Work Text:
It's very uncomfortable to try to watch birds in the dark. Especially if they're black.
Jean hasn't been sleeping well lately: something's always bothering him. Most often, the window rattles, or the trains run too frequently. He chooses to sit and stare at the dead forest outside for long stretches in attempts to distract himself.
It sounds really stupid, but in Jean's humble opinion, the worst thing after cluster headaches is a runny nose. It's very hard to think, and especially to sleep, when you can't breathe.
When he discussed the matter with Judit, she remarked that childbirth is actually worse than a cold, not that Jean could test that. Cluster headaches were already a problem itself.
In any case, it's not much fun.
In winter, you can't see anything except snow and black trees. Jean scratches his nose and wonders if there really isn't a single seagull flying in today. Just pigeons and crows for now. The pier isn't that far away, but there aren't any seagulls for some reason. Something bright and feathered in the periphery of his vision would definitely be nice.
He sits like that until the snow begins to sparkle in the first rays of sun. And then he sits there a little longer. Until the alarm clock blares, making him shudder.
No seagulls, no sleep. Shitty night, it is.
----------
During a smoke break, Harry discovers a small patterned handkerchief in Jean's hands. The tiny cloth, held by the dark and menacing figure, looks almost like a white flag.
"Where did you get such a cute thing?"
Jean glances at Harry and turns away to blow his nose loudly and forcefully. Harry immediately purses his lips.
“Sorry, sorry, don't you cry. It's not cute, alright. It's really evil. You have an evil handkerchief right there."
Vicquemare looks up with watery eyes.
"And thank you very much." He sniffles and adds, "Judit gave it to me."
The handkerchief—besides the wetness—is embroidered with a simple stitch, a crooked blue wave. Harry imagines Judit carefully folding it on the table, corner to corner, and placing a teaspoon on it.
"Aren't you gonna smoke?"
Jean crumples the handkerchief in his hands and stuffs it somewhere in his trouser pocket.
"I can't breathe as it is," he mutters, extending his hand. "Well, whatever."
The lieutenant double yefreitor releases a cigarette with two fingers onto the other man's palm.
"Did you know cigarettes help with a cold? Tobacco kills pathogenic bacteria. And you as well."
“Thought I was crying, like you said."
"Damn. Then no. Just made up the whole “helping” thing, by the way."
Jean makes a very long inhale and an incredibly labored exhale—as much as his stuffy nose allows.
"Holy shit, really?"
Harry nods vigorously as Jean lights a cigarette, takes one drag, and immediately turns away to cough into his elbow.
“Sucks so fuckin’ much," he says. "Can't even smoke properly. Fucking awful."
“It does," Harry agrees. "Just don't infect me as well."
The satellite-officer looks down at his feet. The toes of his boots are buried in the snow: no one's clearing it away in front of the precinct. No one really cares about it.
"So get away then, why are you staring at me?"
"Well, I want to, so I'm staring."
"I see. Well then, get sick all you want."
"I don't want to."
"Well, don't get sick then."
Harry looks at him sideways, like he's an idiot.
"Was that how we always talked before?"
Jean winces and takes a drag on his cigarette.
"No. We never as much as *talked* before. You'd usually be lying drunk on the ground somewhere, and I'd stand off to the side, laughing. Real loud. I'd say, 'Serves you right, you old bastard! Should have drunk less.'"
"I don't believe it. You're kind of... not a laughing type."
"Huh, maybe not."
"Well, you're more of an asshole, sort of."
Now Jean actually laughs—nasally and not particularly sincerely.
"Yeah, yeah. And you're a dumb degenerate who's drunk his brains away. I've heard that one before."
Harry scoffs, but doesn't dignify it with an answer. He belatedly scratches his temple and flicks the ash from his cigarette.
It's too cold today to stand outside for long.
"Okay," says Harry. "I'll go work then."
He leaves Jean thoughtfully twirling the cigarette butt in his hand.
---------------
"Here. I washed it. Somehow forgot.. To give it back."
A woman with sharp features and short hair happily takes the handkerchief from the man's hands.
"Oh! I'd already forgotten myself. Manon managed to embroider another one. That new one has red stripes."
Jean scratches the back of his head and smiles.
"She's a good girl."
"Yeah. She manages to study well and sew at the same time. At her age, all I was interested in was getting my nose into magazines and all that."
"I didn't do anything at all."
Judit snorts and crosses her arms over her chest—a very Jean-esque gesture.
"At all?"
