Chapter Text
TAILOR MADE
Part 1: BESPOKE
One thing Bullseye has discovered very early: the invisible hand he works for, the Hand, has a hand in everything.
(Pun sooo totally intended. When he says he never misses!)
He needs to look the part for this one new assignment, he’s said. Of course, they have their go-to person for that… They get him an appointment. Presence… mandatory.
Men’s Bespoke Tailoring – The Elegance just like in London, says the shiny plaque on the wall of the building’s directory. 14th floor.
Once there, he still probably should knock or something, right?
Door’s unlock, though. Ajar, even. So why bother?
Not that he wouldn’t have probably left himself in anyway: locks mean nothing to him, who was also a burglar once, when he was young, money was tight and his gift hadn’t been discovered yet by the right powers.
Or maybe he would have made his way inside without waiting just to annoy, express his discontent. He’s the (in)famous Bullseye. His time is precious, dammit. He shouldn’t have to bother himself with this.
He makes his way through a narrow hallway, silent like flying on Death’s wings, which is second nature to him. (Or first.) Doesn’t stop for what seems to be a cosy little waiting area with a few plump seats, and aims for this daylight he can see flow through an open door. Does stop on the threshold, taking all in of the spacious workshop with the huge bay windows and a lovely view on the NYC skyline.
He spots his tailor at once.
Bullseye is already gauging him with instinctive disgust, this man who is parading like a peaco*ck before a tall mirror. And, no, Bullseye is not beating a cliché to death, here.
(Though he’d beat anything to death, even that.)
This is a piece of fabric literally peaco*ck feathers-patterned that the tailor is trying on his on chest, angling himself this way and that in front of his own considering reflection.
A micropause in the man’s movements makes it plain he’s conscious of the presence in his back, though Bullseye has made sure his silhouette wouldn’t appear in the mirror, entering the room. One of the basest assassin trick. You don’t disclose your presence just for dramatic effect.
(The drama comes after, with the kill.)
Odd, that the tailor could tell anyway, few could have. Bullseye knows he’s as silent as a cat.
“Ah, a visitor,” the man informs his own image with a slight smile.
He says that as if it were inherently funny.
“Not visitor. Customer. Why, forgot my appointment?” Bullseye snaps, already annoyed. And, yes, he indulges in letting a bit of threat show, too. Because, even admittedly not knowing who he specifically is, who takes lightly their dealings with the Hand? Mostly future dead bodies.
(And he’s the Hand’s hand, these days.)
The tailor only beams harder in the mirror. Then turns, really looking at him for the first time. His eyes widen the tiniest bit, bizarrely. Like there’s some kind of recognition, there…
But Bullseye soon forgets about this strange impression as the tailor starts to actually better… consider him. The man quietly lets the fabric in his hands slither down his body and fall to the ground with glorious unconcern, co*cking his head the tiniest bit on the side in an almost cat-like curiosity.
Which Bullseye finds inherently funny.
(Everybody knows what happens to curious cats.)
His own show of teeth in reply is not exactly a smile, obviously.
This heavy once-over the tailor gives him, then? It might be a totally professional hazard, but it doesn’t feel that way. The man is not dressing him up in his mind’s eye. He’s undressing him. Somehow, Bullseye knows. And it comes with a mild shock to him. This mere lingering gaze makes all of the sudden his whole skin feel absurdly tingly-warm. Almost embarrassingly so.
Forcing him to stare back.
He’s hard to pin, this one character…
Tall, almost as tall as him. And lean, almost as lean as him. And in spite of the ridiculousness of this three-button and absurdly patterned vest he has donned, the shiny silkiness of his shirt, and the definite Nancy-boyness of the colors he wears (What’s this… Pink? Lilac, seriously?), there’s still a predatory physicality to him…
The soft eminence of well-defined musculature gently rolls right under the fabric, more underlined than hidden. The coarseness of black jeans contrasts harshly with the top’s soft fabrics. At the collar of the too open shirt, shoulder and neck tendons chord, like coiled for now, but ready to snap into action at any moment.
(Bullseye, to his utter annoyance, feels his wariness rise.)
This bird of a unique feather even sports a crest… This wild Mohawk of dark hair…? Bullseye is not too sure whether the outré hairdo, with the partly shaved skull, is all affectation or might betray the little savage at heart the man really is, just like the dark lines of a tattoo that he can see peek from under fabric at the left wrist and shoulder could look almost like coyly covered war paints…
In these smooth far-eastern features, a faint deception lies. The man could be twenty like forty. To top it all, he has the poise of confident middle age, but the smirk of a teenager as he raises his gaze to his face once again. Definitively something Asian too in the delicate almond of those eyes. Even when they’re surprisingly clear, like ice.
