Chapter Text
KIM
After four days of running around a drizzly, sleeting Martinaise, a few key things are clear about Lieutenant double-yefreitor Harrier du Bois.
He is incredibly sensitive, tears himself open trying to understand everyone, to grasp their pain, their anger, their trigger points. He makes the most bizarre, even ballsy questions sound like “what’s for dinner.”
And people answer. It’s uncanny. He seems as surprised by his success rate as his subjects.
You don’t need to know the specifics of his history. He is a broken man, a lonely man. You find yourself periodically glancing at the ground behind him, worried he is leaving a trail of blood in his wake — he wears his wounds so freely.
But even besieged by personal chaos, he is obscenely good at his job.
And he’s a good man. Full of equal parts sass and snark and warmth. He is the messiest person you have ever met, and he is impossible not to like.
The man has a tragically weak grasp of subtlety, though. His elastic (but handsome) face does little to hide the thought-war rattling on in his skull. Halfway through the day, he’d dropped any sense of propriety, became blunt and forward. You spared him the eyebrow when he asked about your inclinations, and not wishing to watch him wax on it for the next twenty four hours, graced him with a forthright answer.
“Yes, I am.”
He studied you a moment. You were patient. Waited for the retort, prepared to be stung when it came. After all, you’re not young anymore, your so-called Sunday friends have long since lost touch, and you prefer your shirts sans buttons entirely. You can practically see the remark come to the back of his teeth. But—
“I should have known,” he says.
“Oh?” you say. Your voice clipped. “How’s that?”
“Well, you’re a good listener, for one. I like talking to you, too.” He gave you a grin that made your stomach dissolve. “But let’s be honest - it’s the air of mystery.”
You anticipated - maybe even hoped - that his earlier question might lead to a different conversation. Instead, you’re laying in your bed, single soldier already smoked, listening to his groans upstairs.
Another thing. Harrier du Bois, intuitive investigator, amnesiac drunkard, former speed-demon, and chronic weeper, fucks.
You are not surprised by this. Hell, he’s probably more than halfway decent in the sack. A big, broad, mutton-chopped chap with the confidence to pair snakeskin shoes with yellow trousers (tight enough to see which way he dressed) had no excuse not to be.
Klaasje certainly seems to agree. You can hear her gentle moaning through the walls, and Harry’s, just off time with hers. Less controlled, more animal, strangely vulnerable.
Does he even know how much she’s manipulating him? It gnaws at your guts; you hate to see all that skill stifled in the face of his attraction. He wants her to like him. He wants her to like him and he wants to save her, and you are not entirely convinced yet that she needs saving. She is a fox.
And a person of interest. He is being so unprofessional that you could shake him.
She’s saying something, but it’s muffled; the two of them laugh. Voices entwined as their bodies must be. You can imagine their breath syncing as he pushes into her. Imagine the strain on your her inner thighs under his delightful weight as he presses forward, in, deep.
It figures two such beings would connect.
Above you, the bed creaks, bumping against the wall in a hollow tattoo like a particularly persistent ghost. It’s a turn-on. More than it should be. A visceral reminder of how long it’s been since you’ve let your brain check out and shared some skin. Your cruising days are not entirely over, but the inclination to venture down that road has waned more and more with age. Returning to an empty bed is a relief more often than a disappointment, but it doesn’t warm the sheets. The last overnight guest you had was at least three years ago, and the chances of that changing are slim. There are risks you are willing to take. Harry can’t be one of them.
You sigh, turn into the pillow. His low, rhythmic groans make you wish you hadn’t used the word “pornography” to describe his outlandish suggestions for your precious motor carriage. Who knows what "thought projects" that had borne?
~
He’s pale the next morning, sporting a bite mark on his neck. He makes eye-contact with Titus Hardie, who, like you, has obviously not missed the lipstick smudged on his collar.
You can see the diatribe du Bois is about to lay down in the name of feminism forming in his mind, and something in you snaps. You grab him by the elbow, like he’s some fourteen-year-old delinquent, and bark, “Officer, I cannot begin to impress upon you how little time we have for this conversation. For the love of God, let us please, please get back to our job.”
Harry does not apologize, as he is want to do, and even that makes you mad. But he listens, even as he shakes you off with a petulant glare. You leave.
Every single thing he does today annoys you. His pace has slowed, and while you’d usually relish a break from his constant brisk jog, it makes the whole day drag. Every second watching him revolve on the spot, every unrelated and inane question, every trash can pilfered through to salvage still-dripping tare, every second he spends staring at the muddy ground like a prisoner in the exercise ring just reeks of wasted time.
His gait is a strange, hobbling shuffle. Throw out your back, old chap? Not so hot today, are you? you think sourly. Not a second later, the detective turns, no, whips around, his colorless dishwater eyes focused and sharp on you as cut glass.
Beneath your jacket, all the hair on your arms stands up. Moments like this frighten you. When, despite your better judgement, you swear he can hear your thoughts.
“It’s cold, isn’t it?” he says. “Let’s go get another coffee, get out of the rain. I gotta brainstorm.”
“Fine,” you say, as heat creeps up the back of your neck, prickling as though someone had grabbed you by the scruff and given you a shake.
He pays for your coffee. You don’t thank him and immediately burn your tongue. The detective is staring up at the clouds, running his knuckles over his graying, unshaven chin in thought. “I’ve gotta look at the body again.”
You snort. “You know, officer, eventually we’re going to have to let the boys at processing do their job. Unless you think you’re going to actually find something this time?” You’re being difficult now, but he barely registers your tone. He’s got The Look. Different than what he calls The Expression, but just as striking.
“I don’t know, lieutenant,” he says, tracing a line through the sky, as though following the path of an invisible flock. “Just a hunch.”
Fifteen minutes later, the detective is on his knees, sleeves rolled up his thick forearms, ice-bear towering over him like an angry god. The merc’s putrefying body, a disintegrating proxy of former human, falls from the fridge with a meaty thud. For a hair-raising second, your mind’s eye sees him bursting on impact like a fat July tomato dropping to the sun-scorched pavement, sending a wave of purge fluid and bloody pus and rot spilling over your shoes.
He doesn’t, though, thank God, instead remains stubbornly intact, still and stinking as a bag of slaughter-house leftovers. Harry is on top of him in less than a second, pressing yellow-gloved fingers with a gag-inducing squelch into the dead man’s mouth.
The stench is unimaginable. Your stomach contracts like a vice. Saliva pools in your mouth and under your tongue. You can’t swallow. You dare not, you'll lose it. Bile burns the back of your throat. You grit your teeth so hard your ears ring.
Harry is not paying attention. His watering eyes are wide, crazed, beads of sweat on his forehead the only indicator of his sheer iron will to keep it together. A dazzling contrast to three days ago. Face contorted, he bares his teeth with concentration as he digs behind molars and tongue and the dissolving, liquefying soft palate. “Limbic…system…basal ganglia…I—aha!” He crows. Prying gore-soaked gloved hands out of the corpse’s mouth, he holds up — a bullet. “Jackpot.”
“No way,” you hear yourself say.
“And he didn’t even bite,” Harry says. “Evidence bag, please, my friend.”
~
It’s a long afternoon. The strike makes getting in and out of Martinaise incredibly difficult, worse with the body bagged up and reeking in the trunk of your car. It does nothing to help your mood. A team will disinfect everything the moment you’re on site, but currently it’s on you to tune your thoughts elsewhere to keep your skin from crawling.
