[fic] Their Mouths Always Lie 4/9

[keire_ke]

CHAPTER FOUR - maps of flesh

Charles splayed his fingers, letting them sink into the thick carpet, while Miss Frost did the official preliminary on the body. He was still down on the floor when she deemed it safe to take the victim to the station and Hank took to working through the room inch by carpeted inch, taking photos and snatching pieces of hair from the floor for closer examination. Erik was going through Mr. Zhang’s wallet, laptop and phone, making notes on a piece of paper he swiped from the printer. He shouldn’t have done that, Charles thought, making a mental note to admonish him later. He had been smart enough to take a page from the bottom of the pile, but it still belonged to a crime scene, and thus should have remained undisturbed.

Alex was standing in the corner, wearing an expression of fierce bravery and false cheer. He’d been like this ever since Darwin was shot last Thursday. The paramedics got to him in time, and the prospects were hopeful - full return of motor function to his left arm - given that he already showed an exceptional aptitude for recovery, but Alex took the bullet as hard as though it had hit him. He fought the glum and depression with the aid of masks which slipped his face the moment no one was looking.

Charles put Alex out of his mind. Time for comforting had come and went, and even if it hadn’t, it wasn’t now. He sat there, on the floor by the bed, and breathed, letting the action clear his mental landscape of everything but what was physically in front of him. The inside of his head was no different than the laboratory. The smell and touch and sight combined couldn’t lie, because lie was the invention of a human mind. A crime scene was like a magician’s show: sleight of hand and apparition was nothing but setting up the facts, so that, when put together, magic happened. Just like in a murder, the clever use of a prop disguised and revealed. The trick, in both cases, was to recognize the fact for what it was.

The scent of roses wafted through his nostrils, another fact to add to his mental collage, but there was also something else there, something elusive that he couldn’t quite identify. He bowed low over the carped, breathing in. Familiar. Intensely familiar. Why couldn’t he pin it down?

“Time of death is about six, give or take an hour.” Miss Frost turned to him. “Cause of death seems to be blood loss. Same marks on the wrists, I’d say just as deep as they were on Mr. Tojo. Off-hand, the same murder weapon. No outward sign of struggle.”

“Thank you,” Charles said, barely listening. The show, oh yes, the spectacle of the crime scene was important. The law was powerless until the dance was completed, every arabesque and pirouette, and so Charles danced, even though the spinning made him nauseous.

What was this smell?

“The majority of the calls are to and from Lili.” Erik’s voice hulked through the hazy mist of frustration which started to build up in Charles’ mind. In his hand there was a picture of two nearly identical faces. “I presume this is his sister.”

“We should speak to her now.” Charles unfolded from the floor, abandoning the chasing of memory for a later time. “Hank, I will want all the pictures and the preliminary findings on my desk when I get back.”

Hank started and scrambled for his equipment, when it threatened to escape his hands. “Yes sir.”

“Good luck,” Charles told him, before turning to Erik. “Do you have her address?”

Erik returned to the laptop and scrolled through the emails displayed on the screen. “Most of her emails are from her work account. The company address is one-three-seven Broadway.” He switched between windows and typed something into the Facebook page. “She’s a lawyer, but she owns and manages an advertising company.”

“It’s only a few blocks away. Do you want to walk?” Charles asked, brushing off the rose petal which stuck to his knee. Erik winced at the question.

“Moira called. She wants us to see the psychiatrist before we go anywhere else.”

Charles echoed the wince. How could he not, when… “Poor Wesley. Why?”

“Apparently shooting criminals is a sign of instability now. The mayor wants to make sure I won’t try anything extreme, like arresting them.” Erik’s crooked smile made short work of any doubts still hovering around Charles’ mind. He smiled back, no less impishly, and shoved his hands into his pockets.

“Well, he is right to worry,” he told Erik quietly, so that no rumors made it out of the crime scene. “He has a penchant for young girls and the man you shot was arrested and sentenced for harassing a girl who turned out to be underage.”

Erik gave him a long look, which Charles quickly waved away. “He is not a pedophile. He likes his lovers young, but he means twenties rather than teens. It still makes some people uncomfortable, but they are always willing, and in many cases handsomely paid.” The very last part Charles all but breathed into Erik’s ear, first making sure neither Hank nor Alex were close enough to hear.

Erik’s reply was to shake his head in dismay. “How is that no one had you assassinated yet?” he asked, effectively conveying his fondness for death-defying stunts, such as knowing far more than was healthy for any one man. Charles found himself returning the affection easily.

“Most people think I have a contingency plan for such an eventuality,” he said, ducking his head.

“Do you?”

Charles smiled. “No.”

*****

Doctor Wesley Gibson resided two blocks down, in a tastefully arranged office on the first floor of a building which screamed “expensive! Modest! Important! Be jealous!”. Even the plaque on the door was expensive and superiorly modest about it. Given the introduction Erik expected a middle-aged man, clad in expensive suits and with greying hair falling into smugly superior eyes. As it turned out, Erik’s first impression of the man was that he resembled Charles to an unfortunate degree, if Charles ever showed the fright of a small, cornered animal. He had the same brown hair, although his was tousled rather than neatly combed, bright blue eyes and a red mouth.

Erik’s second impression was of Wesley Gibson, M.D., PhD, was of an empty leather chair, which was a big clue that his resemblance to Charles began and ended with physical.

“Oh, Wesley,” Charles said when Wesley’s secretary, a beautiful, wild-looking woman with more tattoos than most marines, closed the doors behind them both. “Come out.”

“The commissioner said I’m to expect a Mr. Lehnsherr,” came the voice from underneath the desk. “Unless you changed your name and land of origins lately, I’m busy. In fact, if you did, I’m still busy!”

“There’s a Mr. Lehnsherr present,” Erik said, raising his hand in a fairly redundant gesture, since the man it was meant for was still under his massive desk.

“She didn’t mention you!” the desk exclaimed and shuddered, as only expensive oak can.

“Erik is my new partner, Wesley.” Charles spoke softly, as though he was soothing a scared rat. Erik listened and pretended that hearing the warm tone in which Charles called him “partner” wasn’t shamefully thrilling. “He’s serving in an unofficial capacity, as he has no experience with police work, so Moira sent us both. We thought the joint session would be beneficial for everyone.”

