Chapter Text
“So fun fact”, George flips through the case file, even though it’s just paper, he wears surgical gloves and even though he’s wearing surgical gloves he only touches it with his thumb and index finger. Charles and Lewis both look up and George takes that as permission to continue. “We have 7 reports of missing jewerly, all from people who were near the murder, at the time of the murder.” He shrugs and turns the page, his eyes go slightly wide. “Including a pair of pure diamond earrings worth around 3 million.” Lewis whistles, Charles makes a face.
“How do you even steal earrings? I feel like I would feel someone fiddling with my ears.” Neither Lewis nor George has an answer to his query.
In reality the jewerly thing makes more questions than answers, it’s another red string that connects to nothing in Charle’s mind. Lewis claps his hands together and puts a new sticky note on the board.
“Was anything taken from the body?” George shakes his head. “Nope, but his girlfriend was the one who reported the earrings.”
Charles nods even though in his brain this feels like it’s not right. “Ok so maybe Mr. Deorso caught our guy stealing and he killed him so he couldn’t expose him?” Even as he says it he knows it’s not right, it’s a forlorn little hope for them. Lewis shakes his head. “The murder weapon suggests that there was premediation, jewerly thieves don’t carry around poison.”
Charles makes a sort of well what do you want me to do gesture and sits down heavily.
There’s been a new level of stress ever since the international police came for the conference. It’s an expectation that they perform well, they don’t just have their city bearing down on them, they don’t just have their country bearing down on them, they have the weight of the world rolling across their shoulders.
George isn’t even supposed to be helping them but Charles is increasingly glad that he is with every second the three of them spend holed up in this office with the desks pressed together.
George has this aura around him, completely unbothered, paired with his meticulous attention to detail, half the notes on the board and scattered across the room have been written by George.
It’s also got Charles to realise that George somehow got himself a really fucking comfy chair.
It’s covered in shaggy blue fur, has a built in heater with 4 settings and can even recline, George has upgraded it even further by putting a bunch of pillows on it and has a blanket over his legs, combined with his impeccable appearance, surgical gloves, and eye bags, it’s an odd sort of look.
Charles’s back hurts from his much less comfortable chair. He feels a weird combination of absolutely exhausted but also far too buzzed from the many energy drinks he’s consumed to sleep.
He feels like he could pass out at any moment but also run a marathon.
Does George feel like this all the time? How does he stand it?
Charles drags his hands down his face and slaps his cheeks a few times.
“Okay the girlfriend, she’s at that hospital right?” George hums his assent. “Hysterics triggered a seizure, poor thing”. Charles doesn’t even try to seem sympathetic to the information George gives him, out of the corner of his eye he can see Lewis tense up his shoulders, presumably at George calling someone else “poor thing”.
The crush is so pathetic it’s funny. Charles stands up again. “Can I have the address? I’ll see if she knows anything.” George shrugs. “Doubt you’ll get anything that she hasn’t said before but here”.
He quickly scribbles out the address and even with the obvious low effort put into it his handwriting is annoyingly perfect. Charles moves to pat the taller man on the shoulder but thinks better of it. He doesn’t know when the last time George slept was but just based on his eyebags, Charles can guess it hasn’t been for awhile and the other man always gets worse about touching when he’s tired.
Instead Charles just gives him a tired nod and waves at Lewis, in his car he sticks the note to the rearview mirror and hits the ignition, the car rumbles to life fairly quickly, a relief with the problems it’s been having lately, he was half worried that he would have to kick it to get the thing started.
As it stands, or drives, Charles is a stain on the perfect, rich exterior of Monaco, a Ferrari gives him a wide berth while passing as if the driver is afraid that they’ll catch Poorness.
Charles isn’t poor, you can’t be poor and survive in Monaco but he’s found that he has other priorities than buying the newest, loudest, fanciest car every 3 months.
He’ll never admit that the real reason is that there’s too much stuff in the back of the car and he doesn’t want to move it all.
There’s anxiety buzzing under his skin, a type that he knows he will never be able to actively quantify, nothing can explain it.
Charles knows somewhere deep in his bones that whatever he does right now will change his life forever. It’s an odd feeling, to have the weight of the world that was there before suddenly seem so much heavier, when in fact you just weren’t aware of it.
It makes him want to throw up, instead he clenches around the steering wheel and unclenches them again, he takes deep breaths and counts things he can see and hear and feel.
Before he knows it he’s in the hospital parking lot and he finds that he can’t remember much of the drive there, he could have run a red light or hit a grandma for all he knows.
Charles takes a moment to collect himself before getting out of the car and walking to the huge glass doors of the hospital.