When you pulled away from the hostel, you threw a glance back at the detective in the rearview mirror. He stood there, looking alone and lost as a child, shifting back and forth from foot to foot in an eerie mimicry of the hanged man’s sway. The sudden parallel filled you with frozen throated terror, but you were already outbound. You could not turn back.
You made him swear he wouldn’t talk to Titus alone. He’s not stupid, but you don’t trust him to accept the odds. The Hardie boys would wipe the floor with him.
But messy and haggard and barely able to feed and dress himself some days as it is, you’re still creeping toward the conclusion that he might be leagues better than you at this.
Eighteen years on the force. One each in patrol and robbery, two in vice, and boom, fourteen in homicide, anchoring himself as head of the major crimes unit. A staggering two hundred and sixteen closed cases. That kind of record coupled with the title of double-yefreitor (unbelievable) spoke of a man who cared little about rank and appearance, and more about the work itself. The core of it all.
"That’s what I wanted, too," you tell yourself. "That’s why I’m here."
Maybe that’s where you’re wrong. Fifteen years chasing underage drinkers, graffiti artists, pot smokers toking it up behind the school or getting caught shoplifting a pack of Astras - they all felt like endless scratches on a prison wall. A stream of prayers that it would be just one more case, one more year. If not this one then the next one. Okay, the next one. The next one will be the last. Day in, day out with no promise of respite, no end to the term…
Was a sentence like that so trivially given? You weren’t asking for your name written on the door. You didn’t need accolades, despite the fact that you’ve now earned them ten times over (you cling to that truth, you’ve got to. Even if you know what that brand of bitterness can do to a person), but maybe you are where you are not because you still looked like a seventeen year old in skintight jeans at thirty, but because your work was subject to your whims. Your pride. Because you were, and are, shallow, and cold, and selfish, and boring, and unimaginative, and desperate to be valued. All of it blinding you worse than your piss-poor fucking eyesight.
You grip the wheel til your knuckles crack. Resentment fits worse than a pair of tight shoes. That’s what you feel, isn’t it? Resentment. You resent him. You resent du Bois, and for what? Being an effective detective while turning to substance, as so many had, to silence the demons so lovingly bequeathed to those in your line of work?
Men like him are a liability. You can’t remember who drilled that into your head, and it doesn’t matter. It might have even been yourself. It sure sounds like you, sure sounds like a thought from the black box that housed all your worsts - your fear, your rage, your judgements, the shrieking ghost that told you to save yourself, no matter the cost. You hate those thoughts, they make you feel cruel and sick.
But they’re there.
The ones that say you should sanction him for his antics, not just for trying to steal those ceramic boots, or fucking a person of interest. But for being lucky enough to refuse promotion on principle. For not having to deal with people seeing Seolite first, detective (pig) second. Revacholian third, if ever at all.
The words weigh heavy in your lungs like a cancer. You bow your head to the wheel as you coast to a stop at a red light.
That’s enough, Lieutenant.
The jealousy is useless. Du Bois’s life is in tatters. Not even a full mind-wipe was enough to salve his personal darkness. You have seen your share of horror, but you’ve never worked in Central Jamrock.
Who is to say you wouldn’t be in the same state he is now, had your career been the one you’d envisioned? Who’s to say your single daily smoke wouldn’t have become a pack? Or a bottle? Or a needle? Who’s to say you wouldn’t have quit the force ten years ago? Who’s to say you wouldn’t be dead by the hand of some scared kid, or an ice-cold kingpin, or even your own?
Not for the first time, you are quietly grateful Harry doesn’t have his gun.
“Stop it,” you say, out loud. “Stop it. Right now.” The road these thoughts spiral down is an ugly one. Futile and hobbling and unproductive, no matter how justified. You are forty three years old. You are a homicide detective with twenty years of service in the RCM, and you are where you are, with your sanity and control more or less intact. You know better than to wish for more.
With the carriage in the care of sanitization, you head down to the lockers for a hot shower. You’ve got a backup t-shirt and underwear in there, a spare set always kept for the times you utilize the Station gym. The shower you share at the Whirling-in-Rags has been out of the question, and after two days of running in rain and snow and getting entirely too personal with the corpse, you cannot return without a scrub down.
The water pressure is godly, and searing hot. You are relieved for the solitude. You’d like to keep your schedule and be back in Martinaise by midnight, so you can afford to linger here for a bit. It might help you sleep. Your partner had clearly had a wash between last night and this morning, lucky enough to utilize the bathroom of his new bedmate. If it’s still the case tonight, maybe Garte’s had a chance to clean yours…
You know he would love to take Balcony Boy for a spin. The picture is in your head before you can stop it. The detective, tall and perhaps with a few extra buttons undone than usual, striking his lighter on the thigh of his jeans with an entirely too-suave, too practiced flourish. Lighting the tip of a hand-rolled smoke and locking eyes as his target breathed in—
(Like Dom, yellowed canines flashing. Kit, if a lady can't look away while ya light'er up, better believe she's down to clown…" Always growling advice you didn’t need but accepted all the same.)
—and Harry’s eyes, light with the dance of a flame in them…
Cells and pathways light up at once. You are not always in your body, but you are now, and there is interest, and you are alone. It’s as good a method to unwind as any. You have been good. You’ve worked hard.
It doesn’t have to mean anything.
Your hand drifts down to wrap a fist around your prick. Practiced, efficient, almost boring. Your mind drifts. From the noise last night, he’d lasted much longer than you might expect, given his age, his condition. His vices. But beer gut or not, the guy can run for days. He’s got stamina. Power. Strength. He did a perfect clean and jerk on the fly, collars be damned.
It doesn’t mean you’re jealous.
Your hand speeds up. You picture his broad and hairy chest. Flesh and heavy heat and man above you. Beneath you, all yours to grab. Would he have a filthy mouth? He must. His hands on you would feel good. Rough. Greedy. Taking what he wanted, using you. Rubbing beard burn all over your neck. His groans long and self-satisfied as he—
You spill into your fist in seconds, your hiss lost in the spray of water.
~
You pull up to the Whirling-in-Rags just after 11. A sleepy crowd is still shuffling about inside. You lock the Kineema and catch the acrid tang of Astras wafting above you. Smoke curls lazily from the balcony. Light is visible through the broken window. He must be awake.
“Evening, gendarme.” Mr. Martinaise leans against the column by the eatery tables. “Thought you’d skipped town.”
“Work demands.”
He appraises you with the haughty hunter’s gaze. You remember wearing that look, and the impulse to warn and chastise and be him all over again rises in you like a tide. You indulge yourself by allowing him to give you the up-and-down. You do the same, less obvious. His neck is clear of love-bites. His eyeliner still smudged artfully. His shirt undone, but carefully so. Not a hair out of place, except those he chose himself.
Harry has not touched him.
“Daddy-o was here a while ago,” he says, and it takes every ounce of composure to keep your eyebrows from disappearing into your hair.
“Was he, now?”
“Yes.” He’s relishing your attention. “He was mingling.”
“Mingling?” you repeat.
“Mhm.” His head tips slightly toward the Union’s corner. “Don’t worry,” he says, correctly interpreting the immediate flick of your eyes, the squaring of your shoulders, “he made it out in one piece. In fact, I think he made some friends. He had them laughing.”
“They were laughing at him?”
“Didn’t say that.”
“Was he drinking?”
“Why?” The quirk of a manicured brow. “You his handler?”
You don’t need to hear anymore. The Hardies in the corner don’t appear to be nursing any wounds, nor are they puffing and strutting like so many roosters revved up from a fight. A quick glance at a bored and sullen Garte puts you at ease. Still.