Instinctively, Bullseye can already tell: in all his contradictions if not outright misdirections, the man is a headache on legs. Trouble. But then again, Buslleye, he’s a fixer for the Hand. He’s the man who’s on call when there’s trouble. So, he finds himself on familiar grounds, in a way. The sweet pre-murder shiver starts to whisper under his skin.
(To his credit, he's a professional, and he decides to ignore it for now.)
“Name?” the tailor offhandedly asks.
“Poindexter,” Bullseye mutters. It’s a name he often uses. Even if he fails to remember whether it’s actually his birth name. Doesn’t really care, anyway. Ask him, his name is Bullseye. It’s who he is.
“Yes! It rings a bell, actually!” the other man exclaims brightly, with a theatrical clap of his hands. “We indeed have received your measurements. A dummy has been made, I remember!” And his squinting eyes search the room, as if chasing for the memory. “Right here!”
And in a few long feline steps he’s on the other side of the workshop already, where multiple headless manikins are assembled in an odd gathering. The tailor is zooming in, only to put his hands on one of the fake human figures’ shoulders as if he were going to take it for a mad jig when he turns it lively in his patron’s direction:
“Tadaaa!”
A kinda mock-up for a suit in weirdish fabric showing too large stitches hangs on it. The tailor goes back to consider it for the whole of three long seconds. His hand unconsciously flies to his face while he thinks, and only know does Bullseye really notice the dark nails, shiny black like a girl could do them, but drawing attention to the gracious length of these strong fingers. To the impatient tattoo of an index on thin lips, too. Bullseye realizes he was staring at them only when the tailor talks again at last.
He’s still frowning at the headless dummy.
“Huh, this will not do,” the tailor mumbles. “I can’t let you wear that.” The distaste is plain on his face.
“Why?” Bullseye feels his annoyance rise even more with the unexpected fuss. There’re a model for a jacket, and pants, on the dummy. It’s fine. And he’s not picky.
“Wanna see why?” Mohawk asks with a somewhat impish smile. “Change. Put on the baste.”
Obviously, the hitman has no idea what the tailor is talking about, and hearing baste like reminiscent of Bastet, absurdly wonders where’s that cat he’s supposed to wear and why the hell it not what the hell.
“You’ll see, this is a kill,” the tailor continues.
Bullseye’s attention, obviously, sparks:
A kill?
He rolls his eyes, at that, that damn tailor, catching at last on his mild confusion. Suddenly looking so much younger, for this tiny uncontrolled gesture: yeah, a real punk.
“A kill, dear. Sorry, shop talk. A spoiled job that has to be thrown away, it means. This thing is a horror.”
When I do a kill, it’s never a spoiled job, Bullseye would really, really like to retort. But he’s quite sure (and rather moody) that he’s probably not really allowed to blow whatever cover his employers might have come up with for this appointment.
“Put on this rough of your future suit. Now. Chop, chop!” Mohawk keeps on, with an annoying tone of snappish impatience.
OK, Bullseye has to set a line, here:
“I’m supposed to change in front of you?”
“If you’re going to be such a blushing maiden, dear, I’ll be in the reserve to find some samples and choose the actual fabric we’ll use.” And then, over his shoulder, almost as an afterthought, but topped with a saucy wink: “I reserve myself the right to have a peek if you take too long, though.”
And once again that lingering gaze, that makes Bullseye feel already naked…
Does the infamous killer totally ducks behind the dummy to change? He so totally does!
oOo
A bit too reminiscent of a school teacher interrogating a pupil, and clearly wanting to have him reach a certain conclusion:
“How do you look?” his tailor inquires, standing at his shoulder while they both behold his reflection in the tall mirror.
It annoys Bullseye a bit, to have to angle his head a little to see better because of the ever present patch on his left eye. It means he can’t miss either the tailor’s expectant expression in the frame. Of course, this rough form of his future suit, with its patches of material and large stitches, can’t not look a tad ridiculous. But Bullseye sees no problem with it otherwise. The dummy was indeed well-made, it all seems to be in his size.
“Fine.”
“Fine?” Mohawk sounds… appalled. His ensuing sigh is a tad on overdramatic disappointment’s side. “OK, dear. Let’s educate your eyes. Sorry, eye. Let me show you something. Perhaps I can save this piece of garbage.”
