Fanfiction : DOGS (Carnage & Bullets) - More Than Meet The Eye(s)
Title: More Than Meet The Eye(s).
Type: Fanfiction : DOGS (Carnage & Bullets).
Prompt: More DOGS fanfics.
Disclaimer: I do not own DOGS (Carnage & Bullets), because it's just too awesome for my limited intelligence to conjure. It belongs to Miwa Shirow and I'm just playing with the pretty characters.
Rating: PG13, for language and sort-of-kind-of disturbing violence.
Word Count: 1,931 words.
Summary: AU. Badou works with cameras, works with the incomprehensible world of stills and frames. And sometimes... sometimes he cannot forget. [ HaineBadou ]. One-shot.
Author's Note: This is actually an experiment of an AU that takes control of my mind. I fell in love with the plot bunny and it multiplies in its own. Badou seems kind of different (read: sort of psycho) in this one and I had trouble grasping scenes at times. I NEED OPINIONS. I'd love to continue with this 'verse and any help on how to improve this piece will be muchly appreciated. Because I HEART YOU GUYS!!
more than meet the eye(s)
Choose the easy way out,
Take a knife, pick a poison,
Drink yourself into oblivion.
Because Hell is your personal Heaven.
There’s something artistic about photography.
There’s something artistic about photography, about the way the too-fast pace of the world is immortalised into a still frame with just a single click. Recording even the most miniscule of details, most intricate of designs that may have been missed by naked eyes.
There’s something artistic about photography, about the way the too-fast pace of the world is immortalised into a still replica with just a single click. Recording even the most miniscule of details, most intricate of designs that may have been missed by naked eyes. Captured in a split second and admired for eternity. How the flow of Time stops within that small frame, as if in respect, in reverence to its captor’s will.
Time stands still in a photograph.
Time that should have passed and be forgotten.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Badou’s lips twist into a grimace. He finds her position to be distasteful - elbows and knees bent into odd angles and his aesthetic sense disagrees with that - but he says nothing of it. Positions of his subject are the least of his worries. He focuses the lenses on her exposed feet, on perfect pale skin and red-painted toenails. He works his way up. Always like that, and it has become a comforting routine. He snaps shots of spread thighs, tiny waist and sagging breasts. Nipples piercing, glinting silver under artificial light.
Badou pauses to change to a roll of fresh films.
The face is next. He always saves the best for last.
Her neck is a frail structure of marked skin and barely-there flesh. Too thin, just like the rest of her body. Maybe just strong enough to support her head and bleached hair. Hair that falls around her face like some sort of an obscuring curtain, like she is trying to hide herself from the world. She is a pretty girl and Badou cannot see the reason for a girl like her to be a recluse. Such a waste. He lingers for a few seconds on her lips, appreciating the stark contrast of ruby red against pale skin.
Her eyes are a mixture of grey and blue and green.
Grey and blue and green and pain. Too much pain.
Click.
Click.
Click.
“You finish over there, boy?”
Badou takes a drag from his cigarette, lowers his camera and ignores the disapproving glance from his superior as he places the cap over the lenses. “Yep. Got her all pretty and proper.”
The balding man sniffs and coughs and wheezes loudly. Badou wonders when his lungs will finally shrivel up and falls off. “Get out of here and have those developed. I want them on my desk pronto.” He coughs again, frowning at the girl from across the room. “Fucking bitch’s the third case this week. Can’t even get a decent sleep until we got this smoothed over. Goddamn press gonna have a field day over this one.”
“Not every day we have a serial killer in our neighbourhood, boss,” he quips, packing his gear and grinning around his cigarette. He shoulders his bag and heads towards the door. There are yellow tapes all over but he’s used to it. “Look at the bright side. Least you can boast ‘bout it in the retirement home.”
“Son of a bit-”
The rest of the sentence drowns inside a sea of sirens and murmured conversations and worried inquiries on the other side of the door. Badou navigates easily through the mass of uniforms swarming the place, waving at familiar faces and nodding at other photographers. There are a middle-aged couple sitting in the living room, an officer with a notebook and Badou offers them a grim smile. Plays the part of a sympathetic stranger perhaps a little too well. He had done the same thing to other families before this one. He’s used to this.