"Uh... Well, maybe my classmates and I blew up tires. I don't know."
"I'd remember that."
"It didn't really matter to me."
At thirteen, one of the older kids taught Jean how to smoke. After school, that's all he and a couple of other boys did—light up one half-wet cigarette between them. He smoked badly, like a street urchin: the boys at least tried to hold the cigarette between two fingers, like adults. Jean, on the other hand, would furtively pinch the butt and inhale rapid, long drags until someone from the boys took it away.
The skinny, unsightly boy was called "héron" by his peers. Mainly because of his name, but also because of the thin hands and pale, unblinking gaze.
At thirty-two, when Harry spilled wine on Jean, he pulled one wet cig from his breast pocket and thought, absentmindedly: should I quit or what?
"I think I started smoking right then."
"At thirteen? Horrible! If Manon had started smoking, I'd have gone crazy."
"Yeah, it's not much fun. You spend a lot of money."
Jean flicks his lighter and nearly spits the cigarette out in a coughing fit. Jude pats him on the back.
"What's wrong, huh? Thought you'd have recovered by now."
Jean wipes his mouth with his free hand and takes a long, convulsive breath. It comes out terrible: he wheezes so much that Judit winces in concern.
"Seriously, are you nuts? Are you even treating it?"
“Don't… Don't mother hen me, alright," he manages to gasp back at her.
Jude rolls her eyes and pats her partner on the back again.
"I'm not ‘mother-henning’ you. Anyone would freak out hearing a cough like that. You should see a doctor, or so help me God."
“Oh don't you start…"
“I'm not starting anything."
For some reason, Jean remembers the time Harry puked all over his pants.
"By the way, shitkid said Manon's handkerchief was really evil or something."
"...What?"
-----------------------
It's cold at the station—there's some trouble in the steamshop again. Probably one of the stokers came to work drunk and fell asleep somewhere under the ornate lines of the pipes. And never woke up afterwards. This had happened before, and Jean was furious about it: Harry theorized about an organized murder in the boiler room, although in the end, the stoker almost died of his own accord. Almost, because a blunt force blow to the head would have been survivable, if the recipient hadn't been nearly fifty and hadn't had previously documented heart problems. The dead man's careless colleague, who had hit him in the head, didn't even need to be questioned – he himself admitted that he, too, had been inebriated and the sleeping idiot had simply pissed him off.
Sometimes Jean would drift into slumber and imagine Harry in the place of the stoker's bloated corpse, only Harry would likely have gotten hit in the head with a valve and fallen back like that on his own. The hypothetical Jean the stoker would hardly have hit him while he was sleeping: that wouldn't have seemed very chivalrous. He would have just punched him in any other situation, of course.
Jean, without noticing, falls asleep at his desk, his cheek propped up on his hand. He jumps up when a deafening clap sounds in front of his face.
"Vic, Vic! What are you, sleeping in? Trying to outwork Mullen, I see? Even Mullen's working, and you're not," satellite-officer Chester McLaine chirps right next to his ear.
"What... He's working?" Jean mutters.
"I'm actually a hero of the red sky and the gray colossi that people call their homes," comes from somewhere to the right.
"I see... Well then. Fuck off, or something."
Chester's red eyebrows rise in surprise.
"What do you mean? Like, since you're not the one in command here anymore, you can loaf around now?"
"Just fuckin’ leave him alone, will you?" the voiceover suddenly reappears.
Jean scratches his cheek in disbelief and turns around. The lieutenant double yefreitor is leisurely shuffling through papers as if nothing had happened, occasionally chewing on the tip of his pencil. Beside him, Lieutenant Kitsuragi is hunched over, writing something intently in his notebook. Harry gazes at him, only for a moment, and there's something vaguely sad in it.
“You tryin’ to be a hero?" Chester asks. “He won't thank you, you know."
"I know."
Something inside Jean suddenly clenches, and he decides to stumble off his seat and leave quickly, coughing into his fist as he goes.
Outside the door he can't quite catch his breath. He curses everyone, including himself, when he remembers he's already given the handkerchief back to Judit.
-----------------------
Dozens of invisible nails constantly scrape and scratch, each time as if trying to tear his lungs apart from the inside. The coughing is incredibly tiring: Jean quickly learned that it gets easier if he doesn't lie down. He'd dozed off like that a couple of times before, sitting by the window, but such naps were of little use.
He tries not to think about the fact that one day he might suffocate. It's unlikely—Jean can't recall anyone ever dying from a prolonged coughing fit. But he really hopes he's gonna be the first case.
