That also makes him... different from the rest.

Fei Long twists his lips and steps into the dark little cell in which he keeps the spoils of war. Akihito is sprawled across the bed, twisted, with the silver chain on his ankle that's coiled on the mattress and glinting against the meager light that shines in through the window. The dossiers say that the kid is twenty-three, and certainly he doesn't look much younger but there is something distinctly juvenile in his face that intrigues Fei Long. Akihito, when awake, glares and resists with his eyes though he knows better than to resist with his fists, and Fei Long, being amused, doesn't reprimand. But now, the sleeping young man is an image of trust, his mouth gaping open as he breathes loudly and his arms curled precariously on his chest, one hand crossing his shoulder and resting loosely against the back of his neck and the other arm bent into his stomach with fingers curled under his chin. The Baishe tattoo on his wrist is visible and marking him as Liu property, but it's a detail rendered irrelevant while sleep is claiming him.

The sight isn't something that a Chinese syndicate boss often sees. Akihito isn't innocent and it's been years since he's been a child but what Akihito is is honest. In the world that Fei Long has grown up in he knows that honesty is a blood relative of foolishness, and if anyone had any doubt about this fact then they had only to look at the fate that had become of Takaba Akihito. The thought urges a rush of cruelty into Fei Long's mind - he thinks he will shake Akihito awake this instant, slap him out of this tender, trustful sleep and fuck him until he cries and then maybe the brat will be one step closer to seeing reality for what it really is.

Really, Fei Long would be doing him a favor.

But when he steps closer, feet tapping quietly against the floorboards, Akihito's eyelids part. Dark eyelashes raise like stage curtains to reveal equally dark eyes. Fei Long stops and stands over his prisoner, his long silky black hair and pale hanfu robe like a canopy against the bed. Akihito squints at the sight, and though the room isn't lit he blinks to gain his eyesight. He frowns and sits up, swinging his legs off the bed to sit and the chain clinks in the process.

"I was told you wouldn't be back tonight," he explains, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, thinking that perhaps his captor wanted him to stay awake and wait. Then under his breath, "Dammit, what time is it anyway..."

Fei Long is silent, his own slender finger trailing under his bottom lip as he considers the youth who is still half-asleep.

"Well?" Akihito growls, tossing his head up and meeting Fei Long's gaze. "It's pretty obvious what you want, and there's nothing that stops you from taking what you want, so don't waste your time."

The words make Fei Long hiss, and he shouldn't be offended by the truth but it sounds like a mockery when spoken out loud and he is. His hand darts forward and tangles itself into Akihito's unruly hair, snatching the kid up by the scalp and forcing him to his feet. Akihito grunts in pain and tries to pull Fei Long's hand away but can't without hurting himself further, upon realizing this, he sentences Fei Long to hell with blazing irises and Japanese curse words.

Fei Long drags Akihito to the wall and slams him into it with little concern for his head, and the impact tears a pleasing yelp from Akihito's throat. Instinctively, the youth lashes out for freedom with the hand that isn't holding Fei Long's wrist to keep him from pulling his hair, and effortlessly Fei Long pins that against the wall, stretching it until the elbow won't bend.

"What the hell's your problem?!" Akihito snarls, now wide awake and angry. "I didn't do anything to you!"

"You did everything to me," Fei Long corrects smoothly, his face moving in close to the other's but without collision. "It's more than enough that you're Asami's little whore."

"What?!"

The words had come out in an impulse, and Fei Long chuckles at himself for jeopardizing his own grace. He recovers with the gentle deadliness that has made him infamous. "It's nothing personal, Takaba. We're smugglers for the biggest mafia syndicates in the world. The goods get passed around, that's only natural."

Akihito's lips tighten like he's trying to hold back what he really wants to say. Fei Long knows what he might say already, words of the defeated that he's heard a thousand times and he's completely immune to pleas of mercy. Simultaneously, it stops being fun if Akihito doesn't speak at all, so Fei Long waits until he mutters, "Of course it's personal."

He leans closer. "What was that?"

"I said, of course it's personal!" the Japanese boy exclaims. "You did it because you have something against Asami, and now I've been involved even though I have nothing to do with anything. You expect me to believe that it's not personal?"

"I don't care what you believe." The anger, it might have come from nowhere. This boy stirred it up inside of him and now he wants to tear him to pieces and send each mutilated section of bloody flesh to Asami, one by one until there's nothing left and anyone who dares to be honest is silenced from fear. "It doesn't matter to me if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, it doesn't matter to me if Asami raped you or if you desired him when you were together."

Akihito darkened. "I know it doesn't. All that matters to you is holding a trophy above Asami's head."

