Chapter Text
“Come on, don’t look so gloomy, writing voltas is a therapeutic experience!”
“You think that drugs are a ‘therapeutic experience’, shitkid.”
Harry puts a hand on his chest in mock offence. “To be wounded so by one’s own partner!” He looks towering in his bombastic pose under the afternoon sun streaming in through the precinct windows, waiting for Jean to respond in any way with a wide, if a bit strained smile.
Jean never knows what to make of Harry acting buddy-buddy with him. It is either Harry wanting to be friends with Jean again or Harry is honeying him up because he can see that Jean misses his friend, because of course Harry would know that. Jean prefers the second interpretation- it demands less believing that the shitkid is capable of being sincere.
“Well, it’s necessary for the case,” Judit butts in after Jean doesn't respond. She’s sitting behind her desk, quickly looking to the other professional standing next to her for support. The latter, lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi, comes to her support by adding: “besides, it is simply a rhythmic device about something that you have lost. Everyone has lost something.” Kitsuragi nods as he says that, as if to enforce a simple and universal truth.
Look at those two with their correct work ethics and sound minds, standing between the two broken people who can never be repaired.
“So I can write it about a shoe I lost once?” Harry says.
He’s looking at Kim, hoping that the latter will respond to his joke, eyes like colourful marzipan balls that kids like.
“Yes, you can write a Dolorian tragedy about your lost shoe, as long as it is rhythmic.”
Harry and Kim are smiling at each other, twin smiles with inverted intensities, Judit gives a little snort and shakes her head and Jean feels like he's watching a play. Why would Harry make a dumb joke about his shoes to such a large circle? Is he tryWHEEKing to endear himself? Why would he need to do that right now? What the fuck is the shitkid planning?
Sure, he might have made a joke like this to Jean for no reason, but never to a whole group if it doesn't have an emotional benefit. The weirdness makes Jean's muscles tense up.
But nothing happens. The discussion moves on as everyone gives their ideas for the poem, Judit pointing out the need for emotional openness, Harry asking all the questions he could think off before pulling some random lone facts out and Kitsuragi giving tips on how to get a good rhythm.
And Jean isn’t really part of that, no matter how much Harry cracks bad jokes in his direction, or how much lieutenant Kitsuragi tries to ask for Jean's opinion, or how much Judit looks towards him, worried. They live in a parallel dimension, where people feel a healthy blend of emotions and Harry totally isn’t faking it (he swears he isn't).
He does paperwork until the end of the day, trying to ignore the whirlpool of feelings in him. Nervousness, anger, exclusion, sadness and finally- numbness. Shitkid is somehow pretending that he’s recovering and Jean feels either everything or nothing. He doesn’t even know which one he prefers.
He leaves the minute his shift is over, not sparing a look to the passing people.
---
The clock on his table keeps on ticking. Jean checks it. It has been an hour in his miserable dark apartment, the only lights being his tablelamp and glowing streetlights from his small window. He sighs and throws the pen on the table. Thus far, all he has written is:
I lost my happiness
I lost my brain
All of that
To the pale
What has he lost? What hasn’t he lost? No family, no friends, no emotional stability, no happiness, no money. What else do people want from life?
How do you write about losing something if you never had it in the first place?
He still has his coworkers, of course. But they are coworkers, most even subordinates. He has never allowed any of them in his life, other than his former partner.
Oh, but of course, the shitkid.
But Jean hasn’t lost him- he’s still hopping around, looking like the same damn clown de service, doing his impossible deductions.
Much, much less alcohol, this time called “relapses” instead of “benders”. More sorrys, less self-aggrandizing and more pure confidence. He’s healthier, better. Not making Jean’s life into a nightmare anymore.
And Jean is still the same- clinically depressed, wretched beyond his years, oblivious to the art of making friends, unable to keep the ones he already has, only going out to punch the clock and get the paycheck so that he could keep on not dying for another month. These used to be just less outwardly destructive versions of Harry’s traits.
