(Untitled)
Who: Heine Rammsteiner, Duke.
When: Not long after Heine arrives, but probably after he's found Nill and made sure she's safe and whatnot.
Where: Near one of the terminals, out in the open.
Rating: TBD.
Warnings: TBD.
Summary: DUKE THINKS EVERTHING IS A DREAM. Heine wants to kill himself. :)
( Te. c: )
When: Not long after Heine arrives, but probably after he's found Nill and made sure she's safe and whatnot.
Where: Near one of the terminals, out in the open.
Rating: TBD.
Warnings: TBD.
Summary: DUKE THINKS EVERTHING IS A DREAM. Heine wants to kill himself. :)
( Te. c: )
Duke smiled a lopsided smile and said something apologetic about asking Heine the same question twice, then, but the expression didn't reach his eyes. He'd seen the way Heine's stance had changed, even if his face didn't, and more to the point recognized it, and surprised himself with how much it hurt, and it took everything he had not to speak the name.
Don't do that, you twerp. You're not a monster. You're not a hunter. You're not any worse than I am, and I will match you low for low and sin for sin, and there's not a thing you can do about it, so get used to it and get over yourself.
He didn't say any of that, of course, because he wasn't face to face with the person that he'd wanted to say it to.
Fucking vampires. Fucking incubus vampires and their white haired little cousins, watching him like he was fresh bleeding meat, and all Duke wanted to do was smile sadly and then punch this brat's goddamn face in for presuming to know anything about which one of them was the monster and which one was the easy prey.
The green flecks in his eyes flashed. He knew they did this because he'd caught it in the mirror once, when he'd been very upset over something that might possibly have been related to vampires. Emotion made the green threads stand out, like veins of emerald in granite would shine if you flashed a light over them, and even though Duke was smiling he'd changed his stance to match, weight evenly distributed and hands out of his pockets, loose and ready. This wasn't new. Combat was a recurring theme in every dream he'd ever had.
"Well then, Heine-figment," he said pleasantly, the words almost a drawl. Veld had always said it was telling, that his hick act just got cheesier and the accent thicker than molasses the closer he was to serious trouble. "I suppose it's only polite to give you my name in return. Shame I'm crazy and don't have one to give." He watched Heine sharply. "Please call me Valentine."
He wanted the name to mean something. He wanted to watch Heine flinch away in recognition, wanted a sign. That was what he was here for, wasn't it? To do something that would point Duke in the right direction.
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Because humans were one thing. Natural, normal people with their every day lives and their every day phrases and their every day patterns, those were the types of people that Heine didn't have much contact with, and maybe he'd been a bit stupid for assuming that Duke had been one of them when he wasn't even sure he'd ever met one. No, it'd make sense that Duke would be something else, and Heine was surprised he hadn't seen it earlier.
The flashing of his eyes, though, that would have been unsettling to anyone that wasn't him, and he'd shifted his position not long after Heine had shifted his own, and it echoed of cool familiarity. He was noticing things that he wasn't supposed to notice, that no one typically tended to notice, and Heine's brow almost lifted again as dark eyes flicked slowly down the form in front of him.
Interesting.
His fingers slid down past the holsters at his waist to hang limply at his sides, and he didn't manage much more than a slight tilt of his head and an incredulous expression as Duke spoke his name for him.
Valentine. Valentine.
"That's too bad," was all he said, then, because it kind of was, and he was pretty sure that any parental figure who had the balls to name their son Valentine must have been a pretty special individual.
And then he was silent for a second or two as he leaned back against the terminal once more, and as his hand returned to his waist to rest casually and calmly against the holster, because like hell he'd let himself be caught off guard.
Silence, and then a blunt few words of, "You look like shit."
Well, he did.
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So much for all vampires being related.
"My wife's name," he felt compelled to add, the corner of his mouth twitching even though it wasn't really funny at all. "It's much nicer than the one I came with."
Duke's gaze followed Heine's hand to his guns just as casually, and didn't so much as blink. It was cute that Heine seemed to think he might care about his equipment. Young men and their toys.
