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Kim smokes like he’s starring in an old school commercial for it, bringing the cigarette up to his lips and blowing a perfect stream of it into the night air. It’s a little magical, it makes you want one.
(Or maybe you want to be the cigarette?)
Kim tells you that you smell nice after that shower, that he’s surprised it even works after you absolutely trashed it like a maniac rock-star while drunk off your ass.
(He doesn’t say it like that, he phrases it more eloquently.)
(Does he do that not to hurt your feelings or does he naturally talk like that?)
(Some people are naturally considerate of others, dick.)
A thousand Harries say and scream and sob; YOU’RE CRAMPING MY STYLE MAN!
A thousand eyes stare down at him in disappointment.
(And hurt. You always forget the hurt.)
(It doesn’t gel with his persecution complex.)
You think Kim might be lying when he says you smell nice, or that he just has a much higher tolerance for it. He didn’t puke when you investigated that corpse. Even when he had to go poking around in his puss and blood-filled mouth and move around his bloated tongue.
Kim smells like a hint of something and a whiff of something else.
Kim is mysterious in all things.
He’s a slight cologne and sweat and motor oil and one cigarette a day.
Control with an undercurrent of glamour.
An accent that wraps itself around you like a vice grip.
Half an eye, the other obscured by the sun hitting his glasses’ lens.
He is not Dolores Dei’s apricot smoke and flower crown.
He is not her melodious sadness.
He is not her.
(Neither was she.)
“You were the one who wanted me to quit my fucking gym teacher job and join the RCM to begin with!”
“I know but-”
“YOU did, not ME!”
“CHRIST! FUCK! HARRY! Yes, yes I KNOW I suggested it but-”
“SUGGESTED IT? Oh, now you SUGGESTED it!?”
“If I had known what would happen I wouldn’t have-”
“What happened D_____? Huh? What the fuck happened?”
“I-”
“TELL ME.”
“YOU GET SO FUCKING SAD HARRY!
YOU GET SO SAD IT CHURNS AND MIXES WITH EVERYTHING ELSE YOU ARE
IT’S CEMENTED IN YOU.
ALL YOUR OTHER THINGS ARE GUNKED WITH IT THIS- THIS- THIS-
WORLD-ENDING SADNESS!”
“WELL, MAYBE I WOULDN’T BE SO FUCKING SAD IF YOU SUPPORTED ME! HUH? EVER THINK ABOUT THAT?”
No response.
“HUH!?”
No response.
“THAT’S RIGHT, LEAVE!”
A light sobbing.
“Fucking...fine. Fine.”
From her or you?
You have a dream that you’re the body in the tree and Kim is examining you.
It’s so tender - so gentle - so loving that you weep over the image.
He’s saying his findings out loud, moving down the list item by item.
You know who the murderer is.
A baby begins to wail, the noise becoming louder and louder until you wake up with snot and tears streaming down your face, getting caught in your sideburns.
(Christ I thought only chicks got haunted by this kinda thing, you a chick Harry?)
Kim has beautiful eyes. They’re piercing in a way you love.
Dolores Dei’s eyes are always closed in mourning or looking away from you.
Kim looks right at you, right down to your core and for some reason he doesn’t hesitate or balk when he sees it. You know it’s a mess. He knows it too and yet…
You feel like you could tell Kim that you were jealous over a corpse because of how he touched it and he would only nod and think and maybe say something like “Uh huh.” or “Interesting.” or some smart-guy fact about corpses or dreams that you don’t have access to.
Kim is poetry in motion, he’s beautiful in everything he does.
When he smiles for those fleeting few seconds, when you’re lucky enough to see it…
When it’s because of YOU?
(Christ I thought only chicks got haunted by this kinda thing, you a chick Harry?)
“Is there a thing like the homosexual underground but like...for people who aren’t one hundred for men?”
Kim gives you a look you can’t decipher.
“I mean like...you know.” You move your hand in a seesaw motion.
“I think the term you’re reaching for is bisexual. Bisexuality.”
“So it’s a thing?”
“Yes, detective.” Kim says, his eyes obscured by the steam wafting off the mug of the very strong coffee he’s sipping from. “It’s very much a thing.”
You learn that Kim went fishing when he was a child.
You learn that Kim can dance.
