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He wakes up in a hospital bed, with an IV in his arm and a sharp but muffled pain in his left side. Even when he manages to open his eyes completely, the room is hazy, its edges and lines bleeding into the glare of the low morning sun.
Alien, he thinks. I was shot by an alien. And then, with a detached calm that is too familiar to put down to the morphine, I’m not dead.
He lets his eyes drop closed again.
The second time he comes to, the room is darker, and his head feels clearer. He presses his hand to the mattress and pushes himself up through the pain; not quite to a sitting position, but high enough to take in his surroundings.
The room is small - no other beds, no other patients. A glass window shows him a corridor outside; judging by the shadows, another window above his head lets in the daylight. To his left, there is the IV, along with a heart-monitor where his vitals rise and fall in a steady graph across the screen. It looks like they’re moving in slow motion.
On the nightstand to his right, there is a pack of spearmint gum.
He reaches his hand out - uncoordinated, and, fuck, he’d forgotten how much it hurts to get shot - and manages to pick it up. There is a piece of paper stuck between the green-wrapped strips, a card he’s already been handed once. Dr. Rodney McKay, PhD, PhD, it says, followed by a Colorado phone number. No additional information.
He turns it over.
On the back, there is a message scribbled in ballpoint pen, the handwriting surprisingly untidy.
Had to go back to my day job. Strength of character suits you. Bleeding out on desert floor, not so much. You might want to try balancing the equation.
He’s still looking at the card when the nurse comes in, excited to find him awake. When the doctor shows up to shine a flash light in his eyes and check his reflexes, he slips it back into the pack of gum.
It turns out, he learns over the next few days, that Detective John Sheppard of the LVPD single-handedly tracked down a serial killer to his hiding place in the desert. When the killer opened fire, a shoot-out ensued, during which John took a shot to the chest. The killer’s trailer, though, was filled with the chemicals he used to desiccate his victims’ bodies, and a stray bullet from John’s gun caused the whole place to go up in a blaze. The killer’s remains were burned beyond recognition, with no hope of making an ID.
In an incredible stroke of luck, John was rescued by a randomly passing chopper out of Nellis, who happened to see the explosion.
Case closed.
No mention of space aliens or radioactive devices to signal other galaxies or well-dressed men with double PhDs and piercing blue eyes who just want to keep the planet safe.
Oh, and, incidentally, John is kind of a hero.
He nearly tears his stitches laughing.
The day he gets home from the hospital, he calls his captain and asks for a transfer.
“I thought you wanted to quit,” Hendricks says. John can hear the bustle of the station around him, his office door probably left open in some misguided attempt to make him seem more accessible to his men. If the guy ever had any endearing quality in John’s book, it was avoidability, not accessibility.
John lowers himself down on his couch, wincing at the pressure on his still-healing wound. There is a thin coating of dust on the cheap upholstery; he’s pretty sure it was there already before he got shot.
“Yeah, well,” he says. “That makes two of us.” On the coffee table, next to a dried-up bottle of Corona, the untouched packet of gum is bright green, a patch of oversaturated color in a sepia world. “See what you can do about getting me a change of scenery, would you?”
Hendricks is only too willing to agree.
He doesn’t actually care where he ends up, but being the sort-of hero of a gruesome serial killer case complete with explosions apparently means you get a couple of decent options.
The coin he flips lands heads up in the flickering light from the neon sign beneath his window, and he picks New Orleans.
His Camaro has somehow made it back to its usual parking space behind his building while he’s been in the hospital, but the money that was in the front seat is sitting in an evidence locker down town. It's more a relief than a disappointment to be rid of it.
He spends the last dollars in his savings account on having the bullet holes in the car fixed. The engine doesn’t purr quite like it used to, but it takes him all the way down to Louisiana.
