Fuji Syuusuke blinked once, slowly, at his reflection in the compact mirror. His mascara had to be touched up, leaving his eyelashes preternaturally longer and darker. A fine brushing of powder against his cheekbones made his blue eyes appear wider, a smidgen of innocence creeping into them when he widened them. A fresh brush of colour had to be applied to lips that had gone far too pale. Not that anyone could tell in the dimness of the club, flooded with hazy smoke and amber lights that dimmed and shone with increased fervour in the next moment.
Before long, a pair of arms wound themselves possessively around his body. Fuji glanced up at the mirror, entirely unperturbed by the reflection he saw there. Lust, greed and jealousy simmered in the dark eyes of the patron, even as he bit and licked a line from Fuji's ear to his neck.
"No gentleman invades a lady's quarters without permission, hmm?" Fuji asked archly.
"Yet, a gentleman wasn't what you appeared to have in mind when you beckoned to me, my beautiful fox." Oshitari Yuushi murmured, his hands splaying across Fuji's slender shoulders, gently turning the other around to face him. He took in the fairness of Fuji's skin with delight, tracing his knuckles against the softness of Fuji's neck. Fuji smiled and backed away slightly, raising the back of his hand to his lips and tugging the black silk glove off with his teeth.
"Nice. Very nice." Oshitari said appreciatively, pulling Fuji closer.
Fuji's tongue flicked against his lips, sweetly begging for entrance, submissive yet seductive in the way he responded to every caress. The other man took advantage of it as much as he could, blindly seeking out more of the warmth that seemed to seep through his entire body. Uncomprehending of why, even as he crumpled onto the floor, the sweet, sticky taste of strawberry lipgloss lingered in his mouth.
"You had an assignment last night, wasn't it?"
"Aa...it was at St Pierre's underground bar. What about you?"
"Only the night before."
"The one where the fire engines...?"
"Yes."
Fuji smiled and nodded. Knocked back a few more shots and smiled some more.
Tezuka Kunitmitsu couldn't stop wondering at the strange arrangement between them. It seemed extraordinary that he had such camaraderie with Fuji Syuusuke, the same Fuji who was known for fucking everything with two legs, indiscriminate in his choice and unfaithful to all. Conversely, he had accumulated an impressive image as the resident ice prince, animated only when he shot down his victims. Some even speculated that he killed because he liked it. He didn't like lying to himself. There were other jobs he could have taken up, other jobs which perhaps paid a little less, but would leave him without the familiar taste of blood in his mouth. The worst were the nightmares that plagued him, especially after the organisation called for the extermination of an entire family. He liked to think that he could deal with anything that came his way. Children who screamed and tried to hide under their beds, after watching you cut down their parents, were a different matter altogether.
Still, when he had chosen this job, he had sold the pittance of his conscience for the last drags of a cigarette and the promise of cash yet to come. He had needed a resting place, a place that allowed him to shy away from public view, a home that didn't require him to beg, and be kicked and spit upon. When he had been younger...but he closed the door on those thoughts. It was a sure sign that he hadn't been drinking enough. Never drinking too little to be unscathed, never enough to be satiated. The problem lay in its fundamental pliability. If he was happy, he became happier. If he was sad, he grew increasingly moody. But the constant dull ache in his chest only increased with every glass, an emptiness that dissipated whenever he tried to put it in words.
Fuji tended to laugh it off, whenever he got drunk enough to confess his problems to the other man. Two years ago, they chanced upon each other at the same bar. From then on, they met infrequently. They had nothing much to say to each other, but slowly, Tezuka grew used to seeing the younger man perching on the stool in the corner, nursing his drink carefully. Several months ago, he took on a job on their usual night. Even though it was near morning, he grew curious enough to head for the bar, only to find Fuji sleeping at the counter. Coincidentally, Tezuka never had another job placed on the same day of the week again.
Sometimes he hated the way Fuji was entirely yielding, infuriatingly compliant in submitting to the demands that people exacted upon him. All it took was for him to refuse, to yield and say "no" to the jobs that piled upon him, and the organisation would back down and listen. They wouldn't wish to lose one of their most talented killers.
Tezuka watched Fuji smile, and drink, and smile more, and yearned to break him.
"We have a new assignment for you."
Cerulean eyes gazed calmly back at him from the projector screen.