"Yes," Fei Long agrees and Akihito's eyes accuse him of sin, they look on him as though he were akin to the demons in the fairytale world that he wants to perceive. It makes Fei Long's eyes narrow in return, and it makes him smirk. "The look on Asami's face when I stole you was wonderful. Seeing him suffer is almost better than seeing him dead."

"How can you say that?" An incredulous expression meets him, and then Akihito bows his head and looks at the floor or perhaps nothing at all. “...That's terrible."

"How can you say that? He's the one who got you involved in all of this. You should resent him."

"I do, but..." Akihito hardened his voice like steel, and his face snapped up venomously. "..he's better than you!"

Fei Long could punch him. Even with the bullet wounds that sting even more when he's thinking of the Japanese yakuza boss, he could punch Akihito until the boy was unconscious or dead or with head injuries to retard him for the rest of his life. He could destroy Asami in his mind by destroying his whore, and it might even make it all better if only until dawn breaks, he could avenge his father without thinking about his family once.

He grips Akihito's hand so tightly that he cries out, and Fei Long thinks he could destroy him in another way. He could fuck him like Asami fucked him, he could taste him like Asami tasted him and he could breathe him until he was breathing the spirit of Asami himself. Until he could feel the man's presence next to him, with the Japanese boy being the bridge between them.

And perhaps in the darkness of this little cell, Akihito could become Asami and it would be just as before, before the betrayal, before the vows of destruction. Just the night, the sex and the intimacy of having someone hold you and take the blow for you without expecting a favor in return. To run a thick warrior's hand through your hair and kiss your face like you were a woman instead of an heir to the criminal underworld. Ignorant and stupid and fucking sitting bait just waiting to be stabbed in the back or shot in the chest like a fool.

There are ways to live and they shouldn't involve Asami anyway. Akihito is damned idiot if he hasn't seen that but an idiot who is in too deep anyway to ever find salvation. He's become just like everyone else in Fei Long's syndicate and Asami's syndicate and Mikhail's syndicate, only he doesn't need drugs to fool himself, not yet.

Fei Long wavers, and then releases Akihito, tossing him roughly back onto the mattress. Akihito's lip trembles and he lays there in the same position he fell in, stubbornly holding onto his glare like a lifeline until he sees Fei Long retreating. He sits up quickly, widened eyes trailing behind the silk of the hanfu and nervously meeting the body that was encased in it.

"F-Fei Long?" he asks at risk of being remembered if he had been forgotten. "Are you...?"

The sentence wasn't finished and Fei Long doesn't know what the final word was going to be. Perhaps Akihito doesn't know either. Are you drunk? Are you tired? Are you.. okay?

There's the paradox of it all. The thing that makes him want to destroy Akihito or keep him forever and ever, but he knows that he would rather do the latter and if he does, the former will also happen even if he doesn't mean it to. He could watch for himself the undoing of honesty until captivity has torn the youth's spirit to shreds and there's nothing left but a toy to fuck and a corpse to leave at Asami's doorstep because there's nothing left to do with it.

"Just go to sleep," Fei Long calls lightly as though the matter is of no importance to him. Akihito is just a prisoner after all, and with an unbothered tone he lets him know. "I'm not going to be entertained in a dirty cell like this..."

But it's really just that arousal is gone and without falter, he shuts the cell door and locks it behind him. He's weary and he can't sleep but he is too tired to look at Akihito's face and he knows that if he had stayed, he would be unable to look at anything else. Have enough alcohol and opium and you stop caring that it's not fair and you stop being hurt and you smile and do your job and pull the trigger. You can have drugs and adrenaline rushes. You can fuck your subordinates and kill your enemies or you can even kill your subordinates and fuck your enemies because it makes sense in a world that doesn't make sense.

And the last thing that you need at times like this are the subtle, helpless reminders that you're the one living in a screwed up world. So you destroy it and you rape it and you make it one of your own until there's nothing asking you to stop, and it breaks what little heart you have left when you think about it, so you don't think about it as best as you can.

Asami will be yearning for Akihito back. Fei Long knows this because Asami is just like him. They're smugglers, they smuggle the good things and use them until they're useless. Akihito Takaba never belonged in this world. He shouldn't be in this world, Fei Long thinks as he strides down the grand hallway of his headquarters like a vengeful ghost. He shouldn't be in this world but the problem is, Akihito's world is the same world as the mafia's world - somehow, the gods deemed it ironic to put these foreign places on the same planet.

Fei Long cannot sleep so he pours a glass of putao jiu. There's no one watching him now in the safety of his quarters, not at this hour at night, so he drains the cup and pours another, and soon he's just drinking from the bottle to save the effort. The alcohol burns into his throat and he thinks of Akihito crying and Asami bleeding and those images shouldn't go together but they do.

He thinks that he can drink the pain away, he can fuck it away or kill it away. He knows that he'll fail, but he's too strong to stop trying.

-fin