You learn that Kim loves driving a touch too fast provided it puts no one in danger.
(Except himself, just a little bit, just enough to make his heart race)
All those facts get stored in a place you hope you never lose in the midst of a drunken tirade. You hope it so much that you write them all down in the notepad you’re supposed to be using for detective work and clues and such. It’s something you’ll always need to find if it gets lost. The book and the facts.
You have a dream that you and Kim are walking through the cold and familiar streets of Revachol. It’s snowing and raining at the same time, pelting the two of you with wet sludge that melts as soon as it hits the pavement, melts as soon as its formed.
Dolores Dei looms in the background, blending in amongst the buildings.
A woman with a face that blurs and slips away from you like watercolor paint waits in front of a video rental store, she and the building reappearing every few blocks.
Kim is explaining how aircrafts stay in the sky without falling down.
When you wake up you think about how nice it’d be to kiss him.
And that you should have given him your jacket.
Kim takes life very seriously because he handles and sees and knows serious things like death and decay and situations that could lead to death or decay or alerting people to impending or current death and decay.
When he’s not dealing with either he is noticeably lighter, he carries himself with less severity.
(His authority is still off the charts though, he always has that eyebrow, that look that knocks you off your damn feet.)
He’s a man who’s trusted and who has earned that trust.
YOU’RE SO FUCKING WORTHLESS HARRY
YOUR SADNESS IS EVERYTHING ELSE YOU ARE
IT’S CEMENTED IN YOU.
“Please don’t leave me D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D_________”
Do you even remember what she looks like?
Or have you forgotten?
In the fucking six years since you’ve seen her?
“Jean I think I’m bisexual.”
“Fucking congrats.”
“I’m serious!”
“Me too. I’m also super fucking busy and out of 40,000 real and buried in mountains of fucking paperwork because SOMEONE-”
“Kim I think I’m bisexual.”
“Mm.”
“I think butts are hot no matter what gender they are.”
“Mm.”
“Do you agree?”
“I don’t. I’m homosexual.”
“Oh fuck, right!”
“I also think we should be focusing on figuring out where this trail of blood leads.”
You have the same walking-with-Kim dream and this time you stop to clumsily remove your jacket and drape it over his shoulders.
He takes it with only a quick thank you and shoves his gloved hands deep into the pockets. You’re so much bigger than him when it comes to jackets, and maybe hands.
You wake up thinking that you’d really really like to kiss Kim.
And maybe hold his hand.
And maybe even sing to him if the mood strikes you.
You have the sinking feeling that you did something really terrible to D______.
That deifying her in dreams isn’t healthy.
That dreaming about her so many years after isn’t healthy either.
Jean says that the older you are the longer it takes.
Judit says that the harder you loved someone the more you grieve their loss.
Kim only says “Everyone reacts differently.”
You have a horrible feeling that you wrapped D____ up in bandages and encased her screaming body in a Dolores Dei shaped tomb before she was even out the door.
That even after she managed to crawl away you only mourned the cracked sarcophagus.
(What’s her NAME Harry?)
“Kim, I think I did a lot of shitty things in the past. Like, worse than trash that one room and get blackout drunk and shoot that corpse in the tree.”
Kim is sitting in your newly, professionally cleaned apartment.
(You’re so glad you have money, you have a PAYCHECK!)
You are lying on the bed, facing his direction but not looking at him. There’s a crack on the wall and it’s reminding you of you.
(What was the impact? What was the fist or bottle that spread outwards in your life Harry? What led you to the sad-sack boozehound you’ve become?)
(Don’t say Her, you know it wasn’t Her. Not the impact, not the ROOT.)
(She’s just one of those lines that branch off into other lines.)
(And what a fine line she was. Do you remember? Huh? Tracing those curves…)
“I think I hurt people. Really really hurt them.” Your eyes begin to burn.
(Don’t cry in front of Kim, he’s so cool!)
(Don’t cry at all, ever, you fucking wimp!)
(Crying is great, I’m 100% for crying!)
“I think I can’t take it back or apologize or- I don’t- fuck. Sorry. I think...I might be a bad person and I think I wanted to forget that but forgetting doesn’t...it doesn’t make it go away. It just makes me have to discover it again.”
