***
You know you’ve been spending too much time with someone when you can recognize them by the sound they make turning the pages of a book.
He doesn’t count anymore the number of times he has found Daken in the lounge room with a novel. He can picture in his head the angle of Daken’s hand as he sometimes wets a finger by putting it to his lips, knows by heart the snappish way he turns the pages, this little impatient flick of the wrist that always produces a very dry sound as the paper is beaten into submission. It usually drives him nuts. Still, today, it just feels soothingly familiar. It counteracts the harsh hospital smells and sounds that usually set him on edge. And even more bizarrely the bitter tang of defeat left on his mind by his encounter with Deadpool.
“What are you doing here? Done washing your hair, Junior?” he asks without opening his eyes. It’s strange that he is not feeling the sentiment of anger and frustration and, well, other things that the mutant usually manages to elicit in him. He’s not sure he’s totally awake. Or maybe it’s just the drugs giving the world smoother edges.
“You’re actually good company when you’re quiet.” It’s Daken’s voice, all right. But low, the punk is distracted by his reading. “And there’s a limit to the time one sensible man can stay in the same space as Normie and Venom. You’re the perfect alibi. I like you so much. I worry about you.”
Bullseye can’t help the snort at the tremolos Daken puts in his voice. He opens his eyes at last. Then winces.
“What’s with the goddam T-shirt!”
“I like it,” Daken shrugs without looking up, unconcerned. He might be the only person Bullseye knows who can sprawl elegantly in one of these awful plastic hospital chairs.
“It’s a Fantastic Four T-shirt,” he points, as if it were obvious what is wrong with the picture.
“It drives Normie nuts. Or… more nuts, to be precise.” Of course, Daken sounds the tiniest bit smug and smirks accordingly to the page he’s reading.
“Me too,” he grumbles. “Makes me want to stab you.”
“You always want to stab me. It’s all very phallic, if you ask me.”
“No one is asking.” Bullseye raises a finger (the move hurts), but he realizes it’s a little lost on the mutant, still nose in his novel. Maybe for the better. After all the gesture, unfortunately, wasn’t exactly less phallic, he has to concede in retrospect. He’s not at peak capacity. He looks at the book. Can’t see the cover, but Daken is well through it, at last two thirds in. Either he’s been here a long time, or he had already started it and brought it with him, thus came equipped. Both thought are equally strange.
Then he sees the flowers, on the table a little farther away. Can’t help but glare at them. It’s not the white-flowered plant from before (he threw it to the wall, incurring the wrath of the nurses who didn’t like he had left his bed, and after that all goes a little fuzzy…). These are newones. A goddam – extravagant – bouquet of cut flowers. With the goddam red and black DP card.
“You’re angry, suddenly, why are you angry?” Daken inquires. Fuck if Bullseye knows how the punk knows, it’s not like he said anything of his irritation, but the mutant is looking straight at him above his novel. Finally. Not sure it’s really better to be the focus of his attention, though.
“Nothing,” he answers, but can’t help glaring at the gift.
Daken rises from his uncomfortable chair to stand in front of the flowers, considering.
“Ha, I see who it’s from. That’s why you’re cranky. Should I be jealous of your new suitor?” Then, “There’s a note,” he says, looking at the other side of the card. “I’m sorry you got your ass kicked by the awesomeness of me. But what did you expect in a Deadpool issue, really? Say fuck you to Norman for me.”
Daken looks puzzled, Bullseye notices. It makes two of them. The mutant crumples the card in a tight ball and tosses it, hitting Bullseye square in the forehead. The little ball of paper is light but the sharp impact still surprises him. He should have been able to dodge or fend away the offending projectile. He curses a blue streak.
Daken looks almost sympathetic as he explains: “To sum it up, you’re drugged to the gills. The doctor thought you needed it. Too agitated. Of course, it’s not thatobvious, you’re used to so much medications… Still…” Daken taps his own forehead lightly with a finger, adding a sardonic: “Bullseye.”
Daken walks to the foot of the bed, grabbing the chart he finds there and flipping through it without shame. “The doctors don’t want to release you for a few days. And only with the assurance Normie will provide an equipped facility to care for you.”
“He better will. I’m not staying here any longer than I have to.”
“You’re quite fragile, actually, little man.” There’s an odd note in the words Daken usually uses as a slur. He tears the X-ray away from the chart looking at it by holding it to the light from the window.
“Don’t push it, punk. I’ll show you fragile.”
Daken traces the curve of the meat hook coiled in his ribcage on the picture with one finger. “I really didn’t mean to insult you. It takes guts to go against an unkillable degenerate when you don’t have the same advantage. Normie wants me to kill the Punisher.”
Bullseye reels a little from the non sequitur. It takes him a second to rally.
“Frank? He’s fun to mess with. Contracts on his head made me millions.”
“He’s as good as dead.”
“Is not. Look, the bastard is—”
“It’s ridiculous. I’ve been trying to avoid Normie’s little command center for his vendetta for days so that he won’t rope me in his schemes.”
“So that’s why you’re hanging out here.”
“Not really. It’s a perk, though. Be a realist, Lester. He’s beneath me.”
Bullseye would normally laugh out loud at such a boast. But Daken is not trying to lord anything over anybody right now, he doesn’t even sound smug, he just stares at Bullseye, there’s something chilly in the matter-of-factness of the statement.
“Don’t be mistaken. No matter the damage,” Junior keeps on, “no matter how many times he manages to kill me, I’ll neverstaydown. All I need is one well-placed strike and he’s done. He’s a brute – a smart one, I’ll give it to you – but waging a futile war… The hunt and the kill, that’s what I’ve been made for. I won’t shed a tear on him.” Sometimes, Daken doesn’t realizes what he lets slip, Bullseye has learned. Someone madehim what he is. Bullseye secretes the nugget away in a corner of his mind. “Hell, when the time comes, I’ll get myself in the mood for slaughter, no doubt. But for now… Maybe I just have a fondness for people who do absolutely what they want, in spite of society’s morals… without hiding… and in spite of their sadly human limitations. Just like you.”
Daken shrugs his apparent gloominess away and puts the X-ray back where it belongs. “So yhea, I really didn’t mean to insult you. For once,” he adds after a bit with a poorly formed smirk.
“Well, shit,” Bullseye answers with feeling, even though he’s not even sure what he wants to express by that. But before he can sort it out, Daken already moves on:
“Heard you wanted Norman to find a way to patch you up quick so you can keep up with your little war with Wilson. He’ll do it, I gathered, but he has to play ball with the civilians as well, so you’re really still stuck here for a few days, as far as I can tell.”
“Wonderful,” Bullseye replies. At least, his sarcasm is healthy.
“I don’t know him that well,” Daken resumes, “I don’t need the headache. Is Deadpool the kind of guy who’ll try to sneak more flowers in just to piss you off, or should I worry he’ll try to finish you in your bed as well?”
“Not his style. He just likes to annoy. But he won’t do anything drastic while I’m here, unless he’s paid for it. He’s a decent bad guy,” he grudgingly elaborates. It’s not a compliment in his mouth. “Just wants to remind me the game is still on.”
“Want me to get rid of those, then, Lester?” Daken asks, pointing to the flowers with an abrupt movement of his chin.
