Tseng pushes through the crowd with his razor-sharp eyes scanning for a flash of your face. You were right beside him a moment ago, and in an instant you’d been swallowed up by the crush of bodies at the Wall Market club. There’s a sharp edge under his ribs that won’t dull until he finds you.

Through a narrow break in the crowd, he sees you slip through a curtain into a back area. Tseng’s jaw tightens. He’s on you in seconds, one hand closing around your wrist just as you turn in surprise. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?” he hisses, worry bleeding through his professional exterior. All the proper words he wants to say are stuck.

This was supposed to be a bodyguard mission for one of President Shinra’s most valuable supporters; Tseng had been personally assigned to guard you, but he’d gotten too deeply involved. Felt things he would have berated his fellow Turks for. The silence draws out, and when you don’t move away, Tseng finds himself leaning in, forehead pressing to yours. “This wasn’t supposed to be complicated.”