Cold Blooded Lover
Title: Cold Blooded Lover
Rating: R
Pairing(s): Top/CL
Length: 2659
Genre: AU
Summary: He'll love you and leave you alive. She’ll love you and leave you for dead.
Warnings: chara death
Prompt: “We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.”― Andre Berthiaume
Written fo the sky’s the limit
Cold metal presses against Seunghyun’s temple but he doesn’t flinch. Instead he gazes back into eyes as fierce as they are merciless. The cock of the gun clicks in his ears, loud and reverberating throughout his brain until it’s all he hears. He doesn’t fear death, he’s learned to not fear many things, but the skin on the back of his neck still prickles and he knows his heartbeat is racing way past normal. But he doesn’t back down, his gaze narrows and he looks for any openings, any sign of weakness. Of course there isn’t none, why would there be?
Chaerin is just as ruthless and efficient in her kills as he is. He would know, he was the one who trained her. ("Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master” Chaerin’s laughter fills his ears and he slams the wooden practice stick across her chest, the air leaves her and she falls in a crumple of limbs, glancing up with wide eyes she coughs and fights back tears, “You’ll do well to remember that Chaerin. Now get back up”).
“This seems familiar, doesn’t it?” Her voice is a light trill, laughter just at the tip of her tongue, her face a mask of outright hatred and a bit of sadistic glee. Oh, she was his crowning glory, the best, the brightest, the only student of his to have him like this, staring down the barrel of a gun and waiting at death’s door.
****
He presses a knife to soft flesh and watches a trickle of blood slide to the side on a terror stricken face. He whispers quietly, not needing to speak any louder, not with his mouth right beside her ear. “First rule, always be aware, always be ready.” He stands in a fluid motion and steps back watching the fear flit across brown irises to disappear behind a bravado of calm. He can still see the pulse in her throat though and he’s gotten used to it enough to know what her fear would look like.
Chaerin sits up, her hand coming to wipe the blood away and casting him a wary glance. “Did you have to cut me?” Her voice is sharp, tinged with terror, but hidden behind sarcasm and indignation.
“Yes.” His fingers glide over the tip of the knife and he lifts his gaze up to her, trapping her heart in her throat. He feels his lips pull up into a smile, it’s a cold calculating thing meant to assess if she’d last, his last few trainees hadn’t and he’d been forced to kill them himself. “You want revenge right? Then you must be prepared. If you don’t get used to almost dying then you won’t be prepared to kill.”
She nods, her mouth set in a grim line and stands getting into a fighter's stance. His lips quirk up into an almost genuine smile while he does the same. He sheathes the knife and strikes out and she dodges with a move he taught her on the first day. He thinks maybe she might make it through this.
The subsequent day is filled with drills, knives, guns, blackened eyes and bruised bones, and by the end of it Chaerin still looks at him with defiance and fire in her eyes. When he wakes her in the morning, with a gun to her head, she’s ready with one of her own pressed to his chest. (“Second rule never back down”).
****
Sidling through a crowded club, filled with cigar smoke and the cheap smell of beer, he weaves easily to the bar. His eyes have already scanned the area and no visible threat is seen. He turns his eyes back to the bartender and orders a scotch on the rocks. He finds himself sitting down and sipping from his glass when the sharp crack of high heels hitting the floor have him glancing to the side. He doesn’t show recognition but he notices of course.
She’s wrapped in a skin tight black dress, high lace up boots wrap around her thighs, and she’s sporting a wicked smile. The arm around her waist belongs to a man balding and with bulging neck fat. He hides his disgust just as easily as he hides every other emotion, trapped behind a chiseled face and black eyes. He turns back to his glass and watches the amber contents swirl around. Her laughter slips behind a curtain leading to the back and he stands. Barely pausing to pay, he walks with sure steps out the bar door and into the dimly lit street. He locates the back entrance easily, having already canvassed the area beforehand, and makes short work of weaseling past the guard-money gets a person far.