“I couldn’t care less one way or another,” the hitman answers, even though his fingers are already groping around for anything he could throw at the vase.
Unfortunately, when his hand grabs the TV remote – which will do – Daken blocks his line of sight. When he moves at last, though, Bullseye forgets about his plan.
There’s something in the way Daken is looking at the bouquet, as if it offended him too… Then he reaches for the flowers with one hand, picks one of them, removes it, replaces it elsewhere. And keeps going. Slowly, but surely, the all arrangement changes shape, into something more elaborate and graceful. There’s something hypnotic in the calm work of Daken’s hands, the way his dark painted nails contrast with the pastel of the petals. Bullseye is mesmerized. Not by the elegance of the result, he couldn’t care less about the greenery. But the punk kills with these hands, and truly Bullseye wouldn’t have thought he would be able to create beauty with them as well, or even attempt to. Another piece for the little conundrum that is Wolverine’s son. Junior catches him staring, eventually.
“My mother—” Daken abruptly stops himself then resumes: “Natsumi used to practice ikebana. I liked watching when I was a kid.” He’s talking like he doesn’t want to tell but somehow has to.
Bullseye easily convinces himself he actually pays attention because he must be really bored. (It’s not true.) “So you havea mother.”
“Adoptive mother. I killed her.”
He can see something ticks Daken. Like a shark tasting blood in the water, he can’t help but circle closer to the wound.
“You don’t look like you enjoyed it. It’s not like you.”
“I was too young, Lester. I hadn’t learned to enjoy it yet.” But there’s a tension at the corners of his eyes, something stony in his expression that belies his predatory smile. Daken rarely does stony. Things rarely ruffle him enough to cause him to clam up.
He doesn’t know what makes it click in his brain: the (non) expression on Daken’s face; the way it’s manifest he hates the memory and still clings to it, can’t pull himself away from it; the fact that’s a kind of pain he can’t shrug off even with a healing factor. It resonates in Bullseye. It says Mapone to him. Fuck.
Bullseye tries to never think about it. He’d get insane if he did. (Insaner.) Must be the hospital drugs. He is not himself these days. He’s been more messed up than he thought by his scuffle with Deadpool, it seems. It’s been a while Daken’s been here and he hasn’t even tried to kill him yet, for fuck’s sake. Doesn’t even feel like it.
That’s the difference between people like Daken or himself and so-called heroes. They’ve seen the world for the shitty place it is. They’ve known pretty early in life. The taboo about killing doesn’t exist, not really, family isn’t always love and a safe place. Better be the ones who kill than the ones who are to be killed, it’s simple as math. Killing is fine.
But here’s the catch. Killing whom you don’t want to kill is not. That’s why you have to be the perfect killer. And he is Bullseye. He never misses. Never. Never… again. Because there was Rosemary. (Rosemary Pone. Ma’ Pone. In his head, when he can’t forget, the name runs around in circles and bites its own tail. MaponeMaponeMapone.) That woman, she’d been decent to him. The memory is vague, far away. She’d been… warm. Kind. For a few months, he might even have bought the big lie of love, of home, of safety.
He remembers the last expression on her face, her horror while she was looking straight at him. He remembers standing above her body and not feeling any pleasure. He hadn’t meant to. He missed. How could he have missed? He was just a child, but he remembers: he wasn’tless good back then.
This is the contradiction of all the mythos he worked so hard to build around his very being like a wall behind which he felt safe to be who he was. Or maybe, this is the reason of his mythos. (It’s not only the thrill.) He’s been making it up for it, this one mistake, for years. He. Never. Misses. It all comes back to that point in time. This moment when he hadn’t that control. Perfect kills as atonement. He is a god of Death, intent made reality. Control. He wouldn’t able to enjoy killing so much without it. And, don’t be mistaken, he loves killing.
So he knows. He knows the kind of pain he’s looking to inflict on Daken. The kind of scar is about to probe. Confronting him with a moment when control was lost and the resulting loss was even worse. He recognizes it.
But because he is who he is, when Bullseye sees a weakness, he can’t help but pry at it. Daken, in particular, has this effect on him. He aims for the kill, always.
“Had she had any sense, she should have killed you first.”
“Please. She was smarter than I gave her credit for. Of course, she tried. Even had a shotgun with a bayonet. She didn’t stand a chance, though.” The claws pop. They look incongruous in the context of the hospital room. Daken stares at them, as if he was seeing them for the first time, as if they didn’t belong to his hand. “Obviously,” he adds for himself.
I knew it, the hitman thinks. I knew it. You might have been defending yourself, but you never meant to kill her. There’s a perverse satisfaction in knowing Daken is not immune to failure.
But something pulls back the hitman out of his head. One flick of the mutant’s wrist and Bullseye starts. All the flowers drop dead, neatly beheaded.
“Sorry, Lester,” the punk insincerely says. “The smell of the pollen was getting on my nerves.”
“You loved her,” he accuses, knowing he’s right. “But that’s soyou. You don’t take rejection well,” he taunts. “Do you, brat.” He realizes his mistake even before he finishes his sentence. One second, he sees the mutant’s face and thinks Daken is going to kill him right here and right now, that he won’t even have the time to grab the scalpel he secured under his pillow. Indeed he is not able to. The next second, he is pinned and should be dead.
“Who does, Lester?” Daken sweetly asks. The mutant’s lips almost brush his, his face is so close… And surprisingly, his claws are buried in the pillow (not in him). Bullseye can feel them press against his cheek. He doesn’t dare move and hates it. It’s the second time in so many days he is made powerless. It makes him furious. This time he grabs the small blade and strikes towards the mutant’s face with all his might, however impaired by the drugs he may be.
Daken cuts his surprised howl of pain like a pro. Eyes darting to the door. They both freeze, senses in alert. It’s strange how Bullseye automatically relies on Daken’s cue (and his keen senses), now that he remembers they might not have as much privacy as he thought.
“Shit. Nurse incoming. It’s a civilian hospital, Lester, remember? Not a H.A.M.M.E.R. facility,” Daken hisses with aggravation. “They’ll call the cops on you if they think you’re acting out, and we don’t need you starting wasting civilians… I’m in no mood for a lecture from Normie.”
For a handful of seconds after that, Daken is a flurry of activity. He wrenches the scalpel from his cheekbone with hardly a grunt (Bullseye can’t help wincing in sympathy even though he is the one who inflicted the wound and would be proud to say he got Junior and got him good), drops the metal blade in the flower vase (Bullseye is mildly impressed by the quick thinking), wrenches a pillow from behind Bullseye on the bed (Bullseye grunts, to be jostled so hurts, dammit, and Daken his not gentle with it), takes the pillowcase off to press against the side of his face and staunch the flow of blood before he leaves traces of the incident, giving the pillow itself back with his other hand (Bullseye mumbles, but takes it and replaces it at his back.).
The moment the nurse enters the room, Daken looks like he is just fallen asleep in the plastic chair. Twisted to the side, head and shoulder plastered to the backrest, injured cheekbone – and fabric pressed to it – invisible, his long legs tucked under him… A weird arrangement of his limbs lending something vulnerable to the shape of his body, making the woman instinctively detour his chair lest she might wake him up, thus standing at the opposite side of Bullseye’s bed.
