Gift fic for elfiepike
Title: Compensation
Pairing/Characters: 8Uppers, gen
Rating: PG-13 for language and violence.
Warnings: Just a bit of violence. The standard 8Uppers amount.
Notes: For elfiepike. I took your 8Uppers prompt and ran with it. I hope you'll be happy with the result. :)
Summary: Gum tries to take everything into his own hands.
It’s midnight when Gum finally has to admit to himself that this isn’t going to work.
But it’s 11:55 when Jacky finds him and lends a hand. Literally, reaching through the dust of the crawlspace as far as his arm will go and saying “Take it,” with a grunt. “Come on.”
At first, Gum stays quiet. Maybe if he’s quiet enough, Jacky will think he’s not even there. It’s dark and Gum can barely make out the outline of his own hand here let alone Jacky’s. A small sliver of light from the opening Jacky reaches through lands next to Gum’s knee. But still, he’s hidden.
“Come on already!” Jacky says, moving his arm around trying to grab at any part of Gum and in the process the layer of dust is shaken, travels into the air.
Gum sneezes.
---
By the time everyone notices Gum is missing, it’s already past 11pm. The club is full of people, but as far as Johnny knows, Gum just stepped out for a break.
“Is Gum out in the back?” Johnny asks Arsenal when he comes to the bar with an empty shot glass. He refills it and Arsenal immediately throws it back. Then shrugs.
He enlists Toppo for help since Jacky and Mac are in the office and Ace is far too drunk to walk let alone carry a tray. Toppo puts on enough songs to last while he makes the rounds in the club, but by the time he’s back at the bar with a tray of empty glasses, Gum still isn’t there.
Mac steps out onto the floor, surveying right to left. Jacky follows behind him and they approach the bar together.
“Have you seen Gum?” Mac asks Johnny.
Johnny finishes polishing a glass and sets it neatly behind the bar. “I was just about to ask you the same thing.”
---
The first person to notice that Gum isn’t around is Arsenal. Just because he acts indifferent doesn’t mean he isn’t paying attention to every single little fucking detail. Whether he wants to or not, he notices these things.
He notices that Gum hasn’t been to the bar for his evening glass of milk. Then he notices the cats outside hanging around like they haven’t been fed. Arsenal does so, just because those cats probably won’t go away if he doesn’t. Where Gum would bend down and stroke them kindly, Arsenal just haphazardly tosses the food on the ground. But it does the trick. They leave.
He knows that they’re all going to start searching for Gum once the rest of them notice. Maybe Gum just wants to be alone right now. Arsenal can understand that. He steps into the bar to find the rest of them conferring and Toppo checking by the back door.
Arsenal doesn’t plan to say a word.
---
Gum goes to the mansion alone. It’s big and there is a fence all around the perimeter. At every entrance there are armed guards. It doesn’t seem to be regular security, but they are certainly there today on a day when a whole lot of diamonds are about to be exchanged for a whole lot of money.
The details of this operation were garnered from the file he stole off of Mac’s desk. Probably Mac hadn’t had a chance to look at it yet, or so this is what Gum has been telling himself all morning. The request was for them to infiltrate - send someone in as a gruntworker transporting the diamonds. There are four cars, one that the diamonds are to be transported in and three decoys. Gum is to get into the car with the diamonds and take them back to the rightful owner since the ones making this transaction are not.
Well, the real rightful owner is probably some museum, Gum thinks while twisting and untwisting the bandage on his shoulder. But his list of transactions didn’t go back that far and it’s something he’d rather not know lest he has to pretend he didn’t know it later.
He waits in the car, one of the decoys for now, but he has another hour to get himself into the right one.
---
There were thirteen files on Mac’s desk earlier and now there are twelve. He hadn’t yet had a chance to go through all of them, but the one that’s missing, well he knows exactly which one that is. He knows because it was on the corner of his desk, where the ones he’s not even going to bother considering belong. Missions that aren’t worth it, or aren’t worth their time, or are going to be too dangerous in the end.
He knows it’s missing and by the end of the evening he’s pretty sure Gum is the one who took it, but up until just before 11:00 pm he’s willing to give him the benefit of the doubt because he can’t possibly be stupid enough to get neck deep into a diamond heist all by himself.
