Fandom: Detective Conan/Case Closed

Disclaimer: Gin, Vermouth, Vodka, and "Boss" all belong to Gosho Aoyama. Well, everybody here belongs to him, except for Scotch, Cognac, and Absinthe, who are mine.

Story Title: Scarlet Distillation

Chapter Title: A Red Intruder

Notes: This part is not extremely relevant to the plot actions, but very relevant to setting things up and giving an overview of Gin's thoughts.

Chapter Summary: Vermouth has taken a habit to following Gin on his hits. After they kill a target in an abandoned alley, Gin gets distracted by something that's happened to her.

Chapter Quote: "You seem in a terrible rush to get away."

"Group Two to One. Target entering hotel. Possibly ten minutes before he gets to his room. Over."

Scotch's words came over the car's walkie-talkie in soft, scratchy waves, his voice crackling with electricity. Gin knew the operative was likely sitting in a cafe a few blocks in the distance, typing innocently away at his laptop while looking into a high-grade scope disguised as a webcam. They'd recieved a tip-off before to where a politician had gone to hide from blackmailers enquiring about his embezzled funds. His chosen hotel was nondescript, though rather old and run-down looking, and situated in a poorer area of town. There would easily be no witnesses, and, Gin thought privately, Vermouth was a better eye for looking out for passerby than Vodka was. It had irritated him when she insisted on joining the hit, but he didn't want the repurcussions of refusing. The best he could do was to relegate her in the back seat and control himself around her.

He crushed his cigarette on the Porsche's coin tray, bitter smoke wafting from the stub. From beside him, Vermouth looked distastefully at the soft mound of glowing ashes, the tip of her nose wrinkling as she flipped through their hit file. "You've gone through an entire pack already," she muttered. "I don't understand why you're not already dead from the tar."

"Everybody has their vices," said Gin dismissively, tucking his Beretta where it could be easily reached. "Mine is smoking. Yours is fucking with people's minds. We're even."

"So cold, Gin," said Vermouth with a false air of disappointment, and she tossed the hit file into Gin's lap. "Are you going to push me in the back again?"

Even though they were cloaked in a building's shadow, Gin could hear the feral grin in her voice, and he smirked. "I don't care whether you're the boss's favorite or not. This isn't your damn hit." The last four admittedly hadn't been hers either, but she had insisted on going with him. He'd been faintly confused at first (never showing it, of course - he always hid himself from Vermouth's piercing eyes), but the feeling had now morphed into annoyance at her presence and suspicion as to what she wanted. She had never shown such interest in his actions before, relying only on the occaisional scathing retorts and taunting remarks that they flung at each other whenever their paths happened to cross. Now she nearly seemed to be tracking him, though she said with her usual uncaring tone that his hits were more interesting to follow.

The atmosphere between them, Gin noted, had slighty shifted within the past few weeks. It was a subtle change in the air - a tinge of something foreign whenever they talked, and a touch of something different whenever they moved. Their cutting words were the same, and their actions hadn't changed, but the meaning behind them seemed to have altered. Gin snapped his weapons case shut, carefully balancing the noise so it wouldn't betray his conflicted emotions. He'd deal with the strange inconsistencies later and despise her now.

Vermouth didn't seem to notice the whiteness of his hands against his suit. "It doesn't matter who kills him, as long as he's dead," she said, shrugging. She had pulled out a Luger and was examining it with bare interest, her fingers trailing the length of the barrel. "And we all know that I'm a better shot than you are."

"You don't need to be a good shot when it's point-blank," noted Gin, nerve edging into his voice. Execution, the file had stated in small black print. Lure him into a secluded area - industrial side of the nearby abandoned garage ideal - with a promise of a compromise if he gives up half the funds he stole from us, and a disk containing the needed governement files. Suggestion: fire a hollow point. Gin had grinned to himself when he saw the ending note. Hollows. They were particularly bloody, and Gin always had an interest in them. Lead-tipped bullets sometimes bothered him; Vodka always said they were cleaner and thus more efficient, but Gin saw no point in that. Death was supposed to be messy, not clean and clinical. He was always bothered when he shot at somebody, certain that they were dead, but seeing nothing to confirm it except for the momentary shock in their eyes before they slumped over. It merely looked as if they were stunned, and Gin felt that it was much too anticlimactic - a blow and a fall. With hollow points, death would be considerably more graphic, more final - completely irreversible. A crack and then the hard sound of metal tearing through flesh and bone. The shock at the contact, the searing pain of the bullet expanding inside. An explosion of blood at the base of the skull, blossoming scarlet in the pit of the stomach - Gin inhaled sharply, his fingers running rapidly along the base of his Beretta. It wasn't good to get so excited before a hit. Too much adrenaline...he glanced unconsciously at Vermouth, who was selecting a hollow bullet for her Luger.