*
**
His eyes are closed for the charade, but all his other senses are on alert, and thus there is not much that Daken will miss, actually. Her smell is familiar; he knows which one it is, this nurse. An older lady, unremarkable she would have been, if not for the hint of wit underlying her homely manners and underlining her eyes with laughter lines. She was easy enough to charm so that she would let him stay, even outside visiting hours. He tries not to tense when she walks past him, after all his back is left vulnerable.
She whispers. From the sound of her voice, he guesses where she stands, can even picture her leaning a little towards her patient.
“I thought I heard something. Everything alright with you, dear?”
Dear, really? Lester is going to love that, Daken thinks. The fabric of the bed sheets murmurs, the wounded is trying to sit a little straighter, it seems.
“Yhea. He’s the one who has nightmares. Startled me awake, too,” Lester replies, with just enough petulance to sell the crankiness of the bedridden. He keeps his voice low, though, as if he wouldn’t want to wake him up, which is a nice touch, Daken has to admit.
Nightmares? It’s not that bad a fib, Daken would as well allow, in case somebody recognized his voice from the hallway… After all he was the one who cried out, but…
“Poor thing!” the nurse softly coos.
Lester, I’m going to make you pay for that. Daken can feel her gaze on him, concentrates on keeping his breathing regular, deep, slow. Elusive but real, he can perceive a whiff of amusement coming from Lester.
“Your young friend is a darling,” the woman continues on the tone of confidence. “The doctor had to up your sleeping dosage, last night, you know. You were quite agitated when your previous guests departed.” She sounds mildly displeased. Apparently Norman is not considered a darling.
“Yhea, I’d gladly have a few words with someone over that,” he hears Lester mumble, even though it certainly would have been too low for the nurse’s ears. Daken has the feeling Lester doesn’t like being drugged and wishes someone would pay. He hopes Lester’s doctor won’t show her face.
Oblivious, the nurse keeps going: “He was a little uncomfortable with your level of sedation when he arrived.”
And who wouldn’t have been? Daken can’t help thinking. He had expected to show up and just start taunting Lester with his misadventure… Needling the killer is so much fun. But Lester had looked as good as comatose, when he entered the room. It had been jarring. Of course he had inquired! Their Hawkeye can be a pain in the ass and an asshole all rolled in one, even be crass sometimes, but the thing is that what’s even more characteristic of him is this frightening energy thrumming through him, this constant awareness, his lightning like reflexes. Simply put, the intensity of his presence. On the very edge of plunging into sheer madness, sometimes (And, ho, how much fun Daken has hadwith that), but still. It feels like low electricity under the skin, just standing in the nearness of him. And Daken very rarely feels people so clearly. Looking at an unconscious Lester had felt wrong on so many levels. Like his own senses had been dulled.
“And when was that, that he arrived?” Lester asks, the sneaky little bastard.
“It was at the beginning of my shift, it would have been well over six hours ago?” There’s a light flavor of incredulity in her voice. “I’m pretty sure it’s another book than the one he first brought back in when he decided to stay, the one on the armrest of his chair? See, the first one is on your bedside table… ”
“Ho, really. He’s been there that long?” Lester’s mild surprise feels like a weird prickling in his nostrils. Busted, Daken thinks, a tad annoyed. He hadn’t intended Lester to know how long he’d kept (sat?) vigil. He doesn’t even know really whyhe stayed.
She hums knowingly. “I guess he deserves a little rest too. Since I’m here, why don’t you let me have a look at your stitches?”
Lester can’t exactly say no so he remains silent, which the nurse takes as an assent, even though Daken can feel his irritation at being probed.
Lester severely wants to kill her. He wants it sobad. Daken can smell the killing intent building in the air. He pictures it in his mind, clear as day. Lester would push past the pain of moving, remove the cannula from his nose and use the tube from the oxygen tank and strangle her with it. He can already see it. He bets Lester can already feel her breath die from the force of his fingers pulling on the plastic tube.
On the opposite side from the nurse’s, hidden by the frame of the bed, Daken cautiously untucks a leg from under him and his foot hits the metal of the bed just hard enough for Bullseye to feel the vibration. Don’t, he tries to intimate. He takes the risk to emphasize his point with the slightest slit of visible clear pupil under his dark lashes. The patient challenges his gaze a second. Daken guesses it’s fifty-fifty now, he’ll have to wait and see. Just to push the odds a little more in his favor, he releases a bit of soothing pheromones in the confined space of the room.
“Damn,” Lester mumbles. Daken lets go of the breath he hadn’t realized he held. The hitman’s frustration at being thwarted in his intent is grating on his nerves, but for now he can live with it.
“What was that, dear?”
“That kind of hurts,” Lester covers, putting his hand on the patch of skin riddled with stitches the woman just uncovered. (An impressive count, Daken manage to glimpse from the corner of his eye.)
“Well then, maybe you’ll associate with people less fond of meat hooks, next time, darling,” Daken can’t resist commenting, feigning he’s just waking up. Lester, to no one’s surprise, glares. The nurse has the nerve to chuckle, but then she doesn’t realize she’s kind of poking the proverbial bear by doing so. Daken rethinks down her survival rate in his head. He so not wants to have to dispose of her body without anyone noticing in a building full of people, dammit, Lester!
He’s good at sleights of hand, the bloody pillow cover is already disappeared in his back, and he is reasonably sure the wound is already gone from his face; the tingling of the healing factor has stopped almost a whole minute ago. He stretches like a languid cat. It’s quite gratifying to notice the nurse isn’tthe only one looking as his T-shirt rides a bit too high and discloses skin at his waist.
“What’s on your face, darling?” she asks though, frowning. His reaches for his cheek, feeling a little spot of dry blood under his fingertips.
“I cut shaving, this morning. Must have missed a spot cleaning the mess. Silly me,” he sunnily smiles. She swallows the lie, hook, line and sinker. Too caught in the feeling of well being he feeds her through pheromones to realize she should have noticed when she first met him hours ago, if it had really been the case.
“Yhea, you don’t get to lecture me about meat hooks when you can’t use a razor properly, punk,” Lester gleefully improvises.
The nurse tuts. “Is that a way to talk to your visitor?”
Before Lester can snap something back or snap her neck, Daken has to interfere:
“Don’t worry about it. He sounds abrasive but he cares…” he says, lacing his voice with a fondness as thick as molasses. He then stands only to sit right after on Lester’s bed, gluing himself to the hitman, one arm around him in a half hug. “He’s just a big marshmallow inside.” He plants his lips on Lester’s shaved skull with a loud smack. Daken knows Lester is going to be pissed, he’s not sure he minds.
As expected, the second the nurse leaves the room, fortunately on her two feet and alive, Lester explodes:
“Marshmallow? Seriously? What’s wrong with your head!” he grouses.
“I have nightmares? Seriously?” Daken mimics backs. “You deserved it. Plus, it makes it easier for me to tag around.”
“You staying?” He can’t help the surprise in his voice, Daken notices. Neither the relief, which is weird even for Daken. He’s not used to people actually knowing him (except for the ones he is conning, obviously) wanting him to stay. Especially not Lester.