Wesley appeared over the edge of his desk, a little flushed and a whole lot embarrassed, very much resembling a scared rodent. He was staring at Charles accusingly. “I thought I said I don’t want to see you ever again. I screamed and flailed. I thought you got the message.”

“I have orders, unfortunately.” Charles took a seat. “Shall we begin?”

Erik followed his example and smiled politely at the harrowed psychiatrist, taking care not to show any teeth. Most psychiatrists found that unnerving.

“This is highly unorthodox, you understand,” Wesley said, running a hand through his hair. He was about Charles’ age, maybe a few years older, though there were fewer lines on his face and less grey in his hair. “I don’t do couple’s therapy. I specialize in PTSD.”

Erik watched Charles at his least threatening, which was not much different from his usual ambience, offering Wesley his bared wrists and splayed palms. “I’m sure you can manage. Where would you like to begin?”

Wesley sighed. “Alright. Why are you here? Did you make Don Francesco cry? Because as far as I recall you were warned not to do that again. Not that I’m not grateful, mind, the man pays for the office and expenses and I still have enough left over to dine at the Savoy every night.”

“It’s my pleasure, as always.”

“Right.” Wesley mussed up his hair one more time, to no effect whatsoever, and picked up a leather-bound notebook. “So what have you done this time?”

Charles turned to Erik with a merry twinkle in his very blue eyes. Erik took it as a cue to speak up. “I pushed a civilian off the roof. Well, jumped off the roof with a civilian, but the intention was for him to jump, not me. I plead prop on this one. Then last week I shot a man dead in the middle of the police station. I shot him in the head.” He allowed for a moment of silence, to allow the mental pictures to form properly, before adding, “In my defense he was holding a gun to Charles’ eye socket at the time.”

Wesley stared with his mouth open. His face was steadily turning into a tomato. “Oh god, now there’s two of you. I quit. No, seriously. Tell MacTaggart she can go to hell. I quit!” He got up from behind his desk and started pacing around the office, muttering curses under his breath. He was swiftly progressing into incoherence, unless Erik’s understanding of the local phenomena was severely lacking and devil-headed chickens were likely to make an appearance.

“Should we leave him alone?” Erik asked Charles, when the mumbling became ranting.

“Yes, I think so.”

They picked up their jackets and made for the door. “Wesley, Moira will expect the evaluation in a few days,” Charles said from the door. His only reply was a string of intelligible noises. “He’ll be fine, really,” he added in Erik’s direction. “He’s used to me.”

“What did you do to the kid?” Erik wondered in amusement and perhaps a little pity, too.

“He has quite a successful practice, I’ll have you know. He wasn’t kidding with the dining at the Savoy. He is very good. It’s just… he started off as a police psychiatrist, and unfortunately I was one of his first patients.” A deep flush stained his cheeks, causing no end to conflicting feelings. On one hand, Erik couldn’t wait to hear that story. On the other, Charles was red and miserable and that was an upsetting sight. “I was a little angry at the time, at the world in general and at the police. I hated the fact I had to work at the station. Then they told me I was unbalanced and if I wanted to keep working in law enforcement, I needed to see a psychiatrist on a regular basis.” Charles stuttered to a stop and stared at the wall opposite. “I went to the library and started reading. You can imagine that when I walked into the first session I, well. I took all of my frustration out on poor Wesley.”

Why would you keep working at the station, if you didn’t want to? Erik thought, and didn’t ask. For the time being he could imagine all too well what it must have been like: an angry, hyper-intelligent, over-educated boy, made to suffer through the cure to the common mind. “Were you fifteen?” he asked, with just enough irony infusing his voice to keep the conversation light. Charles smiled at him and shook his head.

“Twenty-four, which may as well have been fifteen, in terms of my emotional development. Sadly, long years of being ahead of my peers in terms of intellect left me lacking in other crucial areas.”

“You seem to have gotten over it.”

“I’m very smart,” Charles said. “I’m capable of learning.”

*****

Quarter of an hour after they learned Wesley’s office Charles was showing his badge to a blond receptionist (European origins - Slavic parents, second generation immigrants, studied on the West Coast, fan of football and curling, recently married, potential pregnancy on the horizon caused the nervous habit of biting nails to return), who, after a short phone call, directed them to the top floor, where, among the sculptures and posters, they found the sister of their most recent victim.

“Miss Zhang?” Charles asked.

The woman rose from behind her desk and came to greet them mid-office. “Good morning, detective. May I help you?”

“I’m afraid we have bad news, ma’am. Your brother was found dead in his apartment this morning.”

She paled. Charles still held her hand as she swallowed nervously and brought her other hand to her face. Her pulse raced; her chest heaved with every caught breath. She opened her eyes wide and stepped into Charles’ personal space, as though it would make him more truthful. “What happened? He was healthy, he didn’t… He had a checkup the other month, he was fine! What happened?”

“He was murdered. We are sorry for your loss, Miss Zhang.” Charles kept holding her wrist, letting the beats drum in the back of his head: blood and clock, clock and blood.

She nodded dumbly, fighting the gasps and the thrumming heart.

“Are you well enough to answer a few questions?” Erik asked. Charles cast a quick look at him, solemn and imposing at his shoulder, his arms folded behind his back, yet still sympathetic. He would make a fine detective, he thought.

“I’ll be happy to help you, but if you want to invite me to the station I will take my lawyer with me,” she said firmly, taking her hand back. She was still very pale and the green make-up adorning her eyes stood out all the more strongly in comparison. She didn’t cry, but it was only a matter of time. Her throat was convulsing with the need to let out the pain and anger that a sudden death of a loved one inevitably begets, but she was in control now.

“Here is fine.” Charles touched her elbow and gently led her back to her chair, while Erik fetched extra seats for them.

“May I see Chen first?” Miss Zhang folded her hands atop her desk, unfolded them, to swipe a handful of papers to the side, then immediately clutched her palms together again.

“I’ll be happy to drive you to the station, but if we could talk first, it would hurry things up.”

“How did he die?”

“Peacefully.” Charles shook his head. “He didn’t suffer at all. I’m certain he didn’t even know he was dying.”

She nodded and though her shoulders still shook. This was one of the better news of murder Charles ever had to break to anyone, as it was one of the few he could honestly say the victim wasn’t subject to terror or pain. This was, admittedly, a small comfort in the face of lives lost, but it was something.

