define: the vanishing point.
taekwoon/sanghyuk, vixx 1.2k it's just a drabble of sorts idk have you seen fallen angels?
The television is one of the old CRT sets. The image comes through half formed and never fully in color; Sanghyuk isn't paying enough attention to mind anyway. He smokes a cigarette, half asleep and daydreaming, wishing it wasn't so fucking cold when the telephone rings. It pulls him out of his stupor where he lies across his bed sideways, on his belly, ash on the carpet because the cigarette is burning freely between his fingers.
It's been something like a week, maybe ten days, since the last job, and though it isn't totally uncommon to go weeks without work, Sanghyuk finds it hard to believe everyone in the world is getting along just fine. There has to be something to do, he thinks. There can't just be nothing. But he also knows the telephone never rings when it's a call for a job. That's what the fax machine is for. But the fax machine sits in the corner like some great dead thing, wasting space, wasting his time, because what's the point if there isn't any work to do?
Minutes pass. Sanghyuk waits. The telephone rings again, and again it rings only once. It's a shrill cry in the night and there isn't anywhere for the sound to go; it echoes, then dies away quickly. Sanghyuk stubs out the cigarette and grabs a jacket. It's raining out, but only barely; he leaves the television on, because he lives by the old train station that's been abandoned for over ten years, and no one comes to this side of town anymore anyway. And besides, he thinks, it's better for people to think someone is home when someone really isn't.
*
At a payphone near the airport where the planes hover low overhead so it is like being inside a dying machine, Sanghyuk calls into the receiver, loudly, to be heard over the noise: “where are you?”. He can hear, faintly and far away, the sound of the subway carts. “You're underground?” he asks. “Stay there.”
*
Above Taekwoon's head is a large neon sign that reads platform ten and behind him is a subway car with the doors open and all the benches empty. He stands drinking a beer in a leather jacket with his hair low over his eyes. They don't exchange words when Sanghyuk approaches him. Their eyes meet and he touches Taekwoon's wrist and is momentarily spellbound by the way Taekwoon shivers silently before pulling his arm away.
“I think our boss is dead,” Taekwoon eventually says.
Sanghyuk doesn't say anything. He doesn't know what to think.
“If he is, then what?” Taekwoon asks. “I can't work a day job. Do I look like I can work a day job?”
“I...don't know.”
“He hasn't called me in two weeks. I think he's dead.”
Sanghyuk touches the back of his neck where his hair has grown long. “He doesn't call me for months sometimes.”
“This is different.”
“You're...paranoid.” He starts to laugh picturing Taekwoon working at a convenience store with a vest and a name-tag. “You won't have to work a day job.” He puts his arm around Taekwoon to pull him in, to pull him close, and he buries his nose in the thick of Taekwoon's hair. “I'll make sure you don't have to.”
*
They started working together something like three years ago when Sanghyuk had first moved to the city. It's a long story how they crossed paths, how they got hired. It doesn't matter. What matters is they have a method. Taekwoon goes in first. He cases the building, he finds the target; and Sanghyuk, close behind, goes in with the gun. It's easy work, really. You just—point, aim, shoot. Then you're done. No one's feelings get hurt, because in this kind of work people don't have feelings. Sanghyuk's good at what he does. He hasn't missed a target yet. So even if the boss is dead and everything's fucked, he won't have to get a day job, because he's a sharp shooter and he knows people. It'll be fine, he thinks. Who's thinking so far ahead anyway?
*
He totally gets it, though. After a week of no phone calls and no work, he starts getting antsy like he's searching for a fix. Taekwoon is the same way. He's lying on Sanghyuk's bed with the television glow all over the room where cigarette smoke lingers like a mist and Sanghyuk can see the way Taekwoon can't stop moving his hands. So he reaches out and takes Taekwoon's hands, pulls him by them and pieces their hands together so that their fingers entwine. The window is open and the wind blows the night into the room. The air smells like traffic and like rain and a hint of something else, purely industrial.
Taekwoon asks, “Have you ever thought about leaving?”
“Leaving where?”
“Leaving here.”
“No,” Sanghyuk answers.
“Well, can you think about it now?”
“Why should I?”
“Well, why not?”
Sanghyuk shifts uneasily. He presses his chest to Taekwoon's back and holds him tightly, but he feels a strange roll in his belly like anxiety bubbling up from his guts. He says, “Don't be weird. We aren't going anywhere.”
Taekwoon doesn't mention it again.
*
It's another two weeks before the fax machine whirs to life and when it does, Sanghyuk bolts upright out of a dead sleep. He's shirtless with sweat dampening his hair to his forehead. The only thing that comes through on the fax are coordinates for a diner somewhere in the city; he doesn't have to call Taekwoon. He knows he'll already be there.
*
Sanghyuk shoots the guy in a bathroom. The toilet explodes all over the floor while the bullet curves through the guy's head. So there's brain matter on the wall and blood on the mirror. When the body hits the floor, Sanghyuk knows he's dead, so he leaves and he doesn't look back. The diner is empty. He can hear the panic down the street, fading farther away. He checks the bottom of his boots and determines there isn't any gore stuck to him, so exits through the back door, to the alley, where Taekwoon waits for him.
In no time at all they're sitting in a bar outside of town with cappuccinos in front of them. Sanghyuk is smoking, twirling a spoon round the cup and watching the foam froth over when Taekwoon says, “I'm tired.”
“Do you want to go home with me?”
Later, after the sun has started to rise but the sky is still a pale blue, Sanghyuk, naked from the waist up, pulls Taekwoon into his chest. The sheets smell like sweat and sex and so many other things.
“Have you ever been in love?” Taekwoon asks.
Sanghyuk doesn't know what that even means. “Go to sleep, hyung.”