Everyone dies in this town.
That night, Badou pins up another photograph on his wall, right between the glossy shots of a dismembered body from a case down by the river and the severed head of a thirteen year old boy.
He climbs onto his bed, lights a cigarette and spends the night staring at lifeless grey and blue and green eyes.
He cannot forget.
*
“The Canine Killer Strikes Again!”
“- the community is living in fear, since the first victim, Heather Cord, twenty years old, a social worker for the Saint Cross Hospital, was found in her bathroom four days ago.”
“- found traces of canine hair at the crime scene and on the victim’s body. The victim, seventeen year old Samantha Greene of Woodland High, is the new sacrifice of what is becoming the most horrendous series of crimes-”
“She’s a sweet girl, you know? Totally helpful, always smiling and she’s planning to go to university and take law and. Oh God. Why would anyone-”
“- Mr and Mrs Greene refuse to talk to the press-”
“- on her neck are definitely claw marks. The cause of death is confirmed to be blood loss, though the exact method in which the killer manages to suck out the blood of the victim from such shallow injuries is yet-”
“- the police are still trying to track down the mysterious killer and any information from the public will help in tracking down this merciless monster. I’m Joan Slack, reporting for TV 9.”
Badou switches off the television and spoons soggy cereal into his mouth, staring at rain pelting against the glass of his window.
He remembers that he had run out of coffee two days ago.
*
There is a small, folded note inside his mail box when he gets back from grocery shopping. It’s so inconspicuous and unexpected that he almost missed it, almost missed the slip of paper peeking from the slit of the metal box. Badou shifts the paper bag to his hip, lowers his umbrella and fishes the note out, eyebrows furrowing into a curious half-scowl. He makes it a rule to never disclose his home address. Too many enemies and too little time to re-live the past.
The paper is white and thick, like ones used to make solemn greeting cards. Badou gives the front flap a once-over, notes the lack of to whom it is addresses to and flips it open.
I’m back.
Inky black script. Handwritten. Such arrogance and familiarity punctuating each word that Badou has no trouble discerning the sender of the note. He folds it carefully and tucks it inside the pocket of his jeans, shaking his umbrella free of lingering raindrops at the same time. There is a petite old woman, wrapped in layers of kaftans, smiling down at him from her balcony and Badou waves at her, eye curving into customary happy crescent. He had taken pictures of her daughter-in-law the year before.
She was hacked into fifteen pieces and found inside a garbage bag in someone’s ventilation system, her bright red hair a messy tangle among rotting intestines and chunks of flesh.
The old woman calls him Stella sometimes.
Badou hefts his load and starts towards the elevator. He gets inside just in time, grins at a young couple on their way out and pushes the button ‘13’, exhaling softly as the metal contraption begins its ascension.
His reflection on the shiny, chromatic surface supports the widest grin he has seen since he moves into the town.
*
The first thing he notices when he stands in front of the door is that his security system is fucked to Hell. He’s not the kind of person that installs an electronic thingamajig to protect his den and expects it to be a techologized version of a guardian angel. No. That’s no way to spend his hard-earned money. Badou narrows his eye at the piece of transparent cellophane tape at the furthermost corner of the door, at an angle where the corner meets the frame, and frowns. It has been ripped off. The smoke from his cigarette floats like lazy phantoms to the ceiling and Badou takes one last drag, before grounding it with the heel of his sneakers.
He reaches for the doorknob, spends a second to contemplate his course of action and twists it with only a sliver of hesitation.
The door opens in one easy arc and Badou steps inside slowly, half-expecting an ambush from gorilla-sized armed madmen and crazy pseudo mafia bosses. Disappointing silence welcomes his return and the door closes quietly behind him, as though understanding the grave importance of blending in with the current situation. A quick check around the apartment reveals that nothing is missing. At least, not yet. There is a trail of wet footstep on his parquet floor and to Badou, that is just as good as a yellow brick road.
He ends up in his bedroom with just five steps.
Crimson eyes and white hair and sharp grin greet his entrance and Badou might have forgotten how to breathe.
“Haine?”
