Fic: It's not about what you think (The Replacement Killers)
Phew, haven't done this in a while... I hope I haven't screwed it up.
Title: It’s not about what you think
Author: sangga
Media: The Replacement Killers
Rating: Tame
Disclaimer: not mine, don’t own etc.
Archive: My LJ, goblok archive, others by permission.
Summary: Eighteen months later, and they collide again. John/Meg. ‘I gave you many compliments,’ he says, and there’s that smile again, but with a touch of weary sadness, which is the thing that’s always stayed with her, the thing that seems to have imprinted itself deeper than anything. ‘I just never said any of them out loud.’
Note: This is a sweet return. I love this film.
Spoilers: You saw the movie, right?
Feedback: If you’re not too world-weary.
It’s not about what you think
I’ll miss you too.
Yeah, that. What she should’ve said. Or, y’know, something else. Don’t be a stranger, or Stay safe, or You’re welcome.
Or You’re not even gonna kiss me goodbye?
Something lame like that.
But she was always bad at the crappy one-liners.
*
So she ditches the apartment.
Well, it was all shot to hell. And too conspicuous. Plus the fact that ten grand mysteriously arrives in her bank account within a couple of weeks, and the hell if she’s gonna spit on that.
It helps, y’know, with the Loco situation. Cos she thought that was gonna be, like, a situation, but it turns out that five gees in cash goes a long way towards smoothing bad roads.
But she kept the car a while. It was a damn nice car - once she binned all the CDs in the glove compartment, it seemed to drive better.
So two months down the track, and she’s got a new job - flower delivery, if you can believe that - and she still does the occasional package, but nothing that runs too wild. Mercy stuff, y’know. Good people.
Because it took a professional killer to show her that there’s still good people left in the world. Fuck, that’s like some kind of black comedy right there.
She’s still into taking pictures, because it seems to be one of the only things left that makes sense. Walking around town with her camera. She raises the viewfinder to her face and things come into focus, like the world stops for a second.
And it does stop. She presses the button, and cars settle in motion. Bird’s flight ceases. Garbage stops swirling, or only in short bursts. Gangstas look, and their eyes say something real.
She doesn’t know what it is. But it’s working for her. Helping her forget.
Well, that’s what she thinks. But when she gets the prints and frames them up for her first exhibition - a friend’s coffee shop in Sawtelle, she’s not thinking too far ahead - she suddenly realizes that each picture has something in it that she never realized was there.
The back of a man’s head, his black hair smooth as a crow’s wing. A pair of sunglasses lying on a table. A dark polished shoe. The sharp cut of a suit.
Well, fuck. And here she’s thinking she’s put John well out of her mind.
Clearly her mind has other ideas.
*
No one is more shocked than Meg when seven of the ten prints sell.
She would have sold eight, but that one was hard to part with. On the far edge of the picture, a figure stands in shadowed profile. Straight strands of his hair shift across his forehead, and the side of his suit jacket lifts, like a whirling cape. She called that one ‘Haunted’, and wouldn’t agree to the sale, even when the prospective buyer upped the price.
But seven out of ten, that’s nice. Cool. So she takes more shots, and she has another exhibition, which one of the previous buyers paid for, and goddamn if she doesn’t sell more. She’s drinking champagne in some uptown art gallery, wearing her cleanest pair of pants, and wondering how the fuck this happened. What would her mother think?
Which is fucking stupid, she knows what her mother would think. She’d think it was luck of the gods, and shoot the whole whack straight up her arm, and Meg reminds herself she’s gotta stop thinking about her mother, because that way lies monkey-ass crazy.
But she’s in the papers. Jesus. Her new apartment is small but neat, and she’s living within her means, in case this whole thing goes belly-up, and then Zekoff sends her a card with congratulations. She thinks this is a joke. It’s gotta be, right? A joke.
It’s not a joke. And it’s not going belly-up, because she gets offered a job - an honest-to-god job, and no one’s offered her a job before. Novelty value, huh. This is becoming something she could get used to, and her hackles go up immediately. You want me to take photos? For a living? This is bullshit, right?
She makes the crack in the editor’s office while smoking a cigarette, but she still gets the job. Goes to Thailand on what’s basically a paid junket, only it gets a bit heavy in the crowds because of the migrant relocations, but she gets the shots. They’re fucking nice shots, and she’s the only one in the team who knows how to navigate out of a back alley during a tear gas deal, which basically saves her own ass plus three. Her editor is very happy. Everyone’s very happy. We’re all happy happy people here, and Meg gets a raise, and a trip to India during Holi. To Morocco, during the riots.
