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The wind picks up, churning clouds against a blackened sky. It is cold for April.
Somewhere in Central Jamrock, trash tumbles down a street lined with pre-revolutionary tenements. An old woman shivers in a bus stall, her body laden with blankets.
Inside a boarded-up trik-trak arcade, three men in tracksuits argue about who’s to blame for letting the pig get away. One of them screams through the gunshot wound to his leg. They are losing precious time to track their prey, but are too belligerent—or in too much pain—to care. There are older conflicts here.
Deeper in Central Jamrock, amidst the tumble-down stalls of the public market, an officer of the 57th Precinct staggers down alleyways and hairpin turns he doesn’t know. This is not his territory, and he is alone.
A trickle of blood runs in the officer’s left eye. He scrubs it away with his right hand, and wishes he still had his glasses. He needs to communicate with his officers and alert them that his cover has been blown. He needs medical attention.
When he is confident he has lost his pursuers, he staggers back into the streets, blinking the persistent trickle of blood out of his eyes. All he can see are bright blurs and a wash of gray buildings on all sides.
Music thumps distantly from the top floor of an apartment, something ecstatic and vaguely Mesque in origin, but the rest of the street is eerily silent.
He could ring buzzers on the doors until he got an answer, but he won’t. The residents of Central Jamrock know better than to open their doors to strangers in the middle of the night, and he doesn’t even have his badge to prove who he is, a casualty of undercover work. Not that being a known RCM officer would necessarily help him in Jamrock. It’s not unheard of for cops in this part of Jamrock to be murdered in broad daylight.
A migraine is forming behind his right eye, throbbing in time with the beat. Just what he needed. A head injury on top of his still-healing head injury from a month ago.
As he walks, he counts his injuries. There’s a comfort in knowing. Broken ribs. Lacerations around his left eye from the force of a fist smashing his glasses into his face. Was his eye itself cut? It’s possible. Abrasions on his knee from when he landed on the ground, possibly sprained.
And then there’s his arm. The way he wants to vomit every time he tries to move it. He recognizes the pain. He last broke it ten years ago, when he was still in Juvie, and it looks like the break is going to keep haunting him. His entire left side is numb, but he can sense the pain behind a barrier of shock, trying to claw its way out.
He’s been in worse situations than this. Not many, but the last one wasn’t so long ago. The phantom sensation of a pistol butt coming down on his head echoes through his brain like thunder.
You weren’t alone then, a voice whispers in his brain. It’s a thoroughly unhelpful line of thought, so he stops it in its tracks and shepherds it back to the recesses of his mind. The point is, he survived that. He will survive this.
Ahead, he can just make out a neon glare. As he draws closer, it’s so large and so electric that even he can recognize it as a Frittte sign, but the Frittte it's attached to is as closed as everything else here, a metallic grille drawn tight around it.
He stops, frowning. He has a nagging sense that something about this corner is familiar. An absurd thought, since there's nothing to set it apart from a dozen of Jamrock street corners just like it. He turns, scanning his environs in a slow circle, and--there! Catty-corner to the Frittte sign. There's a couch on the corner. Someone has left it on the sidewalk to be slowly overtaken and reconstituted into the city. Jamrock has wasted no time reclaiming it. A blackened patch from an ill-advised fire on the couch stretches up the back of the seat, though it’s joined with plenty of other burn marks, blunt force trauma, and stains of presumably bodily origin. The parts that have escaped physical harm have still been covered in spray paint and trash. He stares at the couch, and something knots in his stomach, an unease with coincidence. Then he releases his breath slowly.
He looks around, and sees a short flight of stairs leading to a basement unit. There is a single studio unit down there, rented out by a single RCM officer.
A month ago, he helped that officer pick the lock to get back into his apartment. A month ago, he carried a trash can full of bottles to the curb, their contents recently sent to the Revachol plumbing system. He has not seen the RCM officer since then.
Standing at the top of the stairs, its impossible to tell if anyone’s home. It's buried in shadow. He’s not sure this is the right thing to do, but what other option does he have?
He takes a step down the stairs. Working slowly, and keeping hold of the stair railing with his one good hand, he takes another step. Why, he wonders, is he able to walk on his injured leg, but taking a step down the stairs hurts enough to almost make him pass out? He tenses his jaw, and forces himself to continue. It occurs to him that if no one’s home, it will be very hard to get out of here again.
The detective will be there, he tells himself. It’s three in the morning. Where else could he be? Well... He doesn’t want to think about all the possible answers to that.
The last step is the worst, and he staggers off it and into a pile of deconstructed plywood that may have been a bookshelf in a past life. He catches it with his good hand and leans his weight against it. Pain ripples across his body.
He doesn’t hear anything on the other side of the door. He knocks, ignoring the corresponding stab in his chest with each knock.
Silence. Then a deep voice, husky with tiredness. “Go away, Leslie! I know you’re the one leaving dogshit on my doorstep.”