There were several of them in the room with him. Usually only his boss would request to see him, before handing him the file that contained information on the target he was to eliminate as soon as possible. He noticed that the exits were barred, and each of the men – people he had never seen before – had bodyguards who stood discretely behind them. He had been searched before he had been allowed to enter the room. The level of security indicated that the job would be of a much larger scope than prior ones.
His hand brushed against the remaining guns he hid on his person.
"Why?"
"All the information you need is in the envelope that you're holding."
"I'd have to decline this job if there is no sufficient reason for his elimination."
"We chose you because you were the most level-headed of all in our employment. Will you risk subsequent disengagement from our organisation because of this?"
"...no, sir."
"You have until the following week to get rid of him."
He had taken a long time to peruse the file that they had given him. Even after he thought that he had gotten used to the quirks of Fuji Syuusuke's nature, including his penchant for cross-dressing, some of the outfits Fuji had experimented with in the past still managed to shock him. Perhaps the organisation had broken Fuji's mind after all. With his effeminate looks, they had no problems asking him to slip on a dress and eliminate the target after seducing him. A killer and a whore? Tezuka wondered what Fuji had done to deserve a job like that.
"Choose your poison."
Tezuka started, turning to the side to see Fuji slide into the seat next to his. The other hadn't bothered to dress up for the night. He wore a loose collared shirt with the first few buttons undone, the sleeves falling over his fingers in disarray. Fuji could have fallen out of bed and into the bar, and no one could have told the difference.
"You don't have an assignment for tonight?" he asked, beckoning the bartender over and ordering for the both of them.
"No. They're probably too busy fighting among themselves to bother."
"What do you mean?"
"Haven't you heard? They've been increasingly divided into 2 camps. Echizen Ryoma has been proposing radical changes within the organisation, but since he's still young, his credibility and support base isn't as strong as some of the others."
"Wasn't he the one that proposed the modernisation of weapons? The fervent supporter of gun usage?"
Fuji smiled and nodded imperceptibly.
"Ne, it'd take some drastic moves for him to get the attention he needs, isn't it?"
Suddenly Tezuka couldn't remember how to breathe properly, not when those eyes gazed directly at him and stole his breath away. It clicked in his mind then, but Fuji had already turned back to his drink, nursing it carefully. The sleeves of his shirt caught and got in the way of his fingers, and Tezuka surprised himself with his vehemence, yanking Fuji's wrists towards him. The expression in Fuji's eyes was almost gentle as he looked up at him, his fingers carefully smoothening the white linen until it reached his wrists.
Fuji started to move his hands away, murmuring his thanks when Tezuka was done.
He drank in the look in Fuji's eyes when he tugged his hand back, his eyes never leaving Fuji's as he pressed a soft kiss to his wrist.
There was something indescribably intimate when Tezuka's teeth bit gently.
In their job, there was death, and beauty. There was no love, but only death and pleasure and pain.
They had stumbled to the door then, Fuji still laughing, exhilarated as he ran back to down his drink before following Tezuka into the hotel. They laughed a lot, even Tezuka, buoyed on alcohol and experiencing giddiness for the first time. He didn't think it was entirely the effect of the alcohol, not when Fuji's smiles were the sweetest he had ever seen, a mesmerising blue that danced with merriment and darkened with steady arousal.
He took pride in satisfying Fuji, knowing how the other had to do all the work in their daily profession, and was turned on by how obstinately the other insisted on pleasuring him in turn, unyielding and fighting with him for dominance every step of the way. He adored the way Fuji's back arched against his mouth, he thought that Fuji was breathtaking in every strangled moan and whimper and mewl. His mind shut down when Fuji clawed at his back and forgot to breathe when he kissed him hard and demandingly.
He screamed when he came, a steady babbling of sound as Tezuka took a sadistic joy in delaying the inevitable until he was nearly driven out of his mind. He had blanked out for a moment, curling up in exhaustion, before opening his eyes and seeing the gentle expression in Tezuka's eyes. He braced himself mentally for the lashing out that would follow the next morning. When Tezuka realised that he had slept with the company whore, he would turn away from him in disgust. In the meantime, Tezuka's eyes were sleepy and warm with happiness, and Fuji's heart melted a little to see the smitten expression on his face. He fell asleep in Tezuka's arms, strangely contented, his mind peaceful as it had never been before.
Morning came and went. Tezuka wasn't around when he awoke.
His eyes looked strange when he peered into the mirror later. But he didn't recognise the expression he wore, not until the tears started to fall.
Fuji admired the sunset alone.
He sat at the swings; listening to the last cries of the birds die down.