“Did you talk to him?”
“Just a hello.” The cloud of smoke he blows in your direction smells of menthol. “He seemed preoccupied.”
“And you?”
“I’m just taking in the sights.” He may as well have thrown his hands up in defeat. “Don’t worry, gendarme. I’ll be sure not to step on any toes.”
You pause at the top of the stairs, gazing out at his outline from the landing. You could just go to bed. But you need that cigarette and the fresh air and an honest-to-god word with the detective. You need to close your day. One of rumination hasn’t done you much good.
He is there, in his shirtsleeves, his blazer folded over the balcony railing, cigarette in one hand and a thick book open to the halfway point in his lap. Lena’s green ape pen lays in the heart, saving his place.
The usual devil-may-care grin plastered to his face like a rubber mask is gone. His gaze is so far away, you might have mistaken him for dead, if it weren’t for the milky cloud of breath rising from his mouth. It’s unpleasantly reminiscent of the old woman you’ve both come to call the Paledriver. A look that says, I’m not here.
On him, it’s even worse. It says, I don’t want to be.
HARRY
ENCYCLOPEDIA: Forty minutes of holystoning your brain and it’s useless. You’ve not a single lyric to a single sea shanty buried in the depths of your subconscious. No maddening odes to your sweetheart, dead of consumption. No lonesome ballad grieving your fallen captain. Not even a common work song. You should have asked Titus Hardie to spit a few bars…
“Detective.”
Ah, the lieutenant, back from the grisly, sterilized depths of the 57th’s processing department. The sight of him loosens the Gordian knot in your stomach just enough to tug it into your throat.
“Lieutenant,” you croak. Deference seems the way to go here. He was thorny and quick to anger this morning.
EMPATHY: Handle with care.
PAIN THRESHOLD: Handle with gloves.
“Thought I wouldn’t see you until tomorrow.”
“Although spending the night was tempting,” he says crisply, “I had no desire to tempt the morning commute, strike or not.”
PAIN THRESHOLD: Anything to be away from you, is what he means.
AUTHORITY: Ask what he’s doing out here.
SUGGESTION: Ask if he’s still mad.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Ask if you still smell like—
“I don’t blame you.” You close your book. The green ape peers good-naturedly over the top of the pages, snug in its little paper trap. “You get our bad boy in the deep freeze?”
“More like the oven, soon.” He nods, turning up his collar, exhaling a cloud that melts in the chilly air. “It was not a tearful goodbye, I can assure you.” The hallway lights from the hostel cast a glow over his skin.
“How are you?”
HALF-LIGHT: Still got your panties in a twist? is what you’d like to say.
COMPOSURE: On the other hand, better not push your luck. At least he’s not calling you officer.
The lieutenant glances down at you, eyes narrowed, as though weighing the value of small talk. You feel like a creature beneath a magnifier, shrinking under his analyzing gaze, waiting for his beam of focus to fry you to a crisp. What must it be like in his head?
CONCEPTUALIZATION: His neural map ways lighting up like the many spinning, interlocking parts of his expensive wristwatch. They guide him effortlessly on electric currents down the pathways to pool only into sensible conclusions.
Nothing like the scrambled discord of thoughts vying for first shot to plant their flag atop your crumbling mass of gray matter. Bouncing their many inputs around your head in a coked-up, twelve-on-twelve, sudden-death match of frontenis.
LOGIC: Finally, I feel seen.
You know he’s trying to gauge how much trouble you’ve gotten up to today. How much he’ll have to compensate for your assumed indiscretions, your mess.
PERCEPTION: No, it’s more than that. He’s looking at you as though he’s noticed something off. Like you’ve lopped off half your sideburns or sprouted horns or started bleeding from the eyes. He knows you well enough after five (really four and a half) solid days together to know when something’s different.
Well, you probably look different because you are different. Because you’ve confirmed you have an ex-wife who doesn’t care enough to hate you. Because you punched the payphone until it rendered your hands bloody and scream-sobbed yourself almost hoarse. Because it’s been a terrible, illuminating day and while you’d love nothing more than to dance with the pink elephants, the fear of pissing him off has outweighed the desire.
“Guess I meant, are you feeling better? Did the drive help?”
Kim leans against the balcony. “Nothing gets past you, does it?” he asks.
EMPATHY: His face barely moves, but it’s clear he’s unnerved at being read like that. Especially because he’s developing a kind of craving for it, the stimulus of being forced into the proximity of someone so different than himself waking things he’s successfully put to bed.
You wave a hand dismissively. “Plenty gets past me. Like the door to Cuno’s shed. If you recall, it took me, what, three tries before I thought to, you know. Push the pallet aside.”
He thinks about smiling.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: The sharp edges of his profile like a noir cutout, the dark and brooding star of a neo-Dick-Mullen novel.
“Got a new book,” you say after a while.
“Yes, I noticed.” He nods. “What is it?”
“It’s all to do with Pale sailors way back in the day. I think Plaisance was keen to get rid of it. The vibes.” You lift it to show him the cover. The lieutenant glances over the rim of his glasses.
“The Terror. Dare I ask?”
CONCEPTUALIZATION: Oh boy—
“It’s about these ships that disappeared early in the Dolorian Era, looking for some kind of inter-isolary shortcut up and over the top of the world. But supposedly the Pale gets all thick and dense up there, like cobwebs turned to ice. So their ships get stuck. And of course, they all go mad and freeze and starve and try to eat each other, all while there’s a giant, eldritch ice bear stalking their every move.”
“Goodness.”
“Yep. The world is its freezer, and it’s turning them one by one into corpse-icles. Sound familiar?” You flip the pages before your marker. They make a hollow buzzing sound, like a drunk bee. “I know zilch about ships. All the terms go right over my head, but you get the idea. Even if you can’t see every board and bolt-hole.”
“Is it any good?”
“Well, one thing’s for sure, it’s not truly a nautical work until someone gets flogged.” You run your thumb over the title, feeling the outline of the raised letters. “Dunno if I like it, yet.”
CONCEPTUALIZATION: A rotten lie, how very dare you! It’s fucking RIVETING.
DRAMA: Whip out that green pen and regale him with the page you just paused on; we’ll even put on our best Ye Olde Sea Dog voice, it’ll make him smile.
“You seem pretty far in.”
“I’m a fast reader, I guess.”
PAIN THRESHOLD: And it was a welcome distraction, one to pull your senses away from your bleeding hands, your shame. The sound of her voice pouring the blackness into your lungs like hot tar. But then again, you deserve this. You deserve this pain, Harry, you ugly, insane, pathetic lump of pigshit—
“You reading anything right now?” you ask, raising your voice a bit to silence the thought.
He shrugs. “It’s been a while since I’ve read for pleasure. I don’t really like fiction.”
CONCEPTUALIZATION: Makes sense, with his meagre artistic inclinations.
INTERFACING: But he knows how to make an engine purr, and that’s artistry in itself.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: You picture his bookshelves at home filled with manuals, coffee table books with all the old-school Coupris models, three or four volumes focused on the airmen of the Revolution. A few biographies of their key players. Can such skills be so easily picked up in so many books, or is he naturally gifted with an interfacer’s hands?
The lieutenant doesn’t give you time to ask, though. “Mr. Martinaise said you were getting rather friendly with the Hardie boys.”
This morning, you might have taken it as a reprimand. He sure wants it to sound like one, but he’s digging. He wants to know what you found out. He spent the better part of the day in a traffic jam with little to no excitement.
AUTHORITY: Make him wait. He’s bossy, but not the boss.