He releases a breath, and knocks again. His breath is shallow, catching in his chest, and it hurts. “Harry? It’s me.”
A chair scraping against the floor in a sudden, excited movement. A moment later, the door is flung open, and a familiar shape is silhouetted in the doorway: broad, top-heavy. Kim squints against the light.
His old partner steps forward. “Kim?” His face lights up like his birthday has come early. “What are you-” He gets a better look at Kim, and his smile fades. “Shit. What happened?”
“May I come in?”
Harry’s staring at him. Kim doesn’t need to see it, he can feel the other man’s eyes traveling across his body, hear the soundless words at his lips. Cataloging his injuries.
“The tracksuit's bad, isn't it?” he asks, trying to force some levity into his voice.
“Someone hurt you.”
“Can we save the discussion for after I get inside?” he snaps.
Harry blinks. “I’m sorry. Yeah. Of course, let me-” He reaches out to Kim, a hand reaching to steady him.
He shakes it off, feeling the first flare of irritation. He doesn’t need help. He walked this far, didn’t he?
But he’s still leaning against the broken bookshelf that’s the only thing holding him up, and he realizes with a flush of horror that his legs have seized up, and they are no longer obeying their orders. A machine that’s been pushed too far, nothing but grinding gears.
Harry is watching him warily, his face pale in the dark.
“I just need a moment, detective,” he breaths. “It’s been a difficult night.”
Harry looks frozen, like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. “How can I help?” he asks.
“I just need to use your phone.” It’s an exercise in futility, in the dark and without his glasses, but he tries to raise his eyebrow at Harry, to impress upon him that he has this. That he hasn’t shown up just to faint on his doorstep, even if the world is spinning dangerously around him at the moment, and the lights from the storefront above are beginning to shudder in his vision.
“It’s okay. We’ll wait as long as you need.” Harry stands with the door to his apartment open, like the cold of the concrete isn’t stinging his bare feet.
He needs to pull his throbbing head together and make his legs move, but it’s a struggle to breath. That, he realizes, might explain the light-headedness. After a vigorous walk, and an exhausting climb down the stairs, the short, shallow breaths he’s been forced to take are nowhere near enough.
It doesn’t help that the adrenaline that drove him this far is receding from his body, like the tide leaving a beached ship in its wake.
The lights in Harry’s apartment are starting to fade, and he realizes, with horror, that he is fainting.
Something warm grips him under his good elbow. He looks up, reluctantly, at the man some part of him even now can’t help but think of as his partner. He follows his gaze down to the hand on his arm. It already seems so distant, the world flickering out. He's only vaguely aware that he's plunging forward.
The last thing he’s aware of is Harry scrambling to get in front of him, of large arms waiting to catch him.
__
Pain brings him back around. Pain in his head, pain in his chest, pain all over. He is being dragged across the floor, a pair of strong arms hooked underneath his shoulders, his back against a broad chest. He’s being walk-dragged backwards, inside the apartment. His broken ribs are howling in protest. Then a second later, he’s being shifted downward, and there’s so blessed relief as he’s lowered onto a mattress.
“Kim.” Harry sounds frightened, desperate. “Stay with me.“ The voice is coming close to his ear. It’s pleading. “Please stay with me. I don’t know what to do.”
He wants to stay. He will stay. He just needs a minute to rest. If he can just take one good breath without the pain overtaking him, he should be fine….
__
There’s a soft hum in the air, a crackle of static. A very tired voice traveling across radio waves. “-don’t bother with ambulances. If he hasn’t been shot in at least one major organ and more likely two, he’s low priority, you’ll be lucky if they come before lunchtime tomorrow-” Even the way the voice pauses to take a drag of a cigarette sounds tired. “You’ll need to do it yourself.”
“How?”
“You’re a detective, you were trained in field aid-”
“But I don’t remember any of it.” This voice is Harry's and it's close to him. There’s a plea in his voice.
A long sigh fills up the room. “Of course you don’t. All right. Pay attention. And this only works if you follow my instructions for once in your damn life.”
The voices fade out, like a radio station falling out range. Kim falls for a long time through a gray haze. He doesn’t want to stay here. He wants to find his way out, but here in the gray—in the Pale—there's no up or down. No way out.
That pervasive static hum drifts into his consciousness from time to time. He clings to it, like a lifeline.
As the voice talks, he feels his raw, injured body returning to him too, the meat of himself being lifted and touched and prodded. A pair of scissors cut away at his left sleeve—no, not his jacket—and the sleeve is peeled away to expose his arm to the cool air.
He feels the gentle touch of fingertips around his face, his collarbone, his ribs—the parts that are tender and exposed. He hates how exposed he is, but the hands are warm and gentle. They know how to touch him without hurting him. A strange familiarity, like they’re doing movements they know well. Like he’s being touched like an old friend.
A memory floats to the surface of his mind. Skilled fingers probing a dead body, finding their way through the folds of dead tissue, like they've memorized a route. At last emerging and holding up a hunk of metal that gleams in the light.
