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cog_nomenTitle: Four of Clubs
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: OMC/OMC (David Serkey/Constantine Fitzweiss)
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 33,424
Summary: CIA Agents David and Constantine are partners in the Agency's Mindcrime division, working on a new project to combat the illegal usage of PASIV devices for extraction. There is also a secret, a lot of damage, and a slow train-ride into hell.
WARNINGS: Violence, some graphic imagery, and slash of course. David is not a healthy guy.
To tell the truth, I'd had enough of bars - almost enough of him. I thought he was right at least, and I better cool off for a while. I know I take things too far, get out of control. I was fixating and I had to take a step back, find something else to do in the meantime. Something safe. A known quantity. Faceless girls hadn't worked, fucking up Constantine's sobriety had backfired.
So I called a standby, a guy I'd been fucking in New York, another cop. He could be discreet, and he had leave time he was willing to spend in Chicago. I didn't tell Con, of course. He'd have wanted to spend time, to be involved, maybe ask about my past. I know what I'd have done, anyway. And by now it's become policy - I don't let Constantine know the men I fuck. It's too close to home. Girls are fine - there's some level of disconnect, but there are puzzle pieces involved with the guys that I didn't want him to have yet. Maybe never.
Reece caught me by surprise after work when we'd agreed to meet later, though. Caught me walking out of the building with Con, a dirty sort of trick like the asshole liked to pull - always looking for leverage.
I told Con he was an old buddy from New York, while Reece waited to be introduced and made good use of the time I spent making excuses about the two of us 'catching up' to look my partner over like he was a side of beef or questionable produce - which was way more attention than I appreciated. He got even more interested when he noticed how pissed it was making me. I told Con I'd see him Monday, and shut myself into Reece's rental car.
"You could have invited him," Reece suggested lewdly, flashing a grin that had taken a team of dentists years to perfect. Reece looks like a movie star and he knows it. Half the reason he became a cop is the fucking uniform, I think. They'd stopped giving out the S.S. ones by the time he was old enough.
"No, I couldn't have," I told him flatly, end-of-fucking-conversation. "And stay the fuck away from where I work."
Reece chewed that over, arched his brows and looked at me like I was an idiot. I am an idiot, but not the kind Reece thought I was.
"You see the way he looks at you?"
"Yeah," I answered, if I was blind I could hardly miss it sometimes. "He ain't ready, though."
"Push him, he'll swim."
I'd wanted to for so long I could have punched the guy in the face for suggesting it. Like I hadn't already thought about it, like that option was one I hadn't considered. "I'm not so sure," I settled for, and reached into my pocket, brushed my hand over my totem. There's solidarity in there, something reassuring that he wouldn't understand. "He's stubborn. If he's not ready, he might - I dunno, sink on principal."
"Jesus, listen to you. You'd never let that get in the way back at the precinct."
"Nothing at the precinct was quite like this," I actually found myself admitting, to this dirtbag of all people, but it was to the point then where I just had to say it. "You know, you find the one, you take your time."
He laughed at me, really laughed.
"Partners for four years and you're still 'taking your time' How blue are your balls?" Reece turned the wheel with his powerful shoulders flexing, watching me almost more than the road, pulled off at some shithole hotel - the first that we passed.
"Says the cop," I returned, about to undo my seat belt when he reached across the seat and got his fingers into my hair - we never kissed. I didn't want his shit-eating mouth anywhere near mine, but I didn't mind if it was on my dick. He felt about the same, even better if it was someplace we could get caught. He got his zipper open one handed, pulled his dick out and yanked me toward it with clear intent.
So I went. Sucked his cock while he used his voice and pushed me down mercilessly to remind me who he wasn't.
"What a fuckin' thing that would be, huh?" he said, down at the back of my head, fingers tightening in my hair to make sure I was listening.
"That gorgeous untouched partner of yours reads in the paper you're in for indecent exposure, public sexuality." He enjoyed the idea, obviously, let his voice raise up louder like he wanted the attention. "That you were suckin' my dick right here 'cause you're that hard up."
He leaned his head back and let loose a groan that could have rattled windows, and I reached up to shove my first three fingers almost down his throat. I drew back off his cock, pushed my hand deeper into his mouth, like I was about to map his uvula with my damn fist.
"Shut the fuck up, Reece," I warned him.
He made a sound - could have been a chuckle, around my fingers, pushed my head back down and kept quieter until he finished. I spat onto the car-mat in the foot well, withdrew the threat of my fingers from his mouth and sat the rest of the way up, undoing my seat belt.
"There you fucking are," he growled approvingly, "Get in the room, get goddamn ready."
He tucked himself into his pants and got out of the car to pay, and I obeyed orders as soon as I knew which room was ours.
