The Symphony Hall
Pre-Bebop, pre-Julia. Twenty-year-olds Spike and Vicious are low-time gang members for a group called the Red Dragons, but when an opportunity makes itself clear, their lives are changed. Rated R for cussing and adult situations.
A/N: And in this chapter, we come to a couple of understandings. =3 I promised to have posted this chapter n August, I know, and now it's late August. O.o I apologize… I've made it a little longer than the usual 5-6 pages! Hope you guys like it!
Radishface
- 9 -
The night air was cool in their faces and the crickets chirped and the moon glowed and the stars twinkled and Vicious didn't give a fuck.
He and Spike were on the cusp of something, he thought. They were at the edge of something, and Vicious was too full of chicken-shit to analyze what it could be. He wouldn't allow himself that extra hope—not when there was a possible coup within their small gang. Not when the mysterious Elders had suddenly started to subtly issue orders with Lin and Shin as their 'negotiation' front.
Or maybe the edge was something strictly predictable. The Red Dragons, the Elders, a chance to get rid of a C-level syndicate boss who wasted his time and money with the small things.
A C-level syndicate boss who had bugged his phone, Vicious closed his eyes. But how—
It was suddenly clear to him. It was petty, insignificant, and in many ways, ironic. Gritting his teeth, Vicious resisted the urge to whip out his cell phone and give that bastard a call that minute. It could wait. He'd see him tomorrow morning.
Spike had walked briskly to the top of the stairs and was fumbling with his keys as Vicious rounded the corner.
"I've got some beer in the fridge." Spike said, his lips pulled back into an easy grin. "I know you were holding back at dinner. Somebody had to drive us home."
The door opened, and Spike stumbled in, Vicious followed, noting that the living room's condition was just as decrepit as he had last seen it. A fine layer of dust covered Spike's television screen, and the couch (the only piece of furniture in that room) had a new rip along one of the back cushions, the stuffing poking out obscenely. He threw his coat over a chair in the kitchen and watched Spike as the other man bent over to rummage around in the refrigerator.
"I bought a pack this afternoon." Spike tossed him a bottle, and Vicious watched as Spike popped the cap of his beer with his teeth. "It seemed fitting."
Vicious raised an eyebrow, a silent question.
"A man can only take so much wine and fine dining before his baser instincts kick in." Spike shook his head, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Baser instincts." Vicious repeated, and twisted off the cap of his beer.
"You know." Spike glanced thoughtfully at the ceiling. "Cheap women. Cheap beer. Cheap money."
"Spike, there's no such thing as cheap money."
"Cheap money," Spike began, as if reciting an old adage, "is like a cheap woman. They both come easily."
Vicious suppressed a smile and they drank their beer in silence, the absolute stillness of midnight only interrupted by the sudden click-whrrrrr as the refrigerator hummed.
It hadn't taken Vicious very long to realize that this was a routine between the two of them—late nights, coming home to one of their apartments, and drinking in silence. It was a self-absorbed, thoughtful kind of silence—the kind where Vicious would meditate over past missions, where Spike would turn on the television and watch basketball in a mindless stupor. It was the kind of silence where Vicious would challenge Wolfe's decisions and Spike would see the fire in the other man's eyes and wisely shut up. It was companionable.
Vicious glanced up from his beer and found Spike sitting down at the kitchen table, his coat thrown over the table, an empty beer bottle dangling from long fingers. The other man was looking for something—cigarettes, most likely, and clicked his tongue in triumph as he dug a slightly bent cigarette from the depths of his coat pockets. Vicious tossed him a lighter, and the smell of smoke filled the air as Spike lit up and took a drag.
"Are you finishing that?" Spike gestured at the almost-empty bottle that Vicious was holding.
"You want the rest?"
Spike shook his head. "It's only a mouthful."
Vicious set the bottle down on the counter and clenched his fist, then opened it again. Clench. Unclench. "So. About the cheap women."
Spike regarded him with amusement. "You want them right now?"
"No." Vicious shook his head. "I—"
"I know."
