Chapter Text
John was alone. “At home,” yes, “reading”, yes, but most fundamentally, he was alone, with a deep, soft-edged hollowness aching all along the Helen-shaped absence in his life. Dog wasn’t filling that loneliness tonight. Some days were harder than others, and this was one of the hard days. The same paragraph slid past again and again, read but not processed, as that ache grew slowly to rage at the bitter remembrances that cycled through his mind in place of the words on the page.
The sound of the doorbell came as a relief. It could only mean trouble - exactly what John was in the mood for. He took the pistol from the bedside table and closed Dog inside the bedroom – a habit he couldn’t seem to shake when answering the door, ever since Iosef.
“Trouble” wore a cream-colored three-piece suit and pearly pink tie, and a face even paler than those accoutrements. It was a comically poor choice of dress for the events fate had wrought on him that day. Even if he hadn’t been bracing himself against the doorframe in a desperate attempt to stay upright, the massive bloom of red spreading from the center of his chest would have informed John that the Marquis was in dire straits, bleeding out, come to his doorstep to beg. Huh. That sight would cheer him up all evening.
John savored it for a long moment and then began to close the door.
“Wait!”
Resting on the doorknob, John’s hand paused its progress and his eyebrow shot up in a silent expression of, “This had better be good.”
The Marquis began a speech that sounded almost rehearsed. “Let’s make this simple. I am offering you the contract of a lifetime. Not a hit, but something even more suited to your habits. Your job is to thwart the High Table on my behalf until my excommunication is reversed, and I am reinstated as Autem Imperator.”
“Excommunication? For what?”
“For your idiocy at the Basilica, which interrupted my contract. Since you were too much of a coward to face me until I had already fired, you are not dead, and I am being hunted by those fils de pute [sons of bitches]. I set out for the states this morning to end you. But count yourself lucky, Mr. Wick. The Table says it’s too late for that. Your head is no longer wanted – for now. So this is your opportunity to redeem yourself after pulling that completely underhanded stunt. Which, I might add, you botched.”
It hadn’t been a “stunt” he enjoyed pulling. Here was a man infinitely weaker than himself, on a deep, personal level, who lived in desperation. And John had used his own arrogance against him. It was what he deserved for hubris, but to give the Marquis de Gramont what he deserved was to destroy him, and John was tired of destroying beautiful things. Mere boys in their 20s, not so different from himself at that age, forced into that same twisted world. He shook his head, dispelling the memory. “You’re coming to me for protection? Why?”
He clicked his tongue impatiently. “Because! All High Table services are closed to me, but you…you’re completely unaffiliated now.”
“And I’d like to stay that way. If you’re trying to make me want to help, you’re doing a piss-poor job.”
“Oh I don’t need to make you want to do anything. You always take the bait eventually, because that is who you are. You answered the door, didn’t you? Bored of your precious retirement?”
John glowered. “I worked very hard for my retirement, as you may recall.”
“Only to relinquish it again and again. You are going to do the only thing you’re good for these days: poke the High Table only to outrun them with your tail between your legs. Except this time, it will be for a purpose that’s worth something. Try to think rationally for a moment. If there was ever a question of whether to leave you undisturbed, I could speak for you. On the other hand, if you spurn me today, you’ll - ”
“Don’t threaten me.” John closed the door. Didn’t even slam it.
He went to the basement, to fetch something. Could have told the Marquis where he was going, but why waste words? Besides, it was worth making him squirm a little.
When he returned to the door, Vincent had not moved from the spot. He blinked when the door opened, as if shaken from a trance.
John made no comment on it. He simply held up a marker. The little, cold weight of the metal felt hateful in his hand. A dreaded thing, a pin at the center of a butterfly. Something he’d only wish on his worst enemy. He handed it to Vincent. “This is not for your reinstatement as Autem Imperator. This is for your survival until you’re freed from the High Table.”
He scoffed. “You think I’m willing to give you a marker for the sake of mere survival? That is not the deal, Mr. Wick.”
“That is the deal. Mark it.”
“Payment upon receipt of services. Let me in first.”
By way of answer, John stood aside, and watched the Marquis drag himself through with a maddeningly victorious smirk. He limped his way to the sofa, with John following, not letting him out of his sight for a moment.
He didn’t even have to use the needle for a finger prick. He pressed his thumb to his heart, where there was already plenty of blood soaking through the button-down, and then into the brass. John took it back and snapped it closed again, sealing the debt.
It was only then that The Marquis added, “We’ll see whether the Table thinks I owe you anything before I’m reinstated. It’s your word against mine as to what that marker was for, and we all know which of us holds more sway.”
“Some way to honor a blood oath.” If he’d actually planned on using the marker, John would have kicked him right back out again for that. But in all honesty, it was just leverage. He opened the door again long enough to glance up and down the street. “Who shot you? Did they follow you?”
