Rain, dripping from the clouds that cast the world in muted shades of gray.

He sees a hooded figure standing in an alleyway, just off the main street, and so he slips in after it. His breaths are quiet and his footsteps mere sighs in the unsettled wind, but somehow the hooded figure senses him and spins around.

"Why are you following me?" the hooded figure asks. Its voice is deep, rough, and it reminds him of casinos filled with the dense smell of nicotine and the clink of coins, voices muted and muttering about trivialities that represent the world.

He leans back against the brick wall opposite the figure and pretends not to mind the rainwater seeping into his fake-leather jacket. He doesn't answer.

The figure doesn't move. If he could see its eyes, he'd bet ten bucks that they'd be staring straight at him.

"Why are you following me?" the figure asks again, and he can't tell if that's annoyance or fear lacing its voice. He still doesn't respond, instead reaching into his pocket for a cigarette. The rain's still falling steadily, and it soaks the pristine white paper of the cigarette, turning it soggy and grey. He's reminded of the clouds in the sky, that hang low and hungry and shadow the world and drip relentlessly.

"Want one?" he asks, but he pitches his voice higher - makes it more like the nondescript grunt of some random trucker. His voice is recognizable to most of the underground and he wouldn't put it past this figure to recognize it.

This time, it's the figure that doesn't respond, instead shifting uneasily.

He shrugs, puts the soggy cigarette into his mouth, doesn't bother lighting it. "Nice weather, isn't it?"

The figure still doesn't respond. He's starting to see why that could be annoying.

"What are you doing here?" he asks, more to see if it'd react than anything.

"Why are you following me?" the figure returns. Yongguk tilts his head slightly in acknowledgement - it's stubborn, he'll give it that. Three times' the charm, isn't it?

He doesn't modulate his voice this time. "Mmm, I don't know. What do you think?"

The figure starts, and then leans towards him slightly, as if examining him. It pulls back quickly. "You're Bang Yongguk," and the surprise is clear in its voice.

"Nice to meet you, Kim Himchan," Yongguk replies, and he feels the charade melt away just as he sees the lines of the cloaked man tense, become thick and rigid, anticipating an attack.

"What do you want?" If his voice cracks, or is suddenly not quite as deep as before, Yongguk pretends not to notice.

He pushes himself off of the wall and steps into the alley, towards the man he's spent weeks, now, tracking down. He takes his time, measuring every step casually, taking some sadistic enjoyment in the way the man tenses even further. Perhaps he's reaching for his knife now; Yongguk doesn't know and doesn't particularly care.

Perhaps this man is a coward, he thinks - he would not be worth my time, then, and perhaps I should kill him where he stands because now he knows me.

"Why would I want something from you?" he asks instead.

As if that were a password of some kind, the tension melts out of the cloaked man's frame and he laughs, a deep hoarse chuckling like his voice, except now Yongguk smells gunpowder beneath the nicotine and it's just one voice, the dealer, with a dragon's hoard of gold and a veritable feast of dead bodies around the table.

"You're Bang Yongguk," he says, almost dismissively, and his voice is just as deep again and just as certain. "I'm Kim Himchan. People know of us, don't they? Why wouldn't you want something from me?"

There was another charade, Yongguk realizes, beneath the one he'd laid out, and he'd just fallen for it.

Yongguk is nothing but adaptable, though, so he changes his line of attack (he could've been a strategist, he muses in a fit of egoism, not just a sniper). "Tell me, then, Kim Himchan; what would I want from you?"

Himchan lifts up the hood of his cloak. At first Yongguk sees just a layer of soaked black hair, plastered thin to his skull, but then Himchan shakes his head like a wet dog and pushes his hair back. His face is thin and pretty, almost girlish. Only his eyes, dark with amusement and sparkling with something almost sadistic, betray his nature.

"I should get a haircut," he muses, almost to himself, and then rips off the cloak.

It tears off like tissue paper, and he tosses the grey-brown rags to the side. He's wearing a vest, Yongguk thinks at first - a large vest with immense silvery sequins or decorations that somehow don't come off as gay. Then Yongguk looks closer and realizes they're all gun parts or guns.

His hand instinctively jumps to his belt, where he carries his own gun. Blood pounds behind his ears - he can hear his heartbeat, thudthudthudthud like that of a hunted rabbit - and he calculates, almost frantically, if he could shoot faster than the other man, if he could place a good shot on Kim Himchan before he finds himself riddled with so many bullets from beautiful silver half-made guns.

"So, I just met up with this weapons dealer who gave me a load of guns to fix before the end of the week or something," Himchan explains, blithely ignoring Yongguk's distress. "Normally I carry a more - what's the word - eclectic assortment of items, like radios or something, but I deal mostly in cars."

His heart rate slows down and Yongguk forces himself to relax, forces the fight or flight lizard in his head into silence - there's no danger here, at least not immediately.

Himchan glances at him. "So, whaddya want? If you want to fix things, you're going to have to wait for me to finish these." He glances disdainfully at the silver gun parts dangling from his clothes. "Aw, these are getting wet, too. Shouldn't have come out today."

"Yeah, I want you to fix things," Yongguk replies. He takes two steps back, leans on the damp brick wall again. It's a good thing he's never gone for real leather, he thinks - it'd be completely ruined if he had.

Himchan sneezes. It's so out of place in this dismal setting that Yongguk almost laughs, but the dimness and dankness has settled into his bones, weighing the corners of his lips down, so that it only comes as a small involuntary twitch of his lips.

"I hate this rain," he mutters. "You gotta give me a week, though, if you want me to fix anything. What'd you break?"

