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You get the call across via radio, a phenomenon that only you can facilitate (and possibly the Captain), given that you are probably the only one willing to tie your personal radio equipment into station frequencies. It’s almost 9, Saturday night, and the operator who patches Jean through from his MC sounds more than a little confused, but does their job.
Jean and Harry are on their way back from a stakeout. You weren’t overly enthused about it, and neither was Jean nor Harry, but the two of them begrudgingly tolerated each other for almost 4 days of surveillance and reports. Towards the end of the previous day, Harry’s report had come across a little odd, tinged with delirium, and you’d glanced at Officer Pidieu as you closed the call—he merely shrugged, but you saw it, briefly: Maybe he’s drinking again.
And you’d thought about it for another day straight in frustration and fear.
Of the two of them, Jean’s is not the voice you wanted to hear tonight.
“Kitsuragi— d’you copy? I’ve got a request from Du Bois,”
“10-4, go ahead officer,” Du Bois, not ‘shitkid’ or ‘fuckface’ or whatever else you’d heard him use whenever his heckles were up. Maybe you’ve been worrying over nothing.
There’s static, and then some background kerfuffle: “Vic, I can fuckin’…I can ask myself!—kzzt—Harry will you sit down, for fuck’s—kzzt!”
…Maybe not.
“Lieutenant Vicquemare, 10-1…or at least try again when it’s not 10-10,”
“Sorry, lieutenant—fuck—look, Harry’s not been sleeping, and now he’s a fuckin’ fruit loop—will you let go!—Just, he wants to stop by your place, as it’s closer to us than his place—,”
Distorted, from the background: “And then Jean doesn’t have to double back to his flat!”
Jean sighs into the receiver. “Yes, and then I wouldn’t need to double back. He needs to get some rest so his brain will fuckin’ settle, and I guess he thinks you’re the best person to bother whilst attempting it—,”
“—I haven’t seen him in a week! I’m trying to save you mileage here!—,”
Despite everything, you briefly touch a fist to your lips and suppress a smile. “10-69, Vicquemare, Du Bois. Can you give me a 10-77?”
“10 minutes,”
“10-4. Kitsuragi out,”
Jean is somewhat correct. The lack of sleep (and nothing else, Jean confirms, and you flush with relief) has made Harry…well. It’s made him…something.
He stands in your apartment doorway, propped up by Vicquemare, and pulls a face somewhere between ‘eating a lemon’ and a smile, all crinkled eyes and pursed lips. Jean’s face is just the lemon.
“Where d’you want me to put this oaf, then?” Jean asks, and Harry mutters ‘fuckin’ rude’ whilst Jean manhandles him towards one of the two chairs at your tiny kitchen table. He slumps there, and you stand over him with Vicquemare, until the combined image of the two of you causes Harry to blush, to cover his face with two hairy paws and giggle.
“S-stop!” He hiccups. Jean audibly sighs and looks up at the ceiling. You excuse yourself on the basis of making tea, so neither one of your guests sees your smirk.
“Would you like something to drink, officer?”
“No, no; I’m good—and this idiot doesn’t need anything caffeinated at this point either,” Jean shifts uncomfortably, embarrassed suddenly. “I wouldn’t mind…if I could use your bathroom, if that’s all right?”
“Of course. It’s the door just there,”
He gives you a brisk nod and leaves. Harry peeks at you through fingers, then unceremoniously drops his hands and smiles so very sweetly at you.
“Does he think he’s not allowed to piss at Chez Kitsuragi or something?”
The smile is getting harder to hide from him. “Lieutenant Vicquemare was just being polite,”
“What a wiener,” And he draws out each syllable of ‘wiener’, just to really drive it home. You’re honestly not sure what to do with that. “Y’know I don’t think he shat all stakeout,”
“Harry,”
“That’s why he’s embarrassed,” He leans back in the chair, arms folded loosely, face some poor facsimile of that time in Martinaise when he tried to pry you open, brow vs brow. “He’s laying pipe. He’s fuckin’ turding,”
There’s a splutter from the bathroom, and then “Shut the fuck up!” but it’s barely coherent through Jean’s laughter. Harry’s roaring with it too at this point. You cover your mouth and go back to making tea.
They have some sort of bizarre shadow-boxing match when Jean returns from the bathroom, which you watch from your position propped up against the counter. Your money’s on Jean, but only because Harry has decided to compete seated, and mostly keeps his eyes shut and his fists close to his body. Eventually Jean paps him on the head and he sort of loses any semblance of structure in his limbs; almost slips off his chair like he’s made of jelly. The silly little high giggle is back too. Jean laughs back at him but then seems to realise where he is, looking at you guiltily and clearing his throat.
