Disclaimer: Don't own Gambit; do own pretty much everyone else.
A/N: Rating for language, substance misuse and implied adult situations. Please review?
01
"You've no fucking right!" the girl screamed hysterically, her anger flashing in her eyes. She backed away from him across the street, ignorant of the rest of the world. Overhead the sky was a blackout curtain, trapping in the fluorescent glow of street lamps and illuminated signs. The reverberating music of the nightclub resonated through the ground she stood on. She could still feel its crushing embrace, thumping her ribcage, making it hard for her to breathe. Her ears rang with the distorted sound. Adrenaline and alcohol in her blood fuelled her rage, enticed it until it overrode all other feelings she had ever had for him.
"Stupid bitch!" he roared back righteously, storming after her and reaching to grab her arm. She struggled as his grip pinched her flesh, knowing he was stronger than she was. This girl was no pushover though, she twisted and elbowed him in the neck, making him retch and let go. She moved away again, and then stopped, watching him warily.
"Stay the fucking hell away from me!"
"Shit…" he coughed, placing his hands on his thighs, dropping his head and coughing. He spat to clear his throat, and then shook his head in a vague effort to clear his thoughts. When he looked up again, he ran his eyes over her body with familiarity he perhaps shouldn't have. He'd done so much for her, and this was how she repaid him? He'd wanted her, but now everything about her disgusted him. So then, this was how it was to end…
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Two months earlierIt was hot, uncomfortably so in the city. Everything was dusty, grey and shimmering in the heat haze. The temperature caused an uneasy insipidness to mask the sounds of normal Cape Town life. It sapped the energy of the people on the streets, like a lioness draining off the life of the antelope fawn she held in her unrelenting jaws. The image shifted, becoming solid, becoming just one more tattoo on the very muscular upper arm of an individual crossing a boulevard in the wrong part of town.
In a white vest mottled with yellow sweat stains and baggy tan-coloured pants, the local man wasn't as uncomfortable as some in the heat. He pushed open the door to the sickly-looking apartment complex with a grunt. Inside as the door closed behind him, he raised his face slightly to feel the ceiling fans blast still-hot air in his direction. He was vilely ugly, reeking of unwashed flesh and with a nose and jaw that had been broken and contorted many times, turning him into a gargoyle of a man. He scratched the stubble on his shaven head as he glanced at a yellowed scrap of paper in his hand. Room 44 was scrawled on it in blue biro. Victoria Building, Room 44. That was where he needed to be. He dropped the piece of paper on the floor and strode over it. His hand drifted to the handgun at his hip. He'd heard that there were mutants around here. He wouldn't let no damned mutant fuck with him.
The two hookers and the couple of putrid old drunks sheltering from the heat of the day in the building's foyer watched the man with the lioness tattoo head for the stairs. They started whispering to each other, rolling their eyes and sucking in breath. All of them had seen his gun and the aggressive way he moved. They quickly reached the conclusion that whatever the ugly tattooed stranger was up to, they did not want to be around to find out. Maybe now was a good time to leave…
He had to engage an infrequently exercised intellect to find the room he was looking for. One gold sticky label number had peeled off the cracked, greasy veneer years ago in the oppressive, malodorous corridor. He had to allow for the fact that the room thus labelled 4 sat between 42 and 46, opposite 43, before reaching for the handle confidently. The door was stiff, but it wasn't locked. No reason it should be, this had all been arranged. A shove of his massive shoulder and he was entering the apartment.
It was pokey, cluttered with ancient mismatched furniture and decorated with stained wallpaper and floorboards. What the stains were he thought best not to worry about. He wasn't naïve, he'd done this a million times before in apartments, houses and hotel rooms just like this one, and frequently worse. Somewhere a fat fly buzzed lazily, probably in its death throws. The ceiling fan was flying round so fast it was swinging violently from its mooring. It too buzzed loudly, yet it made no difference to the smell of stale alcohol and sweat. The curtains, sad baggy brown rags full of holes, sagged over the open window, leaving the room in shallow shade. The tattooed man barely noticed. He was too busy closing the door, and admiring the only attractive fixture in the room.
The girl sprawled unconscious on the sagging grey sofa that was positioned lengthways along the wall at a right angle to the door. Wearing only a white cotton thong and vest combo, her body seemed spread out just for his enjoyment. One hand rested on her chest, the other just about brushed an empty vodka bottle that lay uncapped on the floor. The man took out his silver gun as he stepped a pace forward towards her. Without thinking about it, he flicked off the safety. Her long silky pale legs were closest to him. For some reason known only to his sick mind, he ran the butt of the gun over her ankle, up her calf and stroked the inside of her left thigh with the metal. Not even her eyelids flickered to suggest she was aware of him. The man smiled coldly, a perverse pleasure pleasing him.
There was a noise, making him suddenly look up. Of the two internal doors to the room, one was on the same wall as the sofa, and the other faced it. Both doors were covered with curtains of brown wooden beads on strings that clattered slightly in the breeze from the fan and window. The clattering substantially increased as the curtain opposite the girl was moved out of the way by an arm, and a new figure stepped partially through. The newcomer leant on the doorframe and said nothing, cast in just enough shade to hide any distinguishable features such as eye or hair colour. The tattooed man scowled, unimpressed at the new arrival. Just a skinny kid, he thought to himself as he examined what was little more than a lean silhouette.
The youth looked the older man over with equal distaste and disappointment. Tall and dripping with confidence, his hands shuffled a pack of playing cards with flare. Still he didn't speak, biding his time for the tattooed man to make his play. The girl on the sofa remained unmoving as the ceiling fan continued to whirl pointlessly.
"You the one I'm supposed to meet?" the older man asked his younger counterpart, who nodded slowly in reply. "I was told you gotta load you're trying to get rid of. It isn't your usual game." Again the younger man nodded, but didn't say anything. He just leant on the doorway and shuffled his cards like all this was barely holding his interest. It made the tattooed man irritable, his sweaty palm closing tighter around the silver gun he carried so easily.
"I wouldn't normally take crap like this on, you get me?" he continued. "I'd be doing you a favour, leading the cops away. I'm thinking I should be leaving you to rot…" He paused for effect, and then turned slightly back towards the way he had come in. He hoped he was scaring the kid shitless, but a backwards glance proved that theory incorrect. The kid was a pro, and he was starting to make the tattooed man feel uncomfortable.
"There's no money in drugs if that's what you're thinking. The big guys are too clever to let nobodies like you and me make anything serious," the younger guy just shrugged, unperturbed, making the older man laugh coldly.
"You're a cool one kid, I'll give you that. Listen, I might be able to get twenty for it, if its as good as our mutual friend told me, if there's as much and if the big guys are buying. Those are some big ifs, kid. So make it five for you, fifteen for me, what with me taking all the risks here…" he tailed off, scratching his crotch as a leer swept over his face. "Tell you what, you go back through there and leave me with the bitch here, just for ten minutes, and I'll let you take seven. You can't say fairer than that, hey kid?"
He saw the younger man hesitate for the first time, saw his gaze flick to the girl on the sofa. That was when he knew he had him, and the deal was as good as made.
"C'mon man," the tattooed thug pressed, feeling his own blood rising with the promise of the girl so close. He could almost smell her scent, taste the salt on her skin… "Its not like she isn't asking for it. Ten minutes that's all I want, and I make you a richer man, much richer. So what do you say?"