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Kyle watches the guy take a turn around the empty room. He inspects the floor, the view out the window, the frame around the en suite bathroom door. Jim—that's the name he'd given—stops, gazing upward at the ceiling corner. His eyebrows crinkle together, lips pursing. His heartrate stutters, as if he's about to tell Kyle that the water stain up there is a deal-breaker. Or is deciding if he'll angle for a rent discount.
Kyle has to suppress a sigh. Fuck, it should not be this difficult to find a decent roommate.
A series of possibles had been through in the last few weeks, and not one of them had been the right fit. They were too picky, or too nervous, or asked too many questions. One actually seemed to be casing the place, and Kyle hustled her out of there before she'd even seen the room. Another was so high that Kyle had even shut the door on them before they got a word out.
Kyle tries to remind himself—having a roommate is a temporary situation. He needs to lay low while the heat is on, bring in a few extra bucks. At least until the trail goes cold from his last heist and he can find the right buyer. He's starting to think that he should cut his losses and run anyway. Or trick that asshole upstairs into "investing" in his "startup." He'd be an easy mark.
"You know..." Jim says.
Kyle can guess, but he's too tired for sarcasm today. "Yeah?" he asks, tone flat.
"I could patch that up for you, make sure there's no black mold festering behind the wall."
Kyle's eyebrows rise—that's a new bargaining angle. "Are you in the renovations game?" he asks, studying Jim's reactions.
"No," Jim says, coloring with embarrassment. "I just have a lot of experience with fixing things up."
Kyle listens for any sign of deception, but there's nothing. No increased heartbeat, no shortened breaths. Hmm. "My landlord said he'd send a guy in a couple weeks," he counters, "but if you want a reduct—"
"Oh, no, no," Jim says, holding up his hands in apology. "It's only, if I'm going to live here, I should carry my weight."
Jim's heartbeat doesn't shift; his face is open and relaxed and... hopeful. No darting eyes, no tense microexpressions. This guy needs a place and wants to help.
Kyle relaxes as well. "How soon can you pay your deposit?"
"Eggs today?" Jim calls from around the edge of the bar.
Kyle waves a non-committal hand, blinking sleepily. It's too early to be awake, but Kyle is not going to pass up someone cooking for him. Jim works third shift, and he likes to eat before going to sleep. "It's no trouble!" Jim had said the first time Kyle protested.
Not only has Jim fixed the water stain, he's leveled the legs on the coffee table, weather-sealed the south-facing windows and oiled all the hinges. And in record time, too.
Kyle started off suspicious—what the hell did Jim want? It made no sense. Kyle wasn't about to offer to reduce the rent. Forget doing any favors in return. He'd been burned too many times when he was coming up in the game. One time, literally. He absent-mindedly scratches a burn scar at the nape of his neck, hidden under his hair.
Kyle can't help but hear the sizzling of the eggs in butter and the sound of Jim humming a familiar tune, he's not sure what. Jim has a light tenor that carries easily through the air, even without his enhanced hearing. The sound of Jim singing comes through the wall between their bedrooms some afternoons when Kyle is trying to read. It's annoying. And nice. Annoyingly nice. He fell asleep once in the middle of a chapter, like he was a fucking toddler being sung to sleep.
He realizes he's humming along with Jim as he cooks and stops with an light growl.
But when he's finishing his eggs (goddamn delicious), he starts humming the tune again and doesn't stop himself. He doesn't look up to see if Jim notices.
Kyle pauses the TV. There had been a swoosh and thump from Jim's room that sounded like— the window opening. There are sounds from inside, like a great gust of wind blowing through. And is that a heartbeat—?
Jim isn't home—he isn't due back for hours.
Kyle jumps up and throws open Jim's door. Or he tries to. It's locked. He's got a key (just in case, he doesn't trust Jim anymore than the rest of humanity), but the sound is suddenly gone. No wind, no heartbeat, he can't even hear the sounds of traffic outside, as if the window has been closed again.
What. The. Fuck.
He jogs toward a wall shelf, where he has a hidden compartment in a faux-marble figurine of a cat. He slides out a key before replacing the figurine on the shelf.
When he opens Jim's door to look inside—there's no mess, no open window, no signs of disturbance. He moves to the window to pull it upward and looks out. The sky is dark, clear and still. No people on the ledge or at street level, except a lone sedan passing below.
He sends his senses out farther, trying to match the heart signature that he'd heard for those brief moments on the other side of the door. There's no sign of it for blocks. Had he... imagined it?
Kyle frowns, closing the window and leaving the room. The click of the lock turning seems louder than normal to his sensitive ears. Is he getting jumpy, this waiting game wearing on his nerves?
