Archive of Our Own

You and Kitsuragi are waiting around the lazareth for Harry to wake up, which is probably the number four most frequent reason for you to be alone together. Technically alone, because Harry is there, but he’s not really. The top ranking reasons are: 3) Harry’s relapsed, or got near to it, but is now asleep, and at least one of you should wait around so he isn’t alone when he wakes up; 2) Harry’s run off to do something insane and possibly dangerous at a social event, to keep himself entertained in lieu of drinking, so you’re waiting for the consequences; and 1) Harry’s snuck away to carry out a scheme, hopefully investigation-related, maybe communism-related, that he knows either of you would try to stop him from doing, so you’re waiting for him to come back with either something that breaks a case wide open and/or a serious injury, or apology pastry because he pissed everyone off and nothing even came of it. It’s a testament to the shitkid’s skill that there’s such a gap in frequency between the number one reason and the number four reason. Numbers two and three were reversed, but things have gotten better, starting sometime around when he lost one of his yefreitors and you gained one. 

It’s a little worse every time this happens. You tell yourself it’s because he’s getting closer to 50 and you’re getting closer to 40 and everybody’s getting closer to ‘73, the year he will still occasionally admit he thinks the world is going to end. What feels like decades of whatever the fuck guerilla war you're also supporting doesn’t help your nerves either. But standing around the lazareth waiting for Harry to wake up was definitely easier when you a little bit didn’t want him to, and you can never decide if Kitsuragi being there makes it better or worse. You’ll probably get only another minute before Gottlieb comes in and tells you he’s not waking up soon and sends you both away, and then you’ll go somewhere to smoke, which is the number five most frequent reason you and Kitsuragi are ever alone together. He’ll smoke as many as you offer him when Harry’s injured. He made himself puke one time, which would have been really fucking funny if you didn’t feel so guilty about it. A shitty part of you thinks there’s something broken in your head that makes other people hurt themselves and makes you help them do it. 

Gottlieb bangs the door open but doesn’t enter, just leans in and glares. “Du Bois’s wives. Get out. He’s going to be fine but he’s going to be out for the night. Quit haunting the place.”

“Fuck off,” you say, but Kitsuragi’s standing up from the hard bedside chair, and you’re checking to make sure your cigarette case is on you. Even if the interval between events of the fifth most frequent reason you two are ever alone together is stretching, it feels habitual. You go for the nearest exterior stairwell, end of the disinfectant-scented hallway. Same place you tried to tell him he didn’t need to take your dying curse of a partner on his first day. He follows you, and you wonder if it looks like the way he follows Harry. When you hold out your cigarette case, he takes one and puts the one from his pocket in its place. You light your own cigarettes. If Harry were here, he likes to try to light everyone’s on one match. That’ll happen again. You’re usually not there for when Kitsuragi has his one, but you’ll come over for dinner at least once when Harry’s on medical leave. Probably only a few days this time. You’ve told Kitsuragi before that you’re glad he moved into the other half of the shitty unfinished duplex Harry’s lived in as long as you’ve known him, but you had the sense to avoid saying that if he hadn’t done it, you might have, and then you probably would have made the man worse instead of better, and then he’d have died, and then you’d have finally eaten your service weapon, and then they’d have needed to bulldoze the whole festering building because two of you dead on one foundation would be too much sickness and rot and evil. 

Kitsuragi pulls out his little blue notebook, and you grunt in disgust. He looks at you, but doesn’t raise the eyebrow like he does when he thinks you’re being childish or an asshole. 

“You don’t want to debrief right now,” he says, sounding a little tired. You don’t know if you got better at reading him over the years or if he purposely lets you hear shit like that and see actual expressions on him as some kind of symbol of your good working relationship. Shitkid’d call it brotherly spirit or something. Fraternity. 

“Not really. Case solved at the expense of another brain injury for the 41st’s finest. He already didn’t know how many concussions he’d had when I met him, what’s one more.”

“Really?” Kitsuragi has a specific tone he uses when you’re offering him details about the old Harry. You don’t think that’s one he’s doing on purpose for you to pick up, you think that one you sussed out all on your own. Even if he tells you he doesn’t want to hear it, he still hits that tone. 

“For all we know he’s the most rung bell in Revachol. Feral kid, athlete, fought a lot, taken a lot of drunken headers. Not that surprising. I don’t even know how many he’s had since I’ve known him, it gets hard to tell.”

“I can see how that would be,” he agrees, which makes you feel relieved, as if he were telling you it’s not your fault. 

“He used to box. Bare knuckle, amateur circuit regular. Heavy, obviously, even trim he was easily 100kg. He was probably a welterweight toddler.”

Kitsuragi huffs out a lungful of smoke in what counts for a laugh. “Probably. I wouldn’t have guessed he had a glass jaw, though.”

“He doesn’t, but there are bigger guys than him and he pisses people off so they’ll hit him harder. I’ve never knocked him out. Not for lack of trying.” You have tried really hard to put that man down, in fact. As hard as you’ve ever tried anything in your whole life.

Kitsuragi turns toward you and very obviously sizes you up. You resist the urge to fix your posture. It never occurred to you before now to think about fighting Kitsuragi. It wouldn’t really be fair. Anyway he’d probably just fucking shoot you if he had to hurt you. 

“You’re what, 100kg yourself? 185cm? I can see that being a good bout.”

“106 and 188, not that it’s a reach advantage with his gorilla arms. He’s probably still got 10kg on me. Feels like he’s always had 10kg on me. Fighting him was an education, he was a good teacher. At first, anyway. Eventually it was like fighting a cat.”

“And you still couldn’t knock him out?” He’s picking on you, which is a good sign. If Kitsuragi is relaxed enough to pick on you, Harry will be fine. 

“Sounds like you’ve never fought a cat. No such thing as a fair fight with a cat, because you’re trying not to kill it and it’s willing to do anything to turn you into a pile of bloody rags. It doesn’t care if it lives or dies, so long as it shreds you.”

“No, I’ve never worked animal control,” he says, and turns back to the rail. 

You laugh. “You’ve got the shitkid on a short fucking leash, though.” You’re thinking about the past and you're thinking you want to die or at least ruin your life and you're thinking of saying one of the worst things you’ve ever said. Definitely the worst thing you’ve said in a long time. You stub out your cigarette. 