“Now, Miss Zhang,” he said. “When was the last time you saw your brother?”

“Sunday evening. We had dinner. I spoke to him last night on the phone.”

“How did he sound? Did you notice anything unusual?”

“Fine. Normal. Nothing seemed wrong.” Her gaze kept returning to her clasped hands and the bracelet on her wrist - a gift from her brother, no doubt - and she spoke with conviction only a lawyer questioned about the details of a conversation can. “Nothing he mentioned seemed out of place. He’d met up with his ex-boyfriend - they broke up a few weeks back, but things have been going bad there for a while and the breakup was civilized, so he wasn’t too down about it. I didn’t think it was important.”

“Can we have the boyfriend’s name and address?” Charles asked.

“Of course.” Miss Zhang pulled out her phone and jotted down both on a piece of paper.

“Can you think of anyone else your brother might have had issues with? Anyone who might gain anything from his death?”

“I’m his only family. I don’t think Chen has a will.”

Charles leaned forward. “I’m sorry, ma’am, truly, but I have to ask - where were you last night around one a.m.?”

Miss Zhang straightened her back, looked Charles in the eye and said, “At home with my boyfriend. We stayed up late watching House reruns.”

“I’m going to need his contact details, too.”

“Naturally.” Another small piece of paper joined the first. “Is there anything else I can do to help?”

Though he had the names and numbers memorized, Charles pocketed the notes anyway. “Thank you. I will give you a call when you can see your brother, if that’s alright. You should go home now, have a cup of tea.”

“Thank you, detective.”

They left her with her head bowed down in grief over the desk.

“Anything?” Erik asked as soon as they were back on the street.

“Well, either she is the greatest actress who ever lived, or she is sincere, though I lean towards the latter. She would have to be quite extraordinary to fool me, and she gave up a law career because of her lack of poker face.”

Erik watched him. “You are quite the conceited bastard, did you know?”

“I try.” Charles tilted his head, until all he could see was the sky. “Which of the boyfriends do you want to talk to first?”

Both turned out to be a bust. Miss Zhang’s boyfriend corroborated her story; he couldn’t recall anything which could aid the investigation. Charles couldn’t even sic Erik on him, because the man was genuinely upset by the news. Mr. Zhang’s ex was just as shocked by his murder, and despite the back breakup had burst into tears. He had no verifiable alibi, but given the bad break of the tibia he sustained in the recent year and weak joints, there was no way he would have been able to manage the physical work the murder necessitated.

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Levi.” Charles said, leaving the man to his grief.

“No leads?” Erik asked when they were walking down the stairs.

“Nothing whatsoever.”

How could it be, he wondered, that two murders were committed and he had no leads, not even a hint of a direction in which to follow? Something must have been left at the scene, he thought frantically, running through the snapshots in his mind frantically. Neither of the victims had fought their attacker. Neither of them had showed any signs of violence. Both had died peacefully. Their apartments had not been broken in. The video feeds were tampered with - the murderer had disabled the cameras on the relevant floor and deleted the footage of the lobby around the time of the murder. No one saw anything suspicious. It was like they were dealing with a ghost.

Or, admittedly, a highly-trained soldier of the special forces with extra skills in espionage.

Charles considered the closest specimen possessing all the traits he could lay his eyes on. Erik was watching the sky with his head tilted back, silent, until he wasn’t. “Is there a synagogue somewhere in the city?”

“Yes: seven. The nearest is about a mile from here, south-east. Corner of Thirty-Ninth, you can’t miss it. There should be a service starting in thirty-five minutes, if memory serves.”

Erik ceased pigeon watching at looked at Charles. “Do you want to go with me?”

The calendar whirled across Charles’ mind. It was nearly a year ago today that Erik requested an urgent leave of absence from the army, for personal reasons. A month ago he was already here, in good enough mental condition, so, factoring in the cavalier attitude to life, it added up to… “Oh,” Charles said. “I’m so sorry. This would be the Yahrzeit, yes? Your wife?”

“Schneim asar chodesh,” Erik corrected patiently. “My mother and my daughter. Today is the first anniversary.”

Charles hadn’t known. That was his first thought, he realized in dismay. He hadn’t known Erik had had a child and lost her. Asking about a wife was a reflex, but he’d been nearly certain that whatever partners Erik had, none have lasted for long, or made a particular impression. A family, though, a child… “I’d love to go.”

Erik didn’t quite smile, but there was something in his expression that made Charles leave all thought of the investigation behind and follow at a sedate pace. He didn’t want to share details, perhaps he never would, but Charles was, surprisingly, not the prying type. He knew enough, he reasoned: why should he scramble for more knowledge?

He reconsidered when they got to the temple and he took a place in the pews in the back. There were only about seventy people there - the temple could seat half a thousand - and they stood out in the crowd, by virtue of being under forty and over fifteen years old. The children, especially, were staring at him, when he didn’t pick up the songs. Three of the particularly avid starers grew up in orthodox families, and were only now spreading their wings in less strict environments. The girls were glowing with giddiness, running their hands over the pews’ back, as though they still couldn’t believe they were there. They were sisters, a year or two apart in age. Grew up in Israel. Their friend was local, though he, too, had escaped the tradition and the escape his weighed heavily on his shoulders.

Charles shook his head when the rabbi raised his open palms and announced the Kaddish. Erik had stirred for the first time since the service began, and stood, along with a handful of others, resting his slender fingers on the backrest of the pew before him.

Erik’s mother had been a lovely woman, Charles thought, as he sat in the synagogue, listening to the heartfelt prayer. It showed in every syllable Erik uttered how much he missed her. His little girl, though… Her death had broken his heart so thoroughly there was no hope of it ever being whole again.

“Oseh shalom bimromav hu berakhamav yaʻase shalom ʻalenu,” Erik was reciting in stilted Arameic, genuine in his yearlong grief, and Charles couldn’t help but worry, because around the grief there was anger, clinging to its edges like oil clings to the wings of a bird. It was not new and it wasn’t fading - even twelve months later it burned as though it’d been set aflame yesterday.

*****

The gun was a comfort, pressed against his thigh. Erik wiped a hand across his face and peered through the visor.