Is that what he lost? A misery companion? How could Harry even get better by just, what, losing his memory? Should Jean take a stroll in the pale as a cure for desolation? Besides, it’s probably an act- he is almost convinced that it is. A ploy to enable Harry to get as fresh of a start he ever could. Jean has seen him acting during those four years of keeping each other from dying, he knows what Harry’s capable of. Figuring out what makes people tick and how to get what he wants from them. How to look genuine and trustworthy, before pulling the rug from under people. It must be the same, his attempt to be loved and supported without the hard work of righting his wrongs.
But at this point, what’s even the difference between him faking it and it being genuine? If he’s acting truly so well that it’s impossible to tell- why does it matter if he means it or not?
But if he is faking it- then Jean hasn’t lost the biggest part of his life for the past half-decade. The one reason to get up from the bed in the morning, because otherwise the shitkid might shoot himself in the head. The one reason to not go on a bender, because the shitkid would throw the hypocrisy in his face. Yeah, it was slowly killing Jean- but what is life but slowly dying?
An emptiness opens up in his stomach. Normally, he could count on Harry being there the next morning, giving Jean his newest fuckup and looking at him like he’s the only one who could possibly understand the ever elusive context, who’d stay by his side to try to fix it, “Come on Jean, you can help me out right?”, Jean would call him a shitkid and Harry would laugh, knowing fully well that Jean will cover his ass before their superiors and fully endorse whatever narrative Harry had made up (but never really believing it).
There was security in knowing that Harry, miserable, destructive, hung up over his ex, could never replace Jean with someone else. Til’ death do they apart.
But now he has replaced Jean- he hasn’t even replaced him with one person, as much as he is constantly on Kitsuragi’s side like he’s the next innocence, the latter clearly isn’t doing what Jean had been doing for years- because Kitsuragi doesn’t have to. Harry has replaced his former partner with newfound happiness and empathy. Jean wishes that he could hate the newcomer, but Kitsuragi has just done what anyone would. He doesn’t have the baggage of knowing Harry beforehand.
Why can’t he just get out of his bed in the morning, if there isn’t a guarantee of a Harry style fuck up he’d have to clean up?
His therapist, the cheap one that RCM could afford to give him, recommended to find positive reasons to get up in the morning. Well, for a long time, there was nothing positive in his life. Only Harry and his latest fuckup.
And now Jean has to, what, get up to.. see Harry succeed? Hear the latest joke that he came up with? See his attempts to make the composed lieutenant laugh, even a bit?
To see, just to see- if people can truly get better.
If he himself could get better.
Jean tries to imagine, just for a moment- the shitkid truly happy. Surrounded by his new friends, from whatever hobby he picked up that month, from his totally normal “book club” that has members that are mysteriously scared of police, from queer cafes he’s taken to visiting, from university entroponetics section, from mythical creature hunters’, sorry, cryptozoology, club. Harry, laughing, not because speed is hitting or he just figured out how to get what he wants from someone, but because someone just told a good punchline. His colleagues around him, not perpetually tired from his bullshit, not leaving him to the one man who tolerates him, but instead leaning closer to him, basking in his presence like Jean had before.
Then- Harry reaching out to Jean, pulling him into the circle. Harry telling Jean that he cares about him very much, and would like to make up for his past.
Jean, for the first time in his life, truly, actually believing the shitkid as he says that. Feeling like a part of something bigger than two fuckups. Feeling- not happy but something close to that.
Jean’s clock buzzes softly, indicating to do what’s written on the paper next to it- “take your meds”. It says that it’s 22.00- Jean could still sleep tonight if he finishes the poem.
As Jean shuffles to the medicine cabinet, he can’t help but feel like tomorrow might not be 100% shit, but maybe instead.. 97% shit.
He’ll get up to see the brand new show that is Harry.
---
Everything has washed away
To the pale, to the pale
His memory, his former ways
To the pale, to the pale
I will see ‘cause i will stay
To the pale, to the pale
If he’ll change back anyway
To the pale, to the pale
Do your fucking best, shitkid
I will search for a reason to live