But it also echoed the way someone else had constantly returned to his guns, long fingers absently brushing the metal as if for reassurance, using them to center himself. Duke remembered with absolute clarity taking one of those hands in his own and kneeling with it like a knight, pressing his lips to the pulse point on the underside of the wrist. He remembered looking up from that, still kneeling, and he remembered the expression he'd seen.
He was too old for this shit. His body and face didn't look it, not anymore, but it was true nonetheless. Too old, too tired, and too sick in the head to deal with any of this.
"I'm dying," he answered absently, and as an afterthought relaxed out of his ready stance. Maybe he didn't need it. Maybe he was so damn sure that he wouldn't be shot anyway, because vampires liked to fight up close and personal with their prey, to back them to alley walls and win their victories by losing physically. "So that doesn't surprise me. I feel like shit too. You could spare my feelings, though, and tell me I look great for someone in my condition. If you wanted to make me feel better."
He fished his glasses out of his pocket and put them on again without waiting for a reply.
"Now then. I'm supposed to go with you, I think. And I can understand why you might object to that, but rules are rules and coincidences are supposed to catch my admittedly deteriorating attention. So should we start the argument now or have it while we walk?"
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He wasn't stupid, after all. Maybe he lacked common sense, sometimes, but that was because he generally didn't need it, and who would when they could regenerate at the speed that he was able to? But he definitely wasn't stupid, and he definitely realized when someone was fucking around with him, and just because the man had slid into a more relaxed pose didn't mean that Heine hadn't already locked on him as a potential threat.
So, for a second, he remained leaned back against the terminal with his chin still tilted upwards as he tapped his fingers lightly against his holster. Duke was still talking, was saying something about death and Heine's manners, and he wasn't really listening. He was watching his every move, rather, and the second he put his glasses back on and mentioned something else about a walk, Heine could have laughed.
No, not today.
Heine wasn't letting anything else sneak up on him and slap him right in the fucking face. Not. Today.
But he pushed himself away from the terminal, all the same, and turned carefully on his heel, before throwing an expectant glance back at the other. He didn't move, though. Not until Duke was moving, too, until his feet were scraping over the concrete and the gravel, closer to him. He didn't move until Duke was almost right next to him, and when he finally did, there was a slight pause, another tiny murmur in the atmosphere, but Heine wasn't listening.
His fingers had already latched up around Duke's throat, thumb pressed insistently into the pulse there, before he was shoving him back down against the terminal and using his own body weight for leverage. The Mauser that had been in its holster mere seconds before was already out and ready, and the chains clinked against the metal as Heine moved to drag the nozzle up against his temple.
Definitely not today.
"Let's rewind," he said, and for however much of a hostile position he'd taken on right in that second, his voice didn't echo any of it. He was still calm, level-headed, because Duke hadn't done anything to really deserve that bullet in his gun. Not yet. "We're going to pretend for a second that I'm not a complete idiot and that you're not really who you say you are."
He shifted, then, and his knee bent a little to press hard against the other's leg to keep him pinned. Heine relaxed his fingers around the Mauser in his hand, but his chin was tilted in toward his chest now as he stared down at Duke with steeled and unwavering vision.
"What the fuck do you want?"
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Okay then.
A long time ago, Duke would have been angry with himself for not seeing this coming and for letting a punk kid pull such a reversal on him. That was before he'd gotten more using to having guns held to his temples being pinned against something and bloodred vampire eyes glaring at him, though. If one could get used to things like that.
He didn't struggle. There was no reason to, so past a certain look of vague surprise, as if he had absolutely no idea why Heine would be doing such a thing to poor, innocent, well-intentioned him, he remained as calm as Heine himself while the terminal edge bit into his spine and the younger man, perhaps quite understably, questioned his intentions. His gun was cute. Duke decided he liked it, despite the odd looking design.