“Shouldn’t I bind his ribs up too, to hold them in place?”
An electric voice crackles. “Fuck no, listen. He’s going to have a hard enough time breathing without you cinching him up like he’s in a corset.”
“But shouldn’t I do something?…”
“Yeah, give him a shit-ton of drouamine.” A pause. “And by shit-ton, I mean one every four hours, Du Bois. And none for yourself.”
A hand finds his face, cupping it. It’s heavy and warm against his skin, and unaccountably, he feels better. His head is tilted up, and something tiny and bitter, is pressed on his tongue. Then a glass of water is being lifted to his lips. Gratefully, he drinks, washing the mystery tab—a pill—down with it.
A different kind of wave rolls in, this one a deluge of apocalyptic proportions, burying everything. He’s pulled under once again.
__
Next, he opens his eyes to a grey morning.
He’s lying down, and he’s warm. He tries to sit up in bed and immediately regrets it, a moan slipping from between his teeth. Then he remembers. The drug runners in their matching tracksuits. Being found out. The beating. Lying on the ground like he was dead, until one of them made the mistake of leaning over him, his jacket falling open to reveal a revolver in his holster. Moving quickly, shooting and running before the others could respond.
The lonely walk across the city. Harry.
He reaches out a hand instinctively to the nightstand beside him, and closes them around his glasses. No, not his glasses. His glasses are tucked away in his desk with his badge, and the ones that were part of his disguise are smashed on the floor of an arcade. The weight and shape of these is wrong. But he’s desperate to see, so he unfolds them and blinks through the thick lenses, and sighs in relief. It’s not a perfect fit, but the world resolves itself into something recognizable.
Grey light filters in through the narrow slats high in the walls that pass for windows. He turns his head, and sees his bandaged and splinted arm, neat rows of tight bandages like stripes on a candy stick. His chest is bare, and if he pulls the blankets down he can see the bruises blooming across his chest. He lifts his good hand to his left eye, and feels the butterfly bandages across his eyebrow and cheekbone. He’s been well tended to. Better than he could have done for himself.
He traces his gaze along the familiar sight of Harry’s apartment. On the floor is the florescent remains of his track jacket. Oh thank God. It wasn't his bomber jacket that got cut off him last night. And beyond that... The last time he was here, there was a couch against the wall. Or rather, there had been a couch there, until they got a closer look at it, and seen the foot-wide hole in the sofa of curdled, melted stuffing and upholstery. Half-burned photographs still sit on this attempted pyre. “Oh god,” Harry had said, looking away in horror. “I murdered it. How long do you think it's been like this?”
"There's really no way to know," Kim had said. The two of them had carried the couch up to the curb. It occurs to him now that he would have walked right past Harry’s apartment last night, if not for whatever possessed Harry to set his couch on fire however long ago. He's not usually inclined to read deeper meaning into things, but he feels like that says something about the whole strange course of their friendship.
He can't stand looking around Harry's sad empty apartment another minute, so he turns his head to his right, and looks at the man dozing by his bedside. Harry sits in a chair pulled close. His arms are crossed against his chest, and his chin is resting on his collarbone. There’s a soft rumbling sound coming from his chest.
How long has he been in that chair? With a still-healing leg injury no less?
Kim scratches the bandages over his eyebrow idly, and studies Harry.
Kim hasn’t seen Harry since he found out there would be no transfer to Precinct 41. They’d spoken on the phone since then, Kim breaking the news to him as gently as he could, but the hurt in Harry’s voice, the desperate bargaining, had been unbearable.
An ache throbs in his chest. He wishes they weren’t seeing each other again under these circumstances.
He's had enough of lying in bed. He pulls the blankets back with his good arm, intending to get up silently, but he must be louder than he thought, because just as he’s trying to slide his feet to the floor, Harry stirs.
“You’re awake,” he croaks. Kim winces. He can’t have slept well like that.
“So are you.” He offers a faint smile by way of greeting. He doesn't really know what to say. A thank you should be in order, but somehow the words stick in his throat.
Harry's busy rolling his head and massaging his neck. His eyes fall on Kim’s legs, half out of bed, and he frowns. “Woah. Stay in bed. I’ll get you whatever you need.”
“I need to stretch my legs.”
“I can do that for you.”
Kim huffs out a breath, amused in spite of himself. He believes Harry would, if he could. “I don’t think it works that way, detective.”
“Look, Gottlieb told me I needed to make sure you got plenty of bedrest. You wouldn't want to make me a liar, would you?”
“I would hate to do that, but I do still have work today. And my station would probably like to know I’m not dead.”
Harry looks nervous. “I already called them.”
Anxiety spikes in his stomach. “Oh? What did you say?”
“I just told them that you were injured…” he runs his hand through his hair nervously, like he’s wondering if he just fucked up and crossed some line of police decorum. “I thought they’d want to know. Maybe they’d send someone to help or something… shit, Kim. Was this supposed to be a secret?”