He tries to put it out of his mind, but he's still awake and staring at the ceiling when he hears Jim come home from work. Kyle doesn't come out for breakfast. It's not until Jim falls asleep that Kyle does, too.
"Next one?" Kyle asks.
Jim nods, taking a handful of popcorn out of the bowl and stuffing it in his mouth. The man is constantly eating, yet is so lean that every corded muscle of his legs stands out.
Not that Jim has noticed.
He lets the show move on to the next episode. It's only 6pm. They've got a couple hours before Jim heads off for work.
Without really noticing, Kyle's schedule has been shifting to match Jim's—sleeping when Jim sleeps, up all night making plans for his big payday while Jim is at work. He shrugs it off when he does notice. It makes sense—it's better to plan when Jim won't accidentally stumble on him, when most of the world is asleep and there's less general noise to block out.
He shudders to think what might happen if Jim did stumble on his plans. Because...
Well, if Jim was gone, he'd have to get a new roommate, and it took forever to find one in the first place...
And he'd have to go back to cooking for himself, or ordering in...
And the place stays picked up,...
And...
He glances at Jim out of the corner of his eye, just as he laughs at some line of dialogue in the show.
Taking a swig of beer to coat his suddenly dry throat, he tries to figure out what he missed, rather than asking.
Safer that way.
"Have you ever..." Kyle trails off, looking out at the sunrise through the balcony window. He's not sure whether to finish the thought.
Jim turns toward him, a curious tilt to his head, still chewing a bite of waffle "Ever what?" he says after swallowing.
Kyle sighs. Another week, and it will have been six months since the heist. Three months since the news stopped mentioning it. One month since the police department server showed anyone had accessed the file—to mark it closed and unsolved.
It was almost time.
"Ever think about retiring?"
"Retiring?" Jim sat back in his chair. "So young?"
"Well, maybe not retire, just move." Kyle shrugs. "Some place warm, tropical, low cost of living..." Few people around, no one to bother him... "I mean, I could do what I do anywhere."
"Your remote job, right?"
"Yeah." It's what he'd told Jim he did, to explain why he rarely left the apartment. "All I need is a good internet connection." And a decent nest egg. He should have that after the sale.
"You should go for it!" Jim says, expression full of encouragement. "Although..." he begins, face falling.
Kyle prepares himself for an argument—it's not safe, he'll run out of money, he'll be far from family. He's prepared well for this. He can deal with dangerous, but most of the countries he's researched are safer than this city by far. His investments and "work" should see him through quite a few years. And family? He has no one left.
"...I'd have to find a new roommate."
Kyle stills. Jim's tone is completely sincere, no trace of joking. His heartbeat is steady and calm. He means it.
How is he supposed to respond to that? Jim's face is warm and open, a little sad. Brush it off? Agree blithely? Assure him that he'll easily find someone else? Kyle suddenly finds he can't stomach the thought.
The awkward silence stretches a moment too long, and Jim adds, "It'll be tough to find another roommate as good as you."
All Kyle can do is nod like a fucking halfwit, a lump forming in his throat that he can't swallow down.
He's staring at the ceiling later—what the hell is happening to him? Getting choked up over someone he's only known for a matter of months? He struggles to fall asleep until Kyle starts counting Jim's heartbeats like sheep. It might be minutes, it might be hours, but he finally lets them lull him to sleep.
"You know it is." Kyle's gaze locks with the intermediary, a woman his buyer had sent to authenticate the merchandise. "If she doesn't trust it's real, doesn't trust me, then perhaps I should find another buyer."
Her nervous swallow would have been imperceptible to anyone else. Her heart skips a beat before saying, "That won't be necessary." She closes the lacquer box with a gentle click and passes it back to him. "We'll be in touch soon."
He nods but remains seated, holding himself almost perfectly still as she rises and takes her leave. He waits until the sounds of her car—and the backup guards' cars are several blocks distant. Until all is completely quiet.
He freezes. It's not. For an instant, there is still one heartbeat out there, half a heartbeat, gone before he can identify it, so quickly it's as if the person had teleported away.
Was it a thief? An assassin? No, his buyer would have known that he'd sooner destroy his prize than lose it to another, dead or alive.
He waits in silence for another hour before taking a convoluted path home.
Empty.
His mind is just... empty.
He'd come home about 30 minutes after Jim's usual arrival time to no sound of frying eggs, no cheerful humming, no smell of brewing coffee on the air. He'd gone to Jim's room to ask if he wanted Kyle to make the coffee for a change and found the door open and the room empty. Empty of... anything.
Oh, sure, the bed was still there, the end table, the curtains. But nothing else. It was as if, in the last few hours, the room was erased clean, back to the way it was the day before he moved in.