Heine was cute too, but Duke patiently put that thought away in the little locked box he kept for such things. The hallucination had gotten that part wrong about him. One would think, after living with himself for so many years, he would be the first to know if he harbored those sorts of tastes, and he didn't, except for the hallucination gleefully announcing that he did, which was why he knew it was a hallucination. Nothing like that had happened in the real world. Not really, ayway. It didn't surprise him that his subconscious was fucked up enough to try and trick him like that. His subconscious was a sneaky unholy bastard that didn't deserve a second thought when Duke wasn't firmly mired inside of it.
"What do I want?" He considered the question seriously, tilting his head as much as the gun barrel would let him. "Well, a lot of things, really. Like a hot seaweed bath. I've always wanted to try that. But for the moment..."
He let it build. It was too good to pass up.
"...cigarettes. Are you sure you don't know where I could find any?"
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This guy, this man, he didn't remind him of Badou. Not with that calm and even expression, like nothing was wrong at all, like this was normal, like he'd been expecting it from somewhere in the corner of his mind. Not with every bit of his demeanor that seemed innocent, until one was able to dig a little bit deeper to find that it wasn't innocent at all, that it was something else entirely.
That wasn't Badou. It couldn't have been Badou, because Badou just wasn't like that. No, no, no. That reeked of Giovanni, and Heine had to bite back the small snarl and had to keep his fingers from tightening insistently around his neck.
Suddenly the bandages around his throat seemed a lot more tighter, and the collar burned and itched beneath its wrappings.
Just his fucking luck.
"Don't do that," he snapped impatiently, and he pointedly lifted Duke up a bit before shoving him down hard into the terminal once more. "Don't give me that bullshit."
His fingers slid down over his throat, and his thumb brushed over his pulse for half a second as he flattened his palm down over the space right above his collarbone, firmly holding him in place. Part of him was tempted to knock his glasses right off his face, because he didn't know what was fucking going on under them, and he figured that Duke must have worn glasses for the same reason Heine did whenever he went to load his gun and kick open a door to annihilate whatever stood behind it.
They were good at hiding shit. That was about it.
But he didn't touch them. That would have had to have involved him putting his gun away, and he just wasn't willing to do that yet. Instead, he went right back to watching him, expression tense and irritated.
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He did wince a little at that, not so much because it hurt but because it was good faith to prove that he was ...something. Affected. Willing to be affected. Willing to let Heine have this moment and continue playing victim.
Not that Heine would appreciate it. Heine didn't seem like the type who appreciated other people's consideration. He watched the other watch him, and maybe Heine thought he was good at being stoic, but he could see the irration as red eyes searched his face and knew what was aggravating him.
"Take them off, then," he told Heine quietly. "If they bother you that much. Most people are more bothered when I'm not wearing them, but I won't mind."
"I'm sorry I can't give you better answers to your questions." Now he just sounded tired. "I wish I had better answers to my own. You wouldn't believe me if I told you I thought you were sent by the gods, right? I wouldn't believe me either."
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He just wasn't.
And Heine wasn't used to not having someone fight back, so it was a little bit strange, maybe, and a little bit weird that he'd just stare up at him like he had no idea what to do, like this made all the sense in the world when it shouldn't have. He was speaking again, though, and Heine almost jerked back when he mentioned the glasses.
Fuck. How did this shit always happen to him?
"Whatever," he said, and his voice dripped venom and suspicion as his hand slid away and as the gun was placed back in its holster.
He didn't move back, though. If Duke had any intention of getting up, he'd have to shove Heine, because. Well, he didn't really feel like moving, and he was still annoyed, still tense at everything, and maybe there was that little, itty bit of him that was looking for a fight.
Because he always was.
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Mentally, of course.
It was a start when Heine took his hand off and put the gun away. Not much, though, since his weight was still pinning Duke against the terminal.
Kids.
"Alright, alright." Duke brought his own hand up, slow enough not to be threatening, took off the shades himself and set them carefully down on the terminal behind him. "You deserve some proof, Heine-figment. And I probably deserve to be tested."
His voice was calm. "If you can kill me, I'll leave you alone and not bother you again. If you can't," and here every muscle underneath Heine tensed, wordlessly promising, "then I'd like to ask a favor of you."