He thinks about it, and realizes that of course it isn't. That's completely impractical. “I’m sorry. I guess I just… I don’t like people knowing. About injuries." He doesn't want to be seen as weak, and he knows it will be taken that way by the other officers. "But yes, of course, my precinct should be kept abreast.”
“They said to take the day off.” Harry pauses, thinking back. “They wanted to come get you, but motor-pool is empty. They couldn’t come get you until this evening, at the earliest, unless you want to let Courbedeau drive the Kineema over-”
“God no!” Kim exclaims, so alarmed he very nearly stands up.
Harry tries to hide a smile. “Yeah, I didn’t know who Courbedeau was, but I kind of thought you might feel that way. I said I’d talk to you.”
He nods, relaxes back in bed. “Thank you. For all of this. I shouldn’t have just dumped myself in your lap. This wasn’t your mess to clean up.”
“Just repaying the favor,” Harry says, his mouth twisting a little. Kim's chest hurts, suddenly, in a way that may be unrelated to the ribs. “You want to use my phone? I can make you breakfast while you call.”
He realizes just how nice that sounds. "I'd like that."
Harry sets up the phone for him. “There’s clothes, too, if you want to change,” he adds, before retreating to the kitchen.
Kim drums his fingers against the receiver, and listens to the ring of the phone, trying to ignore the sound of Harry moving around the kitchen. He’s relayed through several officers before he’s able to give his report.
“Take the rest of the day off,” his captain says firmly. “And tomorrow, if you need it.”
Afterward, he feels relieved, and also suddenly aimless. What is he supposed to do for the rest of the day? He sets the phone aside carefully and his eyes fall on the clothes Harry left for him, folded on the table.
A pair of soft ubi print sleeping pants, and a threadbare sweatshirt with Lycée Grand Couron printed across it in faded letters. It’s worn, but soft to the touch. A once-loved souvenir from a long-ago stage in life, now swept away along with every other moment in Harry’s past. Kim frowns at the sweatshirt for a moment, then focuses his efforts on the not inconsiderable task of changing.
After accomplishing that, he tests out his body, lifting his arm and staring at it. He’s going to be doing his job with a cast for the foreseeable future. It's not a pleasant thought.
He gets up and walks to the kitchen.
Harry looks over at him as he appears in the kitchen. The sight of Kim swimming in his clothes makes him cover his mouth to avoid laughing. Kim shoots him a glare. "You look great! But, uh. Should you be walking around like that?”
“Should you have gone raving with delinquents two days after taking a bullet to your leg?”
Harry has to give the answer more thought than he thinks it deserves, but then shoots him a sheepish smile. “Point taken." He turns back to beating the eggs. At least he seems to remember how to make breakfast, Kim thinks, watching him reach for the spice rack without looking, like his hands know their way on their own. He thinks again of how strangely strong and sure Harry's hands were against his skin last night.
While Harry's focused on eggs, Kim makes a surreptitious survey of Harry’s face from over the cup of coffee in his hands. No telltale signs of recent alcohol abuse—his face is less red than he’s ever seen it, and his eyes are focused even if they're bloodshot from lack of sleep. Kim's eyes dart toward the garbage bin, as if he’s going to see the neck of a wine bottle peaking out from beneath the kebab wrappers. But of course, there’s nothing there. Maybe Harry hid the evidence while he was asleep, or maybe he’s stayed sober for a long and lonely month.
He realizes he already knows the answer.
“I haven’t had anything,” Harry says. He glances from the eggs up to Kim and back down to the eggs. “It’s cool. I don’t really blame anyone for being suspicious.”
How does he do that?
“I believe you,” he says. "I'm sorry for being suspicious. That's... really incredible, Harry."
Harry ducks his head away, but not before he can see the proud smile on his face. “I guess it helps that I don’t remember what it feels like. Being high, or drunk. You can’t miss what you don’t know.”
But that's not it, Kim thinks. His body surely remembers, even if he doesn’t. The craving must be unbearable at times.
“How has it been?” he asks gently. "Being sober?"
He shrugs. “It’s hardest when I’m bored. That’s why I’m running again,” he says. “Turns out I really like running.”
“Who would have thought?” He takes another sip of coffee, smiling into the privacy of his own coffee mug.
There’s a shyness in the air between them that feels a little too overwhelming. Kim looks down at the splint on his arm. “So. Gottlieb, huh?”
“My station’s lazareth. You remember him? Older guy, competent in a scary way, worn down and made unkind by life?”
“That rings a bell, yes.”
“Well, it turns out he’s actually not so mean if you have a legitimate medical problem that you didn’t cause yourself? I mean, it took him a while to believe that I really needed help for my friend and not, you know, ‘my friend,’” he lifts up an eggy spatula to do finger-quotes the air, “but I think he finally realized I’d sound more drunk if I had somehow managed to break my own arm. Turns out he actually kind of… cares? About officers’ health? It was weird.”
