The smell is toxic and weighty and they both know there's more rat poison than tobacco in those goddamn cigarettes. Dirty rat poison cut with asbestos with something leafy to burn nice. Maybe it is tobacco. It probably isn't.
He doesn't know how Badou smokes those things but… it brings him up and out of the blood and the pain.
"Good morning, princess," Badou is saying from across the room. He isn't really looking at him, just staring out the window at fuck all.
Haine spits blood on the floor and he hears Badou tsk like somebody's mother.
ڬIt is fucking nothing like flying or floating or dreaming to be shot through. It's exactly like dying and anytime he hears some religious rag trying to preach it otherwise he feels his intestines coil in on themselves with anger.
It's like dying.
ڬThe hustle and bustle of the low town is embracing, familiar, unfamiliar, sweet and bitter every time he watches some old grandma get hauled off into whichever side street for god only knows what.
No one sneaks up on him in the streets, least of all Badou, smelling of smoke and burning leaves and rat poison and asbestos.
"I want to have lunch with you today," he's laughing ash.
"I'm busy."
"Always busy," Badou says because nothing hurts him anymore, not even the disease in his lungs.
Everything hurts Haine, and he just won't die. "Always busy."
ڬHe watches it coil up from (his spine this time, this time it's from his spine like ice and electricity) the depths of someplace secret and pristine. Badou sees it in Haine's shoulders. Deceptive, frightening.
Haine's laughter is like crying and his tears are like snarls.
And Badou can be such a suicide punk sometimes, too close, too serpentine the way he flicks his tongue and wonders,
"What's the game today, Stray Dog?"
Sometimes it is death and destruction, but it is always, always blood.
ڬGentlesilent Nil cannot get close to Badou. He will not let her and Haine is so entranced by her eyes he really can't see the high barbed wall between his white fallen angel and his industrial fire friend.
Her wings move slowly, fluttering absentmindedly.
"…and the dreams keep coming and I hurt everywhere…" It is Haine's Ave Maria and he whispers it to her: his mute witness. She extends her arms to him and he falls into her. She traces his spine, soothes the electricity shooting through his veins, driving him up and down the walls of his mind.
She rests her cheek against his hair and looks across the church.
Badou is not watching, Badou is not looking, Badou is not feeling.
She holds on tighter to Haine and wonders, How close is he to you? How to ask such a thing, how to ask when Badou has shut his doors to her by simply not acknowledging her? It is as if she belongs only to little dragon Haine.
Nil is not convinced. Of many things, but most of all that Haine has breached Badou's walls.
ڬThe dark corners of the smoke shop smell of lemongrass incense, there's a hideous record screeching on a spindle and a pretty little girl who Badou knows writes subversive pamphlets comes and presses up against him.
He grins at her sharply and pushes his cigarette to one corner of his mouth to kiss her forehead patronizingly with the other. He's slept with her a couple times, it was uninteresting.
"Hey, baby, you talked your old man into selling me some—"
There's a fat old bastard behind the counter who makes most of his money from pushing drugs and letting his granddaughter use his back room to host her little 'parties'.
"Yeah, got somethin' very nice. Those fucks from the Allegany Hole was down here this morning."
Allegany Reservation, the Indians are the only ones who bother growing real tobacco the right way and that means these cigs are going to floss his lungs and wallet like razor wire. Badou's one good eye is lighting up like Christmas though.
"I'll take 'em."
ڬ"You smell different," Haine is already mumbling as he pulls up out of the blood, coughing waterlog and lead from his lungs.
He spits on the floor and Badou makes that sound, that tsk, and rolls his eye. He's not really looking though; he's sitting in the window staring out across whatever scenery there is to stare out across.
Haine takes in a shuddering breath and feels the secondhand smoke coil deep and sharp in his throat; he coughs involuntarily until Badou pushes open the window and the smoke billows outward on a raft of air.
"Pussy," Badou teases and takes another drag.
ڬ"Hah-ahaha-ahah-haha-heh-heh," Badou is laughingsnarling.