The thought rolls around in his mind a couple of times.
“Fuck,” Mac says, out loud, throwing a pencil across the room.
---
Earlier in the afternoon Toppo comes back from the drugstore with some medicine for Gum’s shoulder. It’s been in bad shape ever since the job they ran the week before. Gum used his shoulder to stop a knife, which was probably a wise decision, considering it was aimed right for his chest.
Johnny sees Gum leaving Mac’s office with a file in his hand and is about to ask if it’s a new job but Toppo cuts him off at the pass, sitting Gum down on the sofa so he can fuss over his shoulder some more.
From the bar, Johnny can’t see everything in detail, but he does see the file slip into Gum’s bag when Toppo isn’t looking. And that’s a little strange because why would Gum have a file that came from Mac’s office and no one else knows about?
---
“Let him do it,” Jacky says to Mac. “If this is what he thinks it takes to make him square then let him do it.”
“He’s going to get himself killed,” Mac says, calmly for now, but it won’t take much. Just a little push.
“No,” Jacky says. “Trust him. Like you’d want us to trust you.”
“You can trust me.”
“And we can’t trust him?”
“Where did he go?” Ace bursts in unceremoniously, door stretching beyond what the hinges can take. “Where the fuck did he go?”
He’s got an empty bottle in one hand and a half empty one in the other.
“This doesn’t concern you, Ace,” Mac says, looking down at the bottles in Ace’s hands then back up to his eyes again. “I can smell you from outside, you know, want to fucking cool it?”
“Where the fuck did he go and why the fuck aren’t we going after him?” Ace asks.
“Because we’re--” Jacky starts.
“Shut up,” Mac says. “Both of you shut up. And stop fucking grinning, Jacky.”
Jacky, standing behind him, only grins wider.
---
Toppo is the one they need to get past the guards. He makes a mist that he carries in a small spray bottle. It leaves no scent in the air and after he’s sprayed it the guards lie down completely still.
“Are they alive?” Johnny asks. But when Toppo doesn’t answer right away he says, “Never mind.”
Inside the mansion is like a maze and while Mac has the whole layout memorized, Ace just wants to go barreling through the walls, the windows, kicking down all of the doors.
“Listen,” Mac says, having to pull Ace back by his arm.
But before he can say anything else, Arsenal shoots the doorknob and then shoots the two guys who come in after the sound of the gunshot.
“I guess now we gotta run,” Arsenal says with a shrug.
---
Gum waits in the car, counting down the minutes until he can make the switch. Two of the other drivers are already in their cars. All of them have been briefed as if they’re the ones carrying the diamonds. No one can know the details. No one except the boss.
Even though Gum is used to this kind of thing, it’s a little scary and a little thrilling every time. The other drivers might really be gruntwork guys. But Gum knows how to tell if he’s in the right car or not. It’s the one going to the closest location because you always keep the most important things as close as you can.
---
In some ways, Arsenal doesn’t want them to find Gum. This is something he wanted to do on his own. They should let him be.
But eight shotgun blasts later and Arsenal knows why Mac wasn’t going to let them take this job.
“This is crazy,” Johnny says. Ace hits a wall in frustration, but the problem is that everyone knows why Gum left on his own even though no one wants to talk about it.
“Jacky, Arsenal, you guys go upstairs,” Mac says. “Johnny, wait by the entrance and Toppo stay with me.”
“And me?” Ace says.
“Just find him,” Mac says.
---
Gum is discovered when he’s almost finished making the switch. It’s so close he can almost smell the leather interior of the car. He’s only got his hand on rear passenger door handle when a cold gun is pressed against his forehead.
“The fuck do you think you’re doing?” is the last thing he hears before he’s knocked out and dragged inside.
---
Toppo has been spending the whole week tending to Gum’s shoulder, but even though Gum knows he’s injured, he’s not trying to take care of his injury at all. He moves recklessly. Toppo catches him doing pushups on the floor and every time he comes back up his face is twisted in the worst kind of pain.
He wants to tell Gum to watch it, to be more careful, but Gum knows that. It’s after a couple of days that Toppo realizes Gum doesn’t want to get better.
Then the day that Gum disappears, Toppo knows he’s only going to make it worse for himself. Take it in the other shoulder, or even worse than that.
