Title: Cuckoos and Crow Feathers

Rating: R, M

Characters/Pairings: Magato/Giovanni (because I can), mentions of Einstellsehn, Naoto, & Haine

Warnings: Graphic violence and character death and blood and sex and all that psychotic awesomeness that is Giovanni. Also Magato should be a warning in and of himself. Also, really REALLY confusing.

Word Count: 1,791

A/N: Technically belongs in my anthology, but too lazy to change the rating. Also, this pairing makes me weak in the knees, so I had to write it, I just HAD to. I love both of these lunatics way too much. It was so fun to write Giovanni, I need more of him.

Disclaimer: DOGS and all its characters belong to Miwa Shirow, not me.

Cuckoos and Crow Feathers

"What do you think her eyes will look like when you kill her?"

Magato has always been incendiary, quick to burn his blazing torch of madness without consequence or second thought; sanity a paper airplane fluttering among the flames. Giovanni loves to see his wings blacken and curl; it's a thumbscrew that twists like Haine without his bandage, leaves more blood in deeper footprints.

Magato slides his tongue over his teeth, smooths his curls away from his bone face with faux elegance. His is first class psychopath, definitely, he'll sip only the sweetest champagne from the hollow skull of a young woman, will delight in lathering her blood on his hands, celebrate his ambition, like some infernal emancipation, like some nightmarish baptism.

"I'll find out," he rasps self-assuredly, grins his vulture grin.

He's one of those scavenger people, a black-eyed breed who enjoys the dominance and the hunt. Unstable, dangerous, the way caged things get over the years, reckless and gleaming.

Giovanni sucks his teeth. How nice it is, to have met a kindred spirit.

…

Giovanni stands up at the exact same moment Magato snicks out his dagger, and the blade is a predator smirk with a blood promise on its lips.

Now there's no use placating. Giovanni tries to undo the taut veins that give his face away. He tries imploring. "This is a new suit," but everything hitches on the tiny serrated fangs of the knife. He can't hide from it, he doesn't know how she ever did.

…

He doesn't show his own teeth yet; keeps his eyes on the knife's. Magato's hand is a vice around his neck, but Giovanni's used to feeling choked by a collar, twinges, leers. He's driven into the wall, up on his toes, Magato breathing him in with marauder breaths while he imbues white into Giovanni's vision.

He chokes, his silk voice frayed. This happens often, lately, the cleaner leaves everything splattered with his wrath, painting walls with the disturbed visions wrought on the inside of his curved mind. It's the girl who started it, who does it still, with every breath, every beat of her young heart.

"I'll slice her and dice her and then I'll advise her, that next time she kills me—to make sure I'm dead."

…

He's cutting into Giovanni's skin like (a surgeon, but he fucking hates surgeries, he's always hated the surgeries, the way they left you there, white and taken apart by her voice) he can make it scar through sheer force of will. If only it were that easy.

It's raining intestines. Or whatever those are.

He doesn't cut Giovanni's face. Does he think he's beautiful? Is that why he keeps saying that? Or maybe he's talking about the meaty mass that has become Giovanni's abdomen, the squishy hiss as he heals.

Beautiful, like she was always saying Haine was. And not Gio, never Gio, Gio the runt, Gio the unloved. At least with his blood drying on the sheets Giovanni knows someone other than doctors and surgeons and physicians is paying attention to him.

Ha.

Magato cuts half a smile into Giovanni's face. It's healing in wisps of smoke before he can even start on the other side. He scowls. Giovanni laughs. Not that it's funny, but Giovanni laughs at a lot of queer things, sometimes. That's what happens when people crawl inside you and fuck everything up "because they love you."

Magato isn't the only one who "loves" him.

…

There is a ring of metal against metal, the shock jars down his spinal cord to his hips, all the way up his tiny horseshoe cervical bones and into his brain; his world whites out in agony. The next thing he remembers is watching broken glass fall into Magato's open mouth, being thrown aside and the slightly musical sound of hacking and coughing up the shards.

He stands again; his suit is hanging off him in neatly cleaved tatters, his skin is slippery with blood, not all of it his own. Stubbornness and self-preservation keep the glasses on, undaunted by the lack of lenses.

Standing over him, Giovanni tells Magato to kindly go fuck himself.

He glares at him, but can't say a damn thing with his mouth full of glass. Giovanni thinks that should teach him not to stick his knife where it doesn't belong.

…

Magato is their bastard son, more or less, the bastard son of this gleaming white Hell. He knows too much, and he knows the same people. They believe in different things, maybe. Giovanni isn't sure. All he remembers is his Mother unlocking his cell door, and smiling. All he remembers is her saying, "Look, Giovanni. I found you another playmate…"

And he remembers wondering if she plays with him too, sometimes, in her own way, in the dark places Giovanni will never see.

….