He pushes through the darkness and finds himself looking at a poker scene. The guys around the table look at him suspiciously but he sits in a vacant chair and pulls out a stack of money. None of them say anything but he’s dealt a hand. He loses the first round on purpose and each of the men, one sporting a beard trimmed into a point, another with two gold teeth, and several with faces like jackals share looks and jeering smiles. He pays no attention and continues to play. Two more rounds go by, he wins one and loses the other, before he hears a quick click, click on the floor. He stands, folding his hand of two queens, and bids the men adieu. But they hear the sound too, each of the men look toward the door and stand wrapping their hands around guns hidden behind suits bought from blood money.
Seunghyun is quick, whipping guns from holsters on his body and fires, hitting two men in the foreheads dead center. Gold-toothed man turns his gun on him before he can whip his around but a resounding blast sounds from somewhere. He doesn’t turn to know it’s her. She probably has her arms level and gun poised perfectly, her feet spaced apart just right and her eyes boring death into each person. He watches the remaining men fall to the floor with bullet holes to the chest. Blood begins to seep onto the floor and he’s careful to pick his way back to the outside door without getting any on his shoes.
He turns to Chaerin and glances just behind her to the guard. He doesn’t have to say anything though. The bodyguard aims his gun at the back of her head but she strikes a hand backward hard. All he hears is the sharp ompf of the man as he crumples to the floor. Walking slowly over, Seunghyun glances down to see the knife protruding straight through his chest. He raises level eyes toward Chaerin, “A bit dramatic don’t you think? A bullet would have been easier…and less messy.” He watches the slope of her shoulders rise in a flippant shrug as if the blood spatter to her hands and body was nothing. And it really wasn’t.
“I like to be creative, you know that.” Her lips pull back into a smile and she steps over the dead man, swaying her body back down the hall and into the darkness. His eyes follow her hips just like she knows they will.
They sit in the car, lights speeding past them. “So? How was it?” Chaerin sits beside him in the back seat, her eyes watching the scenery flash by. She turns her gaze to his and shrugs.
“Like all the others. Honestly he hardly put up a fight. Of course he was too busy groping my breasts to notice I had a knife to his throat.” A sigh escapes her lips before she schools her face to show nothing. “There’s only one more left now…have you gotten any more information on him?”
Seunghyun shakes his head, “Not yet. I’m having my informants gather information about the last place he was said to be at. Other than that nothing. Until then we can start to prepare how you want this to be done.”
Chaerin turns her face forward, her lips set in a grim line, he doesn’t need to see to know her hands are clenched tightly in her lap--around the very knife she has used to kill three other men--men that she vowed she would murder. He hears the tremble in her voice when she speaks, knowing that Chaerin can’t help it but loathes herself for showing him this weakness, he would be able to read it even if he didn't hear it, “I want to watch his eyes light up in fear and hear his breath catch in his throat when I drag the knife across his neck. I want to feel the blood pour against my hand and his heartbeat to stop. I want to watch him die the way he watched my father die, my mother…my brother.” Her lip slips between her teeth to bite. He doesn’t reach for her, doesn’t comfort, murder meant no softness and revenge meant no weakness.
She’d learnt that lesson early on when she came to him begging and pleading for him to kill her family’s murderers. But it wasn’t his job to enact revenge. He’d slapped her and sent her to her knees. She stopped begging then and stood on shaky legs and glared at him, eyes watery with tears, he had scoffed and turned away but she’d stepped forward with a knife in her hand, there was determination in her gaze and death in her every movement. He’d agreed to teach her how to kill, to attack, to seek vengeance when no one else would. And she had learnt it all.