Kim examines the splinting closely. “But even with someone talking you through it,” he says, “This is really impressive, Harry. I couldn't have done better myself.”
Harry ducks his head and looks away, but not before he can see a blush forming on his cheeks. “Turns out I had a field aid kit in the bathroom. Like a heavy duty one. I must have taken this shit seriously. I never drank the anti-septic alcohol or anything.”
Kim doesn't bother hiding his smile. "It paid off."
Harry turns back to beating the eggs. He's hitting them pretty hard now. “So, uh,” says Harry. “Do you want to talk about what happened?”
There’s no avoiding it forever, is there?
“Sure.” he gestures to his face, where the bandages around his eyes are. “It’s not actually a very interesting story. An undercover assignment. It ended, as they so often do, in exposure. I was lucky they were more interested in punishing me with a beating than with immediately killing me.” He swallows. What he doesn't say, although he hasn't been able to stop thinking about, is that a more competent, less emotional operation would have shot him in the face and dumped him in the harbor. As much pain as he's currently in, he knows how lucky he is. “And I suppose I should be grateful they took me out of district for it, otherwise I wouldn’t have found you.”
Harry frowns. “You were just… alone? You didn’t have back-up or anything?”
“I’ve done it this way for a long time. Since my partner… since I lost my last partner. It’s fairly standard, at this point.”
“Why would you do that?”
He doesn’t say anything about Harry’s own history of pushing away his partners to work alone. It wouldn’t be fair, to throw that back in his face when he doesn't even remember it. Instead, he says, “Undercover work is isolating by its very nature. And dangerous. Those who take it on know what they’re getting into.”
“You volunteered for this?”
“No. I was asked, and I did it, because it’s my job.”
Harry is staring at him. “So… did you at least bust this case wide open?”
“Well, I learned they're incompetents who will probably come to an ugly end the first time La Puta Madre becomes aware of their attempts to break into the interisolary drug trade. I’m not sure that counts as breaking this case wide open, though.”
“That’s not much to gain for an undercover job you nearly died for.”
He toys idly with the bandages on his arm, which are suddenly itchy. “No, it’s not.”
They sit down to breakfast together soon after, Harry splitting the omelet in two, and Kim pulls the warm cup of coffee to his face, letting the steam warm his glasses. It reminds Kim to ask. “Where’d you get these glasses? The... Jamrock Shuffle?”
“No. Uh, it looked like you needed some glasses, so I bought these at the corner pharmacy. Are they okay?”
He feels touched. “I won’t be doing any model aerostatic painting in them, but they’re a definite improvement over nothing.” Now. Now is the time to just say it. “Thank you for taking me in today.”
“Absolutely," Harry says. Like it wouldn't have ever occurred to him to do otherwise. “And you know, I've been thinking, about you transferring...”
Oh no, Kim thinks.
“You could still fight it. The refused transfer. I’ve looked it up, and technically, an officer doesn’t even need his captain’s approval to transfer to another precinct, as long as you have the new captain's approval. It’s more of a formality than anything else. Even Jean says you should fight it, and he doesn’t like anything I want-”
“Harry… “ He takes a deep breath. “Something being technically allowed and something being good interdepartmental politics are two different things." He swallows down a mouthful of eggs that suddenly feel dry. "I don’t want to fight my captain on this.”
“This is the captain that kept you working juvie for fifteen years?”
He feels a touch of resentment coil in his gut at Harry's presumptuousness. "And the captain that promoted me to detective, and lieutenant. He and Pryce do get the final say on whether I transfer.”
“And Pryce is fine with it!”
“And Captain Leborgne is not. I’m sorry, detective. I shouldn’t have gotten carried away with myself back in Martinaise, when transfers are all dependent on a precinct’s needs-”
“We need you.”
“Harry…” he says, his voice weary.
Harry stops. Hearing Kim say his name seems to have that effect. “Right. I’m being too pushy, aren’t I?”
He stabs a piece of omelet. “A bit, yes.”
"I'm sorry. I'll drop it."
"Thank you."
He should be relieved. He should let Harry drop it. But somehow, a few minutes later, he begins speaking. A strange need to explain himself, or perhaps to convince himself. “We were both exhausted after the Hanged Man. We’d been through something extraordinary, and I let the excitement get the better of me. Once I had some time to think clearly I realized…”
Harry is watching him carefully, his eyes wide and waiting. Harry might be able to read people at a glance, but a lot of him is reflected back to read too. Stoicism does not seem to be in the man’s vocabulary.
He shakes his head. This is not about Harry.
Except it is about Harry, isn’t it? Some small part of his brain thinks. Or at least, as much about him as anyone or anything else. That’s the real reason he limited himself to phone calls and letters after that first night back in Harry’s apartment. He’s afraid of how willing he was to turn his life upside down for Harry after a single week together. He’s afraid of what more he might be willing to do if he becomes Harry’s partner long-term. Reckless things. Things that can make him behave in ways he doesn’t even recognize. And he’s afraid that it’ll hurt Harry as much as him, if he can’t keep this tightly wound control over himself.
