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Published:
2024-06-20
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2025-01-11
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10/?
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i hope he's the one this time

Chapter 4

Notes:

i was right, i didn't get to updating until i got home lol. i wrote a fuckton this week though, it just needs to get looked over still. we're sitting at 11k words now, with at least? two? chapters still to come. don't hold me to that though i don't have a clue

also thinking: i might have a separate explicit chapter in the same "series" as this, so this piece can keep its mature rating AND i can write the reunion sex? but again - flakiest bitch in the tri-state area. i will keep trucking with this shit until it stops giving me happy juice but who can say how long that will be. i'm def looking at finishing THIS piece at least so don't worry about it being abandoned, i'm just musing about future ideas

i apologize in advance but if you are a big jean fan you might not want to read this chapter. i am not a fan of jean personally and i wrote him as kind of a dick. he thinks harry is blowing the situation way out of proportion, and overreacts himself. this is your one disclaimer.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

It was late at night when Doorknob spoke up again. “Are you awake?”

 

Kim wasn’t, but he’d been trying to. “No.”

 

“I’m having a hard time sleeping. Would it annoy you if I talked for a bit?”

 

“I wouldn’t mind, no.” Doorknob had been growing on Kim, the more they talked. He’d started looking forward to her rambling, just a little.

 

“Well, it’s just. I was thinking about my old friend who died, and I wondered if I could tell you about him? It’s keeping me up.” She sounded sad.

 

“By all means,” said Kim, trying to be compassionate.

 

“Thank you.” She went quiet for a moment, perhaps weighing her words. “It’s kind of funny, in a weird way. I’ve got a lot of mixed emotions about this guy, you know?”

 

Kim hummed in acknowledgment.

 

“Yeah. You know. I mean, he was my ex boyfriend. But like. We were together for something like fifteen years, right? I loved him. I really loved him, for a really fucking long time. He was so cool. The coolest. He was incredible. I loved him so much.”

 

Kim understood that his job in this conversation was primarily to make sympathetic noises at appropriate intervals. So that’s what he did.

 

“I. . . god. I didn’t want to break up with him. Even after all that time. The spark had gone down, but I still cared for him, you know? He was always such a good man. I didn’t want to hurt him.

 

But he was an alcoholic, and he did a ton of drugs. We couldn’t afford it in the first place, but beyond that, he was killing himself. Every day. I couldn’t even do anything. He tried to get clean for me a couple of times, but it never went anywhere, he just relapsed and went right back. It hurt so bad to watch. You have no idea.”

 

Kim did know. He knew better than most. But now wasn’t the time to say so.

 

“I couldn’t. . . I couldn’t stay there. With him. For my own sake. I knew there wasn’t anything I could do to save him. So I couldn’t stay there and watch him die. Let him kill himself. Dei –” her voice broke. “I had to leave, and it wrecked him so bad. It was awful. His feelings. . . were a lot bigger than most people’s. That’s what made him such a good guy, he felt for everyone. But it made everything painful in the world hurt him that much more, too.

 

“And mind you – he was everywhere in the city. I couldn’t just break up with him and get an apartment a few blocks away, Dei, no. You can’t escape him. He would have found me and convinced me to come back, sooner or later. Probably sooner. But he loves Revachol, he’d never leave, even if he had the means. So I moved to a whole different fucking isola. I had a radio friend in Mirova, she let me stay with her while I got my bearings for the place. That was. . . oh, something like seven years ago.”

 

Kim stopped breathing. But she didn’t stop talking.

 

“I thought – I really thought he wouldn’t hardly last a year without me. He was well on his way to a heart attack while I was there, I figured it was only a matter of time after I was gone. And – that sounds really bad. I swear, I didn’t want him dead, I just knew I couldn’t keep him alive like he needed me to. I had to live for me. But he didn’t die. He found my long-distance number, and he’d call me all the time. Begging me to come back, telling me about drama from work, just plain rambling – he just talked, it didn’t matter what he was saying. It was annoying at first, but then I realized that I could kind of keep track of him like that. Just to know if he was still kicking.

 

“So I told him, I would hang up on him if he kept asking me to come back. He could talk about anything else, that was my only rule – don’t ask me to come back. And he actually listened. He stopped calling so frequently after a while – at first it was almost daily, then it was once a week, then a couple of times a month, but he never asked me to come home again. He usually called when he was too drunk or high and didn’t want to get shouted at by his one jackass coworker about it. And he just rambled. It was kind of nice. Almost like we were just friends. I liked knowing he was still out there, and I think he liked having someone who would listen.”

 

This wasn’t fucking happening. It couldn’t be her. A scene came back to Kim, unprompted – late at night in Martinaise. Harry, dialing random numbers on a payphone, seemingly just for fun. Prank calls. For one of them, he’d closed his eyes and dialed an incredibly fucking long number totally blind. Muscle memory. The wide-eyed stare he gave Kim when the number’s owner didn’t pick up immediately. When she finally picked up and he talked about utterly nothing for so long. . . fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

 

She sighed. “I actually thought he died a while back. The last time he called was a year ago – the longest time he ever went without calling before that was only like a couple months. But he must have gotten way too caught up with work, or something, and not had time to talk – and then his heart finally gave out. Probably. I missed the funeral, so I guess I’ll never know.”