"Group Two to One," crackled the walkie-talkie, cutting off Gin's thoughts. "He's in his room. I can see his shadow against the curtains. East wing, sixth floor, rightmost room. Over."

"Group One to Two," said Vermouth smoothly, clicking the gun action open. She purred satisfactorily, and Gin's heart rate flared up again in his annoyance at the sound. Once this was over, he'd lock himself up in his room and get away from her soft, constant sounds. "You're making the call in five minutes, then? Over."

There was a strained pause at the other end before the walkie-talkie crackled again. "Group Two to One," said Scotch, sounding confused. "Confirmed. I was...unaware of your presence, Vermouth. Over."

Vermouth snapped in the hollow bullets and pulled the action. There were a few clicks as the cartridges were put in gear. "Group Two to One. You'd better get used to it," she said, smirking triumphantly. "Over."

Gin leaned against a concrete beam, waiting.

The abandoned garage was dark and dank, a few scattered dead leaves strewn across the metal rails by the side. A few towed cars were parked in random spots, the windshields broken and the leather seats slashed open by eager looters. It was old and kept in the greeny scent of rainwater that had stagnated over the months. Gin could smell the overpowering dust and dirt pervading the area. It smelled like a coffin, he noted absently. Even though he'd finished a countless amount of hits over the years, he'd only ever come up close to a coffin once. He was a young recruit in the Black Organization back then, and had passed by a public funeral for a politician that'd been shot in the head. It had undoubtedly been Cognac's work - quick and crisp, and without fail, always from behind. Cognac had never liked looking his hits in the face.

"Pisses the hell out of me when they're still staring at me after they're dead," he had told Gin roughly. "I mean, really. They're fucking dead. What else do they want from me?"

Faintly curious to see the proceedings, Gin had snuck into the line passing by the dead politician's casket. The man's head was swathed with thick cotton, and from a distance he looked like some gruesome mannequin the masses had come to worship. He could have been anybody with the white gauze mask and the standard navy suit. Gin had been foolishly eager to see the corpse up close, but when he did, he'd felt sorely disappointed. It wasn't death, Gin had thought. The man was really asleep. There seemed to be no true confirmation that the man wasn't breathing and his heart wasn't beating. Everything looked too neat and arranged - the stiching on the cotton mask was perfectly aligned and the man's hands were folded carefully over his immaculate clothes.

It all looked wrong.

Gin had always associated death with extreme messes, vomit soaking through the carpet, white froth seeping out of a hanged man's blue mouth, the heady smell of coppery blood thickening the air. As he passed the display, he found himself taking a breath. Dirt and dust - that was what the coffin and dead man smelled like. Almost the same as a forgotten box of furniture in the attic. Too useless.

Death should be dirtier. The cleanliness made it fake.

Footsteps echoed from the shadows, and Gin looked up. A man was walking hesitatingly towards the center of the garage, clutching a package and a CD. Gin smirked. Fool. He was setting himself up to be murdered. Gin wasn't sure exactly what Scotch might have told the politician over the phone, but he knew exactly how persuasive the man could be when he wasn't busy being an asshole. He closed his fingers over his Beretta. This would be exceptionally easy.

Vermouth touched his shoulder from behind the beam. All clear.

"Takada," said Gin, his voice echoing against the hard concrete. The man flinched, and turned toward the source of Gin's voice. Gin licked his lips in anticipation. He could feel the fear emanating from the dark, and his eyes narrowed, waiting. "I see you have our information."

"All here," said Takada, his voice cracking slightly. He sounded hoarse, as if he hadn't drunk or slept in days. Not surprising, considering the man's fragile situation, and the enormous hole he had dug for himself when he had tried to trick what he thought was only a small crime group looking for a little government information in exchange for money. Well, thought Gin privately, we'll solve that little problem. "I'll going to - I'll just set the things on the ground and - and go," he said, tremulous. Gin didn't need the edge of light from the entrance to know that their target's hands were shaking.

He was about to utter a reply when Vermouth startled him into silence. "Why, you'll just leave us?" she said, her voice chillingly lilting. It pierced through the thick air and Gin could feel it slice over his skin, even though he wasn't being addressed. He glanced back forwards. Takada had froze, unaware a second person had been there. "Setting the things and running away?" Vermouth continued, an extra edge to her voice.

Takada blanched, and involuntarily took a step back. "I kept up my end of the deal."

"Certainly," said Vermouth, and Gin felt the fabric of her coat slide over the back of his bare hand. She was moving forward, carefully adjusting her voice so it seemed as if she hadn't moved, letting the echoes throw her words at the target. "You'll keep your promises, just like you did before," she said with a terrifyingly calm voice, and Gin thought he could almost feel her breath in the words whisper over his ear. Interesting, thought Gin, as he lifted the Beretta from his coat. I wonder who taught her the echoing trick. It was working exceptionally well, he grudgingly admitted; if he hadn't felt the brush of her coat against him, he might have assumed that Vermouth was still leaning against the concrete beam, keeping a lookout behind them. Gin scoffed inwardly at his foolishness.

