Tseng understands the attractiveness in listening to Rufus Shinra's voice go from its collected pride to chopped up incoherency. He doesn't understand as clearly how the parallels might run for Balthier, but he knows enough to extrapolate. The two of them are similiar. Similar enough to hate each other as furiously as they do; one chasing the other like kings on a chessboard unable to come face to face.

'The problem,' Tseng starts talking, to both Rufus and Balthier's surprise, 'with living - in excess is that - you don't know how to buckle down.'

He pushes Rufus' neck back when the man tries to rear up. The way he says the word buckle highlights an accent in his tonality he usually never lets surface.

'Stop talking to him,' Rufus grinds out, trapped in between the hard graze of the table and a warmth he doesn't know whether to buck into or pull away from. 'Fuck, Tseng.'

'I'm speaking to you both,' Tseng says, fingers fisting in neat golden strands. 'Are you listening, Balthier?'

'I'm listening,' Balthier replies, shortly.

'This doesn't have to be a war,' Tseng growls. His voice is just deep enough to colour Balthier's imagination. The red lines burn into the back of the eyelids. The thudding noises are rhythmic and evenly spaced. It's so typical of Tseng. 'You could both let it go. Accept that I'm not going to be monopolised. Accept that I don't share any more than I indulge.'

'And they call me crazy,' Rufus gasps, fingers knotting and sliding and finding no purchase. 'The rest of the world just hasn't met you -- fuck,' his voice breaks out in a moan. 'Fuck.'

'There're other options,' Tseng continues. He doesn't have to pin Rufus anymore - Rufus is pinning himself. There are intangible forces that Tseng doesn't even need to appeal to. Rufus' eyes are open, shot and glued to the open phone, as if he can see Balthier there. Tseng wonders how much of a mirror they both really are to each other. It could be, theoretically, a terrifying thing to be unable to distinguish yourself from someone you're afraid to even be like. 'If the both of you are being persistent, it's not because I'm valuable. I'm highly replacable.' Tseng lets Rufus stay where he is, transfixed. He reaches out, and pulls the phone to his ear.

'The ends you both go to just to realise a life that has nothing to do with old money or heritage,' Tseng breathes, hard, into the receiver. He leans down on Rufus, brings the edge of his teeth to Rufus' upper lip. Rufus' mouth is open on a wordless groan. 'What am I? An accessory so that you can learn what it's like to not rule the little worlds you've built?'

Rufus sounds startlingly like Balthier when he makes the noises he does. Tseng reaches down with his free hand, shoves his fingers in when he knows Rufus is already feeling too stretched --

Rufus feels the world drop away from him, crazily wheeling and tumbling and so far away from numbers on boards and too much for even him to bear, so little fucking purchase that he's got nothing to cling onto, sliding just wholesale into his own body and it's a foreign place full of foreign wants. No last names, no inheritances, bare like the inside of Tseng's apartment, Tseng's head, Tseng's heart.

Tseng, who presses the cradle of his phone up against Rufus' ear, and Rufus realises he can't tell who it is, precisely, who's making the undignified keening, desperate sounds.