To Hong Kong, during the Right of Abode protests.
She hadn’t realized how hot things would be there, or how close it was to the mainland, until she found herself in the rear of an SUV in the middle of Kowloon, with so many people shouting her head felt clamoured in. The car is a dead end idea, she figures that out when the first gun goes off, but the guide is from Guangzhou, and he’s not going out there, not if you paid him a million bucks, or in this case, seven million seven hundred and fifty thousand HK.
So she and Gary ditch the car, start trotting back in their usual ‘crazy shit avoidance strategy’. But for the first time, she’s underestimated the crowd. She bends with the flow, but there’s so many fucking people - how the fuck do they all fit on this little island, for Christ’s sake? - and then Gary disappears. She gets off three more shots, four, and she gets jostled, scratched, banged into so many times she worries she’s gonna go under. Time to cut loose, and she aims for a suitable high vantage point and starts weaving.
Then there’s another volley, from somewhere to the far right, and the crowd starts surging. She’s pushed along with it, against her will, and she’s closer to the front than she’d ever planned to be.
This is not good, this is not what she signed up for - and then the tear gas goes off, and someone starts screaming right in her fucking ear, and she’s sucked in, oh god, she’s thrown around like she’s in a washing machine. A woman on her left goes down in a red spray, and Meg ducks and is she hit? No, it’s not her blood. But more people around her are falling, and to hell with this. She’s not getting paid to have her head blown off.
She has to get on her hands and knees and crawl. She almost makes it to the far side of the street - the alley corner is right there, beckoning, enticing, so she goes for it, lunges.
Makes it.
She feels her way along the brick wall, and her whole body smarts. But she can stand up now, thank god. She stands up, then she sits down again. No, something’s not right. She’s still got her camera in one hand. The lens is broken - fuck.
She tries to put the camera back in her side pack, but the pack is gone. Jesus. And her hands are slippery: she rubs them on her shirt, but that makes them worse. Fuck. She can’t get the slippery off. It’s running down the inside of her pants, over her hip.
Another pair of pants, ruined.
She just sits there, in the alley, listening to people screaming. Coughing a little from the tear gas. Wondering how the hell she’s gonna get a new camera in this mess. The world seems very bright from this position. She’s lying on her back now, sideways against the wall. This is obviously not sustainable. She’s gonna have a sore back. But the sky, above the roofline at the top of the alley, is so clear and fine… She could float up there. Yeah, that would work.
By the time a shadow falls across her face, she thinks she’s dreaming.
‘Hey,’ she says, because it pays to be polite, even in dreams.
‘Meg,’ he says. ‘Hold still.’
She wants to say Sure, but her voice isn’t working very well.
‘Are you trying to get yourself killed?’ he says.
She wants to say Is that really you? But she can’t do anything but croak now, so she says ‘John?’ and he just frowns.
‘I didn’t think so,’ he says, and he gathers her up.
*
When she climbs back out of the deep black well that is like a telescope in reverse, the first thing she does is groan.
And the first thing she says is ‘Camera?’
John looks at her from his spot on the edge of the bed. He seems a little surprised - hey, she’s surprised him, she thinks, although maybe that’s because his fingers are still bloody and he hasn’t finished what he’s doing.
But he says ‘Yes’, and she’s so relieved she groans again, and then throws up into a bucket.
Later, he says softly, ‘They won’t let you out of Hong Kong with those pictures, Meg.’
But she doesn’t care, because it hurts too much. She’s sweating with it. She wasn’t awake when he slapped the powder on, for which she’s grateful. This hurt is enough. Her teeth are aching.
Hold my hand, he says, or Drink, or Shh, when she gets particularly loud.
Meg, he says.
Meg.
*
She wakes up in a light-filled room.
The blinds are drawn, but they’re made of paper. Enough sun is coming in that it hurts her eyes. The room has a fire. She can smell a garden somewhere nearby.
‘This is my sister’s house,’ John says. ‘We are outside the city.’
He closes the door behind him and comes closer with a tray. More smells.
‘Soup.’ He uncovers the bowl. ‘Pork belly. It’s replenishing.’
She doesn’t feel hungry until he spoons it into her mouth.
