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“Neil Millett, CSU.”
Neil ❤️
9,022 cases, Larkin wanted to correct. He was only concerned with the recorded murders that had gone unsolved. The everyday victims. The ones whose names never made the newsprint. The ones people didn’t want to know about. And that number was 9,022. Their dreams, their fears, first loves and first heartbreaks—everything that had once made them human, all now consolidated into a tidy pile of DD5 forms with the same notation made year after year until the lead Homicide detective officially deemed the case a loser: No progress to report.
“Because art is his forte,” Millett was saying, pointing at the bag, “and, I wish this wasn’t something I knew, but that is a death mask.”
Got that from Sebastian
—a crown of dandelions, the crackle of open flames, that first kiss, both of them shaking and tasting like sugar and alcohol and the sepulcher of innocence— Memories bled like watercolors left in rain. A gradient of daffodil—no, gold—to slate, mud, death. Larkin dried his cheeks
Doyle’s cologne penetrated Larkin’s personal bubble like an arrow of masculinity—woodsy, spicy, heady, dangerous. It left him reeling, as if he’d been punched in the head. KO’d by neroli and base notes of sandalwood and cardamon.
“Your artistic qualifications,” Larkin corrected. “I’ve seen enough objectively bad police sketches to know being accepted into a prominent unit doesn’t necessarily mean it was based on merit.”
“Lofty aspirations of a cushy museum job—but I was led astray by the siren’s song of less pay, long hours, bad coffee, and bureaucratic bullshit. I think it was the uniforms.” That smile again, before Doyle added, “I look good in blue.”
Larkin glanced at his desk: computer monitor, keyboard, mouse, pen cup, sans the one that’d been in Doyle’s mouth, and a high stack of brown accordion files in varying degrees of thickness and wear—his active cold cases. Each file was a Lost Boy, unclaimed by their nannies and forgotten by their families, brought to Neverland so Peter Pan wouldn’t be alone. If only it were so romantic.
“You’re cute,” Doyle stated. “In a stick-up-the-ass, sees the world in black-and-white with a severely disadvantaged sense of humor sort of way.”
Doyle’s eyes crinkled a little, and those flecks of gold seemed to spark, like…. —white sunshine skittering across the shattered surface of a lake—
There was a sudden but subtle shift in the energy around them, something quantifiable but its calculation for measurement foreign to Larkin. It passed between them in a second. Like a loss of gravity, the crackle of electricity in the air before a storm, the tingle of blood rushing back into a limb after sleeping on it wrong, stuck in a loop of spins while waltzing. It was there, and then it was gone. But the look on Doyle’s face—he’d felt it too. A partnership in art and investigation. A study in death.
“You’re looking exceptionally fine.” “Excuse me?” “I don’t often see men wearing pocket squares these days.”
“No, sir, I’m not making a pass. Thank you.”
The benefits of a modern society have greatly reduced the process of natural selection.”
It’d be easy. It’d be so easy. No more Grim. No more faggot. No more thunderstorms or sugar-and-smoke kisses or the city’s unwanted dead. No more whiskey voice talking about a fit, like he had a single fucking clue what a monumental achievement it was to get out of bed some days. No more feeling as if being alive were akin to a hospital flatline. People don’t want to know what makes them uncomfortable.
People don’t want to know.
Larkin offered the pencil to Ulmer. “Unless this display of toxic masculinity is actually you trying to ask if you may borrow my Lisa Frank pencil. The answer is, yes, you may.” Ulmer grabbed it, broke the pencil in two, then threw the pieces, hitting Larkin in the chest. “What do you think of that fucking display of masculinity?” Larkin said, without any perturbation, “I think it’s very cute you needed both hands to snap a Number 2 pencil.”
A playground sat west of the building, and even Larkin, a man known in professional circles as Grim or Spooky, thought its vicinity to the morgue pushed the envelope of morbid humor a touch too far.
“My short-term memory is terrible,” Larkin answered. “I miss appointments without reminders because I’m just… unable to recall a plan on its own that exists outside a strict routine. I misplaced my wedding ring today. Forgot about it entirely. Gun to my head, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you where I’d put it because I was so immersed in a past event that I was running on autopilot in the here and now. It’s not a gift when my husband confronts me about the missing ring. It’s not a gift that I can’t control intrusive memories because a date, a time, a voice, a crack of thunder is an
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Doyle had big hands with big knuckles, and the veins in his arms were pleasantly defined and close to the surface. That attraction came from a subconscious place, Larkin knew. The biological imperative to find the ideal partner—a strong and healthy physique being an incentive for most. Not that Larkin was in the market. But it was nice to window-shop now and then.
“Oh, I’ve got an ego,” Doyle corrected. “You’ve just got a curious way of stroking it that I’m still adjusting to.” “Noted.”
“People don’t want to know,” he whispered, not looking up. “Know what?” “What makes them uncomfortable,” Larkin specified. “Sometimes they don’t know what to say, don’t want to make a bad situation worse. Other times, they only pretend to not know because the empathy required is too big a burden. They pull back. They become distant. They ask how you are the same way they ask if it looks like rain or if you watched that Mets game on TV. People don’t really want to know.”