Haine grits his teeth, tries not to let Badou's hysteria infect him, but it is. He can feel it, can feel it in his teeth as he grits his jaw. He can feel his pupils dilating huge and black. He cracks his fingers, listens to each sickening snap, and feels himself shivering up and down like a rabid mutt with fleas.
They're going to get blood everywhere, there is going to be blood everywhere, blood, so much blood, it will be on their clothes and in their hair and the floor will be stained.
Good fucking thing it's scheduled to rain tomorrow, good fucking thing, he thinks as his fingers twitch to his guns and Badou's so tweaked out he's got a side kick buried in some asshole's trachea already.
It's like a rain-burst (good fucking thing, he thinks) when Haine starts to fire.
ڬBadou is still jittering, his blood so high on nicotine and oxygen deprivation he can't even think straight and Haine is breathing hard like a dog.
Badou can't get his lighter. It clicks and strikes and sparks but it won't light and he's growling deep under his breath.
"Fuck, fuck."
The cig carton is bright turquoise color with a chieftain's head on, Haine can see it clutched in Badou's fist as he struggles with the little olive green lighter.
Haine is breathing, hunched shoulders and wild-eyed, just breathing, soaking up air through the pink veins in his tongue.
"Fuck, fuck."
Fight. Fight high, drug high, sex high, dog wild, manic and mad and hard, hit them hard and there is blood fucking everywhere and Haine doesn't realize it's still on his hands until he's smeared it all across Badou's face.
"Fuck," Badou curses and fights back until they're struggling on the concrete in the gore they made together.
Badou's fist is buried in Haine's ribs and Haine's teeth are buried into the flesh over Badou's collarbone.
(The turquoise carton of cigs is somewhere, so is the dark green lighter and a bright white cig is lying somewhere, stained red in the carnage.)
"Fuck," Haine rumbles through the teeth he keeps gritting. Badou is bleeding into his mouth and he gets the breath knocked out of him when Badou's knee gets between them and hits his celiac and he's shaking so hard and Badou flips him onto his back and pushes him down into the concrete, smashes his skull back until he sees lights.
"Fuck," Badou is maybe shouting in his face. Badou's arms are quivering and Haine can feel his thighs quaking too and Haine almost can't breath. He groans and shuts his eyes and goes limp and for a long time Badou's breath is warm on his cheek. And then Badou crawls away on hands and knees, sorting through blood and bone and slag for his homegrown nicotine.
ڬHaine has the first wet dream he's had in a long, long—possibly forever—time.
He's drowning in blood, you see, drowning in it. And he's just swimming through this ocean, just another flittering dogfish in a sea of crimson. There's a sun up there, a huge black blot in a sky he can't imagine the color of. He swims for it, every muscle screaming for oxygen and relief and when he bursts out of the water he collapses up, through, onto the shore.
A beach of white tiles, everywhere, as far as he can see and their pristine gleam is stained by the tides and their grout-work has been eroded away by burgundy in some places. The tiles are cold beneath him and the slow waves rolling across his feet and his calves are thick and warm (the tiles are unforgiving, absolutely unforgivingly cruel).
There are birds—he hasn't seen birds in a long time, it feels like—huge blackbirds with beady red eyes who screech out loudly on the air (the sky is still a color Haine does not know).
"I've got candle wax on my tonsils, candle wax in my teeth, candle wax on the roof of my mouth; makes it hard to breathe," the birds are shouting to each other as Haine crawls up the white tile beach. He's naked and cold now, dripping with blood, his fingers and body slipping on the sleek white tile.
"Maybe if I take a rope and tie it 'round my tongue, light it up and hope it won't burn my body all the way through."
There's a ragged old wolf in a barbed wire pen at the center of what might be an island. Its ears are shredded and its gums are weak and some other beast punctured one of its eyes with its fang a long time ago.
The wolf has a soft voice that rasps from its brittle throat. "I am not long for this world."
It is true, Haine can see as he comes closer. The wolf's fur is matted with blood and it does not stand on one of its back feet in its tiny pen.
"Tell me how to get off this island before you die," Haine says to it.