It's an inglorious and stupid way to die—in your own small apartment in the middle of the night, hunched over your desk. Even dogs at least retreat to the side of the road, into the bushes, when they sense their end approaching. But perhaps Jean deserved such a death. RCM officers die from bullet wounds more often than from anything else. Natural causes are unlikely. Harry could have been the first natural cause in a long time, but now he's apparently passed the baton to someone else, who's not even his partner anymore.
Jean no longer flinches at the alarm clock; he just silently buttons his jacket and closes the door behind him.
——————
Birds don't really like it when someone watches them. Crows have the least patience; they fly away as soon as they spot a human. Pigeons, at least, hover around for a long time, waiting for food.
Twenty meters from the entrance to the Precinct 41 of the Revachol Citizens Militia, honorary lieutenant double yefreitor Harrier Du Bois squats, not-so-honorably shaking a handful of millet in front of a flock of sparrows.
"I'm one of you, look!" he exclaims. "Got it? Harrier."
The sparrows, apparently, aren't very discerning about bird species and only hop fearfully around the largest and clumsiest one.
"Maybe you should sprinkle a little on the ground first... Then they'll get bold," Kim helps, standing nearby. He takes a long drag and glances at his partner, hiding a smile behind his cigarette.
"No way! Trust has to be earned, Kim. When they realize I don't bite, then they'll come running."
"And how will they realize that?"
"I don't know. I guess we just have to wait."
As if agreeing with Harry's words, one of the sparrows jumps onto his open palm, makes two hesitant hops, and quickly pecks one, two, three grains of millet.
Harry laughs triumphantly and finally spills the millet from his hand under his feet.
"That's how things are done! Now I'm their leader, or something like that. Where there's food, there's happiness."
Kim scratches his eyebrow under his glasses with his free hand—his eyes twitch with tiny webs of silent laughter.
———————
The police station isn't that crowded on Sunday. Even more so on Sunday night.
McLaine was supposed to be on night shift, but he claimed his grandma was sick. Harry didn't remember McLaine’s grandma, but he let him go home anyway.
Torson wouldn't have gone on shift without Chester, and Kim had already been on duty the night before. Judit had a good reason — her children — which left only Harry and, of course, Jean.
Certainly, there was always the option of barking at Torson and making him stay, but something told Harry that wasn't the right thing to do today. As usual, he couldn't say why.
"Okay," Jean hissed from his seat. "Then I'll... I'll stay."
The satellite-officer leans over the table in a very strange pose, almost lying his head down on it. One of his hands is gripping the edge of the table tightly, as if he loosens his grip, he'll simply fall down.
"Okay," Harry agrees simply. "Then I’m staying too."
Jean frowns and visibly tenses. "Why you?”
"I don't know. Just in case."
“What case?"
The lieutenant double yefreitor chooses to remain silent.
The clock counts down the seconds in a silent chant: the long hand briskly jumps across the dial, jumping back a millimeter with each step. The clock mechanism is quite extraordinary: several gears rotating adjacent to each other.
Jean has spent the last half an hour half asleep, awakened only by the cough piercing his lungs, and even then he stayed lucid only briefly. If Harry hadn't been with him, he likely would have fallen asleep altogether.
His former partner shuffles through the papers, pulling out the necessary files with deft movements for his rough, drunken hands. He glances at Jean from time to time, but, just like a couple of hours ago, decides to remain silent each time a thought crosses his mind.
Is he really waiting for him to speak first? Jean wonders why.
“Fucking... Okay, what do you want? You keep looking at me."
Harry almost glows and drops the file.
"Nothing! How are you doing? We're not talking at all these days."
Instead of answering, Jean silently clenches his teeth. For some reason, he suddenly feels nauseous, although usually he feels like it after a very long coughing fit.
"What difference does it make to you?" he finally manages. "You're not making me work anyway, for some reason."
Harry thinks for a moment.
"You seem kind of... quiet. And you're still sick. I thought it was weird."
Well, what does that have to do with it? He's sick, so what?
Besides the ticking of the clock, Jean suddenly realizes he can hear something inside him crackling with every careless breath. This should be frightening, but the dull, familiar ache in his lungs frightened him even more.
"Everything's fine. Whatever you're doing ... Keep doing it. Or something, I dunno.”
Jean feels Harry's growing irritation in his bones.
"Why do you brush me off every time I try saying something? Am I some kind of imbecile to you?"
The satellite almost says "yes," but quickly changes his mind when phlegm forms in his throat as he exhales.