His new apartment is small and dingy, the air stifling before he opens the window. He settles on the old wooden floor beneath it, his back against the wall, and looks at his empty bedroom. Outside, night-time rain is falling, finger-picking its chords on the window-ledge. The lights of passing cars sweep across his Johnny Cash poster, just pinned to the opposite wall.
He slips the pack of gum from the pocket of his jacket, turns it over in his hands. Opens it and takes out the card.
At the hollow of his throat, he can feel his heart beat, a quick flutter underneath the skin.
He pulls his phone out and dials the number before he can change his mind.
He isn’t sure what he’s expecting, but he isn’t surprised to be put through to voice mail. The cell phone rate for intergalactic calls is probably a bitch.
“This is Rodney McKay,” a crisp voice says, and he hadn’t known if he would recognize it, but the inflection makes his fingers tighten on the phone. “If you labor under the delusion that you might actually have something interesting to say, by all means, leave a message.”
“Um, hey,” John says, then bites his lip because he’s sounding like an idiot. He doubts Rodney McKay has a very high tolerance for idiots. “This is Detective John Sheppard. From Vegas? I just wanted to let you know I transferred out, moved down to New Orleans. I figure, if nothing else, I should run less of a risk of bleeding to death in the desert, here, right?” God, he is an idiot. “I hope everything is going well with…whatever it is you do when you’re not profiling people’s taste in chewing gum. If you want to give me a call some time when you’re in the neighborhood, the cell number’s the same.”
He hangs up, then, before it gets too freaking awkward, and unwraps a stick of gum. The spearmint breaks sharp on his tongue as he leans his head back against the window sill, the rain brushing his scalp.
He isn’t planning on calling again.
Being a cop in New Orleans proves much the same as being a cop in Las Vegas. There are fewer casinos and more colonial architecture, less desert and more fragrant marshland. The air is heavy with humidity instead of sandpaper dry, and the southern wind brings ocean salt, not clouds of dust. But the job is no different, the victims and the criminals nothing he isn’t familiar with. A rent boy stabbed in an alley off Bourbon Street is no more dead than a stripper shot behind the Bellagio, has no less claim to justice. It’s still up to John to chase it down.
He spends his first few weeks shadowing a guy named Frank, an old-school detective with hints of a Cajun accent and three months left to retirement. He gets introduced. To the territories of street gangs, the names and haunts of drug lords never convicted, to informants and district attorneys and the bars you’d better not enter without a hand on your gun. He learns. When Frank asks him why he left Vegas, he says the desert air was hell on his complexion. He keeps his tone light, but his eyes go narrow. Frank studies him for a moment, then shrugs and lets the subject drop. He doesn’t bring it up again.
His first solo case is a robbery homicide in the Florida Projects, an old woman in a pool of blood on her kitchen floor. Her husband is kneeling beside her, not crying, but holding her hand. The deep red-black of the blood has seeped into the khaki fabric of his pants, dyed his clothes the color of her death. There are nineteen dollars missing from a tin in the cupboard above the sink. When John talks to the neighbors, everybody mentions the no-good kid in the ground floor apartment, his gang banger friends, how he buys drugs from the crazy Cuban over by Congress Street, how he’s always desperate for money. John stakes out a local pawn shop, catches the kid trying to hawk the old lady’s jewelry. It isn’t complicated or exciting, it’s just ordinary and sad. The punk doesn’t even try to pretend he didn’t do it.
When John brings him in, Frank claps him on the shoulder, tells him “Well done.” John forces a thin, crooked smile, but it’s only on his face.
It’s later, when he packs the evidence away to be filed, that he feels something.
There is a plastic bag with the victim’s jewelry - a cheap wrist watch, a pearl pendant on a thin gold chain, and a wedding band. Looking at it, he can see the husband sitting over the woman’s body, her hand in both of his. His thumb stroking the paler strip of skin where the ring should have been.
