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Fischer shouldered the door open and entered the office, dark and silent in the wake of another solved case. He needed a fucking cigarette, and he could have sworn there was a half-pack in one of the desks, even though he wasn't supposed to actually smoke them in here.
No need to turn the lights on; he groped his way to the right desk easily. He could just taste the first drag, hot and bitter on the back of his tongue. It made him salivate. Fuck it—he thought he might sit down and smoke one right here, nice and slow, leave the hint of his secondhand smoke for the team in the morning. Oh no, Fischer. Bad boy, Fischer.
He yanked the desk drawer open, thrusting his hand in among the paper clips and crumpled notes from this and that. It had to be in here somewhere.
"You already finished it."
"Shit!" His entire body twitched head to fucking toe like a marionette. It hurt, a red-hot wire threaded through his bones. Only a half-second afterward did his brain and body actually absorb the soft, faintly-scratchy voice and know he was safe. He breathed out. There was a man-sized shadow sitting on the floor against the far wall. "What are you doing in here?"
The shadow that was La Cour didn't move. "Nothing."
"You can sit in the dark anywhere." Fischer grabbed another futile handful of office scrap, but still no cigarettes. He slammed the drawer shut.
"It wasn't dark when I started."
He always sounded so reasonable. Even when he was saying the craziest things. "Anyway, how did you even know what I was looking for?"
"I know you," La Cour said.
Fischer snorted. "You pay attention to every little pack?"
The shadow did move this time, the slender form rustling slightly. "I don't intend to."
Fischer sat on the desk and swung his legs. His eyes adjusted very slowly, but eventually he could see La Cour, leaning against the wall with his legs crossed, overcoat flowing down from his thin shoulders and spreading out on the floor around him like a black pool.
He waited him out. It would've been easier with a cigarette, but he was determined to manage without, at least this once.
"Why are you sitting in the dark?" La Cour asked at last, a vague curiosity stirring in his voice, and Fischer felt a nice warm triumph.
"Well look," he said. "Sometimes you do stuff like this. I know how it is. And people are always interrupting you. I reckoned this time I'd just...leave you to it."
"Oh." La Cour leaned forward, and a faint slant of light from the car park caught him across the cheek. One dark eye glittered ironically. "Thank you."
Fischer swung his legs some more. "It's okay. You can buy me a drink or something." Fischer grinned. "Drinks and dinner, maybe, since I had to be the one in the cage for the re-enactment."
La Cour leaned back into the shadow. "I was videotaping."
"Very convenient!" Fischer chewed gently on his lip, wishing for his cigarettes. If La Cour knew he'd run out, why couldn't he have reminded him?
"I already did my time in there."
"Did you? One of your walkthroughs?"
Silence—the kind of silence that Fischer knew meant yes.
"Sorry to hear it," he said. "God! I was glad to get out."
"Me too," La Cour said. "I got interrupted, like you were saying."
Fischer laughed quietly. "As usual."
The shadow of La Cour's dark head moved in what might have been one single nod.
"Well, it was a good thing this time," Fischer said after a while. "I hated it in there."
"It was," La Cour said quietly. "I didn't."
It took Fischer a minute to figure that out, underneath the rest of his thoughts and his cigarette craving. Then he squinted at La Cour, trying like hell to see his face. "You're saying you enjoy that sort of thing? Like sexually?" That kind of blew his mind. Of all the times to be out of fucking smokes!
"No." La Cour's voice was low and strained, and despite the shadows, Fischer suddenly knew just how he'd look: his eyes far away, his mouth tight. That way he got.
Fischer hopped off the desk and moved closer. "Come on, you know you can tell me. You just said you liked it in there. And it's a sex cage. So...you and Helene, you ever...?"
"No."
He straddled a nearby chair, looking down at La Cour so still and composed. Even in the dark, this close he could see La Cour swallow.
"But you liked it, though."
"Yes."
Fischer choked back his questions and waited. He chewed on his lip again. He would've started in on his fingernails, but he didn't want La Cour to think he was fidgeting. Every second was a fucking hour.
Finally, La Cour stirred and took a long breath, like he was waking up. "It felt very safe."
"Well, sure," Fischer said. "I guess, if you don't mind being folded like a pretzel." He hesitated, remembering the murder. "And if you don't get stabbed in the back through the bars."
"Not safe for me," La Cour said. "Safe for everyone else."
"What, you mean...safe from you?" He was having a little trouble following, but then, that was La Cour all over.
"Yeah."
"Oh, come on," Fischer said, his smile hard to suppress. "Who'd need to be safe from you?"
"Anybody," said La Cour. "Everybody."
Helene, Fischer thought suddenly, feeling stupid for forgetting. "That was an accident," he insisted. "Or—I mean, it was just the one time. You'd had a really bad case, and then you walked in on..." He barely managed to stop himself from running off at the mouth; he figured La Cour didn't need reminding. "It's not like you."
"That's the thing," La Cour said quietly. "It is like me."
"You didn't hurt anybody!" Fischer insisted.
But it was as if La Cour didn't hear him. "It's all like me," he went on, his voice kind of dreamy and absent. "Everything. Every case."
Well, shit. Fischer knew Ingrid had sometimes worried about La Cour's ability being bad for him, but Fischer'd always told her she was being overprotective. More fool him.
"We're not keeping you in a cage," he said lightly. "Ulf would never approve it in the budget—did you see how much that thing cost?"
La Cour's face flickered as if he almost smiled, and Fischer counted that as a win. So he pressed forward: "Anyway, you're not a danger."