"Can't I really ask you about anything now? Except for work. No, even when I mention work, I still come across as some kind of idiot to you. Or a dumbass. Or a brainless bastard."
Jean doesn't like it when people think he's stupid. Before his promotion to satellite-officer, he was always told he wasn't mature enough to have his own opinion: few respect sergeants. Not even sergeants themselves.
When Harry started drinking heavily—not even before weekends, as everyone else did, but every day—Jean felt stupid and uncouth again. How an incredibly drunk man could still masterfully solve cases and drink as if it was normal was a mystery to him.
The new Harry, sent by Martinaise's icy wind, didn't even think about touching the drink. He still said strange things and took ages to answer anyone's questions, but he was a man with a clear head and a nearly clear conscience. Except perhaps also with his memory wiped clean out.
Probably the constant "did we used to do this?" that Harry said was something that made Jean hold his breath and reflexively clench his fists every time.
"Well, it's kind of odd that you seem to actually think with your head. I'm a little unaccustomed to you standing on your own two feet. Sorry ‘bout that," Jean finally says.
"Well then... You don't think I'm an imbecile?"
"Sometimes."
Sometimes Jean wonders what he'd do to himself if he saw his partner's swollen, drunken face in the doorway again. He probably would have punched him hard and with all his might. They would have dragged him away by the arms, but he would have tried to relentlessly break free and finish the job. And then he would have come home and checked if the gun was loaded.
The most frightening thing about this little daydreaming is that in his mind, Harry would never punched back. He would just have looked at him sideways, his face bruised, and maybe cried.
"You say that a bit unsurely. But okay, apology accepted."
Jean felt a little ashamed that he had said all this with a hint of irony. But he partly believed his own words. Only partly.
"Okay. Will you leave me alone now?"
"No. Why are you wheezing so badly?"
Jean chuckles into his clenched fist.
"I smoke a lot. Two packs a day. Bitches call me the Jamrock Chimney."
Harry frowns, as if seriously considering this option.
"No, no way. You are sick, but I can't figure out with what."
"Who fuckin’ cares?"
Jean rubs his eyes tiredly, sighs, and realizes too late that he was wrong to breathe so deeply. A lump in his throat freezes him for a moment before he bursts into an incredibly violent cough. He's in pain, and with every contraction of his lungs, he thinks he's really going to die.
Belatedly, he feels hands on his back, shoulders, and one of the hesitant hands touches his forehead.
"You idiot! God, what’s wrong?"
Harry sounds almost scared, but maybe Jean is just imagining it.
"G-get off me," he mutters, and, timing the moment, stands up abruptly and twists out of his former partner's grasp.
When the coughing gives way to rapid, wheezing breaths and the blurring in his vision stops, Jean looks up at the dumbfounded Harry, feeling almost guilty.
"If only you'd just… stuck to your own business and left me alone," he says anyway, wiping the tears away with the back of his hand.
Harry looks at him, opens his mouth, then frowns and scratches his cheek in shock.
"You don't trust me at all, do you?" he asks.
Jean takes one, then another careless step back. Something trips over his foot and rolls deep into the darkness.
“I, I know things were terrible between us. And that I behaved terribly. I really don’t know what to do or what to say to make you believe me. I never wanted that…”
Something unravels inside Jean with two sweeping stitches, and he realizes too late that he’s screaming:
“What did you *never* want!? Well, tell me, what didn’t you want!? You don’t fucking remember, not a fucking thing. These sermons of yours… What’s that for, huh!? What do you want from me, what are you trying to prove to yourself?”
He expects screams, curses, a fist to the jaw, anything. He tenses and clenches his teeth.
“I’m sorry. I really did scare you a lot. I’m probably scaring you now, too.”
Jean blinks, looks at the floor, quickly glances at Harry’s shoes, his face. He reflexively hugs himself and recoils, as if struck.
For the first time in a long while, he genuinely doesn't know what to say.
"Maybe you should go home early? You're obviously really ill. Should take a sick leave."
Jean seriously wants to go outside and blow his brains out right in front of the entrance.
"I'll figure it out myself, thanks," he scowls.
Harry sighs and walks to his desk, puts something on it, and turns around again. His constant, attentive gaze is incredibly unnerving: the gaze of a lively, sober, and extremely calm Harry is even more so.
"Not right now, in the morning then. I'll tell Price you won’t work."
"I can work just fine."
The thought that Harry could cover for him makes him feel odd.