Kitsuragi takes his last drag and does the same, shrugging. “I don’t, or his bell wouldn’t have got rung today, would it?”

“Can you do me a favor, Kim?” You’re excited. You’re a poison. He might shoot you for saying this. It wouldn't be crazy for him to take it as a threat. He’s still got his gun on him. 

“What’s that, lieutenant-yefreitor?” His hand’s on the door, but he hasn’t opened it, and it’s late enough you know nobody’s out on this stairwell on another level. 

“Fuck me. We can go to mine if it would be weird to go to yours.” Fantastic rush of adrenaline. You’re technically his superior now, officially running the wing, but between him and Harry they could destroy your career no problem. This is probably half as good as speed. If he draws on you, it’ll be equal, and if he says yes somehow? You’re not sure how to scale that. 

Kitsuragi takes his hand off the door and leans his shoulder on it. He’s not so much as twitching towards his gun, but the way he’s got his hand on his hip you can clearly see it under his jacket. His mouth has gotten smaller and he’s clearly thinking, but that’s the extent of your read. You know he and Harry have something going on. You know he’s a fag, and that probably the only other people who know that are Harry and Pryce. He’s very careful. You wonder if maybe nothing is going to happen with this right now, and then when Harry’s up again he’s going to take the time to cripple you himself and then maybe throw you into the Esperance where you can drown at last. 

He finally speaks. “Are you still taking the prescription Gottlieb gave you?” 

What the fuck? “Good catch. No. No supply in the city for a year.”

“Has he given you something else?” His voice is extremely level. He was probably never going to shoot you, you knew that, but if he did it while he was calm like this, that would be better than you deserve. 

“What else would he give me other than what’s in the evidence lockup?”

“Something we can still get for the horses?”

“You asking me if Gottlieb gave me fucking ketamine?” You laugh and it sounds mean. You feel mean. At least this is humiliating. It doesn’t matter if Kitsuragi’s reasoning is right, it’s fucked up that you asked someone to fuck you and he asked if you were off your medication. You wanted a new low, and here you are. Harry could still kill you later if you’re lucky. You’re good at pushing people. You’re ready to push Kitsuragi. He’s staring at you and his eyes are very hard. You feel how much bigger you are than him. He doesn’t look like he feels it. He’d be an easy bench for you. A warm up. He’d have to shoot you to hurt you, if he thought you were going to fight him. 

“We’ll go to mine.” 

He opens the door and holds it for you. Okay. Maybe he’s going to shoot you somewhere else. Or this could be one of those intervention type things. Or he’s actually going to fuck you. You light another cigarette and go inside, and you smoke with intent focus as you follow him through the building and out to the MC they gave him after he transferred, the old thing he’s always fixing. You both get in. His place, and Harry’s adjoining, is only a kilometer and a half from the precinct, stuffed too close up against where the 8/81 passes over the abandoned railway. You barely manage to finish the cigarette before you arrive. You know he doesn’t let anyone smoke inside. He unlocks the front door and holds that open for you, too. You’ve only been in here the one time, when you and Harry helped him move in. He didn’t need your help on top of Harry’s, but you were trying to be useful. Less poisonous. Harry’s place you’ve been to lots of times, of course. Kitsuragi takes the things out of his jacket pockets and puts them where they belong, pen and blue notebook and a second black notebook you’ve never seen on the kitchen table, keys on a nail in the wall, wallet and pocket knife and lighter into a bowl. The jacket has its own hook. You take yours off too, and drop it onto the back of one of the kitchen chairs. He goes to his fridge and takes out two bottles you think are going to be beer, but it’s kvass. He opens both and hands you one, then walks through the living room, a bigger mirror of Harry’s with a dead-end staircase that’s being used as shelving. He opens the back door and holds it. You always thought it was probable you’d die behind Harry’s place. The worst fight you had, the one where he broke your jaw, that happened on the old train tracks within spitting distance of Harry’s back steps. 

Kitsuragi sits on his steps. You do that too. You’re in uncharted territory, only a few meters from a place you’re painfully familiar with. 

“I would have taken my time with that cigarette if I knew we were going to go sit on the back steps.” 

“You can have another. I will too, if you offer me one.” He sounds disappointingly not at all like he’s going to shoot you, but he didn’t take his holster off. Your gun is locked in your desk at the precinct because Harry is injured. You were smart enough to move the cigarette case into your trouser pocket when you took your coat off, at least. You open it and hold it out to him. He takes another of your plain handrolls, and you take the chestnut cigarette he left there earlier. You’re the one with a lighter. You hold it out for him to take, but he leans toward you with the cigarette in his mouth like he’s waiting for you to do it. You light cigarettes for Harry sometimes, if your lighter’s already sparked for your own, and Harry likes to light cigarettes for everyone, racing the length of a match every time. He prefers matches because he likes to show off striking them anywhere, on a fingernail or his ledger or one time a long time ago, the stubble on your pockmarked fucking face. You light Kitsuragi’s cigarette, and then yours. You wait for him to move the situation to the next step, whatever it’s going to be. You’re not a hopeful man but you find it easy to imagine him having you go stand under the overpass to wait for him to shoot you. He can’t see for shit but his scores in marksmanship aren’t terrible. He’d take his time lining up a good shot. You wish the long distance freight trains still ran, speeding dangerously through the city, which they have never done in your life. 

“Jean,” he says, and you regret that you specifically asked him not to call you Vicquemare outside of work, “Aren’t you supposed to be straight?”

You nod, because you don’t have anything to say to fact. You hope it looks obvious that you’re enjoying the chestnut cigarette. You have no idea how to get a man to want to fuck you, but everybody likes symbolism. Maybe it’ll piss him off.

“From your phrasing, I assume you have a specific idea of how you wanted this favor to happen?” He’s still too calm. 

“Not really,” you say, “other than you fuck me.”

“Have you done that before? Been fucked?” He glances at you, but he mostly looks out toward the highway. Trying to keep the pressure off while he asks you questions, so you’ll be more likely to volunteer information. 

“Just the once,” you say, because you don’t really care if he gets all the details out of you, but you want him to work for it. This could still go either way, you’re telling yourself, and it’s better for you if he’s annoyed with you, if he thinks you’re frustrating. 

