A Grave Matter
Prompt: Soulmate AU and Body Disposal
Tags/Warnings: the gore that follows Body Disposal, Grave digging, I-pin, Bovino Lambo, Mentions of the Triads, crackish
Summary: Fon was having a very surreal day.
Fon liked working for the Triads.
He liked pushing his body to its limits. The exhaustion and the challenge made him smile.
Lately though, ever since he’d been slated for mentorship, he’s been cleaning up after his apprentices.
I-pin was fine, she rarely killed and preferred to knock out her opponents as opposed to Lambo, whose skill-set was permanently on the setting of overkill. Cleaning up became a necessity and not an optional thing.
It wasn’t even possible to separate the both of them. Soulmates shouldn’t be separated because tunnel vision happened and then there would be casualties. It’s annoying but he bore it because he loved I-pin. She was like the daughter of his heart.
The only thing left to do would be to get used to the body disposal. He should be used to it, with how long he’d been working in the triads. That doesn’t mean he liked it, or that he didn’t smother a groan into his pillow when his phone rang at three in the morning. Very few people had his number and only two of them had no compunctions about the time. Reborn had no business with him though, so that left only…
“Wèi,” he murmured, voice rough with sleep. “Fon speaking.”
“Shifu!” I-pin trilled in his ear sweetly. It would be a welcome sound if Fon weren’t sleep deprived.
“I-pin, little treasure, it is three in the morning,” he reprimanded.
There was a squeak of shock and some terror. Mostly because I-pin knew that if he was still teaching her, that would be ten laps around the mountain weighed down with rocks.
“Shifu, I’m very sorry,” she apologized. “But I swear it’s not Lambo’s fault this time. We found the body!”
Knowing full-well that if he didn’t attend to this, sleep would not happen for him, Fon gave out one last quiet sigh and stands to get dressed.
The body was covered by purple leather and a helmet. The obvious sign of death was the bullet hole on the helmet, done point blank range, penetrating what was obviously not bulletproof glass.
Fon quietly mourned the man for a moment, then wrapped him in a canvass. He had gotten quite efficient at it.
“Shifu,” I-pin shifted guiltily, seeing the dark bags under her teacher’s eyes. “I am so sorry.”
Fon sighed, unable to really muster a temper in the face of I-pin’s guilt.
“Next time, I am teaching you how to do this efficiently,” he said, smiling at her wearily. If his hands weren’t covered by bloodied gloves, he would have patted her head. Lambo shuffled closer, reaching out for the bleach.
“I’ll take care of this, Fon,” Lambo offered. It was rare that the child offered help, so Fon smiled at him too.
“Thank you for your help.”
The blood splatter wasn’t so much, given that the helmet had caught most of the blood and kept it pooled inside. It was still blood and any civilians seeing it would cause a fuss in the morning.
It was good of Lambo to offer.
Fon yawned again, breathing a couple of times to attempt to meditate the drowsiness away. He had done it for one week straight though and had come off the meditation trance just three hours ago and his body was demanding sleep.
He dug the hole deeply and quickly.
When it was enough, he unravelled the canvass and unhooked the man’s helmet. The blood poured out and Fon wrinkled his nose involuntarily. It didn’t stop him from wiping the man’s face. There was blood and make-up caked all over and he regretted not bringing water. At least the man would have some dignity in death.
Strangely enough, the entry wound was small for a point blank range shot.
Whatever, it wasn’t his job to autopsy the man. (He would regret this later.)
He lowered the man to the hole after cleaning him up as much as he could. Underneath the make-up and blood, there were scars. Old scars that made Fon pause.
“At least you find peace in death,” he muttered.
Then, he grabbed the shovel and started throwing the soil back in.
It’s at this point that things get a bit blurry.
Because when he tossed in his fifth shovel-full of soil, a hand reached out and grabbed the shovel, stopping it from dumping the soil into the hole.
Fon would reiterate later that he did not scream.
“Stop that,” a voice complained, weary and tired. “Just. Stop. Are you burying me???”
Fon would also remember later that those were his Words. But he would point out the sleep-deprivation as defence.
As it was, he answered, “Oh my Primo, the dead body just talked,” he mumbled, shovel falling from nerveless fingers.
The dead man climbing out of the hole Fon dug perked up with a smile.
“Those are my Words!” he said with blood staining his teeth and spilling out into his mouth, down his chin. There was dirt clinging to his everywhere and dried blood on his neck. “Hey, Soulmate! Nice to meet you!”
Fon woke up in his bed and he smiled.
Just an odd dream. What a funny dream.
A weight on his waist made him look down.
There was an arm slung on his waist and the nails on the hand were painted purple.
Fon blinked. It was still there.
“Shifu,” I-pin said, a smile in her face and her voice. She bended over him, holding a glass of water and a towel. “Congratulations on finding your soulmate!”
Fon blinked again. It was the corpse. The man. The man who used to be a corpse.
The noise that came out of his throat was the sound confused puppies made.
It woke up the man with purple hair. There was no longer any blood on him anywhere or dirt. (Hysterically, a small portion of his brain liked the thoughtfulness of this act. His silk sheets would not recover from grave dirt on it.)
“Oh hey, you’re awake!” the man said with a smile that people who were morning people had. “Your student said you were just in shock.”
Fon reached out for the glass of water and downed it like a shot.