His former partner lets out a sound so strange, like a silent sob.
"Just.. Look at you. How can you even work like that? You can barely stand."
There's not a hint of irony in his voice, which is even more confusing. All of fthis after what Jean told him? He doesn't believe it one bit.
"Okay," he lies, and Harry's shoulders sag in relief. His hands return to the papers and that one pencil, the tip of which is mercilessly bitten.
Jean stares blankly ahead—and hears only the ticking of the clock.
————
Dolores Dei is depicted with blindingly glowing lungs. Lungs mean love. Pure, simple, and all-encompassing.
Religious people kept Dolores in small icons somewhere in the corners of rooms or on shelves. She looked at them with a piercing gaze and pointed to her lungs with one hand. As if saying, "Look, I can love and be loved."
Jean always thought she was stupid. He found nothing pure or kind in her perfect figure.
His chest was constantly aching, and the dull ache didn't subside even when he swallowed five drouamine pills instead of one.
After all, Dolores Dei was just a fresco on a building. And Jean was just a complete idiot.
After returning from the night shift, he spent the rest of the morning in his usual dozing off by the window. The light sparkled on the snow, stinging his already sore eyes. Birds chirped, cawed, and chattered joyfully somewhere on the nearby alley, and all Jean could think about was how he wasn't so glad he'd finally heard them.
———————
A day later, the station is as noisy as ever.
At the creak of the door, Judit instinctively turns her head and sighs in surprise.
"Harry said you weren't coming."
"Harry says a lot," Jean croaks. "Why bother?"
Jude just frowns and points to some papers on their table.
"The case," she says. "Look through it. Maybe we'll go out today."
Jean, with a clear conscience, spends two whole hours trying to read the case file, but each time he stumbles on the first page and starts rereading it. Jude, apparently already sensing the extent of his stupor, hasn't bothered him at all during this entire time.
Finally, he can't take it anymore and walks out the door, forgetting his coat. His hands are completely unresponsive in the cold, but he manages to light a cigarette and take a quick drag. His joy is short-lived, because the next second he's coughing so hard that the cigarette butt, disappears somewhere in the snow, forgotten.
Like clockwork, Judit rushes out the door.
"Why did you barge out so–..." she pauses, studying his face. "You dumbass."
Her hand quickly touches Jean's forehead, confirming her suspicions.
"Go home. I'll ask someone to come with me."
"No," Jean wheezes stubbornly. "It's fine."
"Are you serious right now?" she replies, upset. "Wait, just a second."
As he later realizes, Jude was about to go back for his coat, but accidentally bumped into Harry scurrying inside.
Jean feels like a schoolboy being scolded for misbehavior. This makes him even more disgusted with himself. He sees two people coming out the door and quickly turns away to cough into his fist.
Strong hands spin him around by the shoulders, so suddenly that Jean almost slips on the ground.
"Why the hell are you even here today? To infect others? What did I tell you?" Harry glares at him intently, until his gaze slides down Jean’s hands. His tone weakens significantly, unexpectedly abrupt.
"Jean, you're... you're bleeding," his partner says with growing fear.
The satellite stares blankly at his hand.
"Mm. Yeah. Probably gnawed at my cheek. Or something."
"What *fucking* cheek!? Are you really taking me for an idiot right now!?"
Jean didn't quite remember the specifics of a wet cough. Apparently, if you cough a lot and for a long time, something inside the alveoli bursts, creating air bubbles, and sometimes you can accidentally cough up blood. He'd been coughing up blood for two days now, and didn’t die yet, so.
"Why didn't you say anything, huh? You fucking dumbass.”
Because he doesn't care, and he thinks you shouldn’t too, - something answered deep inside Harry’s psyche.
"Take him with you, Harry, please. If anything happens, I'll take Kim with me. I have to go now..."
The road to the hospital is barely an hour away. If it doesn’t snow heavily, maybe a little less. Only if Gottlieb hadn't already gone home from his shift, it would be easier. On the other hand, they probably don't have anything... to counter whatever Jean has come down with.
Jean barely reacts when Harry supports him by the shoulder, and that's what scares him most. He hopes he won't have to drag him like a deadweight all the way to the train, but that hope is slim.
His thoughts drift back to the dirty, sludgey spring in Martinaise, where Jean had come up to him and offered his shoulder.
That's what it was like for you, Harry thinks, feeling Jean’s rapid breathing on him. I understand.
Luckily for Harry, whose leg had at some point begun to violently resist the constant additional strain, his former partner comes to his senses from time to time and remembers to move his legs.