The wolf looks up at the birds, still chanting, "I've got candle wax on my tonsils, candle wax in my teeth, candle wax on the roof of my mouth; makes it hard to breathe."
The wolf licks at its jowls. The wolf is old; its muzzle has gone gray. "Fly. Fly the way angels do not."
Its legs have begun to shake, it lies down carefully and does not show pain when the barbed wire digs into its back.
Haine reaches his fingers through the wire to touch its filthy black fur and to ask, "I can't fly, I don't have wings."
The wolf closes both of its eyes. "All dragons have wings."
"Maybe if I take a rope and tie it 'round my tongue, light it up and hope it won't burn my body all the way through."
"I'm no dragon, just a stray dog."
The wolf's breath shudders out, "Just fly."
Alone now, Haine stands at the center of the island of white tile, the sky is a strange not-color and the sun is black, directly overhead. The sea of blood stretches in every direction.
Haine runs, following the slight slope back down to where the tiles are stained pink by the tide. When he feels the warmth of the blood beneath the pads of his feet, he jumps.
And he flies and it is just like drowning in blood.
Haine wakes up then, breathless and uncomfortable, with a filthy stickiness on his body.
There is rain on the windows.
ڬHe tells gentlefaithful Nil the dream; about the sea of blood and the island of white tiles and the blackbirds crowing in nonsense verse and of the dying black wolf with the gray muzzle that had told him to fly. He tells her he's glad to have dreamed about something else for once. He excludes his reaction, because telling her that would not soothe his soul.
Nil smiles at him as he speaks and he wonders whether she understands or if she thinks it is just a dream. He believes it is just a dream; he believes that his body's reaction to the surreal concoction of his subconscious was a layover from his confrontation with Badou. He'd… he'd come then too. He hadn't said a word, didn't know how to say that word anyway, but he had and it was…
Nil extends her ever forgiving arms to him and he drowns in her.
Badou is not watching, Badou is not looking, Badou is not feeling.
A boy of high turrets and mazes; a stubborn and cagey creature. He talks only to Bishop, there at the pulpit, and he is not even there today.
Nil strokes Haine's hair and watches.
ڬHaine doesn't come up into the sunlight more often than he has to; it makes his skin scream and burn. Besides, he hates the way the sunlight makes people look anyway; too much like pigs. He'd rather be a sewer rat than a pig any goddamn day.
Badou goes up when there are things to see and there are always things to see, always pretty pictures to take. He keeps them in a box and he keeps the box in the closet and doesn't say a word about them even though he knows Haine goes through them often.
What for the rain, the sun's not so warm today. Neither is this shitty coffee Kiri made for him. Coffee is shitty everywhere though, just as synthesized and cut with other chemicals as the cigarettes and then it's just a matter of priorities. Maybe some people are willing to lay down their hard-earned cash for a proper cup of coffee, Badou isn't.
Badou's got one last Allegany cigarette tucked into his front pocket; he's probably saving it for a special occasion because god only knows when those damn traders from the Hole will come back this way again.
Truthfully, the city isn't too exciting today. There's the usual bustle of people but nothing fascinating, nothing beautiful, nothing dangerous. Everyone's inside, no one wants to get wet.
"Fuck," Badou complains, because looking at his commissions is like flipping through a goddamn dog sweater catalogue. "Fuck," he repeats, scowling. He dumps Kiri's shitty coffee over a sewer grate and figures he better get to work.
ڬHaine finds Naoto down in the streets, she gives him a strange look and they end up having lunch in a cramped and smoky oriental place. He puts the table between them and she keeps her back pressed carefully to the wall, watching the room. A fine fucking pair they make.
"I wanted to talk to Badou. Bishop said he wasn't at the church," she cuts in before they've even ordered. Her eyes are always too calm and too serious and remind Haine of the mirror far too much.
Haine scowls at his hands. "Am I my brother's keeper?" Brothers of any sort are a bane and Naoto turns towards his words curiously.
"Why enter a partnership otherwise?" she considers.
"To be more efficient in creating violence."
They don't talk again for a long time. Naoto orders hot tea and spends time blowing at the steam, looking very much the little girl but for the protrusion of her great black bag at her side.