“I’ve been a solo operative for more than forty years for my… whatever.” (He won’t say the word masterin front of Lester; it would be tantamount to invite him to pry.) “Insert yourself in people’s lives, get what you want, get rid of the loose ends and scram. Pardon me if I think the whole ‘frat experience’ – he actually finger quotes to express the depth of his loathing for the idea – living all constantly in each other’s pocket at the Avengers Tower is a bit grating. It’s quiet here.” It’s not even untrue. He needed the breather. He’s still pissed that Karla as good as burned his favorite tea parlor where he could usually catch a break when he needed space and peace. “This,” he finishes with an annoyed wave of his hand encompassing the room, “is a fucking holiday. Now, do shut up so I can enjoy it.”
He lets himself fall back on his seat and grabs his book.
“Fine,” Lester grits, and Daken can’t help being taken aback: the victory was this easy. “I’m tired anyway, don’t bother me.” The hitman rolls on his side, burying himself in the light hospital coverlet.
“Fine,” Daken agrees. One never enjoys enough to have the last word.
*
**
Daken is never gone for more than an hour at a time from the room. A bite to grab. (He even smuggles back sweets.) A quick change of clothes or shower. (Bullseye sometimes catches a whiff of soft cologne which is a nice change from the antiseptic smell of the hospital.) Book runs. (More often than you would think. He is a fast reader, whatever the language.)
The rest of the time, the nurses seem either to act as if Daken weren’t even in the room or fawn over him like smitten teenage girls. There is always this soft “Incoming.” falling from Daken’s lips, warning him of their arrival well ahead of time. As for Bullseye, he bears their ministrations with minimal fuss and barely any discomfort at the invasion of his personal space, or even anxiety. Which is strange in itself.
It’s the second day he fully realizes… Here’s a funny thing. Hospitals feature a lot in his worst memories of helplessness and vulnerability, lying defenseless in a bed, paralyzed, entombed in his own body. It should make him so angry (so terrified) to be stuck there. And even so, he manages to be lulled in deep sleep, even without the doctors’ drugs, knowing Daken is sitting right there. Not a second does he register as a threat. Not a second does he think he’ll get stabbed in his sleep by vicious claws… And there’s also this strange conviction nothing will be able get past the mutant to get to him. He feels safe.
“Are you doing something to me?” he asks, not as irked either as he knows he should be.
The punk raises his head from his current novel and replies, his innocent puzzlement a taunt in itself: “When am I not doing something to you?”
“Obviously, silly me,” Bullseye mumbles. He knows he walked right into this one.
“Indeed.” Daken doesn’t smile. (Then Bullseye would have known he was lying or trying to get something.) But looking at his profile, face bent on the pages, there’s this… tiny shadow, like unborn laughter lines at the corner of the eye. Hard to say if it’s the reading or his words which provoked this fleeting mirth.
“You can keep doing it,” Bullseye says, normally a tad too low to be heard. But this is Daken. So. He has no doubt he won’t have to repeat himself. Reaching for the remote, he turns the TV on, but on mute as a gesture of good will. Big predators move on the screen, graceful and deadly. It’s easy to get lost in their struggle for life.
The mutant distractedly hums his acceptance. Bizarrely, Bullseye muses as a lioness neatly disembowels a zebra, it’s also easier to know Daken gets something out of the arrangement as well. Most of the time they are alone, and Junior seems to bask in the peace and quiet, and for his part (for once) Bullseye refrains to be a nuisance. (Mostly.)
Otherwise, they hardly talk to each other but the silence is hardly uncomfortable, quite the opposite. When the fancy takes him though, sometimes Daken reads aloud. When it happens, Bullseye never interrupts.
Daken reads and he listens and maybe it’s horrible (there’s no other word for the sick feeling at the bottom of his stomach) how much Daken is born to breath life in words. (With his voice, poetry makes sense.) And how nobody knows and thinks he’s only made to kill. Bullseye can’t exactly explain the bitter tang of betrayal he feels. Or maybe he can but can’t just admit it. He and Daken, they’re predators, killers, they recognize it in each other, there’s kinship, somehow, in that. But Daken is also… more. And Bullseye hates him a little, perhaps, for shattering the illusion; maybe they’re not the same at all, after all…
But then, Daken looks up from the pages and wryly comments: “So much pathos, hm? Rather than spill words, ink and all these tears on the paper, wouldn’t it have been healthier to rip to shreds the one who hurt him so?” And the smile on his lips is savage and Bullseye snorts, he can breathe easy again. He… doesn’t see how Daken’s fingers still caress lightly the words on the page.
*
**
One time, they even watch baseball. Or rather, a program about hall of fame players (forgotten or not, curiously) presenting medleys of particularly interesting games. Daken, unexpectedly, deigns getting involved as he notices the spike in Bullseye’s interest for the TV screen. He even settles down on the bed, near the wounded’s feet, to have a better line of sight to the monitor mounted on the wall. He has this little frown like when he is trying to work out something. Bullseye takes pity on him and starts explaining the rules while little silhouettes run on the screen. It’s funny the things you never forget.
“That game is ridiculous,” Daken says at last. “Pitcher, hitter, I get it, the little duel is fun.”
“Little duel?” Bullseye mouths, aghast. The dismissive way Daken says that!
“But all the running around? And why a diamond shape, seriously?”
And, OK, Bullseye has no answer: the running was idiotic. Tried to take part in it as little as possible when he played.
Then it’s the moment he knew was coming. As soon as he had seen the thematic of the particular episode, he’d known they’d talk about it. It had been soclose. He points to a pitcher on the screen. Shaggy strands under the cap, facial hair. Looks at the hitter opposite him as if he were a target, no more than meat. “That’s me,” he indicates.
“That’s not,” Daken replies without even a beat, with a cursory glance.
“That’s me.”
“He doesn’t even move like you he—” On the screen, the pitcher, a tad irritatedly, wrenches his cap from his head to get rid of the sweat beneath. “Holy shit.” The profanity sounds weird in Daken’s mouth. “You do the same thing with your cowl.”
Bullseye is kind of satisfied Daken admitted he was right, but still… He managed to disguise everything in him during this part of his life, from his physique to the way he moved in the throw… And he hadn’t thought of such a minuscule thing being able to bust his act. Daken is leaning forward, looking with unwavering intensity. Then, he glances back at him, considering. He’s just wrenching his neck so he can make eye contact and doesn’t realize how it bares said neck in a curve too tempting for hands (which don’t know if they want to squeeze or caress).
It’s not one of the thick-layered come-ons Bullseye can’t get used to, or like this unexplainable surge of mixed lust and aggression he has no idea how Daken manages to elicit in him without doing anything special. (No, Bullseye knows he’s doing something, he has just no idea what yet.) It’s too unintentional. And much more potent for this very reason. The hitman grips his sheets, forgetting the TV screen for a moment. Then the punk looks away again focusing on his double.
“All new and all different. Quite the metamorphosis. Very, very nice. I like the way your mind works,” the mutant comments. The manner he is watching the screen again, he takes it all in. It’s… heady… being watched like that by Daken. And that matters. Because Bullseye is practically sure the punk is one of the happy few who can understand what he actually achieved during this year, the beauty of this thing he did, the lengths he was ready to go to, the commitment. “Also, it suits you! You rock the hair and the ‘stache.” Innuendo already begins to color Daken’s voice. “That almost makes me sad I didn’t know you then. I—”
“SHUSH,” the hitman cuts mercilessly. Surprisingly, Daken complies. “This guy was the target,” he explains as the damn Slob appears on screen in front of him. At the third strike, the hitter leaves the field. Alive.