“What can I say? Fell among thieves.”
The lieutenant taps a rhythm on the balcony railing. His expression is like stone, but you can tell he’s anxious; his eyes travel over you. Looking for bruising or a black eye. Trying to suss out if you have all your teeth.
You crush the butt of your smoke by your side. “I went in and asked for Titus. I said I wasn’t leaving til he talked to me. He had me up against the wall in less than five seconds. Whole tough guy routine.”
DRAMA: Yes, my liege, YES. You are BECOME Titus—
“‘Pushin’ your luck, swingin’ that dick around, blah blah, who d’you think you are, you got no goddamn authority, no right, crossed a line, blah blah blah.’ Just rippin’ mad.”
“I can only imagine why.” Any doubt is gone, now; he knows what you were up to last night, and the flatness of his voice does nothing but highlight his obvious disapproval. Your face burns, but you will not be ashamed.
VOLITION: Be calm, Harrier. Don’t bow. Don’t snap. Don’t grovel.
“He let drop that he’d killed people before. I asked, ‘Yeah, were they all dead when you found em’, too?’ And Kim, he went. Brick. Red. I had a feeling he might snap. Just glaze over like a shark and end me, so I said, ‘If your idea of honor is getting locked up in Reunion, fine. Go ahead. Shoot me, take me outside and string me up the way you did the other guy, so then at least it looks like a calling card. But she’s not gonna love you for it, even if you do cover for her.
When I said that, it was just him and me. That moment, one guy to another. He’d just gotten his heart stomped on, and he knew I could see it. Made him madder. He was humiliated. Hell, I don’t blame him. No one wants to face that truth. That you think you matter to someone, and really you don’t at all. That you’re being…played.”
Something is shifting in the air. You don’t like talking about her like this. It sounds so ugly, it sounds sinister, and it’s not.
SUGGESTION: She’s not.
AUTHORITY: You don’t know that.
INLAND EMPIRE: Everyone thinks they’re the good guy. Including you.
“Anyway, it worked. Angus, the big one, cracked like an egg. Titus started hollering at him to shut up, he was panicking, it was all going to hell. I told him, ‘Listen. This case is bigger than all of us. You need to start being real with me, we already know it wasn’t you. We’re here to do the part of the job that you can’t.’ And he threw it back in my face and said fine, he shot the guy himself, and I said, ‘Ok, you wanna tell me where you got a gun that shoots jacketed bullets?’”
You can see the longshoreman in your mind’s eye, the vein pulsing in his temple. You can feel the thick meat of his forearms, the unbending strength in those muscles from years of hauling and lifting and loading. Those eyes as grey as gunmetal were unsure, not used to seeing prey beneath him that wasn’t afraid, someone who’d welcome the oblivion of a chokehold.
“You told him about the bullet?”
“I had to. I could see him teetering, right on that edge. He was either going to start talking or he was gonna fuck me up. The fact that I didn’t care was what was messing with him. I just…refused to be afraid. I just kept telling him, ‘Do what you have to. No one will miss me.’ Heh, I almost told him, ‘hey, if I go missing, my partner’ll be relieved to get a real professional on his side, rather than a monster full of trash, and you’ll really be in trouble.’”
Kim frowns. A single line between his dark brows. “I wouldn’t be relieved, detective.”
EMPATHY: His tone is neutral, but he feels bad. You’ve made him feel bad. You’ve made him realize he’s made you feel bad. But your feelings are not his responsibility, just like his competence isn’t a weapon.
“It’s fine if you would be. I’m not stupid. I hate working with me, too. I’m jealous you got a break.” You fumble for another smoke, but your pack is empty. You crush it in your palm. “It all came out, then. They were all drinking and she came running down and said she was in trouble. They went up and found a dead guy in her bed. Just got to work. Hung him in the shower, slapped all that fancy armor on again. Went outside and strung him up. And then, I imagine, probably sliced all their palms and made some quaint little blood-brothers fuck-me pledge to take the fall as a team if things got hairy with us.”
“And you believe them?”
“Right now, I don’t have a reason not to. They even sent Miss Beaufort away. I think she was relieved, though. Imagine being legal counsel for seven drunk jocks who can’t keep their traps shut? No thanks.”
Kim stares at you for a while. It’s the same gaze he fixed you with after prying the bullet from the dead man’s brainstem. “I can’t understand how you go from taunting the bull to having them just open up to you like that.”
You snort. “It’s ‘cause I’m a bad guy, Kim. No one wants to talk about the shady things they’ve done to someone who isn’t a piece of shit. No one wants to confess the things they’re hiding to someone looking down their nose. Evrart’s got a point. You get more meeting people at eye level. Really meeting them. Not pretending.” Your guts twinge. “Beyond that, I think it sank in that I understood. That I want to understand. I told him I knew what it was like to do something for someone you loved and barely know why. Fuck. I wanted to buy a figurine for my ex-wife the other day and I couldn’t even remember her name.”
Hot tears sting your eyes then, tears you will not shed. You have cried enough today.
Kim looks around, clearly uncomfortable. But then he moves to sit, leaning back against the balcony railing, spine lined up with the support bars. “You think he loves her?”
“Maybe, but I don’t even think it’s really about her. It’s principle. They’re just like us. White rectangles, yellow hard hats — who cares? We’re questioning their authority the same way they’re questioning ours. Hell, if I weren’t RCM and didn’t have you to rein me in, maybe I’d be one of them.”
Kim steeples his fingers, pressing them to his lips. Absorbing your words. It’s a lot of information to take in, but it’s successfully kicked down the firewall he’s so staunchly had up. He seems impressed, even a little stunned at how much you managed to get done.
EMPATHY: He’s conflicted, too.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: He’s thinking, I could never…
“How did you even know to look for the bullet?”
“Because Klaasje’s got a new window in her place. I could see the cut marks along the borders. Bits of shattered glass in the carpet. That, and there were a few blood spatters on the pillow. Barely noticeable, but I was close enough to see.”
You don’t like the silence that follows those words. Scratch that, you hate it, as swollen with uncomfortable meaning as the corpse’s bloated stomach.
“It started as a hunch. But it fits the hypothetical trajectory,” you tell him, trying to ignore the writhing guilt. “We’ll talk to her tomorrow. I’ll show you then.”
Kim heaves a deep sigh, as though surfacing from a dive. You’ve heard it before, in those moments you sense the forlorn pail scraping what reserves are left in his unfathomable well of patience. But this time it doesn’t sound like it’s just temperance he’s channeling, but the relief of releasing a great weight.
INLAND EMPIRE: The weight of blame, of an anger you somehow expected, but whose magnitude you can’t quite justify.
“I’m sorry I doubted you, Harry.”
SUGGESTION: The breath is punched out of your every cell at the sound of your name. It feels profoundly private, personal, meaningful to hear him say it.
“Don’t be. I’m sorry for making your job harder.”
“You’re not. I don’t know if…” There’s a weary brand of worry in his eyes as he says that. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do what you do.”
ESPRIT DE CORPS: He’s wondering how many cases have gone unsolved because of his inability to coax information out of people - his tendency to pivot elsewhere, to look for hard evidence that did not rely on the fallibility of human emotions.
“Likewise, lieutenant. You’re a man of integrity. I have a lot to learn from you. Maybe that’s why they paired us up.”
Kim does give you a very small smile at that. “Oh? Is that it?”
“Well, we both know I’m not here to style you.” You smile back, as best you can. “You still mad at me?”
“For?”
“Ms. Disco Dancer.”