He unzips the bag and fishes the ring out. The gold is worn paper thin with age, its gleam dulled by a grey coat of fingerprint powder. He wipes it clean with the tail of his shirt and slips it in his pocket. The other evidence goes in the cardboard box where it belongs, before he leaves his office.
Outside, afternoon is seeping into night, rush hour traffic winding down. It’s a quick drive to the projects.
“Detective,” the husband says, opening his door. “What can I do for you? I thought you caught the boy who did this?” His eyes look red now, as if the crying has been there and gone; over his shoulder, John can see the kitchen floor still wet where the blood’s been washed away.
“Yeah,” John says. “Yeah, we did. He gave a full confession. He’s going away for a long time for what he did to your wife.” He feels suddenly foolish, inappropriate in his wrinkled shirt and uncombed hair. He worries his lip with his teeth, reaches into his pocket for the ring. “I just thought you might like this back as soon as possible.”
The old man takes it from him, the touch of his fingers on the metal delicate, reverent.
“She never took it off,” he says. “Forty-nine years we were married, and she never once took it off since the day I put it on. When I saw her lying there like that…” He looks up, looks John in the eye. There’s something in his gaze that makes John’s chest tight. “Thank you, detective,” he says. “Thank you for doing this.”
John nods, looks away.
“Yeah,” he says. “Look, I should get going. Someone will contact you about…things.”
He puts his sunglasses on as soon as he starts down the stairs.
On his way home, he buys a bottle of scotch, grabs a glass out of his kitchen cabinet without bothering to turn on the lights.
There is an actual bed in his bedroom by now, but not much else. He convinced Mikey to let him leave Vegas without sending someone to break his legs through a promise to make good on his debts, and it’s unlikely Mikey expects him to come through, but either way, regular payments look like a better investment in his continued well-being than furniture. So he settles on the mattress, because it’s the only place to settle, stretching his legs out on the rumpled sheets as he unscrews the cap on the bottle. As he pours, the scotch glimmers amber for a second, clear in the flickering light from outside. He tips his glass to Mr. Cash on the wall and drains it in one go, then pours himself another.
He’s not drunk after the third drink, but maybe it is the scotch that makes him pull his phone out, makes him pick his wallet from the nightstand and dig out McKay’s card. Or maybe it has nothing to do with the scotch at all.
“Hey,” he says to the recording of McKay’s effortless arrogance. “This is John Sheppard.” He pauses, tries to think what it actually is he wants to say. “I closed my first case here today. There was a moment there when the job seemed…worth it. Worth doing. It kinda caught me off guard.”
He pauses again, but that’s really it, so he pushes the end call button.
When he pours his next drink, he raises the glass to McKay, wherever he may be.
Six weeks into his new job, he’s assigned to a poisoning case. Middle-aged man, partner in a prestigious law firm, father of two. Painful death brought on by arsenic. There are too many suspects, too many possible motives and opportunities, too much press coverage. Five days go by, and he has all the information he needs - about colleagues with grudges, about extra-marital affairs with cocktail waitresses, about clients with secrets to keep, about family arguments - but he’s no closer to finding the killer. He leaves the station frustrated, knowing his thoughts are stuck in a loop, knowing there’s something he’s not seeing.
It’s late spring, the temperature reaching into the 80s, and the humid air inside the closed space of the Camaro feels too thick to breathe. He parks the car a few blocks from his apartment, deciding to walk the last bit of the way home, clear his head.
He doesn’t take the quickest route.
It isn’t conscious - it’s the case he’s thinking about all the way there - but after ten minutes’ walk, he finds himself on the sidewalk opposite Germaine’s on Dover Street. He’s been in there with Frank, as part of his Homicide Detective’s Guide to New Orleans package, meeting people with the kind of connections on the other side of the law that a cop can’t do without if he hopes to get anything done. In the back room, behind the expensive, softly lit restaurant, there is a game of no-limit Texas hold ‘em to be found every night of the week and throughout most days. He should have just about enough cash in his pocket to cover the blind.