There’s a low whistle sound from Daken. “You could have gotten him, right there and then. Crushed his skull with the ball.”
“That was the whole point. Only…” Bullseye wonders how he’s going to explain.
“You changed your mind.” Daken is certain but also taken aback, it seems, assessing him from the corner of his eyes. “You saw something shinier. Rarer.” There’s a bit of silence before the mutant ventures his guess: “He was also the pitcher for the other team. You gambled you both would keep this null score thingie up for the whole game and let it play out…” This null score thingie, being a fucking double perfect game. OK, he sometimes forgets Daken is one of the smart ones, so focused he is on how much the mutant pisses him off most of the time.
The minutes pass as his attempt at making history runs on the TV. Little by little, Daken’s back seems too straighten as the tension builds towards the desired ending. “Wait for it,” Bullseye says and braces himself.
“Ball!” The umpire announces, landing the final blow on the attempt and ruining the perfection he took so much effort to try and achieve. Bullseye finds himself seething as much as he did then. He makes the conscious effort to let go of the remote before crushing it with his adamantium bones.
Daken’s eyes are still glued to the screen. Bullseye can only see part of his profile, but nothing of the blue of his narrowed to slits irises. “Pity,” he drops icily. He sounds bitter, even. Then, “Tell me again, the difference between a strike and a ball…”
“Ho, you did see it!” Bullseye instantly perks up. “It was a goddam strike!”
“Please, tell me this… incompetent referee… is dead.” The annoyance in his voice is unmistakable.
“Ofcourse, he is. Who do you take me for?” he asks, verging on insulted.
“Good.” And there’s so much satisfaction dripping from Daken’s voice it’s somehow comforting.
“Wait, you’d have done him for me?” Bullseye can’t help but ask. The notion is strange but not outlandish in the light of Daken’s reaction.
“For 50 bucks, maybe.” There’s a show of predatory white teeth and a hint of humor making the icy eyes crinkle. Bullseye reflexively smiles back without realizing.
At the end of the segment, Bullseye sees the last image of his face on the monitor, blown up out of proportion from a version of his baseball card. You can’t miss his pseudonym: Matt Hobson.
It makes Daken wince, Bullseye notices. “What?” he can’t help himself asking, a bit on the defensive.
“Matt. Seriously?” The mutant has his annoyed face, and it never bodes well. Only, usually Bullseye knows what he did to piss him off, but he must admit that right now he has no clue and doesn’t like that. Mercifully, Daken elaborates:
“Do I have to expect you in red and wearing horns any time soon?”
The tone was positively icy. Bullseye stares a moment. Incredulous. OK, maybe he might have a mildly obsessive personality. But it was just an inside joke, for fuck’s sake! And yes, he has worn the costume for a while, but it’s a period he’d rather forget, really. He wasn’t at his most sane. Plus, this is hysterical, that Daken (of all people) would tell him that. And how revealing it is that Junior doesn’t even seem to notice. The mirth feels first like butterflies in his stomach, but the critters grow and grow and grow in a tidal wave of laughter that bursts from his mouth and shakes his whole body.
Daken’s eyes grow huge in his affronted surprise. His chin juts up in defiance. Bullseye fails to see it. It suddenly hurts like hell. The abused muscles on his ribs seize, pull viciously on his stitches. It feels like his flesh is ripping itself open again. The agony ends up making lights dance in front of his eyes, making it hard to draw air in, mirth dissolved, allowing panic to settle.
He can’t breath. Can’t breath. Can’t. It’s his only thought.
It takes him a moment to recognize the presence that wraps itself around him, lifts him from the mattress and gets him straighter. He can lean on it, supported and relieving his abused body. His hands grips fabric. In the middle of his turmoil, the stray thought hits that he is ruining Daken’s designer shirt. He grips harder. His face finds itself pressed in Daken’s neck. There’s something grounding in the smell of warm skin. Daken’s splayed hand against his wound, stabilizing his ribs, helps a little. His other hand caresses slow circles on his back, with a soothing regularity. He can hear the mutant’s voice counting softly, and quietly enjoining him to breath in, breath out, between numbers. After a while, he is physically able to comply. Panic recedes.
He feels drained, bone tired, with no strength left to disentangle himself from the loose embrace. Daken doesn’t say anything, and for that, Bullseye is absurdly grateful. For a few minutes, nobody moves. The precise moment Bullseye starts to feel restless, Daken maneuvers him to lay down again against his pillows, mindful enough of his wounds but with a kind of detached practicality which keeps the favor from grating on Bullseye’s nerves too much.
Before Daken can pull away and rise from his sitting position on the mattress, Bullseye manages to grab his collar, both pulling him back down and raising himself a little from the bed, so he can whisper in the mutant’s ear:
“Really,Wolverine? You don’t see the irony? You wear your father’s name. You parade in his costume. You’re no better than me, Junior.”
Strike. Something flashes in the cold clear eyes. Bullseye never misses, after all. Daken pushes him back into his pillows. And he is not gentle about it. Ouch.
“Ho, do shut up, Lester,” the punk huffs but won’t look him in the eyes.
The hitman feels suddenly very tired. The pain took a lot from him. He’s on the edge of sleep, already half gone. He doesn’t even realize he is consolingly patting Daken’s leg, which is still at arm’s reach. Doesn’t see either the startled way the punk watches at the hand on his thigh.
*
**
It feels like slow waves at sea. The moments of awareness like the crest of the wave and then the almost immediate descent back in slumber. He’s been in and out for hours. It’s night again. Each time he surfaces from sleep, he instinctively steals a look in Daken’s direction. The mutant rarely leaves the chair he appropriated. The first few times, a book was still there in his hands (or was it another one again? He can’t see the color of the cover very well in the dark) but later, Daken’s gaze seemed just lost in space, in the relative direction of the window.
Now, as he wakes up again, a little more there than before, he can pay more attention and see that the weak glow of the street lamps down below hardly touches the deep shadows on Daken’s face, but still gives it a remote, mineral quality. There’s tiredness on this face, but a stubborn pinching in the corner of the eyes, as if the punk were incapable of letting go of his watchfulness even for a second.
Bullseye has been observing for a while now, intermittently, during his intervals of wakefulness. Only this time, slumber doesn’t pull him under right away. But still, the semi-darkness and the last dregs of sleep keep him in a rather mellow state.
“Don’t you ever sleep?” he ends up asking. His voice is strangely low and lacks its usual bite. His throat feels like sandpaper.
“In the same room as you?” Funny how Daken looks immediately even more alert. The volume of his voice shatters the cottoned atmosphere. “In a place full of pointy things, as you so aptly demonstrated?” Even though there’s obviously no scar, Junior’s fingertips reach unerringly for the exact spot where he stabbed him with the surgical blade.
“Good point,” Bullseye admits. (Or rather, croaks.) He has actually managed to palm another scalpel from a tray during one of his treatments.
“You thirsty?” Daken asks. He manages to affect the perfect bedside manners. There’s just enough disinterest in his tone that you don’t feel like he’s about to do you a favor if you are to answer:
“Yes.” (It makes things easier.)