Vicious swung around and gave Spike an incredulous look—what the hell do you know, how the hell do you know. Spike held his gaze, and suddenly the smoke in the room seemed to have condensed around the two of them, and every breath Vicious took sounded harsh as it echoed in his ears.
"I told you." Spike said easily, shrugging. "I can smell it on you. You stink like a fucking dog."
"That's not what I was going to say." Vicious managed, and blinked. It was a lie. He hadn't a clue about what he had just been about to say.
"So what, then?" Spike's eyes were just a little wider, and he leaned forward in his chair, a puff of smoke escaping his lips. Vicious swallowed and watched as the smoke disappeared.
"You—" Vicious said, and stopped. He didn't trust himself. Somehow, the words he wanted to say had dissolved into the air around them, thick and oppressive, grey and opaque. "Your virgins."
Spike sat back and his eyes were shuttered, half-mast. "So what about them?"
"You're going to be out of options." Vicious said, and he didn't know what he was saying, or why he was saying it. The taste of alcohol burned in his mouth. "You're going to fuck all of them someday."
"No, I'm not." Spike's eyes glittered brightly; Vicious could see it even in this dark haziness. "Thanks for the encouragement—but you know. They take too long to break in."
"Not enjoying the chase like before?" Vicious asked.
Spike shook his head, and stared off into the distance. "Oh no. The chase is always there." A hint of a smile crossed his face, and he trained his gaze on Vicious. "That's the thing I can always count on."
"And the reward is worth the chase?" Vicious said. It didn't feel like he was saying it—his tongue felt heavy in his mouth. He clenched the neck of the beer bottle, to reassure himself it was there. To reassure himself that he was here.
"Of course."
"And the end justifies the means?" His voice seemed so small to himself.
"Absolutely."
They stared at each other like that for a minute—Spike's features barely visible through all that damned smoke in the air, the blackness surrounding them, but Vicious could see the light in Spike's eyes, made all the more apparent from the alcohol, his lips slightly parted, the hard curve of his neck framed by the wide collar of his shirt. Vicious drew a shuddering breath. This was Spike, barriers down, and the alcohol wasn't to blame. Spike could hold his liquor. This was different. This was the side of Spike that only Vicious got to see. This wasn't Wolfe's Spike; this wasn't the Red Dragon's Spike. Spike, with his hair in his face and his eyes glimmering gently in a haze of smoke and a faint quirk in his lips, that was for Vicious to see, and only his to see.
Vicious drew a shuddering breath. You can't think that. He reminded himself, furiously. You're crazy.
A car alarm went off in the distance, and Spike gave a start. Vicious turned his head to face the window, the faint orange of the sidewalk lights a beacon for this suddenly lost feeling that rose in him, and he knew he had to leave.
"I've got to get going." Vicious said, pointing at the beer, Spike's beer, his beer. "I still have to drive myself back."
He saw Spike's gaze flicker to the couch, a silent invitation, and then the other man shrugged. "Sure." His voice was carefully blank, and Vicious gritted his teeth.
No, he thought. To what—his vulnerability, to Spike's open offer, alwaysopen, can't let you get caught by the cops, so just stay the night, leave in the morning, have some of my special hangover crap if you want to. Eggs and something else. Raw eggs.
"I'll see you tomorrow." Vicious said, throwing the bottle in the trash, grabbing his coat off the chair he'd tossed it on, throwing it over his shoulder. Spike's expression was closed, neutral, his lips pulled back in a smile.
"I knew you couldn't hold back on your baser instincts." Spike said, laughing. "First the cheap beer, now the cheap women." Spike stood up, setting his bottle on the table.
Vicious said nothing to contradict him. If Spike wanted to believe that he was going to pick up cheap women, so be it.
"I'd come with you, but—" Spike took a breath. "Yeah. Couldn't hit on a rock to save my life right now."
Vicious allowed Spike's hand on the small of his back, allowed Spike to guide him to the door.
He'd wanted to talk about cheap money. He'd wanted to talk about Wolfe and the inevitable coup, he'd wanted to talk about Spike saying, I'm doing whatever you're doing. He wanted to know what that meant, how far that extended.