 

Kim took several slow, deliberate breaths.

 

He had to tell her. He had to. There was no mistaking those details. It had to be her. But what should he say?

 

Just the truth, he supposed. Bluntly would be best, or at least easiest. So. . .

 

“Khm. Harry isn’t dead.”

 

* * *

 

YOU: You’re back at the precinct. Jean came out to help you get clues from the crime scene, and shockingly, you’d gotten through the whole interaction without publicly shaming him. Now, you’re in relative privacy, with only Judit and Trant as witnesses – and allegedly, they’ve seen much worse from you than this.

 

YOU: “What the FUCK do you mean, kidnapping isn’t our jurisdiction? It’s fucking kidnapping! And it’s Kim! I’m not about to punt this off to some idiot in another division just because we don’t have a body to investigate!”

 

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT (Trivial: Success) – Punch someone.

 

VOLITION (Easy: Success) – No.

 

JEAN VICQUEMARE: He pinches his nose. “We can’t just ignore our jobs, all because it’s one of ours who’s missing. Someone else will investigate. We can’t spare you.”

 

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT (Medium: Success) – Kill him.

 

VOLITION (Difficult: Success) – NO.

 

LOGIC (Easy: Success) – Killing your coworkers, no matter how infuriating they’re being, will not help you find Kim.

 

EMPATHY (Trivial: Success) – Also, Kim would be super disappointed in you if he found out you murdered Jean.

 

COMPOSURE (Difficult: Success) – Calm down. Reason with him. As best you can. You have to get through to him at least a little bit, before either of you takes this to Pryce.

 

YOU: You take a deep breath, and exhale slowly.

 

EMPATHY (Medium: Success) – Everyone thinks you look less like you’re calming yourself down to discuss this rationally, and more like a predator preparing to strike.

 

HALF LIGHT (Easy: Success) – Good.

 

YOU: “You can’t spare me?” Your voice is quiet. So quiet. A stark contrast from the shouting you did ten seconds ago. “You can’t spare me? I think, we can’t fucking spare Kim. He could be dead right now, or actively getting murdered, and you’re trying to stop the one asshole who has any chance of finding him in time from looking.”

 

JEAN VICQUEMARE: His eyes are narrow. Tight. Calculating. He takes several seconds before he responds. “Have you considered, even briefly, that perhaps he’s right where he wants to be?”

 

SHIVERS (Impossible: Failure) – The air freezes. Everyone in the room, besides Jean, stops breathing.

 

RHETORIC (Difficult: Success) – He did not just imply what you think he implied.

 

ESPRIT DE CORPS (Easy: Success) – He did.

 

SUGGESTION (Medium: Success) – Make him spell out what he meant. Out loud.

 

YOU: You step into Jean’s space. Far too close. “What. Exactly. Is that supposed to mean?”

 

JEAN VICQUEMARE: He scoffs. Inches back. Intimidated. “Like you don’t know.”

 

AUTHORITY (Medium: Success) – Now is the time. Put him in his place.

 

YOU: You tilt your head, just a little. Step even closer. Your voice is frostbite. “I don’t, actually. Explain.”

 

JEAN VICQUEMMARE: He sidesteps away, out of your space, and folds his arms across his chest. Defensively. You won this standoff – no matter how awful the poison he has to say next. “I was referring to the fact that you scare everyone off from this precinct, sooner or later. Kitsuragi lasted longer than most, I’ll give him that. But he got fed up with you and left. He’s probably putting his desk back together at the 57th as we speak.”

 

-1 Morale

 

PAIN THRESHOLD (Impossible: Failure) – You knew what he was going to say. But that doesn’t make hearing the words hurt any less.

 

SHIVERS (Medium: Success) – It is not the truth. He must be saved.

 

EMPATHY (Easy: Success) – Kim would never.

 

VOLITION (Difficult: Success) – Don’t rise to Jean’s bait. Keep pushing. You have to find him.

 

YOU: “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” you growl. “Kim's been a better friend to me than you have all year. He wouldn’t just leave like that. He. Needs. HELP. And I’m going to find him, with or without you!”

 

JEAN VICQUEMARE: “Then you’re an idiot!” he roars. “A blind sentimental idiot! You find one jackass who can tolerate your bullshit for half a minute longer than anyone else, and you latch onto him like a barnacle and chase him away! You’re just going to find him across the city in the same job as ever, trying to get away from you, and then we’ll all be stuck with your miserable fucking fallout! Don’t waste all our time – he’s gone now! Let him be!”

 

REACTION SPEED (Godly: Success) – DON’T HIT HIM.

 

YOU: Your hand strikes a stack of papers nearby, sending them flying.

 

INLAND EMPIRE (Trivial: Success) – Bureaucratic confetti!

 

VOLITION (Godly: Success) – Walk out. Right now. You’ll find him on your own.

 

YOU: You leave.

Notes:

again i am @bamboozled-bumblefuck or @officially-a-bee on tumblr come give me a shout :)