The Fatima Curse

\'Joseph Kiernan, a renowned businessman, was found this morning in the parking garage of his office building; Kiernan,, Cole, Mackey & Fergus, a real estate company that specialized with establishing long term housing for minorities, under privileged, and the homeless. He was fifty-seven years of age. No reports have been given at this date as to the cause of death, though a few sources tell us that the longtime hero of the community had his throat slit.



Joseph was born in the town of Springfield, Illinois in the year---\'



Uri closed the paper disgustedly, tossing it aside and feeling his hands tremble mildly with his outrage. He had never given in to his distaste before, but hearing the man praised was almost unbearable. He had lived a secret life that no one - save for a handful in his organization - knew of. And he would be celebrated for his community work. Uri wondered if they would feel the same were he to expose the man’s true tastes. Namely his desire and hunger for petite, pretty little girls with big blue eyes and innocent little hearts.



Let it be. He’s dead, and no praises or songs of glory will change that. Dead is dead. No truer words existed, he was sure. Yes, dead was dead. And there was no cure for it, as far as Uriel Fatima knew. There was a pittance to be paid, even on the road of death, and he was sure Mr. Joseph Kiernan, that angel of mercy, would meet with his in due time. He would find this in the eyes of the Devil; eyes that, like Uri’s, knew not the concept of mercy. Right was right, and fair was fair. And in the end, this was as inevitable as death.



He was in a sour mood. So sour that he poured a little bourbon in with his coffee just for the hell of it. After all, there were no prying eyes this early in the morning, when the sun was just a promise in the eastern sky. He was alone with his thoughts, a morbid prospect, but Uri had always been fascinated with the prospect. Why do I tell them my name?, h pondered to himself as he took a sip of his spiked coffee and swallowed down the pleasing brew. What is the point in giving them a name to carry with them? That was a bullshit puzzle, as Shu would have undoubtedly said. But he wasn’t like Shu at all. He had never been able to shrug off anything, small and large alike. It all weighed on his shoulders until he was like the Hebrews of old, pulling mortar and stone to build tombs of grandiose but blood-stained beauty. He obsessed over information the way normal men his age did women in short little skirts.



He was only twenty-six, a man young enough to ponder and delve into his own cerebellum, and old enough to shrug it all off. A conflicting, contradictory age that baffled even him. Uri closed his eyes and rested an elbow to the table, cupping his chin in one hand as images of the previous night flooded his mind. He did not think of the man he had killed, who had lived fifty-seven years too long, in his opinion. No, it was Shu his mind drifted to. And the kiss he had given.



“Why did I do that?” His voice was scratchy and rough around the edges, oddly tinny and disconcerting in the stillness of the pre-dawn air. It sounded lonesome. Light blue eyes opened wearily and peered across the table to the empty seat before him. A seat that Shuuichi would fill in two or so hours, demanding breakfast in his usual boisterous voice. And how would he greet the man after he had said such things to him? How could he look him in the eye when he had stolen a kiss from his unsuspecting lips as he dreamed his dark dreams and screamed out for a person long dead.



Dead was dead.



Uri thumped his head to the table.



****



He was awoken with a light shake to his shoulder, and he snapped up quickly and took a strong hold of the wrist of his assailant, giving a hard turn until the bone grinded beneath his clutching fingers. Icy eyes stared up into wide, wounded brown, and Uri relaxed at once and released Shuuichi’s wrist, dropping his limp hand into his lap and rubbing his other over his eye, which burned with his sudden arousal into the waking world.



Shu was half naked and unashamed of this. Flaunting off every trim inch as he stretched and cracked his knuckles over his head, sucking in his tummy with the inhalation and prodding his ivory skin with the protrusion of his rib-cage. He shook his black head and grumbled something down at the colored man, something derogatory that Uri had been unable to catch. Shu scratched the back of one thigh, riding up his boxers to get at a square of flesh that was bothering him incessantly.



“Coffee?”



Uri shrugged, and Shu stole his own cup. Uri could not fight off his mirthful smirk as the Asian took a sip and then grimaced, sputtering and coughing as he pounded on his suddenly enflamed chest. “Jesus tap dancing Christ! Who the hell drinks fuckin’ whiskey at six thirty in the morning!?”



