Yeah so I started writing this little piece about Kane, and then of course Taker came along and hijacked it. Such an attention whore, he is. XD
Not really sure where this one is going (if anywhere), but I thought I'd post it anyways. I might just leave it as a one-off.
Rated M for language and violence.
With the faintest of smiles on his lips, Kane stood there in the basement, mesmerized by the fire. He watched intently as the flames flickered and swayed, putting on a seductive show for his own personal viewing. His breathing grew more ragged as the initially small flame grew larger and larger. The front of his pants grew tight as the delicate fingers of the flames caressed the walls and embraced the surrounding objects. He longed to feel those same caresses on his skin but knew that was not a possibility. Fire was a fickle creature, only allowing him to look but not touch, which made her all the more alluring to him. So he was content to watch, to be a voyeur as it were.
Suddenly, a piercing noise shattered the moment for him. His jaw clenched in anger and his eyes slowly turned upwards to glare at the smoke detector above his head as it mocked him with its incessant shrieking and blinking red eye. With a growl, he reached up and ripped it out, effectively silencing it. Crushing the offending object in his large fist, he cursed himself for forgetting to disable it beforehand. Not only had it interrupted his attention, but he was sure Taker must have heard it as well, which meant he'd be on his way down to put an end to the show shortly.
The flames exploded magnificently when he hurled the broken smoke detector into the flames, bringing a genuine smile to his face. It didn't last long though. As expected, heavy footsteps soon sounded behind him, signaling the arrival of his half-brother.
"Damnit, Kane!" Taker yelled as he ran down the stairs and brushed past him. After wrenching the fire extinguisher off the wall, he quickly put out the fire. Kane watched in silent dismay as his creation was quickly destroyed, and he resisted the urge to cover his ears with his hands to drown out the pitiful hiss of the dying flames. The beautiful flames were nothing more than an ugly smoldering pile of ashes and cloudy smoke.
Letting the extinguisher drop to the cement floor of the basement with a loud clank, Taker slowly turned around to face Kane. "The hell were you thinking?" he asked in a deceptively calm voice.
Kane stared stoically at Taker, specifically at the enlarged vein in the older man's forehead that belied his calm tone of voice.
Taker grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him several times. "What have I told you about starting fires?"
"Never do it inside," Kane recited dutifully in a dull voice, even though he didn't believe in it. However, he'd been in this position many times before -- which was the reason why Taker had installed smoked detectors and fire extinguishers everywhere in the house -- and he knew it was the only way Taker would leave him alone. Taker didn't understand him at all. Didn't he know that fires started outside got corrupted by the elements of nature? Flames were forced to move in the direction of the wind and not allowed to dance freely as they should. In Kane's mind, starting a fire outside was equivalent to purposefully corrupting the greatest performance in the world.
Taker released him and gave one final stare before heading back up the stairs. "One day, I won't be here to stop you and you'll get yourself killed."
"Maybe that isn't such a bad idea," Kane muttered under his breath to himself.
But Taker heard him. He whirled around and stomped back down the steps, gripping Kane's chin with one hand to force him to look at him. "What did you just say?" When Kane just glared at him defiantly, Taker moved his hand from Kane's chin to his throat and squeezed hard. "Only a coward takes his own life, you hear me? Is that what you are, Kane? A weak little coward?"
"No," Kane growled and shoved Taker away from him. Ice blue eyes met emerald green, and the two glared at each other, silently daring the other to make a move. When it was clear that Kane wouldn't back down anytime soon, Taker took it upon himself to end the staredown.
"Clean up the damn mess. I have other, more interesting shall we say, things to do," Taker said shortly before turning on his heel and leaving.
It wasn't until then that it registered in Kane's mind that Taker was shirtless and had spots of blood on his arms and chest. Kane knew for a fact that it wasn't Taker's blood. He must have been in one of his moods again. Kane turned his attention back to the faint wisps emerging from the ashes, struggling in vain to continue their show for him even in death. He went over to crouch down and run one hand through the warm ashes, before getting up to see what Taker was up to. The cleanup could wait until later.
_____________
Taker took a step back to admire his artwork. He pursed his lips, scrutinizing the details of his handiwork as he tossed his knife in the air again and again absentmindedly. Vince had given Kane and him a few weeks of vacation to 'de-stress' as their boss had put it. Of course, Taker was sure Vince probably had some idea as to what the two of them were doing on their off time, but as long as it didn't affect their ring performance, their boss didn't give a damn.
"More time to play," Taker said to himself with a shrug, and brought his attention back to the task at hand. His canvas had long since passed out, though whether from fear or pain he wasn't sure. Although working with a live canvas was always more fun, this one had been a squirmer and had made it extremely difficult to get precise cuts in. And if there was one thing Taker was, it was being a perfectionist.
He had painstakingly carved the outline of every single bone in the man's body with his knife so that the man looked like he was wearing his skeleton on his skin. He had cut just deep enough to leave scars, but not deep enough so as to risk the man dying from blood loss. Satisfied with work, Taker decided to sign it with his symbol as he did with all his artwork. With slow and deliberate flicks of his wrist, he meticulously engraved the cross onto the middle of the man's stomach and was almost finished when a voice interrupted him.
"Huh."
Taker flinched when he heard Kane's voice behind him, sending his knife veering off his intended path and across the man's stomach. He had been so engrossed in getting the carving perfect that he hadn't heard Kane enter the room. "Goddamnit!" He roared, staring at his marred symbol angrily before turning around to glare at Kane. "Look at what you made me do!"