“I’m not such a novice as to lead them back. Some hitman at a gas station recognized me, but we lost him. By tomorrow morning, my bodyguard will be in another country, leading the High Table away from here.” He shuddered. “Now shut the door, it’s cold.”
It wasn’t the coldest night. Furrowing his brow, John turned his attention back to his new charge, who was looking paler by the moment. He shut the door. “Lay down.”
The Marquis did not comply. “You’re just an absolute mother hen, aren’t you, ‘Baba Yaga’? Going soft?” he seethed, teeth clenched, breathing through his nose and shutting his eyes in a bid to maintain composure. John knew the look. The feeling of shoving down pain and fear, holding your breath and restraining your muscles, actively ignoring the body’s bright red flashing lights that scream “we are not okay right now.” It was hard, and Vincent was amazingly bad at it. He probably didn’t have to do it very often.
John forced down the twinge of pity that rose up at that thought. The Marquis wouldn’t want it anyway. “Suit yourself. I’m going to get a first aid kit. If you’ve moved from that spot when I get back, I’ll shoot you.”
“Anything you say.” Vincent opened his eyes long enough to smirk and raise his hands innocently, as if playing along with the demands of a child. Unfortunately, the effect was spoiled slightly by the shake in his hands.
Fortunately, when John returned, he hadn’t moved.
“Shirt off.” It was painful just to watch as he tried to raise his arms, wincing, and struggling with the suitcoat. No doubt even more painful to be watched. By the time he got to the tie, John stepped in. “We don’t have all day.”
A venomous glare. He looked ready to cut deep. “Are you so eager to touch me, John? That lonely, in this big empty house, with all your ‘love’? Pathetic.”
Anger got the best of him for a moment and he shoved Vincent by the center of his chest, directly over the spreading patch of crimson. The result was a winded kind of wheezing that afforded him enough leeway to strip away as much fabric as needed. Pink silk sliding through his collar. The top four buttons undone. Underneath, parted flesh echoed the parted flaps of the button down.
Panting, the Marquis chuckled weakly. “Guess I’m right. I got to you.”
“Fuck. Off.”
“How bad is it?”
John had already steadied himself and started inspecting the wound. “Could be worse. Came in at a glancing angle – only tore muscle on the left side. Then it hit your sternum.”
“Je suis à nouveau épargné [I am spared again],” he breathed, with a little dimpled smile.
“Not yet. I need to pull it out.”
“Without anesthetic!? You have to be joking.”
“I don’t have anesthetics in this house. I’ve done this dozens of times. They aren’t necessary.”
“That’s different. You’re a barbarian.”
“And you’re too chicken?”
Vincent tilted up his chin importantly. “Fine. I’m ready.”
“No, you’re not. Bite down, I don’t want a noise complaint.” The discarded tie had found a new use already.
Vincent grimaced at the metallic taste of his own blood on the silk and spat it back at him. “We’d have no concerns over a noise complaint if you weren’t allowed to run rampant and uncivilized. I had forgotten how intolerable the common assassin can be. At least my Myrmidons - ”
John shoved it back in his mouth, and tied it behind his head this time. Without hesitation, he dove tweezers into the wound and Vincent’s muffled screaming filled the room, making the air heady and vivid.
It was over in a second, but then there was the antiseptic, and the stitching took much longer.
It was all one long, meditative moment for John. He was unexpectedly flooded with adrenaline and had to force himself not to rush. There was the rage, but then there was something else, such a desire to make this quick, to offer some kind of mercy. He kept seeing Vincent’s too-wide, horrified eyes the fraction-of-an-instant before he took the shot that pointless, bloody morning in the Basilica Of Sacré Coeur De Montmartre. Neither of them dead, in the end. Just two faked deaths and a few more bad memories. Just a young man, weak, scared of John, scared of failure, driven mad by the constant push towards power, the constant belittling, the constant threat of death from all sides that was life under the High Table.
It was almost over when there was a buzz from Vincent’s coat pocket at the foot of the couch. Shit. The last thing they needed was for Vincent to get even more riled up by bad news.
“Don’t move. You don’t want to look at that right now anyway.”
His eyes were daggers. “The insolence to tell me what I want to do.” He tried to reach for it regardless but failed. “That’s my business phone. Give it to me.”
Sighing, John dove into the pocket and tossed it to him. He caught a glimpse of the screen as it passed: a contract notice. “What does it say?”
“I – nothing. Surely a mistake.” He closed the phone and tossed it aside, feigning indifference.
John picked it up. Contract for Marquis Vincent Bisset de Gramont: $20 Million. Open. International. Special alert to New York. Personal bodyguard already deceased. “The guy who saw you must have called in a tip to the High Table…I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? You're an embarrassment.” Vincent gave a breathy, half-hearted laugh and began to list sideways, deathly pale. John caught him and lowered him into a laying position, pulling his legs up over the armrest. He took Vincent’s wrist between two fingers and his thumb.