“Here.” The glass of water appears near his face, as Daken didn’t wait for the answer before leaving his chair.
“You look like crap,” Bullseye comments between two sips, glancing up to the punk sitting on the bed, waiting for him to be done.
The hitman tries to calculate. How much time he’s been in the hospital. How much time Daken has been here. The punk has mentioned he’d arrived as soon as he heard of his dust-up with Deadpool and had been away on a mission for Normie before. It could have been days.
“I most certainly don’t.” Daken sounds amused enough to force a little the affronted tone. “Healing factor, remember? I can go a while without sleep.”
“But you need it.” A vague shrug is all the answer he gets. “You’re wrong, by the way. Someone who knows you can see it. You need your beauty sleep, nancy-boy.” It was supposed to be a taunt. But apparently his sarcasm is still asleep and the jab sounds more matter-of-fact than anything else.
“Maybe I do.” They’re treading a dangerous ground. If Daken admits he is making the slightest sacrifice to stay with him, then he’s doing him a favor, and their delicate balance of the last few days will be shot to hell. His answer is just non-committal enough to preserve the statu quo. “You finished with the water?”
And still, Bullseye ignores the question (more like the deflection) and can’t help but push:
“But then, why stay here?”
“Fine. If I’m not wanted any more…” Daken stands up – grabbing in passing the glass from the hitman’s hands to put it back on the bedside table – with his confounding usual grace, not at all impacted by the lack of rest. He then reaches for the jacket he left on the back of his chair and makes to leave.
Bullseye grits his teeth. Contrary son of a bitch. You usually can count on Daken to do the opposite of what is expected from him.
“Who needs you,” he says to the mutant’s retreating back, then twists around, pulling the coverlet closer on his shoulder. He resolutely closes his eyes.
Daken stops, Bullseye hears him turn on his heels and come back. He feels the presence looming closer in his back. He’s already half ready to strike, when… There’s a brush of lips at the corner of his mouth, a barely there pressure, soft and warm and already gone. As gone as his ability to breathe, suddenly.
In a hospital you get used to be touched like a piece of meat. In his usual dealings with Daken, they oscillate between violence (Him) and forceful innuendo (Daken); it’s their game. The sensation is shocking. Thiswas something entirely different. Gratuitous. Light, almost reverent. No subtext. An afterthought made touch. He struggles to stay still and not to go feel the tingling patch of skin with his fingers.
“Oyasumi nasai,” is breathed near his ear. Oddly polite and mildly fond.
Bullseye takes a deep breath as soon as he feels Daken pulling back. He decides to keep the new scalpel or the remote for emergencies, so he reaches behind him and blindly throws the naked pillow instead at Daken’s face. It never connects, dies a pitiful death at Daken’s feet, spewing its innards of feathers, skewered in a totally reflexive way by claws.
Bullseye raises his head a second. The mutant looks at the deceased on the floor with distaste. He’s the one who’ll have to get rid of it and hide the mess, if he follows his pattern so far, the hitman muses. So, he waits to see what Daken will do. For now, the punk just pushes the goose down mess under the bed with his foot.
Bullseye doesn’t know what it means. That he’ll come back later to deal with it or that he just doesn’t care any more to preserve appearances. So caught in this woolgathering, he completely misses the departing footsteps and the soft click of the door closing on the retreating mutant catches him off guard. For all that Daken seemed to enjoy the calm while he was here, the change in the quality of the silence is utterly startling once he’s gone.
Damn. And now Bullseye is the one who can’t sleep. He flinches at every sound from the hallway.
It was easier when Daken was there to watch his back.
“Well, shit,” he says to the darkness.
Fortunately no one is here to listen. No one cares.
*
**
Bullseye will never admit to have felt relieved when the mutant came back a few hours later in the morning. But he’ll admit he was surprised to see him enter the room with a box containing a soft toy (visible through trough a window cut in the cardboard) in hands.
“What the hell is that!?” It’s not flowers, he has to give the degenerate that. But otherwise, he must confess to be a little lost…
“It’s a horse plushy.” It’s the exact same tone Daken once used to say he wouldn’t know what it would feel like to be raised by Wolverine. The exact same face. Too innocent to believe for one second it’s sincere in its detachment. And indeed, his eyes crinkle as he adds: “It has your name on it.”
“What the hell!”
Only, standing at the foot of the bed, Daken actually shows him. Bullseye squints in distaste as he looks. It’s not on a card addressed to him by Wilson. It’s there, on the packaging containing the toy. Bullseye. Woody’s horse Bullseye.
“A Disney animal? The asshole!”
“Nope, this one is actually from me.” The smile appears, then. Wicked and also weirdly warm. Knowing for sure he’ll catch it, the punk throws the box at him. “But I must admit this hospital gift shop is a weird weird place. Couldn’t find a book.”
“The indignity,” Bullseye snorts, manipulating the box. He’s pretty sure it’s Daken’s frustration at being deprived of his paper drug that incited him to be a prick and pick up the toy. Well, he can as well open it. The brown little stud is quite big for a toy actually, and has big eyes and an honest (aka. idiotic) expression on its horsy face.
“It won’t stand,” he says somewhat bummed. The four legs have no armature and keep folding themselves under it.
“Just like you these days,” Daken taunts and without even looking dodges the hand trying to swat him in retaliation while he takes his turn to try and have the horse on his four legs on the mattress. He fails as well and frowns slightly. “Poor thing.”
“It doesn’t care,” Bullseye mocks, even though he’s looking down to the toy with pity too.
“I was talking about you, Lester,” the mutant replies without missing a beat. Bullseye would try and stab him again if he didn’t feel so drained of energy. He spent a crappy night.
They watch the Toy Story 2 movie on Daken’s fancy phone, just to see the horse in action: Bullseye is that bored. The mutant is pressed to his side on the bed so they can both see the little screen; he has no sense of personal space. He is also very warm and comfy to lean against, so no real reason to complain, Bullseye tries to rationalize. If he simply needs to kick him from time to time to disentangle their legs and remind him not to get ideas,so be it. Daken sometimes growls but never moves away.
They watch the story unfold in horrified fascination. This is so corny.
“Ho! Here you are!” Daken jovially exclaims, pointing at the screen the first time the horse appears.
And later, “You are a coward, Lester,” the punk comments, mock solemn, as the horse hides while the hero and the cowgirl start arguing.
“It’s called preservation instinct, asshole. It’s not his fight, after all.” Bullseye feels oddly offended on the behalf of his namesake.
“Good point. Why would he care?” Daken pats the toy horse’s little head. It’s sprawled on Daken’s lap, belly up, like a dog waiting to be petted. “I like him. If you don’t want him, I’ll keep him. My pet Bullseye.”
“Be my guest, Junior. I’ll make fun of you till the end of your life,” Bullseye snickers. “Which means, till I kill you, obviously.”
“Please do, Lester,” Daken answers, unconcerned. Then, “Don’t worry, nobody can stop true love, darling,” Daken tells the fucking horse.
“My God! Give it back, you’re getting creepy,” he says, putting the toy under his arm, out of reach from Daken. Throwing a glance at the mutant, he has no idea why Daken looks so smug.