“Charles,” he said, opening the door. “This is a surprise.”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I know it’s late, but I had this thought, I need to bounce ideas off someone.”

He needed to bounce his head off the wall, more likely, but that was neither here nor there, Erik thought, even as he stepped away and let Charles inside. He should throw him out, but he was gazing up and Erik with such hope, Erik couldn’t even think of rejecting him. “We work together every day. Couldn’t this have waited?”

Charles hesitated. “It is quite unorthodox. I was hoping to… Well.” The muscles in his neck shifted and Charles stood up straighter. “I need to ask you some questions. About your past in the army. About your skills. I know what I know, but I have relatively little experience there. I thought I needed some outside input.”

This was the kind of situation in which anyone sane would have demanded a lawyer. “Am I under arrest?”

Charles projected astonishment like a seasoned Broadway star. “Of course not.”

“But you suspect me.”

“Of course.” Charles’ eyes were bright and guileless, and fuck it all, how was he not surprised? The idiot walked into the apartment of a man he kind of suspected of cold-blooded murder and asked to have his suspicions confirmed. It boggled the mind. “It’s nothing personal, you understand. It has little to do with you.”

“You are suspecting I might have murdered two people in their own bedrooms. I dare say that is pretty personal and has everything to do with me,” he said with little fire in his voice.

“No. Erik, no! The city is big; there could be dozens, hundreds of people better fitting the profile, people who make more sense. Messrs. Tojo and Zhang were both relatively sociable; they might have met each other once or twice on neutral ground. There’s no ruling out the fact that there may be a connection and you, you make no sense as the culprit in that light.”

“Thank you, I suppose.”

“It doesn’t mean, that you are innocent, you understand. I can’t simply rule you out.” Charles flailed. His hands hid in his pockets, then crept out to hang loosely at his sides, then hid again. “Still, I’m positive you could have been the murderer, which is why I need to speak with you.”

Translation: Charles didn’t want to suspect him, but he did, which was why he was here, asking those questions outside of work hours and outside his official capacity. Erik sniggered at the utter idiocy of it all, but gestured for the detective to continue.

“I’ve been turning it over and over in my head and something feels wrong.” No kidding, Erik thought. Charles barely spoke in the days since they found the second victim, too. No wonder he needed to finally let it out. “The thing is, these murders make no sense. The victims share a superficial similarity only, there’s nothing that binds them together.”

“They are both rich, Asian, working in jobs beneath their social status. Little family, unattached, in both cases less than five immediate family members,” Erik said. “That’s enough of a type.” If he was browsing through Facebook profiles, that was.

“Exactly! It’s obvious. It’s so obvious you couldn’t have missed it if you tried. Three thousand other men in the city could have been on Emma’s table because of it, why these two?” Charles shook his head and his hands did a complicated dance, culminating in his fingertips touching and then curling downward into fists. With his hands clutched to his chest, Charles continued, “But that’s not even it. The part that doesn’t make sense to me is this: they were wealthy and they were kind, but they had no power. They hold minor positions in companies they could own, or have owned, or just don’t feel like owning. They were generous and small, for a lack of a better word. How could they have made any enemies?”

“Every man has enemies.” In Erik’s case, many. In Charles case… Erik allowed himself a second of complete lack of charity, and the words that flew into his mind said, “everyone he’s ever spoken to.”

“Yes, but not the kind of enemies who go murdering with such efficacy. They are barely even pencil pushers! Compared to who they could be, I mean. It’s like their whole lives revolved around making themselves as small as possible.”

Erik shrugged. “Maybe that’s the problem.”

“To whom? What company doesn’t relish having the owner sit back and let others look after it? What company owned through inheritance and names doesn’t dream of having an owner who wasn’t born into business, but entered it willingly to sustain and build it up?” Charles was rolling his eyes as he spoke and his gesturing gained ebullience with alarming speed. “They were far enough removed from the source of their finances that their deaths changed hardly anything. Mr. Zhang was living primarily off a trust fund, which will now be halved between his sister and a handful of charities. Mr. Tojo had little say in the company’s business by his own choice. In both cases the person standing to inherit is genuinely upset and, more importantly, doesn’t need any more money. Miss Zhang has her own trust fund and a successful career; if anything she is richer than Mr. Zhang. She cares for money enough to pay close attention to it, but not so much she would dedicate herself to the pursuit of it, even though the options are available to her. No one else stands to get enough to justify the murders.”

“People kill for as little as a bowl of soup. Or less.” People kill for no reason whatsoever, in Erik’s extensive experience.

“Don’t be obtuse,” Charles scoffed. “Of course that’s enough. One doesn’t need a real reason to kill another human being. It’s not the case here. There is a purpose to the murders, you can’t tell me you don’t see it. The killer is after something specific. He has a plan, one he is willing to put effort in.”

Then, Charles stopped talking. He was standing in the middle of the room and looked around for the first time, taking in as much as the reading lamp allowed. All the air left his lungs. “Erik…” he said softly, seeking out Erik’s gaze with his.

“Stop it.”

“It’s… Erik.”

Erik escaped to the kitchen and the little protection if offered. He had a bottle of scotch in the cupboards, which he hadn’t had the time to break into yet. “Whiskey?”

“Please.” Charles remained where he stood, turning sixty degrees every ten seconds, taking in every inch of the pristine walls, the mattress and the covers lined on it with military precision, despite the indentation in the middle; the gun on its side and a stack of books on the naked floorboards. There was nothing else in the apartment to look at. Erik was well aware of how empty his place was and now Charles was too.

Well, Erik though, it’s not like he doesn’t already suspect me, even if he’s too much of a Charles to mention it in quite those terms.

“Sorry, no ice,” he said, holding out a glass with two fingers of scotch.

“I prefer it straight up.”

Erik clinked his glass against Charles’ and took a sip.

“Good choice,” Charles said. Then, because he really didn’t know better, he added “It was a gift, wasn’t it?”

Erik didn’t bother playing along with the surprise game. “Going away gift from my commanding officer.”

“You were close?”

“I hated him, personally. I thought he was a sadistic fuck. He was an excellent commander though. He had more medals than I had kills for his successes.”

“It’s good whiskey,” Charles said, staring into the glass as though all of Erik’s secrets were hiding on the bottom.