When they arrive at the mansion, Toppo quickly deals with the guards at the door. But he knows Gum has already been caught because there are places for four guards to stand, but only two are standing there.
“Look for the most guarded room,” Mac says. Toppo meets eyes with him and he can see that Mac’s figured it out too.
There are four cars parked out in front and only three drivers sitting inside of them. The other one is the guy they’ve taken somewhere to deal with inside this mansion, Toppo thinks. The one who belongs to them.
---
“Twenty million yen,” Jacky says.
Gum nods and puts it carefully into the paper bag. “Yeah I counted it,” he says. “Twice.”
“And then I counted it again...” Toppo confirms.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Mac says.
“Define stupid,” Ace laughs.
Jacky jabs his fork into Ace’s side. It only makes Ace laugh even more.
“We’re in this together,” Mac says. “It’s a risk, but we’re in this together.
It’s all Gum can remember from the week before. Because the next thing he remembers is stopping the trajectory of a knife with his shoulder, lucky it wasn’t his right arm or he wouldn’t be able to use the bo at all.
He did get out alive, not really that injured although he really stained Jacky’s white shirt and he knew it must have been pretty severe if Jacky didn’t even get angry.
They didn’t take him to a hospital or else they’d have to explain what happened, but Jacky bandaged him up and Toppo brought some horrible tasting concoction from the drugstore and they stayed up all night until his fever went down.
He remembers watching the paper bag slip out of his arms. Felt like they were someone else’s arms because he could see so clearly everything that was going wrong right there in that moment. Part of the money must have had his blood on it and he wondered, at the time, if that could incriminate him somehow. Then he wondered if it would be him and him alone or if it would be everyone since they’re all in this together.
“Just take it already,” Jacky says. He’s moving his hand around the crawlspace and Gum has inadvertently sunk deeper and deeper inside.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Jacky says.
They’re here, Gum thinks. Even though the money slipped out of his hands and the club took a hit, they’re here. Even though Mac had the fix the books and they didn’t have enough gas to fill the van and they had to make excuses to the landlord for the rent and pretend like cheap liquor was something good for a week, they’re here.
He can hear the rest of them in the room. Arsenal clears his throat and Mac tells the rest of them to be quiet. He can’t hear Johnny, but Johnny’s likely at the front waiting for instructions from there. That’s how they work. Together.
“Gum,” Jacky says.
Gum finally reaches out his hand.
---
It’s quiet when they all return to the club. Quiet in the car and quiet at the entrance and quiet up until they lock the door behind them and that’s exactly when Ace loses it.
“What the fuck,” Ace shouts.
All at once, Gum can’t remember the last time he saw Ace this angry, reeling back his fists like he’s going to take care of Gum himself. Toppo puts a hand on Ace’s shoulder, but Ace struggles free.
“One of us wins, we all win,” Ace says. “One of us loses we all fucking lose, okay?”
He’s not talking about the money or the diamonds. Gum runs a hand over the wound on his shoulder. Still stings and hot to the touch.
“Let’s go,” Mac says. “Johnny, get everything out of the van.”
Johnny disappears and Jacky herds out the rest and it’s just Ace and Gum there in the thickest silence Gum has ever felt. He lifts his eyes, meeting Ace’s.
And Ace punches his good arm and says “Fuck you” and that’s when Gum knows everything is going to be okay.
---
Gum empties out his pocket on Mac’s desk. Three small diamonds, all in a row.
Mac grins. He’s trying not to, but his lips just won’t let him keep the stoic expression he’s trying for.
“You could’ve gotten killed,” Mac says.
Gum shrugs. “It’s a present,” he says. “An early birthday present. Or a late one. Just don’t let Jacky see.”
Mac slips them into the security box. He stands up and comes from around the desk, places his hand on Gum’s shoulder and feels all of the tension gathered there. “Go and get some rest, Gum,” he says.
Twenty million yen, Mac thinks. He’s seen enough diamonds to know that’s what those three are worth. He shakes his head and pushes on Gum’s shoulder a little.
He’s crazy, this guy.
Gum leaves the room with a little salute then a bow at the doorway. But Mac doesn’t let himself sigh with relief until Gum is completely out of sight.