Reece didn't require any special equipment for his sadism. He had his hands and a special talent with a belt, and he didn't believe in safewords. He was too chicken-shit to actually push past the edge. He liked how much I resisted. Liked trying to take the impudent, defiant look off my face. Sometimes, I even let him.
Me? I just liked the oblivion after forty eight hours of endurance, pain, abuse, orgasms. That he'd push strong fingers into the belt marks on my back while he pressed my face into the mattress and fucked me past sensation, into a white space that was almost sleep or suffocation, until my survival instinct kicked up protest and my lungs surged for air and I had to jerk back, gasping. He laughed at that shit, came harder when I choked and coughed.
But I didn't touch a single drop of alcohol all weekend. Monday morning I felt scoured clear, absolved. I couldn't have gotten an erection if I'd walked into work to find out that Constantine and twin supermodels were engaged in an orgy on my office floor and I was invited.
Just Con, sitting at his computer. He wordlessly offered me a still-warm carton of leftover Chinese, his chopsticks still in it. I ate with them. The salty, greasy food tasted like the best I had in years, and the slow repetitive motion let me test the range of pain-free motion in my shoulders.
"We get anything from Seleznova?" I asked, looking at the file over his shoulder. He shook his head.
"Same shit. Can't pin it on her, can't pin her team. She gets picked up just to fuck with us by this point."
"How was your weekend?" I asked, guessing not so great if he was here. I was sure he could guess basically how mine went, if not the details.
He shrugged, then seemed to think of a high point in spite of the dark circles under his eyes, and looked back up at me over his shoulder with the brightest smile. I was almost forced to revisit my hypothesis on my ability to get a boner, and I would have under any other circumstances. As it was, my heart just gave a half-exhausted thump and my brain figured it might as well keep the blood supply.
"Bears won yesterday," he said, and then looked almost - devilish. Playful. "Beat the Giants."
I had no clue what the fuck he was talking about before I realized - it was football. Football season had snuck up on us again somehow, and Chicago's sad old half-dead football team had somehow beat New York's. I apparently should have felt the loss like a personal counting coup in his favor, because when my only reaction was to stuff more Lo-Mein in my mouth, nonplussed, he looked surprised. Then suspicious.
"You're not a fuckin' Jets fan, are you?"
It was so incredulous, so genuine. I laughed so hard I almost choked on my food. I'd never thought he'd be this wound up over football. I guess when your team's the Bears, causes for celebration are few and far between.
"No," I laughed - half coughed - grabbing for napkins. It stretched my painful back, but I hardly felt it, pushing the napkin against my mouth and coughing a few more times for good measure, laughing between. "No, I hate the Jets. That's New fuckin Jersey."
"Come watch next Sunday," Con said, impulsively I could tell, but he didn't have a lot of buddies. Must be better to enjoy sports with more than just yourself. "I'll cook."
"Yeah, alright. I'll play devil's advocate." I agreed. It'd probably keep me out of trouble. And I'd be in his apartment, doing something that mattered to him. I figured after all the bars he'd endured, I could do that much for him.
-
Sundays became regular. It was equally the most stable and the most frustrating time of my life as '06 wore on toward '07. I learned to like football for the first time in my life. Con loved it, ignored my mostly blank looks until I could finally catch on, finally hold a halfway intelligent conversation.
He'd played in high school, the quarterback at a Christian private school of all places, and I wondered if that wasn't half his problem. He was proud of his football years, and I ate up the stories of his past. Some asshole had broken his damn arm just in time for the college recruiters to pass him over, and I could sense the old heartbreak that must have been involved.
I kept it to myself, but I was glad he'd had to fall back onto plan B and become a police officer (against his father's wishes). He was too smart to spend his days getting hit by bigger guys until he was too badly broken to play anymore.
I got him out to toss the football a few times, though long throws hurt his arm, I could tell. Between the scar - I saw that for the first time on one of those Sundays, when I got there early and he was elbows deep in his bike doing repairs. I knew he had it, in theory. I'd read about the injury in his file, but he was wearing this sleeveless T-shirt, all stained with motor oil, and I could actually see it for the first time. It was a smear of uneven tissue, ending in a permanent divot, several long lines pulling up over the bicep toward it, where they'd pulled flesh up to the wound to help it heal. Cleaner than I might have thought.
Between the scar and his old broken bone, he was too stiff to do much throwing, but he still taught me how, and we'd roughhouse. It was torture to learn how his body felt that way, but I did it anyway, because he'd relax into it.
I pretended I was watching the games when really I was memorizing the backs of his shoulders, the attentive cant of his head, how he'd lean as far forward as possible on the edge of the couch cushion when he was deeply attentive, his whole body into it.