“What are you…”
“Taking your pulse.” It was absolutely flying, dozens of little taps flickering against his fingertips in the space of a second. The Marquis’ eyes fluttered closed at the sensation, overwhelmed by the awareness of his own blood. But his expression remained frozen, a desperate grasp for some semblance of dignity.
“You’re either in shock or having a panic attack. Probably both.”
“I am not having a panic attack.”
“Fine, then you’re in shock.”
“So fix it.”
“I’m trying. You need to elevate your legs, and you need to calm down.”
“I need to calm down,” he repeated, sarcastic. The little taps accelerated. Not helping. He jerked his hand away, his voice rapidly pitching upward into a kind of hysteria. “I’m going to die. I’m going to die.” That’s true, John thought, if you don’t calm down. “You. This is your fault, for a second time. This is why you are alone, a pathetic widower. You are cursed. Everything you touch dies, John Wick, you are poison. Good for nothing. Je vais mourir. [I’m going to die.] This is fate. God is against me.”
This time, he didn’t take the bait. The situation was quickly becoming critical. “Vincent. Breathe.”
He was gasping now, between every other word, almost delirious. “Espèce de pion…sans valeur [You worthless pawn]! My name…is The Marquis de Gramont! You will…address me…by my title!”
John muttered a curse under his breath. Think, accommodate this asshole’s massive ego if that’s what it takes. He had destroyed many people, but rarely had someone been so fragile before him, so absolutely in need, and by extension (ironically), so innocent. Looking down at him, he suddenly viewed Vincent as something other than an asshole, something beyond judgement. An animal that lacked concepts like reason or remorse. Just something that suffered, and wanted, and needed, and that he was charged with treating according to its nature. “Marquis de Gramont,” John said calmly but forcefully, and, even though it wasn’t true, “Autem Imperator.” Please don’t pass out, he thought. Please don’t die on me. “Regarde-moi et respire. [Look at me and breathe.]” He pressed a hand into each of his shoulders, physically stopping the shaking. Physical contact, but more dignified than the hug he wished he could offer, hopefully less likely to make Vincent feel pathetic. He let his face go flat and his voice perfectly monotone, neither pitying nor dismissive, but simply a statement of fact. “Tu vas bien. Je ne vais pas te faire de mal. Ce à quoi vous survivez actuellement est extrêmement difficile. Tu te débrouilles bien. Je ne vais pas mentir, je déteste tes tripes, mais tu ne devrais pas être obligé d’être dans cette position. Cela me fait chier aussi. Alors je ne vais pas te laisser mourir. Je veux que tu ailles bien et je ferai en sorte que cela se produise. [You’re okay. I’m not going to hurt you. What you’re surviving right now is extremely difficult. You’re doing well. I won’t lie, I hate your guts, but you shouldn’t have to be in this position. It pisses me off too. So I’m not gonna let you die. I want you to be okay and I will make that happen.]”
He half expected Vincent to spit insults again, but he just stared, unable to respond. It may have been his imagination, but he thought he saw Vincent’s eyes glaze slightly, pinprick pupils finally swelling open. Leaving one hand on his shoulder, John pulled the coat over his body, arranged it into place, and resumed the firm pressure on his shoulders. A human simulation of a weighted blanket. For a moment, he shivered even more violently, adjusting to the heat, and then let out an exhale as the peak of the terror began to subside.
Then those insults began to come. “This is exactly why I hate you. This sickeningly sweet nonsense that you spout. It makes me depressed to look at you. You say this - this fairy tale merde [shit], like you’re noble. But the world doesn’t work that way. It’s an affront to my intelligence. There’s no mercy waiting for you.”
“Maybe not. But there is for you. Even if I have to make sure of it myself.”
“I - “ his voice gave out into a sob and he turned his entire head away, into the cushions.
Heavy, sparkling droplets clinging to eyelashes, half-parted, twisted-up lips pressed into the fabric, the most wrenching sounds… He looked beautiful crying, and that thought did not belong in John’s head. He averted his eyes respectfully, partly so the Marquis would be free to turn back towards him if he wanted, and partly to avoid feeding whatever god-forsaken thing had just reared its head inside him.
They sat that way a long time, in silence, Vincent’s shoulders shuddering under the rock of John’s weight, sobs escaping a torn-open chest.
And as the Marquis’ muscles finally relaxed, John felt something. He felt something for this mess of barely restrained malice and misery pinned underneath him. An urgency, all through his body, his own heart taking flight as Vincent’s came to rest. I want you to be okay and I will make that happen, he had said. That was true.
It was then that John knew he was fucked.