‘Water,’ she pleads, and he gives her some. And then, ‘How long?’
He inclines his head. ‘This is the second day.’
Her eyes are focusing better: she can see more details now. He looks tired. There are auburn stains on his pants, and his suit jacket is somewhere else. The collar of his shirt is open - she can see the place his neck meets his collarbone. She’s kind of fixated on it.
‘Tell me,’ she says, and he does. His mother has passed. His sister is alive: she is training to be a teacher, he supports her. He is the personal assistant of some ministerial attaché, which she takes to mean he’s a bodyguard. That was why he was at the rally. That was how he saw her.
‘But you knew I was there,’ she says. May as well get it all out in the open.
He settles the soup bowl back on the tray, places the spoon. ‘Yes. I’ve been following your career.’
‘My career.’ She laughs a little - no, that hurts.
‘You’re very talented,’ he says. ‘The pictures from Marrakesh… The one with the gunman -‘
‘Please don’t bullshit me, John, I’m too tired.’
He makes that wry closed-lipped smile she remembers - god, she remembers - and his eyes go all soft. He brushes hair gently back from her forehead with a finger.
‘You were never able to take a compliment.’
‘Is that why you never gave me any?’
He lifts the tray as he stands and heads for the door.
‘I gave you many compliments,’ he says, and there’s that smile again, but with a touch of weary sadness, which is the thing that’s always stayed with her, the thing that seems to have imprinted itself deeper than anything. ‘I just never said any of them out loud.’
And he closes the door on that.
Bastard, she thinks.
But something inside her is singing.
*
‘Meg,’ he says. ‘Meg, wake up. We have to leave.’
It must be early morning. She can hear birds, outside in the dark. He has that same economy of movement she’s come to admire as he goes fast around the room, collecting her things.
She only needs one thing. ‘The film.’
He pockets it, puts the camera in the fire. Then he pulls back the bed covers, helps her up. She can’t really walk, so he collects her into his arms, like a child.
‘You’re heavy,’ he says, raising his eyebrows.
But she knows he’s just saying that to distract her from the pain, which is large. She keeps her eyes open and tries not to groan too much. When he carries her out. When he puts her in the car. Her feet are bare, and her eyes water in spite of her promises to herself.
They’re already driving fast when she speaks. When she can open her mouth without yacking up.
‘Where to now?’
‘Kowloon.’ He glances over, frowning behind his sunglasses. ‘A hotel. I know a place.’
It’s a cheap place, just a bed and a mirror and a toilet. There’s a tiny balcony that looks out over the grottier parts of the city.
‘Just like old times,’ she laughs, before passing out again.
The next time she wakes up, it’s evening, late. John is lying in his shirtsleeves on the bed beside her, eyes closed, face lined with exhaustion but calm in sleep. His lips are gently parted. Lights from the city filter through the slatted door of the balcony, soften his features and glance off his mussed hair.
She turns onto her good side so she can look at him. Commit him to memory again. She’s tried - god, she really has tried - to let him go over the past year and a half. But here he is again, and she’s okay about giving in. She’ll suffer for it later anyway, she’s sure. Once this is all over.
She’s busy looking at the shadowed place under his shirt collar where she knows there’s a star-shaped scar - there, on his shoulder - when his eyes open. His face looks younger so soon after rest.
His eyes seem to drink her up, here in the dark. She bites her lip. There’s this feeling, like every particle of air around them is charged, and it continues even after he lifts his hand, slides his fingers into her hair to cup her nape, and she can hardly breathe from it.
‘Meg,’ he says, and then he kisses her.
It’s like…like she’s been holding her breath for a year and a half, and now she can let go. Her lungs can expand again. She can’t stop gasping. God, his lips are so soft.
‘You’re hurt,’ he whispers.
‘Then go slow,’ she says, because she’s damned if she’s going to let anything get between them now.
He takes her at her word. And Christ, she didn’t realize it could be like this, didn’t know how slow things could be. It’s agonizing, how his fingers are so deliberate, so languid. She’s seen him move fast, she knows what he’s capable of. This is like tai chi - everything tunneling back, everything gentle and still, like a bee’s steady drone, or smoke rising from a censer.
And she can’t really describe it. It comes to her as a series of images - the city lights on his skin, as she pushes the shirt back off his shoulders; his hair feathered down, brushing her stomach; how pale she is, next to his smoothness. The sensations are overwhelming, but it’s the images that linger. His eyes. His rare smile.