“I got carried away.” He finishes, lamely.
"Oh." Harry is looking at him, hard. He recognizes that look. It's a look that says he's trying to figure something out.
“There’s—it’s not just my colleagues,” he swallows. “It’s also-”
Harry watches him carefully, brown eyes curious.
“There’s things I need to finish.”
It’s not a lie, is it? That’s also a factor here. He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. “Cases. There are cases it’s important for me to close.”
“You can’t take your open cases with you to Precinct 41?”
He shakes his head sadly. “Without regular access to the Greater Industrial Harbor Area, and the evidence locker, and classified documents? No. Even if I could, what about Precinct 41’s legendary workload? They’ll get pushed further and further down my priorities list until they don’t happen at all.”
He didn’t mean to tell Harry any of this, but it’s spilling out. It does scare him, how easily that happens. That he’s being pulled further and further from a promise he made to himself.
Harry’s face screws up in concentration, like he’s trying to understand. “No one else is going to solve them if you don’t, are they? You’re the only one keeping these cases alive.”
He nods his head. “Yeah, something like that.”
“If you ever wanted, I could help you. Even if you don’t transfer. If you need a fresh perspective.”
He’s offering. Openly, without strings. He’s not meeting Kim’s eyes. Kim’s heart flutters in his chest. This is not something he ever expected or wanted from Harry. He opens his mouth to refuse, then stops. He doesn’t know anymore why it’s so important to do alone. If it ever was important to do it alone, or he just got used to doing alone.
“You bring the freshest perspective of anyone I know,” he says. “Sure. Maybe some day.”
“They’re my partner’s old cases,” he says softly. “It’s… important to me that I solve them. But it’s really more important that they get solved at all. Yes, I’d like it if you looked at them some time.”
"Sure. I'd be honored."
There's something that passes between them. A thrill of excitement. He realizes, with a start, that he misses working with Harry. That he wants to share these cases with Harry. It's a lot, and it makes him uneasy to think about.
After breakfast, despite his best efforts to stay awake, he wants nothing more than to crawl back into bed. Just lying prone hurts, with broken ribs, but he doesn’t have the energy to stay upright any longer, so he slides into bed.
"Do you want to sleep?" Harry asks.
He considers it seriously, then shakes his head. "I don't think I could. Not till my next drouamine, at least."
"You want to read?"
"I can't," he points to the glasses on his face. "Close, but quite."
“What if I read to you?”
Hm. That is an idea. “Perhaps something that doesn’t require me to engage my brain.”
“Is Dick Mullen okay?”
“Perfect.”
It turns out Harry has a whole shelf of Dick Mullen novels. Harry reads from the latest, one of the later, more derivative ones. He’s good at the voices, Kim has to admit. He injects some life into the pulpy prose. They take turns noting the inaccuracies. It’s… fun. He can’t remember the last time he felt relaxed. The last time he had fun with someone, when he wasn’t dealing with a murder investigation weighing on his head.
They’ve just arrived at the part where Dick is about to confront his mysterious doppelganger who has been framing him for crimes all over town when Harry sets the book down. “What do you think is going to happen?”
“My guess is he’s going to use some combination of punches and kicks to throw the doppelganger off the top of city hall. That’s his usual modus operandi.”
Harry frowns. “Well, maybe we’ll save that for later.” He can tell Harry was imagining something much more exciting. He decides to ask him. He's willing to bet money that whatever Harry is imagining was more exciting than the actual ending.
At that moment, there’s a knock on the door. Harry raises his head, then glances at Kim, alarmed. Like he expects whoever is there to kick the door down. "Leslie?" He calls. "I still don't want any dogshit."
“Shit, what? It's me, Du Bois. Open up. I brought something for your friend.” They both recognize the voice, even if Kim has only ever heard it over the radio before.
In person, Nix Gottlieb is a bit bent from hunching over a desk all day, but still looks like he could snap a larger man in half over his knee. “I brought plaster," he says, frowning around Harry's barren apartment. It's impossible to tell if he's disappointed with it or relieved. "So you can have a proper cast, lieutenant.”
“That's not necessary," Kim begins.
He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m on my way home for the night at the end of a thirty-hour shift. The longer we have to stand here talking about it, the longer before I can be home in bed.”
Kim decides that he likes this man. He holds out his arm. Down to business. Harry hovers nearby, as Gottlieb lays out supplies, until Nix finally tells him to get lost. Harry retreats to the living room with a worried glance at Kim. He tries to shoot him a reassuring smile.
“You doing all right under his watch?” Gottlieb asks, as soon as Kim is alone with. “You rather I just call you a cab home?”
“Not necessary. I, um, actually appreciate the company." The thought of being shunted off to his cold and empty apartment suddenly feels unbearable. "Harry's a good caretaker, actually. He did a very good job on my splint. Did you train him to do that? Back when he became a detective?”
