(no subject)
Title: Apologia Pro Vita Sua (Chapter 13)
Authors: Scorpions angelinaii, murasaki_plum, nemesis_cry
Characters/Pairings: All (kangteuk, shichul, kihae; potential kyuwook, eunkihae, shihanchul, yeshdong, yewook, minry)
Rating: PG-13 to R
Genre: AU, organized crime, postcyberpunk
Summary: In a world where money and crime go hand and hand, survival is not determined by the fittest, but the ones who will fight to live.
Warnings: violence, swearing, sexual situations
Introduction and Chapter 1 | Chapters 2 & 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12
Banner by angelinaii
Their room was empty of any furniture besides their bed; an empty single room at the heart of an even emptier apartment. Good enough for a spell, good enough for people living in perpetual motion, in perpetual danger. Ideal when he needed a place to crash and waste a few silent hours. Rolling over in cool sheets, he stretched an arm over the opposite side only to find more coolness, more empty space. It was bad enough already, considering Heechul hated waking up early, but waking up early and alone, that was even worse.
"You people need to cut down on the caffeine," he mumbled, biting the pillow with his lips before rolling over onto his back and cracking his eyes open. "It's too damn early."
Siwon glanced up from the newspaper that was laid across the dining table that really saw them eating, a small grin appearing on his face as he reached for a slice of toast. "Sleep well?"
"Wake up on the wrong side?" Hankyung asked, not bothering to turn his attention away from his work on the counter. By all appearances, both had been awake for hours.
Heechul stood up, faking a yawn. "You boys need to learn the meaning of decadence," he sighed, brushing a hand through tangled, dyed hair. "Or I need to start slipping you sleeping pills." A brief scene flashed before his eyes: Hankyung, under the slightest suspicion, pressing one of his pretty, pretty knives to his throat. In reality, he'd never see it coming. Not even from Siwon.
"Anything new about your girl in the paper?" he asked, returning to the present and more pressing matters than his own survival--clearly he was still asleep; as if there was anything more important to him than that.
"There's news about another girl." Siwon rolled his head on his shoulders and reached out for Heechul's slender wrist. It was far too early to get into it about that girl again. "Sit."
Only because he was still asleep and this was just a dream, Heechul obeyed, straddling the bench and throwing another leg over Siwon's thighs after a brief hesitation. No trying sudden moves out on the hitman, not so early in the morning, at least.
"You gonna obsess over this one too?" he sighed, clicking his tongue in sign of disappointment as he took a bite out of the other man's slice of toast.
Siwon rolled his eyes. "I'm doing my job, Heechul. If obsessing over this one will help me learn who killed that one, then I will."
His lover mulled it over, the excuse making some sense but not enough to fly. "Boring," he decided, throwing a casual look over the paper. "And gruesome." The pictures were subjected to less and less constraints of obscenity and gratuitous gore. On a good day, he enjoyed the change. Less and less when it held Siwon's attention for so long.
Hankyung carried over the cutting board to the table, its surface covered with peeled and cut fruit. He made do with the small amount of groceries available in the apartment. Glancing over at the photographs on the front page, he made a low hum. "It's too clean."
"Are you serious? The woman's been peeled open like an apple," Heechul protested around a mouthful of the same fruit. "It's disgusting."
Siwon stiffened slightly. "It's big enough for a Judoh newspaper to cover."
"Besides that," Hankyung pulled up a chair to gesture at the paper. "Take a closer look. It's clinical, even the way the blood is around the body lacks character. Your killer is a professional, but not in my field."
Heechul's eyes scanned the grainy picture again, lingering only briefly on the highlighted crime scene. Blood didn't look so dark in reality, which made it easier, but there was no ignoring the composition as a whole, the woman sprawled naked and evidently dead on a bed somewhere. Fire was so much cleaner, on the whole.
At his side, he could feel Siwon's interest renew itself, all because Hankyung decided to get sucked into this business.
"It's probably some nutjob trying to throw the cops off," he shrugged, reaching for the still photograph Eeteuk so dutifully sent to feed his lover's fixation. "Probably this nutjob," he added, pointing to the dark and faceless man. "The stuff of nightmares."
