothes down to his ankles, and tseng would do it, if he asked, if he told him he had to. that's not the kind of fear that he wants to instill in people: and not the kind of feeling he wants to instill, either, in someone that he has candid interest in.
so it's his own hands, that work to shrug out of his shirt, to carefully shed his pants, his underwear, his socks, everything else left in a neater pile than the bread crumbs he left behind previously--unabashed, he eases past the glass door of the shower, ducking his head beneath it first to let the water wash over his hair, smearing it into his face, casting hot steam down his bare arms and shoulders. with a pass of a palm over his nose, his eyes, wiping the water out of the way-- )
I seem to have misplaced my favourite shampoo, you know.
( it's not true. all the bottles are neatly lined up where he expected them to be, and it's obvious there's a smile in his voice, when he turns to put his back to the spray, to work his hands up through his hair and peel it back. )
Come in and help me find it. Your suit isn't welcome here.
[ Tseng watches the faint blur of Rufus’ silhouette behind the glass and lets the rush of water fill in as an ambient backdrop to his voice. He can’t see the faint lift of Tseng’s brow, but Rufus can surely imagine it, reacting to the deliberate cadence to his voice, the kind that invites but certainly doesn’t curve down to beg. Tseng pulls his shirt free of his belt before slipping it off entirely, and soon enough he has removed every item of clothing and folded it once to set them aside. He turns off the faucet filling the tub.
His lips twitch at the obvious ploy. Stripped down to nakedness, Tseng opens the shower door to a veil of escaping steam. The space between the two men thins quickly. Tseng reaches forward without looking, around Rufus, and his forearm brushes against his side. The fleeting touch feels charged in the confined space—or Tseng heaps the feeling onto it for himself; his skin is still cool. He picks up the ‘missing’ shampoo, floats it along the bottom of Rufus’s view. ]
A curious case. [ He remarks, as if he did only step into the shower to resolve the issue quickly. Now that he’s done so, he’ll put the bottle back, and– no one is so drilled on business-only, not even Tseng, that he’ll just leave.
The steam curling in the confined space clings to Tseng’s skin as much as it does Rufus’s. The water drips down the blond’s shoulders, highlighting the flush that blooms across his skin from the heat—he looks almost fevered in this light, but Tseng looks into pale eyes that have a sharpness like crystals and they deny anything being out of sorts. There’s nothing, but the blood on his face, of course. It’s begun to wash off unevenly under the running water and Tseng’s gaze follows the pale pink rivulets trailing down Rufus’s neck and to his collarbone. He hogs the stream of the shower. Strands of Tseng’s hair curl faintly at the ends, drawn into disarray by the steam building up on his body as moisture anyway. ]
Shall I help you with the rest?
[ Rufus can keep teasing him for asking, but Tseng lays his tone flat in the direction of it. He means to do it. ]
( damp, his fingers thread back through pale strands, combing it away from his forehead, from his face, and it's not so unusual a sight; perhaps it would be more shocking to brush all his hair down in front of his face, again, let it cling to his brow the way it did in his youth, when a part of him had hoped he could hide the worst parts of himself, and his life, beneath the shaggy hang of bangs. likewise, the appearance of tseng, stark naked and matter-of-fact as usual, isn't strange either: he watches, waits, pretends to look stunned when the aforementioned bottle of shampoo is held in front of his face like some kind of magical savior.
with his lips curling up into a smile, he tries for a voice of total shock-- )
Oh, is that where it went off to.
( one hand lifts, but tseng is already stretching past him to replace the bottle on the shelf where they both know it belongs--empty, his fingers curl into nothing but the steam of the shower, but there are more important things to reach for.
tseng's hair is curling, slightly, under the burden of the steam, and with a soft click of his tongue, he lets his hand slide over a naked shoulder, shrugging long, dark strands from sticking to the skin; they roll and stick to tseng's back, instead. )
I think you'll need to stay, for the sake of my safety. ( he does, at least, let that hand fall, holding tseng's upper arm to use it as a counter balance, as he steps sidelong, and out of the shower spray. )
Go ahead and get yourself wet. ( he's still smiling as he says it, though he is rounding back for the bottle of shampoo again--so that he can add it to his palm, coax both of his hands up to start working it through his own hair. ) I'll wait.
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no subject
Tseng lets his gaze drift over the path Rufus has cut through the suite, each piece of clothing a breadcrumb leading to the bathroom. He doesn’t follow it immediately, though he goes to the sink there, too. His gaze lingers on Rufus, undressing.