"Nothing yet," Yongguk replies, and he takes a kind of satisfaction at seeing the mechanic's eyebrows rise. Skeptical. You don't ask people for long-time favors - not in this arena, at least.

Yongguk knows Kim Himchan isn't stupid, so he's not surprised when Himchan gets it. "You want me to be a consultant, of sorts. You want me to work for you."

There's the catch in this arena, too - you're always working for something, always working for someone. There is no purity. Every action has an ulterior motive, and if you don't bother to find out, you can only blame yourself when everything gets blown up straight to hell. Such is the law of the criminal underworld.

Bang Yongguk has never been one to obey laws.

"I want you to work with me," and Himchan's raised eyebrows aren't solely skeptical anymore.

He doesn't answer Yongguk directly. "Let's get out of this rain," he says instead. "I know a café around the corner that'll keep anything anyone says under wraps. They have their own secrets to deal with there."

The café is still dank and dismal, but it doesn't drench them in water so Yongguk decides to just stay. Himchan directs him to a booth in the corner next to the door. The waitress, a harried, cross-looking woman of probably thirty-some years, plants herself by their table and smacks her gum in a ridiculously annoyed manner until Yongguk orders coffee, Americano, iced, no sugar, no milk, I didn't order a latte, woman, and Himchan appeases her with a ridiculously cheesy smile and a no thank you, ma'am.

"Popular with the women, aren't you," Yongguk snorts as he watches the waitress walk away to the kitchen door. There's only one other group of patrons - three men, huddled over a small table, whispering intently. The click-clacking of her heels on the floor are sharp and loud and they echo through the room.

Himchan, leaning back against the cheap plastic booths in a way that practically defines laziness, just shrugs. "Why do you want me to work with you?"

Yongguk shrugs, too. He puts his elbows onto the table, leans forward a bit. The table makes some odd, squeaky noises in protest. "I need a mechanic."

"Oh really?" Himchan asks. He shifts a little so that he's reclining against the wall, too. Yongguk can almost see him deciding whether to put his feet on the table or not. "Couldn't have ever guessed that."

The kitchen doors open - squeak - and Yongguk hears the sharp click-clack of the waitress' heels again. He sits back, takes his arms off of the table (which squeaks in protest again, the stupid bastard).

"One Americano, iced," the waitress snaps. She places a dusty glass cup in the center of the table, doesn't bother to address either of them in particular. Yongguk's certain that she's forgotten who ordered it to begin with. "Anything else?"

Himchan shakes his head. "That'll be it, ma'am."

"Four dollars, then," the waitress says.

Yongguk gapes.

"Four dollars?" he repeats.

The waitress sniffs, looks annoyed. "Yeah, four dollars. Gotta problem?"

Himchan glances sideways at him, but doesn't say anything.

"No, I'm good," Yongguk mutters. He digs into his pocket for his wallet, pulls out a crinkled five dollar bill. The waitress takes it with a definite look of condescension on her face.

"I'll be back with change," she says.

The coffee is bland, watery, and lukewarm, with a slight metallic tang. Yongguk takes two quick gulps and then abandons it.

"Four dollars," he says, shaking his head.

Himchan watches him, amused. "Didn't think you'd be such a cheapskate, Bang Yongguk."

Yongguk glares at him, which only makes him smirk. "I don't make money honestly."

"So why should you spend money honestly, right? Ah, I get it," Himchan says. "But some people try to make livings honestly, Bang Yongguk, even if it means they have to charge four bucks for a cup of coffee."

"What, you own this place or something?" He doubts it; he doubts Himchan's worked honestly a day in his life. They're both criminals, albeit different kinds, and that gives them more in common than most people would think.

He shakes his head slowly, almost ponderingly. "I know the person who does, though."

The waitress comes clacking up to the table again and throws a dollar bill at Yongguk's lap. She looks disappointed when he catches it. "Have a nice day, and come again," she says. It sounds like she's reciting lines from a play.

"Have a nice day," Himchan echoes, inclining his head slightly at her.

She nods at him, looking slightly more cheerful, and disappears back into the kitchen.

Himchan sits up, now - no more leaning against the wall, no more laziness. "You can get a mechanic anywhere. Why do you need me, and why do you need me on a permanent basis?" Even his voice is different - more suited to a business meeting, with powerpoints and suits and ties than a casino.

Yongguk clears his throat, shifts a little. "I can't bargain effectively," he says bluntly. "I need more cars and more contacts than I have."

"I get the cars part," Himchan says, "but there's better-connected people out there."

"You're more versatile."

Himchan shrugs, glances out the window opposite their booth. It's still raining, but it's not such a deluge anymore. Yongguk thinks it'll probably die out within the hour. "You only planning on working with two people?"

"Perhaps." Truthfully, he'd never considered. He'd only really thought as far as getting Himchan to join him.

The other man snorts. He relaxes, slouching back into his previous position. "You should probably get more people, cover all the bases."

"You think?"

"Yeah." Himchan pauses for a second. His brow furrows. "I heard about this new guy a few days back. Got some seriously sticky fingers, but he's real good at it. Quick, from what I hear, and he doesn't make mistakes. Think you could use a thief?"

Yongguk nods. "Are you in, then?"

"Why not?" Himchan grins. His top teeth show, a line of white that seems rather out of place in the greyness of the café. "I gotta get these guns in first, though. Don't want him to shoot me for not getting these in fast enough."

woot i got a chapter done

this is unedited, no beta, so if you see any mistakes/confusing parts please tell me