"I wouldn't doubt it is him." Hankyung nodded, turning the photograph so that he could take a look. "You would be lucky if he is only a nutjob. Is this all you have on him?"
Siwon inched his chair closer and nodded. "We have a lead, I think. But for now..."
"For now," Heechul finished for him, "he'd rather spend day and night working overtime. All because some guy is playing Jack the Ripper... Honestly, I suppose I should impale myself on one of your nice pointy things so he'll pay as much attention to me."
"Take your pick," Hankyung said light-heartedly, glancing over at Siwon. "Is he always this pleasant in the morning?"
A shrug. "You learn to ignore it." The mood swings, the bad humor, those slightly unhinged ideas of his that Siwon always feared he might sell to Eeteuk one day. To Heechul, he added: "Go impale yourself on something nice and pointy and not deadly instead and give me a break. I'm sure Hankyung'll oblige happily."
Hankyung made a soundless laugh and leaned forward in his seat. "And why might I oblige that?"
"Because you were so obliging last night," Heechul retorted, patting his arm, "and because Siwon thinks with his dick."
"And so do you." he grinned, wetting his lips before reaching for another slice of apple.
"When you lack other pointy implements, you have to make do," came the laughing explanation, Heechul sliding away from them. "I'm going to take a shower. Your pick," he grinned, walking backwards with his hands held out like a balance. "Dead girl or me." Overconfident to the last, he didn't stick around to wait for their answer.
Hankyung watched him retreat into the bathroom then glanced over at Siwon. "Translate for me this code you two have. I'm pretty sure he's not wanting to shower by himself."
Smoothing out the paper with one hand, Siwon quirked a half smile, palm lingering by the edge of the murder scene. "Heechul plays games. He leads, we follow." A glance in Hankyung's direction. "On a good day, it's the other way around."
"But your mind is elsewhere," the other man noted.
He gave a half-hearted shrug. "I'll make it up to him. He'll make sure of it."
***
Eeteuk didn't so much ask them as let them know there was a job for them. Kyuhyun provided the details but no explanation to the unlikely partnership. It wasn't that they made a secret out of sharing a bed--and sometimes a car or a shower or various other places where Heechul had an itch to scratch--but that their roles were polar opposites. Regardless of title, Heechul was an agitator where Siwon was an enforcer and the only time they worked together was in an emergency. With that in mind, being sent on a recruitment of this nature didn't bode well.
"Don't trust me enough?" Heechul smiled into the phone, unease barely veiled by amusement.
"Don't turn this into a popularity contest," Eeteuk warned. "Take Siwon with you." For a moment, it sounded as if he would tell them to be careful, but there were limits even to their leader's gentle nature. "And try not to get yourselves killed," he advised instead, hanging up.
Useful, if somewhat difficult to apply, Heechul decided among several expletives he'd never admit to using when talking about the boss, once he realized that essentially everything Kyuhyun had on their mark by way of information labeled him as a hitman: and a very dangerous one at that.
"How is he not dead?" he huffed, hands spasmodically opening and shutting a silver lighter as they walked into one of the less dilapidated bars in the Bottoms. How Kyyhyun knew the guy would be here was something no one could ever hope to understand; another mystery from a mysterious and rather creepy-looking kid, in Heechul's opinion. "How many people do you know who chop up a don and live to tell the tale?"
Siwon hid a smirk, reaching to still the other man's fingers. "You can ask him yourself. Up ahead," he nodded towards the back of the joint, "he looks the part."
"Yeah, if I have a death wish," he answered bitterly, shaking off the obtrusive, soothing touch. "Henry had better be hiding somewhere around here to avenge me. I'm not holding my breath that you would."
"We can negotiate a price for that later," Siwon pacified him with a roll of his eyes.
Cracking a smile that was three quarters fake and one quarter genuine amusement, Heechul lit up a cigarette and almost deplored the lack of explosion from his lighter. It just figured fate would screw him over on the eve of meeting up Mr. Reaper."Everything is money, money, money with you," he said lightly, mood hardly improving. "Whatever happened to true love?"
"I'll make it up to you later. Satisfied?"
"Hardly." A dejected sigh. "Fine. Let's get to work."