The cheap women beat him to it.
"Good night." Vicious said.
Spike laughed, running a hand through his hair, scrubbed his face. "G'night."
The dating process was slow, Vicious thought. It was tremendously slow. It involved connections, and gifts, and hypocritical compliments. It involved courtship. It involved patience, and it involved romance. Suffice to say, it was harshly involving.
Perhaps Vicious didn't know Spike as well as he thought he did.
Spike, who carried a gun and wanted to shoot it on sight, whose fingers had trembled impatiently on the trigger when he had his first encounter with the Water Leopards years ago, Spike, who dug into his meals without finesse, great mouthfuls of food crammed down his throat at breaking speed, Spike, who would hoard a half-smoked cigarette in his pocket simply because he wouldn't want to take the effort to open another box of them.
And apparently, Spike, who took his sweet time to romance virgins, to prowl the suburbs and comb his hair and look respectable and do all those things that were time-consuming and involving. Vicious felt his eyebrows knot together in an unconscious frown.
He thought about these things as he was sitting in Wolfe's office, watching Wolfe watch him. It was strangely satisfying, he thought, to know that Spike would do these things, could manage to do these things for those girls.
Vicious looked down at the plush carpeting, imagined being barefoot in Wolfe's office, digging his toes into the material. He tried not to think about Spike's toes on Spike's carpet in Spike's apartment, naked toes and naked feet and naked ankles and inevitably, a girl's naked ankles locked in a painful embrace around Spike's naked waist in some cruelly distorted façade of lovemaking. It was Spike's quirk, Vicious thought. Virgins.
He exhaled sharply, and peered up at Wolfe through the thick of his bangs. The man smiled disarmingly at him, his fingers laced together.
"So you won't tell me what happened?" Wolfe clicked his tongue, and shook his head. "How can that be?"
"We discussed nothing of importance." Vicious stated coolly. "It's nothing you don't know already."
Wolfe arched one eyebrow. "Please. Tell me what I know."
Vicious pushed his feet into the carpet, imagined being barefoot again. "You know that they're based in China. You know that they have operations in other places. Scattered around. You know that they use a biotechnology corporation as their syndicate front. You know that they share the same name as us."
Wolfe nodded and sat back in his chair, closing his eyes. "Let me tell you what else I know."
Vicious sank his feet a little harder into the carpet. There would be indentations left there.
Wolfe opened a desk drawer and brought out a hand-held tape recorder. Holding it up to his ear, he grinned at Vicious and pressed the play button.
"… think, that the Elders are looking forward to expanding onto Mars. Again, we wanted to merge with your organization because it is already quite established within this locality. The only reason we can tell you these things is because the Elders have already made their decision. We are almost ninety-nine percent sure that we will annex your organization and make it a division of our syndicate." Lin.
"Has Wolfe agreed to this?" Vicious recognized the voice as his own.
"The man--is not to be bothered, on our orders." Lin.
"Not to be bothered, or not bothered with?" It was Spike's voice, faintly disbelieving.
"Both."
Wolfe turned the tape recorder off, and cracked on eye open. "He gave a very thorough account of the syndicate."
Vicious didn't rise to the bait. "He did." He could hear the blood rushing through his head, roaring in his ears.
"And, if I remember correctly— " Wolfe closed his eyes again, his eyebrows arching pretentiously. "—oh, I remember. I'm doing whatever you're doing." His smile grew wider. "Did you ever decide on what you were going to do?"
Vicious chose not to say anything.
"Then I suppose I have a fifty-fifty chance of guessing what you and Spike are going to do." Wolfe said, and reached under his desk.
Vicious pulled out his gun the same instant Wolfe did, and the next moment they were both standing, aiming for each others' heads, steely grey eyes boring into cool blue ones, Wolfe's desk between them.
"What they're offering you would be too much for you, Vicious." Wolfe said. "You're just a delivery boy. You and Spike. That's all you are."
"And you're just our boss." Vicious said, both hands on his gun. "You're just the boss of two delivery boys."
"What makes you think that it'll be different with the Chinese?"
"They don't just think about fucking every night."
