Chapter Text
XX.
The “quite generous” reward from Delphine Bellecourt turns out to be a whole four-hundred reál.
You split equally between you, Kim, Jean, and Adrian Berg.
It’s time for a rare pleasure-purchase: you buy a new boxed set of books – The Man from Hjelmdall – figuring you’ll try a different genre for a bit. You’ll trade in Dick Mullen’s pistol for a battle-axe or two. The set comes with a small figurine, a resin facsimile of Hjelmdallerman himself, his longsword held up triumphantly with both hands. You’ll put him in your office somewhere, you eventually decide.
On the Twenty-Fifth of June, Kim buys a new pair of boots from the Coalition military surplus store on Rue Dèuxiemme.
They are, in all ways you can tell, identical to his old boots, except for the color – and now you have to listen to him grouse about how they only had them in black. They’ll do, but black doesn’t really match anything else I own. Black doesn’t really suit me. They fit well, but – they’re black!
“Oh, come on, black goes with everything, and you know it.” You tell him, taking a short break from your reading to make tea. “I mean, why do you think police lieutenants’ uniforms are black?”
*
The water is still quite warm from Kim’s shower twenty minutes ago. Even though the pipes are extra-creaky tonight, you still take the opportunity to thoroughly wash your hair and breathe for a few moments. You step out, wrap a towel around your waist, and immediately realize you forgot your underwear and pajamas in your bedroom.
The drying water is cold on your bare skin, and the apartment is quiet as you walk across the living room. But something pauses your trek halfway through: the door to the lieutenant’s room is wide open.
The first thing you see inside is a low bookshelf – with a 1/16 scale model of a Coupris Kineema sitting on top. You can’t help but walk closer.
Eventually, you take one single step inside, and then another. Around the corner, Kim’s bed comes into view. The comforter is orange – just like his familiar bomber jacket.
At least, like the bomber jacket he used to wear before Sylvain Heim’s high-velocity bullet shredded it, not the one he’s currently wearing while standing in front of a cracked full-length mirror propped against the wall. This one is black. He’s also wearing matching black leather driving gloves and his new boots. And jeans, those tight black jeans he wore when you went undercover.
(The ones that made a mess out of your head for a good half-hour that night).
When he sees your reflection in the mirror behind him, he coughs out a self-conscious little laugh. “Ah, I am...trying to find a way to make black work.”
“You look good.” You tell him. “...Really good.”
He looks devastatingly, unbearably good; almost dangerous, like the newly sharpened edge of a knife. You’re soggy, half-naked, and your face is now as red as a tomato, and oh, a naughty impulse suddenly grabs the steering levers of your brain, a week’s worth of idle, late-night thoughts revving up and bursting through the seams. You’re nothing but a passenger now, it tells you. Enjoy the ride.
“Think you have a little scuff on one of your boots, though.”
He groans. “Really? Already?”
“Yeah. I’ll get it for you.” You wag a corner of your towel at him. “Really.”
You kneel in front of him on all fours, a deep bend of your knees that nearly touches your gut to the floor. The towel was just a gesture: instead, your wet hair flops into your eyes as you press a kiss right on the toe of his left boot. You can smell the clean, new black leather as you drag your lower lip across his foot and up his ankle. You’re deprived, open-mouthed and exaggerated just for him, the tip of your tongue laving over the brass eyelets one by one.
The lieutenant’s voice is snapped-off and surprised. “Harry–”
Soon, you feel denim under your cheek, as your hands massage his calves and cup needfully at the back of his knees. You let yourself move higher, until you breathe, “I need you so bad. I’ve wanted you forever, I–” right into the heat of his inner thigh. Yes, you decide, when you finally make it all the way up, you’ll kiss him breathless.
You feel his gloves against your ears, stroking your neck, soothing you into silence, and he sighs. It’s loud, like temptation has at last breached his impeccable self-control. “Stay here with me tonight, Harrier?”
You don’t know if it’s a question or an order, but your chin is firmly against the crotch of his jeans, and you can clearly feel his intent here. He’s inviting you, and you’re a bomb already, a barrel of nails and powder ready to blow.
“Fuck, you don’t have to ask twice.”
“Bed.” He commands.
Your lip catches on his belt as you untuck his T-shirt – the only piece of his attire that isn’t black. You teasingly roll up the hem with one hand, as your other finds his waist.
As you back him toward his bed, the towel, which had grown loose around your waist, falls to the floor. You don’t care at all; you lie him down and fit in between his legs, your mouth exploring the soft skin of his stomach. His back arches beneath your forearms. You can barely take it, the sentiment finally spilling from your throat as if torn out:
“I love you, Kim.”
And of course, he tells you he loves you back – just as a slight wince perturbs his face.
“You okay?”
“Yes. Just hurts where the bullet got me.”
“I’ll be gentle.” You sweetly kiss his hip bone. “I promise.”
*
The next morning, the Twenty-Sixth, the lieutenant decides that he’ll try to work at the station for more than a couple of hours for the first time since he was shot.