It’s not like Bullseye feels exactly crowded, when the tailor starts working on him. But his personal space is definitively encroached. The punk’s hands are everywhere at once, like his body were already conquered territory. Cologne or aftershave, he’s not sure, but he catches a very faint smell of green tea, each time the tailor leans in too close.
And Bullseye is overly affected by this very physical presence, to the point he has to refrain himself to fidget badly by exaggeratedly tensing up. It doesn’t help that he catches a few times from the corner of his eye Mohawk’s thin amused smile.
Bullseye also sees in the mirror some of the shiny needles the tailor uses on the clothing between the man’s lips, and it takes every ounce of his willpower not to send his elbow flying there on purpose, to make a mess or possibly a carnage of this pretty face.
But there’s also something unmitigatedly joyful in the way the tailor busies himself on him, that bizarrely makes Bullseye revise his age estimate the low way. It comes with a slight dissonance compared this utter competency at his job that the punk seems to exhibit.
“Now, look again,” the tailor says at last, looking way too pleased with himself.
No one bragging he never misses likes to admit he was wrong, though. That’s why it takes Bullseye a moment of staring at himself to utter at last:
“Better.”
Because, it’s true. Because, with these tiny needles, the tailor has really done something. Suddenly, the line of the clothing seems to cling to him more adoringly.
(Just like the man’s hands earlier.)
So much so that he does indeed look better.
“Yes. English cut. See? Waist more tapered at the sides, and we’ll have dual vents on the skirt!”
“I’m not going to wear a skirt!” Bullseye blurts out at that, in sheer outrage, almost getting in the face of the tailor.
There’s a second of stunned silence, on Mohawk’s part.
Then his hilarity booms out of him, in a laughter so impossible to contain it collapses him against Bullseye’s side, grabbing the hitman’s arm for balance and his face hiding in the crook of the hitman’s neck.
(Shockingly soft hair brush against his lower jaw. Sensation so sharp, strange and foreign it cuts through the indignation.)
Plus, the punk, still gently shaking, is all but draped all over him, now… Bullseye knows he should (stab-main-hurt…), he should—but a light euphoria takes him by surprise, as good as washes over him, as if riding on this mirth the tailor exhibits, making the hitman’s head light and all bubbly. Thawing his annoyance to an indulgent smile he can feel on his face, involuntary, alien, but really there.
“You’re a silly little man,” the damn tailor murmurs against his skin, still softly wheezing.
Little man!?
Bullseye is actually appalled, in spite of this contagious amusem*nt. No one has ever addressed him this way and lived.
(His hand flexes, conflicted, unable to decide between providing support to the body melting against his or reaching for a blade on his own person.)
But there’s also this note in the tailor’s tone he’s unable to recognize for what it is, because… Yes, no one has ever addressed him that way either. With absurd and absolute fondness.
“I… I don’t remember the last time I’ve laughed…” the tailor says, grinning wildly, gathering himself a little and planting his eyes in his patron’s one.
And then, his smile abruptly breaks, though. Like he’s just been struck in the face, incredibly.
(Bullseye knows the look. He’s used to birth that look. But he’s just not sure he can get the credit, here. Annoying.)
“I don’t remember the last time I’ve laughed,” the tailor more slowly reiterates.In a show of devastating matter-of-factness.
Bullseye feels a sinking feeling, like lead in the stomach, that he can’t explain. And though the punk is still so very close, the man suddenly feels light-years away, eyes lost to the ether over his shoulder…
The cold predatory part of Bullseye bristles with the novel insult. Of course he’s been hiding his true colours, but still…The damn punk is ignoring the predator in the room. Any other day, it would have sealed his fate…
Another part of Bullseye, however, which he very seldom knows to listen, because it speaks a language almost foreign to him, mourns the mirth and the warmth, so different from the ecstatic release he usually chases with the kill, but not exactly less…
(A feeling that he’s never known enough to want…)
“Why?” It’s a surprise to Bullseye to recognize his own voice. Still, he’s the kind of guy who, once he starts, never relents till he lands a target, so… he just continues: “Why don’t you laugh?”
And yeah, bull’s eye.
The clear blue eyes search his again at last. Shock spreads on these sharp Asian features like blood from a stab wound.
(Bullseye feels oddly… vindicated. Magic.)
Can’t believe he had said that out loud, had he, his tailor?