He'd grouse when things went badly, but always perked up again when the Bears won. My luck was such that as November turned to December they did that often. I took a gamble. I knew a guy who knew a guy. For Christmas, I got him - us - superbowl tickets. It was risky before post-season.
"I got a good feeling," I said, when he looked at them with his hand over his mouth, like he didn't want to mention how much faith I was extending on behalf of a team I usually disparaged. "And if the Bears suck in the playoffs you can sell them and get yourself a watch to remind yourself it's time to root for a real team."
It was the most grateful punch in the arm I'd ever received. The picture from that game - us smiling our asses off in Miami in February, about to watch the Bears get clobbered by the Colts, but he looked happy. I was looking at him, and I almost looked - normal. Content. Even though his team lost, he walked out happy.
Sundays kept happening. Even without football, we'd just spend a few hours. Cook. Go to the batting cages. I found the closest thing to equilibrium I'd had in a long time. But, I could feel the tension winding up again, curling up in the back of my mind like a venomous snake just waiting for me to put a foot down in striking distance.
So as regular as our Sundays, Reece came on his leaves. I spent a lot of cash to get him up from New York to berate and half-destroy me. I didn't know, couldn't know, that he could only level so much steam off the boiler with his belt and his recklessness. Each time, there was a little more left behind, letting things get closer and closer to the surface with each interval.
Still, it went on a little while okay. Things could almost be normal, week to week. We still went to bars, sometimes, but I let him believe I was chilling out, not so desperate all the time. It was by that point I thought - and maybe I was right about part of it but I couldn't go on like he deserved - If I let him see that he was what I needed...
But if it was going to work, it wasn't going to do it fast enough.
I could have held out for a year, maybe, if things went easy, but they didn't. We had a job that meant 'easy' wasn't part of our vocabulary, and we were dedicated to it. Theoretically, with no distractions. Though not having a wife or kids didn't automatically qualify us for a full frontal lifectomy, it meant Con and I could stay late, did stay late. Put our noses to the grindstone and actually picked up tracks. Other metaphors, too, I'm sure, but it culminated in several arrests (for possession, which wasn't the worst part of the crime, but it was better than nothing), and another run in with our old friend Ksenia Seleznova.
Russian girl. Liked to play the runaround game, maybe a little too much. A mouse baiting cats.
-
Con was in the other room trying to work a deal with their leader, leaving me alone with Ksenia - I figured this time I might break her.
"Why don't you make a deal - you're a kid. Just a sad little girl alone," I said, echoing the words Con uses, but in my own condescending tone, trying to push her against the grain. "You don't have to do what you do. You can make it without all this crime shit. You're smart - smart enough to know where you're going when we put you away for this - and this time'll be it."
"You're terrible at this," she answered, sitting up absolutely straight, hands folded together atop her crossed legs. Her hair was straight, blonde dyed blonder, and cut to stay out of her eyes. "You just aren't cut out for 'good cop'. Does your partner ever buy it?"
"Sweetie, we're both good enough agents to put your whole team in federal prison for a very long time."
"You weren't always agents," Ksenia said offhandedly, lifting a hand to examine the undersides of her nails critically. "No one wouldn't know you were a cop to begin with - why don't you strike a deal with me?"
I figured this would be good. I crossed my arms to listen.
"It's just a matter of knowing where to look, as you know. So I checked up on Fitzweiss. I figured, no one's that good at 'good cop' without something to hide but - what do you know? Miracles do happen. My mother would be very happy. He really is a boy scout, isn't he? Never in trouble, always gets his man."
I wondered if she had possibly found something that I hadn't on him. I was mortified - what if he had a blind spot I couldn't protect him from?
She kicked one leg idly, looking at the toe of her pump as if there were something on it she'd like to scrape off.
"And then there was you."
My blood ran cold when she looked up, and I knew - she knew. Or maybe she was bluffing, reading cues she thought she saw, so I tipped my head back, drew in a breath, dared her to put her money where her mouth was.
She slowly smiled, cattish.
"I'll set the scene," she began, smoothing her hands over her leg, and then looking up at me to be sure I was listening.
"Upstairs at the Penthouse Executive Club, there are 'harem rooms'. Little private spaces where girls entertain rich men in more intimate quarters. Everyone knows - cops especially - you don't get laid in a strip club."
She knew, and that was enough to prove it, but I made her play it out, kept myself upright, tried to look un-fazed.