Their target didn't look nearly as guarded or concerned about the extra company as they joined him in the booth at the far corner of the bar. The hitman looked between both of them, sizing them up as much as appraising as he twirled a shot glass between his fingers. "You're not regulars."
Heechul smirked, wondering if he could drink the man under the table and make his job all the easier. Probably not. Something about the way the guy stared straight ahead reminded him of Kyuhyun and the last thing he needed was to end up drunk with a guy who could have him dead in the blink of an eye. It would be such a sad way to end an evening.
"Mind the company? Place is just so crowded," he sighed, throwing a pointed look at the empty chairs and empty tables around them. Nothing like favoritism to arouse interest.
"Not at all, I was about to invite the two of you over." the man turned in his seat and made a motion to the bartender for two extra glasses. "I bought more than I could drink on my own."
"How thoughtful," Heechul noted, the movement offering a glimpse of something metallic and sharp concealed under the man's coat. "Never could say no to alcohol." Or threatening objects, for that matter. Whatever. "You look lonely. Bad day at the office?"
"Horrible." It was said in a joking manner, and even Siwon afforded a chuckle at the stranger's expense.
Heechul remembered Sungmin's wide, annoyingly pretty face and Ryeowook's deceptive innocence and tried to blend the two. "Why?" he asked, earnestly. "Did someone die?"
"No, unfortunately. I deal in one of the two certainties in life, when neither occurs then I'm not doing a good job, am I?" the man ran his fingers through hair that had been stripped of all color. And interesting choice for someone whose career choice relied on them being unseen.
"Death and taxes?" Siwon queried, grinning when the hitman nodded.
Heechul downed his drink with a wide smile. "Well, we can't help with taxes, if that's your business. Can't really abide accountants--" and didn't that make things just so interesting when working with Kibum, "--but there are avenues where you can satisfy a thirst for the other. I just hate seeing someone look so down."
The man leaned forward in his seat, his faint smile unchanged from the way it was when the pair joined him. "Do I look that sad to you?"
"In need of some R & R, I'd say," Heechul answered softly, voice low and controlled because there was no need to shout with the other man so close. "And I feel especially altruistic tonight." A glance down to his glass, before he met the man's eyes again. "Of course, I could just try to figure you out instead. That's always entertaining. My guess is you kill people for a living. And you happen to have a contract expiring soon that needs resolution... except you can't quite decide how or when to do it. I can already tell you it's not worth the money."
"Is that so?" he raised his eyebrow and leaned back into his seat. "That's a very intuitive guess, unless you know who the contract is for."
It was Heechul's turn to lean forward, hands joined on the tabletop. "Left my crystal ball at home, so yes, I do know who the contract is for. I also know his head is worth a lot more than half a million. He's just that pretty." Throwing Siwon a roguish grin, he went on: "But before you start shooting me under the table or whatever it is you people do, I have a proposition for you. Business, sadly, not pleasure."
The man laughed and poured Heechul another shot. "Unfortunately, I'm not in the mood for business. Perhaps you could share your proposition with me some other time."
"Why do men always say that to me?" he mused, leaning back in his seat. "Some other time is fictitious. You get what you want and I get my hopes up. It's terribly unnerving. But that's beside the point anyway. By then, you'll have made good on your contract and my proposition won't be applicable anymore. Especially since there's an important clause in there that says you're not to kill Eeteuk tonight or any other night. See my dilemma?"
"That is indeed the dilemma." the hitman nodded and glanced over at Siwon. "What if I were to postphone my plans later this evening and not kill Eeteuk, could you tell me the proposition in the morning? You see, it is unwise of me to commit to a proposal over alcohol."
Siwon smiled. "You'd have to bear our presence until morning, then."
"Yes," Heechul nodded, "we'd have to make sure you're not tempted to go back on your word."
"I always stick to my word, unless someone else breaks theirs first." he grinned and left a wad of bills on the table to pay for the drinks. "We'll just have to find ways to keep ourselves entertained tonight, won't we?"
Pleasure first, business later, Heechul thought with a grin. Who would've thought it of Mr Reaper? A step ahead of him, Siwon slipped into place beside the hitman, just like a missing puzzle piece. To think Heechul had almost forgotten how good he used to be at his old job.
