Page 29 of Vigilante Twink and the Cop

This man’s name is on the board in my incident room. His name being on the board is the direct result of my boss ordering me to put it there, after my partner told my boss it probably belonged there, and the reasons for all of that are reasons I helped create.

A fan letter to his home address.

I’m already putting my coat on.

I tell myself it’s because it’s relevant to the case. A person of interest receiving unsolicited mail at an address that shouldn’t be findable is a legitimate professional concern. This is a reasonable thing to investigate.

I know it isn’t why I’m going. I know that on the drive over. I know it when I stop for wine, better wine than I’d usually spend without quite examining why. The truth is simpler and considerably more embarrassing. He said he wanted me there, and I can’t not go. We both know the letter is an excuse. We both need it anyway.

The concierge doesn’t even blink when he sees me. I am becoming, apparently, a fixture. This is information I’m going to ignore.

Micah opens the door before I’ve knocked. He’s wearing an oversized vintage band tee that’s soft with age and sweatpants that are slightly too short and show his ankles. His feet are bare. His hair is doing that artless thing it does when he hasn’t tried with it, which somehow looks better than when he has. He has a bowl of popcorn in one hand and genuine relief on his face when he sees me, unguarded and unperformed, and that last part does something to my chest that I can’t account for professionally.

“You came,” he says.

“Show me the letter.”

He shows me the letter. It’s from a fan. Effusive, slightly unhinged in the way fan letters sometimes are, but not threatening. No return address. Postmarked somewhere in East London. A determined enough person with time and the right kind of obsession can find most things if they look hard enough.

“It’s probably nothing,” I say.

“I know.” He takes it back, sets it on the counter. “I just knew I’d feel better if you were here.”

The simple honesty of that lands somewhere it has no business landing.

He has, I notice, already set up the sofa. Blankets. Two glasses. The popcorn. The television paused on a title screen. He was confident enough that I was coming to set all this up before I arrived, and I find I’m not even slightly annoyed about that.

He takes the wine, opens it with the practiced ease of someone who does this often, pours two glasses and hands one over. His fingers brush mine when I take it. Neither of us comments on that.

“Sit down,” he says. “You look like you need to stop being a detective for a few hours.”

He isn’t wrong.

I sit. He drops down beside me, close enough that I’m immediately aware of the warmth of him, pulls a blanket across both our laps without asking, and hits play. As if this is a thing we do. As if we have done this a hundred times.

The film is not what I was expecting. I was braced for something stylish and impenetrable, chosen to make me feel uncultured. Instead, it’s quiet and character driven. Two people in a small apartment in a city that might be Paris, who talk a great deal and say very little and slowly, without fanfare, fall toward each other. The kind of film that shouldn’t work and entirely does.

Somewhere in the first half I realize I’ve stopped waiting for it to get worse. I’ve just been watching it. This happens so rarely these days that I notice it the way you notice the sudden absence of a noise you’d stopped registering.

Micah shifts slightly beside me, and his shoulder settles more firmly against mine. I don’t move away. He doesn’t either. I become unreasonably aware of the exact point of contact, the warmth of him through my sleeve, the way he’s breathing, slow and easy, the particular quality of his attention when he glances across at me every now and then to check if the film is landing.

One of those glances lasts a beat too long.

I look at him.

He looks back.

Neither of us says anything for a moment that goes on slightly too long to be comfortable and slightly not long enough to be anything else.

“Stop watching me watch it,” I say.

“I’m not.” He sounds entirely unrepentant. “I just like knowing if it lands. You’ve been completely still for twenty minutes. That’s a good sign.”

“Hmm.”

He laughs, soft and pleased with himself, and goes back to the screen, and I feel that laugh against my arm, and I am in serious trouble, and I’ve known it for weeks and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better.

We finish the bottle somewhere in the middle. He gets up to open another, and while he’s up he refills the popcorn bowl without being asked, brings it back, sets it between us, and tucks the blanket back around us both with a small, unconscious tidiness that I suspect he doesn’t even know he’s doing. It’s such a domestic gesture. Such a quietly careful one. I watch him do it and feel something tighten in my chest.