Then, he wets a towel, squeezes out the excess water, goes to wipe Dark Nation’s muzzle with it. There’s a brief exchange of low murmurs and a gentle hand guiding her great muzzle. Her skin may be too dark to show the difference well, but by how stained the towel eventually becomes Tseng can say when he’s cleaned her up enough. Kneeling by her bed, with her nose pushed into his palm once more, Tseng dispenses a little more praise. He’s really not too unhappy to have gone without seeing the trophy of her kill.
He goes back into the bathroom, rinses the pink water from the dirty towel, and puts it in the hamper. This time along with each item of clothing he’s picked up, having followed the trail almost to the shower. Tseng lets Rufus’ tie, the last piece, weave between his fingers. Steam curls at his feet. His hand and glove are still bloody. Tseng washes them in the sink also. There’s no point putting it back on, so he resolves to leave both of his gloves as a pair on the countertop.
With forethought, too, he turns on the tap on the bathtub. The pipes can surely handle pumping so much water, even up at the altitude of the 70th floor. He dips his bare fingers into the shallow pool that’s collecting quickly, testing the temperature. Over the sound of the shower: ]
I’ll be back to join you when you’re ready.
[ In dutiful wait of an answer, Tseng stands on the other side of the fogged up glass. He looks at Rufus’ silhouette. ]
no subject
I'm surprised you're not more hands-on, Tseng.
( but this is the game that they play, the lines that they dart back over and hide behind, as though blurring them is not quite as fun as deciding when and how they'll come into play. he could easily command tseng to strip him of his shirt, unbuckle his belt, drag all of his clothes down to his ankles, and tseng would do it, if he asked, if he told him he had to. that's not the kind of fear that he wants to instill in people: and not the kind of feeling he wants to instill, either, in someone that he has candid interest in.
so it's his own hands, that work to shrug out of his shirt, to carefully shed his pants, his underwear, his socks, everything else left in a neater pile than the bread crumbs he left behind previously--unabashed, he eases past the glass door of the shower, ducking his head beneath it first to let the water wash over his hair, smearing it into his face, casting hot steam down his bare arms and shoulders. with a pass of a palm over his nose, his eyes, wiping the water out of the way-- )
I seem to have misplaced my favourite shampoo, you know.
( it's not true. all the bottles are neatly lined up where he expected them to be, and it's obvious there's a smile in his voice, when he turns to put his back to the spray, to work his hands up through his hair and peel it back. )
Come in and help me find it. Your suit isn't welcome here.
no subject
His lips twitch at the obvious ploy. Stripped down to nakedness, Tseng opens the shower door to a veil of escaping steam. The space between the two men thins quickly. Tseng reaches forward without looking, around Rufus, and his forearm brushes against his side. The fleeting touch feels charged in the confined space—or Tseng heaps the feeling onto it for himself; his skin is still cool. He picks up the ‘missing’ shampoo, floats it along the bottom of Rufus’s view. ]
A curious case. [ He remarks, as if he did only step into the shower to resolve the issue quickly. Now that he’s done so, he’ll put the bottle back, and– no one is so drilled on business-only, not even Tseng, that he’ll just leave.
The steam curling in the confined space clings to Tseng’s skin as much as it does Rufus’s. The water drips down the blond’s shoulders, highlighting the flush that blooms across his skin from the heat—he looks almost fevered in this light, but Tseng looks into pale eyes that have a sharpness like crystals and they deny anything being out of sorts. There’s nothing, but the blood on his face, of course. It’s begun to wash off unevenly under the running water and Tseng’s gaze follows the pale pink rivulets trailing down Rufus’s neck and to his collarbone. He hogs the stream of the shower. Strands of Tseng’s hair curl faintly at the ends, drawn into disarray by the steam building up on his body as moisture anyway. ]
Shall I help you with the rest?
[ Rufus can keep teasing him for asking, but Tseng lays his tone flat in the direction of it. He means to do it. ]
no subject
with his lips curling up into a smile, he tries for a voice of total shock-- )
Oh, is that where it went off to.
( one hand lifts, but tseng is already stretching past him to replace the bottle on the shelf where they both know it belongs--empty, his fingers curl into nothing but the steam of the shower, but there are more important things to reach for.
tseng's hair is curling, slightly, under the burden of the steam, and with a soft click of his tongue, he lets his hand slide over a naked shoulder, shrugging long, dark strands from sticking to the skin; they roll and stick to tseng's back, instead. )
I think you'll need to stay, for the sake of my safety. ( he does, at least, let that hand fall, holding tseng's upper arm to use it as a counter balance, as he steps sidelong, and out of the shower spray. )
Go ahead and get yourself wet. ( he's still smiling as he says it, though he is rounding back for the bottle of shampoo again--so that he can add it to his palm, coax both of his hands up to start working it through his own hair. ) I'll wait.