His voice is strangely soft once the word escapes his throat, laced with a mixture of disbelief and relief and needyouneedyouneedyou. It is a word he has not spoken out loud for months, years, ages. So long it feels like yesterday. Buried so deep inside his memory that sometimes, sometimes he doesn’t even know if the owner of the name even exists. The taps of rain against the window, the busy rattles of vehicles outside, the screeching music from floors above - they all seems to fade into nothingness inside his head, joining in the symphony of silence that resides over the space.
Haine nods, as if a mere confirmation will make a difference, grin morphing into a slow smile. Inviting and cold and warm and dangerous, all at the same time. Familiar. Haine hasn’t changed. Not from what Badou can see. Wild, untamed hair that sticks out everywhere. Eyes that mirror malevolence and secrets and “I know something you don’t”. Still the same, untouched by changes and mortality’s frailties. As if Time hasn’t passed for Haine. As if Time stops for Haine. For one second, Badou believes that is possible.
He used to believe that Haine can defy the law of reality if the man wants to.
He still believes that. Sometimes, sometimes.
They are standing close enough that he can see dry blossoms of something-crimson on Haine’s otherwise white shirt, just over the collar. Badou wonders if being a hired kill means that the other man has no time for laundry. His eye trails to Haine’s neck, catching glimpses of ruined skin that white hair tries to conceal. Wonders if the mark - THE mark - is still there, etched into pale skin and hardened muscles. Just as he remembers it.
Badou snaps out of his reverie when Haine takes a step forward, spreads his arms and the smile turns teasingly malicious.
No word. Not words. Words are overrated.
Badou sinks into the welcoming heat, clutches the white-haired man in a desperate embrace and rests his head on the broad shoulder. Tries to channel what he feels as their bodies mould to fit each other. Just like old times. He inhales deeply. It has been too long, too long. Far too long.
His eye starts to close, but not before he realises that another pair of eyes is watching them, right from the collage of pictures on the opposite wall.
Observing, calculating, judging.
Mocking.
Grey and blue and green swirl behind his eyelids, incomprehensible vortex of colours and Badou tightens his hold on Haine.
He wishes that he can forget.
He cannot.
END?
Critics are very much loved and welcomed!
Type: Fanfiction : DOGS (Carnage & Bullets).
Prompt: More DOGS fanfics.
Disclaimer: I do not own DOGS (Carnage & Bullets), because it's just too awesome for my limited intelligence to conjure. It belongs to Miwa Shirow and I'm just playing with the pretty characters.
Rating: PG13, for language and sort-of-kind-of disturbing violence.
Word Count: 1,931 words.
Summary: AU. Badou works with cameras, works with the incomprehensible world of stills and frames. And sometimes... sometimes he cannot forget. [ HaineBadou ]. One-shot.
Author's Note: This is actually an experiment of an AU that takes control of my mind. I fell in love with the plot bunny and it multiplies in its own. Badou seems kind of different (read: sort of psycho) in this one and I had trouble grasping scenes at times. I NEED OPINIONS. I'd love to continue with this 'verse and any help on how to improve this piece will be muchly appreciated. Because I HEART YOU GUYS!!
more than meet the eye(s)
Choose the easy way out,
Take a knife, pick a poison,
Drink yourself into oblivion.
Because Hell is your personal Heaven.
There’s something artistic about photography.
There’s something artistic about photography, about the way the too-fast pace of the world is immortalised into a still frame with just a single click. Recording even the most miniscule of details, most intricate of designs that may have been missed by naked eyes.
There’s something artistic about photography, about the way the too-fast pace of the world is immortalised into a still replica with just a single click. Recording even the most miniscule of details, most intricate of designs that may have been missed by naked eyes. Captured in a split second and admired for eternity. How the flow of Time stops within that small frame, as if in respect, in reverence to its captor’s will.
Time stands still in a photograph.
Time that should have passed and be forgotten.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Badou’s lips twist into a grimace. He finds her position to be distasteful - elbows and knees bent into odd angles and his aesthetic sense disagrees with that - but he says nothing of it. Positions of his subject are the least of his worries. He focuses the lenses on her exposed feet, on perfect pale skin and red-painted toenails. He works his way up. Always like that, and it has become a comforting routine. He snaps shots of spread thighs, tiny waist and sagging breasts. Nipples piercing, glinting silver under artificial light.