Pairing/Characters: 8Uppers, gen
Rating: PG-13 for language and violence.
Warnings: Just a bit of violence. The standard 8Uppers amount.
Notes: For elfiepike. I took your 8Uppers prompt and ran with it. I hope you'll be happy with the result. :)
Summary: Gum tries to take everything into his own hands.
It’s midnight when Gum finally has to admit to himself that this isn’t going to work.
But it’s 11:55 when Jacky finds him and lends a hand. Literally, reaching through the dust of the crawlspace as far as his arm will go and saying “Take it,” with a grunt. “Come on.”
At first, Gum stays quiet. Maybe if he’s quiet enough, Jacky will think he’s not even there. It’s dark and Gum can barely make out the outline of his own hand here let alone Jacky’s. A small sliver of light from the opening Jacky reaches through lands next to Gum’s knee. But still, he’s hidden.
“Come on already!” Jacky says, moving his arm around trying to grab at any part of Gum and in the process the layer of dust is shaken, travels into the air.
Gum sneezes.
---
By the time everyone notices Gum is missing, it’s already past 11pm. The club is full of people, but as far as Johnny knows, Gum just stepped out for a break.
“Is Gum out in the back?” Johnny asks Arsenal when he comes to the bar with an empty shot glass. He refills it and Arsenal immediately throws it back. Then shrugs.
He enlists Toppo for help since Jacky and Mac are in the office and Ace is far too drunk to walk let alone carry a tray. Toppo puts on enough songs to last while he makes the rounds in the club, but by the time he’s back at the bar with a tray of empty glasses, Gum still isn’t there.
Mac steps out onto the floor, surveying right to left. Jacky follows behind him and they approach the bar together.
“Have you seen Gum?” Mac asks Johnny.
Johnny finishes polishing a glass and sets it neatly behind the bar. “I was just about to ask you the same thing.”
---
The first person to notice that Gum isn’t around is Arsenal. Just because he acts indifferent doesn’t mean he isn’t paying attention to every single little fucking detail. Whether he wants to or not, he notices these things.
He notices that Gum hasn’t been to the bar for his evening glass of milk. Then he notices the cats outside hanging around like they haven’t been fed. Arsenal does so, just because those cats probably won’t go away if he doesn’t. Where Gum would bend down and stroke them kindly, Arsenal just haphazardly tosses the food on the ground. But it does the trick. They leave.
He knows that they’re all going to start searching for Gum once the rest of them notice. Maybe Gum just wants to be alone right now. Arsenal can understand that. He steps into the bar to find the rest of them conferring and Toppo checking by the back door.
Arsenal doesn’t plan to say a word.
---
Gum goes to the mansion alone. It’s big and there is a fence all around the perimeter. At every entrance there are armed guards. It doesn’t seem to be regular security, but they are certainly there today on a day when a whole lot of diamonds are about to be exchanged for a whole lot of money.
The details of this operation were garnered from the file he stole off of Mac’s desk. Probably Mac hadn’t had a chance to look at it yet, or so this is what Gum has been telling himself all morning. The request was for them to infiltrate - send someone in as a gruntworker transporting the diamonds. There are four cars, one that the diamonds are to be transported in and three decoys. Gum is to get into the car with the diamonds and take them back to the rightful owner since the ones making this transaction are not.
Well, the real rightful owner is probably some museum, Gum thinks while twisting and untwisting the bandage on his shoulder. But his list of transactions didn’t go back that far and it’s something he’d rather not know lest he has to pretend he didn’t know it later.
He waits in the car, one of the decoys for now, but he has another hour to get himself into the right one.
---
There were thirteen files on Mac’s desk earlier and now there are twelve. He hadn’t yet had a chance to go through all of them, but the one that’s missing, well he knows exactly which one that is. He knows because it was on the corner of his desk, where the ones he’s not even going to bother considering belong. Missions that aren’t worth it, or aren’t worth their time, or are going to be too dangerous in the end.
He knows it’s missing and by the end of the evening he’s pretty sure Gum is the one who took it, but up until just before 11:00 pm he’s willing to give him the benefit of the doubt because he can’t possibly be stupid enough to get neck deep into a diamond heist all by himself.
