Chapter Text
00-7621-A2
Selling one’s soul to the law was far easier than it might’ve seemed at first. There was an inherent thrill which came with playing both sides, even if the toll could be untenable. So far it’d only earned him the odd black eye, a split lip here or there, burned bridges. So far.
There had got to be a better way of killing someone, but dealers who imbibed their own stash were hardly known for their sound judgment. In a way there was genius behind framing the whole affair as if it were merely the inevitable.
Adam played his role to perfection. The last few weeks had been slim pickings. The Doctor was out of town at some stupid conference about cancer and shit. Hoffman had been promoted from vice to homicide, and the last time they’d fucked it had ended up as an argument. The speckle of yellows and greens around his throat were reminders that accused him from the cracked pane of the trap house mirror. Or at least they had until he was strong armed out of the bathroom, still half dressed and itching for a fix.
Cuchillo was named as such for some pretty fucking obvious reasons. He wasn’t a particularly imposing man, so he surrounded himself with men whose physique didn’t brook any nonsense. He owned too many run down squats throughout the city, used the muscle to keep the dead eyed whores who bagged his merchandise in check, and valued the kind of loyalty which Adam felt incapable of.
Somewhere South of the river resided his palace - the one trap house in a squalid domain which actually looked somewhat habitable. Three floors, four walls, dirty mattresses slumped against walls that declared Rusty was here nineteen ninety nine, Pete R is a pedo, Forsake all hope ye who enter.
That last one resounded, causing Adam’s chest to shudder with a hysterical bubble of laughter from where he lay prone on the floor of a forgotten bedroom on the third floor. The ceiling was at its weakest here, a steady drip, drip, drip of ice water from a rotten fissure in the wallpaper kissed his bare ankle. He’d been presented like cattle, looked up towards the barrel of Cuchillo’s favourite piece, an arm twisted behind his back so hard he felt the bone snap. Mute horror setting in as they discussed just how the Forty Fives dealt with grasses. Shooting him was passe, too complicated if things went South, and he’d already had seven shades of shit kicked out of him in the backyard; just wouldn’t die out of sheer stubborn will.
Eventually one of the stringy little things nested up against their leader’s side gave Adam a disgusted look and proffered the suggestion that they should just pump him full of fent. Let him go out with a dumb grin on his battered face. Blow out the candles on his life one last time.
Despite barely being able to see out of his right eye, despite having a headache to rival the worst hangover, a possible concussion, a definite fracture in his wrist, he’d scratched and hissed and fought the needle until it was far too late.
Now here he was, slowly dying on naked floorboards, with blood thick on his tongue, cracked paint beneath bitten down fingernails as the drugs took everything away bit by bit, by helpless bit. Genius indeed.
The walls spoke, wide arcs of colour and furious words melting into each other, a throbbing animate mess. The room was a gaping maw, a ravenous stomach whose acid was dissolving him; bones and all. Whatever pain had been left slid slick and easy into the blissful heat of unprescribed medication. Caring left upon the hard shoulder, a hitchhiker ignored.
There were no unbroken panes, not in the sum of three entire floors, save for the basement where faceless drones cooked. Helped air out the place, let the shit stink of walking skeletons, minds and bodies rotted by methamphetamines dissipate. Jagged glass teeth let the dying throes of sunset into the room. Daubed Adam’s bloodied legs in vermillion while he was digested. Dying was easier than slotting his tail between his legs for Hoffman had been. Easier still than letting Dr. Gordon, letting Lawrence make an experiment out of him. The easiest fucking thing on the planet, to let go, to feel the sum of his parts be distilled until there was nothing left, but a hollow cocoon.
A caved in skull, formerly a door, was shuddering on its reluctant hinges. Scent and sight and taste were long gone, but Adam still heard it when they finally gave way. He was right there, a tightrope walker who wanted so badly to just fall. Outside sirens wailed like grieving mothers. This was a sick joke, it would be hilarious only if he died to prove a punchline.
00-7621-A2
He giggled weakly, not really letting out more than a choked gurgle around the tongue lying dead in his bleeding mouth. Would he still be a string of numbers, or a file that gathered dust in Hoffman’s desk drawer. Would he be anything at all?
Someone was hoisting his remains up, splinters stuck fast to the ruined skin of his calves. Citrus and Aperol brought familiar features back into focus. The same mouth which had plundered his ass like it was a vocation last week, those eyes which nailed him to a proverbial cross whenever he got too cheeky, pushed too hard. Adam believed in coincidences about as much as he did fairy tales. You had to engineer what you wanted in life, or just deal with the shit it threw at you by any means necessary.
Outlandish as the sensation was, Hoffman’s arm formed a solid band across his sweat slicked back, firm through the loose t-shirt he’d stolen off the rack at goodwill. He tore through the seal of a syringe, rended paper with his teeth and spat it out onto the rot beneath.
Dr. Gordon would have slid it in nice and easy, tapped the vein with the back of his hand, kissed it better if Adam entreated him, massaged his cock through his slacks, played nice for once.
The needle plunged in hard and fast, puncturing the meat of his thigh through Adam’s shorts. He tossed it aside, gathered the scraps of Adam up into his arms, let him slouch limp and sickly against the security of his chest. A uniform strolled in, started to say something about the arrests downstairs, blanched when Hoffman roared at him to get the fuck out.
Three minutes and seventeen seconds. That was how long it took the room to regurgitate Adam. It purged him in an acerbic torrent of chunky bile, and he surged back to waking, clawed at Hoffman’s shirt, caught his badge where it hung on a chain around his neck, bit back a rancid cry, and hacked weak, stuttering breaths into the crook of the older man’s neck.
“I’ve got you. Adam, I’ve got you.”
Still drenched in gastric juices, Adam sat back just enough to study Hoffman’s face, to marvel at the sound of his own name on a cruel tongue. A million questions, a desperate need to know how fate, or circumstance, or divine fucking intervention had conspired to unbirth him back into this uncaring world; they died too. Hoffman’s hands were perpetual in their claiming of him, but this time he leant into the warmth of the palm that engulfed his cheek.
Answers could wait their damn turn.