201: Loss
Detective Greenly, Boston homicide, knows now that he is not the sharpest fucking knife in the fucking drawer. Yeah, he freakin' gets it, gets it drilled into his head on a weekly basis, sometimes daily, by that asshole, so it's fine, whatever ego he had once had about that detective's rank has been pretty much shot to shit. Smecker calls him stupid-- in words of more goddamn syllables, of course-- and wham bam thank you ma'am, Mike finds himself stupid. Find himself shooting off at the mouth, and in the old days that didn't matter because Duffy and Dolly knew he was just, y'know, brainstorming aloud, rambling to get the theories out there so he could get to the real ones, and nobody paid much attention, but then High And Fucking Mighty showed up and paid Detective Greenly the favor of his attention, of two and three seconds of arched brows and contemptuous smiles as Mike said his theories. Paid him the favor of making him look like a fucking retard in front of everyone else, of turning him into coffee bitch and whipping boy, and did it all with a little swish that said And you should be thankful you're even worth that, darling.
Asshole.
So yeah. Mike gets it now, that he's not a fucking genius. He's happy to leave that to Special Agent Smecker.
But each weekly bitchslap notwithstanding, and the stupid shit he says at crime scenes notwithstanding, Mike did earn that detective rank, and he has eyes, and, alright, maybe he doesn't push himself the way he should, the way Smecker pushes him, but when he remembers to switch it on Michael Greenly does have a brain. Can't pull conclusions together like lightning the way the agent does, it's more a... more you just do the grunt work and piece it together, and it never comes in blinding revelations, the way he wants it to, but in slow tedious bits that percolate on through until he finally has a good theory.
'Percolate.' Jesus. He hates that word now, and anything else having to do with coffee.
There's this theory he's got, a theory that's been percolating nice and slow for... how the hell long is it, anyway? Since St. Paddy's and that alley and the day Special Agent Smecker showed up to make everyone's life hell? Jesus, it's getting into like a year now, which is weird to even think about, that the brothers have been doing this for so long-- and that he and the others have been helping-- and that none of them have gotten caught. Mike's a twice-a-year Catholic and not especially prone to belief in miracles unless you count the Red Sox this year, but hey, you can't fucking argue with that.
Detective Greenly's theory. His slow theory, coming from too much contact with Paul Smecker, from dealing with the bastard day in and day out and putting up with his insults and getting him his damn coffee. His theory is:
The guy is losing it.
And it's a theory, and it's the theory he makes sure not to let past his lips to ramble aloud because if ever Smecker was going to wage nuclear warfare on his ass for a theory mumbled aloud then this would be the one, the one that dares draw observations about him.
Tough shit though, because Smecker's made him work like a dog and forced him to start observing again and Greenly's doing it and he sees the evidence.
It's true he doesn't know the man well enough to know what he was like before, not really. It was only a few days before Smecker had apparently figured it all out and thrown his lot in with the MacManuses, so Mike can't really judge too well what the guy was like. Smooth, sure. Stuck-up asshole, probably born with a goddamn silver spoon in his mouth in Maine or somewhere like that. And yeah, Greenly's willing to admit the guy was funny, at least when it's the other guy he's ripping into and not you. Smecker with his day-to-day suits that were more expensive than anything a Boston cop owned, and Smecker with his not-giving-a-fuck what you thought, about his being a fag or about anything else. You had to grant the jerk had balls. He had... he had it together, he had his shit collected and organized just the way he wanted it, and Greenly would have disliked him just for that even if Smecker hadn't decided to pick him as the puppy to kick. Envy for that, for that self-satisfied smile and those signs of a put-together life, because Detective Michael Greenly's never once felt he's got his shit together, whether it's losing his car keys or losing his girlfriend.
Some people just have all the luck, except Greenly can't even say that to himself without hearing Smecker drawl Luck? Greenly, there is no such thing. Go wash your mouth out with soap.
The point being.
The point being that in these months since the day after St. Patrick's, since a morning of hangovers and corpses, Detective Greenly has watched Special Agent Smecker slowly lose his shit. There's signs. There's evidence.
There's the way he doesn't smirk after delivering his little cuts, the way those cuts are simpler and rawer now and leave you, not wincing, but standing there staring after him going Jesus, asshole, I didn't deserve that; the way the cuts have become more like kicks to the balls. There's the way he sometimes doesn't say much at all, just comes into the scene and puts his headphones in and works the case with no more words than short, clipped questions of the techs and the coroner. There's the way he rubs and rubs at his temples when he thinks nobody's watching. There's clues...