“Uh, I, uh—suppose it’s getting late—I should probably get going,” He mumbles. You follow him the short distance to the entryway, and he fidgets in the hall, still not really sure how to act around you during off hours. Stalling. He’s trying to work out something pithy to leave you with, probably, hand on the doorknob.
Harry pokes his head out from the kitchen and huffs: “Well, bugger off, then,”
“Harry—!” Jean works himself up into a little state and wrenches on the door handle, turning to you.
“…best of luck, Lieutenant!” And then he’s gone.
Harry’s not in the kitchen when you return. He’s instead flopped against your sofa, holding one of your Tip-Top magazines open at a vertical angle with one hand, the other at his mouth as he chews the fingernail of his pinky. His legs are splayed across the cushions, still surprising in their length, and his shirt has ridden up slightly—revealing a small stretch of rounded pink belly dusted with hair just above his belt. It takes him a little while to realise you’re there, so you take advantage of it, framing the image in your mind.
Cute.
“Hi, Kim!”
“Hello, Harry,” You sit across from him on your coffee table, elbows propped on your knees, and he smiles, genuine and affectionate, dropping the magazine in favour of copying your pose. His version has him propping up his chin against his palms in addition—once again, it is so difficult not to smile. He’s smiling enough for both of you, anyway.
“Have you eaten recently?”
“Hummm….fairly, yes. I’m all good,” He pats his stomach. You squash the desire to pat it too.
“That’s good. How about sleeping?”
“That one’s…s’not so recent,” He drops his hands down to his lap and guiltily studies the palms. “Can’t sleep on a stakeout,”
“Oh? Why not?”
“Feels bad,” And then: “‘Don’t like it,” Petulant.
He’s quiet for a moment. You’re about to prod him gently for another answer when he adds: “Felt guilty,”
“About what?”
He takes a deep breath and looks at you, guilt (and …fear?) written all over his face—then pitches backwards, hitting the back of the sofa and palming his eye sockets. “I left you with so much paperwork!”
That wasn’t quite the answer you were expecting. It seems like it wasn’t quite the answer he originally intended either. Whilst you’re attempting to formulate a response, he mumbles: “What if you died from a paper cut and I never got to tell you how cool you are,”
He sounds genuinely distraught. And you’re laughing.
“Harry…why on earth…a paper cut?”
“It’s a lot of paper! My backlog is huge!”
“What makes you think I’d be doing your paperwork? That’s entirely your mess,”
He pouts at you from the sofa and you smile in spite of yourself. The paperwork is nothing, a ruse; it’s the second statement that belies his true intent.
“You’ve already told me how cool I am, Harry—I remember it very clearly,” As to be expected. You’ve thought about it every day since.
“I need to tell you again though,” He says earnestly, pushing himself back up, one hand on each knee. “In case you forgot. Or you thought I didn’t still think you were…are? You are. Cool. I spent a lot of time thinking about it,”
“Really,”
“More time than the case,”
“That’s concerning, Detective,”
“More time than sleeping!”
“Evidently. Also concerning,”
He glowers at you, face suddenly altogether more solemn. The pout is back too. Take me seriously, Kim.
“If you didn’t want me to spend all my time thinking about you, then you shouldn’t be so fuckin’ cool,” His eyes widen in a silent challenge. You blink back at him blandly.
Internally, your affection for this ridiculous idiot has reached fever pitch.
“I think maybe we should get you to bed,” You stand, and make for the bedroom. Behind you, Harry makes what you can only describe as a ‘whoop’ and stumbles after you. When you stop at the doorway he bumps into you and holds on, large hands at your waist, chin at your neck.
“You’re coming too, right?” He rumbles into your ear; you suppress just about every single bodily reaction and instead make a small catalogue of your bedroom contents, anything you might need to add to accommodate him. He’s still talking: “Right? Can we both stay here in your room together? Keep me company, ok? I’ve only had Jean to talk to for ages,”
“Harry…you radioed in a report almost every day,”
“Yes, but Jules was listening! I can’t talk to you with Jules listening!”
And what exactly did he want to talk to you about that Officer Pidieu couldn’t listen to?
It pains you to do so, but you gently remove his hands from your waist and turn, so you can observe him face to face.
“Where’s your bag?”
Harry gives this some serious thought. “I…must have left it in Jean’s car,”
“So, you have nothing else to wear. Nothing appropriate for bed,”
He grins, mildly flushed. “I’ll have to go commando style,”
God. “Not if I’m sleeping in the same bed, you won’t,”
“Aww, Kim…!”
“I’ve got a shirt you can borrow somewhere, and you can keep your underwear on…please,” Cough. Hide it.