"Two of New York's finest - dressed down and off hours. One's the police chief. The other? A lieutenant. There's cocaine - not a lot. Enough so the police chief must be coasting - rocketing, if he's never done it before the way he claims he hadn't. No one's sure if you - I mean, the lieutenant had any at all. Past experience says the lieut can get a little unglued. Likes power. Maybe likes it enough to have the police chief's dick halfway down his throat when the other cops - the ones the stripper called when she saw the drugs - kicked in the door."
Ksenia sat up straighter, brushed an invisible speck off of her shoulder, and only then met my eyes to measure the effects of her words, looking smugly satisfied when she saw my anger. She'd opened this can of worms, and she had no idea how badly I wanted to destroy her memory of it. Wanted to rip it out by the roots like it was hair and show her that when she came at a guy like me with something from the past, she should know that the currency she was gambling in was pain.
"So why don't you keep threatening me, and then when your pal Fitzweiss looks in in, oh," she looked at her watch with a big, exaggerated motion. "Ten minutes, I'll see how the only good cop left in Chicago feels about his partner when he knows that smart mouth of yours almost ruined a married man. Wonder where he'll think you're headed, though the answer's 'down' isn't it? I know about the visits. That cop comes in from New York an awful lot. Intimate getaways in shitty hotels. Fitzweiss know about those? He know about how you like it?" She clicked her nails on the tabletop, eyes half closed.
"So here's the deal," she began. It was enough. Blackmail, she was talking and if it started here, if I gave her control, even this much - it wasn't gonna happen. Put it that way.
Instead I lunged, grabbed my hands into her collar and hauled her up, face to face, let her look right in my eyes and see the full measure of me. What I was capable of.
"The deal is, so help me god, that you shut the fuck up right now, or I will have to ask my 'good cop' partner to help me file a report on why there's so much blood in this interrogation room," I snarled, shook her once - hard enough to snap her head back and forth on her neck.
I heaved her back again suddenly, backwards until her knees hit the chair and she sat down automatically. "You get to use this once," I told her, "So, congratulations - you've just used it."
Then I showed her why there's a big old yellow pages in every interrogation room, but not a phone to be seen. It's not so you can look up a lawyer. I picked it up in both hands and heaved it toward her middle, let her catch it in her shock. They always catch it, criminals - quick hands, reluctant to let go of anything they've got ahold of. I followed the path of the book with my closed fist, so she took the transfer of force through a wide surface area - it wouldn't bruise that way. Knocked the wind the fuck out of her while she tried to fight her locked diaphragm for air.
"In ten minutes," I told her, catching the book when she dropped it and raising it in my hand, a tangible threat. "You walk the fuck out of here, and if you so much as think of New York, I swear to you there is nothing on this whole green earth that will keep you and your team alive."
It was mostly an empty threat, but maybe in that moment if she'd so much as moved wrong, I'd have carried it out. Right then and there. As it was, she looked up me, frozen, eyes trying to see deep enough to measure how much was an act, and how much she had really pushed me. She saved herself by her hesitation, beginning to draw back to kick me - likely square between the legs if she could manage - only just as Constantine came in to break it up.
"Hey, easy - jesus, what is this a playground?" Con's arms looped around mine as the clear aggressor, and he pulled me back. Ksenia started to get up, to press the advantage she thought she had with my arms pinned. Con put a hand square center on her chest and pushed her back into her seat without letting me go more than he had to.
"You sit down," he told her, pulling me back one more step. "You ought to know better."
He differentiated her from me with tone, by turning his head to speak into my ear, and I challenged Ksenia with my gaze, dared her to say anything to him. She just watched us warily, waiting to see if she'd have an opportunity.
She didn't. I put the rush on getting her out, getting them out. By that point we knew jerking them around on our legal suspect holds wasn't going to convince them of their wicked ways. We did it so they knew we were watching them, maybe eventually they'd feel enough pressure to make the kind of mistake we needed. Today was not that day, and I wanted Seleznova to think about how I'd reacted to her threats. How much a guy like me would actually do to protect himself. I was counting on her to suspect that she'd barely scratched the surface, finding only those things I'd been caught at.
It wasn't that I thought it'd all fall apart. The CIA had to know by now, but they took the good with the bad. Knew that all skill sets are necessary to produce results. I didn't think Con would just give up on me either, but he might start to think he had to watch out for me, to defend me. I didn't want to put him in that place, not after all he'd done already.
If she'd have had a cat, I'd have shot it to make sure she got the message. It didn't matter in the end, the team decided we were too big a pain in the ass and moved over-seas. Nigeria's a hotbed, dreamshare isn't illegal there. It's still illegal to own a PASIV though, since that's solely the property of the U.S. Military.
They went, we didn't miss them. But my equilibrium had been tipped again and the walls I'd created to keep my spin tightly controlled began to crumble away, turning simple rotation into a spiral, into loops outward. Normality never lasts.