When La Cour opened his mouth, surely to disagree, Fischer said emphatically, "Not to me. And that's what matters."
La Cour looked at him dubiously. His eyes were even darker than the shadows.
"Let's spar in the morning," Fischer said. "I'll show you."
"Oh you will?"
"Yeah," Fischer said, sticking out his chin.
La Cour watched him without answering. He looked fragile, somehow. Those hollows in his cheeks and under his eyes. Even though Fischer'd been on the receiving end of plenty of his armlocks and throws, enough to know not to underestimate him, there was something strange underneath now. Something drowning.
He abruptly stretched one leg out, planted a foot next to La Cour, right up against him. "You can't hurt me. You never could."
La Cour shook his head.
"Come on then." Fischer nudged La Cour's leg. "Let me prove it. You want to fight?"
"No," said La Cour, his voice strained.
"Yes you do! Let's get drunk," Fischer said, putting his foot on La Cour's thigh, jostling him. "Get drunk and have a match."
"Probably not a good idea."
"Ha! You said 'probably'. So there's still hope!"
La Cour rested one firm hand on top of Fischer's foot, stilling his energetic bouncing. "You're such an optimist."
And before Fischer could think of something else persuasive, La Cour had slipped his hand up to his ankle, gripped hard, and levered Fischer's leg to the side. Fischer yelped and tried to get off the chair in time, but it was too late: he had to go with the pull, curling his shoulder under but landing hard anyway, the chair toppling over with him.
"I knew it," Fischer said when he got his breath back. He untangled from the chair.
"Still think I can't hurt you?"
"What?" Fischer rolled to his hands and knees. "Of course you can't."
"Don't get any funny ideas," La Cour said warningly. He still sat crosslegged against the wall like a meditating monk. "There's no room in here to spar."
"Sure, yeah, I'm not sparring." And he jumped at La Cour with his arms wide. They thumped sideways, Fischer scrabbling for an armhold to try to get him onto his face. But La Cour was wily, wedging his knees beneath him as a solid base. Fischer draped himself over La Cour's back, thinking heavy thoughts.
Not heavy enough, though; with a single heave, La Cour pushed up with his knees and flipped them both over onto their backs, Fischer underneath. Before La Cour could turn over for a pin, though, Fischer got him around the chest and hung on for dear life, La Cour's back writhing against his belly, their shirts coming untucked.
"I thought we should get drunk first, but this way's okay too," Fischer gasped.
He thought he might be able to wear him out, especially since there wasn't room for them to roll freely. But all it took was one moment of inattention—and his hands and wrists getting sweaty in their grip around La Cour's chest—and La Cour was able to turn convulsively inside his arms, breaking the hold, and pin him chest to chest with hands and hips. Fischer bucked a few times, but La Cour had found the secret of thinking heavy thoughts or something, because for such a skinny guy he could barely be moved.
"Still...not feeling...in danger," Fischer managed with each buck.
"God," La Cour said, half-laughing. "You really are bulletproof."
"Yeah." Fischer stopped bucking, drew a big breath, and lunged in an attempt at a rolling escape. His head knocked soundly against one of the legs of the fallen chair, just above his eye. "Shit! Shit, fuck."
"That must have hurt," La Cour said, hoarsely conversational, pushing him back into the pin. "Sounded like a church bell."
"Ah, fuck," Fischer groaned. "Maybe we should keep the chair in a cage."
He let out all his air, going limp. And when La Cour shifted his grip the smallest bit, he jerked his sweaty wrists free as he wrenched his knees up. One foot connected with La Cour's hip and he used it to shove him off hard into the wall.
They lay on the floor panting for awhile. Fischer tried for deeper breaths and coughed.
"It's the cigarettes," La Cour said admonishingly.
"Thanks for the diagnosis," Fischer said. "But I think it's having a detective inspector on my solar plexus for like ten minutes."
He clawed his way over to the wall and propped himself there. When La Cour managed to sit up, Fischer leaned heavily against his side. He could smell the heat and clean sweat rising from him; must have been sweltering under that damn coat.
"Time to get drunk now."
"Fischer—"
"I have a few bottles back at mine. You'll get drunk, you'll feel good. You'll give me a rematch."
"Aren't you going out to a bonfire or something?" La Cour asked, sounding guarded.
"Rather have you in." Fischer already felt a little drunk. Maybe it was from nicotine withdrawal. "We can sing the Midsummer hymn together."
"After we...spar?"
Fischer should have known La Cour would be way ahead of him. Damn psychics anyway. "Or something," he agreed. He nudged further into La Cour's side and stayed there. He could feel his heart through his ribs, pounding away.
"I don't think it's a good idea."
"Oh yes you do," Fischer said, feeling a little psychic himself. "Come on back with me. Tell me how my haircut suits you these days."
He didn't look over at him; he just held still and counted heartbeats. Eventually, La Cour shifted and brought his hand up, stroking over Fischer's buzzcut with a warm, appreciative palm.
"You like it, right?"
"I suppose." But La Cour's voice sounded hushed now.
"Come over."
"Probably should just go home instead," La Cour said.
"You said probably."
La Cour sighed. "I did."
Fischer grinned. And then, so as not to waste it on the dark office, he turned it to La Cour. He gripped him by the collar and leaned in.
La Cour kissed him back eagerly, hot for it, much more than his words would have suggested. He'd always been like that. Like, what was that bird, a swan? All soft ruffly feathers on the outside, and under the water paddling like hell.
That was just great with Fischer. He grunted happily as La Cour unhesitatingly pushed him against the wall, nearly hard enough to bruise.
Felt like they were both ready for a little hell.