And the feeling that this is something they are both allowing themselves - this is an indulgence, two controlled people giving themselves permission, just this once.
*
They get one more day. She lies on the bed, enjoying the sight of John with his shirt untucked. But they have to move again that night.
She has to walk this time, there’s no help for it. She has to look whole. He’s bought her a sundress and a floppy hat, sunglasses. The tourist with her Chinese valet-slash-bodyguard-slash-whatever. She takes a lot of painkillers and almost overplays the role, she’s so high. By the time they get into the expensive room, there’s blood spots on her dress.
He lays her down on the bed in her underwear, and cleans her up gently. Folds her into one of the hotel bathrobes, before going downstairs to buy clothes, toiletries, more medicine.
‘Can’t we just shoot our way out of here?’ she asks wearily.
‘The embassy,’ he says. ‘We only need to get you that far.’
They go in the early hours of the morning, while the street sweepers are still out. She has to lean on him, a lot. They dodge two patrols, at his insistence: she doesn’t know where the danger is coming from, this whole thing is outside her understanding. Political analyst she is not - she just takes the pictures.
Then they’re at the corner, and it’s time. She’s put the film under her bandage - it rubs on the wound in a nasty way, a reminder. He’s pushing her to go, to cross the street to the checkpoint, and she’s ready to walk, and then she realizes: this is it. This is the last time she’ll see him. Her job, his sister. They have responsibilities. There will never be another time, and there will always be consequences.
‘Wait,’ she says. ‘Take off your sunglasses. I want to see you.’
‘Meg -‘
‘Don’t say you’ll miss me. Don’t you say that.’
She’s crying. She didn’t cry the first time. This is harder, because she knows the truth now.
She puts her hand on his cheek. ‘Say “I’ll see you again”.’
‘No, Meg.’ He swallows, and his eyes are hollow with grief. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘It’s not about what you think.’ She pushes at his chest. She’s touched him there, skin to skin. ‘It’s not about what you think. It’s about what you feel. Say it.’
‘Yes,’ he says desperately. ‘Yes.’
And now she can go. And she goes, and he stays, and she knows, she knows…
This is not the end.
End
Thanks for reading, folks
Title: It’s not about what you think
Author: sangga
Media: The Replacement Killers
Rating: Tame
Disclaimer: not mine, don’t own etc.
Archive: My LJ, goblok archive, others by permission.
Summary: Eighteen months later, and they collide again. John/Meg. ‘I gave you many compliments,’ he says, and there’s that smile again, but with a touch of weary sadness, which is the thing that’s always stayed with her, the thing that seems to have imprinted itself deeper than anything. ‘I just never said any of them out loud.’
Note: This is a sweet return. I love this film.
Spoilers: You saw the movie, right?
Feedback: If you’re not too world-weary.
It’s not about what you think
I’ll miss you too.
Yeah, that. What she should’ve said. Or, y’know, something else. Don’t be a stranger, or Stay safe, or You’re welcome.
Or You’re not even gonna kiss me goodbye?
Something lame like that.
But she was always bad at the crappy one-liners.
*
So she ditches the apartment.
Well, it was all shot to hell. And too conspicuous. Plus the fact that ten grand mysteriously arrives in her bank account within a couple of weeks, and the hell if she’s gonna spit on that.
It helps, y’know, with the Loco situation. Cos she thought that was gonna be, like, a situation, but it turns out that five gees in cash goes a long way towards smoothing bad roads.
But she kept the car a while. It was a damn nice car - once she binned all the CDs in the glove compartment, it seemed to drive better.
So two months down the track, and she’s got a new job - flower delivery, if you can believe that - and she still does the occasional package, but nothing that runs too wild. Mercy stuff, y’know. Good people.
Because it took a professional killer to show her that there’s still good people left in the world. Fuck, that’s like some kind of black comedy right there.
She’s still into taking pictures, because it seems to be one of the only things left that makes sense. Walking around town with her camera. She raises the viewfinder to her face and things come into focus, like the world stops for a second.
And it does stop. She presses the button, and cars settle in motion. Bird’s flight ceases. Garbage stops swirling, or only in short bursts. Gangstas look, and their eyes say something real.
She doesn’t know what it is. But it’s working for her. Helping her forget.