Freedom had been given to him over half a year ago, and now, he was cutting it short. The same freedom that he had sought for, slaughtering his way through easily hundreds of people in order to lift the invisible yoke from his neck. The organisation was everywhere, masking the body-count that accumulated in the name of necessary sacrifice. Behind the reported deaths of a famous few, there lay the bodies of people who had made the actual decisions behind entire corporations. He liked to give them a blissful death, but Tezuka liked to keep it brief and simple. A single gunshot which had never fallen astray before, lodged in the wood of the director's desk.
They had given him up for good, now that he had expelled most of their enemies within the past six months, and was no longer of any value. When he bumped into Eiji a while ago, he learnt that Tezuka's workload had doubled – even tripled in the short time that he had gone. When he had contemplated that it could have been due to his absence, Eiji merely looked at him in the most pitying way, as though he was missing the painfully obvious. They seemed intent on working Tezuka to the bone, sending him out for even the most mundane jobs that could have been relegated to the most junior member of their team. Fuji had waited for him, staking out their usual bar, from night till morning for two straight weeks, until he realised that Tezuka Kunimitsu was never coming back for him again.
Now he had missed his mark, a shamefully obvious sign on his inability to cope with the intense workload heaped upon him, the corporation seemed determined to pin the blame on him for all the miscellaneous killings that were sloppily accomplished and unaccounted for.
There were 7 days left before Tezuka's hearing. It was almost a foregone conclusion that Tezuka would hang, unless he confessed the truth about their organisation in return for amnesty. Fuji didn't dare to wait any longer, not when the organisation lay ready and coiled to strike at any moment.
No one ever left the fold of their own accord before, and no one ever would.
"Syuusuke," Tezuka greeted tiredly. "Why are you here?"
Fuji's eyes took in the worn expression, and the faint lines that had appeared on the other's face, signs of stress that hadn't been quite as obvious before. He smiled slightly before sitting next to Tezuka on the bed, masking the lump that arose in his throat when he realised for the first time that Tezuka sincerely hadn't the faintest idea why he was there. He only had half an hour. The guard had searched him, but evidently, prison security hadn't been the first priority on the guard's mind, not when Fuji had got down on his knees and bit his lips suggestively.
"Don't you miss me?" he hazarded a guess, scratching distractedly at the material of his cheongsam.
"You should change your bad habit of answering questions with other questions. But, yes I did."
Fuji leant his head against his shoulder, his fingers sliding under his dress and caressing the syringe that he concealed there. There was only enough for one of them but he had brought a knife along as well, carefully sheathed and strapped against his thigh. He winced a little at the thought. He didn't enjoy pain when it was self-inflicted and he thought that dried blood was rather annoying, especially when it clung all over him and made him sticky and uncomfortable.
"Ne, me too," he whispered, tugging Tezuka closer for a kiss. He missed the closeness between them, and the way Tezuka protected him wordlessly, instinctively. He had been set free to lead his life, but knowing that Tezuka paid the price for it, and was willing to pay more in his silence as he headed toward certain death, was enough to turn him back towards the life he fought so long to escape. He didn't dare to breathe a word about his plans. His mind was made up, but Tezuka had to be entirely unsuspecting. Before the organisation struck, before they sent someone to get rid of Tezuka...
Tezuka knew him remarkably well as always; kissing him deeply, his knuckles caressing the side of his face, an awkward but tender affection that made Fuji want to cry even more. It was curious, the way he always felt simultaneously empowered with the way he held Tezuka's heart so close to him, yet became completely helpless in his lack of will to break it. Fuji purred and arched closer when Tezuka pressed him against the bed, his fingers curling in Tezuka's hair before pulling painfully, delighted at the annoyed yet aroused look which Tezuka shot him in response. It was a shame they didn't have the time to explore this aspect of his personality, but –
He froze when he felt a familiar pinprick of pain.
Tezuka's fingers left the syringe, his hands reaching for Fuji's increasingly cold ones.
"I don't think I ever told you how much I love you."
Fuji felt rather than heard Tezuka speak, felt the heat of his breath against his throat. He felt the ice invading his veins and the blackness steadily overtaking his vision. So this was what it is like to die. He fought against it for as long as he could, struggling to speak even as Tezuka gently disengaged the knife from its position and rested the edge against himself.
"But I think you already know."
END
A/N: Oh dear god, I am incapable of writing decent summaries!!...aside from that, please let me know what you think!