Just like his mind right now.
He blinks at the scene, uncomprehending, not even able to form a question. Not, "What happened?" Or, "Where is he?"
Or the hardest one of all, "Why did he leave?"
He finds himself slumping against the wall, only heightened senses letting him catch his weight with his hand so he doesn't completely collapse to the floor.
His vision blurs, everything goes out of focus, and he stands there, numb. He doesn't feel time pass. He doesn't sense the way his muscles are starting to cramp, the way his body slides downward when they give out.
There are no tears, no anger, no confusion.
Just...
Nothing.
When things finally come back into focus, he's not sure how long he's been there, checked out from reality. He reaches out with his hearing, something he would have thought to do by now in any other circumstance. He can hear the woman next door, quietly humming to herself. He can hear the bodega clerk on the ground floor giving a customer their change. He can hear the screech of the subway as it pulls into the station ten blocks away. And he can hear heartbeats—the woman, the clerk, the subway passengers, the rest of the whole damn city.
But not the one he's searching for.
That's when the hurt builds, suffusing his entire body until he lurches to his feet. He reaches for his coat, swipes the keys from the tray and turns the knob of the front door. He doesn't know where he is going, only that he has to find Jim.
And find out why.
Door halfway open, he stops, breaths coming heavy and fast. He fumbles out his phone, cursing at himself for not thinking to do this first. He checks his text messages, checks for missed calls, for anything, but there's nothing. He calls the number Jim gave. It rings and rings. He drops the phone from his ear and tries again, to see if he can sense the ringtone going off nearby, even the vibration of a phone on silent. A man about a mile away startles awake and groggily answers his phone, but it's not Jim.
His own heart is loud in his ears as he types out a text message. Why did you move out? he types first, his thumb hovering over the send button. It feels unnatural to him to ask like this, to be so direct. He erases it and tries, Where are you? It's only three words but it feels needy, desperate. That's not him, it's never been him. Not since the age of five, when he learned that seeming needy made you a target. He erases them. Next he types, Running a little late, you need anything? as if he isn't home yet. He hovers a bit longer, but no better words come. He presses send.
The single word Sent mocks him from the bottom of the screen for several minutes. Not Delivered or the preferred Read. "Fuck, this is useless," he growls, shoving his phone back into his pocket, pulling it back out to check that the ringer is on, and shoving back in again. Then he closes the door again.
What point would there be in looking for Jim? If he's not in the city, he could be anywhere. He could have left hours ago, got some moving company to strip his room when he knew Kyle was out. It doesn't make any sense, but nothing about this makes sense, so why not?
A notification chime sounds, and his heart leaps. But the screen is blank on his personal phone. He slides out his business phone and flips it open. Price accepted. Name your preferred meeting time and location. the screen reads.
Not Jim. His buyer.
His heart steadies, and he pushes away the sadness. This he can deal with. This is the culmination of all his plans for an entire year. Jim? He can do without Jim. In his tropical paradise, he can find a new Jim.
Or better yet, no one at all.
He responds to the text, and tucks the business phone back into his coat pocket. He tosses his personal phone on the side table—he's not going to need it much longer—and starts to tear off his clothing piece by piece on the way to the shower. The quicker he can make this sale, the quicker he's away from this city. And all its memories.
He's chosen the central train station for the transfer, at the height of the morning commute. The noise is going to make this hell—all the voices, the movement, the trains coming in and out, not to mention the hundreds, maybe thousands of heartbeats—but it's safer. And he can get lost in the crowd afterward. He's got a go bag, there's nothing in the apartment that he cares about—anymore—and a ticket to Panama under an assumed identity.
He arrives early. He takes a seat in the rows of padded chairs, scanning the crowd for any inconsistent behavior, so when he hears it, so sudden, so close, he freezes.
Jim's heartbeat.
Jim steps into view and sits in the seat across from him, there quicker than Kyle can process. Before Kyle can open his mouth, Jim says, "Don't do this."
What? "Jim." How did he just... appear? A question starts to form on his lips. "Wh—?"
"You're better than this," Jim says.
And it doesn't matter which question was going to come out anymore. Because now he can only let out a bitter laugh and say, "You don't even know who I am, Jim."
"I know we're a lot alike, Kyle."
Kyle can only shake his head. He's pretty sure that's the furthest fucking thing from the truth. "No. You probably had the perfect suburban, white-picket life." He's never asked because he never wanted to share anything about own terrible childhood. "You came to the big city for a little adventure. If you don't make it, no big deal. You can go home again." No one can be this sunny, this sincere, without a childhood like that.
Jim's lips tighten but he doesn't confirm it.
"Am I close?" Kyle prods, the hurt he's been trying to suppress leaking out.