Then Mohawk’s gaze glazes over somewhat, lending a stony expression to this beautiful face.
“Who cares… No. Let me rephrase. No one cares. And certainly not you.” And with that, the tailor has the gall to pat his face lightly, condescendingly. Pasting something that tries to look like a smirk on his own features. “My bad, little man. That wasn’t very…professional. Spaced out. All yours, now.”
And it’s easier to breathe, suddenly. Like the air is purer.
(Or empty.)
Like Bullseye hadn’t realized how oppressive the atmosphere had become for a moment before this weight lifted.
“The skirt is the part of the jacket below belt. Also, as I was saying, English cut. It changes everything,” the tailor resumes more conversationally. “It comes from the old days of horseback riding. And see how it sits better at the waist, makes you look even taller, leaner? No padding at the shoulders, by the way. You sure don’t need it. And we’ll go with peak lapels, too, to draw the gaze up on them niiice shoulders.”
And Bullseye knows, knows the man is trying to bury what’s just happened under his prattle.
(Bullseye thinks he tries too hard.)
“And we still can do so much better,” the Asian man nods fervently.
Oh, no. They’re not done yet?
This derails Bullseye a little :
“What? We don’t need to.”
“I do need too. Let’s call it… professional pride. Fabric, now.” He reaches for a swathe on a nearby table, with a little label attached, stating POINDEXTER in a messy handwriting. The tailor is frowning as he then pastes it on his customer’s arm to gauge the effect of the material. “That plain grey wool that was chosen is so dull. Were I free to go wild, I’d dress you in IKB. Klein blue.”
To be fair, the tailor puts on a good show. There’s a faint twinkle at the corners of the almond eyes, a hint of amusem*nt in the curve of the lips, but it still feels a tad lackluster compared to the truer enjoyment he had exhibited earlier…
“You have no idea what I mean, right?”
“You have no idea what my assignment is, right?” Bullseye retorts. He can’t catch the eye more than the big man he’s supposed to shadow, right? “Can’t go about parading in an… electric royal blue!”
He grins, the tailor. Better effort than before, at that. Pleased to discover, it seems, in spite of being shot down, that his patron is not a total heathen and knows who Klein is.
(Or, more worrying, he had guessed Bullseye wasn’t a total heathen and was just needling him… Which means, he just fell for it. It’s a worrying notion the hitman can’t entirely discard.)
“I need to remain mostly low profile,” Bullseye chooses to disclose. Not that he particularly likes the fragrance of undercover work much himself, but orders are orders. He’s a professional.
“OK. Unimaginative it is. Straight to the point, then…”
“Straight is fine.”
“Riiiight. God forbid I might imagine you were bent, dear…”
(Bullseye can tell Mohawk’s loaded look is trying to get to him. Again. He has to retaliate somehow.)
“Oh, I can do twisted.”
Can’t help but let a bit of menace show, there, by the way.
Only, he gets entirely ignored.
(The nerve of that punk!)
“Hell,” the tailor sighs. “I’d like to invent a color for you,” he mutters under his breath, keeping him just at arm’s length to get a better look at him, hands planted on his shoulders. There’s a definitive hint of fervor in the hushed words, a weight to the gaze, that are eerily heady.
“Too bad,” Mohawk continues. “But I’ll find something anyway, with a little bit more panache than grey. Almost invisible stripes, a faint shimmer or something. To remind the world you’re not entirely a dull boy. You are not a dull boy, are you?”
“Hell no,” Bullseye hears himself as good as growl.
It’s a shame he can’t show how he knows to have a good time. Can’t add the splash of color the tailor seems to miss so desperately in the form of streaks of dark red…
“I say vest,” his tailor adds, then, without even a beat.
To Bullseye’s mild horror.
“Vest, no.”
“Vest, yes, dear.”
Bullseye glares daggers, obviously, but the damn tailor really acts like he’s impervious to threat. It starts to really rub him the wrong way. The hitman truly considers getting more proactive, and wonders whether Mohawk would be as impervious to harm.
Except the punk can’t seem to stop talking.
“I mean, look at you! It would be a real shame not to show off your silhouette.” And suddenly his hands are all over Bullseye again, in a kind of worship of his shoulders and arms. “What are you…? An athlete, or something?”
“Or something.”
“I bet.”
And he winks, at that, the cheeky son of a bitch.
The hitman feels the temptation to reach for his knife and go at these almond eyes with its blade…
But the tailor, who has exploited his blind side to duck behind him in a seamless move, is now exploring how the fabric of the pants falls on his hips.