Haine chews clumsily and swallows whatever it was he ordered. It is something greasy, with meat.
"I couldn't open up to a partner," Naoto finally murmurs.
Haine can't make himself give a dry laugh at her naïvety. "You don't need to. You just need to trust them."
ڬBadou goes over to Haine's place that night, just to see what he did today and he finds his partner shot up with a broken elbow. It's been healing and Haine's been fucking with it and Badou has to break it all over again and twist it back into the right shape. Haine's out of it by the end.
"Half-way to Hell again," Badou hums. Scrawny fucker that he is, Haine's easy to pick up and Badou dumps him on the couch.
Badou throws a blanket over him and then sits down to smoke and watch TV. The news is bullshit and hysteria again, but Badou watches it, just to kill time until the princess wakes up, spits blood on the floor, and then bitches about the Indian nicotine stench again.
ڬThere are so many things Haine wants to tell Badou. But he isn't there when he wakes up. He's just left the sick tobacco smell on the air and when Haine spits he can imagine that stupid sound Badou makes. Tsk.
He jerks on new clothes and goes out.
ڬMihai is giving him that sad look again, like he doesn't have any other expression.
Kiri is irritated in the background.
"You really just don't know anything about him—"
Badou sighs and rubs where the strap of his eye patch goes over his ear. "I know what he is willing to do, and I suspect what he's capable of. I don't need or want to know anything more." Mihai is opening his mouth but Badou motions irritably and keeps going. "Just like I know what you're willing to do, just like I suspect what you're fully capable of doing. I don't need or want to know anything else. I'm a private investigator. I don't ever need to know any-thing else about any-one. I can't care about the rest for every goddamn person I come across."
Mihai swallows around his feelings. Kiri is washing glasses gloomily.
Badou growls and gets up, leaving a cup of shitty coffee behind.
ڬHaine isn't with Nil when he gets to the church, so Badou goes to ask Bishop about jobs and leaves the girl to sweep the front steps. He isn't rude to her or different to her, but he sure as hell hates that look of hers, like he should want to confess to her the way Haine does.
Badou doesn't confess to anyone because that would imply he cares when he sins. He doesn't do things if he thinks he'll regret them later; couldn't be a smoker otherwise.
Regardless, Nil grabs at his arm as he tries to go through the door. She's got the face of Haine's salvation and… there's something she wishes she could say to him, the same way Mihai wanted to.
"I can tell," Badou murmurs around his cigarette. He swallows and then puts on his biggest asshole grin, "just from the expression on your face that I don't want to hear whatever it is you know."
She scowls at him in frustration and he gently pries himself free, ambling into the church and letting the heavy door shut behind him.
ڬHaine never calls, but he'll come if Badou will.
Badou's control is breaking down, and Haine doesn't get how people can shatter in different ways, but Badou doesn't snap the same way he does. High strung. Something dangerous like piano wire pulled too tight and Badou takes out somebody's eye every time another chord snaps.
"With my fucking teeth," Badou is seething over a corpse, clawing at it even though no one is left moving in the room. There weren't so many that he couldn't do it himself this time and he startles sharp and angry when Haine enters his domain of wet and copper.
Badou didn't call him this time and he gives that jittering laughter, high up on frenzy and hysteria.
Haine watches him with cold interest. "I heard from Bishop where you were headed, heard from Nil you were acting like a douche."
"She suddenly start singing?" Badou asks viciously.
"She has her ways," Haine deadpans. The smell is starting to get to him, starting to work him up, but there are other things to say. "You've been strange anyway."
"Shut up," Badou is growling. There's blood in his hair. There's blood all over him, staining his skin pink. "Fuck off."
"I needed to ask you something."
Badou chuckles and finally stands up, he ties his hair back with his bloody hands. "Yeah?" he drawls. He's coming down; maybe some air is finally reaching his brain. Though he's far from safe and Haine doesn't have any poison on him.
"I want to see the mark I left on you."
Badou goes still, frowning darkly if it can get any darker than this blood spattered headquarters somewhere in the low town. Badou doesn't answer, but his guard goes up when Haine comes closer. He smacks Haine's hand away and that silver-haired devil bares his teeth.