"Why is it okay for you to do this in the house, but not for me to burn things?" Kane griped as he regarded the blood dripping on to the ground, seemingly unfazed by neither the blood nor his brother's outburst.
"Because a little blood isn't gonna burn out the support beams and send the house crumbling to the ground," Taker grumbled, turning back to eye his disfigured signature with a frown. He was more angry at himself for not hearing Kane come in, rather than anything else.
"And hanging a two hundred pound man off one of the beams won't either?" Kane retorted.
There was no answer. Taker was too preoccupied with trying to figure out how to fix the ugly mark on the man's stomach. His brows furrowed together in concentration and he tapped the blade of his knife against his lips. Kane rolled his eyes at his brother's obsessiveness and took out a lighter from his pocket. Before Taker could stop him, he flicked it on and brought the flame to the man's stomach, burning away the wayward cut. The man jolted awake with a scream at the new kind of pain, looking around blearily and panting harshly.
"What did you do that for? Now it's even more uneven," Taker growled, running his thumb over the charred flesh, ignoring the cry from the helpless victim.
"Why do you have to be so anal?" Kane sighed and brought the flame to the man's stomach to make a symmetrical burn mark on the other side. "There."
"What are you doing?" The man wailed.
"Does it feel good?" Ignoring the man's question completely, Kane asked one of his own. He tilted his head to one side, curiosity striking him suddenly. When the man just stared at him with a look that was both incredulous and confused, Kane clarified his question impatiently. "When the fire touches you. Does it feel good?"
"No, it doesn't feel good, you crazy bastard!" The man snapped, momentarily forgetting his pain and the fact that he was completely at the mercy of the two large men in front of him. The absurdity of the question that was just posed to him took him off guard.
Through the curtain of hair covering his face, Kane stared silently at the man for a long moment. He turn on his lighter again and looked back and forth between the small flame and the man several times. He brought his own hand to hover over the flame and felt the warmth of the fire. Finally he came to a conclusion. "You're lying," Kane said bluntly and brought his lighter towards the man, intending to burn him once more.
Taker slapped Kane's arm away. "Stop wrecking my work! Get your own damn canvas."
Kane glared at Taker. "You never let me have any fun."
"You keep eyeballing me like that, and I'll cut out your eyeballs and make you eat them. Let's see how much fun you find in that."
"You two are freaking insane!" The man interrupted their argument. At that, Kane threw back his head, long hair flying back over his broad shoulders, and laughed a laugh that the helpless man could only describe as maniacal.
"Evil. The correct term is evil," Taker corrected him calmly.
"What the hell is wrong with your face?" The man asked stupidly when he finally saw the scars on Kane's face, now that his hair wasn't obscuring it. Kane's smile faded away slowly, and he quickly dipped his head back down to cover his face with his hair. Normally he would've been wearing his mask, but since he and Taker were at home alone, he hadn't seen a need for it -- until now, that is. Kane gritted his teeth and his fist clenched together angrily, shattering the lighter in his hand. Ignoring the stinging pain in his palm, he let the lighter drop to the floor and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him. The walls rattled so hard that the man could feel the vibrations through his back even from his position at the opposite end of the room.
"Really shouldn't have done that," Taker tsked at the man hanging on the wall. "Didn't your momma ever teach you any manners?"
"Fuck you." The man spat on Taker's chest. He'd come to the conclusion that he was going to die anyways, so it didn't matter what he did or said at this point. Or so he thought.
"You know," Taker began, looking down at the spit on his chest before calmly taking the back of his knife and scraping it off, wiping the blade clean on the man's hair, to his disgust. "I was gonna let you go after I finished. I was really was. I mean--"
"Let me go? You think you'd get away with this?" The man cut him off.
"I'm the motherfuckin' Undertaker. I can do whatever the hell I want," Taker replied coolly, "Anyways, as I saying before you so rudely interrupted me. I was gonna let you go, but since you were so rude to Kane and I, I think I'm gonna let you stay for a little longer."
Taker walked over to the only piece of furniture in the room. He placed his carving knife back in its original position on the table after wiping the blade clean with a wet cloth. Carefully, he decided on two identical larger knives, twirling one in each hand by the handle as he strolled back over to the victim who watched him warily.
"Go ahead, kill me now. I don't care," the man goaded with false bravado. The truth was he wanted to die now to get the pain over with.
"Kill you?" Taker laughed loudly, reminding the man of how Kane had laughed earlier. With an amused sigh, Taker finally calmed down enough to speak. "Killing you would be too nice, and you know what?" Taker leaned in and whispered in his ear, "I'm not a very nice person."
With that, Taker took one knife and stabbed the man's left forearm with it, pinning him to the wall. While the man was still screaming, Taker put his other knife in the man's right forearm, in the exact same position of course. "Right between the bones," Taker said to himself, all the while ignoring the man's annoying cries. He began to uncuff the man's wrists so he would hang solely from the knives embedded in his forearms, when it suddenly occurred to Taker that the knives probably wouldn't hold under the man's weight. He went back over to the table and retrieved two more large knives and put one through each of the man's legs without hesitation. This brought on even louder cries pain from the injured man.
"Don't worry. I didn't hit any major arteries so you won't die anytime soon. I'll see you in a couple of days," Taker announced. As he exited the room, he turned around to take one last look at the man. Taker was immensely proud of himself. How many people could say that they had a live skeleton hanging on one of their walls? With the faintest of smiles on his lips, Taker shut the door, silencing the screams of his vacation project.