“Bourbon,” Uri corrected, little smile held in place as he retrieved his cup from its precarious perch on the edge of the table that Shu had nestled it upon. He took a sip and rubbed his tongue across his lips. “It takes fine to me, Shuuichi. Maybe you’re not the big tough man you thought you were.” Shu blushed in defiance, waving this away before flipping his friend the bird with a lopsided sneer. “Yeah, fuck you and your camel, sand douche. That doesn’t explain why a man has bourbon in his coffee at six thirty in the fucking morning.”



“What would you have me have it in in six thirty in the fucking morning?,” Uri asked back amiably, his smile spreading. “Root beer?”



Shu’s blush spread, painting his cheeks with a brighter rose than the one that bejeweled his left ear. Uri liked him this way, with little knowledge of why this should be so. Perhaps it softened that jagged razor he had taken under his wing. Or maybe it was just the way his lower lip trembled before he bit it and halted this weakness. “Yeah, whatfuckin’ever. You go ahead and booze it up, hobo.”



“I appreciate your permission.” Uri nodded and took another sip, smiling with broader sincerity before he and Shu laughed together quietly in the slowly brightening morning. Was it wrong that he enjoyed these moments more than any other? In a few hours there would be twelve hungry men and eight hungrier women in this kitchen looking for breakfast, coffee, and conversation. But Uri liked his quiet little chats with Shu.



He just wanted to spend a little time with him. It meant nothing.



“You gonna make me coffee, right, Uri?” Shu sat down with wide-eyed, boyish innocence, batting his eyelashes as he lightly shook and nudged Uri. “Huh, huh? You’re gonna get me some coffee, right? You make it the best. Bourbon aside.”



“So suddenly you want my coffee? Honestly, Shuuichi, I don’t understand you at all.” Was this the thrill of these moments? That he truly, splendidly did not understand? It seemed that everywhere he looked he was bombarded by the same old same old. Nothing but an endless string of faces he knew speaking words he foresaw. Nothing but a tireless pendulum of back and forth, give and give more. Shu was a breath of fresh air from that. Like fireworks exploding, light lightning striking… you never knew just what to expect of him. And right when you thought you finally did comprehend him, he would turn around and dazzle you with a shiny new face.



Because that was just his way. And like Uri, he could kick himself in the ass for things he could never change, or he could accept them and move on knowing he could be no better. In a world that cared nothing of them, they were forced to care for one another.



We’re partners after all, Shu thought, and this voice in the back of his mind forced his cheeks to darken once more. Supposed to stick together even when I want to beat him within an inch of his life. Like brother’s right? We fight like brother’s. I guess we love like brother’s, too. Shu dropped his eyes to the side and nibbled his pouty lower lip. “Don’t have to make me coffee. But you did cost me some dope ass Chinese slaughter last night, don’t think I’ve forgotten. You owe me at least a cup of joe, ne? Or is that too much to ask after you basically invaded my room and touched my property?”



“You sound like a police report already. I’ll get your damn coffee.” Uri stood and moved to the counter, grabbing a cup from the cabinet and pouring a hot stream of black gold up to its lip. No sugar or cream for Shu. No, he took it black and bitter, like a real man. The only trouble with this was that Shu did not do this because he liked it, rather to boast his own worth. But he was an eighteen year old kid in an organization full with cold-blooded killers at least ten years his seniors. Uri could - surprisingly - sympathize. After all, he too had once been a wet eared little puppy once. As hard as it was to believe looking him over.



“Your coffee, my liege,” Uri said dryly, resting the cup before Shu and slinking back to his seat and plopping down roughly, cupping his cheeks and watching Shu take a sip and brush off a shudder of revulsion. “Arigatou, bakaface.”



“Sheesh.”



