Chapter 3

"Can we move a little? Lean against the wall or something?" Sendoh arched his spine, stretching, and put a hand to his back.

"Sure. But I'm here to tell you, those rocks aren't comfortable against your back, even if they are rounded."

Sendoh groaned. "It doesn't matter, I just need to move. Wanted to warn you."

Rukawa smiled at him. "I appreciate that. I'll stay close." Both of them crabbed back on their hands until they reached the wall.

Sendoh leaned against it. The stones stood out round and hard against his back through his T-shirt. He made a face. "Nice."

Rukawa scratched his back against a rock. "At least they're good for something." He looked up to his left and back at the wall behind them. "Did you notice the way these fuckers have me chained up? The wall bracket, the ring at the end of the chain... hell, even the chain's pretty thick. Talk about overkill. No way I could break that. Though I tried."

"That work out well for you?"

"Smart ass."

Sendoh craned his neck, looking. He gave a low whistle. "Guess they want to be damn sure you can't get off their leash." He eyed Rukawa. "If that's what they think it'll take to keep you from escaping, they're giving you way more credit than I would."

"Yeah. Definitely more than they should have," Rukawa said, and Sendoh grinned at him. "Look at this setup, though. It just screams that these guys aren't new to the kidnapping business. And since we're here now, I'd say they got away with it before."

Sendoh shifted restlessly. His ass didn't like the cellar, and in particular the earthen floor, any more than he did. He looked up at the wall bracket again. "Shit. Is that a blood stain?"

Rukawa glanced up. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure. At first I thought it was rust. Hoped it was. It's harder to spot on the rocks, but it's there, too." His expression was grim.

"None of this makes any damned sense. So what, they kidnap us, keep us down here, give us food amf water and then kill us?" Sendoh's voice grew louder as he spoke. "It's like some fucked up horror movie- you get that, right?" His fingers dug into the packed earthen floor.

"Yeah, I do." Rukawa's voice was soft and even. He watched Sendoh.

"And I slept with the guys holding us. Way to go, me." Sendoh slumped back into himself and rubbed a hand over his face.

Rukawa was quiet a moment. He bumped Sendoh's shoulder with his own. "No worries. Long as you used a condom."

Sendoh stared at him. "Will you shut up?"

"Okay." Rukawa yawned.

"How can you be sleepy? We're in the middle of a kidnapping!"

"You want me to scream and tear out my hair?"

"Please. No."

Rukawa didn't crack a smile. "I'm exhausted. Everything hurts. I don't have a lot left over for hysterics, but if you change your mind and want a show I could give it a shot."

"I won't. What I want is for you not to be hurt at all." Sendoh felt as startled as Rukawa looked. It just slipped out of his mouth before he could think. "Uh, why don't try to sleep anyway? Get some rest."

"Don't think I can. We're in the middle of a kidnapping."

Sendoh threw him an exasperated look.

Rukawa ignored it. "The weird things is, I don't feel as shitty as I did. Relatively speaking. The dog attacked me just last night, we're not in exactly sanitary conditions, we only have water to clean the bites...and I feel better than I did when I woke up, even with the ankle messed up on top of everything else. It's crazy. It worries me."

"Quit looking a gift horse in the mouth."

Rukawa looked irritated. "What the fuck is that stupid saying anyway?"

"You really want to know? I can tell you."

"I said I didn't want to sleep now, thanks."

Sendoh bumped his shoulder back. "No? So we'll talk about something else. Why would kidnappers let me keep my wallet?"

Rukawa shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. You got anything in there that'll help us?"

Sendoh dug into the back of his jeans pocket and opened his billfold. "Let's see. There's a five, three ones, and a...never mind...and a penknife."

"You're kidding."

"Nope."

"You've actually got a knife on you?"

"Sort of?" Sendoh pulled it out of a credit card slot and held it up. Folded up, it was about the length of his index finger, the handle ridged and black. "I could try and stab someone in the eye with it, I guess. Maybe. If they didn't check my wallet, they don't even know I have it." He put the knife back where he had it, then shoved the wallet into his back pocket.

"That's good. That little penknife is our ace in the hole. We'll catch them unwares with it and we'll do...uh...what will we do with it?"

"Stab them in the eye, remember?" Sendoh said helpfully. He tapped his fingers on the ground. "You're distracting me. We need to look at your ankle."

"What, pour water over it? Not going to help much with the prongs still sticking into my skin. Back to what we were talking about. We've been kidnapped, it was planned, been done before, we're doomed..."

"You're not funny."

Rukawa was silent a moment. "I think I am."