"Yeah." The man is an expert in speaking around a cigarette dangling out of his mouth. ”Incredible he's managed to retain any of it, except how to pocket drouamine tabs.”
"I think he's retained a lot of what he learned, actually. I don't think I could have done a better job myself."
He wonders if Harry can hear them in the kitchen. Surely he can, and he doesn't mind being overheard.
Gottlieb snorts, and busies himself with his work. Eventually is rewarded with his arm warm and clammy, encased in a plaster cast. “That should keep your arm safe while you’re out on the streets.”
He looks at it, and feels something in him break. “Thank you," he says. "It's incredibly kind of you to treat someone who's not even in your precinct."
"Eh. We're all on the same team. And the officers who aren't morons are a rare breed. We need to hang on to as many of you as we can." Kim wonders if his own precinct's lazareth has such a generous view of his own mission.
"To be honest, everyone in Precinct 41 has been incredibly kind to me,” he admits. He's not sure why he's saying it. What is happening to him?
“Oh god, I hope you don’t think this is like an advertisement for the 41st. Don’t come here, for the love of God, unless you like entropy and idiots.”
He turns his face away and tries to fight a smile. “Maybe I do.”
Gottlieb looks up to see Harry glancing around the corner of the kitchen. Harry ducks his head away as soon as he realizes he's been spotted.
“God help you,” Gottlieb says around his cigarette. He rises with his medical bag, and salutes Kim. Kim can’t remember the last time anyone did that old fashioned gesture. “Best of luck to you, lieutenant. Wherever you end up.” By the time Gottlieb steps outside, it’s already fully dark.
Harry cooks up a small dinner of rice and chicken—the spices, again, speak to some deeper understanding of culinary principles than Kim would have ever expected. Afterward, Kim watches Harry move around the room dragging blankets and cushions out of closets and laying them down on the floor. Constructing a bed for himself where the couch used to be.
When he's done, Kim nods. "A real improvement. I think I'm going to turn in early tonight. You should too."
He looks thoughtfully at the bed. "Gottlieb suggested trying to sleep upright tonight. Apparently it can help a broken rib heal faster.”
“Oh." Harry's face falls. "Guess a couch would have been ideal for that.”
“Mm. Nothing to be done about that. Besides, if you hadn’t burnt your couch, I wouldn’t have found you. It was a..." he searches for the right words. "A beacon in the dark."
The look Harry gives him is so fond, so pleased, it feels dangerous. It’s intoxicating, to be looked at like that.
Harry scrambles to his feet. “Wait, I got this." And then he's moving around the room, scooping up the blankets off the floor and heads to the bed, stacking blankets and pillows in an elaborate edifice against the wall. It’s a soft backing to lean against the headboard, made of blankets and cushions. When he’s done, it look precarious, but not uncomfortable. He’s used all the materials from his own makeshift bed for the purpose.
“What about you?” Kim asks. “You need to sleep too.”
“I’ve got Old Blue here,” he says, patting the folding chair companionably.
“You’re not sleeping in a folding chair,” Kim says calmly. “Take half the bed.”
Harry drops his eyes. “I’ll be fine.”
“I’m not letting you sleep in a chair another night, detective,” he says calmly, clearing his throat. He puts a note of authority in his voice, and feels a small flicker of gratification when Harry raises his eyes at the sound, as if compelled. Maybe that's why he lifts an eyebrow and adds, “You’ll be no good to me then.”
He feels the heat that climbs up his neck as he says it, and notes the answering color on Harry’s cheeks. What is he doing?
“But you need the blankets…”
“It’s a double bed, detective.” He shoots him a small smile, and ignores the fluttering in his stomach. He’s injured, and they’re both exhausted. That tightly coiled twist of fear and excitement that steals over him when thinking too hard about being in close quarters with Harry can stay safely locked down tonight.
He sees Harry nod slowly, a shy smile creeping over his face. “Okay. Cool. Sleepover at my place. I don’t snore. I think.” He tilts his head. “Kim, do I snore?”
Kim realizes that he’s probably the only person to share a room with Harry since his rebirth. And he’s done it multiple times now. He wonders how long it’s been since Harry had someone else in a position to answer that question.
He blinks, and shakes the thought away. “A little. When you first fall asleep. I’ve heard far worse.”
It only takes a brief while to get ready for bed—thank God Harry buys his toothbrushes in packs of four—and then he’s climbing into the strange bed-settee Harry has constructed for him. He can sit up like this, and it takes the weight off his ribs. But the backrest is concave, and lying on it tends to lead to him sliding to one side. He sighs in frustration.
Harry’s watching this, frowning. “Um. Kim. Could I make a suggestion?”
“Mm?”
“You could use me. To lean against. If you want.”
“That doesn’t sound like it’d be very comfortable for you.”
“I think it would be.” He seems to mean it.
Kim swallows, and nods.