He could go inside, sit down at the table and forget about the case for a few hours, forget about everything.
He slumps against the wall of the building behind him, drops his head back against the stone. When he presses his hands against it, the stucco is smooth and cool beneath his sweating palms, chilled by the evening breeze.
It’s a clear night, and above the rooftops he can make out a faint spattering of stars. Not for the first time, he wonders how many of those distant systems are home to life forms he’ll never know, if he can see whatever sun the Wraith was born under, before he became a pilot crashed in an alien desert. But it’s too far away, probably; must be, even if he knew in which direction to look. If he ever meets McKay again, he should ask.
He has his cell phone in his hand and is dialing the number from memory before he has time to realize what he’s doing.
“…leave a message,” McKay’s voice says.
John takes a shaky breath and pushes himself off the wall. Turns away from Germaine’s.
“So I’m working this case…” he begins.
On the sixth morning after the murder, he pulls the lawyer’s personal assistant in for questioning. By noon, he’s standing over her as she signs her confession.
After that, it becomes habit.
Something he does, when a case gets too much, when he can’t see his way to the solution. He has no way of knowing if McKay ever hears the messages, if he ever will, but he calls, and he talks. Lays the facts out, the details of the crime, what he knows and doesn’t know. As a detective, he’s never really had a partner, and he’s never been big on sharing his thoughts in any circumstances, but somehow this works. He isn’t sure if it’s the process of thinking out loud, or if it’s the reminder, the act of making himself remember that McKay exists, that he wanted more from John, demanded things of him he had long since stopped seeing the point of being. Regardless, it helps him focus, helps him see the pieces of the puzzle he might be overlooking.
His first quarterly performance review is tentatively favorable.
It's the performance review - the irony of it, maybe - that makes him start doing counter-intelligence. Receiving it reminds him that McKay knows everything about him (or at least he did, when the information served a purpose), but he knows next to nothing about McKay.
He starts digging.
The most conspicuous thing about Rodney McKay, it turns out, is his current non-existence. Starting at the present and going back five years, there are no records of him anywhere. As if he's quite literally vanished from the face of the earth. John doubts he'll ever look at a missing persons case the same again.
Before that, there is research. The PhDs are in Theoretical Physics and Mechanical Engineering, the published papers many and varied. As far as John can tell, controversial and spectacular. Several are on wormholes, the possibility of wormhole travel. He doesn't pretend to understand the physics, but the math, the complicated equations and formulas, makes something itch inside him. A few of the early papers, which seem not quite indecipherable, he prints out. He tries not to think about how McKay wasn’t even out of his teens when he wrote them.
The very first mentions he can find of McKay's name are in connection with music, not science. A Canadian award for young musicians, won at the age of ten. The jury’s motivation talks of “astonishing technical skill, paired with remarkable sensitivity and emotional range”. He thinks of the hard, merciless edge of McKay’s gaze, the softness of his voice asking “Are you okay?” He wonders to what extent he was being played. Then he wonders if he really thinks it matters.
McKay’s parents lived and died in Vancouver. There was one sibling, a younger sister: Jeannie, married Miller, a physicist like her brother. Deceased last year. She lived with her husband and child in Canada, but her death certificate is signed by a U.S. Army surgeon, stationed at Cheyenne Mountain. The cause of death is peculiarly vague. It occurs to him that perhaps this is the casualty of war McKay has to live with. Things don’t always go the way we plan.
He shuts down his computer, and doesn’t look for more information.
It’s harder than he’d like to admit, working his way to something approaching an understanding of the more mathematical parts of McKay’s early research, but he used to know how to do this, and it’s not as if he has a social life.
There is a paper on the Riemann hypothesis that catches his attention, and for days, maybe weeks, he comes home to an apartment empty except for a bed strewn with notes, littered with calculations. If gambling was forgetting, this is more like remembering what used to come before the things he wanted to forget. He falls asleep, more nights than one, with a pencil in his hand, and wakes with the sun in his eyes and his face stuck to a half-scribbled function. It’s still easier to get out of bed than it ever was in Vegas.