"Unfucking funny. I mean it."

"What do you want from me? Told you panic isn't going to help." Rukawa hitched a shoulder and rubbed against one of the protruding rocks again.

"Well, if it's something that's happened before- somebody missing, somebody held hostage- the news would have picked it up, right? We'd probably have heard something."

Rukawa shrugged. "I don't know. Not necessarily, not if somebody just went missing. It'd be different if somebody saw something suspicious, saw someone dragged away or something like that, but if they just disappeared, well, people take off all the time. But maybe I'm way off, thinking we're not the first. I hope so." Rukawa leaned over and looked at his ankle. After a moment, he blotted carefully at the blood oozing from under the chain with the hem of his jeans. He sat back and looked at Sendoh. "Yeah, that fucking helped. Not."

"I'm sorry," Sendoh said again. He couldn't help it, though it felt useless to say so.

"I told you before. You didn't do this. Shut up about it, okay?"

Sendoh cleared his throat. "I don't know about you, but I don't have money. I don't have any family to speak of, either. Hell, I'm the next things to homeless." He gestured at Rukawa's ankle. "And even if we were being held for ransom, nothing explains that piece of work."

"I'm thinking that being held for ransom's got to be the lesser of evils at this point, but my family's not rich. They're not exactly poor, either, but still. There's plenty of better targets to pick if this were just about money." Rukawa sighed. "Any other ideas?"

Sendoh shrugged. "I can't figure any reason why anybody'd be after me. You?"

"Not a clue." Rukawa rolled his head against one of the rocks in the wall and looked up at the ceiling. "Not one fuckinh clue." He looked at Sendoh. "Time to move again, okay?"

Sendoh took a deep, sighing breath and sneezed. The air smelled musty, heavy with age and cold earth and things too long in the dark. "Okay. Which way we going?"

"Forward again. Away from the wall. You have allergies?"

"Nah." Sendoh sneezed again.

"They develop at any time, you know."

Sendoh pulled a breath in and thought about it. "If you look in a horse's mouth you can tell if it's young or old or sick, stuff like that. Somebody gives you a horse, you don't look in its mouth because that'd make you an ingrate."

"And you're telling me this because why?"

"I thought we were trading useless information."

"Damn, I like you." Rukawa's grin crinkled the corners of his eyes. "So, your turn. Tell me what you were doing last night. Shit, not the part where you- not that," he said hurriedly when Sendoh gave him a look. "Before."

"I've been laid off for a few weeks from my job. Some of my friends thought I needed a night out drinking. I had a few too many." Sendoh rubbed his nose and thought about it. "More than a few."

"Laid off, huh? It's a damn good reason to throw a few back. All the good college boys do it."

"I wouldn't know. Never went." Sendoh looked down at their feet. "And you're not putting me off anymore. I'm gonna look at that ankle, okay? Grab the water jug."

Rukawa rolled his eyes and leaned over, grabbing the pitcher by the handle. He put it by Sendoh on the ground. "Okay, Nurse Nightingale. But you pull that chain and I'll show you some real hysterics."

Sendoh nodded impatiently, then moved closer and bent over Rukawa's ankle. "They took your sock."

"Easier to carve the turkey that way, I guess. The turkey being me of course. Nice of them to give me my shoe back."

"Dude, you don't ever stop. Don't move." The chain was thinner than the wall chain and the same thickness as the chain that ran between them. Sendoh tried easing his finger in between it and Rukawa's skin. "Damn, that's tight." He gave up almost immediately. He'd hoped to try and work the jean material from Rukawa's pants leg in under the prongs, but nothing was going to wegde in there without gouging him further.

He leaned down again and studied Rukawa's ankle more closely, saw the metal prongs disappearing into swollen, bloody skin. "Damn it," he swore, couldn't help himself. "I don't see how you're sitting upright, much less talking through all this."

"Doesn't hurt too bad if I don't think about it," Rukawa said softly.

Sendoh shook his head, giving him a dubious look. There was blood all over Sendoh's hand. Blood caked on Rukawa's ankles and down below, into his sneaker. Sendoh winced, remembering how he'd pulled away from Rukawa earlier.

He picked up the jug and looked at Rukawa, making sure he was ready. Rukawa nodded, and Sendoh tipped water out of the jug. He heard Rukawa's breath hiss between his teeth. His hand jerked, splashing water over Rukawa's shin.

"Sorry," he said, not looking up. He kept pouring, a careful, slow flow.

"The water's making the prongs cold. Are you almost done?"

Sendoh stopped, looking up again. "Does it hurt?"