They never see the end of the movie. Thank god, if the relieved looks they exchange can be believed when Daken utters his usual “Incoming.” as he hears someone coming down the hall to the room. Too much feeling in the damn story.
It’s Bullseye’s doctor who passes the door a handful of seconds later. Her face is slightly pinched but she still hands Bullseye his release papers. They can see the influence of one head of H.A.M.M.E.R. in the expedited process and the thundercloud in her eyes. Bullseye is good to go provided he’s got somebody to take him to the location prepared for his recovery by his boss, she explains. Daken suavely inserts himself in the conversation saying all is taken care of. She looks a lot calmer when she leaves. Bullseye arches an eyebrow and Daken innocently shrugs, mouthing a clueless “What?” who wouldn’t fool anybody.
They don’t lose any time gathering Bullseye stuffs (a small go bag plus the horse) and leaving the room. As they reach the parking lot, there’s a spring in Daken’s step that Bullseye really resents. He wishes he could leave this place on his two legs, but no such luck. He’s stuck on a damn wheelchair Daken is pushing. He’ll have to finish healing at the tower. Normie better have a way to fix him and fast. He has a red and black degenerate to deal with, dammit.
Suddenly, still pushing the chair, Daken is almost running.
“What are you doing, asshole!” Bullseye twists his neck and looks up at the mutant’s face. His eyes are strangely focused but there’s a sparkle in them and his mouth is twisted in a wild smile. They gain speed incredibly fast. Bullseye actually has to grab the armrests.
“Ride like the wind, Bullseye!” There’s the ghost of a laugh in the exclamation.
“Ho, damn you!” the real Bullseye curses but can’t summon much fire. There’s something exhilarating in the speed.
One moment, the mutant sort of jumps, gripping the back of the wheelchair and leaning on it, his feet leaving the ground, and they’re almost flying. It’s wonderful. Lester whoops, he can’t help himself. They’re about to crash in a vehicle as Daken touches ground again. His feet grind in the gravel in an agonizing sound. They stop right in front of the car. It’s a white sports car, gleaming and lean.
“Ha, here’s our ride,” the mutant says, dangling keys in front of Bullseye’s face. Delight of their run has dusted the punk’s face with a light pink, his eyes shine, the hitman has never seen him look so young and happy and beautiful (and oblivious of it for once). Lester is struck dumb for a second when he catches sight of him. A stray thought, Boys will be boys, flashes in the hitman’s head. It’s different, seeing Daken loosen up, simply enjoying a moment, no ulterior motive, no manipulation, and no iron control. It’s like watching under a veil. And suddenly looking at something you never would have thought existed.
For all his raw intelligence, his cultured manners, his craftiness, his deviousness beyond his age (and Bullseye knows the guy is even older than he looks, but still), it’s not the first time he is intrigued by the fact that in certain areas Daken can be strangely immature, and finds himself thinking about the guy’s life, what kind of childhood he could have had, that he never really had the time to mature over it. The contradiction could break any… brain. (Bullseye fancies he has no heart, after all.)
Daken then opens the car door with a mocking flourish and even helps him get into the seat, putting bag and horse on his lap, bending over him to attach the seatbelt and then checking it doesn’t press too hard on the injured area of his chest. His hands don’t wander, no lewd comment. No odd uncontrollable feelings erupting. Still, as the mutant pulls back from the interior of the car, the sudden absence of these hands feels like a loss. Weird.
“Wait here.”
Bullseye watches Daken leave to return the wheelchair to the entrance of the hospital. At the glass doors he stops as a nurse comes out, ready to relieve him of his burden. He flirts with the woman, obviously, like it’s as easy as breathing for him. Bullseye can see it from where he’s sitting. Daken’s hand touches her arm, her shoulder. Meanwhile, waiting for him, Bullseye feels his irritation grow.
“You took your time,” he comments through gritted teeth on his return.
“Stop strangling the poor horse, will you? All yours, now. See?” Daken says as he takes place into the driver’s seat.
“You better,” he replies, and it’s surprising even to himself how much he means that.
*
**
A few days later…
Deadpool has hardly left the cyber café from where Bullseye wired the mercenary the sum of money Osborn owed him to get him off his back, that a shadow frames itself in the doorway. He’s not exactly surprised when the backlit dark silhouette addresses him with Daken’s voice.
“So, you done yet, Lester?”
It’s been a moment he hasn’t seen their resident Wolverine, too caught in speeding his recovery and then monitoring Deadpool to find the good moment to strike. He has no idea what Daken has been up to these last few days.
“What are you doing here?”
The mutant steps inside, all civilian clothes and confident swagger, too smart for the quaint place, in order to stand right next to his chair, looming over him as he is still sitting at the computer, so close Daken’s leg actually touches his.
“Told Normie you were gone from the tower and that being in a helpful mood, I would find you.”
“A snitch and a liar,” Bullseye sighs, “that’s what I have to deal with.” He has no compulsion being discreet, they’re as good as alone in the little shop; the desk clerk/barista is knocked out behind the cashier bank. “Just so you know, you’re the snitch and Normie is the liar. He knew exactly where I was. I told him I would catch Deadpool when he lost patience and tried to pull something stupid.”
Daken raises an eyebrow. Damn, the jerk doesn’t even have to talk to piss him off. Heknowsthings didn’t end up exactly as planned…
He removes his Hawkeye cowl in an irritated gesture and winces. The move pulled on the abused muscles around his ribs, he almost dislocated his shoulder when he was knocked down by that old bat’s car and his leg hurts, the bone may be broken where it was run over by Deadpool’s monstrous truck.
“Look at the state of you.” Daken’s features show mild distaste. “It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt, hu?”
“You know, it was fun, actually… Really fun.” He might still wonder at that, but it’s true, in spite of the clusterfuck it also has been. A last residual chuckle even manages to escape him. Bizarrely, Daken’s face softens the tiniest bit at the sound. A tension the hitman had failed to notice earlier seems to leave his frame. Bullseye still tries to redirect anyway:
“So what, still trying to avoid your other duties?” Daken blankly stares at him. “Castle,” Bullseye has to elaborate with an annoyed sigh.
“Ho, that? It’s done. He was a pain in the ass till the end,” Daken comments with no particular inflexion.
It stops Bullseye dead cold. Alas, poor Frank, is the thought he manages to spare for the Punisher’s fate. But mainly, the core of his musing is still Daken. Maybe it’s a little frightening, Bullseye has to admit in the privacy of his mind, how their Wolverine looks fresh as a daisy, so dapper in his designer clothes and sunglasses… Not a scratch, not a scar, not a hair out of place. Essentially untouched by the event. One wouldn’t think a fight to the death took place, what, a few hours or a day ago? It also feels strange to think one of his nemeses got snuffed just like that from the world by the punk, and he didn’t even know. But there’s always a silver lining…
“Arf, he’ll come back,” Bullseye can’t help but note. “We’re the kind that never dies.”
On Daken’s face, a shadow that looks like pity. The punk thinks he is in denial, and Bullseye knows he is not. That’s how it is. Junior will learn. He’s pretty sure Daken (and he’s not thinking only of the healing factor) is of the same ilk as them, even though it’s hard to imagine what would effectively cause him to stay down,as he says. Maybe he’ll try seriously, one day. Make it stick. It’d be fun. Maybe not. Like the red and black degenerate, perhaps Daken belongs to the few it’s even more fun to imagine killing than actually lose with the realization of the fantasy.