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: OMC/OMC (David Serkey/Constantine Fitzweiss)
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 33,424
Summary: CIA Agents David and Constantine are partners in the Agency's Mindcrime division, working on a new project to combat the illegal usage of PASIV devices for extraction. There is also a secret, a lot of damage, and a slow train-ride into hell.
WARNINGS: Violence, some graphic imagery, and slash of course. David is not a healthy guy.
To tell the truth, I'd had enough of bars - almost enough of him. I thought he was right at least, and I better cool off for a while. I know I take things too far, get out of control. I was fixating and I had to take a step back, find something else to do in the meantime. Something safe. A known quantity. Faceless girls hadn't worked, fucking up Constantine's sobriety had backfired.
So I called a standby, a guy I'd been fucking in New York, another cop. He could be discreet, and he had leave time he was willing to spend in Chicago. I didn't tell Con, of course. He'd have wanted to spend time, to be involved, maybe ask about my past. I know what I'd have done, anyway. And by now it's become policy - I don't let Constantine know the men I fuck. It's too close to home. Girls are fine - there's some level of disconnect, but there are puzzle pieces involved with the guys that I didn't want him to have yet. Maybe never.
Reece caught me by surprise after work when we'd agreed to meet later, though. Caught me walking out of the building with Con, a dirty sort of trick like the asshole liked to pull - always looking for leverage.
I told Con he was an old buddy from New York, while Reece waited to be introduced and made good use of the time I spent making excuses about the two of us 'catching up' to look my partner over like he was a side of beef or questionable produce - which was way more attention than I appreciated. He got even more interested when he noticed how pissed it was making me. I told Con I'd see him Monday, and shut myself into Reece's rental car.
"You could have invited him," Reece suggested lewdly, flashing a grin that had taken a team of dentists years to perfect. Reece looks like a movie star and he knows it. Half the reason he became a cop is the fucking uniform, I think. They'd stopped giving out the S.S. ones by the time he was old enough.
"No, I couldn't have," I told him flatly, end-of-fucking-conversation. "And stay the fuck away from where I work."
Reece chewed that over, arched his brows and looked at me like I was an idiot. I am an idiot, but not the kind Reece thought I was.
"You see the way he looks at you?"
"Yeah," I answered, if I was blind I could hardly miss it sometimes. "He ain't ready, though."
"Push him, he'll swim."
I'd wanted to for so long I could have punched the guy in the face for suggesting it. Like I hadn't already thought about it, like that option was one I hadn't considered. "I'm not so sure," I settled for, and reached into my pocket, brushed my hand over my totem. There's solidarity in there, something reassuring that he wouldn't understand. "He's stubborn. If he's not ready, he might - I dunno, sink on principal."
"Jesus, listen to you. You'd never let that get in the way back at the precinct."
"Nothing at the precinct was quite like this," I actually found myself admitting, to this dirtbag of all people, but it was to the point then where I just had to say it. "You know, you find the one, you take your time."
He laughed at me, really laughed.
"Partners for four years and you're still 'taking your time' How blue are your balls?" Reece turned the wheel with his powerful shoulders flexing, watching me almost more than the road, pulled off at some shithole hotel - the first that we passed.
"Says the cop," I returned, about to undo my seat belt when he reached across the seat and got his fingers into my hair - we never kissed. I didn't want his shit-eating mouth anywhere near mine, but I didn't mind if it was on my dick. He felt about the same, even better if it was someplace we could get caught. He got his zipper open one handed, pulled his dick out and yanked me toward it with clear intent.
So I went. Sucked his cock while he used his voice and pushed me down mercilessly to remind me who he wasn't.
"What a fuckin' thing that would be, huh?" he said, down at the back of my head, fingers tightening in my hair to make sure I was listening.
"That gorgeous untouched partner of yours reads in the paper you're in for indecent exposure, public sexuality." He enjoyed the idea, obviously, let his voice raise up louder like he wanted the attention. "That you were suckin' my dick right here 'cause you're that hard up."
He leaned his head back and let loose a groan that could have rattled windows, and I reached up to shove my first three fingers almost down his throat. I drew back off his cock, pushed my hand deeper into his mouth, like I was about to map his uvula with my damn fist.
"Shut the fuck up, Reece," I warned him.
He made a sound - could have been a chuckle, around my fingers, pushed my head back down and kept quieter until he finished. I spat onto the car-mat in the foot well, withdrew the threat of my fingers from his mouth and sat the rest of the way up, undoing my seat belt.
"There you fucking are," he growled approvingly, "Get in the room, get goddamn ready."
He tucked himself into his pants and got out of the car to pay, and I obeyed orders as soon as I knew which room was ours.