The thought rolls around in his mind a couple of times.
“Fuck,” Mac says, out loud, throwing a pencil across the room.
---
Earlier in the afternoon Toppo comes back from the drugstore with some medicine for Gum’s shoulder. It’s been in bad shape ever since the job they ran the week before. Gum used his shoulder to stop a knife, which was probably a wise decision, considering it was aimed right for his chest.
Johnny sees Gum leaving Mac’s office with a file in his hand and is about to ask if it’s a new job but Toppo cuts him off at the pass, sitting Gum down on the sofa so he can fuss over his shoulder some more.
From the bar, Johnny can’t see everything in detail, but he does see the file slip into Gum’s bag when Toppo isn’t looking. And that’s a little strange because why would Gum have a file that came from Mac’s office and no one else knows about?
---
“Let him do it,” Jacky says to Mac. “If this is what he thinks it takes to make him square then let him do it.”
“He’s going to get himself killed,” Mac says, calmly for now, but it won’t take much. Just a little push.
“No,” Jacky says. “Trust him. Like you’d want us to trust you.”
“You can trust me.”
“And we can’t trust him?”
“Where did he go?” Ace bursts in unceremoniously, door stretching beyond what the hinges can take. “Where the fuck did he go?”
He’s got an empty bottle in one hand and a half empty one in the other.
“This doesn’t concern you, Ace,” Mac says, looking down at the bottles in Ace’s hands then back up to his eyes again. “I can smell you from outside, you know, want to fucking cool it?”
“Where the fuck did he go and why the fuck aren’t we going after him?” Ace asks.
“Because we’re--” Jacky starts.
“Shut up,” Mac says. “Both of you shut up. And stop fucking grinning, Jacky.”
Jacky, standing behind him, only grins wider.
---
Toppo is the one they need to get past the guards. He makes a mist that he carries in a small spray bottle. It leaves no scent in the air and after he’s sprayed it the guards lie down completely still.
“Are they alive?” Johnny asks. But when Toppo doesn’t answer right away he says, “Never mind.”
Inside the mansion is like a maze and while Mac has the whole layout memorized, Ace just wants to go barreling through the walls, the windows, kicking down all of the doors.
“Listen,” Mac says, having to pull Ace back by his arm.
But before he can say anything else, Arsenal shoots the doorknob and then shoots the two guys who come in after the sound of the gunshot.
“I guess now we gotta run,” Arsenal says with a shrug.
---
Gum waits in the car, counting down the minutes until he can make the switch. Two of the other drivers are already in their cars. All of them have been briefed as if they’re the ones carrying the diamonds. No one can know the details. No one except the boss.
Even though Gum is used to this kind of thing, it’s a little scary and a little thrilling every time. The other drivers might really be gruntwork guys. But Gum knows how to tell if he’s in the right car or not. It’s the one going to the closest location because you always keep the most important things as close as you can.
---
In some ways, Arsenal doesn’t want them to find Gum. This is something he wanted to do on his own. They should let him be.
But eight shotgun blasts later and Arsenal knows why Mac wasn’t going to let them take this job.
“This is crazy,” Johnny says. Ace hits a wall in frustration, but the problem is that everyone knows why Gum left on his own even though no one wants to talk about it.
“Jacky, Arsenal, you guys go upstairs,” Mac says. “Johnny, wait by the entrance and Toppo stay with me.”
“And me?” Ace says.
“Just find him,” Mac says.
---
Gum is discovered when he’s almost finished making the switch. It’s so close he can almost smell the leather interior of the car. He’s only got his hand on rear passenger door handle when a cold gun is pressed against his forehead.
“The fuck do you think you’re doing?” is the last thing he hears before he’s knocked out and dragged inside.
---
Toppo has been spending the whole week tending to Gum’s shoulder, but even though Gum knows he’s injured, he’s not trying to take care of his injury at all. He moves recklessly. Toppo catches him doing pushups on the floor and every time he comes back up his face is twisted in the worst kind of pain.
He wants to tell Gum to watch it, to be more careful, but Gum knows that. It’s after a couple of days that Toppo realizes Gum doesn’t want to get better.
Then the day that Gum disappears, Toppo knows he’s only going to make it worse for himself. Take it in the other shoulder, or even worse than that.