Well, that’s what she thinks. But when she gets the prints and frames them up for her first exhibition - a friend’s coffee shop in Sawtelle, she’s not thinking too far ahead - she suddenly realizes that each picture has something in it that she never realized was there.
The back of a man’s head, his black hair smooth as a crow’s wing. A pair of sunglasses lying on a table. A dark polished shoe. The sharp cut of a suit.
Well, fuck. And here she’s thinking she’s put John well out of her mind.
Clearly her mind has other ideas.
*
No one is more shocked than Meg when seven of the ten prints sell.
She would have sold eight, but that one was hard to part with. On the far edge of the picture, a figure stands in shadowed profile. Straight strands of his hair shift across his forehead, and the side of his suit jacket lifts, like a whirling cape. She called that one ‘Haunted’, and wouldn’t agree to the sale, even when the prospective buyer upped the price.
But seven out of ten, that’s nice. Cool. So she takes more shots, and she has another exhibition, which one of the previous buyers paid for, and goddamn if she doesn’t sell more. She’s drinking champagne in some uptown art gallery, wearing her cleanest pair of pants, and wondering how the fuck this happened. What would her mother think?
Which is fucking stupid, she knows what her mother would think. She’d think it was luck of the gods, and shoot the whole whack straight up her arm, and Meg reminds herself she’s gotta stop thinking about her mother, because that way lies monkey-ass crazy.
But she’s in the papers. Jesus. Her new apartment is small but neat, and she’s living within her means, in case this whole thing goes belly-up, and then Zekoff sends her a card with congratulations. She thinks this is a joke. It’s gotta be, right? A joke.
It’s not a joke. And it’s not going belly-up, because she gets offered a job - an honest-to-god job, and no one’s offered her a job before. Novelty value, huh. This is becoming something she could get used to, and her hackles go up immediately. You want me to take photos? For a living? This is bullshit, right?
She makes the crack in the editor’s office while smoking a cigarette, but she still gets the job. Goes to Thailand on what’s basically a paid junket, only it gets a bit heavy in the crowds because of the migrant relocations, but she gets the shots. They’re fucking nice shots, and she’s the only one in the team who knows how to navigate out of a back alley during a tear gas deal, which basically saves her own ass plus three. Her editor is very happy. Everyone’s very happy. We’re all happy happy people here, and Meg gets a raise, and a trip to India during Holi. To Morocco, during the riots.
To Hong Kong, during the Right of Abode protests.
She hadn’t realized how hot things would be there, or how close it was to the mainland, until she found herself in the rear of an SUV in the middle of Kowloon, with so many people shouting her head felt clamoured in. The car is a dead end idea, she figures that out when the first gun goes off, but the guide is from Guangzhou, and he’s not going out there, not if you paid him a million bucks, or in this case, seven million seven hundred and fifty thousand HK.
So she and Gary ditch the car, start trotting back in their usual ‘crazy shit avoidance strategy’. But for the first time, she’s underestimated the crowd. She bends with the flow, but there’s so many fucking people - how the fuck do they all fit on this little island, for Christ’s sake? - and then Gary disappears. She gets off three more shots, four, and she gets jostled, scratched, banged into so many times she worries she’s gonna go under. Time to cut loose, and she aims for a suitable high vantage point and starts weaving.
Then there’s another volley, from somewhere to the far right, and the crowd starts surging. She’s pushed along with it, against her will, and she’s closer to the front than she’d ever planned to be.
This is not good, this is not what she signed up for - and then the tear gas goes off, and someone starts screaming right in her fucking ear, and she’s sucked in, oh god, she’s thrown around like she’s in a washing machine. A woman on her left goes down in a red spray, and Meg ducks and is she hit? No, it’s not her blood. But more people around her are falling, and to hell with this. She’s not getting paid to have her head blown off.
She has to get on her hands and knees and crawl. She almost makes it to the far side of the street - the alley corner is right there, beckoning, enticing, so she goes for it, lunges.
Makes it.
She feels her way along the brick wall, and her whole body smarts. But she can stand up now, thank god. She stands up, then she sits down again. No, something’s not right. She’s still got her camera in one hand. The lens is broken - fuck.
She tries to put the camera back in her side pack, but the pack is gone. Jesus. And her hands are slippery: she rubs them on her shirt, but that makes them worse. Fuck. She can’t get the slippery off. It’s running down the inside of her pants, over her hip.
Another pair of pants, ruined.