Reece didn't require any special equipment for his sadism. He had his hands and a special talent with a belt, and he didn't believe in safewords. He was too chicken-shit to actually push past the edge. He liked how much I resisted. Liked trying to take the impudent, defiant look off my face. Sometimes, I even let him.
Me? I just liked the oblivion after forty eight hours of endurance, pain, abuse, orgasms. That he'd push strong fingers into the belt marks on my back while he pressed my face into the mattress and fucked me past sensation, into a white space that was almost sleep or suffocation, until my survival instinct kicked up protest and my lungs surged for air and I had to jerk back, gasping. He laughed at that shit, came harder when I choked and coughed.
But I didn't touch a single drop of alcohol all weekend. Monday morning I felt scoured clear, absolved. I couldn't have gotten an erection if I'd walked into work to find out that Constantine and twin supermodels were engaged in an orgy on my office floor and I was invited.
Just Con, sitting at his computer. He wordlessly offered me a still-warm carton of leftover Chinese, his chopsticks still in it. I ate with them. The salty, greasy food tasted like the best I had in years, and the slow repetitive motion let me test the range of pain-free motion in my shoulders.
"We get anything from Seleznova?" I asked, looking at the file over his shoulder. He shook his head.
"Same shit. Can't pin it on her, can't pin her team. She gets picked up just to fuck with us by this point."
"How was your weekend?" I asked, guessing not so great if he was here. I was sure he could guess basically how mine went, if not the details.
He shrugged, then seemed to think of a high point in spite of the dark circles under his eyes, and looked back up at me over his shoulder with the brightest smile. I was almost forced to revisit my hypothesis on my ability to get a boner, and I would have under any other circumstances. As it was, my heart just gave a half-exhausted thump and my brain figured it might as well keep the blood supply.
"Bears won yesterday," he said, and then looked almost - devilish. Playful. "Beat the Giants."
I had no clue what the fuck he was talking about before I realized - it was football. Football season had snuck up on us again somehow, and Chicago's sad old half-dead football team had somehow beat New York's. I apparently should have felt the loss like a personal counting coup in his favor, because when my only reaction was to stuff more Lo-Mein in my mouth, nonplussed, he looked surprised. Then suspicious.
"You're not a fuckin' Jets fan, are you?"
It was so incredulous, so genuine. I laughed so hard I almost choked on my food. I'd never thought he'd be this wound up over football. I guess when your team's the Bears, causes for celebration are few and far between.
"No," I laughed - half coughed - grabbing for napkins. It stretched my painful back, but I hardly felt it, pushing the napkin against my mouth and coughing a few more times for good measure, laughing between. "No, I hate the Jets. That's New fuckin Jersey."
"Come watch next Sunday," Con said, impulsively I could tell, but he didn't have a lot of buddies. Must be better to enjoy sports with more than just yourself. "I'll cook."
"Yeah, alright. I'll play devil's advocate." I agreed. It'd probably keep me out of trouble. And I'd be in his apartment, doing something that mattered to him. I figured after all the bars he'd endured, I could do that much for him.
-
Sundays became regular. It was equally the most stable and the most frustrating time of my life as '06 wore on toward '07. I learned to like football for the first time in my life. Con loved it, ignored my mostly blank looks until I could finally catch on, finally hold a halfway intelligent conversation.
He'd played in high school, the quarterback at a Christian private school of all places, and I wondered if that wasn't half his problem. He was proud of his football years, and I ate up the stories of his past. Some asshole had broken his damn arm just in time for the college recruiters to pass him over, and I could sense the old heartbreak that must have been involved.
I kept it to myself, but I was glad he'd had to fall back onto plan B and become a police officer (against his father's wishes). He was too smart to spend his days getting hit by bigger guys until he was too badly broken to play anymore.
I got him out to toss the football a few times, though long throws hurt his arm, I could tell. Between the scar - I saw that for the first time on one of those Sundays, when I got there early and he was elbows deep in his bike doing repairs. I knew he had it, in theory. I'd read about the injury in his file, but he was wearing this sleeveless T-shirt, all stained with motor oil, and I could actually see it for the first time. It was a smear of uneven tissue, ending in a permanent divot, several long lines pulling up over the bicep toward it, where they'd pulled flesh up to the wound to help it heal. Cleaner than I might have thought.
Between the scar and his old broken bone, he was too stiff to do much throwing, but he still taught me how, and we'd roughhouse. It was torture to learn how his body felt that way, but I did it anyway, because he'd relax into it.
I pretended I was watching the games when really I was memorizing the backs of his shoulders, the attentive cant of his head, how he'd lean as far forward as possible on the edge of the couch cushion when he was deeply attentive, his whole body into it.