A muscle leaps in his jaw. Yes, it’s touched a nerve in him. His mouth pulls to the side, like he’s biting back his words, tucking them in his cheek like a mint. He takes a moment. “I won’t lie to you, I’m not pleased. I don’t see a scenario where it wasn’t very, very risky.”
“Yeah, well. That’s why sex-pionage can be so powerful, though, isn’t it? Risk, reward, all that crap?”
“Detective, we’re the furthest thing from a pair of Moralintern super-spies,” Kim says, flicking open his lighter and pulling out his smokes. “It was incredibly unprofessional at best, but at worst that was compromising and downright dangerous.”
Calm as his voice is, it is a scolding, and one you deserve. You almost wish he’d shout instead. You doubt he would, but the stillest of waters run terribly deep - you don’t know what might truly set him off.
SUGGESTION: Sucking the dick of the lorry-driver, that would probably put you in his bad books.
“It felt dangerous, that’s no question,” you tell him, running both your hands through your own hair, watching him light up his smoke. The relish with which he inhales is palpable. “When she came out wearing that big, fake, blue cock, I just thought, ‘I’m about to take more damage than Measurehead could ever dream of.’
CONCEPTUALIZATION: I can see the headlines. ‘FUCK ME FOR REAL - DEPRESSED AND HORNY COP DEAD AS A DILDO.’
Kim coughs, so hard it startles you, waving his hand through the cloud of smoke he’s just spit forth in shock. “Excuse me?”
“What?”
“Are you serious?”
“What do you mean, am I serious?”
Kim shakes his head, the purity of his disbelief is tarnished by his watering eyes. “You can’t—you can’t mean…”
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Oh yeah, he gets it, baby.
You can’t help it. The leer that spreads across your face would make the devil blush.
“Oh my god, Harry.”
“Am I in that much trouble?” you ask, with an air of innocence so unconvincing that you wouldn’t be surprised if he slapped you across the face with a fine. But you can’t help it, you’re full of an unrestrained, cackling glee at hearing him so aghast; the light ricochets around your ribcage like a rogue pinball.
He groans. “I knew you were experimental, but I suppose I didn’t expect you to be—”
“A big horny bastard? Ehh.” You shoot the finger guns at him, and saints be damned, Kim covers his face with both gloved hands. “Takes one to know one, Mr. Man.” You throw the crumpled up empty Astras carton at him, which he bats away.
“I’m not surprised you’re a tomcat,” Kim says, tipping his head away from you, a bit of his fringe dancing over his forehead. “But I suppose I didn’t think you were into that sort of thing.”
EMPATHY: Why’s he looking at you like that?
It’s an expression you haven’t seen before. Like he’s sizing you up, but not as though assessing a threat. There’s a…smugness to it. The most subtle of unsubtle appraises.
SUGGESTION: Dude. He thinks it’s kinda hot.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Of course he does. It WAS hot.
The idea that Kim Kitsuragi can find anything, anything in relation to you hot is, well. Safe to say you’re having an experience right now.
VOLITION: Okay, to be clear, he doesn’t think YOU’RE hot.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: But the act itself, oh yeah. He’s familiar with it. He’s, shall we say, a fan, even if his experience involves less long-haired blondes. And less tits.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: You’ve got quite pair yourself, coach. Juicy. Squeezable.
“You know, frankly I didn’t know either. Until it was happening. And let it be known I didn’t go to her with the intention to board the 3:10 to Bangtown—” You ignore his sputter, “I wanted to ask her what happened Sunday night. Since her room was so close to mine. I wanted to know if, you know. If I had company or if I had said something or…you know. And I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of you more than I already had. Hard to believe that might even be possible, but a guy’s gotta try.”
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: It’s not the only reason.
Slimy guilt twists in your gut. You guessed she had speed, and you needed the kick. Just to highlight what you weren’t seeing. To clarify the thoughts rolling in like a storm, to peel through the clouds, open the sky and render yourself a willing conduit.
“And, what, the conversation just turned?” Kim asks.
“Pretty much. What else happens when two lonely people come together? We saw that in each other from the get-go.” What a pair you and her made, two casks of aging secrets wearing their every hardship on their skin.
She hadn’t quite believed your amnesia story at first, hadn’t believed you were as in the dark as you claimed. As she watched you take a hit, she pinned you with a stare, her eyes reddened and rimmed with dark, blue-green halos. Analyzing you. Running her fingertip down your indices, only to find all references, all pages lost to the singularity. She could dig all she wanted, and you would let her. Let her scrape up what little you could salvage into a small mound, to guard like a sad old dog might his master’s grave.
“You’re really starting over, aren’t you, officer?” she’d said. “Ground zero.” You told her you had no choice. And when she leaned back and smiled at you, there was resignation in her gaze, the only way to hide her envy.
You watched Mr. Martinaise saunter out for his evening perusal of the square with a careless and blasé elegance. Seeing him moved something in you, and you told her what you’d been suspecting about yourself. When you looked back, her expression is unchanged. You could see her, handling the information like a deadly poison, careful and almost rapturous, wondering what to do with it. She was used to doing that - cataloguing secrets.
SHIVERS: It’s why she’s here.
But this is not a secret. She cannot hold it over you. She cannot hurt you with it. She won’t.
You told her you weren’t unhappy about it, you weren’t disgusted or afraid or ashamed. You were just wondering if this was trapped in you, in the before-times.
INLAND EMPIRE: A truth stuck and immovable like a bent coin in a slot, holding everything together and at bay, starving you of gifts, until you violently shook it free. If it’s why you are how you are.
“All sorts of things to discover about this new you,” she said, moving closer. “You could find out now. I could show you.”
A semi-recognizable heat bloomed in your chest as she draped her arm around your neck. And the fluke of attraction, of arousal, made you wonder if you were wrong. Or if you could both be wrong. If you could be more than one thing. If understanding was even the point. If any of it even fucking mattered.
She brought your hand around her waist, to the small of her back. She was so skinny. Her hips rocked forward, her body arcing back in a graceful half moon like a lover in a boiadero film.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: You really should watch one of those.
You’re curious. How could she show you? Just by trying to prove you wrong? You were smarter than that.
PERCEPTION: Your eyes drifted to the window overlooking her room. It must be awash with evidence.
“Alright.” Her eyes are hungry in a way you recognize - your bloated, aging body is a crime scene, and she wants to play detective. “Show me.”
Afterward, she lay beside you, the pair of you swapping swigs from a bottle of gin. She asked if you thought they lynched him.
EMPATHY: It’s not a real question. It is a test, and something deeper.
INLAND EMPIRE: A plea.
You rolled onto your side and looked her in the eye. You may never see her again. You may not know her name, and you don’t even know if you’re right about yours. And you let her take you apart completely with no hesitation. Here, you were, and are, merely a vessel. Like her unnamed merc. Like Titus.
SHIVERS: She needs you like that. She needed him like that.
Stripped bare, in that sentence, she could ask you, and tell you, the truth.
Someone, you can’t identify who, it’s hard to distinguish them sometimes - informs you that you’ve been staring into space for the last thirty seconds or so.
Kim’s dark eyes are gleaming with amusement. “Lost in the memory?”
“A little.” You run a hand through your hair. Drama informs you that you can afford to embellish (sire). He’s interested. Just leave out the speed. “I felt bad for a bit, I was paying so much attention to this…rubber-silicon thing. Instead of her. I don’t know what she could get out of it.”
DRAMA: You just barely got away with that one, milord. You know just what she got out of it.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Fuck, there have to be tracks carved in your brain dedicated to giving head. You took that thing down your throat like a CHAMP.