Incidentally, the tailor’s hands seem to wander to his belt, which he has kept even on the rough suit, right where Bullseye’s trusty little ceramic knife is, handle hidden in the buckle.
Except the punk’s nimble fingers blindly find it, work it loose from his belt, only to peek curiously at it over his patron’s shoulder.
“Pretty,” the tailor simply says, with an absence of surprise a tad jarring.
Plus the sight of his blade manipulated by these long fingers arrests Bullseye’s eyes. The contrast of the golden skin and dark shade of the punk’s nails against the ceramic’s pure whiteness is pleasing on the eye, he discovers.
“Ceramic. Undetectable,” Bullseye comments.
“Not for a… tailor. But I prefer bone, personally.”
Which is a weird thing to say.
“Bone knife?” Bullseye checks, not even trying to hide his puzzlement.
“Yup.”
“You carry a concealed bone blade?”
By this point, the hitman is actually thoroughly amused.
“Several, dear.”
By that point, the hitman is actually thoroughly aroused.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” he breathlessly mutters, angling his head to see the tailor better, gauging whether Mohawk is actually pulling his leg. Their faces are so close he almost has to squint to see the punk’s expression properly.
He wants to lay his hands on the tailor in the worst way, right this moment. To seek these weapons hidden under these tight-fitting Nancy-boy’s clothes.
And the damn tailor looks like he knows. There’s something quite pleased in his smirk.
And he takes advantage, the asshole. Invades his space once again. Too busy looking for these secret weapons on the man, Bullseye has noticed only too late the hand raising to his face, to his eye-patch in particular. The hitman freezes entirely. Not to cede to the instinctive impulse to break fingers on the spot.
“What’s with this flimsy material?” the tailor comments with mild reproach. “You need something more sophisticated. Leather? Velvet?”
(His touch is velvet, the way his thumb gently teases the thin skin near the side of his eye.)
“Let’s make it more rakish and less down-on-his-luck pirate, won’t we? I’ll take care of that too.”
“Har, har,” Bullseye darkly jokes, but it doesn’t stop the punk’s exploration of his face. There’s a faint furrowing of Mohawk’s brows: he’s intrigued by something suddenly.
“Hm. Cosmetics…”
Very few notice, in Bullseye’s experience. But he has to resolve himself to the indignity of concealer, when the Hand wants to use him discretely. The patch can’t cover the entirety of what’s happened to his ruined eye.
“Scar,” Bullseye doesn’t elaborate, teeth somewhat clenched.
But, butterfly-light and reverent, the punk’s touch lingers.
“Oddly shaped,” he notes.
His fingers still hover. Explore carefully the almost invisible ridges in Bullseye’s skin.
“Is that a target?” the tailor inquires. Fingertips barely there but disproportionately affecting.
“Hmph.”
“Oh, bull’s eye!” The tailor joyfully exclaims.
He freezes for a short moment, Bullseye, wondering whether (how) he could have been unmasked by a goddam tailor, but there’s no particular expression on this punk’s face indicating he’s actually been found out and that it was his name, being uttered.
“I guessed!” the tailor continues. “So, why there? Middle of the forehead, like kill shots in pop culture, not enough challenging for the talented people out there to get you?”
It’s all in light tease. Clearly, he’s joking.
But thinking about it, Bullseye considers that, yes, in all seriousness. Of course the left eye is more challenging. He almost says so. Caught in this musing, he’s completely caught off guards anew when the digits get even more daring, actually feeling the edges of the patch, all ready to allow the tailor a peek under.
“May I look?” the damn punk only belatedly asks.
It heightens the ever present burning sensation nestled right there in the hitman’s ocular cavity, by the way, the punk’s violation. He could incinerate that damn tailor, if the man were a fool enough to insist…
Bullseye reflexively makes a grab for a wrist, authorizing himself at last to fringe hurting territory, he grips so hard.
And still the tailor’s face shows nothing. No fear. Not even the acknowledgement of this pain Bullseye would have liked to see etch itself on the almost hieratic features.
The knowledge the Hand owns him for now chafes a bit. He’s not exactly free of his movements… So this is sadly less a threat than a warning, in a way, when he snarls:
“Do you want to die?”
Not even a beat before the punk’s answer, though:
“Maybe?”
And there’s a disquieting matter-of-factness in this simple word, with the density of concrete.
