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“Is happiness a choice?” Vegas asks.
Kinn watches him smoke on the balcony, rudely having inserted himself here without any remorse, taking up the space left behind by Porsche.
“I heard Porsche say something like that to Chay one time. Like, it was meant to cheer the kid up.” He drags on his cigarette and holds the smoke, waiting. “Can you imagine Korn saying something like that to you?”
Kinn shifts a little where he leans against the open door, a breeze blowing the stale air of traffic past them. “I can imagine him saying it to Gun,” Kinn says, a smile spreading across his face. “You choose whether you win or not.”
Vegas turns out to the skyline, the pale blue twilight like a soft wrapper that makes him seem smaller. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“Are you happy?” Kinn asks. And then, when Vegas doesn’t seem likely to reply. “With the choices you made?”
“Are you?” Vegas retorts. He glances over his shoulder while he draws another breath from the cigarette, the warmth of its ember glinting in his eye like the flames of hell. “Are you happy with Porsche?”
“Is that what you think happiness is?” Kinn asks, still amused, forcing his lips to curl, his brow to furrow.
Vegas continues to smoke silently. Kinn watches him.
“Why are you here, Vegas?” Kinn asks.
“I’m doing research on happiness,” Vegas says with a grin, but Kinn rolls his eyes. “I’m curious if you’re going to figure it out before one of us dies.”
Kinn is used to Vegas’s threats, but this isn’t the usual shape of one. “Dies?” Kinn asks.
“Of old age.” Vegas stubs out the cigarette, leans on the balcony with both hands, leaning back so far that the wind travels up the side of the building and ruffles his hair, pulling the silken fabric of his shirt taut against him. “Or of boredom.” He shrugs. “Same difference.”
The night is slow to come on, but Kinn knows that he should figure out what Vegas wants, half-shadow that he is, stealing across balconies and up stairwells. Porsche isn’t here and he would be the first to punch Vegas or urge patience. ‘You’re family,’ he’d say.
But that’s because Porsche doesn’t know yet what Kinn has had a lifetime to learn. Family is the most precious thing and the most dangerous.
For all his softened edges, Kinn will never forget what Vegas has done to him.
For all his easy smiles, Kinn is just as willing to kill Vegas if it gets him what he wants.
“What is happiness?” Vegas asks. “Do you feel it yet?”
“What do you want, Vegas?” Kinn asks.
“I’m worried you’re going to kill yourself when you figure it out,” Vegas says. He exhales softly. “All there is... This life. Once you figure out that this is all there is, will you kill yourself?”
Kinn has known Vegas a long time, knows that they’re both one bad day away from tearing out each others throats, knows that Vegas is a well-rehearsed picture of casual violence and glory in pain. And yet. He knows that this isn’t just a taunt, this isn’t a threat.
“Are you happy?” Kinn asks.
“No,” Vegas says, “but I never expected to be happy. Not a day in my life. Mm. My fifth birthday. My dad hired a clown. That made me happy. But not since then.” He smiles. “I always expected you to be happy once your dad died, and then with Porsche…” He shrugs. “But you don’t seem happy.”
“I need a drink,” Kinn says and steps off the balcony, toward the small bar outside his bedroom, mixing a drink and pausing when Vegas steps up to him. “Do you want one?”
“I’m not supposed to drink,” Vegas says, but takes the glass. “Doctor’s orders.” He gulps it.
Kinn scoffs and mixes himself another.
“No one is happy in this business,” Kinn says. “There’s pleasure, there’s success, but happiness…”
“It’s a choice,” Vegas sing-songs, dangling the crystal tumbler from his fingers as he swans back through the apartment, back toward the balcony.
“I’ve chosen this,” Kinn says. “Whether that makes me happy or not, it means my success, and that of our family.”
“Power isn’t the same thing as happiness.”
Kinn nips at the smooth smokey flavors, the sweet orange that bites through the rest.
“Our fathers lied to us, telling us they’d be happy once we were on top. They made us rivals in their game, it was all a lie to keep us from becoming happy. To keep us as unhappy as they were.”
“I’m taking that from you,” Kinn says, reaching for the glass, but Vegas downs the rest.
“Maybe you’ve made the wrong choices all along and that’s why you’re not happy,” Vegas says, setting the empty tumbler down with a delicate clink.
“You say that like you’re happy,” Kinn points out.
“Now that would be telling,” Vegas says. He leans in to leer at Kinn, tilting his chin up so he can get a look at him. “But I bet I’m happier than you.”
He smiles, wolfish, and disappears out the front door. But like his entrance to the compound, it lacks a trail. When Kinn calls the security desk, no one knows where Vegas went.
“He’s probably living in the vents,” Kinn complains to Porsche on the phone later.
“Let it go,” Porsche says. “I’ll be back in a few days and I’ll make you the happiest man on earth.”
Kinn laughs despite himself because no matter what Vegas says, he is happy now.