It’s a big modern place made of glass with big pieces of modern art on the waiting room walls and leather chairs that look so saggy that anyone who sits in them would fall in and never be seen again. The receptionist sits behind a huge wooden desk with marble countertops and the hospital’s name and logo in gold and backlighted on the front of it. It’s a place of grandeur and pompousness but all the warm wood and chairs and art can’t disguise the fact that it’s a hospital, it carries the air that all hospitals do, one of high emotion and stress and the whole place smells so strongly of cleaning chemicals that Charles’s nose actually hurts.
He wastes no time, as a knock he taps his badge on the receptionist's desk a few times.
She looks up suddenly and disorientedly, her brown hair is shoulder length and messy, her eyes are unfocused, Charles immediately knows that she was either just asleep or has a painkiller addiction. Based on how her tongue comes out to wet her lips and how her eyes are mostly black with the thinnest ring of blue around them he guesses the second one.
He doesn’t know how she would come to work in a hospital but with only a little bit of guilt Charles finds he’s glad she is.
“I'm the police, uhh we’re investigating a murder, I need the room number of this patient”. Charles hasn’t gotten even a hope of pronouncing the girlfriend’s name right so he just slides the sticky note George gave him over to her, as she bends to read it he catches a glimpse of her nametag, Vanessa.
Vanessa stands up. “Right this way sir”. Charles doesn’t understand what’s happening for a minute before he finally gets the gist that she wants him to follow her. He clears his throat. “That’s really not necessary I’m sure I can find -”. She cuts him off with a little snort, her smile is sickly sweet, her lips are thin, not like they’re small, but like they’re being pulled over too much mouth. “This place is confusing, trust me it’s easier this way.” Charles’s suspects that she just wants an excuse to not do her actual job but he tries to school his face into something vaguely polite.
As he expected, the way to the hospital room is actually quite short and Vanessa holds the door open with that too-thin smile.
It’s a big room, the floor feels like it stretches for a million miles, there’s potted plants lining the walls, on one side across from the bed there is a dresser with a pitcher of water and a cellphone on it.
There’s huge floor to ceiling windows in front of him, and the lady in the bed is turned away from Charles to look out of them.
Behind him the door clicks shut and when he turns around he sees Vanessa sinking into a seat by the door.
Charles chooses to ignore her and step towards the bed, with every step his shoes make an awfully loud clicking sound.
The lady has kind eyes, when she finally turns towards him Charles can appreciate that she’s pretty, not his type but she’s a person who would probably be a model in a different life.
Now though she has fading bruises on her neck that Charles knows has nothing to do with the murderer, she can’t be older than 30 but her eyes and smile have a sort of sad wisdom beyond her years.
She looks like the very definition of an old soul, there’s the start of crow’s feet at the crinkles of her eyes and laugh lines around her mouth, her dirty blonde hair spills over her shoulders.
“Hello”. She has a thick accent that Charles cannot place and her voice is a bit hoarse, whether from the asthma or the bruises Charles can’t tell.
“Hi”. He gives her a soft smile and sits on the chair at the edge of the bed. “I’m here to ask you some questions.”
Immediately she tenses up, the smile gone from her face and replaced with a serious expression. “I have told the police all that I know already”. Charles puts his hands up in a placating gesture. “I know I know but you were having your attack and.” He gives her as sympathetic a look as he can.
She relaxes a bit. “Nothing I’ve not said before but if you want to waste your time”. She finishes the sentence with a shrug.
From the door Vanessa coughs.
Charles nods, “Thank you for your time, uhm, can you describe in detail the jewerly that was taken from you?”
She lights up a bit. “Yes these beautiful earrings, diamonds you know, shaped like little moons with little stars in the hole that the crescent leaves”. The blonde starts to smile as she describes them.
Charles types it down on his phone with a hum. “Ok thank you, do you have any description of the shooter?” She stops to think for a moment before answering.
“He was broad shouldered, his hair was light”.
Charles zeros in on one word. “So it was a man?” She nods, “yes, or a woman who used to be one.”
Charles swallows, “I’m going to go to the bathroom, can you think of any reason someone would want your boyfriend dead?” He pats the bed rail and nods.
Vanessa looks up from her phone for half a second when he walks past her. Her leg is shaking.
The bathroom is cold and sterile, the floors are just damp enough that Charles watches his every step and the lights are bright enough to give him a small headache.
He brushes past someone as they go to wash their hands, he listens almost unintentionally to the little melody they hum under their breath.
When they leave Charles is almost sad, some part of him wishes he could get their face, maybe their number. He is washing his hands when he notices the few drops of blood on the corner of the sink, they are fresh and red, like the person had a bloody nose.