And Mohawk must feel his surprise, his minute shocked recoil, because the tailor amends in what Bullseye can only interpret as a kind of save, whose innuendo sounds real enough, though:
“Maybe it’d be worth it just to see both your eyes, dear.”
This overt… flirting… is sure disturbing enough, and still, there’s something darker, there. That it can’t totally erase or cover. A dare. Which Bullseye is not completely sure whether the tailor is directing at him or himself. He’d lean towards somewhat self-destructive, though.
“Or maybe I’m not worried. Maybe I’m that hard to kill,” the tailor concludes. Almost purrs.
It’s Bullseye who has to avert his gaze entirely, this time. Not to have to deal with this. The Hand tends to frown when he burns (pun so intended) their assets.
However, keeping the power inside hurts on the best days. On the worst ones, it’s pure agony. Actively restraining it? It’s even worse.
Pain blossoms mercilessly in his orbit, now, pulsing. Spreading to his temple, the back of his neck, like a thousand burning needles.
It would be so easy… A relief, actually. To get rid of the eye-patch and let his Medusa-like gaze turn the damn punk not into stone but to ashes.
But, he doesn’t know why, he’s sure he wants to do the damn tailor with his hands. Close and personal.
So he fights the impulse, in spite of the white spots already appearing in his vision and the slight vertigo that seizes him.
Speaking of hands… Suddenly the tailor is way too near once again. One hand is palming his jaw, the other working a kind of magic at the nape of his neck in a gentle kneading. It melts a bit of the tension away. Loosens the vice-like grip on him of his pain… Like the air is suddenly easier to breath and it lifts some of the weight of containing what’s inside him, this insane power that the Hand once punched into his face without asking, and which sometimes burns to the point of hurting his sanity.
“Shhhh. Daijobu dayo,” the punk breathes, almost on his lips, he’s so close.
Bullseye feels himself imperceptibly relax. Close his eye…
The hitman starts, after a moment. Realizing he has lowered his guard without meaning to.
(Was about to lower his face to the punk’s…)
And it’s not exactly the first time around this guy. It’s… perturbing.
This punk is a menace.
But also a marvel at diversion, because his tailor understands at once the quiet moment is gone.
“Tie.”
”Tie?” Bullseye sighs, all reluctance, even as he somewhat mourns the absence of the soft touch at his neck now that the tailor’s hand is absent. He hardly refrains himself to add a very petulant: Do I have to?
“Do you have to be such a tab?” the tailor protests, showing some real annoyance for the first time. “I know what I’m doing. I’m pretty sure you know how to do your job… How would you like someone commenting at every turn!”
Makes sense, unfortunately, Bullseye considers. Fair is fair.
On a console, the tailor starts flipping through the pieces on a funny spinning tie rack. There’s something almost comical to his intense concentration. Then he breaks into a satisfied smile as he exhibits his prize all laid out on his forearm for Bullseye’s appreciation:
“This one. More than meets the eye. Just like you.” Because under a certain angle of light, its pale grey subtly changes to a powdery, shimmery bluer color. Bullseye has to admit, with all due reluctance: it looks nice. But it wouldn’t do to give more than a terse nod. The tailor doesn’t seem fooled in the last.
“Also, emergency strangling instrument, dear. Always useful.”
This one gives Bullseye pause. There is some jest in the words, sure. But only a hint of it, really, hardly coloring the brutal fact.
(How much in the know the Hand’s tailor is of his profession, eventually?)
“Come again?” the hitman has to ask.
“Emergency bondage instrument, too, if it’s a kink of yours.”
And very low. Very close to his ear:
“It’s one of mine, dear,” the tailor murmurs.
And that’s how Bullseye gets collared before he knows.
There’s the snap of fabric bent into the submission of a tight knot, almost uncomfortable around his neck, and viciously pulled, bending his head a little towards the tailor’s own face. Who is positively grinning.
And this one throws him. He, Bullseye, who is the one used to throw things to cause sheer mayhem…
Plus, Mohawk uses this second of confusion of his, as he loosens almost as soon the thin strip of fabric.
Swift as a snake, the silk slithers on his neck, from the tailor’s sharp tug. Seems to fall, brushing along his arm, and Bullseye has no idea how, suddenly, there’s a knot of this length around his own wrist. The tailor, the other end of the tie in a rolled fistful, snaps up his arm bent, dragging the hitman’s limb higher in the same move, merciless. Like an odd parody of arm-wrestling in the air between them.