Badou pauses to change to a roll of fresh films.
The face is next. He always saves the best for last.
Her neck is a frail structure of marked skin and barely-there flesh. Too thin, just like the rest of her body. Maybe just strong enough to support her head and bleached hair. Hair that falls around her face like some sort of an obscuring curtain, like she is trying to hide herself from the world. She is a pretty girl and Badou cannot see the reason for a girl like her to be a recluse. Such a waste. He lingers for a few seconds on her lips, appreciating the stark contrast of ruby red against pale skin.
Her eyes are a mixture of grey and blue and green.
Grey and blue and green and pain. Too much pain.
Click.
Click.
Click.
“You finish over there, boy?”
Badou takes a drag from his cigarette, lowers his camera and ignores the disapproving glance from his superior as he places the cap over the lenses. “Yep. Got her all pretty and proper.”
The balding man sniffs and coughs and wheezes loudly. Badou wonders when his lungs will finally shrivel up and falls off. “Get out of here and have those developed. I want them on my desk pronto.” He coughs again, frowning at the girl from across the room. “Fucking bitch’s the third case this week. Can’t even get a decent sleep until we got this smoothed over. Goddamn press gonna have a field day over this one.”
“Not every day we have a serial killer in our neighbourhood, boss,” he quips, packing his gear and grinning around his cigarette. He shoulders his bag and heads towards the door. There are yellow tapes all over but he’s used to it. “Look at the bright side. Least you can boast ‘bout it in the retirement home.”
“Son of a bit-”
The rest of the sentence drowns inside a sea of sirens and murmured conversations and worried inquiries on the other side of the door. Badou navigates easily through the mass of uniforms swarming the place, waving at familiar faces and nodding at other photographers. There are a middle-aged couple sitting in the living room, an officer with a notebook and Badou offers them a grim smile. Plays the part of a sympathetic stranger perhaps a little too well. He had done the same thing to other families before this one. He’s used to this.
Everyone dies in this town.
That night, Badou pins up another photograph on his wall, right between the glossy shots of a dismembered body from a case down by the river and the severed head of a thirteen year old boy.
He climbs onto his bed, lights a cigarette and spends the night staring at lifeless grey and blue and green eyes.
He cannot forget.
*
“The Canine Killer Strikes Again!”
“- the community is living in fear, since the first victim, Heather Cord, twenty years old, a social worker for the Saint Cross Hospital, was found in her bathroom four days ago.”
“- found traces of canine hair at the crime scene and on the victim’s body. The victim, seventeen year old Samantha Greene of Woodland High, is the new sacrifice of what is becoming the most horrendous series of crimes-”
“She’s a sweet girl, you know? Totally helpful, always smiling and she’s planning to go to university and take law and. Oh God. Why would anyone-”
“- Mr and Mrs Greene refuse to talk to the press-”
“- on her neck are definitely claw marks. The cause of death is confirmed to be blood loss, though the exact method in which the killer manages to suck out the blood of the victim from such shallow injuries is yet-”
“- the police are still trying to track down the mysterious killer and any information from the public will help in tracking down this merciless monster. I’m Joan Slack, reporting for TV 9.”
Badou switches off the television and spoons soggy cereal into his mouth, staring at rain pelting against the glass of his window.
He remembers that he had run out of coffee two days ago.
*
There is a small, folded note inside his mail box when he gets back from grocery shopping. It’s so inconspicuous and unexpected that he almost missed it, almost missed the slip of paper peeking from the slit of the metal box. Badou shifts the paper bag to his hip, lowers his umbrella and fishes the note out, eyebrows furrowing into a curious half-scowl. He makes it a rule to never disclose his home address. Too many enemies and too little time to re-live the past.
The paper is white and thick, like ones used to make solemn greeting cards. Badou gives the front flap a once-over, notes the lack of to whom it is addresses to and flips it open.
I’m back.
