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Larkin released a breath, the wispy plume of air immediately lost to the same wind and rain that had uprooted the crabapple tree he stood beside, its gnarled roots reaching in vain toward the sky and thousands of pink blossoms carpeting the sodden ground like a flower girl at a wedding had gone buck wild.
That evokes some rather vivid imagery.
Larkin involuntarily began cataloguing details. He was tall—six feet at least—though his shapeless PPE offered little else by way of physical details. His brown hair—honey, caramel—why were subcategories of hair color always the names of foods? Larkin wondered—was plastered across his forehead. He was classically handsome, sort of like a hardboiled PI brought to life from the pages of an old pulp novel.
I think I will be highlighting a lot of vivid descriptions in this book. I am so here for it.
“Cold Case?” Millett echoed. “They let you guys outside?” “I believe the department is ethically obligated to allow us to see the sun once a quarter,” Larkin said, although the joke was delivered so dryly, it came across as gravely serious.
Yeeeesss!!!! Love a dry sense of humor! Especially when it’s delivered deadpan.
“I’ve seen a lot of bizarre deaths in this city… but a body in a box, cracked open like a time capsule, is a first.
He twisted the rearview mirror and checked his appearance: ash-blond hair parted on the side, clean-shaven, splotches of red in his otherwise pale complexion, and light, light gray eyes. A face poetic in its tragedy, a contemporary psychopomp regulated to a scale of monochrome.
“A murder from the 1980s is approached differently than if it were the 1880s,” Doyle concluded.
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.
“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.”
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.
The benefits of a modern society have greatly reduced the process of natural selection.”
“You were right.” “About what, being cute?” “No. I’ll take the dead. You can have the living.” Larkin moved past and started for the steps.
Sunshine cut through swatches of heavy gray clouds like a puncture from a dull knife, and light seeped like blood from a bandaged wound. Wind blew like the shudders of a man trying to hold back tears and breathe at the same time. Blossoms whipped across the bottom steps in a furious little cyclone. Eventually the air would still, and the petals would sprinkle the ground like confetti, then be trampled. They’d become muddy, torn, and then, forgotten.
“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.”
“I don’t care that he’s a fag,” Ulmer said, hackles rising. “The use of that term implies the contrary,” Larkin answered easily, still floating on the haze of a relaxed high.
The overcompensation of heterosexuality has been viewed in the past as a repression of latent homosexual desires. Those are big words, I know, so I’ll put it more simply: you want me to stare at your ass and that makes you angry.”
One Police Plaza, an ugly-as-fuck love song to Brutalism architecture, had replaced the former headquarters of the NYPD—a gorgeous Renaissance Revival structure from the turn of the century—in the ’70s, a decade where everything once beautiful was left to die. The monochromatic, minimalist structure of thirteen stories sat wedged between Park Row and Pearl Street on the lower end of the island—a turd that the entire neighborhood complained about as if it were an Olympic sport.
Doyle was doing it again: exhibiting that lazy physical posture—he’d fall off the stool if he wasn’t careful—while his pyrite eyes sparkled like every stone had been overturned and what was found underneath was a deep pool of intelligence, that sunshine skittering across its surface.
You don’t like compliments, do you?” “No. And neither do you.” “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.”
Doyle leaned his backside against the furniture, his long legs stretched out, big hands resting along the siding, looking comfortable—like he belonged. Larkin didn’t like unnecessary ornamentation, which left his workspace as sparce as a military barrack, but this current embellishment was…. Keep that locked up.
“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.”
“People don’t want to know.” He was quiet, so absolute in his agreeance. Doyle cast Larkin a sideways glance. “But I do.” Larkin put a hand over his mouth as one very big and very heartbroken sob tore through him, wracking his entire body like a leaf battling a hurricane. Huge hot tears spilled down his cheeks and he considered: Had anyone ever said that to him? Not his parents. Not Dr. Myers. Not Noah. None of them.
“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.”
Larkin kept his expression a practiced neutral, but it was difficult. Pride skimmed very close to the surface, like little nips of electricity along his skin. And while he’d have preferred a comparison like Larkin would send Rosencrantz and Guildenstern packing in a game of questions, big cats were king, so it’d do.
Seven years. That was how long Larkin and Noah had known each other. And it had been good in the beginning. Like waking from a restless sleep and getting an overdose injection of serotonin and dopamine. The effect had been immediate and intense, and Larkin should have known to slow down, to be careful, because he was damaged goods and most people weren’t in the market for those bruised apples at the bottom of the produce display. But the love had felt so good. And Noah had said he understood. He’d listened, sympathized with Larkin when no one else had. Until he hadn’t.
A partnership shouldn’t fill missing pieces, but instead enhance what was already present.
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. He’d known Ira Doyle for all of two days and the other man saw, really saw, more of Larkin than Noah did.
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.
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? Because Larkin was having domestic troubles. Because his marriage was falling apart. Because he was dying.
Larkin’s professional career dealt with damaged relationships every day. Abuse led to unhealthy complications with lust, money, and the pursuit of power. This in turn led to death. Every time. And the victim was always the last to know. Funny how Larkin knew this—knew all of this—and yet here he was, the last person in the room to realize his relationship had grown toxic as fuck, and he’d, maybe years ago, fallen out of love with Noah.
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.”
“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.”
“Detective Doyle was able to put a face to and identify Monday’s skeletal remains in less time it takes you to find your ass with a flashlight, O’Halloran,” Larkin said dully.
“There isn’t a finish line in this race. It’s not about sprinting—it’s about stamina to keep going.”
Doyle kissed him. Whether he meant to or not, it was happening now—and it was nothing like their other kisses, which had been gentle, tentative, affectionate. This was hard and aggressive, like Doyle wanted to fight the demons Larkin carried inside by literal tooth and nail. Lips and tongue and hot breath, hands grabbing at suits, chests bumping, middles touching—all of it sparking a flame, a rebirth inside Larkin.
Larkin’s even tone broke the stillness. “You inappropriately manhandled me, and now we’re in HR.” Doyle chuckled, deep and rich and thoroughly amused. “Worth it.”