"Deal?"
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He hadn't been expecting that. It would have been one thing for Duke to attack Heine out of nowhere. That, he could deal with, because that was something he'd already dealt with on a regular basis. But the fact that he was attempting to make deals now, that was different. It was still reminiscent of Giovanni, and maybe that was what made the entire situation so goddamn uncomfortable.
Either way, he figured it didn't matter much, and he rolled one shoulder back calmly as he studied the other man with a wary, tight expression.
How fucking irritating.
"You know what I think?" And his hand was pressed down on the terminal next to Duke's head, now, as he leaned in until his face was mere inches away from the other's. Heine smelled like lilies and sterility, because he always had. "I don't think you should make deals unless you're sure that you can win them."
And then there was a stretch of silence where he just watched him, studied his expression for something telling, before he was pulling back completely. The chains attached to his guns moved along with him as he went, clinking together noisily, and Heine stood ready, waiting, watching.
"Fine," he replied finally, and he moved one of his hands up to tug uncomfortably on the wrappings around his neck, because they were still bothering him, because the collar was still burning.
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Unfortunately, without his glasses, it made his pupils contract to inhuman slits and the entire iris burn, momentarily, to green.
He swallowed carefully. It wasn't out of fear. Not exactly, anyway, and he answered Heine as neutrally as he could while trying not to think about the difference in scent and utter lack of difference in attitude.
"You know, that's probably very good advice."
He held himself still until Heine moved though, breathing quietly, and was irrationally proud of it.
Game set. Now Duke just had to make sure that he wasn't balls out bluffing, because he didn't know for certain himself.
It would make this exciting, anyway.
He watched Heine tug at that odd ribbon bound around his neck, and wondered, but said nothing. He was on Mission now, everything rearranging itself into its proper priorities in his mind as the familiar coldness took hold of him, and he thought to himself that it was good to be back.
"Let's dance," he said, because he'd always wanted to say that to someone, and abruptly snapped his arm to the side, the small amalgam of metal and wires hidden up his sleeve slipping neatly into his palm, and launched it directly at Heine's pretty face.
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Heine's chin jerked up, and he snarled when Duke tossed whatever-the-fuck that was into the air. At first, everything went kind of slow, like it wasn't really happening, like Heine wasn't really there threatening to kill some guy he barely even knew. But then reality sunk in, and his fingers were sliding over cool metal before he could stop himself, and he'd pulled the trigger right when he realized that fuck, he really shouldn't have.
And of all the times he'd missed in the past, it figured that he wouldn't miss now, and his stomach dropped the second that the bullet hit the bomb.
"Son of a bit--"
The force from the explosion knocked him back hard, and the heat rolled off of him in heavy, thick waves. His back met the rough brick of a wall, and his head slammed back against it not even two seconds later, and it hurt, yeah, but it hurt in the kind of way where Heine didn't notice it. Because he'd been desensitized to most pain, right, and this wasn't even the worst of the shit he'd gone through in his life.
But it still fucking stung, and he couldn't see shit anymore, because of the dirt that had been kicked up. Duke was somewhere underneath it all, covered in all that fucking black, and Heine let out a quiet hiss as he brought one hand up to touch the back of his head.
Fuck.
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The explosion that blew Heine off his feet would have rolled over Duke as well, if Duke had still been where he was when the bomb detonated.
He wasn't.
The cloud of dust and debris roiled, as it had been intended to do, and Duke stepped out of it to Heine's side as neatly as if he'd teleported. Another somewhat disquieting effect of mako poisoning. They told him even SOLDIERs didn't have the reflexes they'd tested off him.
Both of the younger man's guns flashed up at aim, as could only be expected, but Duke had a headstart and was already moving. He stepped in, reached...
...and neither of Heine's triggers clicked, because Duke held the forward arc of the crescent shaped piece of steel, keeping it in place.
Oddly enough, he wasn't smirking. He just looked sober and chose not to make a snappy remark.
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