She just sits there, in the alley, listening to people screaming. Coughing a little from the tear gas. Wondering how the hell she’s gonna get a new camera in this mess. The world seems very bright from this position. She’s lying on her back now, sideways against the wall. This is obviously not sustainable. She’s gonna have a sore back. But the sky, above the roofline at the top of the alley, is so clear and fine… She could float up there. Yeah, that would work.
By the time a shadow falls across her face, she thinks she’s dreaming.
‘Hey,’ she says, because it pays to be polite, even in dreams.
‘Meg,’ he says. ‘Hold still.’
She wants to say Sure, but her voice isn’t working very well.
‘Are you trying to get yourself killed?’ he says.
She wants to say Is that really you? But she can’t do anything but croak now, so she says ‘John?’ and he just frowns.
‘I didn’t think so,’ he says, and he gathers her up.
*
When she climbs back out of the deep black well that is like a telescope in reverse, the first thing she does is groan.
And the first thing she says is ‘Camera?’
John looks at her from his spot on the edge of the bed. He seems a little surprised - hey, she’s surprised him, she thinks, although maybe that’s because his fingers are still bloody and he hasn’t finished what he’s doing.
But he says ‘Yes’, and she’s so relieved she groans again, and then throws up into a bucket.
Later, he says softly, ‘They won’t let you out of Hong Kong with those pictures, Meg.’
But she doesn’t care, because it hurts too much. She’s sweating with it. She wasn’t awake when he slapped the powder on, for which she’s grateful. This hurt is enough. Her teeth are aching.
Hold my hand, he says, or Drink, or Shh, when she gets particularly loud.
Meg, he says.
Meg.
*
She wakes up in a light-filled room.
The blinds are drawn, but they’re made of paper. Enough sun is coming in that it hurts her eyes. The room has a fire. She can smell a garden somewhere nearby.
‘This is my sister’s house,’ John says. ‘We are outside the city.’
He closes the door behind him and comes closer with a tray. More smells.
‘Soup.’ He uncovers the bowl. ‘Pork belly. It’s replenishing.’
She doesn’t feel hungry until he spoons it into her mouth.
‘Water,’ she pleads, and he gives her some. And then, ‘How long?’
He inclines his head. ‘This is the second day.’
Her eyes are focusing better: she can see more details now. He looks tired. There are auburn stains on his pants, and his suit jacket is somewhere else. The collar of his shirt is open - she can see the place his neck meets his collarbone. She’s kind of fixated on it.
‘Tell me,’ she says, and he does. His mother has passed. His sister is alive: she is training to be a teacher, he supports her. He is the personal assistant of some ministerial attaché, which she takes to mean he’s a bodyguard. That was why he was at the rally. That was how he saw her.
‘But you knew I was there,’ she says. May as well get it all out in the open.
He settles the soup bowl back on the tray, places the spoon. ‘Yes. I’ve been following your career.’
‘My career.’ She laughs a little - no, that hurts.
‘You’re very talented,’ he says. ‘The pictures from Marrakesh… The one with the gunman -‘
‘Please don’t bullshit me, John, I’m too tired.’
He makes that wry closed-lipped smile she remembers - god, she remembers - and his eyes go all soft. He brushes hair gently back from her forehead with a finger.
‘You were never able to take a compliment.’
‘Is that why you never gave me any?’
He lifts the tray as he stands and heads for the door.
‘I gave you many compliments,’ he says, and there’s that smile again, but with a touch of weary sadness, which is the thing that’s always stayed with her, the thing that seems to have imprinted itself deeper than anything. ‘I just never said any of them out loud.’
And he closes the door on that.
Bastard, she thinks.
But something inside her is singing.
*
‘Meg,’ he says. ‘Meg, wake up. We have to leave.’
It must be early morning. She can hear birds, outside in the dark. He has that same economy of movement she’s come to admire as he goes fast around the room, collecting her things.
She only needs one thing. ‘The film.’
He pockets it, puts the camera in the fire. Then he pulls back the bed covers, helps her up. She can’t really walk, so he collects her into his arms, like a child.
‘You’re heavy,’ he says, raising his eyebrows.
But she knows he’s just saying that to distract her from the pain, which is large. She keeps her eyes open and tries not to groan too much. When he carries her out. When he puts her in the car. Her feet are bare, and her eyes water in spite of her promises to herself.