Whatever it is, it’s not Charles’s problem, he opens the bathroom door.
There is more blood, as if the little dots on the sink were a trailer to the horror show in the hallway, the door is propped open, the door is propped open by Vanessa’s body. Her white uniform is almost pure red and there’s a puddle slowly forming around her, her head is ducked and her face is covered by her hair.
He runs past her into the room, wrenching the door open as he does, behind him is a dull thunk of her head hitting the tiles.
The bed is empty, nurses swarm around him, around the blood on the floor that has been tracked through with too many boots, including Charles’s own to figure out the killer.
“No no no no”, he shakes his head fast and as he does so he notices the hole in the window.
It’s lined with blood and rips of fabric.
Charles pushes a nurse aside to peer out the window.
The body is there, her blonde hair frames her face like a halo, she’s naked and in her stomach are at least 6 bullet holes.
Charles does throw up then, he’s lucky that a hospital has so many trash cans.
His phone starts dinging.
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Max spins around as he half skips and half walks back to his apartment, he feels lighter than a feather, like a balloon with too much helium in it.
His last job, technically a continuation of the job before that, was an actual challenge and he is delighted, not the actual victims of course but the staff and security and getting the room number.
He feels like a kid on Christmas, not that he’s had a Christmas for forever, in fact, it’s more like a distant feeling than any sort of tangible memory, brightly coloured fairy lights blink at the corner of his brain.
Needless to say, he’s happy.
Max starts humming and laughing, he grabs the banister and spins himself around it.
He then promptly runs into someone face first.
“Oh shit are you ok?” They sound genuinely concerned even though Max has enough fight training that he barely moved and the guy is the one who stumbled back. Max nods and as he does so he takes in the person standing in front of him.
He’s really hot, Max is definitely staring but he doesn’t really care, the man stops fidgeting with his nose and looks up.
And then he smiles at Max and Oh.
There might be actual stars in the blonde’s eyes. “Someone’s excited, I’m Daniel by the way.”
What a perfect name, actually, everything about this guy is perfect. “Uh yeah, Um, a job went really well soo.” Max rubs a hand across the back of his neck and wonders if he’s blushing, his face feels hot but then again he’s never done well with sunlight of any kind, much less Monaguese summer sun.
Daniel on the other hand looks like he was born with the sun kissing his face and any other place it could reach, his tan is impeccable.
“Oh congrats!” Daniel sounds so genuinely excited, it confuses Max more than he’d care to admit.
He manages a shaky smile back. “Hey what’s your name?” And Max almost, almost says his real name before. “Leo.”
Daniel’s eyes do a funny thing and it makes Max’s stomach do a funny thing in turn.
“Well Leo, I don't recall ever seeing you around”. Daniel cocks his head to the side. “Yeah.” Max scrambles to come up with anything to say but he’s schooled himself enough that he knows his face is perfectly blank. “My work is pretty busy.” Thankfully Daniel doesn’t ask what he does.
“Well, give me your number and we can hang out sometime.” Daniel’s smile is casual but Max is suddenly consumed by all encompassing panic, he thinks of the one contact in his messages, he thinks that he doesn’t know what his number even is.
He thinks.
He wasn’t trained to think, he was raised to kill.
But here he is, with this beautiful man and a million thoughts going through his head at a million miles an hour.
Max doesn’t know what to do, he doesn’t know where to go from here, he is standing on a cliff that is surrounded by dark fog. This scares him, he is scared and in turn that makes him excited.
“Uhm my phone's dead but write your number down and I’ll text you when it’s charged.” Max fidgets with his hands and tries to smile in a way that doesn’t look nervous.
Daniel’s smile doesn’t falter for a second, he gets a pen from his pocket that seems a bit too convenient and reaches for Max’s hand.
The touch is electrifying, Max almost pulls away, instead he flicks his eyes up to look at Daniel and then flicks them back down to their hands, his own looks small and pale compared to Daniel.
His eyes are starting to sting. “Hey are you okay?” The curly haired man seems genuinely concerned, his smile dimming to something more sympathetic. Max nods.
“Yeah just.” He doesn’t have any sort of answer, instead he takes the hand that Daniel isn’t writing on and waves it around his head.
“Alright then, text me when you get the chance.” The taller man pats him on the shoulder and starts half jogging down the stairs, Max watches him until he disappears and then stares at the space on the stairs that Daniel occupied for a little bit longer.
He closes his eyes and sighs, relaxing his tense shoulders and loosely draping his arms around his stomach.
