Chapter Text
“I am not divorced,” Gerard announces to his two first customers of the day.
The two children in the doorway stare up at him. “We didn’t ask you that,” the younger boy of the two says, raising his eyebrow.
“Oh,” Gerard replies. “Right, I just thought you were going to.”
“Why would we ask you that?”
Gerard has a brief, deranged moment, in which he wants to tell these two children that he was convinced that Elody had sent these two children to ask what he thought the status of their relationship was. “Never mind,” he says instead. “How can I help you kids today? Pie?” He holds up a slice of rhubarb pie that almost slips from his hand, sliding across his leather gloved palm before he rights it and shoves it under the counter.
“We are actually here to sell you something today, sir!” the girl announces, striding up to the counter with an exaggerated swagger, slamming a briefcase onto the counter. “Today I present to you, my magical abilities!”
“What,” Gerard states. She pops the case open before he can say anything else. Inside the briefcase: several dead flies. “Oh, Jesus Christ.”
The boy elbows past her, sliding onto a stool until he is eye to eye with Gerard. He cannot be any older than ten. “It isn’t actually us that has the power, it’s another girl who couldn’t make it, but we are here to pitch her case for her. Do you understand, mister?”
“Not really,” Gerard says. “Let’s not do something that we aren’t going to be able to take back, ok?”
“Too late!” the boy sings. “Our friend has the most wonderous power -”
“Please -”
“The most spell-binding magic -” the girl begins, kneeling dangerously on one of the stools next to the younger boy in a manner that greatly concerns Gerard.
“I really don’t-” Gerard tries again.
“Of necrophilia!” The boy announces, the two of them doing jazz hands around the dead flies.
“WHAT.” Gerard shouts.
//
There is a brief interlude between this moment and the next in which Gerard must explain several things.
One of which is that necrophilia and necromancy are two very different things.
The second of which is that if you have a friend that has any superpowers, you should not go around telling people about it, as some of those people might want to experiment on her and figure out how she was able to do these things.
The third and final of which is that Gerard wants them to go find the girl that they are saying has this gift, and please ask her to come see him.
//
“Why?” the boy asks, suspicious.
“It is just very important that I see her,” Gerard replies, trying his best to remember that he is speaking to two young children, disregarding how he had to explain to the two of them what necrophilia was just moments ago. The girl, Ylfa, had pulled a notebook out that she had written down everything he said before tucking it away beneath her red coat. (“It has infinite pockets,” she told him, the boy shaking his head no behind her.)
“Are you going to test her?” Ylfa asks. “Like you said the scientists would?”
“No, I’m not a scientist,” Gerard explains. He gestures down at himself. “Why would – If I was a scientist, why would I be working behind the counter of a pie shop?”
“Undercover,” the boy, Pinocchio, states.
“An undercover scientist,” Gerard says flatly.
“Yes.”
“Why would a scientist be undercover, they do experiments, it’s the direct opposite of undercover.”
“Well, you tell me, it might be you, Gerard,” Pinocchio says, squinting at his nametag. “You tell me.”
Gerard drags the flat of his palms down his face. “Please, can you close the suitcase,” he says, muffled beneath his hands. He hears the dull thump and click of the suitcase. “Thank you.”
“You seem like a very important person,” Ylfa says. Gerard peels his hands away from his face to look down at the bright green shirt and apron he’s wearing and then looks back at the two children. “So, I don’t want to be rude. However, we need to know why you need to see her.”
“You were the ones who brought her to my attention, why is now weird that I want to see her?”
“Situation’s changed,” Pinocchio states.
“That makes no sense. How?” Gerard asks.
“Just has,” he replies, shrugging.
“Open the briefcase, please.” Ylfa does so. “This is why I want to see her,” Gerard says. And reaches his hand down into the case and brings a fly back to life.
//
Here’s the thing: Gerard also knows necromancy. Well, necromancy is not the word he likes to use. It was just always something he could do. Touch a dead thing, bring it back to life, if alive for more than a minute then something or someone else had to die in its place. Touch a dead thing twice and it would die forever, never to be brought back ever again. That was a hard lesson to learn, and Gerard always learned lessons the hard way.