“By the way,” he tells McKay’s voice mail one afternoon, whiling the time away while staking out a suspect’s house from behind the wheel of the Camaro, “I think you were wrong about Riemann in ‘85.”
That one sentence feels more revealing than all the hours of talking he’s done about his cases. He hangs up, and waits in silence for his killer to show.
Two weeks later, an email arrives in his NOPD inbox. The sender is listed as Rodney McKay. There is no subject line.
He stares at the screen, tries to breathe calmly. Listens to Detective Andrews argue with the Assistant DA in the office next door. After a minute or two, he clicks the message.
Sheppard, (it reads)I was not wrong about Riemann. It might come as a shock to you, but a minor in Math does not actually mean you can count. Next time I’m in the neighborhood, so to speak, you owe me a beer for assuming otherwise.
You’re like a noir crime novel, serialized. True pulp fiction. Limited vocabulary, yet strangely riveting. Did you figure out who killed that socialite at the charity auction? I seem to be awaiting the next installment with bated breath. (Hah!)
Rodney McKay
P.S. The size of my personal file in the data stream from home has increased exponentially since you started doing this thing of yours. There is already a rumor that I’ve got a new girlfriend.
I don’t do girlfriends.
P.P.S. I’m really glad you’re doing well.
He reads it through some five or ten times, and still has no clue what to make of it. Except that McKay is as ruthlessly cutting in writing as he is in person, and that they seem to have a date for when he’s next on Earth.
He can’t stop staring at the last two lines.
When the ADA gets the final word (Andrews is not the sharpest pencil in the box; John is glad he avoided being partnered up with him), her heels clicking down the corridor past John’s door as she leaves, he picks up the phone.
“I got your email,” he says. Takes a deep breath and lets himself give an answer to the question he hopes McKay is asking. “Lucky for you I’m not a girl, then, isn’t it?” The tone of his voice comes out rough, too obvious. He takes another breath and changes the subject. “As for the socialite, you can rest easy. The butler did it. Well, not exactly, but I always wanted to say that. What happened was…”
It’s a pretty good story. He tries to tell it without thinking about the part of the call that actually matters.
Weeks go by, and there are no more emails.
One night in late August, he gets called to a 187 at a gay club in The Quarter. It’s open and shut: a young man lying dead on the restroom floor, blood in an abstract pattern on the wall where his head was bashed against the white tiles, several witnesses saying they saw the victim’s boyfriend flee the scene. A patrol car snatches the killer up about ten minutes after John sends out the APB.
They bring the witnesses in to the station to identify him, and John walks them each through the line-up. The last one is a kid maybe twenty years old; blond hair artfully spiked, just a touch of eyeliner around blue eyes, tight black jeans and tight black t-shirt leaving nothing to the imagination - strikingly attractive in a way you can’t help but notice. When he picks the perp out through the two-way mirror without hesitation, John mentally marks the case as closed.
“Thank you for your cooperation,” he tells the kid as they step out into the corridor. “Someone from the DA’s office will contact you if we need you to testify in court.”
He half turns to pull the door shut, and when he turns back, the kid is standing right there, too close.
“You gonna be off duty soon, then, Detective?” he says. “I mean, it’s late, it’s been a long night.” He smiles up at John through thick lashes, lays his fingertips very lightly, with studied coyness, against John’s chest. “If you want somewhere to unwind…”
The pure, sinful invitation hits him hard, like a blow to the solar plexus.
In Vegas, he would have taken the guy up on it.
But he knows how this one goes, knows he isn’t the person this boy is seeing.
He’s tired of pretending.
“Look,” he says. Takes the kid by the wrist and gently but firmly moves his hand away, lets it drop. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m gonna have to pass on that.”