“Harry?” he says, and you confirm with a hum. “Did you like it?” he asks. He doesn’t sound like he expects the answer to be yes. 

“Do you think I didn’t like it because his cock is fucking massive or because he was a fucking monster?” 

He laughs, low but multiple actual noises instead of just the usual breathing-but-different that counts for him. “Either, really.”

“I liked it,” you say. This is a part where you think you can probably push him. You don’t know the specifics of their thing, but probably you can make him jealous.

“Because he hurt you, or because he didn’t? Or what? What did you like?”

You didn’t expect that kind of follow up. Incisive. You think about it. You’ve thought about it a lot. 

When you and Harry were first partnered, you were rangy still. He wasn’t that far off his gym teacher life. He was built, like you wished you were built, and he had his whole kinesiology thing and you spent a lot of time working out together, and he knew good stretches and kept you from hurting yourself, and he was such a jock and so sure of himself that it wasn’t weird to let “Coach” Du Bois rub you down after a workout. That lasted until he made lieutenant, but you’d pretty much got it all by then, so it was normal that he got more hands off. You had your own routine. You felt he was more like your friend than mentor already. When he decided to go for the first yefreitor, that was when you both got into speed. He liked to party, and he liked to drag you along with him, and he got you both laid. By the time he started working on the second yefreitor, you were both different. You were in league. His rank was yours. If he was double-yefreitor, so were you. You were fucking supercops. You were one fucked up monster running on amphetamines and cocaine and heroic quantities of alcohol. You feagued each other up. You didn’t spend time in the gym on careful stretches, if you went it was to slam iron around until you ached. If he went with you, it wasn’t to keep an eye on your form or make sure you cooled off responsibly. It was so you could beat the shit out of each other. On some level, you thought he always wanted you to be stronger so you could more effectively kick his ass. He wanted you to give as good as he could. The stress got worse, you both got less stable, you beat each other raw more than you got laid. Nobody wanted to fuck you because you were a monster, either of you. You got fucked up and you fought and you solved the fuck out of cases. You fought too hard. You were going to lose your jobs, or one of you was going to die and then the other one would lose his job, which was basically the same as dying to you. It was Harry who responded to your shove by going to his knees. He goaded you. Fucking his throat was about as good as bloodying his nose. Fucking his ass was about as good as bruising his ribs. It worked for a little while. It was sometime in there he fucked you, once. 

Fighting is fun, you both knew that your whole lives. Even when you were doing it because you kind of wanted to kill one another, it was also for fun. Spitting blood and hanging off each other was fun, it made you feel like best friends. There was a night, rare towards the end, where you’d solved a tough case clean, that you fought but not too hard, nothing that’d get you in trouble with the captain, some wrestling, some shoves, and you were high as shit, and after you fought Harry wanted to rub you down. Pyrholidon and ketamine, you think. He wanted to suck your cock, which was different from you fucking his face, but it wasn’t that different from pushing the tension out of tight muscles, pulling tendons until your joints were loose, which you’d still let him do. He wanted to put his fingers in you, loosen you up. You told him you thought that was fag shit, and he said that it was just anatomy. He wanted to know if you ever put your fingers in yourself, and you’d said no, of course not, and he said he did it all the time, it was disco. He said it wasn’t fag shit to know anatomy, which sounded right. He said it was something chicks could do to you, if they liked you enough to get weird. He made you come with his fingers in you, and then he said he thought you could take him, all of him, and you were still both really, really fucked up. You’d very happily taken more of the ketamine. You said to him that probably nobody could take his whole stupid cock, and that’s why he was alone, and he said that you could do it, and you wanted to prove him wrong. It was a matter of pride that you both be provably unlovable. He started to get it in you and it was back to his kinesiology thing. Careful and gentle about pushing you to the edge of what your body could do, movement that hurt but in a way that felt productive, burn of just the right workout. He talked you through it and you took the whole thing. You were really cut then, speed helped with that, and you could see the bulge of him in your gut. It was fucking crazy. When he started fucking, really slow, long strokes, it was like there was a monster inside you. There was, obviously, but what you were seeing was just Harry’s huge monster dick. Part of it was definitely the drugs, but the surreal drag of him was a perfect knife edge, way too much which was the right amount. When you came with his cock in you, it felt like it took forever, and you shook like a fucking leaf after. You assume he came in you, but you don’t remember that specifically. He said a bunch of sweet bullshit to you and put his fingers in you again and rubbed at you until you were completely empty, completely fucked out, wrung dry. 

He didn’t remember it the next day. Ketamine can do that, and he’d blacked out before. You’ve never blacked out in your whole fucking life. He didn’t remember that he’d got his whole cock in you and way too many of his fingers and that you came in his mouth and not down his throat, he didn’t remember any of the shit he said, he didn’t remember how your stomach looked like that, he didn’t remember. Which meant it didn’t happen. You didn’t think about killing yourself for four months. You’re not sure how much of all this you’ve said out loud. Kitsuragi looks like he’s been listening really carefully. At least he wasn’t taking fucking notes.

“Do you think it might have been the ketamine, and not the getting fucked?”

“Why the fuck would horse tranquilizer make me not want to kill myself? Anyway I’ve done ketamine since then, and pyrholidon,” you admit, “and I have tried to get women to put their fingers in me but nobody wants to do that on a one-night thing.” 

“Do you do it to yourself?”

“Oh yeah.”

“And?”

You shrug. “Still want to fucking kill myself, don’t I?”

Kitsuragi nods and stubs out his cigarette. You finish yours. 

“I have ketamine,” he says, like it’s fucking groceries, “but if you think Harry’s massive cock was a factor, I’m sorry to say mine’s regular size. You’d have to wait to proposition him instead.” 

“You fuck Harry, right? I know you fucking do. He’s fucking brain damaged and getting brain-damaged-er regularly. But he’s getting better.” This is the logic and you know it sounds so stupid. 

“Are you trying to get him to fight you again?” 

You’re fucking pathetic. He’s not mad at you at all, you’re so fucking bad at this. Your whole life pissing people off and the time you need someone to hate you it’s just not working. Harry won’t fight you anymore. Obviously Harry won’t fight you anymore. 