He doesn’t know why he’s surprised that there is someone else like him. Only that there had been no one like him. Ever. He had been as young as these kids once, had a close friend that he told everything to, the two of them creating angels out of piles of dead leaves, giggling at how the orange and cracked leaves burst into a show of green and life.
(He never had a friend like that again; he couldn’t even remember his name. Gerard reckons that shows something deep and horrible about him, how he so quickly moved on from deep connections. Elody would have picked that apart, told him what it meant, told him that if he just thought about it for longer than just a few moments then maybe he would remember. She would tell him this: his ability to forget all these details of his childhood wasn’t some accident, but rather a conscious effort to not examine himself too closely. Probably.
It didn’t matter anyway, because he never told Elody any of this.)
//
Gerard is hiding in the kitchen when Timothy finds him. Which makes sense considering that it is Timothy’s kitchen.
“Why are you hiding in my kitchen?” Timothy asks, dropping flour on his counter and crouching by Gerard who has attempted to shove himself into one of the cabinets.
“I have done something very brash,” Gerard tells him, giving up on the cabinet and instead sliding until he is curled into a ball on the floor. “When was the last time you cleaned this floor?” Timothy opens his mouth to respond before Gerard interrupts him. “Wait, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.”
“What have you done? Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think it is.” Timothy tries to lay a comforting hand on Gerard’s shoulder, Gerard attempting to dodge which is significantly difficult to do from the ground. Mostly the movement just wriggles him about the floor and he stops before his moustache brushes against what he imagines to be the most contaminated surface in Greenleigh.
“I showed some kids that I can bring the dead back to life, and they are bringing their friend over who can do the same thing,” Gerard explains.
“Oh,” Timothy says. “Ok, that wasn’t that bad, I thought you were going to tell me that you killed someone.”
“How often do you have people telling you that they killed someone?” Gerard mutters.
“My Jack is a good boy, but he gets into a lot of trouble,” is all Timothy says, absentmindedly patting Gerard on the shoulder.
“I’ve never met anyone like me,” Gerard says, deciding to tactfully move past the fact that Timothy may have covered up a murder for his twelve-year-old son. “I don’t know what to do with that. Could there be more? Are they around me all the time? What if -”
“I believe you are spiraling,” Timothy tells him. “Let’s get you up, would you like some apple pie? That always makes you feel better.”
“That has never made me feel better,” Gerard mutters, mutinously, before remembering he is in his thirties. He lets himself be dragged up by Timothy in a surprising show of strength from the older man.
“There we go, hang tight.” Timothy disappears for a moment before returning with a slice of apple pie and a fork. “Here.”
“Thank you,” Gerard says before shoveling too much pie into his mouth to stop himself from speaking.
Timothy makes himself comfortable on the floor across from him, their legs parallel to each other. He neatly takes off his apron and folds it onto his lap. “Do you not want people to be like you?” he asks.
Gerard shrugs. He doesn’t know in all honesty. Being alone in something and knowing that you are alone is a strange kind of comfort. To have based your identity on a fact like that and then to find out there is someone out there that could understand you in a way that no one else would? Terrifying. Gerard wishes the entire morning didn’t happen, wishes he hadn’t ignored his deep desire to stay in his bed for another hour.
“Right,” Timothy hums. “Listen, why don’t you have dinner with me and Henry tonight? We could use the company.” He nudges his knee against Gerard’s leg.
“Mmmh Hmmmh,” Gerard says around a mouthful of pie.
“I am not just saying that to convince you to come.”
“Hmmmm Mummmh.”
“No, no, you coming is 100% more for our benefit than yours! I promise!”
“Mmmmmmh.”
“I’m not lying!”
Gerard chokes down the rest of his pie. “I have had dinner with you and Henry every day for the past two weeks.”
“And look at us! We’re getting cooler with every visit!” Timothy exclaims.
“I work with you every day, Tim.”