“You’ll see. He’ll be back. It’ll bite you in the ass.” There’s the tiniest bit of satisfaction in that.
Daken only snorts, passing behind Bullseye’s chair. The punk drapes himself on the chair’s back, pressing himself against his shoulders and back with absolutely no sense of personal space (and maybe Lester should find it alarming that it doesn’t even phase him anymore), peering at the still on computer screen. Bullseye only lets him because it would hurt more to move and try to remove him. He can feel his breath near his ear as the mutant asks:
“So, you paid him to get out of your hair?” There’s a slight lilt in the punk’s voice that means the pun is totally intended and he won’t do him the pleasure to react. Also Daken ignores his frustrated growl or when he calls him a fucking eavesdropper and continues: “Can’t believe he thought Norman would just settle his debt. Is that the remaining sum on your account? Not bad.”
“One of my accounts. Who do you think I am? I’ve got ten times more at last.”
Daken hums approvingly. “Yes, not bad. I’ve got you beat with what I made the times I was allowed to freelance, but then, I’ve been longer at it, I must concede.”
“Allowed?”
“What, never been on a retainer for somebody? It kind of limits your freedom of movement.” Daken asks so silkily Bullseye knows it’s mostly misdirection; Daken’s situation wasn’t an exclusive. Somehow he knows it wasn’t exactly a choice on Daken’s part. It’s been a while he gets glimpses and pieces of a looming presence – which is most certainly not his father’s – in the punk’s past life the mutant doesn’t want to talk about. He’ll crack the mystery, one day; he bides his time, quite content to gather scraps of evidences for now. He’ll find out, he has no doubt.
“Can we go now?” the punk asks. This petulant tone, it makes Bullseye laugh a little. It reminds him the first time he ever saw Daken fight. It was during this bloody mayhem against Morgan Le Fay’s legion of demons. A discreet presence in the background he saw moving out of the corner of his eye. Methodical. Unfazed by the madness and the sheer number of foes. Not a hint of fear. Impatient just to be done. (Can we go now?Every goddamfiveminutes.) The only feelings he’d let show this day had been his dismay at Doctor’s Doom decline and only mild surprise at the nature of the Sentry. Bullseye should have known, then, that Daken was a special kind of crazy.
The mirth shakes him and his ribs don’t like it, though. A spasm hits his muscles. He reflexively sends his head back, hissing. His skull makes contact with Daken’s chest, the mutant still leaning against the back of his chair.
“We go. Now.” There’s more steel in Daken’s voice, this time, and a hint of a growl. The change is uncanny. Junior grabs the rolling chair and pulls it from the computer and abruptly turns it (that, is not good for Bullseye’s ribs either, dammit) so that the hitman faces him. He bends forwards, putting his hands on the armrests. His face level with Bullseye’s, eyes searching, he asks: “Can you walk? I’ll know if you lie.” But as he sees the hitman about to open his mouth, he scowls even deeper and adds: “On the other hand, Lester, I could just let you make a fool of yourself and watch you try and fail.”
Bullseye hates it but he is the first to break eye contact. “Fine,” he says. He doesn’t admit to anything but raises an arm so that Daken can help him stand.
“Fine.” Daken grabs said arm and puts it around his shoulder, coiling his own limb around the hitman’s waist. That way, he supports most of Bullseye’s weight. And it’s not exactly a small feat, the hitman muses, with his adamantium-laced bones. They cross the cyber café, reach the street and walk to a car parked nearby. It’s the white sleek thing they used when they left the hospital.
It’s not the first time he notices but: “Nice car!” Bullseye voices this time. “Gimme me the keys, I’ll show you ‘ride like the wind’.”
Daken has the nerve to laugh to his face. “Yhea? With a broken bone? You won’t even be able to sit your ass in your seat without me. The degenerate drove over yourleg.”
Bullseye wonders how much Daken actually saw. He never even spotted him. “Don’t rub it in,” he grumbles, only to be completely ignored.
It feels like déjà vu as the mutant helps him get into the passenger seat. Daken is especially careful with his bum leg. He even crouches a moment near the car door, taking the time to methodically run his hands on the limb, feeling the bone. Bullseye tenses a little, he decidedly can’t get used to the feeling of these hands on him. It affects him in a totally disproportionate way he can’t explain. The downturned curve of the mutant’s lips is a clear sign of his dissatisfaction with his findings.
“That bad, hu?” Bullseye quietly asks. Thing is, for his part the hitman is not that upset. Normie’s cronies patched him once; they’ll patch him again. The mutant stands up but doesn’t answer the question, and Bullseye is not sure he likes the silent treatment better, finally.
Daken briskly walks round the car, and, all in one fluid movement, sits in the driver’s seat, leans on the side and reaches with his hand to grab his jaw, turn his face and lock eyes, not exactly gentle but not exactly trying to hurt either. More like he’s trying to get his undivided attention, as if this clear stare, as naked as a blade, weren’t enough to pin someone.
“You’re of no use to me like that. You are no fun in this state, Lester.” Daken is chiding. “What will Norman say, anyway?”
Bullseye frees himself, swatting Daken’s hand away (the punk surprisingly lets him) and groans aloud.
(Sometimes, you really can hate your boss and love your job. He didn’t lie, on the radio.)
But Daken must have mistaken his growl of frustration for pain from his wounds, for he asks in this falsely disinterested way of his, as he starts the car:
“Do we need a hospital?”
Bullseye bends his head a little to see his face better.The mutant carefully doesn’t cross his gaze, keeping his eyes locked on the road as he maneuvers out of his parking space to join the street traffic with a roar of engine.
“We don’t need a hospital. We need food. Take me to dinner.”
(Sometimes, Bullseye forgets himself.)
There’s a beat of silence from the mutant. It might even be intentional on his part. He gives Bullseye all the time in the world to realize what he has just uttered. Then Daken arches an eyebrow, eyes glinting with amusement: “As it happens, I have a reservation Chez Panisse tonight,” he says, in a somewhat unusually cautious way. “Care to join me?”
Daaaamn, Bullseye thinks. He can either own it or look ridiculous.
“Ha, hell.”
(Also, sometimes, he forgets to hate Daken. It’s OK, though. He can still stab him tomorrow, anyway.)
He leans back towards the car door, his elbow bent against the window he uses as a armrest, the bottom of his face in his hand as he looks the world now go by at break-neck speed.
“Why not, we’ll try your sissy place, nancy-boy,” he says at last. It’s muffled against his palm. But Daken hums quietly in answer. And the car… Its engine suddenly roars with renewed enthusiasm.
“If it’s better for your personal pride, Lester, it’s not like you can run away with that leg.” Daken supplies after a while. “And I’m the one driving, you don’t really have a choice.” His lips curl in the kind of smile that Daken uses the same way Bullseye would use a dagger. To stab you in the back. “Maybe I’m kidnapping you.”
Bullseye straightens up in outrage.
“And how exactly is that better for my pride?”
(Thinking about it, maybe he’ll stab the punk in the middle of the restaurant. Plenty of knives lying around.)
THE END