Jim lets out a little huff of frustration. "Not really. But that's not what I mean."
Kyle copies his huff, down to the volume and strength. He's always been good at that; his hearing is so good he can mimic almost anything—an important skill in his line of work. "What do you mean, then?"
The line of Jim's mouth twists, and for the first time, Kyle hears a jutter in his heartbeat and increased respiration. He's nervous. He glances left and right, takes a breath, and—
There's a rush of sound and wind and his sight blurs, but it's only a second. A half-second, maybe. And they're in a field, sun-dappled stalks of corn rising all around them. The light of the sun, the smell of earth and especially the sound of the swish of the leaves is too authentic to be anything but real. There are no cornfields within a hundred miles of the city. Where are they?
Kyle steadies himself, trying to regulate his heart and breathing, and looks into Jim's face. He... he has... "You have powers."
Jim nods. "So do you."
"I..." Should he lie? His powers aren't flashy, like Jim's speed. They're not visible to anyone. The only time he told someone else about them, they'd turned him into a thief. It hadn't been bad. He'd needed those skills to survive, and now to thrive. Should anyone but the very rich care what he does with them? "Um..."
"Come on, Kyle. You hear everything. You're an amazing mimic. You can detect the truth from the smallest microexpressions. Maybe you're just hyperobservant, but I know it's more than that." He takes a step closer. "You're the master thief the department has been searching for for months."
Kyle goes a little cold. The 'department.' That half-heartbeat he'd heard yesterday, it— "And you're the one who's been following me."
Jim gives him a sad confirming smile, spreading his hands.
But then...? "Why haven't you turned me in?"
Jim drops his gaze to the satchel Kyle is carrying, where the gem rests in its secure case. "Because this isn't over yet." The way he says it is half-question, half resignation.
"Have you been after me all along?" he says, suspicion wrapping him again like a familiar blanket. "Gaining my trust and then biding your time until I tried to sell it?" He waits, knowing that any and every reaction will reveal the truth.
"Honestly?" he begins, then laughs. "Why am I saying that, of course you'll know if I'm being honest. No. I needed a roommate, you were advertising one. It's only coincidence and my bad luck that you turned out to be one of my cases."
Kyle starts to back away. It's useless—he doesn't have anywhere to go, he has no idea where he is. Jim stands there, looking at him with an expression so pleasant Kyle both wants to smack the shit out of it and beg forgiveness at the same time. He trips over a cornstalk and catches himself before he's flat on his ass. But the embarrassment is overwhelmed by the knowledge that this is it. He's failed, he's going to jail, he'll never watch the tide come in while drinking mai tais out of a coconut or whatever fucking cliched thing they do in Coronado.
So he slides down to the ground for real, slumping against one of the stalks. He pulls the small lacquered box from his pocket and holds it up toward Jim, not able to look at him a moment longer. "Take it. Take me. Whatever." Of course this was the way it was going to end. How could he have allowed himself to hope otherwise?
Jim doesn't take it. After a beat, he says, "You know there's a reward on that."
Kyle blinks and looks up.
The sun shines down through Jim's hair, making a bright corona that shadows his face. "It's not as much as you'd be able to sell it for, but it could get you started, wherever it is that you're going..."
Kyle drops his hand into the other, the box cradled in his palms. Jim is giving Kyle a way out. And it's not a trick. But he's not sure he deserves this.
He stands slowly, and then places the box in Jim's palm. With a few taps and presses, the top pops open to reveal the gem, which glitters in the light. "Take it. I'd probably get bored in Panama, anyway." Without you, he doesn't add.
Jim lifts the gem out carefully, turning it this way and that to inspect it, almost reverently. Then he tucks it away, and places a hand on Kyle's arm. "You ready?"
Before Kyle can finish his nod, he's enveloped in the same rush and woosh and blurring colors as before.
Then he stands alone.
But it's not the police station. It's not the apartment. It's not anywhere he recognizes, outside of high resolution photos online. Panama. His feet shift slightly in the sand, and he looks out at the water, hearing the roar and rush of the waves for miles on either side. He sends his senses out to verify, and he catches conversations far away, some Spanish, some English, something than even sounds like Swedish. No one for miles around.
It's perfect. He can't help but smile. That son of a bitch.
Something buzzes below and he looks down to see his go bag at his feet. He squats down to unzip it, finds everything just the way he left it, except the buzzing device he never packed. It's a phone—not his personal phone or a business phone, but another one altogether, nestled in among a large wad of cash. And the text message on the screen reads:
enjoy
if you're looking for a roommate
it's an easy commute
A warmth that has nothing to do with the balmy air around him courses through him. He just might take Jim up on that.