tampered | Log; Ongoing

Log; Ongoing

When; July 17th [events are backdated]
Rating; PG-13 to R
Characters; Giovanni [

60_08]; Heine Rammsteiner [

weisshaar]
Summary; Family ties never die, never falter, never wither.
Log;
Memories flood like a broken dam floods a city, when it comes to the things you'd like to forget.

It's the same for everyone, really - bad memories are never shut off because you find them in dreams, or nightmares, or the faces and touches of other people. You find horror when you look in the mirror, and you find solace in beating other people to death in a mindless haze.

That was the nature of a stray.

The nature of family, even, if Giovanni could so affectionately put it.

As it was, the memories that bind - poetic as it may sound, and there is something terribly sappy about the whole setup, actually - are the only things that urge in a city unfamiliar. Giovanni had found Heine, or rather he was the one found, and they had set for a little date so quickly it was almost amusing.

He was missed, maybe.

But it's been so damned long and it's been such a while and Heine was taking too much time just to show up, here, now, in front of the carousel, Giovanni with his hands smoothing through his tie while he waited.

O Brother, where art thou?

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With a foot in the mouth, as the metaphor goes, Heine revised his firearms one last time, and seeing them fully loaded, he stomped out the door and towards the elevator. He punched the down button a little too violently, jamming it. It took a second for him to scowl and take the stairs instead; it was only six floors anyway.

Cement and steel were speed lines, and soon was the asphalt. Heine didn't feel like meeting his self-proclaimed brother, but at the same time something--anxiety, irritation, boredom, whatever--drove him closer to the carousel. His nerves were high and the blood only flowed faster when he saw the peppermint ovals and multicolored lights flash on the misplaced fair ride. Then he saw Giovanni, and he stopped, loosening his clenched hands. Though he was meters away, he spoke loud enough for the suited man to hear.

"Wait long?"

What a question.

"I've been waiting for years, actually," Giovanni answered, his tone betraying none of the heavy anger that had buried itself somewhere at the bottom of his guts. ""I'd read out my lines to you now, but, well, we're not home exactly."

He pushed himself off from the railing he had leaned on for a while, watching the lights flash along his peripheral vision as the carousel continued winding itself on and on. Gingerly, he patted the knot of his tie with a finger, then adjusted it to loosen a little around his neck.

Breathe in deep. Hold still. Then pull the trigger.

Or rather, don't pull the trigger at all. Haine had said it - no shitting around or he jumps his guns. Honestly, he had no humor at all.

"Business now?" Giovanni asked, pocketing his hands. "Or would you rather we talked over coffee instead of lead, this time?"

A bitter smirk tickled Heine's lips, and he raised his head to the side, white-lashed eyes narrowing and irony choking his voice, "Really. You shouldn't have. Maybe I should postpone this talk and wait for your hair to grow gray."

The albino hitman's vision fixed upon his suave-spoken sibling, keeping one eye on his face and another on his hands. Although Giovanni was warned, Heine trusted nobody, and he wasn't going to change that now; yet, somehow there was a twisted kind of leisure in the whole scene that allowed him to rest a thumb through a belt loop.

"Neither. Just tell me what the fuck you want from me and leave."

Casual was not synonymous to patient in the boy's behavior.

"Greyer than yours, you mean?" Giovanni would have quirked a brow, considering his hair was blonde enough to be white under harsh light.

"Well," he started, pulling a hand out of his pocket and running it over the back of his head, smoothing the strands of hair that had twisted away from its coiffed appearance through draft of wind. "I'd really rather we talked in private, this time."

There was a quiet sort of... feeling humming through between them, like a thread pulled a little too tightly that someone had plucked like a musical string. Soon it would snap, if they didn't play their game properly.

Not like it wouldn't snap either way, though.

"What I want from you, is you."

Heine huffed, as if shrugging off any trace of amusement. He recalled the time he was identified by his hair color by that petty goon back home. Sometimes he thought if dying hair would make a difference, but frankly, he didn't give a damn. Whoever was turned into shit either way.

Dark pupils moved left and right, scanning the myriad edifices blocking the shadowed scenery. The combination of Giovanni and a café was out of the question since Heine didn't want a repeat of the last time it two came together, although he pondered wether Giovanni in front of him was the same as that time's.