“Do you think he would, if you fuck me?” You sound like a beat dog half-wagging its tail in hope. You need to be put down. 

“Definitely no.” 

“Is the thing, you know, with you, not…” you wave your hand, trying to come up with a word, “Serious?”

Kitsuragi coughs. “It’s serious.” Now he’s uncomfortable at least. That’s progress.

“Is this some kind of disco shit then? You’re swingers? Or do faggots not care? Or are you finally fucking done with the shitkid and you want to make sure he’s fucked up for twice as long about you as he was about the last bitch?”

“No,” and the cinder of anger in his voice goes right to your fucking wreck of a limbic system, and you can’t help but look at his gun. You’ve never thought a man was hot before, but it’s a little bit sexy. Kitsuragi draws his weapon more easily than you do, way more easily than Harry does. That’s probably part of this. Your gun’s locked in your desk. You imagine him fucking you with his gun in your mouth, either of them, and you imagine poor trigger discipline finally fucking ending you with a huge splatter. You hope he’d finish. You wonder if a corpse can come, if it’s fresh enough, like a chicken with no head can run. 

“Jean, I’m not going to shoot you.” Madder. Good. 

“What, Harry teach you to read minds too?”

“Nobody can read minds. You’ve been staring.” 

“Maybe I’m checking you out. Why are you still armed?”

“You’re not checking me out. You know why I’m still armed.”

“Because you’re a faggot and I’m your suicidal straight coworker who asked you to fuck me, and you don’t think I want you to fuck me, you think I want you to fucking shoot me. Which you’d have to because you can’t take me in a fight.”

“Yes, very good. I like when we’re on the same page.” Still pissed, but now he kind of thinks it’s funny. Fuck. It’s slipping.

“We’re fucking not.” You croak like you’re going to fucking cry. Idiot.

“No? What part’s wrong?” 

“I didn’t think you’d really shoot me. Definitely not fatally. I wish you would, but I never get what I really fucking want.” You’re mad you finished your, his, chestnut cigarette. You’re mad you finished your stupid refreshing non-alcoholic drink. You’ve got nothing to do with your hands but try not to talk with them. 

“So what are you hoping for? Do you even know? Are you trying to make Harry jealous so he’ll fight you, or are you trying to ruin his life so things will go back the way they were when you were both suicidal?”

“He’s not going to fucking fight me ever again.” You wish you could cry, your head hurts so fucking bad. “Harry’s dead. Long live Harry. It’s been years. I’m over it.”

“Great. You sound so over it.” 

“Fuck you.”

“Not what you proposed.”

You start laughing and you put your head in your hands. You laugh too hard and it makes you cough. You smoke too much. Get it together. 

“He really wouldn’t be mad if you fucked me?”

“No. He thought you might ask one of us.”

“Why the fuck did he think that?”

Kitsuragi stands up and stretches. He’s in decent enough shape, for his age. You have to be, to chase Harry. If you were 18cm shorter, he would be fun to fight. Wiry, compact, a little fat over lean. “You know how he is. He seemed to think it was a good idea, for some reason. He brought it up a few weeks ago. I thought it was one of those things he does, like, if a seagull followed us home how would we take care of it, if the overpass turned into taffy what would we do. If Jean wanted one of us to fuck him, we should say yes.” 

“What the fuck is wrong with him?” 

“He has a two millimeter hole in his brain and the Pale leaks out of it into him and it makes him very odd. And also all of the residual damage of drugs and alcohol. And his dick’s too big, and he’s maybe the most rung bell in Revachol. But he’s trying to be a good man, and he’s often right about things. Get up.” 

You do, and you stretch also, and he looks at you in a way that is definitely checking you out and not sizing you up this time. You don’t know if you like it. He opens the door and waits for you to go back inside, follows you in, switches off the light on the back of the building. 

“So you are going to?” You feel first-date nervous, like you’re a fucking teenager, and it’s not like nobody’s had sex with you in years, but not anybody who knows you at all, not anybody you intended to see again. Millions of women in Revachol, always bound to be some desperate ones. 

“Sure,” he says. “Do you want me to kiss you?”

“Uh.” Harry only ever kissed you to piss you off. You’ve never kissed a man otherwise. “I don’t know.”

“We can try it and you can decide if you’d rather not.” 

He puts a hand on your shoulder, close to your neck, and waits to see if you freak out. You feel like he thinks you’re a skittish horse. You need to be less of a fucking pussy about this. You grab his upper arms and lean down. He’s a familiar height, at least. You mash your mouth into his, not sure if it’s better to try to do a good job or to try to get him angry again. You don’t want him to think you’re bad at this, it would suck to be known as a shitty kisser, but you’re not good at sincere. His mustache is weird, way softer than Harry’s, way less of it, and it’s not being ground against your face to make you try harder for the pin. He puts his other hand on the back of your neck and you automatically open your mouth. Ashtray. It’s not that different. He pulls back and you’re feeling a little warmed up. 

“So?” he says, looking up at you, waiting for your professional assessment. 

“Uh. It’s not bad. Did you like it?”

“I like men, Jean,” he says, like you’re a fucking idiot.  

“I’m a fucking idiot.”

“Not really an issue for this activity.” He unlaces his boots, pulls them off, and drops them in a spot by the bedroom door that is obviously where they go. You toe off your shoes and leave them there too, and follow him into the bedroom. He’s undressing, in no particular hurry, putting things away instead of dropping them on the ground like you always have and like you know Harry always does. He has another hook on the wall here that’s specifically for his holster. It’s easy arm’s reach of the bed. “You can put your things on the clotheshorse. Do you just want to get fucked, or did you want to try anything else? Is there anything you definitely don’t want me to do?”

You drum up an answer. “I don’t know. I don’t think I want to suck your dick. And don’t shoot on my face.”

“Alright. Where do you want me to come, then?”

“Wherever else? I don’t really care.” 

“Should I use a condom?”

“Why, do you think you’re going to knock me up?” This does get you a disapproving eyebrow. You realize you do have a preference after all. “No, raw.”

“Okay. Can I hit you?” 

That’s another excellent adrenaline spike. You’re out of clothes to take off. He’s also naked by this point, standing by the bed and waiting like this is no big deal, asking you questions like this is a fucking sandwich order. 