When they arrive at the mansion, Toppo quickly deals with the guards at the door. But he knows Gum has already been caught because there are places for four guards to stand, but only two are standing there.
“Look for the most guarded room,” Mac says. Toppo meets eyes with him and he can see that Mac’s figured it out too.
There are four cars parked out in front and only three drivers sitting inside of them. The other one is the guy they’ve taken somewhere to deal with inside this mansion, Toppo thinks. The one who belongs to them.
---
“Twenty million yen,” Jacky says.
Gum nods and puts it carefully into the paper bag. “Yeah I counted it,” he says. “Twice.”
“And then I counted it again...” Toppo confirms.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Mac says.
“Define stupid,” Ace laughs.
Jacky jabs his fork into Ace’s side. It only makes Ace laugh even more.
“We’re in this together,” Mac says. “It’s a risk, but we’re in this together.
It’s all Gum can remember from the week before. Because the next thing he remembers is stopping the trajectory of a knife with his shoulder, lucky it wasn’t his right arm or he wouldn’t be able to use the bo at all.
He did get out alive, not really that injured although he really stained Jacky’s white shirt and he knew it must have been pretty severe if Jacky didn’t even get angry.
They didn’t take him to a hospital or else they’d have to explain what happened, but Jacky bandaged him up and Toppo brought some horrible tasting concoction from the drugstore and they stayed up all night until his fever went down.
He remembers watching the paper bag slip out of his arms. Felt like they were someone else’s arms because he could see so clearly everything that was going wrong right there in that moment. Part of the money must have had his blood on it and he wondered, at the time, if that could incriminate him somehow. Then he wondered if it would be him and him alone or if it would be everyone since they’re all in this together.
“Just take it already,” Jacky says. He’s moving his hand around the crawlspace and Gum has inadvertently sunk deeper and deeper inside.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Jacky says.
They’re here, Gum thinks. Even though the money slipped out of his hands and the club took a hit, they’re here. Even though Mac had the fix the books and they didn’t have enough gas to fill the van and they had to make excuses to the landlord for the rent and pretend like cheap liquor was something good for a week, they’re here.
He can hear the rest of them in the room. Arsenal clears his throat and Mac tells the rest of them to be quiet. He can’t hear Johnny, but Johnny’s likely at the front waiting for instructions from there. That’s how they work. Together.
“Gum,” Jacky says.
Gum finally reaches out his hand.
---
It’s quiet when they all return to the club. Quiet in the car and quiet at the entrance and quiet up until they lock the door behind them and that’s exactly when Ace loses it.
“What the fuck,” Ace shouts.
All at once, Gum can’t remember the last time he saw Ace this angry, reeling back his fists like he’s going to take care of Gum himself. Toppo puts a hand on Ace’s shoulder, but Ace struggles free.
“One of us wins, we all win,” Ace says. “One of us loses we all fucking lose, okay?”
He’s not talking about the money or the diamonds. Gum runs a hand over the wound on his shoulder. Still stings and hot to the touch.
“Let’s go,” Mac says. “Johnny, get everything out of the van.”
Johnny disappears and Jacky herds out the rest and it’s just Ace and Gum there in the thickest silence Gum has ever felt. He lifts his eyes, meeting Ace’s.
And Ace punches his good arm and says “Fuck you” and that’s when Gum knows everything is going to be okay.
---
Gum empties out his pocket on Mac’s desk. Three small diamonds, all in a row.
Mac grins. He’s trying not to, but his lips just won’t let him keep the stoic expression he’s trying for.
“You could’ve gotten killed,” Mac says.
Gum shrugs. “It’s a present,” he says. “An early birthday present. Or a late one. Just don’t let Jacky see.”
Mac slips them into the security box. He stands up and comes from around the desk, places his hand on Gum’s shoulder and feels all of the tension gathered there. “Go and get some rest, Gum,” he says.
Twenty million yen, Mac thinks. He’s seen enough diamonds to know that’s what those three are worth. He shakes his head and pushes on Gum’s shoulder a little.
He’s crazy, this guy.
Gum leaves the room with a little salute then a bow at the doorway. But Mac doesn’t let himself sigh with relief until Gum is completely out of sight.