Bullseye’s first impulse is to violently pull back, of course, but the tailor holds surprisingly fast. Their gazes lock in a silent battle of will. They get each other, in this second.
None of them will use their other hand to upset this struggle of them. Bullseye grits his teeth, feeling himself loose ground, and his hand finds itself raised almost level with the man’s face, as the tailor has managed to twist the tie one more time around his own appendage…
And then, Mohawk’s aim all along gets suddenly clear, as, all smiling a predator, he softly kisses the hitman’s knuckles, lips warm, hint of tongue hot, and a nip tof teeth entirely too teasing, holding his gaze all the while. There’s something hungry in them startlingly clear eyes that Bullseye refuses to recognize as blatant seduction, even though he does his damnedest to ignore his blood that sizzles already in embarrassing places.
Bullseye needs a distraction. And he has noticed something, earlier.
Daijoubu dayo.
“You speak Japanese.”
“I am Japanese. “
Bull’s eye, Bullseye almost gloats, but catches himself in time. There’s something there, indeed…A weak point to exploit, surely.
Bullseye at this second, feels like the shark suddenly tasting a drop of blood in the water. He has to circle this, right? Because why double-down on something that was absolutely implied in his comment, right?
“But not entirely Japanese, punk… Eyes can’t lie. What, you wanted to see my other eye. Didn’t you? Thought I wouldn’t notice yours? What is it they say? Eyes are the window to the truth?” It’s his turn to invade the other’s space, to viciously whisper in the shell of an ear: “Teme wa konketsuji desu…”
The tailor recoils in shock, under the insult. His smile becomes a show of teeth speaking of aggression. The transformation of the man’s face has been instant. Pure hate in one second flat twists the stark features to the point of almost ugly.
A wave of something hits. Vile, violent and corrosive. To the point of making Bullseye feel weak at the knees, but in an entirely different way than before.
“No. Daken. That’s what they rather call me. A more vivid image, don’t you say?”
Daken. Mongrel. Yes, it is.
He shrugs, his tailor, then. And just like that, the default smirk is back in place. Like a door slams.
Whatever was happening to the hitman, it stops, and Bullseye pains to understand how come he can’t control his nerves around the damn punk, can feel himself go haywire at the weirdest times. Leaving him all… quivering.
(He keeps note of the word, though. Daken. He knew it. Under the pretty wrapping of colorful fabric, there’s more than meets the eye. A rabid dog, surely. Who would have thought!)
Bullseye unconsciously reaches for his belt buckle. He realizes with a start that his blade is not there…The punk has actually managed to palm it, never giving it back!
“So…” his tailor resumes. “You’ve been watching my eyes, you say, little man?” And the jerk sends him a heated gaze from under heavy eyelids for good measure. Not in innuendo but in clear invite.
“NO!”
Except, yes, Bullseye realizes. Yes, he has more than noticed these eyes, cold and calculating one second, warm and sparkling the next, without rhyme nor reason… And their effect on him, too. This startling rollercoaster that’s starting to get to him.
This will not do.
(That’s the second he decides he’s going to kill the Hand’s tailor, though he’s not quite ready to admit it to himself yet.)
“You can take off the baste, now. We’re done with it.”
And this time, the tailor shows no inclination to leave him any privacy at all. Just stands there. Waiting. He’s not even trying to hide how he ogles, when Bullseye ducks once again behind the dummy to don the clothes he came with.
But, incredibly, when he hands the mongrel the rough for his future suit, Bullseye hears himself asking for more:
“Shirt?” he tells his tailor.
Meaning, more time. To figure the asshole out. Start a real game between them, perhaps.
And he seems pleased, his tailor. Even though this arched eyebrow of his spells he’s not entirely unaware of an ulterior motive on his part.
Good.
“Of course, darling. I’ll take care of that too. Let me have a look in the back. I’ve spotted some nice models in the reserve.”
oOo
Bullseye gets his head back a bit, once the punk removes his presence from the room. Like a welcome splash of cold water when you’re drunk. He’s still not too sure what the hell this guy’s playing at…
(Which game he wants to play himself with that punk.)
A civilian. This tailor doesn’t belong to his world, isn’t like his usual preys or partners in fight. And still, the faint flutters of anticipation are definitively here while he waits.
He thinks he vaguely hears the sound of a ringtone at one point, a classical piano melody. A few words in Japanese are uttered as his tailor answers the phone. But the communication seems to remain brief.