“And I can’t get enough of you,” Timothy says, patting Gerard’s knee. “I am very glad you accepted my offer to become front of house. You are my favourite employee.”
“I’m your only employee, at the moment,” Gerard points out.
“I do miss Candlewick,” Timothy sighs. “But I couldn’t allow him to keep biting the customers.”
“Also, he hit me with a ladle that one time I came in,” Gerard reminds him, feeling that the latter is a more serious offence.
“Yes, yes,” Timothy hums. “Very troubling. Still, he had a kind soul.”
“You say that about everyone,” Gerard says.
“I say that about you,” Timothy says and pats Gerard on the knee again. Gerard doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just looks down at his plate and pretends that his vision is blurry because of an allergy he doesn’t have. “Come join us for dinner, Gerard.”
“Ok,” he says, and pats Timothy back on the shin, careful not to touch the sliver of skin around his ankle.
//
Here’s the thing: Gerard has done a lot of stupid things in his life. When he was ten, he tried to cycle up the stairs on his bicycle, which is one stupid thing. The second was how he stayed, crumpled, at the bottom of the stairs for twenty minutes, waiting for his parents to notice that he had hurt himself. The third was bringing Timothy Goose back to life a year ago.
He hadn’t been the first person that Gerard had brought back to life, but it was certainly the most impulsive. Late at night, walking around after an argument with Elody, and he saw a car hit someone. The car kept going, skidding around the corner without pausing. There had been a moment in which he froze, glancing around before he realised what he had been doing: looking for someone else to solve this problem.
There had been no one else, just him. Bringing the stranger back wasn’t something he thought about, it was something he just did. Something so climatic done with something as simple as a tap of his fingertip.
(Gerard had offered to work with him forever if he wouldn’t tell anyone about what he did. Timothy had told him that he wouldn’t tell anyone anyway.
So, every morning for the past year, he comes to Timothy’s diner ‘The Pie Hole’, and he touches all of Timothy’s rotten produce, bringing a sad pile of strawberries back into its original, red splendor.
It brought Timothy’s building back from the verge of being repossessed by the government; buying rotten fruit is significantly cheaper than buying fresh. Timothy had cried in front of him when he finally started profiting again after a decade of being in red. Gerard didn’t know what to do with gratitude like that. He felt queasy with it, like it was only a matter of time before Tim realised the fundamental truths about Gerard.
He hasn’t yet. And so, Gerard continues to come in every day.)
//
Gerard is on his way home when he is accosted by someone that he would rather not see. Or rather, someones.
“Not tonight,” Gerard tells Sinbad. From experience, Sinbad is less headstrong. “Please.” He attempts a pleading look which Sinbad laughs at, which is upsetting to say the least.
“This is important,” Scheherazade interjects.
“You always say that,” Gerard complains.
“And I always mean it,” she replies. “I have someone I have questions for.” Gerard sighs and tilts his head back to look up at the sky. A few moments pass before he hears Scheherazade move behind him and start to steer him down the pavement. “You can do this while moving,” she tells him.
Gerard refuses to look down even when his neck starts to hurt, purely out of spite.
Gerard supposes that this is his night job, if it can even be called that. Scheherazade is a private investigator, Sinbad being her partner in the sense that it is his office that she occupies and he accompanies her everywhere. Gerard brings back recent murder victims for them so they can ask them who their killer is and bring justice, smoother and swifter. Gerard tried to ask how their business was before he started helping them out but Scheherazade’s sudden lack of eye contact while Sinbad made a gesture of an explosion behind her back was answer enough.
Finally, they arrive at the morgue. Sinbad slides an ID around his neck, a matching one for the ones they are too wearing. “Why can’t you just give me my own one?” Gerard asks.
“I really want to,” Sinbad tells him, giving a purposeful look at his partner.
“You’re not on the payroll,” Scheherazade says.
“Speaking of, is there any way I could be put on your payroll?” Gerard asks. The two of them turn to stare at him with varying degrees of surprise. “If that’s like, allowed.”
“I thought you had a sugar wife,” Sinbad points out.