Wonderful opportunity to revisit those days. If they lived through the night.
Authors: Scorpions angelinaii, murasaki_plum, nemesis_cry
Characters/Pairings: All (kangteuk, shichul, kihae; potential kyuwook, eunkihae, shihanchul, yeshdong, yewook, minry)
Rating: PG-13 to R
Genre: AU, organized crime, postcyberpunk
Summary: In a world where money and crime go hand and hand, survival is not determined by the fittest, but the ones who will fight to live.
Warnings: violence, swearing, sexual situations
Introduction and Chapter 1 | Chapters 2 & 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12
Banner by angelinaii
Their room was empty of any furniture besides their bed; an empty single room at the heart of an even emptier apartment. Good enough for a spell, good enough for people living in perpetual motion, in perpetual danger. Ideal when he needed a place to crash and waste a few silent hours. Rolling over in cool sheets, he stretched an arm over the opposite side only to find more coolness, more empty space. It was bad enough already, considering Heechul hated waking up early, but waking up early and alone, that was even worse.
"You people need to cut down on the caffeine," he mumbled, biting the pillow with his lips before rolling over onto his back and cracking his eyes open. "It's too damn early."
Siwon glanced up from the newspaper that was laid across the dining table that really saw them eating, a small grin appearing on his face as he reached for a slice of toast. "Sleep well?"
"Wake up on the wrong side?" Hankyung asked, not bothering to turn his attention away from his work on the counter. By all appearances, both had been awake for hours.
Heechul stood up, faking a yawn. "You boys need to learn the meaning of decadence," he sighed, brushing a hand through tangled, dyed hair. "Or I need to start slipping you sleeping pills." A brief scene flashed before his eyes: Hankyung, under the slightest suspicion, pressing one of his pretty, pretty knives to his throat. In reality, he'd never see it coming. Not even from Siwon.
"Anything new about your girl in the paper?" he asked, returning to the present and more pressing matters than his own survival--clearly he was still asleep; as if there was anything more important to him than that.
"There's news about another girl." Siwon rolled his head on his shoulders and reached out for Heechul's slender wrist. It was far too early to get into it about that girl again. "Sit."
Only because he was still asleep and this was just a dream, Heechul obeyed, straddling the bench and throwing another leg over Siwon's thighs after a brief hesitation. No trying sudden moves out on the hitman, not so early in the morning, at least.
"You gonna obsess over this one too?" he sighed, clicking his tongue in sign of disappointment as he took a bite out of the other man's slice of toast.
Siwon rolled his eyes. "I'm doing my job, Heechul. If obsessing over this one will help me learn who killed that one, then I will."
His lover mulled it over, the excuse making some sense but not enough to fly. "Boring," he decided, throwing a casual look over the paper. "And gruesome." The pictures were subjected to less and less constraints of obscenity and gratuitous gore. On a good day, he enjoyed the change. Less and less when it held Siwon's attention for so long.
Hankyung carried over the cutting board to the table, its surface covered with peeled and cut fruit. He made do with the small amount of groceries available in the apartment. Glancing over at the photographs on the front page, he made a low hum. "It's too clean."
"Are you serious? The woman's been peeled open like an apple," Heechul protested around a mouthful of the same fruit. "It's disgusting."
Siwon stiffened slightly. "It's big enough for a Judoh newspaper to cover."
"Besides that," Hankyung pulled up a chair to gesture at the paper. "Take a closer look. It's clinical, even the way the blood is around the body lacks character. Your killer is a professional, but not in my field."
Heechul's eyes scanned the grainy picture again, lingering only briefly on the highlighted crime scene. Blood didn't look so dark in reality, which made it easier, but there was no ignoring the composition as a whole, the woman sprawled naked and evidently dead on a bed somewhere. Fire was so much cleaner, on the whole.
At his side, he could feel Siwon's interest renew itself, all because Hankyung decided to get sucked into this business.
"It's probably some nutjob trying to throw the cops off," he shrugged, reaching for the still photograph Eeteuk so dutifully sent to feed his lover's fixation. "Probably this nutjob," he added, pointing to the dark and faceless man. "The stuff of nightmares."