Max doesn’t remember the walk up to his apartment, he just sort of ends up there which is somewhat worrying, his little blank outs haven’t happened for a while, he chews his bottom lip.
It’s when he finally flops backwards on his bed that he actually starts crying, big ugly tears that he doesn’t try to wipe away, instead he just tucks his legs up to his chest and wraps his arms around them, his hand where Daniel wrote his number feels like it’s burning, his throat feels the ghost of hands squeezing around it and his back is covered in imaginary scratches.
What the fuck what the fuck whatthefuckwhatthefuck Max digs his hand into his hair and pulls, a warm trickle of blood makes it’s way down his scalp and into his eye.
Against his better judgement he looks at his other hand, messy handwriting in blue pen is there, the number had clearly been traced multiple times to show up, at the end is a messily drawn smiley face.
Max wails then, he digs his nails deep into his arms and wrists, scratches all the way from his elbow to his palms, he pulls his hair again and the blood from his scalp mixes with his tears in a salty red mess down his face.
He covers his face with his arms and half screams and half cries. His body shakes and he doesn’t know why, he doesn’t know how to stop it.
Max is scared. Max is scared of being scared.
There’s a knocking on his door, soft at first but now more like a pounding, Max doesn’t think about the blood on his arms and his face and goes to open it.
It’s Daniel and despite his best efforts, Max starts crying again.
Daniel’s eyes widen and take in the sight before him, he draws Max into his arms with zero hesitation, holding him tight despite the blood on him and how badly the shorter man is shaking.
They stay like that for who knows how long, Daniel sways side to side and Max closes his eyes and pretends he’s on a boat in the middle of the ocean where no one can reach him. His sobs turn slowly to hiccups, he shakes his head against Daniel’s shoulder, he relishes in Daniel's soft touches against his back, touches with no expectations, none of violence or anything else, it is touch simply to touch, to comfort.
“I’m sorry”, he murmurs, barely audible, he himself doesn’t know if the words are meant for Daniel, himself, or something else entirely, some long forgotten deity, maybe his mother.
Daniel shakes his head, the only reason Max knows is that it jostles his shoulder a bit.
“Let’s get you cleaned up”. To Max’s surprise they don’t go back into his apartment but rather start moving down the hall in a slightly awkward shuffle.
He hears his door close behind him, Daniel is still rubbing soft circles in his back. Max starts to breathe a little easier.
He is sat in a comfy armchair by Daniel, who pats him on the shoulder with a squeeze and goes off to make some sort of drink that will apparently make Max feel better.
Max notices the cat then, she (Because Max knows it’s a she and he can’t explain why) Is big and black and fluffy, her yellow eyes are slitted and she has an air of regalness to her, Max breath catches for a second.
“Pspsps”, her eyes lock on him and after a second of what seems like disdainful calculation she steps over towards him with slow deliberate pads.
Her fluffy black tail is almost as long as she is and the tail flicks in time with her steps.
When she’s at the foot of the chair she pauses for a minute, her eyes are wider now, Max widens his eyes in solidarity.
She hops into his lap with a little chirp. He gasps.
The cat spins around a few times before settling in a curled up position on his legs, she turns to Max, almost expectedly and flicks an ear.
Max very gently, reverently almost, places one hand on her back and strokes her.
“Aww, Ozzie likes you.” Daniel hands Max a mug of steaming hot chocolate, Max looks down at the cat and back up again. “Oh I thought it was a girl.” Daniel waves his hand that’s not holding his own mug. “She is, I just like classic rock.”
Ozzie starts purring and Max smiles, Daniel smiles back at him.
Even with the panic still clawing around his insides, he feels content, more content than he has in a long while.
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Charles’s heart had been pounding before, but after about 10 minutes of being yelled at it had kind of devolved back to normal, Lewis looks half asleep every time Charles glances over at him.
They both know they’re getting fired, now it’s just waiting out until Toto’s voice wears out, from the door of the conference room George watches and winces occasionally when Toto really lets loose with a particular insult, Charles is almost completely numb to it at this point, but he appreciates the solidarity nonetheless. Toto seems to be running out of steam, closing his eyes more and taking big huffing breaths.
Finally he sits down and puts his head in his hands. Lewis opens his eyes. Toto groans. “Go, I don’t even want to look at you anymore, just, George help them get their things”. He waves his hand in George’s general direction and then makes a shooing gesture to the two former detectives sitting in front of him.
They leave silently, less for their benefit then Toto’s, who might be having a migraine. George lets them pass and Charles notices the Monster Energy held in his hand. “How many of those have you had?” George hums in question and Charles points down at the can.