The train ride serves as an incredible catharsis after the journey to it, which seems impossible. Harry collapses into an empty seat with relief and pulls Jean with him. Jean yields—too easily, without any resistance — and something in Harry's chest aches from that very fact.
The rumble of the wheels distracts him slightly. His hand supports Jean's shoulder, as if he could escape from the empty benches.
Harry suddenly remembers how Jean, drunk and stoned out of his mind, had told him he wouldn't mind dying right then and there.
“Alright," Harry had simply agreed then. "The gun's over there. Maybe we can play Russian roulette?"
"Sure."
They sat on the floor for a long time, passing the revolver back and forth, each time more and more surprised by the identical click of an empty chamber.
"Damn... How come?" Jean muttered disappointedly, taking the revolver from Harry's hands. "Maybe we're... Immortals?"
Harry frowned.
"Like Innocences? No, no. It's God leading you by his hand. Or someone higher than God. Oblivion itself." He yawned and added, "It's not working. Maybe we should go to bed?"
Jean stared thoughtfully down the barrel, awkwardly turned the revolver over, and placed it on the floor.
"Oh well. Sleep it is."
The morning after Harry checked the revolver and laughed when he found the cylinder completely empty. Someone had been too preoccupied with the prospect of death (and drunkness and the power of speed) to check if there were any bullets in the revolver in the first place.
Harry hugs Jean, still alive, tighter, and almost falls asleep himself, until the bell rings for the train just arriving from the opposite line. If he'd missed the station, he'd have to wait who knows how long for the next one.
"Come on, Jean. Let's go, the doors are gonna close and we won't make it. Hey."
Anxiety seethes traitorously inside Harry as Jean blinks weakly and stares blankly down.
"I don't want to," he whispers.
Harry diligently reminds himself that Jean has a fever. That he really does want to get better, really.
Then, he’ll sit there like a proud rook and shower him with insults, as always.
Out in the fresh air, his partner almost comes to his senses. He grabs Harry's shoulder abruptly and nearly slips on thin ice.
"Fuck... It's slippery," he says for some reason.
"Yeah. Don't fall. I have a bad leg, I won't carry you."
But if I had to, I would.
The snow crunches heavily under his feet as Harry sees the yellow windows of the hospital and nearly cries.
In the emergency room, Jean recovers enough to argue.
"Why did you drag me here? We were working," he asks.
"Brought you here for experiments."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Sleep, they'll call for us."
Jean, leaning heavily on Harry's shoulder, inhales and starts choking in another coughing fit. His former partner patiently holds him in his arms and strokes his back like he was some kind of a fragile matter.
"You’re so stupid," he mutters, feeling the other's convulsive wheezing all over his body. "Why would you even want to work in a state like that? What are you trying to prove to everyone?"
Harry is dozing, leaning back on the hospital bench, when the local doctor enters the hallway.
"Excuse me, were you the one who brought Vicquemare?"
Harry immediately sits up straight.
"Yes, yes."
"Basically, I think you’ve already figured it out, but he's being hospitalized. You need to sign a consent form, he refused to sign it at all. Are you related?"
Out of habit, the lieutenant finds his badge in his pocket.
"I'm.. Uh.. Family. His." He remembers that the name on the ID is different. "I just got married recently. To a ma... a woman. We have one mother." he thinks for a moment. "I'm from police, by the way."
The doctor is completely uninterested in every word that comes out of Harry's mouth.
"I see. Well, sign it and go."
"How long will he have to stay there? I'll report it to the station."
"Three weeks, at least. It's pneumonia, an advanced one. Don't you even watch out for each other at the station? That's how the law is these days, I guess."
That explains the coughing up blood part. Everything else... not so much.
"No. I would have taken him here earlier, but he said I was an imbecile."
"Okay. Sign here, and here."
"Oh... Will I be able to visit him?"
"No. It's a bacterial infection. Better get it checked out yourself."
Harry visibly falters.
"I don't think I'm sick..."
"You're so sure about that now. Well, that's your business."
The lieutenant double yefreitor sits down on the hospital steps and fishes a cigarette out of the pack. He lights it and gets a little surprised when the cigarette quickly wettens under his fingers. He wipes his eyes and sighs. He's probably just tired.
With the first rays of sun, the birds are completely silent.
——————
Jean sits near the hospital's outpatient wing, his coat hastily thrown over his shoulders and his hands awkwardly resting on his lap in front of him. Harry is sat next to him, a little further to the left, turning away every now and then to blow a puff of smoke into the frozen air.