You leave him to change whilst you extinguish the various lights around your modest apartment, up-end your cup and leave the teapot in the sink until tomorrow. It’s barely 10:30pm, but you can’t think of anything else to do, certainly nothing that can replace thinking extensively about your guest. So you’ll go and continue thinking extensively about him whilst lying in the same bed and not touching.
This seems dangerous, don’t you think? You could write this little visit off as Harry being kind to Jean after the long slog of surveillance, but…you worry. You worry what others think, what Jean thinks. What he must be taking back with him to the station tomorrow. You’ve spent so long hiding yourself from your coworkers, every little detail of your personal life, and now Jean a.) knows where you live and how you live, and b.) knows that Harry knows. Knew. Must have visited you multiple times prior to remember even in his sleep-deprived haze how to reach you.
It shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. You could explain all of this away. Jean is probably just grateful someone else is dealing with Harry nowadays instead of him. Probably.
Maybe he just thinks you’re too polite to say no.
Maybe.
Sigh.
In reality, who you’re really hiding from is unfortunately one of the most skilled detectives in the entire Militia. And is now wearing your clothes and rolling about in your bed.
Where you have agreed to join him.
“Smells nice in here,” He mumbles into your pillows. Whilst you were away, Harry has coiled your bed covers around him like a little cocoon, leaving nothing for you. He pokes his head out of the top of it, a strange middle-aged caterpillar, shuffling about the bed with you perched on the mattress next to him.
And you stop worrying.
“Nothing happened, by the way,” Says the disco caterpillar.
“Hmm?”
“The stakeout. We saw literally fuck all,”
“Yes, I was there for each of your reports,”
A slightly more pronounced wiggle. “Oh yeah, you were, weren’t you?” He shifts and pulls the blankets about until his head is fully out, propped on the pillow next to you, his hair wild. “Hello again,”
Ridiculous. You smile down at him, affectionate, all walls down. He might not even remember any of this, so why not enjoy it?
“Are you going to share any of those covers or do I have to freeze tonight?”
“Oh! God, you’re right—shit—wait—!” Disco caterpillar begins to violently jerk and squirm until Harry emerges again, a full man, complete with y-fronts and SPEEDFREAKS FM T-shirt, flapping the blankets across you both; he then reaches up and yanks you underneath with him. You make a frankly embarrassing aborted yelp, trapped beneath the fabric, Harry’s beaming mug across from you and his hands on your biceps.
“There! Sorted,”
“Pfft…would you like me to go grab my flashlight too? So we can read under the blankets without being caught?”
“Huh?” You forgot the holes in his memory again. He has no idea what you’re referencing.
“Never mind. Something I’m told happens at sleepovers,”
He squints. “People read together at sleepovers?”
“Harry…forget I even said anything,” You break the small blanket fort to reach over and place your glasses down, then flip the lights. In this interim period Harry has also broken free of the covers, and you settle back next to him, studying as best you can the outline of him lying next to you, radiating heat and curiosity.
“Is this a sleepover?” He whispers finally, a little more clandestinely than really necessary; as if you aren’t two fully grown men, alone, in an apartment that one of you legally rents.
“If you want it to be, detective,”
“I can’t remember if I’ve ever had one before,”
“I surmised as much, given your previous questions,”
He falls into a lull again. You’re almost disappointed that it’s over. Childish of you, to imagine that instead the two of you would gossip, huddled together, swapping secrets into the wee hours of the morning.
You’re considering the insides of your eyelids when he finally speaks again.
“It’s okay, isn’t it? Doing this?”
“…what do you mean?” You mumble back. His hands are on you, warm where he touches your sides, slides down your arm and pulls your hand up, so that he can cradle it vertically in the space between you, a black form against the muted white of your bedroom ceiling. He gently manipulates it, rolling his fingers against the gaps between yours, circling a thumb at your palm. Previous question forgotten.
“I love your hands,” You don’t know if you trust yourself to respond to that. He’s not expecting anything, the continuing low rumble of his voice striking in the quiet. “You always hide them away…it’s nice to just…see them, y’know? Feels like a privilege,”
Why is this making your lungs hurt?
“I always wanted to ask you something,” He says, still holding your hand. And then he doesn’t say anything else—you barely know if your voice will work at this point, but you indulge him.
“…Yes?”
“In Martinaise—when we got back to the mainland and Jean’s little squad turned up,”—Your little squad, don’t you mean, Harry; characteristically you say nothing—“And Jean told us both I used to be a gym teacher,”
“I remember quite clearly, yes,” Where is this going, exactly…?
Somehow, you hear him smiling in the dark. “D’you remember what you said to me afterwards?”