A shirt-cuff left unbuttoned, which that smooth bastard who first told you to get him his café latte would never have permitted. The pinched, drawn look around his eyes and nose, like there's not enough skin there and what is is having to stretch to cover his bones. The questions it takes him four or five seconds to hear, to turn and answer, when he's busy doing something else, or the time you entered his office without knocking (and Jesus, did he rip you one for that) and he had his head in his hands and looked more exhausted than you knew people could be.
He didn't notice when his pricey iPod ran down last week, had the earphones in for a good ten minutes after you saw the screen flicker and die.
Bruises and scrapes on his knuckles, and you do know enough about marks of violence to know he's not hitting people but objects. Industrial strength aspirin left out on his desk. Mornings he comes in, dressed and buttoned and apparently none the worse for wear but when he sweeps by trailing dazed rookies in his wake then you can smell the alcohol, morning after and you can still smell it.
Hell, even his damn wardrobe has started changing, the careful color-coordination of tie and shirt and what-the-hell-ever-else he wears slipping so that he doesn't look so much like a fag in a good suit as much as.... just another fed, white-shirt-black-tie grabbed and worn without a lot of thought. It weirds you out that you even notice this, but Smecker's terrorized you into becoming more observant and it worked, so you do. You notice his colorlessness, his distance, his distraction, his irritability and his impatience and gravity, the goddamn weight he lugs around on those skinny shoulders...
You want to ask, If it fucks you up so much, man, why do it? Why help them?
But you also want to live, so you don't ask this, don't pull that trigger and give him an excuse to get in your face and tell you how much you don't know and how you're as wrong with this as you've been with all the other hypotheses. You're right, though. Evidence doesn't lie, and the evidence says that the guy who's got his shit together, the all-knowing genius fed, is on a downward spiral that's going to end in some cosmic crash of broken glass and blood everywhere.
He's losing.... losing sight of what he's doing, maybe, or losing count of the bodies, or losing faith in them, or losing his grip on however he's rationalized it to himself. Losing that life that he had just how he wanted it. Losing that composure. And you're no shrink and maybe only a mediocre detective, but you can guess that at some point he's just gonna lose his mind, go bugfuck nuts, like that scene in the street, except this one he's not gonna come down from. Won't straighten his tie and saunter off giving you all dirty looks, but just keep rocketing off the rails until he crashes and burns, and God help anyone near when it happens.
You do a lot of private hoping that he hasn't already lost it.
fandom: boondock saints
muse: paul smecker
word count: 1500ish
Asshole.
So yeah. Mike gets it now, that he's not a fucking genius. He's happy to leave that to Special Agent Smecker.
But each weekly bitchslap notwithstanding, and the stupid shit he says at crime scenes notwithstanding, Mike did earn that detective rank, and he has eyes, and, alright, maybe he doesn't push himself the way he should, the way Smecker pushes him, but when he remembers to switch it on Michael Greenly does have a brain. Can't pull conclusions together like lightning the way the agent does, it's more a... more you just do the grunt work and piece it together, and it never comes in blinding revelations, the way he wants it to, but in slow tedious bits that percolate on through until he finally has a good theory.
'Percolate.' Jesus. He hates that word now, and anything else having to do with coffee.
There's this theory he's got, a theory that's been percolating nice and slow for... how the hell long is it, anyway? Since St. Paddy's and that alley and the day Special Agent Smecker showed up to make everyone's life hell? Jesus, it's getting into like a year now, which is weird to even think about, that the brothers have been doing this for so long-- and that he and the others have been helping-- and that none of them have gotten caught. Mike's a twice-a-year Catholic and not especially prone to belief in miracles unless you count the Red Sox this year, but hey, you can't fucking argue with that.
Detective Greenly's theory. His slow theory, coming from too much contact with Paul Smecker, from dealing with the bastard day in and day out and putting up with his insults and getting him his damn coffee. His theory is:
The guy is losing it.
And it's a theory, and it's the theory he makes sure not to let past his lips to ramble aloud because if ever Smecker was going to wage nuclear warfare on his ass for a theory mumbled aloud then this would be the one, the one that dares draw observations about him.