"Maybe just a..."
"I don't get it, are you really that fuckin’ stupid? I won't give you a cig."
The satellite officer flips the lieutenant off as the latter turns away from him once again.
"It's still blowing on me, by the way."
Harry gasps and moves another two meters to the right.
"Really? Why didn't you tell me right away?"
"Passively smoking."
"I'll kill you."
With every breath, Jean expects to hear the familiar crackling in his lungs and he'll have to hold his breath to keep himself from coughing. It doesn't happen. Only occasionally does he still wheeze. But only occasionally. He doesn't rule out the fact that the considerable distance between him and his former partner means he's constantly yelling in the cold weather.
Former partner... It sounds a little silly. Former partners don't bring you lousy vending machine coffee or tell you how boring it is to work without you.
If Jean were a little bolder, he'd call him a friend. But he never will: it should be clear by now anyways.
"By the way, I'll be discharged in a couple of days."
"Oh, really?"
"Uh-huh. I'll be in their sights for about another six months, but that's it." Vic pinches two fingers to his mouth and exhales an invisible cigarette, presumably to appear cool, as he says, "About damn time."
"It's been so quiet around here. Chester hasn't called me any variation of a member of the homo-sexual underground for, I don't know, a whole week out of three."
Right. And Kim probably sighs a little less often.
"I hope you prayed every day for a lamp to fall on my head and kill me," Jean mutters.
Harry quickly tosses away his cigarette butt, takes a few long strides, and looms menacingly over him, asking seriously, "What did you say?"
"That you're a mindless idiot."
"Ah," Harry draws himself up proudly. "Yes. That's me. Same for you here."
It's weird to admit, but he seemed to miss this silly name-calling a little.
Sitting on the steps is funny; it feels like you're a bird on a perch.
"I'm thinking," Harry continues, "Maybe when you get discharged, you could... crash at my place? Not for a beer, or anything. Okay, maybe a little beer, that's it."
Jean exhales a puff of air and raises an eyebrow at his partner.
"You're like... inviting me over for a sleepover? What are we, five?"
"Yeah."
"God..." Harry freezes and braces himself. He even stops breathing. "Yeah, okay, damn you, okay! You're going to burn a hole in me."
Jean almost regrets agreeing, because his partner throws himself at him in joy, shaking him by the shoulders.
“Fuck, get the fuck away from me! What am I, a pear tree to you or something!?
"The dumbest pear tree in the whole world," Harry laughs. "Dumb and smelly. Didn't they say what time they're discharging you?"
———————
Harry's house isn't as damp and dirty as it used to be. Jean knows why.
The patrol uniform still hangs in a frame on the wall. A tie is hanging on the frame—not the kind that usually suggests doing something incredibly *disco*.
The window in the small room is wide open—Harry immediately runs over in his dirty boots and hastily locks it.
"Here," he presents, as if Jean hasn't been here dozens of times. "We can do somethin'. Or we can do nothing. Want some coffee?"
"Uh-huh."
Thursday evening feels very weightless. Most likely because it's almost Friday. 'Brilliant, absolutely brilliant,' Jean thinks to himself. 'I need to run this through Harry.'
"No, man. Friday is three-quarters to Saturday. By the way, what's your Friday – green or red? I'm leaning more toward gray. Probably because everyone gets drunk on Fridays and their vision go black."
"Uh... Red. It's kind of icky to me."
"Why?" Harry asks, surprised.
"I always feel like something crazy is about to happen before the weekend."
He gets up out of habit to go out for a smoke, but then changes his mind.
"That's un-fucking-fair. What am I supposed to do now?"
"Instead of smoking?"
"Yeah. Well, after six months, maybe I can... I'll probably start even earlier. They told me I was healthy, like a fuckin’ horse. They were surprised I even caught pneumonia in the first place."
For some reason, Harry doesn't laugh and falls silent. Just as Jean begins to frown tensely, he blurts out:
"Why didn't you want to get better?"
The question catches the satellite off guard.
"...What?" he asks dumbly, as if he could hide something like that from someone like Harry. Harry always knows everything, somehow.
"Judit would agree, if anything. You brushed her off too. So why?"
"Are you an idiot? Why are you even asking this right-”
"I'm not an idiot," Harry interrupts, low and authoritative. "You thought you could just go and work yourself into the grave, huh? Because of what?"
"You know why, why are you dragging this out of me…?” - Jean sighs.