Giovanni realizes Magato never says his name out loud when he can help it. He supposes it's because Magato has no more room left in his spider mind for any more; imagines all his thoughts constantly at each other's throats, like mutinous wolves.

…

His hair crackles down his skin like lightning, the rumbling susurrus of his voice constant, perfunctory—her name, it's always her name. Giovanni lets jealously slide over his smooth eyes; he wears the flashy designer suit of sadism in all its different styles.

It's always so difficult to remember who is the perpetrator, here, who is the victim. Giovanni wears the collar, true, but he holds the leash in his own hands, freely, ready to slip into a noose around dear Magato's neck.

Though there are animal nights, dark times in the daylight, among the coffins they have crafted for others, the hot violence of teeth and cries and eating and never dying. Magato loves to kill him, Magato loves to be killed. Magato learns from him: the taste of glass, how deep to cut. Giovanni learns when to say her name, the best ways to bleed.

The game is dangerous, yes, but if it wasn't, why then, it wouldn't be so much fun.

…

"Your bitch is with my brother."

Giovanni is very quietly seething, straightening his tie pin. It was a gift from his mother, the first time he came back to her alive.

"This problem is very easily solved," Magato is saying matter-of-factly. He removes one glove, just the one, skating the flat of his knife across the back of Giovanni's jacket. The movement is exquisitely precise; the blade slides over the fabric without so much as a single tear.

"How?" Giovanni asks abruptly. He doesn't care for the situation; his brother is not supposed to be with anyone, just alone, just himself, just the hound of hell tattooed into his DNA.

Magato insinuates one spider leg between Giovanni's, his knee just barely bumps the crotch of Giovanni's trousers. Another movement and he's encapsulated inside Magato's flesh and blood, the blackness and the noise.

"My little sister doesn't stand a chance against you." The side of his knife slides up the silk of Giovanni's tie, undoes the knot with a twitch of his wrist. Giovanni hums, pleased with the compliment, the tip of the knife barely pricks his throat.

"And what about Haine?" he asks arbitrarily. Magato's free hand slips inside his jacket, slithering, strong, almost enough to make Giovanni believe he's vulnerable. Giovanni leans back, fluid, right into the blade held against the back of his neck. The cut is deep, blood soaks his shirt collar. Magato holds him by the collar, turns his head so he can lap at the blood pooling at the base of his neck.

"There's only one way to deal with a mad dog."

…

Magato wants to go buy flowers for her funeral. Like Ophelia, he says. Like a martyr.

"Roses, for compassion."

He scrapes the broken, jagged edge of his new blade against Giovanni's thigh, encouraging him to spread his legs wider.

"Lilies, for purity."

Giovanni smiles, Magato's hands tighten around the bone-white hilt of the broken sword.

Giovanni likes this job. He does it well.

"Daisies, for innocence."

And his reward hasn't stopped, not since he came back, saying I know you always wanted to see what her eyes looked like when she died, so…and turned out his pockets.

"In a white coffin, lined with white."

He says it like a dream, holding her eyeball between his fingers like a rosebud. His face is alive with ecstasy. Giovanni hasn't felt this alive since Haine.

Giovanni spits out a spume of blood from between his teeth; to his disappointment it just barely grazes Magato's cheek.

"Why white?"

He closes the space between them into nothing, Giovanni's scars kiss themselves shut. They are slick with blood and sweat and come and more blood, a carnal entity of naked skin with the hot metal blade beating between them like a heart.

Giovanni likes this job. He does it well.

"Because…it looks so good with red."

…

Perhaps they could be equal.

Giovanni looks at him angle by angle, curve by curve, until he loses himself in the intricacy and confusion. He runs a fingertip down the arched landscape of Magato's killing arm, and thinks, perhaps they could be equal. And this contest is just a game for the snake boy and vampire to play until their bloodlust overwhelms them again (and again and again).

Of course he knows he's merely being sentimental, stupid again. With his glasses gone and off the leash no one is equal to him. Especially not now. He glances over in the direction of the corner chair, where last they flung it. It glitters, and sparkles like a necklace, a perfectly constructed delicacy of bone and bone. It has a lovely tail of his tattered, pale flesh. Blood is still dripping down to the floor.

There is no need for them anymore. Mother will not be pleased when she finds out, and she and the loyal will chase them like hellhounds of the hunt. Giovanni doesn't care. He has known brutality now, the cruelty of shine, the tempest storm of muscle and mind-games. He has known it, and he knows it is far better than anything like "love", or whatever.

He runs two of his fingers down the bizarre convexities of Magato's spine, so deliciously human, so easy to bite.

Within minutes his wrist is broken, and Magato is grinning down at him with his fangs glittering and sparkling like knives.

Perhaps they could be equal.

Giovanni gazes up at him, and slowly grins back.

…but perhaps not.

A/N: Yeah, I know, it's too much, but Giovanni and Magato are too much, so. By the way those flower meanings are all made up; I figure Magato would be the type to do that.