“I know. He has excellent taste.” It was one of the many things Erik found unsettling about the man. He rarely voiced his misgivings. Sebastian had excellent press and better connections. A nobody like Erik was not entitled to an opinion.

Charles sipped, slurping only a little, as he stared at the window and the darkening grey of the sky outside. Most people had the lights on by now, but Erik preferred his apartment in the shadows. The white of the walls hurt his eyes; it was too much like a hospital. He allowed himself the reading lamp, to ease up the strain, and that was it, unless he was doing something which demanded particular attention to visuals. Charles didn’t seem to mind the half-light, considering the way his posture relaxed the longer he was standing there, in front of Erik’s window, gazing out and whatever it is he saw when he looked at the city at night. There was a pale patch of skin visible beneath his ear and above the collar of his shirt, nearly translucent in the moonlight. Erik imagined seeing the pulse that beat there. He imagined a great many things.

“We should paint your apartment.” Charles tried to put down the tumbler, but of course there was nothing to drop it on. He held on to the glass by a sheer miracle, and cradled it in his hands to prevent a disaster.

“Now?” Erik asked, taken aback for once, because Charles seemed ready to walk out of the door this very minute, as though he had paint and brushes waiting for him in the car. Of all the things he expected to hear this wasn’t it.

“Well, why not? You weren’t going to sleep, anyway.” Of course, Charles operated on a whole another set of directives. It probably made sense in the world of the super-sane.

Erik let his hands fall. He downed the glass and set it on the bar. “True.”

“So?”

“I don’t have any paint.”

Charles beamed. “I have a car downstairs. There’s a DIY store not far from here.”

Erik would have made a show of tapping his watch, if he was wearing a watch and thought it would do much good. “It’s seven.”

“The store will be open for another hour, then.” Charles was staring at him expectantly and Erik thought, whatever. It wasn’t like he had alternative plans.

“Sure, why not.”

Charles got them to the door of the store in under seven minutes, heedless of traffic and pedestrians. Given that two old ladies were waving something gun-shaped in their direction, Erik had to admit this was a sound strategy.

Charles parked neatly within the narrow borders of the white lines, taking his time to align the front bumper with the curb, and immediately wandered inside, making a beeline for the shelves of paint, leaving Erik to collect a stroller, solvent and tarp. Charles blinked at the contents of the basket when Erik found him contemplating the yellows. Erik immediately knew he had never painted anything in his life. At least, he amended quickly, never anything bigger than Raven’s fingernails, given how comfortable they seemed to be with each other’s touch. “I like the floor,” he offered as explanation, enjoying the pink flush which blossomed across Charles’ cheeks.

“Oh! Of course, sorry.”

“You don’t dabble in interior decoration, do you?”

“No, I’m afraid not. Raven handles our apartment, and she usually hires contractors. I don’t get involved.”

“What were you thinking?” Erik asked, indicating the cans, even if his mind wandered to the short, pleated skirt, the thigh-high stockings and what it implied for the apartment’s decor.

Charles was aghast. “It is your place.”

“I don’t really care.”

“But you hate the white.”

“It’s an eyesore, but I’m barely there, anyway.” Except he was spending the nights there, and the motivation to go out in the evenings had yet to appear. Erik read plenty, but most of the time he just stared, at whatever happened to be in his field of vision. Sometimes it was a half-full bottle. Sometimes the walls.

“A comfortable apartment is important,” Charles said stubbornly, setting his jaw and turning a can of beige paint over, as though this beige was any different from the seven other beiges with vastly different labels next to it.

Erik found it adorable, that they were pretending it was about the apartment. “How about purple?”

Charles put the beige back onto the shelf and moved down the alley, where the colors had names that meant things to Erik. “Do you like purple?” he asked, tapping a can of camellia pink.

“It’s a color. I don’t have feelings on the subject.”

Charles took this as consent, because they ended up picking up two gallons of royal purple paint, two brushes, two rollers, a tray and a roll of masking tape. On the way home Erik also picked up a crate of beer.

It took them an hour to arrange the tarp to Charles’ satisfaction, using the tape and Erik’s service knife in lieu of scissors. They moved the mattress to the kitchen and covered it with a leftover piece of tarp, which Charles insisted was just a precaution, but Erik, though he never painted anything after he finished fifth grade, had an inkling he would be grateful for it once the battle for the walls commenced.

The instructions printed on the side of the can were deceptively simple. Some kind soul included pictures of rollers and trays, which implied the process violated laws of thermodynamics by happening spontaneously. Naturally, five minutes later they were both splattered up to the elbows. Charles had wisely discarded his jacket, which, Erik discovered with some surprise when he hanged it in the closet, had a discreet designer label sewn into its collar.

He never paid particular attention to what Charles was wearing, but he had an inkling that most of Charles’ clothes that he’d seen had fit him too well to have come from a department store. Not to mention his shoes, which gave the impression that the pig they were made of, while it was alive, wouldn’t deign to oink, but would be more likely to glare at the offender snidely until he or she supplied gloop. It was one thing, however, to admire the fine tailoring of Charles’ pants, it was something quite different to find that he recognized the brand as something he knew he couldn’t afford.

Interesting.

“This is harder than I was led to believe,” Charles said, wiping his hands on his pants, leaving indelible purple smudges across his thighs, and rolling up the sleeves of his shirt.

“It was your idea,” Erik pointed out, holding his roller over the tray while it dripped.

“I’m never going to forget that.” Charles glided the roller across the tray and put it to the wall. A few cautious swipes later he paused and cursed. “I’m afraid we underestimated our own height.” No matter how he tried, the furthest he could reach was still two feet short of the ceiling, and Erik wasn’t that much taller. There would be a white stripe between the purple and the ceiling, no matter what they did, and given their collected skills it wouldn’t be level.

Erik laughed.

“I fail to see the humor. We should get a ladder.” Charles was pouting as he stubbornly pressed his roller against the white, leaving purple stripes in its wake. The downcast curve of his mouth was so miserable Erik couldn’t help but pet his hair.

“Forget it,” he said with his fingers lightly pressed against Charles’ skull. “It’ll work just fine.”

They got the hang of it, eventually; two hours later they were down six beers, but the three walls, barring the one that contained the kitchen, were covered in sticky purple paint.

“It looks awful,” Erik said honestly, popping another can of beer and taking a hearty swig.

“It does not!”