PAIN THRESHOLD: You belong on your knees.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You know, man, I really hate that this is all we agree on.
“There was a moment I was like, no, no, this can’t work. It’s not gonna fit. And even when she proved me wrong and it did, it didn’t feel good, and I was like, ‘ahh, fuck, no way, no way. No way anyone can enjoy this!’ And then it just…felt different. And then it felt really different, and then I just lost all capability of thought and speech. She destroyed me. Came so hard I gave myself a Charly Horse in one of my asscheeks at the end there. I don’t know how I made it to the shower. Completely dick drunk, dead legged.”
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: And high as a kite, babe.
“Little surprised you remember the term ‘dick-drunk.’” He smirks, looks away. “Explains your little slowdown this morning.” His smoke has gone out. “The hours immediately after aren’t conducive to a brisk jog, are they?”
PAIN THRESHOLD: He knows you were sore as fuck.
EMPATHY: Because he’s been sore as fuck.
COMPOSURE: Buddy, I’m telling you, we cannot go there right now.
“And so somehow in the middle of this wild sexual escapade, somehow before she, as you put it, ‘destroyed you,’ you managed to decipher the path of a bullet?”
“Saw the cuts on the window edges when we were laying there afterward.” The blood on the pillow as you pulled her on top of you, her thighs over your ears, as you pressed your tongue inside her, stroking her thighs as you let her grind against your face until she quivered and came and came and came. Your heart sang, it was like church. There were things that came naturally to you. Things like worship.
Kim nods slowly, looking out into space. He might be amused by your antics, but he will never approve. You know this, but you can’t stop trying.
SUGGESTION: Be sorry. Tell him.
“I know it was a bad decision. I’m sorry. I’ll add it to the list.”
“The list?”
“Of my fuckups.” You ruffle your imaginary feathers. “Fuckupitoo, remember?”
Kim shakes his head. “Let it be known, if you start squawking every time you ‘mess up,’ I will fine you myself.”
ESPRIT DE CORPS: Nah, he won’t.
HALF-LIGHT: He might.
“I’m not under any illusions,” you reassure him. “We didn’t even kiss. She was game to bend me over, but I don’t blame her for saying no to anything face-to-face. Not when I’m a walking shag carpet with a set of tits to rival hers and a big ol’ beer belly to match.”
(It’s not entirely true. You don’t think she would have been repulsed. She was wild. She left nail marks in your hips. She spat in your mouth. She had held your face between her hands and looked at you with a savage awe in the sludgy haze of orgasm, like she wanted to taste herself on your mouth. Like she wanted to pour her whole Self into you and touch that source of nothingness and drink it in. The lamp from her ceiling fan cast rays around her head like so many swords of light. Her bangs knife-sharp across her eyes. You could not believe in any way that you looked good like this, red faced and fucked out and on the edge of sanity. You could not let her kiss you. You would not. You would have turned your head. She might have just been into the act more than you; you may be immaterial; flesh might just be flesh. Regardless. You didn’t want to know, or confirm, that truth. It hurt enough already, thanks.)
Kim, however, frowns. “Those things aren’t necessarily unattractive, detective.”
“I’m not in a creative mood, Kim. My reserves of imagination are dry.”
“Color me surprised,” he says. “Everyone is different. We all like different things, different people.”
“Kim, I can guarantee that more people would find you the sexier of the two of us. No, you’d probably rank the top 90th percentile of hotness in Revachol.”
VOLITION: Bud, you are treading on some thin-ass ice, here. Do not. Push. Your luck.
Why not?
ESPRIT DE CORPS: This guy has to put up with you for the next several days. You don’t need to be telling him how hot he is when he’s in the middle of a case. When he has to look down the barrel of working with you for the foreseeable future. You’d be compromising his methodology, his focus.
“I don’t even want to point out all the reasons you would be wrong, there,” Kim says dryly.
SUGGESTION: The hell does that mean? He’s fucking dreamy. He’s got nice skin and those high cheekbones. And the shape of his dark eyes and his thick Revacholian accent and his sleek, gelled back (slightly receding) hair. And he’s cool. And he smells good.
COMPOSURE: Close your mouth, dipshit, you’re gaping.
“Why do you say that?” you ask, surreptitiously wiping your mouth with your sleeve, checking for drool.
SUGGESTION: I think we’re finally coming to something here. I think you—
EMPATHY: Shh, Kim’s talking.
Kim’s expression holds a tired patience, the sort that might come with trying to teach a five year old fractions. “Why do you think, detective?”
SUGGESTION: Wait. What?
It takes a moment.
LOGIC: Because he’s—
HALF-LIGHT: GIVE ME THEIR FUCKING NAMES, I’LL—
You very much want to find the lorry-driver right now.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: And put a steel-toed boot in his ass.
“Regardless,” Kim continues, either not seeing or ignoring the white hot rage dousing your brain like acid, “folks who would enjoy your company are likely not the same people who might like mine. Well…” He breaks off, shaking his head. “Anyway. I would encourage you not to be so hard on yourself. You might not look like your personal ideal, but it doesn’t indicate unattractiveness. I had a particular friend who looked a bit like you. People practically threw themselves at him.”
You narrow your eyes. “When you say, ‘Looked like me…’?”
“Khm. He had his own sense of style. Never had any trouble growing a beard. Certainly tall, and strong. Very manly.” He pauses. “Soft and round in the middle,” he says lightly. “But like I said, it wasn’t unattractive in the least. Quite the opposite.”
INLAND EMPIRE. A softness kisses the notes of his speech. A real, youthful wistfulness. There’s something there.
“Particular friend, hm?” Kim nods, lighting up again.
RHETORIC: What a strange moniker. A—
HALF-LIGHT: Careful, boss.
SUGGESTION: No, no. Go ahead.
“Like a boyfriend?”
Kim is very still. He inhales, deep. You shiver - you can practically feel the smoke burning away his hesitation. “Yes. One of my boyfriends.”
There’s something about hearing him say the word that makes the whole thing very real in your mind all of a sudden. Perhaps it is his mission to appear so utterly professional that the regular world might perceive him as icy, sexless, unromantic, intimidating. The picture of a stoic.
But. Boyfriends. Kim has had boyfriends. Plural. He has been someone’s - a man’s - arm candy. Someone’s bedfellow. Someone he saw naked and woke up to and made coffee with and probably said the words, “I love you.”
SUGGESTION: Has he had many? Several?
LOGIC: Is there a difference?
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Why are you waxing philosophical about his bodycount? Are you calling him a —
You stop any sort of speculation comparing your level of promiscuity. You’ve been awake for 72 hours and have managed to remember your ex-wife’s number, had another meltdown, gotten pegged by an Oranjeese disco dancer, and made time to both have and (semi) solve a sexuality crisis.
At most, Kim’s just indicated that he’s dated at least two men over the course of his life.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: If anyone’s a tart, it’s you. Spread the luuuuv, my man.
You snort. Kim’s jaw tightens.
EMPATHY: He thinks you’re laughing at him.
“I’m not laughing at you.” His face remains unchanged. It’s not good. “I’m just laughing at…I don’t know. Myself.” You tap your head against the wall. “What did you call me? A tomcat?”
“I daresay it was the politest term I could conjure at the time.”
ESPRIT DE CORPS: He’s regretting it.
“You probably could have called me a—”
“Detective. Please. Let’s change the subject.”
RHETORIC: How about we pivot, instead?
“Did you really date someone who looked like me? Or are you just saying that?”
