Title: hiding skeletons in closets
Rating: teens for sexual implications and violence
Genre: Drama/Romance
Pairing: Seems like a onesided Gio/Heine. You're wrong. And squinty squint squint Heine/Badou.
Summary: Maybe there is something more to Giovanni wanting to say better things and Heine sitting across from him anxious to leave.
Notes: Critiques would be appreciated, thank you. :)
hiding skeletons in closets
"I'm not mad at you, I just," Heine's apologetic grin cuts through him like grass, leaves his skin for a want of an itch, but this itch can't be scratched unless he wants his bodily functions to spew on the linoleum too.
Giovanni smiles as if he understands. Which he doesn't. "Yeah, yeah, I know. You're busy. With work. Just don't have enough time to hang out, it's cool."
Funny how Heine's skin creases around his eyes, jagged wire fences. Giovanni's comment appears to leave its own mark upon Heine and it's high time for Heine to get his nose out from sniffing his ass and start caring. He rubs his hand a little like he's twitching to fool around with something other than Giovanni who still sits across from him waiting because the moon comes up a few hours from now and sitting at this coffee joint for too long results in staying until closing time. The them being together is awkward enough as it is.
They've done that before. The staying until closing time part on some Thursday the year before and this girl last on her shift came over, oh so politely, asked them if they needed anything. Her way of telling them to leave and Giovanni thought he was the only who got it. Any possible hint swept past the dust of Heine's hair and of course he didn't respond. Said he was fine.
Sure he was.
In other words, Giovanni doesn't know exactly what to do with this loss except hold on to that knifing feeling to hold on. Giovanni can't be any less ridiculous. (Doesn't debate against it because it's oh so true.)
"No, I don't want you to get the wrong idea," Giovanni wonders if Heine knows that his smile looks like scars, could care less probably, "I have to work more hours. The dude I work for, well. He's crazy. You know what I mean, doubling up your work and trying to drag you to hell with him. I mean, geez, sort out your priorities."
Chortles a bit, Giovanni does, and faking can be kind of hard when it comes to Heine. It's not the seeing through part, it's the doing. Because Giovanni knows it's him and analyzing brings no comfort to the heart. More of a needle-prickling pounding really.
"Hey, I'm fine with it. No worries. Just call me or something when you have time." Heine seems okay with his answer if the loosening of his facial muscles means anything. It does, because Heine rarely lets loose with displays of emotion. It's a Heine-kind-of-thing but it doesn't mean it still doesn't hurt, because of course it does.
Heine stands up and the squeal of the chair as it creates sparks with the floor causes both to wince. He remains stooped over and Giovanni follows his lead, does with such grace that Giovanni can feel Heine's inward grimace. Straightens his tie and picks up the coffee, realizes with a plunge of (he doesn't know anymore) something that neither of them drank.
Haine hurries over to the swinging doors and his want to leave is so apparent it's uncouth. It's almost as if Giovanni's feelings weren't ever considered in any of Heine's actions. It's regrettable, but it's alright. Could be worse.
This feels worse.
Harsh sunlight beats its feverous wings on both of them, under this lighting Heine's eyes seem to disappear entirely. He doesn't say so, but the slight laugh from Giovanni doesn't go unnoticed.
"What?" And it's bitter, like the coffee they ordered an hour or so ago. Cold.
Giovanni smiles and for once is glad that he wears his ludicrous glasses because it's a sort of one uppance on Heine. Eyes speak volumes by themselves after all and it's his own way of not letting Heine completely in.
"Your eyes look like paper cuts right now."
Heine shakes his head, grabs the back of his jeans. "Well, thanks."
"So you take that as a compliment then."
"Coming from you, what else can I take that as?"
Giovanni doesn't answer and it's not that he doesn't have anything to say as a reply when he has so much to say but by Heine's nervous reflex of cuffing his pocket it's too late. The guy's bored. His eyes keep straying in some arbitrary spot far off and even if Giovanni followed his movements he wouldn't be able to discern what it was he was staring at. Difference between them or one anyway.
Licks his lips. Steady now. "Alright, sure."
Heine's feet move before he can speak, lets Giovanni fathom what he's going to say next which should be of no surprise to the either of them. Giovanni hurts something awful on a backburner, in his chest electricity jolts come rushing in.
"So see you then?" Heine cocks his head, the sliver of his waxen throat makes his own run dessert dry. Giovanni licks his lips and releases the clenching of his fist. Lets go.
"Yeah, alright."
The second Giovanni ends Heine disperses within the crowd, doesn't look back. Giovanni kind of hopes for a miracle. He yells anyway, maybe to fill in his own silence amidst the clamor of commuters.
"Hey, Heine," Giovanni doesn't see him, but seeing and hearing are two different things and he can help but repeat himself, "call me sometimes. Anytime." Unconsciously Giovanni waves, feeling mighty stupid, this one-sided act.
I could have tried harder, Giovanni thinks.
X
"You think that's the end?" Campanella lounges against the burnt rust of the rail, fingers half-tracing the steps to sticking a cigarette between her snake teeth and gnawing on the slipstream of nicotine entering the system. Giovanni knows she won't stay quit for long and doesn't voice his opinion aloud.
"I guess." Giovanni's hair scratches itself against his face as it swirls in the afternoon November wind. He backs up, changes his answer when he acknowledges a 180. "I know."