Inky black script. Handwritten. Such arrogance and familiarity punctuating each word that Badou has no trouble discerning the sender of the note. He folds it carefully and tucks it inside the pocket of his jeans, shaking his umbrella free of lingering raindrops at the same time. There is a petite old woman, wrapped in layers of kaftans, smiling down at him from her balcony and Badou waves at her, eye curving into customary happy crescent. He had taken pictures of her daughter-in-law the year before.
She was hacked into fifteen pieces and found inside a garbage bag in someone’s ventilation system, her bright red hair a messy tangle among rotting intestines and chunks of flesh.
The old woman calls him Stella sometimes.
Badou hefts his load and starts towards the elevator. He gets inside just in time, grins at a young couple on their way out and pushes the button ‘13’, exhaling softly as the metal contraption begins its ascension.
His reflection on the shiny, chromatic surface supports the widest grin he has seen since he moves into the town.
*
The first thing he notices when he stands in front of the door is that his security system is fucked to Hell. He’s not the kind of person that installs an electronic thingamajig to protect his den and expects it to be a techologized version of a guardian angel. No. That’s no way to spend his hard-earned money. Badou narrows his eye at the piece of transparent cellophane tape at the furthermost corner of the door, at an angle where the corner meets the frame, and frowns. It has been ripped off. The smoke from his cigarette floats like lazy phantoms to the ceiling and Badou takes one last drag, before grounding it with the heel of his sneakers.
He reaches for the doorknob, spends a second to contemplate his course of action and twists it with only a sliver of hesitation.
The door opens in one easy arc and Badou steps inside slowly, half-expecting an ambush from gorilla-sized armed madmen and crazy pseudo mafia bosses. Disappointing silence welcomes his return and the door closes quietly behind him, as though understanding the grave importance of blending in with the current situation. A quick check around the apartment reveals that nothing is missing. At least, not yet. There is a trail of wet footstep on his parquet floor and to Badou, that is just as good as a yellow brick road.
He ends up in his bedroom with just five steps.
Crimson eyes and white hair and sharp grin greet his entrance and Badou might have forgotten how to breathe.
“Haine?”
His voice is strangely soft once the word escapes his throat, laced with a mixture of disbelief and relief and needyouneedyouneedyou. It is a word he has not spoken out loud for months, years, ages. So long it feels like yesterday. Buried so deep inside his memory that sometimes, sometimes he doesn’t even know if the owner of the name even exists. The taps of rain against the window, the busy rattles of vehicles outside, the screeching music from floors above - they all seems to fade into nothingness inside his head, joining in the symphony of silence that resides over the space.
Haine nods, as if a mere confirmation will make a difference, grin morphing into a slow smile. Inviting and cold and warm and dangerous, all at the same time. Familiar. Haine hasn’t changed. Not from what Badou can see. Wild, untamed hair that sticks out everywhere. Eyes that mirror malevolence and secrets and “I know something you don’t”. Still the same, untouched by changes and mortality’s frailties. As if Time hasn’t passed for Haine. As if Time stops for Haine. For one second, Badou believes that is possible.
He used to believe that Haine can defy the law of reality if the man wants to.
He still believes that. Sometimes, sometimes.
They are standing close enough that he can see dry blossoms of something-crimson on Haine’s otherwise white shirt, just over the collar. Badou wonders if being a hired kill means that the other man has no time for laundry. His eye trails to Haine’s neck, catching glimpses of ruined skin that white hair tries to conceal. Wonders if the mark - THE mark - is still there, etched into pale skin and hardened muscles. Just as he remembers it.
Badou snaps out of his reverie when Haine takes a step forward, spreads his arms and the smile turns teasingly malicious.
No word. Not words. Words are overrated.
Badou sinks into the welcoming heat, clutches the white-haired man in a desperate embrace and rests his head on the broad shoulder. Tries to channel what he feels as their bodies mould to fit each other. Just like old times. He inhales deeply. It has been too long, too long. Far too long.
His eye starts to close, but not before he realises that another pair of eyes is watching them, right from the collage of pictures on the opposite wall.
Observing, calculating, judging.
Mocking.
Grey and blue and green swirl behind his eyelids, incomprehensible vortex of colours and Badou tightens his hold on Haine.
He wishes that he can forget.
He cannot.
END?
Critics are very much loved and welcomed!