"Because it's important."
A chuckle, very bitter one.
“Really?"
Harry's look says it all. Jean raises his hands in defeat.
"Okay, okay. If that's what you want." He gathers his courage, rubs his neck, and says, "Well... My friend, almost a year after his memory was shattered, is living his best life. I thought it would be easier working with Judit. That the problem was you. It definitely was, but not entirely, and I only realized it just now. And I'm still in this mess. And I'm still, I don't know... I don't care whether I die or not."
He doesn't look at Harry, scared to see his face. A long, tense pause follows.
"You really think I have the 'best life'?"
"Don't you? You're partnered with the best man from the ‘57th. Who's now the best in '41. After you. You've forgotten all the shit before, and now you walk the earth like a damn saint, and everyone forgives you for everything."
Jean finally looks up at his partner, who hides his face in his hands and laughs sarcastically.
"Do you seriously think this is *great* for me? You said it yourself, it's been almost a year. I now remember beating people unconscious, tripping over shards of glass, and wallowing in my own vomit. Is this *great* for you?"
Before Jean can object, he continues:
"I didn't remember your face. At all. Once, I caught, how do I put it, a vision, and I didn't understand why I saw *you*. But not you particularly, just your silhouette. Do you think I care so little about you that I decided to just step over you and move on?"
You're pushing me away, he doesn't say. I called you my family in front of a stranger.
"I was actually thinking..."
“Fuck whatever you were thinking."
"...Sorry," he blurts out, hastily.
Is he really so dumb, being all silent and making things up in his head all the way from April to November? What is he, a little girl?
Harry sighs.
"I still sometimes think about, well... blowing my brains out. At least I have Kim. I tell him. And you, you tell no one... You can't go on like that. Everyone at this god-awful job is going crazy in different ways, you know."
Jean thinks about Judit's sad glances and the coffee neatly left on his desk. She knows, she's just waiting for him to talk. But he doesn't. Ever.
"I used to come to you," he admits quietly. "But now, well... You have a different life."
"That's not true. That's just not, that's all. I wouldn't have invited you here then."
Well, yeah. It's still hard to believe. Even now.
"Basically, I'm a dumb idiot," Jean concludes.
"You could say that. But really, it's..." Harry rubs his face. "I'm too old for this shit… Just, don't go all silent on us. Please. I'm worried, and everyone's worried too."
Funnily, Jean said something similar back in Martinaise.
"Okay then. If I start coughing up blood again, I'll show you first."
"Oh, God, don't."
Silence.
"I think I'll go to bed. Where can I lie down at your place? On any horizontal surface, or somewhere you haven't puked on?"
Harry sighs patiently.
"There's no puke anywhere. Lay out the sofa.”
If Harry were a landlord or just a money-grubber, Jean would have gotten a punch in the face a long time ago for his constant caustic comments about his den. But it's a real shame to hit Jean, malnourished from his time at the hospital: like hitting a wet mongrel found on the side of the road.
He puts the cups in the sink and turns off the light.
The apartment feels different with anyone but Harry in it. It feels the same odd way when Kim comes over. After Kim, it's cleaner and brighter. With Jean... He hasn't decided yet. But it feels like something else.
Harry blindly waddles in the dim light and instinctively touches Jean's forehead. It's cold. He listens to his breathing, even, clean, and freezes, as if afraid to scare it away.
Something good at last, he thinks. Then he remembers his revolver, lying forgotten on the desk. For some reason, he pats Jean's head again. His fingers run across his forehead, brushing away the hair that had fallen from it, then approaches the window.
He picks up the revolver and checks the bolt. He thinks about how many times Jean has pointed his own identical revolver anywhere but the space in front of him. He thinks about how many times he's done exactly the same thing.
His hands tremble as he completely unloads the cylinder. The cartridges clatter against the tabletop, trying to roll to the floor. Harry tuts, furtively turns over his shoulder, and quickly covers the bullets with his palm to stop them from rattling.
In the end, he doesn't know why he did it.
When he returns to the coach, Jean has almost slid to the floor. Harry doesn't know whether he's gonna be hit in his sleep or not, but he decides to lift him up a little by the elbows anyway.
Receiving no reaction, Harry sighs like an old, tired dog and lies down next to him.
In the pale light of the streetlights, the frosty air freezes and crystallizes tiny droplets of water. Five kilometers away, a kestrel cries on a gnarled aspen branch.
As Harry drifts off to sleep, he thinks of Dolores Dei and her honey-golden lungs.