She bites down, hard, on the curve of her lips while she changes her movements so that the sunset glares coal soft crimson back at her snake slit eyes. Snorts, Campanella takes Giovanni's curt words towards her as an expressive insult. He should be ashamed.
"You're a coward, giving up before the first bark. The first bite. Why don't you give it another go? How can you call him your friend when you don't even make an effort to be with him? You'll always be the hundredth out of a hundred best to him."
Giovanni scratches the now-mess of his hair, joins her side by the sun's cast of fire upon them and Giovanni feels the flames licking his skin. Also knows that it's not the big setting orb in the distance doing this. It's him.
"Maybe it's not because I think I can't do it. I'm scared, sure. Anyone would if they knew Heine. I know Heine."
Campanella laughs, head arched back a makeshift tight-strung bow to Giovanni, always high on edge. Never lax and she might kill a few if she would ever decide to. Her voice cracks slightly and Giovanni pretends he doesn't hear it. Doesn't need to be reminded that even the toughest ones have a rough time with staying strong. (He thinks about Heine then.)
"No you don't. Give me that shit again and I might kill you."
Giovanni tests her, licks his lips because they're dry again. "I'd like to see you try."
X
Giovanni's part time job feels as enjoyable as searing himself on a skillet alive. The joy. It might have been a little better if this idiot wasn't up in his personal bubble, mindlessly droning about some shitty product they sold because the perks are sometimes worth it. Not right now, though.
It has something to do with not organizing the camouflage shirts in the correct category, which shouldn't have been such a vexation to the man hunting down for clothes fashion seasons past. Apparently it is, metallic wire hanger scraping his vision precariously close. Giovanni wants out.
"Hey," Giovanni frowns and it's probably the first and last thing coming from him that won't comply with the customer's declarations, "no smoking."
The guy in front of him exerts that drug taking convulsion, hurried fingers slapping the lighter into submission and cigarette cupped in his mouth. Reminds him of that coffee-joint where –
He forgets, simply.
"What do you mean no smoking?" He's ticked off, greasy curtain of carrot hair swinging with each twitching pause of eyebrow and flicking of lighter between elongated fingertips. Giovanni nastily suspects that the guy might let fire spill on the floor. Burn this place down from shingle to shingle and tile to tile. He likes that.
Giovanni points to a washed out sticker molded onto the glass door. "Read the sign outside, no smoking permitted."
"Oh, well," he sighs and the rush of breath breezing from him to Giovanni leaves air freshener to be desired. Giovanni doesn't blink. "Hey, um, I'll be getting these then."
Giovanni already knows that the loaf wasn't the type to try on clothes. Read signs before entering. Red-head freak probably bounces through things in a lackadaisal manner until he or what he bounces off of gets hurt. He scans the items almost weightless in his hand, bags then. He tucks the receipt inside and feels the brush of cracked knuckles against his hand.
As the guy departs off, Giovanni begins to wonder why he thought of Heine then.
X
Campanella's shift ends in ten minutes and standing outside the bakery and bracing the chilly winds while waiting for her feels more than he can stand. He hurts all over. He doesn't know from what though and it's been bothering him since midday.
"Um, excuse me, sir." A girl piques behind him and he backpedals a few feet to let her through the door. Giovanni wonders since when he became a blockade. Maybe since now. (Or forever.)
"Sorry about that," he shuffles his feet together and stubs the toe of his shoe on the concrete.
Through the filmy windows he recognizes her as the newspaper girl. He's never seen her around at this time so it's a moderately strange event. Just a thought. Campanella's amphibian-like eyes widen for a fraction, in perpetual disarray at the sight of the girl and likewise could be said. Newspaper thuds onto the floor.
Campanella reaches her kitchen blade last. There is already the slimy, unclean trickling of blood stumbling through the folds of her skin and the folds of her clothes. She chokes under the weight of air needed to pump through her body, a nice smile for once spreading from cheek to cheek, and Givoanni has no one to wait for.
He kind of wants to say sorry to make up for it.
X
On a Thursday, Giovanni grips the steel of the gun biting Heine's hair harder. The view looks nice from here.
"I've been thinking," pauses, arches lips dagger sharp and flicks out tongue to meet it, Giovanni can't wait, "that you should have tried harder if you wanted to hide your identity from me."
Heine drags his brow into a frown, gaze still searching far beyond what the window can give him, "I am Heine Rammsteiner and I'll always be Heine Rammsteiner. What more are you talking about?"
"A name means almost nothing if it's bereft from additional feeling." Giovanni's statement has a ring of finality. It thrums in Heine's chest to an unknown beat. Bumpa bumpa bump.
Using the gun Giovanni tilts Heine's head to meet his reflection. The one on the ground blinks in masterful disguise. Neither of them has changed much.
"It's been two years, Heine. You never called."
"I would have forgotten." A lump in Heine's throat isn't the only thing he's trying to will down, but he's hoping Giovanni won't switch positions. That bastard has a tendency to do that and his pants have become uncomfortably tight.
"Liar," Giovanni whispers into his ear, sending a wave of air rolling, "you've never, ever stopped searching."
There isn't enough time in the world for Heine to whip his face around and respond in cold fury, but Giovanni won't have any of it, not this time. Smiles wickedly like –
Oh.
X
(And the roar of the lion in Giovanni's chest never sounded again.
Never.)