There’s that eyebrow. Wouldn’t you like to know. Wait—
“Was it me?!”
He closes his eyes with a face that says, Give me strength.
“Oh, Kim, oh lieutenant, was it—”
“No, detective, it was not you.” And it is so clear the subject is closed that everyone in your head shoves back an arm’s length from the table, leaving you governor of your own devices.
“That was a dumb question. Sorry. I’m sure he looked better than me. I’m sure he looked as good as you.”
“Look, it’s—” Kim rubs his forehead. “Nevermind. It’s not really about what he looked like.”
“Why did you like him?”
He mulls it over. “He was very kind. Very fun. We had chemistry. He was different than me. He made me want to be better.” He shrugs. “He thought I was hot.”
“You mean he saw you were hot.”
Kim waves a dismissive hand, but you are not fooled. Empathy is watching him preen. He loves the praise. He needs it.
“Where is he now?"
“He passed away.”
A small explosion goes off in your head at that. Four thoughts immediately and with painful simultaneity screech to life, a cacophonous chorus of Wait, What? / Oh my god, oh my god this is not happening/ YOU HAVE WALKED INTO DEAD BOYFRIEND TERRITORY/ Oho, man, let’s pry.
Something in you breaks. You fail whatever passive test inside you keeps your face from successfully hiding the shock. Kim quickly looks away.
“Shit.” Is all you can say. Somehow, you can’t even scrabble for the words I’m sorry. They feel dull and hollow in your mouth. Useless and paltry as wet cardboard. You swallow, breathe. Say them anyway.
“It’s fine. You didn’t know,” he says. He stares down at the toes of his boots, legs stretched out in front of him.
“Are you, like…ok?”
Kim frowns, confused. Then. “Yes, detective. I’m okay.” And he is, strictly speaking, composure and authority intact. But—
INLAND EMPIRE: Some small, starved thing in him is turning toward the sun.
—and suddenly you know with certainty that he hasn’t spoken about this with anyone — ever. “I mean…it hurts, sometimes. I miss him. But it was a very long time ago. Half a life. I was a young man.”
“You’re still a young man,” you tell him.
“Oh shush.”
Everyone is fighting in your head - Who are you kidding? You think he doesn’t think about his dead boyfriend once a week? Once a day? / You don’t know. You wouldn’t know. / You’re so selfish that you erased her. Blacked her out and now you’ve held the page up to the light and seen her outline again. Keep fucking hitting yourself, asshole.
Kim, bless him, can see you spiraling. “And you? Have you decided you’re an old man?”
“I don’t know. I have a feeling I won’t like it regardless.”
Kim tips his head and looks at you. Not for the first time, you acknowledge he could have just gone straight to bed. His evening ritual complete. But he’s out here with you.
“Well. Everyone’s got a birthday. Yours has to be someday.”
“When’s yours?”
“November.”
“When in November?”
“I say the 19th.”
“You say?”
“I don’t know for sure.”
“Well. Glad to be in company, then.” You lean your chin on your hand, look at him with wide eyes. “What if that’s my birthday, too?!”
He scoffs, but he is amused. “Hm. Yes. It would be something.”
A silence falls between you. “I’m sorry if I made you talk about your—
RHETORIC: Don’t you DARE say “dead boyfriend.”
“—lover. Partner. If you didn’t want to.”
“Don’t. It was a long time ago, and you didn’t know. I only brought him up because I wanted to put you at ease. More people than just me found him gorgeous; I’m sure the same can be said for you.”
There’s a muffled wwwwwwwuUFF! from below -
REACTION SPEED: Someone poured lighter fluid on the trash can fire.
HALF-LIGHT: YOU ARE ON FIRE.
PERCEPTION: No, you’re not.
VOLITION: You are very much not.
But you do feel very warm. The light from the fire doubles in his lenses as he glances over the balcony.
PERCEPTION: Making sure his pride and joy doesn’t catch a spark.
“Gorgeous, you called him?”
At ease with the carriage’s safety, Kim shrugs and sits back, draping an arm lazily over a knee. “I like big boys.”
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: B i g. B o y z. It’s like a mouthful of warm honey with his accent.
“What did he look like? I want more details.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. What color were his eyes?”
“Oh. I can’t remember. I don’t even know if I ever really saw.”
“Even when you were fucking?”
“Especially when we were fucking.” He adjusts his glasses.
VISUAL CALCULUS: Oh yeah. He needs those.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Kim must fuck like a demon. It’s a truth of the universe.
COMPOSURE: Oh god.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Holy shit.
PERCEPTION: Yeah, we know.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Holy shit, Kim’s a babe.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Yeah, we know.
He interprets your ferocious lip-biting as disbelief. He whips off his glasses and hands them over to you. “Take a look.”
EMPATHY: Oh, whoa. He just—
COMPOSURE: *weakly* Buddy—
VOLITION: DON’T make it a big deal.
You put them on. They’re still warm from his skin.
VISUAL CALCULUS: Cripes, he wasn’t kidding.
“Tits on a stick, you could travel through time with these.”
“I know. Currently you are a big smudge on the window.”
“My mirror’d say the same.” You stare down at the book in your lap. It’s almost indecipherable. “So you can barely see the hand in front of your face?”
“Correct. My life as a palm reader was very short-lived.” You are relieved at the humor in his voice. You hand them back over. Your ocular muscles twinge at the adjustment.
He puts them back on as his watch chimes the hour. “It’s late, detective.”
ESPRIT DE CORPS: “Detective.” Back to business, now.
“I won’t sleep.”
“I won’t either, but we should still try.” He stands up in one without using his hands, brushing grey dirt off his pants. He shivers, turns up his collar against the cold before holding out a hand to you. “You did good work today. I am humbled.”
You have never had a conversation with him this long. It’s better than being offered the first hit. Better than the high that follows. You never want him to stop talking. You want to feel the warmth of his pride.
SUGGESTION: Remember this feeling. Remember.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Bottle that brew, do a line of it every day.
You take his gloved hand and let him help you to your feet. When he meets your eyes, the morning’s iciness has melted from his face. For a moment, Dora’s voice doesn’t exist, nor does Klaasje’s body pressed up against yours, a miserable emptiness in your chest mirroring that which had to ache in hers too — all of it is gone.
He holds the door for you. You peer down over the hostel’s railing into the cafeteria below. There’s still chatter, the Whirling’s main room a never-ending, always-shifting home for the late night lonely souls.
You glance at Kim, who’s pulling out his key.
EMPATHY: Are you as lost as the rest of us? Are you lonely too?
INLAND EMPIRE: He has lived so long with so many doors inside him shut, so many windows shuttered, mirrors covered. Of course he is.
He hums to Garte’s ever-looping tune as the door to the balcony hisses shut behind him. Downstairs, the blond-wigged man from the imaginary precinct sees you looking down.
Goddammit, it’s such a stupid disguise. It’s insulting that you can’t remember the face beneath it. The other officer averts her gaze.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: The tragedy of it escapes none of you. It hurts to exist like this.
Kim’s key clicks in his lock.
SUGGESTION: No, please! Not yet.
“Kim?” you say. The lieutenant literally has one foot in the door, but he stops.
“Yes?”
DRAMA: Sire…It’s a perfect night…
Your head is buzzing. You know this feeling. Like finding a word on the tip of your tongue, like sticking the landing. For a moment, there is only Kim’s easy smile, the echo of his warm hand, and the solar fire burning in your lungs. The enormity of it inside you renders everyone silent. Breaking through the fog of uncertainty, it is the realization you are—
SUGGESTION: Smitten.