"Fuck off," Badou repeats. "Fuck off, Haine."
Badou fights back when a fist twists into his shirt, but Haine is paying close attention this time; it shows in his beady red eyes. He's a better grappler than Badou anyway. Wild dogs have always liked to play rough with each other.
He has to sweep Badou's ankles to get him on the ground and he has to punch him in the mouth to get him to lie still. Badou spits blood up at him and Haine finds himself sneering, tsk.
With two white fingers he pushes down the neckline of Badou's shirt, just enough to see his collarbone and the bandages Badou had put over the wound. Haine rips that off and admires the perfect half circle of his teeth, scabbing over burgundy and bruising like lilacs.
Silently, Haine leans down, gets another eyeful of blood spat at him. He presses his mouth to the wound. Badou is breathing beneath him.
ڬHaine wakes up on his couch to the smell of cigarettes. His body is sore, but he doesn't feel like he died again last night.
Badou is sitting in naked in the window. Even his patch is lying with the rest of his scattered clothes on the floor. He doesn't turn to look when he says, "Good morning, princess."
Haine doesn't have any blood to spit and he wants Badou to look over at him with that one green eye.
Haine gets up off the couch and goes towards the other man. Badou is still stained with blood—blood of assholes, it's no concern of Haine's—but when he gets close enough to touch, Badou leans his forehead against the cold glass window and hunches his shoulders.
"I'm not going to be your mother fucking savior, Haine. Get Nil to do it, she seems geared up for the job."
Haine grabs Badou's hair like a leash and yanks on it hard. He ignores the man's snarls. "I didn't ask. I asked you to be my partner and maybe that fucking girl was right when she talked about opening up."
"Look who decided to grow a heart, get off me, ass lover."
It would be bemusing should Badou fall out the window, became a greasy smear on the pavement below. Instead, Haine drags him closer and smashes their mouths together and keeps pulling until he feels the couch behind him.
Badou's cigarette is smoldering between his fingers and he tears to take a drag. He tries to stare Haine down, except neither of them will look away.
"I am not your fucking boyfriend."
Haine sneers at him. "Yes you are."
Badou's face twitches and he can't make himself put on that asshole smile of his. He shoves Haine away and makes for the shower, bitching the entire way.
ڬWhen he goes down to the smoke shop there's nothing but rat poison and asbestos and Badou takes it. And after his performance on the last group—("By yourself?" Granny had asked.)—there's no goddamn work to do in the low town, so he heads up to Buon Viaggio to drink shitty coffee and talk to Mihai.
He's been there two hours (reading the newspaper, listening to Kiri bitch-out her bitch-boys, watching Mihai's goddamn sad expression and not really doing any of those things at all) when Haine ambles in the door. His expression is sour as ever when he's gotta come out into the sunshine like a real human.
"Where have you been?" Badou asks because it's a standard greeting, not because he cares and certainly not because he's actually ready to face Haine yet.
Silver hair and red eyes drops down next to him at the counter and dumps out his pockets. More than a half a dozen blood stained cig cartons tumble onto the wood and Haine just fucking stares at him.
Mihai is peering around Badou to look at them all and he's half scandalized and half amused. Kiri just sticks with the latter.
A few of the packs are nice, not as nice as the expensive Allegany's, but still better than rat poison and asbestos.
Badou can't stop himself from grinning. He leers over at Haine and coos, "I fucking looove you."
Haine sneers in reply, but still watches Badou greedily count each cigarette.
Maybe it's the gesture, or maybe it's just that Badou's reached some kind of internal conclusion, but he leans over and plants a sloppy mocking kiss on Haine's forehead.
"Fuck off, Badou," Haine grumbles, and wipes off the spit.
Tsk, the redhead shrugs and stuffs all the cartons into the various pockets of his coat. When he's satisfied with their placement, he looks over at his partner.
"So, what's the plan, Stray Dog?"
Haine grins.
Sometimes it is death and destruction, but it is always, always blood.
Standard Disclaimers.