Not that it mattered much. He was still crazy and annoying as hell.

Sighing silently, he finally nodded north, past the blonde-haired and bug-eyed man. "Pick a building. Lots of them are empty. Though I don't know why you need all this hush-hush," he added, muttering.

Pick a building. Lots of them are empty.

Of course.

He hadn't changed much since he'd left a time ago. Still harsh, still foul-tempered, still so emotional in a way that made him seem so apathetic to the entire world. Not part of any future, because God was he so ensconced in the past to notice time fly by him. Sad in so many ways - and yet indestructible in most senses. Crazy to some.

The one and only Haine Rammsteiner to Giovanni.

A breakdown and summary of his obsession, actually.

"Lead the way, then," Giovanni replied, stepping forward and setting himself beside and a little ways behind Haine, inclining his head to the same direction he nodded to. "And to answer your question - we've never been any for public decency, in the nicest sense possible."

"People are just obstacles anyway," Heine agreed, something he hardly conceded to, especially when it was Giovanni speaking.

As told, Heine began the walk forward. Though other's proximity was permitted, he kept one eye on the road and the other on him, making sure that he didn't proceed too far ahead in case he was going to be shot in the back or otherwise.

The many chains and metal stringed and dangling from his belted clothes jingled together, harmonizing with the dull crunch of pebbles and rocks below his spiked boots. (Why, yes, he did intentionally wear them today.) The visual frame quietly traversed into a silver screen; then streets and lamposts were replaced with stairs and railings.

Heine stepped aside, apathy hardening on his face. "You first."

"Obstacles to you, and yet you still work with them in your free time." Giovanni had paid attention to those details many times before, back in their own city, when Haine was still the greyed wet tissue thrown against the grime and spit of the Underground. "Was it that necessary for you?"

And though waiting for a response, Haine had given him a cold look, told him to go ahead if you please, and the mindset was that no not ever or you'd shoot me in the back, but really, what was there to worry about now, when Haine had expressed himself so eloquently about what Giovanni should and should not do, all in a single sentence.

"All the way up, then?" Giovanni asked as he took the first step forward.

As contradictory as his words were to his actions, Heine made no retort. To answer and deal with his insiduous comments were trouble than they were worth, like pushing your way up from a sea of mile-long venomous snakes. There was more value in the absence of sound than in its presence. A frigid glare would profit more, and Heine was brimming rich with those.

"Wherever the hell you want; just move," came the red-eyed man's order, and he waited for Giovanni to ascend a step or a dozen before bending knees himself.

It was possibly a very annoying contradiction and amusing irony that as much as they opposed the other in so many ways - from their dressing senses to their speech patterns - they were, invariably, too similar in so many things.

Like doing their best to get the other to play by the rules, or not at all. Giovanni had conceded several times, in some instances because he needed to. This here would be another.

"So how long have you been in this city?" The building was dark, thank gods for that - it felt familiar in this lack of light. "I seem to be the most recent addition from our little nook of the earth."

Abyssal pupils dilated as they reached the top of the staircase, stretching to detect every shard of light filtering through the crack and holes in the peeling paint of the empty walls. Heine scarcely wandered far before leaning against cold cement, arms and heels crossing. With half-closed eyes, he watched Giovanni comfortably find a stance of his own in the hollow quarters, asking questions in his roundabout way. It unnerved him, but it was too late to revise options.

Silver strands eclipsing his shadow-colored face, Heine responded halfheartedly, "Several months. Two were here before me, then four after, including the twins and you. Next question."

"You stay close, Haine, though I won't go anywhere yet."

Giovanni leaned casually against a darkly lit panel of window, the lights filtering from the street behind and beneath him glinting off the sheen of his glasses.

"Why? ...Don't answer, that wasn't my question."

He took a short sigh of breath, stirred nighttime dust motes and cool wind.

"When do you plan on coming home?"

Heine quirked a brow.

Why what?

He gave the thought no further regard as his pale lips thinned at Giovanni's real question. Heine thought the doctor's pet would get tired of the same cycle, being chewed up and spat out repeatedly with the same attitude and the same frowning face.

"Don't have a date. Don't plan to if you're going to chaperone me."

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Log; Ongoing

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