Vermouth would never let herself be pushed to the back.

And now she was taking charge in such a way that Gin could do nothing but wait back for her and take her position. She'd even rubbed the fact triumphantly in his face, what with the subtle slip of her coat, taunting the fact that she'd stolen his hit. Stepping forward and speaking now would be an idiotic thing to do, but he thought of something better and carefully clicked his Beretta. To Takada, it must have seemed like a click of a case, a relatively safe ten metres away.

"It was a mistake!" said Takada, trembling violently. Lucky for Gin, he hadn't let go of the CD case, and his shaking hands was making the surface of the disk glint and catch the sun. taking care not to make a sound, Gin raised his Beretta, forcing himself to stay still as Takada blubbered on. "But I've got everything here, no issues, no tricks -"

"No bombs?" said Vermouth dangerously. "We've recieved them in the past, you know, by people smarter than you expecting to kill us all, but it was foolish of them. They got their due in the end. And you seem in a terrible rush to go away, my darling, and I haven't even given you my little reward yet."

Gin bit his lip, steadying himself. From her voice, Vermouth sounded like she had never left, and could have been saying the same things to him, whispering to him in that maddeningly superior way of hers. You seem in a terrible rush to go away. Her words were duplicated, in a ghost by the beam and in a killer by the hit. She was probably beyond excitement now, taunting them both at the same time. Brilliance, Vermouth, thought Gin sardonically, catching the fading echoes of her voice. Fuck you too.

"There's - I swear there's no bombs!" insisted Takada. He sounded hesitant and confused. "And what do you mean about...?"

"It's just a gift from me to you," she said, and Gin saw her reach slowly toward her Luger.

Now, thought Gin, and fired a shot that blasted past Vermouth's shoulder and straight through Takada's head.

The man staggered with the force and fell back, an torrent of blood and skin exploding from his neck. There was enough light for Gin to see the rush of scarlet bleeding away from the corpse, still warm, and a surge of pleasure rose within him as he watched the body twitch and writhe before slowing down into a skewed position, the head half-gone and the organs inside raw and exposed. The coppery smell of blood burst into the air, and Gin closed his eyes. This was death. The blood, raw and heady, was drowning him in pools of red until he thought he'd choke on the thick smell. He tucked his Beretta inside his coat, adrenaline surging up in him again as he gazed at the dead man. There was the finality of not even having a face left and having all the blood drained from the empty shell of a bruised body.

Perfect.

"You took him from me," said Vermouth with a forced whine, breaking the silence that had lapsed over them as they had watched the man die. "And I was having such fun -"

"Dragging it out?" finished Gin coldly. "You do enjoy playing with your food."

"I like seeing the fear in their eyes," said Vermouth, her voice dropping, and Gin realized that she was truly standing next to him now. "An insane gleam of desperation. That raw hunger to live. And it's all the more powerful when you know that you can starve them of it." She wiped something off her face, looking extremely irritated. "You got blood on my face."

He had. There were little streaks of scarlet bursting from the hollow of her cheek, spread across her forehead and eyelids. It stood out in sharp relief against her pale features, and Gin found himself staring at the odd beauty of it. Blood. Blood, and Vermouth. The stench of the place flooded his senses, and his heart began to race with the heat of the assasination. He'd stated many times that he'd kill her if she wasn't in the Black Organization, and the sight of blood on her was growing to tempting for him to bear. She could've looked dead if he imagined it well enough, another spoiled mannequin back inside the coffin, hands folded neatly and a tatoo of scarlet spread over her bare, fragile skin. It would only take a flick of the wrist, a sharp knife - "Shit," he muttered, tearing himself away from her questioning expression and walking stormily back to the Porsche. "Clean your damn face up," he shot over his shoulder, his voice echoing down the cold concrete.

Blood and Vermouth, he considered, waiting. The thought was a provocative, if not dangerous one, but he couldn't get the sight of her bloodied skin out of his mind. The walkie-talkie crackled and beeped, waiting for a reply, but Gin was lost in his thoughts, an image of an explosion of scarlet burned into his eyes.

A minute later, he began to laugh, the feral sound trapped by the walls.

A/N: Normally when I write, I try to actually go and experience what the person is feeling before I go and write it. For this fanfic, however...I suppose you may guess that I didn't murder somebody in a back alley and then laugh manically in my car. 8D No method writing for this one, I'm afraid.

This chapter mainly sets up the scene. The next chapters are full of deception, manipulation, and confusion. Can't wait to write it - angsty-ness is a new department for me, and while I won't be pulling out all the emo spigots, I'll still be pouring some hard shots in here. Hope you like it, and thanks for reading!