“You want to hit me?”

He does that combined nod-shrug of-course gesture, and you have no idea how anyone could accuse this guy of being anything but pure Vacholiere. You’re sure that gesture was happening around this shitty river from day one. It probably came out of the Esperance somehow. But he wants to hit you, of course. Stupid question. That’s why he asked. He’s met you: he wants to hit you. 

“Yes. You can hit me.” 

“Is there anywhere you don’t want me to hit you?”

“No.” 

He makes a face, but it’s not there long enough for you to decide what it is. “Okay.” He opens the drawer in the bedside table and pulls out a bottle of lube and sets it on top, and then pulls out a tape case and hands it to you. Fun place for a cop to keep his ketamine. “Don’t overdo it. If you get incoherent, we’re done.”

“Thanks, Doctor Kitsuragi.” 

He sighs, and you can’t help grinning to yourself as you mete out your rail. This is fucking unbelievable. You line up the amount you think you probably would have gone with back then, then halve it. You’ve barely touched anything harder than grass since ‘51. Nose shit is less fun when your sinuses aren’t used to it any more and you’re sober and fully able to feel your own face. You hand the tape case back to him, and it’s returned to the drawer. 

“Do you want to be ass up, or on your back?” 

“Can you ask me fewer fucking questions? I don't have a fucking interrogation fetish.” 

“I think I maybe have five minutes left to ask them before you’re no longer in your right mind, but fine, I can ask fewer questions. Is there anything I should know? Anything I should avoid?”

“Kitsuragi—”

“We are naked and I’m about to fuck you. Kim, or lieutenant-yefreitor if it gets you going.”

You laugh. Absurd. You’re the one who switched you to first names off-hours, years ago. And you were a dick about it, and you were trying to needle him when you brought it up, but whatever. And now you’re trying to put that distance back. Why are you fucking like this?

 “Kim. We’re naked and you’re about to fuck me. We’re not getting fucking married. I don’t know if you do this questionnaire with all the guys, but you don’t need to do it with me.”

“Okay,” he shrugs again, and walks over to you. He reaches up and grabs a fistful of your hair and drags you down and kisses you, turns you both, backs you up to the edge of the bed, and then when he pulls his mouth off yours he shoves you. It’s tidily done, his ankle behind yours makes sure your feet go out from under you, and you fall back, caught completely off-guard. Your head hits the wall with a loud thud. 

“Fucking hell,” you say, and then, “Rock and roll.”

“You’re too tall,” he says, which is not an apology, not that you want one. 

“What grown man puts his bed all the way against the wall?”

“One that always sleeps alone, right? A single man with a narrow bed against a wall and a table on only one side.” He leans over you and slaps you hard across the face. Your head spins for a second. He looks openly glad to have done it. 

“Fucking ow, good arm, you couldn’t have waited for the ketamine to take?” 

“You said I could hit you. I was going to wait, but you’re such an asshole.” 

He’s right, you are an asshole. If you’d been a detective for half a second, you’d have put together the bed thing, the way even the arrangement of his furniture needs to pretend. His day-to-day stakes. You probably only have a few more minutes to be a detective. You look him over. He doesn’t look any bigger, standing over you, but this is clearly the kind of situation where he’s used to being in control. He’s basically what you would have expected him to be undressed, from locker room peripheral awareness: wiry, stomach a little soft, RCM-issue scars, normal cock as promised, brownish at the head, maybe half-hard. What little’s happened so far has been at least somewhat inspiring to him, then. Probably the pushing you around. You know the old Harry got off on rough treatment, it was how the whole deal worked. You barely ever made any effort to get him to finish, he just would if you gave it to him hard enough. That seems like something wired into people, something that would stick around like his taste in food and his desire to drink. You didn’t think about what Kim likes before you got yourself into this. It was impulsive, like most of your poison choices. You figured he fucks men, you’re a man, and then you were excited about what a life-ruiningly bad idea you’d had, about the distant and very stupid connection that implied this specific disgusting shithead suggestion might fix you if it was carried out. And that was it. Because you’re a fucking idiot. He probably should have shot you. If this doesn’t magically fix you, and it won’t, maybe you can still get him to do that.

He’s looking at you, too, cataloging details of your body, drawing his own conclusions. You know you look like a really strong wreck. The scarring from the pox is everywhere, but it’s not the most severe case you’ve seen, and it didn’t even kill you. It’s not bad enough to be interesting or minor enough to be interesting. You’re like old concrete: textured in a way that is unremarkable and unpleasant. You’ve been shot and stabbed, obviously, who hasn’t, though not as many times as some of the guys, and more times than the guys who’ve killed a lot more people than you. You’d rather get shot or stabbed than kill someone, which means you’ve been shot and stabbed. Your limp dick is unimpressive, and standing at its proudest it’ll still be barely half the size of Harry’s. You always made a point of avoiding fucking anyone who can make that comparison, but there is no fucking way Kim’s not making it in his head right now. Your height works against you here, because the size of the rest of you makes your dick look smaller. Kim’s probably not going to be much longer, once he’s all the way up, but with the rest of his body short and narrow, it’s going to look better on him. It’s bullshit, especially because you know that women prefer a dick like yours to one like Harry’s. You heard him drunkenly weep about it enough fucking times. Everyone wants to see it, but nobody wants it, and he can rarely get it in even if a lady’s willing to try, boo hoo. At least you’re fit. You’re careening toward middle age and you want to die and the way things are in the next few years you definitely might, your doing or anyone else’s, but at least you’re fit. You aren’t picking up shit from how Kim’s looking at you, other than that he’s been doing it for a while. Normally you’d assume he’ll like your body well enough, but Harry’s a fat fuck, and if that’s all Kim’s into, then fit’s doing you no favors. Whatever. He’s the one who agreed to fuck you, his problem. He can close his eyes and think of lovehandles and 25 centimeters of cock. God you really fucking hope he doesn’t. If he does, he almost has to shoot you after. 

Kim snaps his fingers in front of your face. He’s leaned over you again. You missed that happening. Detective time is up. “Jean. What are you thinking about?”

“If you have to think about the fucking shitkid to get it up with me, you have to shoot me after.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.” 