She inhales sharply and turns to him her body movements jerky when she reaches for him. He tenses and suddenly his senses are full of her. Hands fill with soft thighs and lips press against dangerous ones. Everything is violent and deadly when they stumble through his door, like everything they both are, her nails claw at his skin and his hands press bruises into hers. Their bodies rock together with ferocity and heat; it burns with its intensity and creates wounds deadlier than any weapon can do. She cries out against his neck, knowing her lips can feel his pulse faster and wilder than it ever is after a kill, adrenaline courses through them both and they ride it out. She never wiped the blood from her skin and he licked it off tasting the kill. And he takes her with such a frenzy it leaves them both exhausted and spent on the floor. Limbs tangled together, bodies sweaty, and breathing fast and hard. It feels just like when he kills and he realizes he might be addicted to this too. (“Rule three don’t involve emotions when you kill. Hatred can blind and you end up dead. Pity has you dying. Sadness means death. And love, love means you might as well kill yourself”)
****
People say their lives flash before their eyes when they are about to die-something about the body’s response going through every memory to pull up some way to save itself. Seunghyun doesn’t think any of that’s true. He stares down the barrel of the gun and all he can think about is soft limbs pressed against his and brown eyes upturned into a smile, laughter, and a feeling that he knew meant his death.
Seunghyun can read Chaerin easily. She’s always been like a book to him, when she attempted to appear tough as he beat her down to build her back up her emotions were etched on her face, and now staring back at her she’s just as readable but now he is too.
When she speaks to him her voice is carefully controlled, “Tell me why. Why did you do it?” He hears the hurt and betrayal though. And he catches a glimpse of self-doubt. Seunghyun knows he is a creature of self-preservation and any way he can save himself he will. He’s cold-blooded and he created someone just as cold-blooded.
“Chaerin-ah, I can hear emotions in your voice.” His voice is chiding as if this were just another lesson. And he can see her body tense and her eyes shift to steel.
“Tell me you fucker! Tell me why!?” Her voice is a shriek now, tears once controlled spilling out, and this is his chance. He’s up in one movement, gun cocked and pointed back at her. She stands there momentarily shocked but composes herself quickly.
“I don’t need to tell you anything. You should know that by now.” His voice is calm and level and filled with disdain.
Her face twists into outrage as she screams, “Don’t treat me like a child! You bastard! You killed them. You killed them and then made me believe-“
”Believe what Chaerin? That I cared about you? That I loved you?” He scoffs and shakes his head, eyes filled with pity that he doesn’t feel. “Rule number three Chaerin. The most important one.”
“Don’t lie to me! Don’t lie! You think I can’t read you now!? You made me like you.” And her voice drops to a whisper, tears stopping as she glares at him. And he wants to kiss her, crazy as it is, he’s never been completely sane anyway.
“Then read this. When I brought my knife to your little brother’s throat I didn’t hesitate to drag the blade across.” He doesn’t feel the bullet when it hits him. The close proximity blows out his eardrums and suddenly the gun in his hand falls and is kicked away. He clutches at his right arm and dodges the blow that Chaerin aims at his face with her knife.
The pain stings like a branding iron but he fights through it, he’s been through worse, but Chaerin is just as skilled-and uninjured. He fights and lands several blows to her face but she shoots his legs and he crumbles to the floor. Her body straddles him, and images of her naked and glistening, her face in a mask of pleasure, and body riding his flash through his mind. This time though she’s clothed and has a knife to his throat. It cuts into his skin and he feels the blood trickle down into the collar of his shirt.
Her body leans forward and she whispers in his ear, “I can feel your heart in your throat.” He’s not scared though and she knows it. “This is for everything you’ve done to me you sick fuck. When I kill you I’m going to carve out your heart and burn it you bastard.” He feels hot tears hit his skin, her body is shaking. (“Chaerin stop crying.” His voice is harsh on his ears but her head whips up and she wipes the tears away quickly. He steps toward her, against the voice in his mind telling him not too, and raises his hand to wipe the rest away. They stand like that and stare at one another. He pulls her toward him and wraps his arms around her. Her body shakes and then he feels the tears against his skin. It’s a weakness, they both know that, and when she pulls away with her tears dried up they don’t mention it. He thinks about it at night when she lies next to him, naked body wrapped in the sheets, he thinks about it and hammers another nail in his coffin).
The knife slices across his neck and his blood pours out across her hand. She whispers something but he can’t hear it, he barely makes out her mouth moving as his eyes grow dim. It looks to him like, “I love you" but could just as easily be, "I hate you."
“Rule three don’t involve emotions when you kill. Hatred can blind and you end up dead. Pity has you dying. Sadness means death. And love, love means you might as well kill yourself”