Bullseye waits some more. Almost fidgeting. Fighting any onset of boredom by making a tour of the workshop, palming little objects in passing that he’ll love to use to kill. Needles, tiny scissors for delicate sewing work… A tie, because why not, his tailor is right, one can always need an emergency strangling instrument. And even a thimble, because he can see himself using it to choke someone. Imagine the sweet irony of letting a breather choke on a literal thimbleful, right!
His impatience grows, though. His tailor still isn’t back, and it’s been a while.
He starts woolgathering.
The damn punk has hooked him alright, he’s starting to notice with a kind of dark and desperate amusem*nt. It’s been… different, their encounter. From the fear he usually instills in his victims, for once, and even his most trusted foes. He realizes it’s also the longest conversation he’s had with anyone in ages… Even his handlers from the Hand keep their communication with him terse and to the point. Theirs, though verbal, have had a kind of weird sparring quality that has been…interesting. Entertaining.
Too bad that punk is just a tailor, he mourns once again. Bullseye almost wishes it could last longer. That the mongrel would be able to fight back when the time comes to put him down.
(And that time is about now.)
f*ck the Hand, the hitman finally decides once and for all. He’s going to kill his tailor as soon as he comes back, just to stop wondering. What this punk is. What he’s doing to him. The asshole is eating his mind.
(And maybe that’ll soothe this awkward current of want sizzling under his skin he’s not quite ready to acknowledge, too.)
Yes. Let’s kill the damn tailor. Screams are never ambiguous. They don’t lie. They make sense. The world makes sense when he kills. He’s in control, and his…tailor… is loss of control on legs.
Sure, it’s a defeat in a way, this… seduction. This way the man has had to force him to forego his professional duty for an unsanctioned kill. All the more reason to kill the mongrel, by the way. Shut him up. Make sure nobody knows.
Dammit. How much time has it been since that punk is gone? Bullseye can’t take it anymore. Can’t wait anymore.
He has to make his move.
“Hey, punk,” Bullseye calls, as he pushes the door to the reserve and passes its threshold.
He’s not there, his tailor.
A window is opened. Light curtains dance lightly in the soft breeze from the outside. In their frame, Bullseye can see the rickety structure of an old fire escape.
Bullseye is not alone, though.
There’s a corpse right there, at his feet, in the middle of the room. Fresh, no more than a few hours. A neatly put together middle-aged man with a roundish head and huge glasses.
Also, there’s this elegantly calligraphed note, neatly pinned on the man’s opposite lapel:
I’m a heathen who wouldn’t recognize a good line in cloth even if it stabbed me in the heart!
The cadaver would still be entirely unremarkable if not for the three little wounds on his chest, right where the heart should beat. Bullseye, for all his professional experience in killing, doesn’t quite recognize what weapon could have left such marks, these three irregular puncture wounds. Though it tickles his murder bone to imagine the guy was repeatedly stabbed by a knitting needle or something, he rather has the impression this was a three-pronged weapon. With serrated blades.
Bone blades… his mind gently whispers. Making the insane leap. However impossible the notion might seem.
“Heh. I’ll be damned…”
This is the Hand’s tailor, surely. Must be. Which means…
Who the hell was his tailor?
Bullseye grabs his phone from his back pocket. The job one, with only one number memorized.
Yes, the invisible hand has a call line. Good forbid they let him contact his handler directly. The goddam Britain thinks himself way too important for that.
The hitman skips the niceties entirely when his call is picked up.
“Your tailor is not rich,” he says to the stranger on the line, “he’s dead.”
There’s a beat.
“Have you…?” the voice inquires, completely unruffled.
“No, not me, it pains me to say.”
“Please, hold,” comes the reply. The intonation is so flat he can’t even tell whether the voice is male or female.
He does, hold, though. Not exactly listening to the ridiculous musak in his ear, but rather replaying in his head his whole afternoon. All the little tells earlier which should have told him the guy wasn’t exactly who he seemed to be.
“We’ll arrange for another appointment for you elsewhere,” he’s told after a moment.
“Hell no.”
He’s not going through all this tedious process again.
(Not with someone else.)
And he hangs up.
Gives the room a last once over.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he also mutters in disbelief. The model for his suit, that the fake tailor had taken with him in here, is nowhere to be seen either. “Asshole.”
But Bullseye laughs, then.
It bursts out of him. Grows, fed by a mighty thrill.
So… the punk was a killer too all along, hm?
It means, the next time he sees that damn mongrel, there will be no holds barred.
They’re going to have themselves so much fun!
(To be continued.)