They settle into bed next to each other. Harry’s the perfect counterweight. He's buffeted by the cushions on one side, and the sturdy line of Harry’s body on the other. His entire right side feels warm where their bodies touch.
“Comfortable?” Harry asks, sounding worried.
“Yeah. Surprisingly enough.”
Harry leans over and flips off the light, and they are plunged in the dark. One night, he thinks. That’s all this is. Tomorrow morning, he’s back to his old life. His cold apartment. He closes his eyes and feels warm next to Harry, and very aware of Harry’s body, the bulk of it, the trembling underneath his stillness, how carefully he’s holding himself, trying not to jostle Kim.
“Just relax, detective,” he murmurs. “You’re not going to hurt me.”
Harry sucks in a breath, and swallows.
“And thank you, again, for letting me impose,” he says softly.
His hand is loose by his side, and so is Harry’s. They are close enough to brush. He can feel the energy it takes to not close the distance between them. This is what he was scared of, wasn’t it? How easy it is to draw close, and how normal levels of closeness aren’t enough. Harry’s recovery is so fragile. He doesn’t want to be the one to threaten that.
He draws another shallow breath. How long can you draw only shallow breaths before you develop pneumonia, he wonders?
But if he’s being honest, it’s been a long time since he allowed himself to take a full, unfettered breath. Since long before he met Harry.
He thinks again about Harry and his colleagues. Thinks about his own colleagues. How lonely the work is, and how used to the loneliness he’s become. Thinks about how, for a few days after the Hanged Man case, it seemed possible for that to change. How, when Harry’s around, so many things seem possible. And when he’s gone, things fade back to gray regularity. He had thought, this past month, that that was clarity, that his time with Harry was the illusion, but...
“Kim,” Harry breaths.
“Mm?”
“Are you asleep?”
“Not remotely.” He smiles into the dark.
“Do you want to talk?”
“I want to listen,” he says. “You haven’t told me about what it’s like, being back at work. Tell me about it.”
“Oh yeah. Sure.” Harry talks, and he listens. The details of Jamrock’s macabre, bizarre, or just plain exhausting cases wash over him. It’s ugly stuff. Humanity at its worst. The murders, the abuse, the exploitation. The Major Crimes Unit has closed just a single case in the past month, and been stymied in far more. That two-hundred and sixteen cases solved on the ledger seems to taunt Harry now. Kim can hear it in his voice. He's wondering if it was the drugs that made the difference, if he can ever be that good sober.
“One case a month is still well above average for an individual officer,” Kim says gently. “It may be lower than average for an entire unit, but most units aren’t working with the complexity of cases that the Major Crimes Unit does.”
Harry swallows. “Huh. I never thought of it that way.”
“What else have you accomplished?” he asks softly. “The things that don’t get recorded in ledgers.”
“Uh, well, I mean, I did meet these kids whose graffito technique was all wrong, so I showed them a thing or two about how to actually control the paint brush. And light it on fire.”
“Hm. Breeding new forms of delinquency. Impressive.”
“You asked!” Harry turns thoughtful. “Um. Okay. How about this. We were talking to a witness. Nice lady, new baby. Just exhausted, and not just because of the baby. Because the landlord's son played his anodic music at all hours of the night.”
"Uh-huh."
"And there's nothing she can do about, because he's the landlord's son."
"So you did something about it?"
"I posed as a government official representing the interests of Col Do Ma Ma Daqua, who I had reason to believe had nesting rights in his apartment building."
"And he believed you?"
"I mean, we don't know that the Col Do Ma Ma Daqua isn't nested in his apartment building." Kim can't tell if Harry's being earnest or teasing him at this point. Most likely, both. "Also, he's high out of his mind most of the time, so I think that helped."
Kim turns his face into the dark and huffs a chuckle.
“I mean, we didn’t end up solving the murder, but a mother and her baby got some sleep. That's... something, right?” It's a question. He's not sure himself.
He asks himself if anyone has made him feel the way Harry makes him feel. He’s carefully guarded and aware of the limitations the world enforces. Harry isn’t aware of any of that. It’s maddening. But refreshing too. A chance to see the world in a different light.
“Of course. That’s all you can do, take the small wins where you can.”
He brushes his finger against Harry’s, nervously. There’s a whole world of pain he could be opening them both up to, and he’s not sure he’s ready for it. But the trembling response in Harry’s finger, the shaky intake of breath, tells him he hasn’t mistaken this, at least.
They’re in blind territory, but they’ve found their way in the dark before. He thinks of hands that still know their way around a broken bone even after they’ve forgotten the dozens of times they’ve done the motions before. A skilled pair of fingers lighting on a bullet, even after the very concept of crime has been wiped from their owner’s mind. His feet finding their way to Harry’s apartment, even though he hadn’t know what he was looking for. Their bodies know the way even if they don’t.
He relaxes into the warm bulk of Harry's body, and something unwinds, a pressure on his chest, the burden of staying upright on his own. As he slips into sleep, he draws his first deep, full breath in ages.