"I wouldn't doubt it is him." Hankyung nodded, turning the photograph so that he could take a look. "You would be lucky if he is only a nutjob. Is this all you have on him?"
Siwon inched his chair closer and nodded. "We have a lead, I think. But for now..."
"For now," Heechul finished for him, "he'd rather spend day and night working overtime. All because some guy is playing Jack the Ripper... Honestly, I suppose I should impale myself on one of your nice pointy things so he'll pay as much attention to me."
"Take your pick," Hankyung said light-heartedly, glancing over at Siwon. "Is he always this pleasant in the morning?"
A shrug. "You learn to ignore it." The mood swings, the bad humor, those slightly unhinged ideas of his that Siwon always feared he might sell to Eeteuk one day. To Heechul, he added: "Go impale yourself on something nice and pointy and not deadly instead and give me a break. I'm sure Hankyung'll oblige happily."
Hankyung made a soundless laugh and leaned forward in his seat. "And why might I oblige that?"
"Because you were so obliging last night," Heechul retorted, patting his arm, "and because Siwon thinks with his dick."
"And so do you." he grinned, wetting his lips before reaching for another slice of apple.
"When you lack other pointy implements, you have to make do," came the laughing explanation, Heechul sliding away from them. "I'm going to take a shower. Your pick," he grinned, walking backwards with his hands held out like a balance. "Dead girl or me." Overconfident to the last, he didn't stick around to wait for their answer.
Hankyung watched him retreat into the bathroom then glanced over at Siwon. "Translate for me this code you two have. I'm pretty sure he's not wanting to shower by himself."
Smoothing out the paper with one hand, Siwon quirked a half smile, palm lingering by the edge of the murder scene. "Heechul plays games. He leads, we follow." A glance in Hankyung's direction. "On a good day, it's the other way around."
"But your mind is elsewhere," the other man noted.
He gave a half-hearted shrug. "I'll make it up to him. He'll make sure of it."
***
Eeteuk didn't so much ask them as let them know there was a job for them. Kyuhyun provided the details but no explanation to the unlikely partnership. It wasn't that they made a secret out of sharing a bed--and sometimes a car or a shower or various other places where Heechul had an itch to scratch--but that their roles were polar opposites. Regardless of title, Heechul was an agitator where Siwon was an enforcer and the only time they worked together was in an emergency. With that in mind, being sent on a recruitment of this nature didn't bode well.
"Don't trust me enough?" Heechul smiled into the phone, unease barely veiled by amusement.
"Don't turn this into a popularity contest," Eeteuk warned. "Take Siwon with you." For a moment, it sounded as if he would tell them to be careful, but there were limits even to their leader's gentle nature. "And try not to get yourselves killed," he advised instead, hanging up.
Useful, if somewhat difficult to apply, Heechul decided among several expletives he'd never admit to using when talking about the boss, once he realized that essentially everything Kyuhyun had on their mark by way of information labeled him as a hitman: and a very dangerous one at that.
"How is he not dead?" he huffed, hands spasmodically opening and shutting a silver lighter as they walked into one of the less dilapidated bars in the Bottoms. How Kyyhyun knew the guy would be here was something no one could ever hope to understand; another mystery from a mysterious and rather creepy-looking kid, in Heechul's opinion. "How many people do you know who chop up a don and live to tell the tale?"
Siwon hid a smirk, reaching to still the other man's fingers. "You can ask him yourself. Up ahead," he nodded towards the back of the joint, "he looks the part."
"Yeah, if I have a death wish," he answered bitterly, shaking off the obtrusive, soothing touch. "Henry had better be hiding somewhere around here to avenge me. I'm not holding my breath that you would."
"We can negotiate a price for that later," Siwon pacified him with a roll of his eyes.
Cracking a smile that was three quarters fake and one quarter genuine amusement, Heechul lit up a cigarette and almost deplored the lack of explosion from his lighter. It just figured fate would screw him over on the eve of meeting up Mr. Reaper."Everything is money, money, money with you," he said lightly, mood hardly improving. "Whatever happened to true love?"
"I'll make it up to you later. Satisfied?"
"Hardly." A dejected sigh. "Fine. Let's get to work."