Wolfe's eyes flashed. "Prove your loyalty to the Red Dragons." He said.
"I don't have to prove anything." His voice had taken on a guttural quality, hoarse in his throat.
"You don't think I've been watching you?" Wolfe shook his head, stepping around the desk, keeping his gun pointed at Vicious. "This is standard procedure. I have men watching Spiegel right now. One word from me, and he's dead."
"He's Spiegel now?" Vicious felt like laughing. He was in Wolfe's office, with Wolfe's gun pointed at his head, his gun pointed at Wolfe's head, and minutes ago he had been imagining his bare toes curling into Wolfe's carpet.
"The ends justify the means." Wolfe grinned.
"No." Vicious said, his voice low in his throat. "You didn't."
Wolfe nodded, gripping the gun harder as he picked up the tape recorder again, clicked it on against his ear.
"Not enjoying the chase like before?"
"Oh no. The chase is always there. That's the thing I can always count on."
"And the reward is worth the chase?"
"Of course."
"And the end justifies the means?"
"Absolutely."
"Have you forgotten already?" Wolfe laughed, and threw the tape recorder on the table.
The clatter resounded in their ears. "Spiegel." Vicious wanted to laugh. "Spiegel."
"Prove your fucking loyalty to this organization, Vicious." Wolfe whispered. "Prove your fucking loyalty."
Vicious reached into his pocket and pulled out the bugged cell phone. "This. This proves my loyalty." He threw it onto Wolfe's desk, heard it fall to the floor with a muffled thump. "I have nothing to prove."
Wolfe shrugged. "It was standard procedure."
"Standard procedure." Vicious chuckled. "Fuck you."
"Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill you right now."
"I'm fifty percent of a decision that hasn't been made yet."
"You're fifty percent of a liability this organization can't afford to have."
"You don't care about liability." Vicious shook his head, eyes wide with incredulity. "You don't care about this organization. Indecisive. Weak. Those are the qualities of this organization."
"I heard an engine running for five hours last night." Wolfe's tone was soft, mockingly gentle. "I heard you driving for five hours last night. I heard that after hearing you leave from Spiegel's apartment. Am I the indecisive one?"
"Pathetic." Vicious said. "You're the pathetic one."
"At least I know what I want." Wolfe held his gun a little higher.
"You're not getting it." Vicious whispered.
"No, I don't think I could." Wolfe's tone was thoughtful. "Especially not when so much is at stake, right?" He gave his telephone a meaningful glance, and looked back up at Vicious. "I don't think I would be able to get much of anything if he were scattered all over the street."
Vicious ground his teeth, his hands shaking as he set the gun down. "Fuck you. Fuck you."
"Go fuck Spike." Wolfe replied nonchalantly as he took Vicious' gun, placed it in his holster. "You might earn your own self-respect."
Vicious bit his tongue so hard he tasted blood.
"Now if you'll run along." Wolfe sighed, and dropped into his chair, fingering the barrel of his gun. "I have some work to do."
He resisted the urge to crash his car into a wall and leave it a wreck. It was likely that Wolfe had done more than plant a bug in his cell phone—but he had no idea where the other surveillance material could be. In his car, in his apartment, in his food. In Spike's apartment, because that tape had recorded their conversation from last night--
But it was on the same tape that had followed the dinner conversation with Shin and Lin. Vicious screeched to a stop at a red light. It might be safe to assume that Spike's apartment wasn't bugged.
Virgins, Vicious realized. The fuckin' innocents.
He wrenched the steering wheel around, tires screaming in the U-turn. You couldn't see the red lights in a red-light district in the afternoon. But it didn't matter.
"When am I going to meet your little friend, anyway? Spike? I think that was his name."
Spike was clean in more ways than one.
"It was an assignment." Lisa said, her blue eyes a little too bright. Her chin was thrust out defiantly. Vicious stood by the door, arms crossed.
He had gone to the bar that Lisa usually frequented. She was there, chatting with her colleagues. She'd given him a smile of recognition and he'd vaguely gestured to the inn next door. She'd mouthed 'fifteen' at him, and he'd gone ahead and got a room.