They’re already driving fast when she speaks. When she can open her mouth without yacking up.
‘Where to now?’
‘Kowloon.’ He glances over, frowning behind his sunglasses. ‘A hotel. I know a place.’
It’s a cheap place, just a bed and a mirror and a toilet. There’s a tiny balcony that looks out over the grottier parts of the city.
‘Just like old times,’ she laughs, before passing out again.
The next time she wakes up, it’s evening, late. John is lying in his shirtsleeves on the bed beside her, eyes closed, face lined with exhaustion but calm in sleep. His lips are gently parted. Lights from the city filter through the slatted door of the balcony, soften his features and glance off his mussed hair.
She turns onto her good side so she can look at him. Commit him to memory again. She’s tried - god, she really has tried - to let him go over the past year and a half. But here he is again, and she’s okay about giving in. She’ll suffer for it later anyway, she’s sure. Once this is all over.
She’s busy looking at the shadowed place under his shirt collar where she knows there’s a star-shaped scar - there, on his shoulder - when his eyes open. His face looks younger so soon after rest.
His eyes seem to drink her up, here in the dark. She bites her lip. There’s this feeling, like every particle of air around them is charged, and it continues even after he lifts his hand, slides his fingers into her hair to cup her nape, and she can hardly breathe from it.
‘Meg,’ he says, and then he kisses her.
It’s like…like she’s been holding her breath for a year and a half, and now she can let go. Her lungs can expand again. She can’t stop gasping. God, his lips are so soft.
‘You’re hurt,’ he whispers.
‘Then go slow,’ she says, because she’s damned if she’s going to let anything get between them now.
He takes her at her word. And Christ, she didn’t realize it could be like this, didn’t know how slow things could be. It’s agonizing, how his fingers are so deliberate, so languid. She’s seen him move fast, she knows what he’s capable of. This is like tai chi - everything tunneling back, everything gentle and still, like a bee’s steady drone, or smoke rising from a censer.
And she can’t really describe it. It comes to her as a series of images - the city lights on his skin, as she pushes the shirt back off his shoulders; his hair feathered down, brushing her stomach; how pale she is, next to his smoothness. The sensations are overwhelming, but it’s the images that linger. His eyes. His rare smile.
And the feeling that this is something they are both allowing themselves - this is an indulgence, two controlled people giving themselves permission, just this once.
*
They get one more day. She lies on the bed, enjoying the sight of John with his shirt untucked. But they have to move again that night.
She has to walk this time, there’s no help for it. She has to look whole. He’s bought her a sundress and a floppy hat, sunglasses. The tourist with her Chinese valet-slash-bodyguard-slash-whatever. She takes a lot of painkillers and almost overplays the role, she’s so high. By the time they get into the expensive room, there’s blood spots on her dress.
He lays her down on the bed in her underwear, and cleans her up gently. Folds her into one of the hotel bathrobes, before going downstairs to buy clothes, toiletries, more medicine.
‘Can’t we just shoot our way out of here?’ she asks wearily.
‘The embassy,’ he says. ‘We only need to get you that far.’
They go in the early hours of the morning, while the street sweepers are still out. She has to lean on him, a lot. They dodge two patrols, at his insistence: she doesn’t know where the danger is coming from, this whole thing is outside her understanding. Political analyst she is not - she just takes the pictures.
Then they’re at the corner, and it’s time. She’s put the film under her bandage - it rubs on the wound in a nasty way, a reminder. He’s pushing her to go, to cross the street to the checkpoint, and she’s ready to walk, and then she realizes: this is it. This is the last time she’ll see him. Her job, his sister. They have responsibilities. There will never be another time, and there will always be consequences.
‘Wait,’ she says. ‘Take off your sunglasses. I want to see you.’
‘Meg -‘
‘Don’t say you’ll miss me. Don’t you say that.’
She’s crying. She didn’t cry the first time. This is harder, because she knows the truth now.
She puts her hand on his cheek. ‘Say “I’ll see you again”.’
‘No, Meg.’ He swallows, and his eyes are hollow with grief. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘It’s not about what you think.’ She pushes at his chest. She’s touched him there, skin to skin. ‘It’s not about what you think. It’s about what you feel. Say it.’
‘Yes,’ he says desperately. ‘Yes.’
And now she can go. And she goes, and he stays, and she knows, she knows…
This is not the end.
End
Thanks for reading, folks