He'd grouse when things went badly, but always perked up again when the Bears won. My luck was such that as November turned to December they did that often. I took a gamble. I knew a guy who knew a guy. For Christmas, I got him - us - superbowl tickets. It was risky before post-season.
"I got a good feeling," I said, when he looked at them with his hand over his mouth, like he didn't want to mention how much faith I was extending on behalf of a team I usually disparaged. "And if the Bears suck in the playoffs you can sell them and get yourself a watch to remind yourself it's time to root for a real team."
It was the most grateful punch in the arm I'd ever received. The picture from that game - us smiling our asses off in Miami in February, about to watch the Bears get clobbered by the Colts, but he looked happy. I was looking at him, and I almost looked - normal. Content. Even though his team lost, he walked out happy.
Sundays kept happening. Even without football, we'd just spend a few hours. Cook. Go to the batting cages. I found the closest thing to equilibrium I'd had in a long time. But, I could feel the tension winding up again, curling up in the back of my mind like a venomous snake just waiting for me to put a foot down in striking distance.
So as regular as our Sundays, Reece came on his leaves. I spent a lot of cash to get him up from New York to berate and half-destroy me. I didn't know, couldn't know, that he could only level so much steam off the boiler with his belt and his recklessness. Each time, there was a little more left behind, letting things get closer and closer to the surface with each interval.
Still, it went on a little while okay. Things could almost be normal, week to week. We still went to bars, sometimes, but I let him believe I was chilling out, not so desperate all the time. It was by that point I thought - and maybe I was right about part of it but I couldn't go on like he deserved - If I let him see that he was what I needed...
But if it was going to work, it wasn't going to do it fast enough.
I could have held out for a year, maybe, if things went easy, but they didn't. We had a job that meant 'easy' wasn't part of our vocabulary, and we were dedicated to it. Theoretically, with no distractions. Though not having a wife or kids didn't automatically qualify us for a full frontal lifectomy, it meant Con and I could stay late, did stay late. Put our noses to the grindstone and actually picked up tracks. Other metaphors, too, I'm sure, but it culminated in several arrests (for possession, which wasn't the worst part of the crime, but it was better than nothing), and another run in with our old friend Ksenia Seleznova.
Russian girl. Liked to play the runaround game, maybe a little too much. A mouse baiting cats.
-
Con was in the other room trying to work a deal with their leader, leaving me alone with Ksenia - I figured this time I might break her.
"Why don't you make a deal - you're a kid. Just a sad little girl alone," I said, echoing the words Con uses, but in my own condescending tone, trying to push her against the grain. "You don't have to do what you do. You can make it without all this crime shit. You're smart - smart enough to know where you're going when we put you away for this - and this time'll be it."
"You're terrible at this," she answered, sitting up absolutely straight, hands folded together atop her crossed legs. Her hair was straight, blonde dyed blonder, and cut to stay out of her eyes. "You just aren't cut out for 'good cop'. Does your partner ever buy it?"
"Sweetie, we're both good enough agents to put your whole team in federal prison for a very long time."
"You weren't always agents," Ksenia said offhandedly, lifting a hand to examine the undersides of her nails critically. "No one wouldn't know you were a cop to begin with - why don't you strike a deal with me?"
I figured this would be good. I crossed my arms to listen.
"It's just a matter of knowing where to look, as you know. So I checked up on Fitzweiss. I figured, no one's that good at 'good cop' without something to hide but - what do you know? Miracles do happen. My mother would be very happy. He really is a boy scout, isn't he? Never in trouble, always gets his man."
I wondered if she had possibly found something that I hadn't on him. I was mortified - what if he had a blind spot I couldn't protect him from?
She kicked one leg idly, looking at the toe of her pump as if there were something on it she'd like to scrape off.
"And then there was you."
My blood ran cold when she looked up, and I knew - she knew. Or maybe she was bluffing, reading cues she thought she saw, so I tipped my head back, drew in a breath, dared her to put her money where her mouth was.
She slowly smiled, cattish.
"I'll set the scene," she began, smoothing her hands over her leg, and then looking up at me to be sure I was listening.
"Upstairs at the Penthouse Executive Club, there are 'harem rooms'. Little private spaces where girls entertain rich men in more intimate quarters. Everyone knows - cops especially - you don't get laid in a strip club."
She knew, and that was enough to prove it, but I made her play it out, kept myself upright, tried to look un-fazed.
"Two of New York's finest - dressed down and off hours. One's the police chief. The other? A lieutenant. There's cocaine - not a lot. Enough so the police chief must be coasting - rocketing, if he's never done it before the way he claims he hadn't. No one's sure if you - I mean, the lieutenant had any at all. Past experience says the lieut can get a little unglued. Likes power. Maybe likes it enough to have the police chief's dick halfway down his throat when the other cops - the ones the stripper called when she saw the drugs - kicked in the door."
