A Head to Kill
Ficlet HQ"A Head to Kill" Minseok/Luhan
It was a hard life, a hard night, a hard rooftop. The smell of death, the stench of the city wafting upwards. Luhan didn't notice any of that though. Not when he had a job to do. Not when he had a body to kill.
His stake out was a lonely place, three in the morning, and no moonlight to speak of. The city was always covered in clouds. Smog was the friend of the sniper assassin at night. It blocked out the moon's rays, kept him shrouded in darkness. Luhan reveled in it, his dark black leather pants and jacket the perfect outfit for blending in. He set his tripod, checked the scope of his rifle, silencer in place, and then he lay in wait.
They hadn't given him any information about his target. That was how he worked: no questions asked. All he knew, as he peered through binoculars at the building across the way, was that somebody would be entering the lit-up room. Somebody would walk right into his anonymous employer's trap, try to uncover a secret mystery file, and then Luhan will kill him. One, quick bullet to the head. Pow. And then his job would be done. No pick-up, no clean-up. He'd stash his weapon and disappear into the night, and no one would be any the wiser. Tomorrow he'd wake up in his nice pent-house purchased in another name and casually make himself a perfect cup of hand-poured coffee as he'd learned from his lover long long ago, and wait for the next assignment. The only regret he had in life was that he never poured coffee for two. Those days were gone. His lover was gone. Dead perhaps, killed, or disappeared. He never figured out which it had been. Not that Luhan had any time this evening to dwell on that.
He ran through the facts of the job in his head. The target would be enter through the far right door, and make his way to the desk on the left. He should be about 6' 2'' or 1.87 meters tall and dark-haired. He set his rifle for the perfect angle, exactly where he estimated the target would stand before he bent over the desk, right above the window bar. It would be the perfect shot, and if he was off by even a millimeter the whole job might be scratched.
He waited. His watch read the hour as 2:58 am. Getting closer. Luhan stretched his muscles, relaxing his body so that he would be ready.
2:59 am. Luhan circled his head around his shoulders, clearing the cricks out of his neck.
3:01 am. Any time now. He inhaled slowly and deeply, and then exhaled, once, twice, ten times.
3:03 am. And still nobody had shown. Perhaps they were late. Perhaps his information was wrong. Perhaps he should allow for human error. Not every person about to be murdered followed an exact timeline after all.
3:06 am. The door was opening. Luhan held his breath, watched as the door knob turned and then opened and in walked the figure. The room was dark. He couldn't see him very well except for a shadowy profile.
Something was off though, and Luhan frowned trying to figure out what. The figure walked just as he should towards the desk, and Luhan put his finger to the trigger, waiting for the target's head to align perfectly so he could blast his brains out.
But the head didn't align. And then the target was turning on a light by the desk and before Luhan had time to adjust his measurements, he suddenly recognized that face. No person with a towering six foot plus height, that was for sure. No dark hair. The target was six inches shorter! With blond hair! This was all wrong. All completely wrong! And while Luhan cried out in his head, brain confused, his heart stubbornly insisted that it knew the target. It knew that face, and those eyes, and those cheeks and that body.
"Minseok..." Luhan whispered to himself, heart pounding in his chest. "Minseok... Where were you..."
Then, "Who are you...?"
His lover, his lover he'd thought dead for years was in that room, rifling through that desk, bent over looking for the bait he should have been assassinated for. And yet... Luhan couldn't pull the trigger. The angle was wrong. He kept telling himself that over and over again. The bar is in the way. He'll miss the shot. The target will be startled and he'll duck and run away, and then never appear again. Minseok will disappear again...
Before he even realized it, Minseok, the target, had realized there was no secret file in that desk. It was a bust, just like it was set up to be. Except Minseok wasn't supposed to walk out of that room alive. That was the plan. But Luhan let him live...