“A sugar wife is not a thing,” Scheherazade elbows him in the side.
“How else would you describe it?”
“I have my own money!” Gerard exclaims. A moment passes. “Had.”
“There it is,” Scheherazade says, throwing her hands up.
“Like you guys haven’t spent all your money,” Gerard huffs.
“I don’t have an income like you did!” Scheherazade points out. “Some of us have savings!”
“I would’ve spent it all too, mate, don’t worry about it,” Sinbad whispers to him, which doesn’t bring Gerard a lot of comfort. Scheherazade pinches the bridge of her nose, looking bone-tired.
“Look,” Gerard says. “I’m not asking to be paid full hours or anything. I have another job -”
“Where?” Sinbad asks.
“The Pie Hole,” Gerard replies.
“Oh, I love that place!”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah! The cat there is great.”
“Cat?”
“Enough,” Scheherazade interrupts. “Listen, I’ll start paying you for the hour you come by and help us out here, alright? I’ll have to check to see at what rate though.”
Gerard isn’t sure what a ‘rate’ is, but he nods as though he does just in case. Scheherazade looks as though she knows that he’s being weird about something, but nods back anyway.
They all make their way into the morgue, Scheherazade slipping the man at the front desk some cash so that they can make their way into the back room. Before them, a dozen stainless steel hatches. Gerard used to feel nauseous at the sight, envisioning all the corpses that were stored inside.
Scheherazade strides to one of the containers, double checking someone she had written down in her small notebook before reaching for the handle on it. Laid out on the tray is an older man, white beard and a pale, shiny head. Despite his age, there are cords of muscle in his arms and legs. Gerard reaches for the tag around his wrist, pinching it delicately and reading the information written on it. Cole was his name. Or is, depending on how you view what Gerard is about to do.
Gerard peels his gloves off. After getting a nod from Scheherazade, Sinbad behind her with his own notebook ready, Gerard reaches out and taps Cole on the shoulder. He shoots upwards, inhaling harshly, body spasming for a moment as all functions shoot on. Gerard yanks his hand back before he touches him again by accident. Sinbad had never let him live it down the last time he did that. Sinbad grins at him over Scheherazade’s shoulder as though he was thinking the same thing, which Gerard ignores and looks at his watch. Fifty-eight seconds left.
“Hello, Cole, my name is Scheherazade, you’ve been murdered, is there anything you could tell me about your assailants?” Scheherazade has a calming voice, her face sympathetic, naturally drawing the attention of the room. She was always the one who spoke, Sinbad was confined to writing down everything that was said. Sinbad tried to talk to the people they brought back once, when Scheherazade was too sick to, and the entire minute was used up on his best knock-knock jokes. It was the worst minute of Gerard’s life.
Cole opens his mouth to speak and only a huff of air manages to wheeze out.
Forty seconds.
“Oh shit, he can’t speak,” Sinbad points out.
“Helpful, Sinbad,” Scheherazade sighs, passing her notebook and pen to Cole. “Here, write anything you think can help us.”
Thirty seconds.
They all watch as the man writes excruciatingly slow. His hand shakes around the pen, fingers squeezed near the point, the flesh a startling white from the pressure. The shaking continues until it travels up his arm, his shoulders trembling with it.
Sinbad reaches over to steady him, but the man jumps away from his touch.
Gerard watches the seconds tick down, and then reaches out and taps the older man on his back, all of them watching as he slumps over, pen stuck in his clenched fist, dead.
“Jumpy guy, eh?” Sinbad says to Gerard, jostling his shoulder.
“Suppose being murdered might do that to you,” Gerard replies.
The notebook had fluttered to the ground and Scheherazade picks it up, tearing out the piece of paper that he wrote on. “She can’t stand anyone else’s writing in it,” Sinbad whispers to Gerard. “I wrote a very nice, encouraging poem in it, and she burned it in front of me.”
“You write poetry?” Gerard asks.
“No, it was a haiku.”
"That is poetry, Sinbad.”
“Nah.”
“What do you mean ‘nah’ - !”