Shu’s foot brushed Uri’s calf, the large man stiffening with this and crawling his eyes to the boy across from him. Shu was smiling, but it was a secret smile with the kind of innocent meaning only a boy could possess. Uri couldn’t help but smile back. “And scientists said it couldn’t be done,” Shu joked. “In their faces. Up their asses---”



“And down their throats. Yeah.” Uri finished the quote, his smile growing as he watched Shu take another sip of the hot brew and smack his lips. He was watching him almost obsessively now, but he couldn’t stop. There was something about the way he looked in the growing red-orange glow of the birthing sun. Something about the way his hair stuck up in corkscrews, the way his tired eyes gleamed with pure and unfiltered youth. Just something about him that Uri wasn’t comfortable missing a moment of.



Get wise, Uriel. It’s just Shuuichi. But that was the magic of it. It was just Shuuichi. Just beautiful little Endo Shuuichi.



Shu set his cup down, peering over at the paper and grimacing as he had when bourbon has met his taste buds. “Reading the paper again, uh? That shit isn’t good for you, Uri. You know how it gets to you.”



“It doesn’t get to me,” Uri corrected defiantly, “It interests me. I like seeing how conflicting death can be. Apparently the man I killed last night is this century’s Ghandi of the lower east side.”



“The baby rapist? Get a clue, turban brain. That shit is like poison for us. And if those people wanna remember him in some good light, what’s wrong with that, anyway? It’s their life. I think people are a lot more willing to believe the best in people.”



“Do you, really?” This mystified Uri.



“Yeah, sure, I dunno. I’d prefer they think he’s some Saint that pisses stardust and shits rainbows than a raping cannibal. It’s better to live in the dark sometimes. People really don’t care much about the truth. It’s all about what lets you sleep at night.” Shu’s voice dropped on this last line, his eyes clouding in secret worry as he pulled his cup to his shaking lips and took a sip.



And how do you sleep at night? The question was on Uri’s lips, but he didn’t dare ask it. There were certain boundaries between them that they had erected halfway out of kindness and consideration, and mostly out of an inability to speak their feelings. They were men after all. Not mutant men, either. They got tired, hungry, and hard just like any other man. And hell, sometimes they even got pissed off. It was a way of life.



Life is life. Jesus, he was sick of all the psycho-analytical babble of his untethered mind. Maybe bourbon at six thirty wasn’t a good idea. “I should get breakfast ready before that damnable Cullen wakes up. He eats the equivalent of forty full grown---”



“Elephants. Yeah. He traded me pot for my scrambled eggs last week, and when you weren’t looking I dropped it into the pan.”



Uri laughed. “I thought it was parsley. I thought everyone got a little odd last weekend.” Shu smiled and pressed a finger into the valley of one dimple, batting his eyelashes once more as he looked around coyly. Uri’s laugh deepened, until his sides hurt. And he supposed, deep at the heart of the matter, this was the reason he enjoyed their time alone together.



No one else could make him laugh.



****



Uri was cooking, and Shu was rambling. It was a typical Saturday morning. Except it wasn’t. They were dodging the topic of the previous night. Namely the kiss that had almost happened, and, unbeknownst by Shuuichi, the kiss that had happened. Uri was plagued with it, a grain of undecipherable sand that fogged his brain and forced him to grunt replies to Shu’s ranting.



“So I was doing fine until you came into my room last night.”



Uri’s heart stalled, beating three times in quick succession to make up for the skip. His throat felt tight and dry, and his mind was suddenly empty. He could think of nothing to say, except to offer another unintelligible grunt. “Yeah, I was so close to finishing that mission too. But I guess you wouldn’t understand how important it is to me. You’re pretty retarded like that.”



“I know what it means to you. You kill those people in that fictional little world because it draws a fine line between reality and make believe. You can cut them down without feeling anything. You’re talking to the man who used to wipe your tears away after every kill.”



“Okay, first of all, you’re fucking wrong. And secondly, the hell did you ever wipe my tears away? You always stood there like some granite gargoyle and told me to man up. ‘Man up, Endo Shuuichi. The world is bigger than you.’ Pssht, spare the heroic talk for people who eat your bullshit pie, Uri.”



“I said some things last night I shouldn’t have,” Uri continued, ignoring Shu completely. He licked his parched lips and melted some butter in the pan he heated, paying attention to every small step in his cooking to ween his mind from the image of that black ink low on Shuuichi’s back. The image of that mutilated heart with its blood of midnight skies. “I know you want to pretend they weren’t said.”