“Do you keep your eyes open when your head is turned towards the wall?”

Charles grimaced. “It does, doesn’t it? I’m so sorry. I’ll get Raven to come in, she does amazing things with interior decoration, she really does. She’ll pick something better for you, and I promise I will have it painted.”

Erik shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. It’ll do.”

“It could look better.”

“It’s purple, Charles. It couldn’t look worse.”

“It could look better,” Charles repeated stubbornly, dropping the roller onto the tray. “Don’t you think so?”

Erik took a moment to consider. He stared at the purple walls, with an uneven stripe connecting them to the white ceiling, at the tarp, and then Charles in the middle of it all. He took in the vivid purple freckles all over his hands and even his earnest face, and arrived at the conclusion that the apartment had never looked better. “I like it as it is,” he drawled and grinned, which might have accounted for the incredulity Charles regarded him with.

“It looks hideous!”

“Perhaps.”

“You’re a horrible person.”

“You’re the one who insisted on painting the walls.”

All pretense of banter drained out of Charles, almost like there was a plug in the great big bath of humor somewhere in his brain. “Because it was far too bleak, my friend,” he said.

Erik shrugged, which inexplicably resulted in his shirt coming off, so threw it into the kitchen. The alcohol gave him a pleasant, warm buzz, one that loathed to be contained by clothes. The wife-beater was enough to maintain a standard of decency, not that he needed any, at this point. “Let’s finish this up.”

Charles didn’t move. Erik grabbed the empty can out of his hand and shook it pointedly. Charles was staring at his shoulder, as if hypnotized. It was only when Erik cleared his throat that he blinked and averted his gaze. “Sorry. Sorry. It’s just…”

Erik brought up a hand to follow Charles’ gaze, to feel the puckered tissue there. “My very first mission. I was shot.” He understood Charles’ expression - the scar was nasty, far longer than it should have been, when it was only from a bullet, strewn with darker lines. “Then, admittedly, had gravel ground into the wound. I didn’t get a chance to get it cleaned properly until after it started healing.”

“Didn’t you want to have it removed?”

Erik snorted. City boys were precious. “Scars are nothing to be afraid of.”

Charles chuckled, dismissing the unsaid insult with a casual wave of his hand. “Oh, I know. I have a few myself. This just looks like it might go deep enough to limit your movement, it’s all.”

“Not at all.” Erik healed well. Who cared what was left on the surface? Then, “You have scars?”

“Hm? Yes, I do.” Charles smeared the remainder of paint in the tray with his roller. “I’m not quite so inexperienced.”

“Never said you were.”

“You were thinking it. Cities aren’t that friendly.” Charles rolled up his sleeve a little higher, past the elbow, revealing a poorly administered knife wound. “A murderer. My very first case. Doubly funny, since I was a CSI then, not an officer.”

“It doesn’t look that funny.” It looked like a defensive wound, sustained while trying to keep a crazed knife-wielder away from vital organs.

“It was hilarious,” Charles insisted, “in hindsight. You see, I wasn’t quite so well-adjusted then.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Charles had the gall to look sheepish. “I was collecting evidence. I happened to take a look around the room, at the detectives and the officers at the scene, and I asked why they didn’t arrest the murderer.” He paused, rueful. “You have to understand, I was young, angry, straight up from school - they were suffering for staff much as they were now, so I did my summer internship running labs for the police department. I wasn’t - well. My understanding of social conventions was poorer than it is now.

“It was the mortician - it turned out later that he had quite the secondary career. He started laughing. Everyone started laughing, until I pointed out that the man was clearly familiar with the scene, that he had scratches on his shoulders and a missing tooth, when the victim had skin under her nails and a faint impression of teeth on her knuckles. The evidence was obvious, once the connection was made, but to most the leap had been preposterous.” Charles bent his head to stir the paint some more, and Erik folded his arms, staring at his exposed neck, at the lack of marks there. His teeth were itching to change the status quo.

“It didn’t go through so well, did it?”

“I was laughed out of the room, but I’d said enough. He tried to kill me the next morning, when I was coming in to work. Fortunately for me, he was so unsettled he tried to pull me into an alley from a busy street. There were witnesses. I’m not much of a fighter.”

“Was that how you became a detective?”

“It wasn’t that instance, but yes.” Erik interpreted the confirmation as “not before ruining a few more careers, thank you very much.” “I was put into formal academy training as soon as I got my degree.”

“That’s an unpleasant start to a job.”

“It wasn’t even the worst.” Charles pulls his shirt out of his pants and shows Erik a gleaming burn scar, the length of a man’s palm, spanning from the edge of his rib to his waist. “Lab explosion. A silly accident, to be honest - an overheated metal shelf landed on my side.”

“The lab at the station?”

“Yes.”

“I did wonder what happened there.”

“A bomb was brought in, hidden in a package. Nothing sophisticated, just oil, gasoline and a detonator with a timer. It wasn’t aimed at anyone in particular, I was there when it went off. Detective Marko carried me out. He died from his wounds soon after.” Charles rolled the paint around with more force. “I never got the chance to thank him.”

Erik was silent for a long while, long enough for Charles to murmur a soft “oh” and look at the overwhelming purple rather than him. “Raven told you.”

“She mentioned her father was called Marko, but she preferred to use your name.”

“Our relationship - my relationship, really - with the Markos was very strained. Kurt married my mother when I was eight and he never made a secret of the fact that the monetary gains were his primary motivation. He wasn’t a family man by any stretch of the imagination, so the days he ignored me or his own son - Cain - were the good days. When Raven was born it was even worse.

“You see, Kurt took tradition very seriously, and he was from a long line of detectives. Cain, well. He held little promise, unlike Raven and I.” Charles pressed the pad of his thumb against his mouth, as though he had to drag each word out with force. “I’m very good at cerebral work. I’ve always been, obviously. Cain’s talents ran more towards brute strength. Kurt had very little affection to spare, I’m afraid, and between the two of us, his admiration for my mind and his paternal pride in Cain’s sports trophies, he was strung out, and Raven ended up being ignored more often than not. She appreciates it now.”

Erik listened to that with only half an ear, only partly because the speech was, at best, haphazard. His gaze was drawn to another mark on Charles’ torso: a narrow, even stripe of tissue that could have only be left by a wide kitchen knife. This was a stab wound and it wasn’t singular.