And she'd opened the door, pressed her hot little mouth against his, and he reciprocated, shutting the door behind them, slipping her coat off and tying her hands together behind her back with her scarf. She'd blinked at him, a slight smirk on her face.
"You've gotten a little kinkier since I last saw you." She'd grinned.
Vicious had shaken his head and shoved her onto the bed. She gave a little squeal as she tumbled face-first into the pillows. "That's not what this is about."
"Oh." She'd said, blankly, at first. Then her eyes widened. "Oh."
"So tell me." Vicious said, sitting on the bed.
She'd jumped up and swung her head at him, and he'd barely managed to duck before she jammed her stiletto heels into his upper thigh and made a sprint for the door. He'd grabbed her hands, still tied together, and had yanked her back against the bed, and had pressed a hand against her mouth.
"It wouldn't matter if you screamed, anyway." He'd said, and let her go, standing up to guard the door. "So tell me."
And it was an assignment. A well-paid assignment, Vicious heard. One that kept her living comfortably for two weeks without having to serve a single customer.
"And now?" Vicious asked.
"Now I'm back." Lisa glared at the sheets, at the room. "Wonderful, isn't it?"
Vicious raised an eyebrow. "Were you paid to bug Spike's phone as well?"
Lisa hunched into herself, shaking her head. "Could have had another two weeks off if I had gotten him. You were assigned to me." Lisa said. "But Padre had instructions from Dr. Rodnag that whomever could land this guy would receive the reward."
"Padre?" Vicious prompted.
"Our." Lisa bit her lip. "You know."
Vicious nodded. "And Dr. Rodnag?"
Lisa shrugged. "You figure that one out."
Dr. Rodnag. Vicious shook his head as he made his way back over to Lisa. Red Dragon.
He sat her up and untied her hands, watching her wince and rub at her wrists.
"As far as you're concerned," Lisa said, lying back against the headboard, "they just think you're here for your afternoon fuck."
It wasn't necessary to specify who they were.
Vicious settled next to her, hands folded on his stomach. "So I'm not leaving right now."
"Not unless you can explain why you left such a huge sum of money for a ten-minute screw." Lisa said, her lips quirked in a half-smile, half-grimace as she closed her eyes and sighed. "I'm staking my ass on the line for you. You'd better put out."
Vicious reached into his pocket and pulled out his new cell phone, the one that Lin had given him. Lisa cracked open an eye. "Tempted?" He asked.
Lisa snorted and turned over onto her side.
It was late afternoon when Vicious pulled into the parking lot of Spike's apartment complex. He stopped his car and rolled down his window, fingers digging in his coat pocket for his lighter, a half-smoked cigarette already between his lips.
He watched the sun set, watched the sky turn from blue to pink to orange. He tried to guess which of the windows belonged to Spike's apartment. He smoked, he nibbled on the end of his cigarette, felt the paper and the filter give way under his teeth.
His cell phone rang once, but he didn't answer it. When the street lights turned on, Vicious dropped his cigarette on the asphalt and started his car.
A/N: Thanks for reading this chapter! 3 The review mark hit past 80, which made me sooo happy. =D This is probably the most-reviewed fic that I've written (and will keep writing!). I will definitely start writing chapter 10 when the review counter hits 90; I plan to have the chapter out around late September – early October.
I didn't get around to writing Lin and Shin into this chapter, which makes me sad. ;; But they will be in the next chapter for sure! Lin's fierce loyalty and protectiveness of Vicious always surprised me (as so valiantly displayed in the Jupiter Jazz episodes :D), and I hope to explore how that developed in the upcoming chapters.
Doesn't the blackmailing just scream 'plot device!' ? But the big S/V moment shouldn't be too far now. Heh.
And if you're not happy with what little action is going on right now between S & V (I know I'm not… all this plot is exhausting… and all the UST! . ), never fear! I have a special (heh heh heh) citrus-flavored fic that I plan to write and post once the counter reaches 100 reviews. =3 Muwahar.
Thanks again for reading! And the review button is right there. puppy-dog eyes Make my day! =D