"I don't like it. Feels weird. Like I feel them cooling inside my skin."

"Almost done." Sendoh resumed pouring, stopping when the runoff was finally clear. The water was nearly gone. He put the jug down, then settled his hand on Rukawa's knee, looking at him intently. "I just don't understand why anyone would do this to you. What's the purpose here?"

Rukawa scratched his nose. "Don't know. We can ask them again next time they come down."

"Don't joke. This is so, so far from funny. They've got this shit rigged specifically to hurt you. I'd like to know why."

"I know it's not funny, damn it, but they didn't give me any answers. You're the one that spent time with these guys, not me. I'm sorry to ask, but do you remember anything at all from last night that might help us figure out what's going on? What they want from us?" He paused. "Not that I want to think about you with those guys, but if there's anything-"

"Sorry to offend you, dude," Sendoh interrupted, ice in his voice. "This is fucking stupid."

"No, you're stupid. Or blind, maybe. I'm not offended. I was kind of wishing I'd met you first."

Sendoh stared at Rukawa, taking in the high cheek bones, the eyes tip-tilted like a fox, cerulean-blue, alive. There was no revulsion there, only an openness to being seen that Sendoh envied, and suddenly he felt that Rukawa deserved to know whatever it was he could tell him.

"I just needed to blow off some steam. I went with them. They liked things pretty, uh, rough, but I can handle a little enthusiasm." Sendoh felt his face redden, but he kept talking. "You talked about the smaller guy being strong, but both of them are powerful. Really in sync, too, like they know each other really well. They didn't threaten me. They didn't do anything at all that made me think twice about being with them. I was pretty drunk, like I said, and I passed out afterwards. I woke up here."

"You didn't hear any noise this morning before they brought you down here? Because I put up a fight." Rukawa laughed, short and bitter. "Lasted about two seconds, but still."

"No," Sendoh mumbled, rubbing an eye with the heel of his hand. "Been a really shitty week. Month." He sighed. "This is not helping, Rukawa. Nothing felt off. Nobody acted freaky. It was a pickup, that's all. At least that's all I wanted."

"Did they talk? What'd they say?" Rukaw asked hesitantly, as if he knew he was pushing it.

Something snapeed inside Sendoh. "Yeah. Spread your legs, turn over, you like it like this?" Sendoh's voice was fast, impatient.

Rukawa's mouth fell open. "Shit. Don't do that to me."

"You wanted to know, didn't you." Sendoh said it flatly, suddenly enraged and knowing it wasn't at Rukawa, acutely uncomfortable with talking about his sex life with anyone- even this shaggy-headed motormouth who already made Sendoh feel easier with him than anybody else had managed in a long time.

"I didn't. Not the way you make it sound." Rukawa's voice was soft.

Sendoh looked at him sharply. "Yeah. Listen, it's just... I don't talk about this shit, okay? Not anyone else's business." He sighed again, tried to relax. "The brown-haired one's name is Fujima, and the bigger guy is Maki. Not that it helps or anything, but..."

Rukawa nodded, then stared at the dirt floor, his face expressionless. He rubbed a finger idly in the dirt.

"Rukawa... what was your first name?" It was the first thing Sendoh could think of to break the awkward silence.

"Uh, Kaede."

Sendoh eyes went wide. "That's the girls name. Do your parents even like you?"

Rukawa's eyes shot up to meet Sendoh's. His brows drew down. "Hey, now."

"Well, I mean it's a little... unusual."

"They've always acted like they like me, but there's no possible way they'd lay a name like that on a baby boy if they really did, so no. They do not. And thanks, I was completely unaware that my name was unusual until you so kindly pointed it out."

"Listen, bitch, I like odd. I'm odd. It's great." Sendoh smiled.

Rukawa eyed the smile with suspicion. "You're indeed odd."

"Like who?"

"Never mind."

"Heh."

"So, what's your name?"

"Akira."

"Ah. Also girls name." Rukawa looked absurdly pleased, as if he felt the playing field were somehow leveled between them.

"Yeah, but Akira isn't...embarrassing."

"You sure about that?" Rukawa punched him in the shoulder. "Sounds like somebody's grandma to me."

Sendoh grimaced, and Rukawa smiled at him. It knocked Sendoh back a little- it was a great smile, so pretty face.

The smile disappeared as suddenly as it came. "Damn."

"What?"

"Here they come."

Sendoh looked at Rukawa, question in his eyes.

"Don't you hear them?"

Sendoh listened, finally hearing the floor creak close by the stairway. The door opened.

tbc

Thank You For Reading.