Larkin couldn’t remember when he’d allowed himself to be touched like this. Noah, of course, but when was the last time it’d felt like acceptance and not a means to an end? It wasn’t a hug that conveyed apology or jealousy or lust. Doyle’s hug was simply a hug, and Larkin was so fucking traumatized that—that sometimes—even his aversion to touch couldn’t overpower that single-most desire all humans craved. To be loved.
“You were born with HSAM?” “No.” Then Larkin said something only his parents, Dr. Myers, and Noah knew. “On August 2, 2002, I was struck in the head with a baseball bat.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Doyle hissed. “I assure you, it’s Larkin.”
But that question—Are you okay?—rang so hollow for him because people never wanted to know. But I do. And Doyle had found a way to communicate that.
A partnership shouldn’t fill missing pieces, but instead enhance what was already present.
Doyle’s acceptance of extreme heartache in return for unbridled happiness was a representation of who Larkin, too, could be, if he wanted it. And sure, he’d likely have more shadows than sunlight. More night than day. More despair than hope. But there would be thrill and wonder and partnership too. ’Til death do us part. And then, quite suddenly, Larkin’s mind silenced and only one thought rose to the top: I’m dying.
He took a deep breath, and another chuckle escaped as he said, “I don’t remember the last time I laughed like this. It feels good.” “You have a nice laugh.”
Doyle had a wish… an inclination… an impulse. That was it. An impulse to touch Larkin again. Something so essential to his personal makeup that a man of lesser intelligence or understanding would have violated Larkin in order to fulfill that need. But not Doyle. Because those eyes weren’t fool’s gold. They were the real deal. Twenty-four karat.
“What was their name?” Larkin’s chin quivered. His eyes stung. He said roughly, “Patrick.” “I’ll say a prayer for Patrick.”
Larkin looked up. “How old are you.” “I say daddy and you immediately ask how old I am?”
Larkin had acquaintances. He had colleagues. He had a husband. But he had no friends. He had no partnership—no day to complement his night. Until now.
Doyle saw Everett Larkin and took him and all of his complications in stride.
Broke his heart that he’d been begging for help, dying in front of Noah for a year, and the one who made Larkin eat, who hugged him, who gave that hair tie a tug to make sure he was okay, had been an absolutely gorgeous and kind man he wasn’t married to.
Doyle brought his big hands up and cupped just under Larkin’s jaw. He opened to Larkin’s touch, and Doyle tasted like oil from the egg roll, sugar from the Coke, and something a little like perfection.
How much did a wedding ring weigh? A few grams, Larkin thought. Not an ounce. Not even half an ounce. More like an eighth. So why did something so delicate feel like an anchor dragging him down, down, down into parts unknown?
Doyle’s smile as Larkin corrected the button on his vest. Sitting together on the back of the ambulance, Doyle tugging the hair tie. Doyle’s whiskey voice reduced to a teasing whisper in Larkin’s ear, followed by his larger-than-life laugh. Being told, “Love and sex can only be used for good.” So much sensory stimulation, and yet, it all had felt right. Like coming home after being lost in the dark woods for a very, very long time.
Doyle wasn’t okay. Larkin understood that now, because he used those same coping tricks. But Doyle had also seen the light. He wasn’t afraid of the extremes, of feeling happiness, of being alive. He’d been standing in that deep dark hole and thought to look up. And that was the kind of man Larkin wanted in his life—in whatever capacity Doyle was willing to share himself.
“I struggled for a long time with the concept of love languages,” he said into the quiet. “You know these?” “Affirmation, quality time, service, gifts, touch.”
“But afterward, when the HSAM started, for lack of better description, I thought: remembrance is the greatest act of love there is. Because… because no one is truly dead and gone, so long as someone remembers them.”
“My life feels like wreckage I’ve only just woken to and I don’t even know where to start picking it up… but… whether we only interact as professionals or maybe friends or… something… I think you’re someone I would be very lucky to continue knowing.”
There was a joy in knowing that if he were to die tomorrow, someone would remember Larkin, and fondly.
Is it that artist guy? I know you’re married, Larkin, but there’s no harm in looking. I’d eat a three-course meal off his ass.” Doyle stepped out of the room and joined them in the hall. “Hey.” “Oh!” she said, surprised. “Hello. Aiko Miyamoto.” She offered a hand. “Ira Doyle.” “I don’t regret what I said,” Miyamoto stated. “You’ve got a smashing ass.” “Ah… thank you.”
Doyle hummed in agreement. “I never claimed I was God.” “That’s good, because you’ve called me Jesus a few times, and if you were God, that’d make everything a bit awkward.”
“I could kiss you.” “If it turns out I’m right, you’re welcome to do more than that.”
“Last night,” Doyle began, his voice in harmony with the pat, pat, pat of rain on the windshield. “I told you I don’t drink.” Larkin didn’t speak, didn’t move. “I self-medicated after losing Abigail. Hard. Gin was my go-to. It’s okay to hurt, but you can’t blame yourself.”
“I’m sorry,” Larkin whispered. Doyle shook his head. He reached across Larkin’s lap and tugged the hair tie a few times. “I don’t want you to be sorry. I want you to be okay.” “I’m not.” “You had a life-changing night, didn’t sleep well, and this case—” “No. I mean, I haven’t been okay for eighteen years.” Larkin looked at Doyle, at the raindrops glistening in his dark brown hair like little diamonds. He was beautiful. And so kind.