“No, they were dick moves on your part. But I know you. You’re a dick.”



“Can you be serious for a moment?”



“No. There’re eight chicks in this house you can pamper with your cute little apologies. I’m not gonna sit here and listen to them. Cause they’re more for you than they are for me.”



“Goddamnit!,” Uri bellowed, tossing his spatula to the counter and turning in a flow of caramel tresses to pin his oddly naked, vulnerable eyes on Shu’s shocked face. “I’m sorry.” He said this with such vehemence Shu made no move to brush it off. Instead, he nodded, wide eyed and spellbound by the beauty of his friend. He had never seen him look so… human. “It’s fine. We both were being kind of babies last night. Don’t worry about it.”



\'“I got the tattoo for you, Uriel.” \'



Uri turned back to the stove, grabbing his spatula and squeezing on the handle as he stirred around the melted butter and began to crack eggs against the metal lip of the pan. “So,” he said, more casually, and with more of his usual passiveness. “What’s the new tattoo for, anyway? You’re not going to tell me you got it just because you wanted new bait for all the girls.”



Shu laughed this off. “No,” he said, and his voice was resigned. Resigned to telling lies. And if not lies, half-truths that stung Uri’s heart. “I got it for my mom, you were right. Y’know, this is the tenth anniversary of her death.” The tears in Shu’s voice were not a con, nor an actor’s strategic deception. They were real, and they were heartbreaking. “I keep waiting for the pain to go away. Or to wake up and remember she’s gone. But it never happens. It keeps hurting, and I keep forgetting. I keep calling for her in the night when I have a nightmare.”



I know, I’m there. Again, he wanted to say this, but he bit the words back. “I’m sorry,” was all he said, all he could say. There was nothing that he could do for the man, short of a miracle. And as he had stated earlier, dead was dead. In this circumstance, it brought him no joy or comfort. It made his heart ache with a dull kind of hollowness. Shu said nothing to this, only sat there with his hands clasped between his thighs and his head downcast. One tear fell from the end of his nose and dropped onto his wrist. He would rather bite off his own tongue than tell Uri the real reason he had gotten the mark on his body. In a spot that Uri was fond of touching. That hadn’t been coincidental.



It’s my heart, bleeding for you. But he couldn’t even admit this to himself. It was a whisper from the lowest chamber of his soul. A whisper he never heard, or allowed himself to understand. He was straight after all, something he knew for a fact, and so what if he was staring at Uri’s dark flesh in the morning sun and wondering what it felt like beneath crawling fingers? So what if he could somehow taste the flavor of him on his tongue, and had images of the dark man tangled beneath him in a flow of sweat?



It was nothing.



“We’re going down to that gay club today, right? The one Marco and Allister pimp all the damn time? What’s it called, again? The Cock Hut?”



“Close,” Uri laughed softly, “It’s called Exhale. Just as disturbing if you ask me, but I’m not critic. And it’s purely business, Shu.”



“You say that now. But wait ‘til we get down there and you see Captain Buttfloss gyratin’ his junk in your face. Then you’ll wanna beg me for singles to slip between his cheeks.” A touch of jealousy.



Uri clucked his tongue. “I highly doubt I’ll lose my composure with a little skin exposed. Nothing new to me. I’ve been to places like that a dozen times or more. You have to remember our occupation and the kind of clients we deal with.”



Shu thought of what they would see down at the establishment, and his skin hardened with excited gooseflesh. His blush returned with a vengeance with the images that floated through his mind. Naked men brushing against him, the smell of their skin clean and fresh, their hair touching him, their hands moving low, their bodies writhing, heaving, pushing. Their nails digging into him….



“---I guess you’ll have to bum sips.”



“Hunh? Wha?” Shu asked this in amazing stupidity, his jaw slack and hanging as his crotch hardened and twitched in his snug boxers. “I said,” Uri reiterated, “That since you’re only eighteen, I guess you can’t drink. You’ll have to bum sips.”



“Oh.” Shu laughed hectically. “Yeah. Sure. Okay.”



“You alright?”



“Jesus, yes. Stop pecking, momma hen. I’m fine.”



Uri smiled a contemptuous, unseen smile, and continued to cook.