“I’m not big the way he is.” You are just barely coming up and that is a fucking sad thing to say. His brows twitch, like he was going to do a pity face but stopped himself. Time’s slowing and that may be useful. Maybe you’re a detective still. You fucking hate pity. 

“I said I like men, he’s not the only one. You look good. We should get started.”

He puts his hand on your jaw and starts kissing you again, and you’re putting together that probably ‘Do you want me to kiss you’ was more like ‘Can I hit you’: he likes it, he wanted to. You weren’t entirely sure about the kissing but you’re coming around. It makes it feel more like you’re going to fuck and less like you’re having a breakdown in front of someone while you’re both naked. He shoves you around until your head’s on the pillow, situating himself between your knees, and then he takes your calves and pushes them up. 

“Hold your legs,” he says, and fine, you do that. He rearranges you a little so they’re further apart. He picks up the bottle of lubricant and dispenses an indiscriminate amount onto your crotch. 

“What the fuck, Kim, that’s cold!”

“I don’t see the problem,” he says, and puts his hand on you, which feels in contrast very very warm. You hiss. He squeezes and lets his palm slide up over the head of your dick, and you were just starting to chub up from the kissing but this is getting you very quickly the rest of the way there. You would have described your opinion of hand stuff before as tolerance, but he is doing a better job jerking you off than you do. Maybe women are just bad at this. Or maybe it’s the insane amount of lube, or the calluses. Or the way he’s looking at your dick. You imagine yourself as he sees you, a bigger man than him holding his legs apart for him, exposed. There is absolutely no dignity here. You probably look like a poxy whore. His slick hand slides down to your balls and tugs at them, and you wince. “No? Okay.” He presses his knuckles to your taint instead, and rolls upward. That's a rush, why have you not been doing that yourself? You want him to do it again, but he's moving on, rubbing his fingers against your asshole. You tense your abs, ready to push open when he goes for it, but he doesn’t. He keeps touching the outside of you and puts his other hand on your stomach and says, “You don’t really take your time with yourself, do you?” It feels like judgement. 

“The fuck would I take my time for?” He blinks at you and then does the knuckles thing again, and that wave goes through you slower and worse this time. 

“Because it’s better that way.” You hate when he talks to you like this at work, and you know he knows that, and he’s good about keeping everything respectful in front of the lower ranks. But you’re not at work, and this is full condescension. “Pull your legs up higher.” You do, curling your back and folding yourself some. His lube-covered right hand is back to rubbing your hole, but with his left he takes an assessing handful of your ass. Then he gives it a smack. It stings, but he hit your face way harder. Or you’re just anaesthetized now. 

“Are you trying to get me to say I’ve been a naughty boy or something? Because I’m not doing that.”

“No, I just thought that I would like it. What do you squat?” His voice is still normal, but you can see he’s all the way hard now. It’s crazy this is doing it for him. You haven’t touched him at all. You have no idea what gets a homo-sexual going. A bigger man exposing himself for him, you guess. Hitting you and seeing you let yourself get pushed around.

“Like, two of you. Three on a good day.” You see his dick twitch. You didn’t even exaggerate because you didn’t think he’d believe it. “Could probably bench two of you.” That is an exaggeration. It maybe used to be true, but not lately. 

He sits up and leans over you again, fingers still circling, which is starting to feel weirdly intense. It’s weird having him lean over you between your legs. It’s all very weird. He puts his left hand on your chest and lets his weight press you down into the mattress, and then finally pushes his fingertips into you. “I don’t think you can bench two of me.” 

 “Yeah, no. But you can’t bench one of me, so.” 

“I’m more of a cardio guy,” he says. You try not to whimper like a bitch when he pushes further in.

“Harry’s partner, lots of that.”

“Plenty. He can bench two of me.”

“Couldn’t squat three of you, though.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed you were such a dick-measurer,” he says, and you laugh and it makes your body bounce a little, and you feel his second knuckles enter you way too easily, and you realize that his cock is up against yours, not root to tip but like the middle of his bumping against the head. You are such a dick-measurer. He’s looking at your chest, and you realize his focus is not on your musculature but on a scar. Obvious cigarette burn, less obvious among pox marks. “Did he do that?”

“Yeah, and then I never did it to myself again. Can we not talk about that?”

“You brought him up. But okay.” 

You meant scars, you putting out cigarettes on yourself; you don’t care if you talk about Harry, but you don’t clarify because he curls his fingers and what you say instead is, “Fuck, fuck fuck, shit,” and that kind of thing. He’s fingering you like you’re his favorite high school girlfriend and you think you’re pretty much just swearing for a while.  You consider whether this counts as too incoherent to continue, but it must not because he hasn’t stopped. Years of practice enunciating your fucks paying off. He’s sitting back between your legs again, and the hand not occupied killing all your thoughts via your prostate is lazily touring your flesh. Your stomach, your chest, your legs, your sides, your throat, you feel like you feel it a second before you feel it. The rare scratch of a fingernail causes indefinite frisson. Maybe you should have halved your line twice. This is really nice. Then you experience a twist in your gut, your mouth waters with nausea, your knees come up and you tuck your face into them, and you discover out of order that you were smacked in the balls and you had been about to come.

“What the fuck, Kim, are you fucking psycho, what the fuck,” you mumble into your knees.

“It’s too soon for you to finish,” he says, and when the feeling’s passed enough for you to unclench, you let your legs fall apart again so you can see him. He looks perfectly serious, but there’s a tilt to his mouth. 

“You hit me in the balls—” He pulls his fingers out of you, and that’s crazy because you hadn’t realized they were still in you. It feels crazy. You have no idea how you’re still hard. A second ago you were on the edge of puking. 

“It was just a little tap. You said I could hit you anywhere. Do you want to revise that?” He sounds like he’s trying not to laugh. 

“Yeah, don’t hit me in the balls, shithead,” and then your train of thought is derailed because he’s lubing up his cock, “Fuck, are you going to fuck me now?” You feel your heart beating under your skin everywhere. This is the part that’s supposed to fix you, even if it’s stupid, even if it’s temporary, even if it’s four months again, you’ll take it. 