KIM
There are greater sins on your ledger than indulging Harry du Bois, you tell yourself as you follow him downstairs. You can’t help it. Talking to him softens your practiced patterns of resistance. If it damns you to hell, so be it; doubtless you’re already on your way.
It’s true he’d reminded you of Léon. But only briefly, his memory a mere means to ballpark Harry’s height as he’d staggered downstairs and across the cafeteria floor.
Body type aside, most of the similarities had stopped there. The handful of years between you and Léon (combined with his size) had gilded him with maturity and experience. He’d seemed so much older, but you were twenty. Who didn’t seem old? He was far younger than Harry is now, big all over with an ego to match. And a very fast motorcycle.
He was not your first love, nor your last, nor your best. After his accident, the world had rolled right the fuck on and watched you struggle against turning into a Kim who made a living from jumping to conclusions, obsessing over worst case scenarios, pissing away your sleepless hours imagining the many ways your every joy could, and would, be taken away.
The black box swallowed so many ugly thoughts, it almost wouldn’t close. You stooped to telling yourself all sorts of things. That you didn’t know him like you thought. You’d only just started to get to know each other. You hadn’t even met his friends yet. How much could you know someone after only six months?
It’s crazy that Harry sees things in you after less than a week that Léon couldn’t dig up after half a year in bed together. He sees you clearer than anyone, even Eyes, who had tried, really tried, but grown tired. Harry may be walking, talking worst-case-scenario, but he lights up your dark corners like he’s plugged you into the sun, like he’s wandered into the Library of Kim and decided it’s his duty to read every book.
Your feelings toward him are like affection, but tinted by your status as brothers in arms. Even if you are from different precincts, even if you never see each other again after this week, you must believe he would die for you should the tides turn. You would for him, it’s not a question. It’s just not solely on principle anymore.
A cascade of personal reasons temper what any other officer would consider automatic trust. But for now, the warm feeling in your chest allows you faith in the affirmative. You pray you’re not put to the test.
Harry zeros in on Garte, the pilfered silk robe fluttering over his arm as he launches himself at the bar. Karaoke is happening. He will hear no arguments. Garte’s new stuffed grouse glares with beady eyes at his unsuspecting audience.
“Out of the question,” Garte grunts.
“Even after I brought you a new bird?”
“I appreciate the gesture, but it’s not happening. You can’t have a heart attack in front of all my patrons. Not after your stunt this afternoon.”
“Stunt?”
Garte addresses your look of suspicion. “He chugged an entire bottle of hot sauce on order of one of the Hardie Boys.”
Harry glares, hands on his hips. “It wasn’t an order. I don’t take orders. Except from him.” He jabs a thumb over his shoulder at you.
“You’ve never heard me give you an order,” you say, and if it comes out as a purr, well, what’s to be done? “Not a real one.”
“I’ll be ready. I’ve got it on good authority that I belong on my knees,” Harry says, shoeshine smooth. “It was a dare, Garte, with my honor on the line. I was counting on going through at least another half bottle. Be elated I didn’t.”
“What sort of dare?” you ask.
“After, you know, our chat, Titus tried to buy me a drink. Told him I had to decline, so his buddy Big, Blond, and Macho told me I had to take a shot of the hot sauce for every inch of my dick instead.”
“Ye gods, the heartburn.”
“They positively cheered,” Garte mutters darkly. “And now I’m out a full bottle of Captain Sunspot.”
Harry throws up his hands. “It was a moment of brotherhood! I couldn’t disrupt the mood,” he insists. “The Captain served his sacrificial purpose.”
“Río de Fuego is better on eggs anyway,” you add.
“See? Invaluable hostel guest feedback.” Harry switches tactics, wheedling. “Come on, Garte. Why do you even have that thing set up if you’re not going to use it? It’s just standing there and taunting me.”
Over Harry’s shoulder, you give Garte a look — Please just do as he says. You know he’s not above it but you’d rather Harry not resort to begging. Not in front of other people.
Garte finally breaks. Harry, delighted, hands the not-a-bartender his tape, shucks his dress shirt and swoops the silk robe around his shoulders, knotting it at the waist. When he whips out the bow tie, you turn away, grinning and meandering further from the stage so you can watch.
His unnamed fellows from Precinct 41 are watching, too. Whether it’s horror or hilarity passing between them is hard to tell.
You glance back at the Union’s corner. All of them sit at attention. Their vigil unbroken. Titus Hardie’s broad, smirking face turns like a coin to face Harry as he climbs on stage.
Gird your loins, you think. You won’t laugh, no matter what he sounds like. Morning feels like years ago. The evil, angry thoughts of spite you nursed have quieted, burnt out, bewitched to a long sleep.
He looks very silly up there in that robe, silly and just a little sexy, for all he doesn’t give a shit. It’s a powerful force, his blithe, blinding courage. His complete presence. It’s won him friends today, won him leads. Won the hearts of the hardest men in the district and Mistress Mystery herself. He has won this moment.
The music creaks to life on the ancient system. It’s an old song, dated as hell, but thankfully free of the pulse of disco. Harry looks strangely at home up there. Garte, for all his grumbling, dims the cafeteria lights, and a half-hearted hush falls over the hostel lobby. You see the detective begin to take in his surroundings, then think better of it. He probably can’t see you, standing at parade’s rest in the middle of it all, determined to be his pillar of support.
But then Harry opens his mouth, and this sound comes out. It pulls the kill switch on your every thought. It glues your feet to the ground. It draws your every cell toward him like a dousing rod to water.
You would have never guessed Harry housed such a voice. You should have. It’s the time blunted weariness lying in Martinaise’s every broken heart. It’s chilled fingertips and hunger and skin stained with mazut and coal dust and the stale sea air.
“I have been so glad here. Looking forward to the past here.”
The lights are bright. They sting your eyes. His are closed.
“But now you are all alone. None of this matters now, none of this matters at all.”
The tape clicks, ends. Harry steps back from the mic, basks in the loudest claps that come from the back corner. Titus Hardie, applauding with his massive shovel hands, whistles. “Crazy Captain Sunspot!”
“It’s pronounced Tequila Sunset,” Harry growls into the mic. He points at you. “I’d like to dedicate this song to my partner, Kim Kitsuragi.”
You clear your throat and look away. Holding your smile on your face is almost too much to bear as Harry hops down from the stage. Behind him, Garte yanks the cord out of the outlet. “Your turn,” Harry chirps.
“In your dreams, detective.”
“Oh lieutenant, you don’t want a peek into my dreams,” he says, with a wink that makes you want to thread your fingers through his beard and give it a tug. Naughty boy.
Walking backward toward the stairs with you, Harry raises a hand in farewell to the Hardies. “Until tomorrow, lads!” Heat rolls off him, even after only a few minutes onstage, his big chest gleaming with sweat.
“We’ll find you a tape,” he says, as you reach the top of the steps. “It’s my life’s mission, now.” He mimes whipping out a notebook, pretending to scribble. “Hear Kim sing.”
“Ha ha.” Your voice is a lilt. “Unattainable goals are the best.”
“You’re no fun,”he grumbles, and your breath catches as he passes barely inches behind you to reach his room.
“Unrepentant spoilsport, I told you.” You cast him a sideways glance. His door unlocks. How about that. He looks back at you.
“Made the rent today.”
“That’s good. I’m out of things to pawn.”
“Guess we’ll have to share another night,” he sighs. “Night, Kim.”
You roll your eyes, but you will replay those words over and over, like this case’s ever ticking clock. “Goodnight, detective.”