Charles noticed his gaze and immediately tucked the shirt back in, hiding his skin from view. “I say, the purple is not that bad, once you get used to it,” he said with cheer so fake it had silicone stripes peeling off every syllable. “I’ll come in some time, to see what it looks in the daylight, how about it?” He whirled in place, went to grab his jacket and palm the keys of his car.

“Charles.”

“Yes?”

“You can’t drive.”

“Oh. Right. Well, no harm, I’ll call for a cab.” Charles took two steps towards the door and stopped. “Not true. We should clean up. It doesn’t seem fair to leave you like this.”

“It is mostly your own fault. It’s only fair you help.”

Charles dropped his jacket on the kitchen counter and helped Erik roll up the tarp and store it securely in the corner, along with the remaining paint and brushes. They’ve done an amateur job, at best - the coat was thinner in places, resulting in a gradient ranging from lilac to deep purple throughout, and that was only what the lamp light revealed; who knew what it would look like during the day.

“Oh! Are you allowed to paint here? Won’t your landlord complain?” Charles fretted over the pile of supplies, as though they were a box of frightened kittens, and thus not to be left in the desolate corner.

“What is he going to do, eat my deposit?” Erik shrugged. “He can keep it, for all I care.” His fingers itched, and the sensation was scrambling up and down his arms, biting into the elbow, driving its teeth into the shoulder, left more than the right, into the scar there, hanging off the raised flesh and giggling like a loon. He needed to get Charles’ hands out of the way, to pull the shirt up and see the knife marks, to know where they came from, to trace them down until he knew their shape and could tell for sure what weapon left those marks behind.

He quelled the impulse. Instead, he lifted the hem of his wife-beater to show his ribs, where a bayonet had once grazed his side. “That was a fun day, let me tell you,” he offered, a tantalizing hook for the shiny little fish, and Charles swallowed it without a blink, because he was coming closer, bending to inspect the scar.

“The stitching looks horrible.”

“I had to stitch it myself in the middle of a jungle. I was on my own for three hours.”

Charles smiled and bent further, to lift the leg of his pants, revealing a jagged line across his shin. “I jumped out a closed window, I’m afraid.”

“You jumped out a window.”

“It was either jumping or getting shot with a machine gun.”

“Did you shoot back?”

“I’d mislaid my gun,” Charles said nonchalantly, and Erik immediately knew this was a regular occurrence.

“Raven said you don’t like guns.”

“I don’t mind guns. It’s the shooting at people I can’t abide.”

Erik folded his arms and, with his face perfectly straight, asked, “Aren’t there rules about that?”

“Pardon?”

It was entirely possible that Charles perceived sarcasm. It was nonetheless possible that he would miss it, given enough emotional upheaval. “Don’t you have to have at least two kills to your name to get your shiny badge?”

“You’re thinking of double-oh seven agents. It’s perfectly possible to have a long, illustrious career in the department without shooting once.”

That would be a no on the sarcasm question. Still, something in Charles’ voice made Erik curl his lips and say, purely on instinct, with only the slightest hint of facetiousness, “I never said anything about shooting.”

Charles’ smile was so thin Erik could see the coiled panic as clear as though he was running around the room with his hair on fire. It lasted only a second, but what a glorious second it was, before Charles - and god, Erik could see him file away the slip up and rebuild his mental software, incorporating the new data into the loops - smiled up at him and said, “All too true. I never shot at another human being. I killed seven.”

Erik wasn’t thinking when he crossed the room and gripped Charles’ head. He carefully didn’t think how well it fit in his hands, how his middle fingers nested perfectly in the grooves behind Charles’ ears, how his thumbs brushed the corners of his mouth. He fixed the look of Charles’ blue eyes in his memory - bright, wide, but unsurprised, pupils dilated with want - before he closed his own and brought their mouths together.

He might as well have been kissing a marble statue. Charles’ lips were still cold with beer and unresponsive, until Erik tilted his head sideways and slipped his tongue deep into Charles’ mouth. He came alive then, wrapped his arms around Erik, digging his fingers into his back. He arched into the kiss, thrusting his hips forward, and moaned for the lack of leverage. Erik took a step forward, intending to press them both against the wall, but the purple haze was more than just naked want, but a very real threat of becoming stuck, so pulled them both down onto the floor instead.

Charles wasted no time pulling Erik’s undershirt up and over his head and away, to another dimension. His thighs slid open beneath Erik’s weight, coming up to wrap around his hips, urging him on.

“Fuck,” Erik hissed, worming a hand between their bodies, into the mess of fabric and skin, applying pressure wherever he could reach and bucking into it, feeling Charles respond in kind, until his dick was threatening legal action unless the proceedings escalated right now. “I want-“ Everything. All of it. Charles on his hands and knees, himself on his knees, sucking Charles off - the images flowed into one other with no regard for the common logic or the limitations of the human anatomy, but that’s what happened when the rational centers of the brain reached for the popcorn and admired the fireworks. “Do you have condoms?”

“Yes, please. No, I don’t.” Charles blinked and then raised his head off the floor, to chase Erik’s lips, before letting it fall back with an audible thump. “I’m so sorry, I don’t carry any around.”

Erik, on behalf of his dick, let out a very colorful description of a sexual intercourse with a number of farmyard animals. For propriety’s sake, he made sure to only use Arabic. “You were never a boy scout.”

“Neither were you,” Charles told him with enough conviction to shift a mountain.

Erik ground against him and any further comment died in the unison groan they let out. They were both hard, and no one shed a relevant article of clothing yet. Erik had survived fifteen years of communal showers without so much as an inappropriate erection, and now he was excited like a teenager on his first date, humping through the clothes in the backseat. “You’re telling me you came here tonight and you didn’t know sex would happen? A blind octopus could have predicted that!”

“I don’t know the future,” Charles muttered, a little peeved. His palm was maddeningly warm against Erik’s lower back, a counterpoint to the unbearable heat elsewhere, with the fingertips applying gentle pressure just below the waistband of his jeans, right on the whip-mark, which crossed Erik’s spine.

“The fact that I’ve wanted to fuck you for weeks now escaped your attention?”

Charles avoided his eyes, though the flush on his face was nothing if not telling. “I thought bringing condoms would have been presumptuous.”