“Yes, I’m going to fuck you now,” and he’s so fucking smug, you would really love to hate him. The tip of his dick touches your asshole and it is really, really warm. You shiver. You go to relax and discover you aren’t tense. He pushes just the head into you without much effort, pulls it out, pushes it in, seems content to do that forever. He’s fucking with you. You don’t like to be teased. You’re still holding your legs, like you were told to, which doesn’t put you in a position to hurry him up. You convince your hands they’re yours and you know how to move them, and you let go, and you grab him at the waist and push on his ass with your calves, and then he’s all the way in, fucking finally. He caught himself with his hands under your waist. He sounds like he’s breathing really carefully. 

“Just fuck me, you piece of shit, quit playing with me and fuck me,” you say, and you are glad you don’t neglect your back because you have plenty of control in a bridge to grind him into you. 

He takes a big, slow lungful of air before he speaks. “Hold on, okay, I can’t go forever, I’m sober and I’m not young, it’s too soon for me to finish, okay?” His voice is really tight, like he’s trying not to yell at a junior officer, but also really low. He’s not angry. He looks at his watch, which is something no one has ever done during sex with you before, which is a reassuring thing to be able to say about yourself, and Kim doesn’t count so you’re going to call your record clean still. 

“How long since we started?” He could tell you it’s been a year, or that you both died already, or that it’s been two minutes. You have no preference. 

“It’s been half an hour since it looked like it hit you. I think you have twenty minutes to an hour, I didn’t see how much you took.”

“Probably closer to twenty, I’d need a bump for an hour. But I feel good.” You tense your core again and squeeze him as hard as you can. You don’t entirely perceive a difference between how that feels and how it feels when his hands on you tighten, between the flex of your legs on him and the movement of his muscles against them.  

“Stop, stop that,” practically a gasp, and he looks up at the ceiling, which is entirely dull, probably very helpful. “You need to let me set the pace, okay? I’ll take care of you but you need to let me set the pace.” 

“Okay, lieutenant-yefreitor,” you say, and then you have to try really hard not laugh at his face when he really obviously likes that. “That’s what Harry said to me too, he’d take care of me.” That’s true, but it’s also true messing with Kim is fun. Something weird and sad and horny and conflicted passes over his face and you’re glad that you didn’t take too much and that ketamine time isn’t not-detective time or you’d have missed all that. “Easy for you to imagine, huh?”

“You have no idea how easy.” He takes another of those slow breaths. He moves his hands over your ass to under your thighs, behind your knees, pushing them back toward your shoulders. You think maybe he’s stronger than you thought, but then you’ve seen him lift Harry unconscious and stuff him into the back of an MC, you saw that literally today, and you’re not really resisting, so probably this is about what you’d expect. You follow that thread from impressed to not at all impressed, completely unsurprised by information you definitely knew. “Jean,” he says, and you get your head back on current events. He’s drumming his fingers on your calves expectantly, which is happening somewhere above your ears. You remember about your own hands, which as established you do control, and you move them off Kim’s middle and back to your legs. 

“You like this angle,” you say, because he hates when people know things about him. 

“You will like this angle,” he counters, and pulls back and then drives right back at you, and you think it’s probably not the done thing to hit that that hard, because you get dizzy and you feel precome drip hot onto your own chest. You do like it. He’s very precise about it, and mostly doesn’t do it that vertiginous way, but you’re peaking anyway and you feel very heavy inside your skin, and his hand is also on your dick, sliding really easily, and you’re not entirely sure who the other hand belongs to that is touching you or him. Precision was not how Harry did this. That was confusing also, but you think you were just so audaciously full of cock that angles weren’t a concern. You have the hilarious thought that while Harry’s had sex with more women than you, you’ve been in more women than him. You wonder if Kim’s ever fucked a woman. He seems to know his way around fucking a man, more competently than you might have guessed for a scrawny dork. Maybe faggots love scrawny dorks. Maybe short and binoclard makes a kind of man go crazy. You feel kind of crazy and you don’t even like men. You are crazy anyway, though. This is supposed to help, you remember. You’re getting occasional spots in your vision. You’re very close. You’re very very fucking close. Very very very. Then suddenly there’s nothing touching your dick, there’s nothing inside you, only hands on top of yours on the backs of your knees. Kim’s just looking at you. Your dick did not get the message about the work stoppage. You come anyway, with a low whine like his shitty old MC makes sometimes. 

“Why did you stop, what the fuck is wrong with you,” you say, or more like whisper; you haven’t taken a full breath in a while and whispering feels easier. 

“Just a quick break,” he says, and you do not buy that, you’re fucked up but you do not buy that, he is actually smiling at you, panting and smiling open-mouthed at your suffering like a fucking lunatic. 

“You did that on purpose, you wanted to set the pace, you said—” You’re cut off by your own groan. He’s put his cock back into you, and yours is in his fist, like he hadn’t stopped, and this is sort of like shooting you, you think. 

“You’re okay, I’ve got you,” he says. 

“Too fucking much,” is what you manage. 

“No, you’re good.” He sounds so sure but you are being driven at a full gallop toward a jump you can’t see the other side of. 

“I’m not good, I’m dying, you’re fucking killing me.”

“Shut up, you’re good, you’re okay, you can do it again.” 

“You’re fucking insane, no I can’t, I’m not fucking young either,” but you are trembling and you’re not very sure of anything. Everything feels even more, like being hungover but inside out, so instead of bile and hate pouring out of you at every noise or smell, you feel like you’re absorbing sensation and it’s being crushed into you, compressed between your guts and your heart. You think he’s actually moving slower than he was before, and your face is wet in a way you choose to assume is sweat. You listen to him and there’s no way he isn’t coming soon. 

“You can, just shut up, I’ve got you.” 

You don’t have the energy to be mad when he’s right. Your ears ring. Barely anything comes out of you, but your cock jerks in his hand for long seconds, and you feel every pulse in your ass like he’s fucked your entire spine. He pries your fingers off your legs and when you let them drop, he slips out and you make another fucked up noise. He drops forward onto his elbows, hands on your face thumbing at your cheekbones, then seems to give up and just lays fully on top of you. You’re chest to chest for what you realize is the first time. His breathing slows before yours does, probably all the cardio. He rolls off you, his whole side stuck sweatily to yours. He looks at his watch. 

“How long now?”