“Oh, like 6 I think?” Lewis spins around so fast. “How are you still alive?” His eyes are bugging out of his head in incredulous disbelief. George just shrugs like he didn’t just reveal that he’s drunk enough of those things to kill an elephant.
George sighs, “you guys are the unemployed ones stop worrying about me”. Lewis still gently takes the drink from George’s hand and throws it in a passing trash can. “It’ll be fine,” Charles grins, “I’m too invested in this.” Lewis blinks at him, “You’re going to keep investigating?” The three reach the room they’ve commandeered as their office, George wrinkles his nose and pulls his chair closer to his body.
“Yep.” Charles pops the “P” and places his hands on his hips, surveying the mess. Lewis, to everyones surprise, starts laughing. “Yeah sure, I’ll help”.
Charles spins and now it’s his turn to bug his eyes out. Lewis seems to have control over himself but when he sees Charles’s expression he starts laughing again, big guffaws that take up all his air.
Charles and George share a look, Charles a little affronted and a little concerned, George mildly amused. “Well yeah.” Lewis shrugs, “I have nothing better to do and I know where we can do it.” George butts in with a polite cough. “May I help?” He asks almost shyly. Both men blink at him, Charles has the odd feeling that he’s approaching a stray cat in an alleyway, his hands twitch like he’s about to put them up in surrender. Instead he nods, George’s smile is small but bright.
“I’m still employed, I can get you copies of everything”.
“You’d do that?” Lewis’s whisper is full of appreciation and awe, George nods. They stand in silence for a minute before Lewis jumps. “Oh I know a guy who can help!” He grins almost menacingly.
“Can we trust him?” Charles crosses his arms, Lewis waves him off while simultaneously trying to pull his phone out from his back pocket. “Yeah definitely, OK I’ll text you guys the address, show up tomorrow at like lunch?”
Charles’s own phone dings, he grins, he feels like when he was a teenager skipping school, George rolls his eyes and starts taking pictures of all the evidence they can’t take with them, which is to say, all the evidence. Charles takes out his phone and does the same, Lewis keeps lookout.
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The next day is far too bright and sunny in Charles’s opinion but he greets it anyways with excitement, even though he woke up at a frankly ungodly time because he forgot he was now without a job and set his usual alarm, he is still burning with almost unnartural excitement.
He tries to watch TV or read or anything to make the time go faster, in the end he settles on making 4 sandwiches, even though he’s unsure whether the guy that Lewis apparently knows will be there or not, extra sandwiches are in no way a bad thing, not in Charles’s opinion.
He spends the last 20 or so minutes before he leaves tapping his finger on his counter and staring off into space.
FInally he packs his computers and notebooks and phone and chargers and the sandwiches in his bag and steps out of his apartment. The pile of stuff his neighbours keep adding too in the hallway has grown an alarming amount, so much so that Charles has to hop over it.
He follows the directions on his phone to another apartment building where George is standing outside.
They stand together in comfortable silence for a minute before Lewis comes running up the stairs to the basement. Out of the corner of his eye Charles can see George aggressively wrinkling his nose.
“Hey, glad you could make it, come on, Yuki will be here soon.” Yuki is “the guy” Charles can only presume.
They follow Lewis down the stairs while he explains the building and the history and other things Charles doesn’t care about. He only starts paying attention when Lewis tells them the code to the big door that separates where they will be working from the rest of the apartment and the rest of the world.
Inside is actually pretty nice, there’s a big board set up on one wall and Two desks pushed together, as well as a few extra chairs, there’s a printer in one corner of the room.
George does a little spinaround and seems to deem it, while cramped, acceptable. He sits in one of the extra chairs and crosses one ankle over the other delicately.
Charles sits at one of the desks and pulls out his computers to get them connected when someone knocks on the door.
Immediately the atmosphere is tense, Lewis puts on a shaky smile but no one makes any move to open the door and Charles has the sudden realisation that everything they are doing is quite a bit illegal.
The knocking starts again, then stops and then. “Lewis it’s me I forgot the password.”
Lewis actually smiles then and wrenches open the door with such force that the person on the other side almost falls forward.
For a second Charles thinks it’s a kid and is about to say ‘no’ because Charles doesn’t have many morals, but not putting kids in danger is one that he will abide by till his death.
It’s only when the guy stands up fully that Charles realises he’s just really short.
That sounds mean even in his head, but he did just say that he doesn’t have morals.
The guy grins and takes in the room, Charles, and George all in the span of a second and yet Charles has the eerie feeling that he knows more about him then Charles does himself.
“Hi I’m Yuki”. He says, “this is gonna be fun.”