Ksenia sat up straighter, brushed an invisible speck off of her shoulder, and only then met my eyes to measure the effects of her words, looking smugly satisfied when she saw my anger. She'd opened this can of worms, and she had no idea how badly I wanted to destroy her memory of it. Wanted to rip it out by the roots like it was hair and show her that when she came at a guy like me with something from the past, she should know that the currency she was gambling in was pain.
"So why don't you keep threatening me, and then when your pal Fitzweiss looks in in, oh," she looked at her watch with a big, exaggerated motion. "Ten minutes, I'll see how the only good cop left in Chicago feels about his partner when he knows that smart mouth of yours almost ruined a married man. Wonder where he'll think you're headed, though the answer's 'down' isn't it? I know about the visits. That cop comes in from New York an awful lot. Intimate getaways in shitty hotels. Fitzweiss know about those? He know about how you like it?" She clicked her nails on the tabletop, eyes half closed.
"So here's the deal," she began. It was enough. Blackmail, she was talking and if it started here, if I gave her control, even this much - it wasn't gonna happen. Put it that way.
Instead I lunged, grabbed my hands into her collar and hauled her up, face to face, let her look right in my eyes and see the full measure of me. What I was capable of.
"The deal is, so help me god, that you shut the fuck up right now, or I will have to ask my 'good cop' partner to help me file a report on why there's so much blood in this interrogation room," I snarled, shook her once - hard enough to snap her head back and forth on her neck.
I heaved her back again suddenly, backwards until her knees hit the chair and she sat down automatically. "You get to use this once," I told her, "So, congratulations - you've just used it."
Then I showed her why there's a big old yellow pages in every interrogation room, but not a phone to be seen. It's not so you can look up a lawyer. I picked it up in both hands and heaved it toward her middle, let her catch it in her shock. They always catch it, criminals - quick hands, reluctant to let go of anything they've got ahold of. I followed the path of the book with my closed fist, so she took the transfer of force through a wide surface area - it wouldn't bruise that way. Knocked the wind the fuck out of her while she tried to fight her locked diaphragm for air.
"In ten minutes," I told her, catching the book when she dropped it and raising it in my hand, a tangible threat. "You walk the fuck out of here, and if you so much as think of New York, I swear to you there is nothing on this whole green earth that will keep you and your team alive."
It was mostly an empty threat, but maybe in that moment if she'd so much as moved wrong, I'd have carried it out. Right then and there. As it was, she looked up me, frozen, eyes trying to see deep enough to measure how much was an act, and how much she had really pushed me. She saved herself by her hesitation, beginning to draw back to kick me - likely square between the legs if she could manage - only just as Constantine came in to break it up.
"Hey, easy - jesus, what is this a playground?" Con's arms looped around mine as the clear aggressor, and he pulled me back. Ksenia started to get up, to press the advantage she thought she had with my arms pinned. Con put a hand square center on her chest and pushed her back into her seat without letting me go more than he had to.
"You sit down," he told her, pulling me back one more step. "You ought to know better."
He differentiated her from me with tone, by turning his head to speak into my ear, and I challenged Ksenia with my gaze, dared her to say anything to him. She just watched us warily, waiting to see if she'd have an opportunity.
She didn't. I put the rush on getting her out, getting them out. By that point we knew jerking them around on our legal suspect holds wasn't going to convince them of their wicked ways. We did it so they knew we were watching them, maybe eventually they'd feel enough pressure to make the kind of mistake we needed. Today was not that day, and I wanted Seleznova to think about how I'd reacted to her threats. How much a guy like me would actually do to protect himself. I was counting on her to suspect that she'd barely scratched the surface, finding only those things I'd been caught at.
It wasn't that I thought it'd all fall apart. The CIA had to know by now, but they took the good with the bad. Knew that all skill sets are necessary to produce results. I didn't think Con would just give up on me either, but he might start to think he had to watch out for me, to defend me. I didn't want to put him in that place, not after all he'd done already.
If she'd have had a cat, I'd have shot it to make sure she got the message. It didn't matter in the end, the team decided we were too big a pain in the ass and moved over-seas. Nigeria's a hotbed, dreamshare isn't illegal there. It's still illegal to own a PASIV though, since that's solely the property of the U.S. Military.
They went, we didn't miss them. But my equilibrium had been tipped again and the walls I'd created to keep my spin tightly controlled began to crumble away, turning simple rotation into a spiral, into loops outward. Normality never lasts.