“He just wrote ‘her’,” Scheherazade says, interrupting them. She turns the piece of paper towards them. Sure enough, written in a jerky handwriting, HER is scrawled out.
“Huh,” says Sinbad.
Gerard isn’t sure what to say but tries to ignore the way his stomach drops at the sight of the word, as though he knows something that he doesn’t actually know.
“Let’s go,” Scheherazade says, frowning to herself. Before they leave, she pries her pen out of Cole’s grasp, each finger creaking as she peels them off. Something about it forces Gerard to look away, feeling disturbed in a way he cannot explain, yanking on his gloves so that he doesn’t have to look at his own hands.
For the rest of the night, Gerard lies in bed in his apartment that he bought ages ago and then forgot about. He never came here after he met Elody, he had no reason to.
Before he falls asleep, he thinks he can see the word ‘her’, naturally made in the cracks of wood that make up his bedroom ceiling.
//
Here’s the thing: Gerard has known Scheherazade for many years. Two, to be exact. Technically, it was Sinbad he met first, when Sinbad stumbled into the street and Gerard had yanked him out of the way of a car and then just as quickly dropped him again as he panicked over touching people he didn’t know.
Scheherazade had squinted at him and asked him if he was alright with that tone that implied that she wasn’t asking the question she really wanted to ask.
A month later, she had showed up at his house and he had thanked everything that was holy that Elody was through in their garden when Scheherazade had point blank asked him if he could bring back the dead.
(Her mother had told her stories about a young boy who used to go around town, releasing frogs that had been killed for dissection in his biology class, tapping each one of them and watching them hop back to the pond with his face cupped in his life-giving hands.
“How could you have possibly known that was me?” Gerard asked her once, a couple of months into him helping her out at night.
“I asked a lot of other people first,” she said, and smiled at him for the first time.)
//
The girl sitting across from him looks terrified, and he feels bad about that. He nudges the sugar towards her and she accepts it, but then just holds it between her two hands. She has bright pink nails that she traces the indents of the word ‘sugar’ on the tub with.
“So, how’s school?” he asks.
She pats down one side of her blonde hair with one hand before quickly returning it to the sugar jar. “Good,” she says, shortly. After a moment, she darts her eyes around for something else to say. “I’m very good at mathematics. And gymnastics. This is a beautiful diner that you own.”
“I don’t own it, I just work here,” Gerard says.
“Oh. And is that – how is that?”
“Good,” he says, shortly.
An awkward silence reigns for a moment. He thinks that he recognises her but doesn’t know from where.
“So,” he says.
“Yes,” she replies.
Another awkward silence.
“So, you can, you know.”
“Yes,” she repeats.
“Well, that’s - that’s good.”
“Really?” she asks, big eyes looking sad.
“Of course! I love it. I love that I, too, can...” he trails over, uncertain.
“I killed my boyfriend,” she tells him.
“Oh, Jesus.” He tries to wipe off the startled look on his face and replace it with something more supportive. “Ok, alright. Ok, that’s ok! You didn’t know! Did you know?”
“No, he was dead in the woods, and I touched him, and he came back for a moment and I didn’t know, and I touched him again and he wouldn’t come back after that,” she tells him, tears streaming down her face as she uses a napkin to blot them. “I don’t know what to do, what do I tell his parents? It’s a mess and it wasn’t supposed to be. It’s all ruined!”
“I’m really sorry,” is all he can think to say.
He hesitates for a moment, hand stuttering in the air, before he reaches across and holds her hand, glove to glove.
Her smile is small but significant, even amongst the shiny trail of her tears. He hopes that his is the same.
//
Here’s the thing: It isn’t until after the girl leaves that Gerard realises how he knows her. She is Elody’s cousin, Rosamund du Prix.
(He tries not to panic about this, but he ends up on the kitchen floor again with Timothy who pats his knee until he feels better.
“What if Elody finds out, about me?” He whispers to Timothy.
Worse than divorce, worse than being hated. Gerard is most afraid of Elody knowing him.
He’s a coward.
Timothy invites him to dinner anyway.)