(Shitkidshitkidshitkidshitkidshitkidshitkid)
(Dolores Dei's weeping, the baby’s weeping, someone else’s weeping, everyone’s-)
(YOU’RE CRAMPING MY STYLE!)
Kim opens a window and looks out. The sounds of the city drift up and fill the room.
Jamrock smells like piss and cheap coins.
Your apartment smelled infinitely worse but now it smells like some flowery chemical perfume that’s making you nervous for some reason.
(Ask Kim to stay and fill it with his own scent.)
(Absolutely DON’T ask that it’s the creepiest thing I’ve ever fucking heard.)
“You can’t change the past no matter how much you’d like to. People are angry with you, it’s not your place to tell them not to be. They have a right to be, they have a reason to be.” He turns and looks at you and you meet his eyes.
They’re dazzling.
“You just have to move forward, apologize and work on being someone they can accept it from.”
Your mouth falls open as you shift on the bed, you’re sitting up now, never breaking eye contact with Kim.
“I didn’t know you before but the man I know now isn’t a bad person. He’s a very good detective, very earnest. Cries a lot.”
You’re crying right now.
“Cares a lot.” He turns and looks back out the window, tracking something or someone moving across his field of view. “And he’s become someone I care for quite a bit.”
“You care about me?”
“...I would not have done half the things I’ve done for you if I didn’t.”
“I thought it was a professional obligation!”
“Professional obligation doesn’t encompass-”
Holding Kim’s hand is just as nice as you thought it might be.
He’s obviously startled by the gesture but quickly relaxes, moving his hand-
(To let go!?)
(Of course to let go, are you braindead?)
(Probably yes.)
-to get a better grip on yours.
“I care about you too Kim.”
“Yes, well.”
(That’s obvious.)
(You’re not good at lying to him.)
After Kim leaves you sort through a box of keepsakes you kept in a secret floorboard under your bed that the cleaning lady found and left for you.
Most of the trinkets don’t do anything for you, whatever value they had is lost.
Then you find the polaroid, buried under everything and half-torn. Like the person lost their nerve to sever the picture halfway through.
There’s a brown-haired woman staring out at you, a playful smile on her lips.
She’s young and in the arms of a man that looks like you.
You didn’t know you could look like that though - so...shiny. New.
(Before you started drinking.)
(Before the bad times started rolling in.)
(Before you became a rockstar superhero cowboy man!)
On the back a man has written ‘I’ll love you forever Dora.'
Dora.
Your hands shake as you put the photo back in the box.
You cry again.
You take it out and shove it in a drawer, somewhere you can feel it being there.
You don’t love her.
Not anymore.
She doesn’t love you either.
It’s painful but a good pain- like ripping off a bandaid and finally assessing the damage underneath.
It’s bloody and infected after being left to fester for so long but you think it’s good, it’s a first step after six years.
You can heal from this.
Maybe one day you can apologize to her and she’ll be able to accept it because you’ll both know it’s the last time you’ll talk to her and you’ll both be happier for it.
You will heal from this.
“I’ll come back tomorrow and we can paint some of the walls.” Kim says as he leaves, pulling on the helmet to his motorcycle that he of course owns because he’s the coolest man alive.
“You don’t think the beer stains liven the place up?”
“I think you’d feel better without them ‘livening the place up.’”
“Are you suggesting we kill this place?”
“Yes.” He says, revving up his bike. “Kill it dead.”
Then he’s off. “Fuck the world!” You call after him and you think he raises his fist in agreement with the message.
Kim’s the best.
You dream that you and Dora are sitting on a bench and talking about a movie. She liked the practical effects but thought the story was lackluster and you’re repeating catchy one-liners that stuck with you. It’s pleasant, familiar.
Kim taps you on the shoulder. “Come on, it’s time to go.” He says, beginning to walk away. He’s looking at the trees and his hands are in his pockets. He looks happy.
Ah, he's looking at the apple pickers on their mechanical ladder-things, not the trees.
You look to Dora and she smiles, nodding. “Go. This has been fun but I’ve really gotta catch my train.”
You nod and wish her a safe trip, turning and running to catch up with Kim.
You’re grinning as the wind tussles your hair, waving and calling for him to wait for you.
He does, holding out a hand for you to take.
You do.
You wake up warm.