→ imeeji: memory five
Mar. 1st, 2019 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
irregularThat's what you're doing for those first few crucial seconds, limbs slack, breath tight in your chest: praying to God and Christ and any of the saints that might be listening that he doesn't follow up with the head shot.
You can never remember what they call it - the pulse point in the neck.
You do know this, however: most people cannot find it to save their lives.
Kase went for center mass. That was smart: gotta give him that much at least. He doesn't follow up with the head shot, though, and that's really, really fucking dumb. That's what you're doing, for those first few crucial seconds, your limbs slack and your breath tight in your chest: praying to God and Christ and any of the saints that might be listening that he doesn't follow up with the head shot, because if he does then it's over no matter how many bases you thought you had covered. But he doesn't, he just doesn't and you exhale slowly as he stands and turns his back on you. But then, he always was cocky. Always did think he had it right first time.
You found that charming, once. Read arrogance as confidence, posturing as skill. You thought he played for love, because you did. The pros had seen through it in seconds. Just another small-town hero, sitting smug in his castle on the sand.
The shock isn't how much he hates you. The shock is how jealous he still is.
So no, you can't remember what they call that pulse point. Probably named after one of the arteries, but fuck if you know what it is either. It's just the artery in your neck. Kase potters around the house and its complement of corpses (the last idiot trusted him, too); he washes up the glasses, he washes his hands. He doesn't bother cleaning up further: there'll be people to do that for him, now. Perhaps he'll set the place on fire - but then again, perhaps he won't. It didn't work so brilliantly last time, after all. You think, ridiculously, of the thing that someone told you once, about what a problem it was for the paramedics that so few people could find that pulse. Right beneath the chin, about the point the jawbone angles up, then press hard. Harder. There.
It's killed people, and you're not supposed to be that lucky. You - lying on the patio, curled up around the ache in your ribs, breathing in sips and wondering exactly when it was he first started to hate you - you're not supposed to be the one guy that it saves.
The front door slams; a car door slams. Sound of an engine, receding, with a brief comic interlude to open and close a gate. You wait for the sound to die away. Then, still not moving, you start to count.
You count a thousand, hearing nothing but the murmur of the grasses and the leaves in the trees, the rustle and whirr of insects, birds yelling at one another in bird and the distant grumble of traffic on the highway. After that - well, you've been cautious. You reason that you might as well let yourself get up. So you sit, and nothing happens, and you rub the patio dirt off your cheek and your clothes. You've bled just enough he didn't think to question it, and you stand at the sink to wash away the blood just like Kase washed away the cyanide. Your chest still aches, and now you breathe cautiously because it hurts. Maybe Kevlar can stop a bullet, but it can't change the fact you've been shot.
You take one last look at the old man's cooling corpse as you head to the door. Kouga is still slumped in his chair, with flecks of foam on his lips and his chin, and already he looks waxy and drained. And he smells, too: bitter almonds would be preferable. A glossy blue-green fly lands on his cheek, walks over one boggling eye: you pull a face, you wave it away. Poor bastard. Maybe somebody had to do it: maybe you would have done, if you could. Maybe this sort of death, for a guy like him, is damn near natural causes. But here and now he's just another idiot with lousy taste in men, just another guy who bought what Kase was selling, because the sly, self-serving bastard told him what he wanted to hear.
Sometimes, you really, really fucking hate being right.
You've still got the bike. You've still got the backup. There's a hundred and one things he doesn't know, never asked, about what you've been getting up to since the fire: how you might have managed to survive. It's another thing you now realize you've always resented, this senpai-kouhai, you-talk-I-listen bullshit, the complete lack of interest in anything but pouring his problems into you, until yours got too big to ignore.
And you're there before him: you all are. But he comes back to the headquarters - glossy, gleaming, imposing and entirely legitimate-seeming, a tower block just like the one next to it, and the one on the far side of the road - just like you know he will, to lay claim to his kingdom before anyone else can snatch it from him. He'll want to present his foster children with a fait accompli. So Kase comes back - with a couple of his brothers, just in case. That's probably what took all the time. Probably off telling them it was all sorted over a couple of cups of sake. You didn't make a move like the one he just did without being pretty damn sure you won't end up with a knife in your own back, five minutes down the line...
When you step out onto the top of the stairs, he stares. You're a ghost, a revenant, a reprisal.
He's killed you twice. He'll do it again. Third time lucky, and stay down this time--
But there's a rule about guns (does he know it?), which says that at this range you're just as dangerous. It says you can close the gap between you faster than draw-aim-shoot. So when he goes for the gun again you're ready, and three fucking times spells intent. So you move - you don't bother with the stairs. You run, you spring, you hit the ground running, and when the claws on your gloved hand sink into Kase's chest - up and under, a twist and a tear - you feel the impact, right the way up to the shoulder.
The bullet goes nowhere. You're a better killer than him, too, and it's sickening.
Hell has been here all along.
You can never remember what they call it - the pulse point in the neck.
You do know this, however: most people cannot find it to save their lives.
Kase went for center mass. That was smart: gotta give him that much at least. He doesn't follow up with the head shot, though, and that's really, really fucking dumb. That's what you're doing, for those first few crucial seconds, your limbs slack and your breath tight in your chest: praying to God and Christ and any of the saints that might be listening that he doesn't follow up with the head shot, because if he does then it's over no matter how many bases you thought you had covered. But he doesn't, he just doesn't and you exhale slowly as he stands and turns his back on you. But then, he always was cocky. Always did think he had it right first time.