Your focus isn’t especially sharp today. The first chapter of Hjelmdallerman: The Man from Hjelmdall has yet to snare your attention fully. The couch is scratchy beneath your shoulders, and your living room is warm and fusty with early morning humidity. It was much cooler an hour ago, when you first woke up. You greeted the day in Kim’s bed, in his tiny room, in this leaky, cramped, criminally-overpriced apartment – home. Kim’s home; your home. Where you live, together, an immutable fact that no amount of money will ever change.
“Huh.” Kim says, not interrupting much of anything. “There’s going to be a union parade on Boogie Street next week.”
You stretch out, and your back cracks satisfyingly. “Bit early for Labor Day, isn’t it?”
“A celebratory thing, I think. The cammioneurs are inviting everyone else.”
He drains the last drops of coffee from your RCM mug, folds up the newspaper, and sets it down on the end table. He picks up what was next to it: his notebook.
“So what’s on the docket for today?” You ask.
“Well, first, we’re going to deal with that mess on the bulletin board behind your desk. And then we’re meeting our new civilian consultant before they get whisked away for onboarding. Miss Amandou’s very excited to get started.”
“Two.” You correct him. “We’re meeting two new civilian consultants.”
“Wait.” He seems surprised at this lapse in his note-taking skills. “…Who’s the second?”
“Younger guy. Bit of a rising star in the politics of union organizing. You might know him. Name’s DuPont.”
Kim chuckles. You put on your shoes and follow him into the kitchen.
“So.” He starts, holding the door to the hall open for you. “I never got an answer last night. Do you like my new boots?”
“Love ‘em. They’re fucking disco.”
It’s honesty as only you know it: blunt and unashamed.
***
XXI. Epilogue.
Overlooking Boogie Street, the biggest and busiest street in all Revachol West, is the second-floor balcony of a small café. Its patrons are mostly middle-class folk, the kind of people whom, once in a while, enjoy a good croissant or an espresso served in a proper demitasse cup.
At the table nearest to the center of the railing, Nix Gottlieb attempts to dislodge the notch he just cut from his cigar. It’s stubborn; when it finally yields, a fine crumble of tobacco spills out onto his saucer.
Across from him, Ptolemy Pryce laughs.
“What?” Gottlieb mumbles around the cigar now in his mouth, striking a match on the tabletop. “Damn pocketknife’s dull.”
The parade rumbles by enthusiastically below, a rainbow of confetti, flags, and banners. Everyone is there: the millwrights, the plumbers, the loosely affiliated “carpenters’ union” – all whooping and clapping their way down the street. Red-shirted débardeurs shake hands with the camionneurs marching around their lorries, which are all freshly washed and festooned with blue bunting. A young man in a plaid cap hangs from a lorry window, music blasting from his porta-reel boombox.
“Finally.” Pryce says, looking down below. “It’s about time something goes according to plan.”
“Come on, you knew it was a good idea.”
“Of course, it was, Nix. I never doubted you.”
“Although.” Gottlieb puffs at his cigar, “I would’ve hired a Revacholiere instead of a Gottwaldian. You know what she did was very much illegal by Gottwaldian law. The great Captain Pryce, financing a criminal conspiracy of industrial espionage? Heads would roll if that got out.”
“Oh, come on. You and I both know that it’s easier to lose the trail, the more space you get between all that stuff and you. Even though I just hired her to find the corruption that we all knew had to be there, and pass that to the press to get that extra few percent we needed, I was not letting that few extra percent get tied to the RCM.”
“Ah, well, it worked.” Gottlieb says. “Ultimately, her mission was successful. Even though it didn’t go quite as intended.”
“Well, I certainly could’ve gone without all that sex and stalking and murder, but if there’s one thing our job’s taught us, it’s that humans are messy, and you can never predict anything.”
“I could’ve gone without Kitsuragi getting shot.“
Behind his spectacles, Pryce rolls his eyes. “No shit. Of course, that was less than ideal. But that’s why this is a slow game. If we were going about this the conventional way – you know, charging in with our artillery blazing – there would be a lot more bloodshed. Didn’t the Coalition’s response to the March decree teach you anything?”
“That was long ago, Ptolemy. I was ten years old in ’02!”
Gottlieb smiles and looks down over the colorful sea of humanity. A group of people in green T-shirts walk along the curbs, distributing pamphlets to the edges of the sizable crowd.
“Who are the guys in green?” He asks.
“They’re calling themselves the Allied Grocers of Revachol.” Pryce says. “A newer effort.”
“And the ones with the yellow jackets? They look like bees.”
“They’re cabbies and chauffeurs – a camionneur copycat. Apparently they started their petition to unionize just last week. It’s called the butterfly effect.”
“The what?”
“You know, that shit where a butterfly flapping its wings down there–” The captain points toward the street, “–could eventually lead to a tornado in Graad.”
“Or right through the Coalition. That’s where it fucking ought to go.”
“That’s the spirit.” Pryce says. “And maybe now, everyone will realize that. That this is how it starts – our new revolution. That this, the strength of our workers – is how we will become free.”
Gottlieb nods and taps the ash from his cigar over the railing. He looks out at the skyline, at a horizon one day closer to greeting a new dawn for Revachol, and grins thoughtfully at his best friend.
“Oh, I can’t wait.”
“In the meantime, can I buy you another coffee?” Pryce asks.
“You know? I can’t wait for that, either.”
***