“…You’ll have to be more specific,” Oh god…
“That it explains everything. The running, the jumping…the bicep girth,”
If any gods or Innocences care one jot about you, you hope they make it so Harry can’t see you cringe in the dark.
“You do remember!” No such luck. He shifts his weight and leans closer to you, demeanour that of a giddy school child. “So…why did you notice my bicep girth of all things?”
Deflect! “Difficult not to notice when you deadlift 60kg in nothing but a mesh shirt,”
“You were thinking about my biceps since then?! That was like…the 1st day we met! You thought about my biceps for over a week?!”
You close your eyes again. The gods really don’t care for you tonight; either that or they’re having a fantastic laugh at your expense. There’s no point in further denying anything—he’ll know if you’re lying. Even like this, deeply sleep deprived and silly.
So you tell the truth.
“…yes,” He makes a small sort of squeak beside you. “…I regret saying it out loud in front of the rest of the MCU, however. But I was also suffering from a concussion. The lapse in professionalism was perhaps…understandable,”
“You called me Harry then too. You never did it much that case, but you did then. I always know I’m getting the real Kim when you say my name and not just ‘detective’ or the dreaded ‘officer’,”
You release a silent huff of laughter despite yourself. “Was that wise, to reveal that? Now I’ll know not to do it,”
He hums thoughtfully to himself. “Tit for tat,” He says, simply, no pretences. You gave me some of you, now here’s some of me.
He pushes your hand up against your chest, his own still cradling it, shifting again onto his side and pulling up close. The proximity is alarming, and yet feels like the greatest indulgence you’ve ever allowed yourself.
“I’d been thinking about you a lot too,” He says softly into the fabric of your shoulders. His nose nudges against your neck, the subdued heat of breath into skin.
“…indeed?” You whisper back.
“Yes. Difficult not to notice when you’re being cool and composed with nothing but a washed up amnesiac alcoholic for a partner,”
“Harry,”
Nothing for a while, and then: “I’m glad it was you,”
You thread your fingers up into his, interlacing your hands against your heart.
“I’m glad it was you, too,”
Jean ‘phones the next morning at 8. It’s your day off, the first in 2 weeks, and by rights his too, but he forgoes it to alleviate the stress on the rest of the MCU. He wants to know how much of a write-off Harry is, given his behaviour during the stakeout; the events of the previous night inclusive.
“I imagine he’s about a useful as a mangey cat on fire right about now,”
“I won’t ask you to explain that metaphor, Lieutenant,”
“Is he even awake yet?” You’re safe, he won’t be explaining it. You cradle the receiver into your shoulder and look straight ahead into the doorway of your bedroom. From this angle you can see the bed, and its occupant, on his back, head tilted upwards towards you, eyes open and focused. He doesn’t say anything, just observes you, observing him, unguarded and soft.
You shift to the opposite hip, back against the wall. “No, he’s not,”
“Ugh, useless as always. S’pose you’re stuck with him for the day, he’ll probably sleep right through,”
“I suppose so,”
“You know, you don’t have to put up with him—it’s not in your job description to play babysitter,”
“Or male nurse, firefighter or animal control agent,” From his position in your bed, Harry smiles but doesn’t make a sound.
“Er—sure, lieutenant—,”
“Officer, I am well aware of my job description and what it does or does not entail. I’m sure I can survive Harry sleeping for a day,”
“Of course; my apologies—I’ll, erm…I’ll leave you to it, then—,”
“Yes. Thank you, Lieutenant,”
“Good…good day,”
“Good day,”
You hang up, your eyes never leaving Harry. He watches you walk the short distance between phone line and bedside, still laid out like some sort of jungle cat between your bedsheets. He’s not wearing the SPEEDFREAKS t-shirt any more. The morning light, what little of it makes it through the still-shut curtains, gives him a soft halo at his throat, the dip of his collarbones. One of his hands lies palm up above his head, fingers lax and gentle. His breathing is deep and slow, but you see it behind his eyes—a frisson of anticipation and desire.
Slowly, as if you might spook him, you pull away the sheets, leaving him unclothed beneath, alighting the mattress on your knees. He lets you look, wordless, nothing between you. You place your own hand, palm down, against his sternum, then flex fingers to gather the hair underneath in sharp pulls. He lets out a singular breath.
You could torture him like this, all morning, all day. The shape of you, just out of reach, Harry languid and easy beneath you. He’d let you. You consider him again, the crease of his brow, the dip in his chin—you raise yourself and relocate, straddled over him before settling on top. His hands move to cradle your bare thighs where they meet his hips. It’s familiar, like it’s been done before—hands moving to trace more of you, bare legs, the crease of skin at your hip, the curve of your spine against white walls as you lean forward to meet his lips.
You’re so glad it was him.