Their target didn't look nearly as guarded or concerned about the extra company as they joined him in the booth at the far corner of the bar. The hitman looked between both of them, sizing them up as much as appraising as he twirled a shot glass between his fingers. "You're not regulars."
Heechul smirked, wondering if he could drink the man under the table and make his job all the easier. Probably not. Something about the way the guy stared straight ahead reminded him of Kyuhyun and the last thing he needed was to end up drunk with a guy who could have him dead in the blink of an eye. It would be such a sad way to end an evening.
"Mind the company? Place is just so crowded," he sighed, throwing a pointed look at the empty chairs and empty tables around them. Nothing like favoritism to arouse interest.
"Not at all, I was about to invite the two of you over." the man turned in his seat and made a motion to the bartender for two extra glasses. "I bought more than I could drink on my own."
"How thoughtful," Heechul noted, the movement offering a glimpse of something metallic and sharp concealed under the man's coat. "Never could say no to alcohol." Or threatening objects, for that matter. Whatever. "You look lonely. Bad day at the office?"
"Horrible." It was said in a joking manner, and even Siwon afforded a chuckle at the stranger's expense.
Heechul remembered Sungmin's wide, annoyingly pretty face and Ryeowook's deceptive innocence and tried to blend the two. "Why?" he asked, earnestly. "Did someone die?"
"No, unfortunately. I deal in one of the two certainties in life, when neither occurs then I'm not doing a good job, am I?" the man ran his fingers through hair that had been stripped of all color. And interesting choice for someone whose career choice relied on them being unseen.
"Death and taxes?" Siwon queried, grinning when the hitman nodded.
Heechul downed his drink with a wide smile. "Well, we can't help with taxes, if that's your business. Can't really abide accountants--" and didn't that make things just so interesting when working with Kibum, "--but there are avenues where you can satisfy a thirst for the other. I just hate seeing someone look so down."
The man leaned forward in his seat, his faint smile unchanged from the way it was when the pair joined him. "Do I look that sad to you?"
"In need of some R & R, I'd say," Heechul answered softly, voice low and controlled because there was no need to shout with the other man so close. "And I feel especially altruistic tonight." A glance down to his glass, before he met the man's eyes again. "Of course, I could just try to figure you out instead. That's always entertaining. My guess is you kill people for a living. And you happen to have a contract expiring soon that needs resolution... except you can't quite decide how or when to do it. I can already tell you it's not worth the money."
"Is that so?" he raised his eyebrow and leaned back into his seat. "That's a very intuitive guess, unless you know who the contract is for."
It was Heechul's turn to lean forward, hands joined on the tabletop. "Left my crystal ball at home, so yes, I do know who the contract is for. I also know his head is worth a lot more than half a million. He's just that pretty." Throwing Siwon a roguish grin, he went on: "But before you start shooting me under the table or whatever it is you people do, I have a proposition for you. Business, sadly, not pleasure."
The man laughed and poured Heechul another shot. "Unfortunately, I'm not in the mood for business. Perhaps you could share your proposition with me some other time."
"Why do men always say that to me?" he mused, leaning back in his seat. "Some other time is fictitious. You get what you want and I get my hopes up. It's terribly unnerving. But that's beside the point anyway. By then, you'll have made good on your contract and my proposition won't be applicable anymore. Especially since there's an important clause in there that says you're not to kill Eeteuk tonight or any other night. See my dilemma?"
"That is indeed the dilemma." the hitman nodded and glanced over at Siwon. "What if I were to postphone my plans later this evening and not kill Eeteuk, could you tell me the proposition in the morning? You see, it is unwise of me to commit to a proposal over alcohol."
Siwon smiled. "You'd have to bear our presence until morning, then."
"Yes," Heechul nodded, "we'd have to make sure you're not tempted to go back on your word."
"I always stick to my word, unless someone else breaks theirs first." he grinned and left a wad of bills on the table to pay for the drinks. "We'll just have to find ways to keep ourselves entertained tonight, won't we?"
Pleasure first, business later, Heechul thought with a grin. Who would've thought it of Mr Reaper? A step ahead of him, Siwon slipped into place beside the hitman, just like a missing puzzle piece. To think Heechul had almost forgotten how good he used to be at his old job.
Wonderful opportunity to revisit those days. If they lived through the night.