You found that charming, once. Read arrogance as confidence, posturing as skill. You thought he played for love, because you did. The pros had seen through it in seconds. Just another small-town hero, sitting smug in his castle on the sand.
The shock isn't how much he hates you. The shock is how jealous he still is.
So no, you can't remember what they call that pulse point. Probably named after one of the arteries, but fuck if you know what it is either. It's just the artery in your neck. Kase potters around the house and its complement of corpses (the last idiot trusted him, too); he washes up the glasses, he washes his hands. He doesn't bother cleaning up further: there'll be people to do that for him, now. Perhaps he'll set the place on fire - but then again, perhaps he won't. It didn't work so brilliantly last time, after all. You think, ridiculously, of the thing that someone told you once, about what a problem it was for the paramedics that so few people could find that pulse. Right beneath the chin, about the point the jawbone angles up, then press hard. Harder. There.
It's killed people, and you're not supposed to be that lucky. You - lying on the patio, curled up around the ache in your ribs, breathing in sips and wondering exactly when it was he first started to hate you - you're not supposed to be the one guy that it saves.
The front door slams; a car door slams. Sound of an engine, receding, with a brief comic interlude to open and close a gate. You wait for the sound to die away. Then, still not moving, you start to count.
You count a thousand, hearing nothing but the murmur of the grasses and the leaves in the trees, the rustle and whirr of insects, birds yelling at one another in bird and the distant grumble of traffic on the highway. After that - well, you've been cautious. You reason that you might as well let yourself get up. So you sit, and nothing happens, and you rub the patio dirt off your cheek and your clothes. You've bled just enough he didn't think to question it, and you stand at the sink to wash away the blood just like Kase washed away the cyanide. Your chest still aches, and now you breathe cautiously because it hurts. Maybe Kevlar can stop a bullet, but it can't change the fact you've been shot.
You take one last look at the old man's cooling corpse as you head to the door. Kouga is still slumped in his chair, with flecks of foam on his lips and his chin, and already he looks waxy and drained. And he smells, too: bitter almonds would be preferable. A glossy blue-green fly lands on his cheek, walks over one boggling eye: you pull a face, you wave it away. Poor bastard. Maybe somebody had to do it: maybe you would have done, if you could. Maybe this sort of death, for a guy like him, is damn near natural causes. But here and now he's just another idiot with lousy taste in men, just another guy who bought what Kase was selling, because the sly, self-serving bastard told him what he wanted to hear.
Sometimes, you really, really fucking hate being right.
You've still got the bike. You've still got the backup. There's a hundred and one things he doesn't know, never asked, about what you've been getting up to since the fire: how you might have managed to survive. It's another thing you now realize you've always resented, this senpai-kouhai, you-talk-I-listen bullshit, the complete lack of interest in anything but pouring his problems into you, until yours got too big to ignore.
And you're there before him: you all are. But he comes back to the headquarters - glossy, gleaming, imposing and entirely legitimate-seeming, a tower block just like the one next to it, and the one on the far side of the road - just like you know he will, to lay claim to his kingdom before anyone else can snatch it from him. He'll want to present his foster children with a fait accompli. So Kase comes back - with a couple of his brothers, just in case. That's probably what took all the time. Probably off telling them it was all sorted over a couple of cups of sake. You didn't make a move like the one he just did without being pretty damn sure you won't end up with a knife in your own back, five minutes down the line...
When you step out onto the top of the stairs, he stares. You're a ghost, a revenant, a reprisal.
He's killed you twice. He'll do it again. Third time lucky, and stay down this time--
But there's a rule about guns (does he know it?), which says that at this range you're just as dangerous. It says you can close the gap between you faster than draw-aim-shoot. So when he goes for the gun again you're ready, and three fucking times spells intent. So you move - you don't bother with the stairs. You run, you spring, you hit the ground running, and when the claws on your gloved hand sink into Kase's chest - up and under, a twist and a tear - you feel the impact, right the way up to the shoulder.
The bullet goes nowhere. You're a better killer than him, too, and it's sickening.
Hell has been here all along.
notes |
| ★ K has really terrible taste in friends. This is the same childhood friend he was with the night of the fire that supposedly killed him, and they both ended up making very similar bargains with two very different men. Kase's? He was a Yakuza boss, and he ended up working as his personal assistant. What K thinks he's up to... well, he doesn't seem to have a lot of choice in who he's getting aimed at. |
| ★ He also quite possibly has really terrible taste in boyfriends. |
| ★ K's taste in murder victims may also be becoming slightly more obvious at this stage: they include another hitman in a hockey mask who was trying to murder a girl and two very obvious gangsters and are, as far as anybody can tell, really not very nice people. It's starting to sound like the man behind the man figures he's cleaning up the streets, and picked a kid with nothing to hold him back to do it. |
| ★ For all K's choice of profession and Kase's status as a target, his ultimate death at K's hands is the result of an act of self-defense. By the time he dies, Kase has tried to kill him no less than three fucking times... and is actively in the middle of Attempt #3 when K finally fatally stabs him. |