Tough shit though, because Smecker's made him work like a dog and forced him to start observing again and Greenly's doing it and he sees the evidence.
It's true he doesn't know the man well enough to know what he was like before, not really. It was only a few days before Smecker had apparently figured it all out and thrown his lot in with the MacManuses, so Mike can't really judge too well what the guy was like. Smooth, sure. Stuck-up asshole, probably born with a goddamn silver spoon in his mouth in Maine or somewhere like that. And yeah, Greenly's willing to admit the guy was funny, at least when it's the other guy he's ripping into and not you. Smecker with his day-to-day suits that were more expensive than anything a Boston cop owned, and Smecker with his not-giving-a-fuck what you thought, about his being a fag or about anything else. You had to grant the jerk had balls. He had... he had it together, he had his shit collected and organized just the way he wanted it, and Greenly would have disliked him just for that even if Smecker hadn't decided to pick him as the puppy to kick. Envy for that, for that self-satisfied smile and those signs of a put-together life, because Detective Michael Greenly's never once felt he's got his shit together, whether it's losing his car keys or losing his girlfriend.
Some people just have all the luck, except Greenly can't even say that to himself without hearing Smecker drawl Luck? Greenly, there is no such thing. Go wash your mouth out with soap.
The point being.
The point being that in these months since the day after St. Patrick's, since a morning of hangovers and corpses, Detective Greenly has watched Special Agent Smecker slowly lose his shit. There's signs. There's evidence.
There's the way he doesn't smirk after delivering his little cuts, the way those cuts are simpler and rawer now and leave you, not wincing, but standing there staring after him going Jesus, asshole, I didn't deserve that; the way the cuts have become more like kicks to the balls. There's the way he sometimes doesn't say much at all, just comes into the scene and puts his headphones in and works the case with no more words than short, clipped questions of the techs and the coroner. There's the way he rubs and rubs at his temples when he thinks nobody's watching. There's clues...
A shirt-cuff left unbuttoned, which that smooth bastard who first told you to get him his café latte would never have permitted. The pinched, drawn look around his eyes and nose, like there's not enough skin there and what is is having to stretch to cover his bones. The questions it takes him four or five seconds to hear, to turn and answer, when he's busy doing something else, or the time you entered his office without knocking (and Jesus, did he rip you one for that) and he had his head in his hands and looked more exhausted than you knew people could be.
He didn't notice when his pricey iPod ran down last week, had the earphones in for a good ten minutes after you saw the screen flicker and die.
Bruises and scrapes on his knuckles, and you do know enough about marks of violence to know he's not hitting people but objects. Industrial strength aspirin left out on his desk. Mornings he comes in, dressed and buttoned and apparently none the worse for wear but when he sweeps by trailing dazed rookies in his wake then you can smell the alcohol, morning after and you can still smell it.
Hell, even his damn wardrobe has started changing, the careful color-coordination of tie and shirt and what-the-hell-ever-else he wears slipping so that he doesn't look so much like a fag in a good suit as much as.... just another fed, white-shirt-black-tie grabbed and worn without a lot of thought. It weirds you out that you even notice this, but Smecker's terrorized you into becoming more observant and it worked, so you do. You notice his colorlessness, his distance, his distraction, his irritability and his impatience and gravity, the goddamn weight he lugs around on those skinny shoulders...
You want to ask, If it fucks you up so much, man, why do it? Why help them?
But you also want to live, so you don't ask this, don't pull that trigger and give him an excuse to get in your face and tell you how much you don't know and how you're as wrong with this as you've been with all the other hypotheses. You're right, though. Evidence doesn't lie, and the evidence says that the guy who's got his shit together, the all-knowing genius fed, is on a downward spiral that's going to end in some cosmic crash of broken glass and blood everywhere.
He's losing.... losing sight of what he's doing, maybe, or losing count of the bodies, or losing faith in them, or losing his grip on however he's rationalized it to himself. Losing that life that he had just how he wanted it. Losing that composure. And you're no shrink and maybe only a mediocre detective, but you can guess that at some point he's just gonna lose his mind, go bugfuck nuts, like that scene in the street, except this one he's not gonna come down from. Won't straighten his tie and saunter off giving you all dirty looks, but just keep rocketing off the rails until he crashes and burns, and God help anyone near when it happens.
You do a lot of private hoping that he hasn't already lost it.
fandom: boondock saints
muse: paul smecker
word count: 1500ish