Luhan awoke early, early in the morning. His bedside clock read 4:59 am. Somebody had entered his apartment. Lawfully, legally. He heard the security code beep from the outside, someone entering his pin number, and the door opening. Nobody knew that pass code other than Luhan. Correction, no one anymore knew that code. There had been someone in the past, but that person was dead. Luhan had thought he was dead, until tonight when he let him live.
He sat himself up in bed, hand almost reaching over for the pistol he kept concealed beneath his bedside table. Then he decided he didn't need it, didn't want it. Footsteps came slowly, softly down the hallway, right to the cusp of his open bedroom door, and Luhan held his breath when a figure appeared in the doorway. He held still, nearly invisible in the dark, but he should have known it was pointless.
"You're awake," said the figure. He sounded just the same. Luhan wanted to cry.
"Minseok..."
"Yes." It wasn't a question, not really a response. The man confirmed he was alive and there with all the gravity of a feather in the wind, and yet it was so much more.
"I thought you were dead," said Luhan, evenly controlling his voice because that's all he had left.
"I almost became so tonight."
Both were silent, letting Minseok's words sink in. His face was starting to be familiar now. Light from the hallway starting to seep into the room, and Luhan could see how tired and exhausted he was, how much older. It had been almost four years since he last saw him. Four years since they both woke up and Luhan had kissed his cheeks in good morning, and they'd showered and eaten breakfast and got dressed and went their separate ways to work. Minseok was a kindergarten teacher. He was supposed to be a kindergarten teacher.
Luhan couldn't respond, and so Minseok spoke again.
"You think I didn't know that was a trap? That you were probably stationed somewhere with a scope, ready to kill whoever entered that room?"
Luhan's throat went dry. "How did..." He stopped and then changed tactics. "If you knew that, then why did you enter?"
Minseok never came home after that day. Vanished and disappeared. He hadn't shown up to his job. When Luhan, frantic, went to inquire, the school hadn't even heard of Minseok. They looked at him like he had gone mad, and perhaps Luhan had. Minseok had never been a teacher. He'd never worked in a school. Everything was a lie, and now he was gone.
Minseok smiled. "I wanted to see what you would do. If you would pull the trigger. Or... if you would forgive me."
Luhan's whole being turned to rage. "I thought you were dead! You disappeared, you were gone out of nowhere one day! I found out I didn't even know who you were! You lied to me! Minseok, tell me which one of those things am I supposed to forgive you for?!"
His hands balled in the sheets, and despite his shouting, his eyes were weeping.
Minseok didn't say anything for a minute. He stood in the doorway, motionless. And then he slowly began walking forward, closer to the bed where Luhan waited, where he hadn't moved.
"Any of those things... all of those things... Luhan, I'm sorry," he spoke so softly.
"For what?"
"Everything. Luhan, I love you. That part wasn't a lie, then or now."
He couldn't be serious. Not now after everything he had put Luhan through; it just wasn't fair. Luhan loved him with every fiber in his being and yet Minseok had betrayed him and ripped that heart from body. And then he showed up trying to offer it back.
"I don't know if I can forgive you."
"I know that," said Minseok, if his name even was Minseok. Luhan didn't trust anything anymore. "I know... but I still had to try."
It hurt, everything hurt, and Luhan didn't know what to do. He was so tired, and his body ached. His heart ached, and yet here was Minseok standing before him, pleading everything but offering him no explanation.
"Okay..." he said after a moment. Minseok didn't speak, but he did look at him with something close to begging. "Okay," Luhan repeated. "Come to bed first? Tomorrow I will tell you if I can forgive you or not."
Minseok smiled so sweetly, so earnestly. Luhan didn't know if he'd made the correct decision or if he'd just set himself up all over again. Maybe this time it wouldn't be Minseok who disappeared, but himself. He couldn't bring himself to care though, not after Minseok was tossing his belt and shoes on the floor and climbing into the bed. Not when Luhan's arms were finally sinking around Minseok's waist. And definitely not when he was kissing Minseok's tear-stricken face, nose to nose finally, again, at last.
**Drabble included originally as an unfinished fic within my story, 'Write Me Into Fiction, Hyung'
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