“Fifty-five minutes. Do you want a cigarette?”

You’ve never wanted a cigarette less in your life, at least since you were fourteen or so. 

“I want a liter of water and a warm rag.” You’re cold and so you don’t want him to get up, but you decide not to be stupid about it. He leaves the bed, with a slight wobble that’s pretty gratifying to you, shrugs on a faded black robe, and you hear taps running. It’s truly the middle of the goddamn night now, lights from the highway flickering over the walls. He comes back and tosses a warm, damp rag at you, takes it back when you’re done, hands you a tall glass of water. You only actually get about halfway through it, but he finishes it. 

“I’m going to have a smoke, if you want to sit with me. You can take the blanket if you’re cold.” 

You put your boxers back on and grab the blanket, and follow him back through the living room and out to the steps. It’s warm out still, and the air smells less like MC exhaust than it did before. You watch Kim light his cigarette. 

“Three today. Harry only needed a couple stitches.”

“Technically this one is the first one of tomorrow, but yes, it’s going to be an annoying few days for me. Do you still want me to shoot you?”

“Not right now. You’re certifiable, by the way.” 

“Why, because I risked my career and maybe life to give my hetero-sexual superior officer ketamine and fuck the suicidal thoughts out of him, and he wasn’t polite and didn’t say thank you?”

“I’m not saying thank you for sex, you were a freak about it. Is that how it always is for you?”

“What do you mean?” He’s daring you to describe any part you want to pick on him for because he thinks you’ll be too uncomfortable. He’s got you there, at least for right now. 

“All of… that.”

“It was less tears than I’m used to, and more back-talk.” Slightly kidding, you think.

“Fuck you, I didn’t cry.”

“Apologies, I’m sure it was some other liquid from your eyes.” 

“Is that what gets you off? Grown men crying?” 

He laughs a little, and tilts his head. Turns his hand over, wrist loose, a kind of effeminate What can I say, gesture. You’re never going to see him do that at the precinct.

“I guess I should have known. You love Harry fucking Du Bois, that’s insane.”

He turns his head from watching the highway to look at you, and points at you with his cigarette. “You love Harry Du Bois.”

“Not the same. A dead man was my best friend.”

“He’s not dead. We’re all alive.”

“Doesn’t feel like it all the time.” You feel a protective thing building in your lungs. “You are in love with him, though. In love in love, not the sick platonic thing I’m doing.”

“Yes.” Uninflected, matter-of-fact, inviting no further questions on the topic. But that satisfies you better than the “serious” of earlier did. 

“Why do you keep ketamine in your bedside drawer? Do you do that with Harry?”

“It’s for him, but we usually just sit in bed. I do a crossword or read and he lays there and sorts through his head. None of what he was taking in the city now, either. Heidelstam said there was evidence horse tranquilizer is effective against suicidality, and we have plenty of horse tranquilizer.” He looks away from you, back to the highway. “We can do that again, if you want. Just the ketamine. Getting fucked likely doesn’t hurt but ketamine among friends is more like medicine. Harry would be happy to sit with you, too. Or fuck you, if you’re insisting on that part.” 

“So I was that bad?” You grin at him, the one you secretly think of as your version of Harry’s fucked up rictus expression. He gives you a sidelong look and snorts.

“You should see your face. I hit you much harder than I should have.”

You shrug. “I was being an asshole.”

“You were, but I should know better.” He actually sounds like he regrets it, which is funny as hell given you know it got him half-hard.  

“None of my teeth are looser than they were, so it’s nothing Pryce’ll care about. But it’ll be better plausible deniability in the future if you just fucking punch me. Half the 41st has a black eye on any given day.”

He shakes his head. “That’s not good the same way.”

“You’re a fucking weird guy.” 

“And you’re a hypocrite,” he says, his usual flat calm. You let that stand because it’s true, and you just watch him smoke for a while. It’s a nice night. You think you’re sober now, but you don’t feel the overwhelming grief and hopelessness that usually comes with being sober (which you almost always are). You think you might just be a normal amount of melancholy. 

“What are you reading lately?” you ask, for no particular reason.

“Some book on the history of aerostatic engineering Harry found in the garbage at a crime scene.” You hear the unspoken you know how he is. You do. 

“He’s started bringing me junk he finds again, yeah. Kinda wished he’d forgot that, or that he’d keep it your problem.” You were trying to bitch, but you sound like you like the trash-picking sack of shit, probably because you still do. 

“What do you do, other than work and lift weights and roll cigarettes?” 

You can’t help but laugh at this. “How the fuck have we managed to work together this long and never have a conversation that wasn’t about work or the fucking shitkid?”

“We also talked today about how you want to kill yourself, and briefly about sex. Not all of that was work or Harry. And,” he seems to think, “you like jazz? The louder kind. And rock, though not the louder kind. We know each other’s food orders at every takeout place in Jamrock, and how the other takes their coffee. And,” his eyes dart to you briefly, and you feel a little stupid in your boxers and wrapped in the blanket off his bed, “more important things. I think of us as friends.” A little close to the bone for him, you guess. He’s pointedly looking out at the highway now. 

“Are you trying to convince me? You don’t need to try to make me feel better about it, I know all my relationships with people are fucked up. I’m a cop. So are you. It’s just how it is. How many normal friendships do you have?” 

“Zero.” He ashes his cigarette. “So do you read?”

You scoff. “Yeah I fucking read. I like Modern poetry, psychological realism, old Graadians and Vespertine fags going on about how everything is shit and love is fleeting but you have to go on, pretty much exactly what you’d expect.”

“Sixteen Days in Coldest April?” 

“Love that shit. You’ve read it?” 

“No, but I stood around in Martinaise while Harry read a copy he found in an abandoned apartment.”

You shake your head, a little awed. “Bastard. I was trying to get him to read that book for two years. I lent him my copy and he lost it and I bought another and he lost that one too. Did he like it?” 

“He cried, more than he usually cries about things. I think he really liked it. You should talk to him about it.”

“Not your thing though?” 

“No, but I’ll hear more about the Vespertine fags.” 

It’s a really nice night, and the lights of the 8/81 slide by zoetropic. There’s a breeze, and you don’t want a cigarette but Kim’s smells nice. You tell him about poetry you like.