“Fuck you, Xavier. Just… fuck you.” Erik kissed him again, deep and bruising, as he brought his knees underneath them both, until Charles ass was on his lap and his shoulders on the floor. He straightened his back and, though his hands shook, unbuttoned Charles’ shirt one button at a time. Then, when he got his hands to cooperate, the belt on his pants.

Altogether it was short and messy, unbecoming of their ages and life stories. The zipper of Erik’s jeans cut into his hand, presumably Charles’ too, when their fingers tangled around their cocks, fighting even then. It was a miracle no one was hurt, Erik thought when Charles’ back arched and he was all but sitting in his lap, even though his shoulders were still on the hardwood floor. Given the angle it was no shock that, when his vision started to white out and the need for an orgasm spilled over every other thought process, Erik’s open mouth pressed against ribs even as his hips shot forward, trapping both their hands in a Gordian knot of fingernails, zippers, skin, cloth, hair and the fine leather of Charles’ belt.

There was a scar beneath his lips, Erik realized, when the whiteness ebbed away. It was one of the scars left by a kitchen knife; thinner than the one Charles had lower down, obviously shallower.

“Thank you, Erik. This was lovely,” Charles said meanwhile, dazed and not a little spent.

Erik snorted into his intercostal space. “Not exactly, but it will do for now.”

“Are you disappointed?” Charles asked carefully, to which Erik immediately shook his head. He wasn’t disappointed, by any stretch of the imagination.

“Not disappointed. Just unsatisfied.”

Charles laughed. “Your body would disagree,” he said, running a hand down Erik’s wonderfully loose back muscles. It was true, in a way - he was boneless and spent and physically satiated. Still, the sight of Charles wouldn’t leave his eyes, not as he was now, happy and physically weary, but as he had been moments ago, when the pressure was still mounting beyond its limits, when his eyes were wild and scared, open wide and seeing nothing.

“I’m not done.” Erik raised his hips off the floor, letting Charles slide down, gripped Charles’ wrists and brought them together over the man’s head. He stretched over him, pinning him in place, until the arch of his back brought them into contact, pelvis to chest. “It’s not enough.”

“What do you want then? I’m sure we can arrange it.”

A lazy smile spread on Erik’s face. Very few people, bedfellows in particular, could stand to see that smile from up close. He’d been informed he looked like a particularly vicious Batman villain when he grinned that way; that they feared for his sanity and their lives when he bared all his teeth. The information usually made him grin wider.

“I want,” he whispered, bending so that Charles’ face was less than an inch beneath his. He brushed a soft kiss against his mouth and whispered, “To get you out of all your clothes. I want to wreathe ropes around your body, until you can’t move unless I want you to move. I want to spread you open and see what you look like when you’ve been fucked for hours, when even your precious brain can’t handle the stimuli and shuts down.” Erik moved so that his lips were brushing Charles’ ear. “I want to look at you when you aren’t capable of thought, when you can’t run, can’t reason, when you can only feel me, and what I’m doing to you. I want to see you ripped open and raw, completely at my mercy.” Erik rose on his elbows, just enough so he could look into Charles’ eyes. “Tell me, can we arrange that?”

*****

The floor was digging into his shoulder blades. Charles had given up on their comfort, as they had borne most of his weight during their …tryst. There would be consequences, he realized: already his spine would twinge in protest at the uncomfortable angle, even though he was relaxed now. Muscle memory worked faster than he’d anticipated, and when he flexed his thighs and brushed against Erik’s his spine would wail. Still, he was loath to lose the warmth, the closeness; the delightful pressure against his groin.

He very was still when Erik whispered into his ear. He swallowed the moan the voice, the promise in it, was engendering in his throat. He clawed at the floor, whether in panic or lust he wasn’t sure, and then, very softly, he let his lips shape acquiescence.

Then he pushed at Erik’s shoulders, hard, rolled to his feet and fled to the bathroom.

The mirror on the wall was barely big enough to shave with. Erik didn’t bother with much - he got it in the convenience store, and duct-taped it to the tiles. The rest of the bathroom was as empty as the apartment: a single towel, generic store-brand shaving cream, a disposable razor, two-in-one shower gel and shampoo, a surprisingly pricey after-shave, a toothbrush, toothpaste and deodorant. Charles’ fingers skimmed the caps, following the patterns of Erik’s habits, no doubt.

Charles closed his eyes and breathed. He didn’t look until he was sure he would only see his face in the mirror, and not the reconstruction of Erik’s ablutions, evident in the smudges on the cans and bottles, in the position of the razor. When he finally looked, he found, unsurprisingly, a pink flush on his face and neck. There was a mark on his chest, reddened spots on the underside of his jaw where Erik dug his fingers a little too deep. Nothing damning, nothing permanent. Good. Fraternization was frowned upon - they were not likely to get in any trouble, but it was discouraged, with good reason. An attachment like that changed things. Entering a relationship with a work colleague was risky, at best. Emotions carried over into the work area; stress from one spilled over into the other, until eventually work became play and play became work. People had destroyed themselves over such arrangements.

Charles wondered if it would happen to him, too.

He had said yes to Erik. Perhaps out of curiosity. Perhaps he, too, wanted to know what he was like when he was broken open, when he could no longer think, only feel. Perhaps he wondered if there would be anything of him left.

Or perhaps it was because he knew Erik wouldn’t stay to drive the knife deeper and that, too, was fine - it was safer that way. The pieces would crawl together eventually, and in the long run he would be richer for the experience.

Charles shook his head, washed the come off his stomach and straightened his clothes. When he exited the bathroom he looked very nearly presentable, save for the purple smudges on his pants and the matching specks on his shirt.

Erik was sitting on the floor and looking up at him with the obvious question in his gaze. Charles smiled brightly. “We didn’t manage to discuss the case, in the end.”

“How were you planning on getting home?”

“I’ll call a cab. The response at this hour should be prompt, there’s no need to worry.” A second of thought had him dropping his car keys on the counter, when he picked up his jacket. “Take my car to work tomorrow. I’ll see you there?”

“Charles…”

“I’ll be looking forward to it,” he said. After a short moment of hesitation he crossed the room and knelt to press his mouth to Erik’s. It was marvelous, how such a small action could loosen the tension in a man’s shoulders. “Goodnight.”