The kid smiles again, a little harder around the edges.
“Hey, can’t blame a guy for trying. Your loss, Detective.”
John watches him go, his body still humming with the unexpected human contact.
He doesn’t call McKay that night, but he thinks of him.
He reads the report through one more time - domestic, stabbing, self-defense; it all seems okay - before signing his name, the day’s date. He puts his pen down, looks at the numbers he’s written. He’s avoided the thought all day, but now it’s staring him in the face, and he needs to make a decision.
He puts the report in his outbox, turns off the lights and closes up his office. The parking lot outside is dark, almost empty. He leans his hands against the roof of the Camaro, clenches his teeth together until his jaw hurts, until he can make himself get inside. He could drive home, could make a right out of the lot, like every night. He turns the car in the opposite direction, towards the interstate.
Maybe the thought of doing this has lurked in the back of his mind for the past few weeks, as it always does around this time of year, but he’s still surprised when he keeps driving, past the city limits, following the I-55 north through the night. When the traffic thins beyond midnight, he pushes the accelerator down and lets the momentum carry him forward, thinking of nothing but the road and the roar of the engine and the wheel in his hands.
He gets there not long after dawn, the small town mostly asleep as he drives through. He’s glad; he doesn’t want to meet anyone.
It’s easy to find the cemetery, neat rows of headstones fanning out from underneath the shadow of the silent church. Harder to find the grave, without directions, and he almost lets that be his excuse to turn away again, get back into the Camaro without even opening the gate.
He takes a deep breath, instead, the Tennessee mountain air almost crisp enough to sting his lungs after the heavy moisture of the Mississippi delta, and starts to search.
He finds her beneath the cover of a maple tree, the grass around the stone strewn with yellow leaves. Six years to the day since the date carved into the granite beneath her name. He thinks maybe he should have stopped somewhere, to clean up after the drive, buy her flowers. But she’s seen him a lot worse than this, has made love to him with both their clothes stiff with sweat and desert sand, and he would never have considered bringing her flowers when she was alive - it seems like it would be insulting to start now.
He squats down in front of the stone, touches his hand to the ground.
“Hey, Holland,” he says. His only answer is the tickle of grass against his palm, a bird rustling its wings in the maple above. “I know you probably want to kick my ass for not coming sooner. You know what a chickenshit I can be.” He closes his eyes, strokes his fingers through the fine blades of grass, wet with dew. “I’m sorry.”
Sorry he couldn’t save her, sorry for all the people who died because he tried, sorry he wasn’t there to keep her safe in the first place. Sorry he let it turn him into such a sorry excuse for a human being.
“I’m trying to do better,” he tells her. “I’m trying to get it right.”
Up in the tree, the bird flutters again, moves from branch to branch.
There is no try, Holland would have told him. Would have flashed him one of those crazy, fucking, gorgeous grins, just to mess with his head.
He wishes he could start to believe her again.
“No, I’m telling you, man,” Jamaal says, his voice raspy with static from shitty cell phone reception. “He’ll be there. My guy says he’s made arrangements to leave the country tonight, but he’s been holed up in this warehouse, and he’ll be there this afternoon.”
“And you’re sure you can trust your guy?”
Jamaal’s intel is usually solid, his position as a trusted fence giving him access to all sorts of valuable information, but John is rather safe than sorry.
Jamaal heaves a put-upon sigh.
“Did I ever sell you anything but top quality merchandise, Sheppard? I thought we had a bond of trust, here. People don’t like what Rivers did to his old man - ain’t nobody gonna try to protect him.”
“Okay,” John says. “Okay, I hear you. If this pans out, you can consider your check already in the mail.”
He hangs up the phone, opens his desk drawer and grabs his gun, lifting his half-untucked shirt to clip the holster to his jeans. He pulls the Glock out, checks that the magazine is full, then pushes it back into the grip with the heel of his hand.
“Now that,” a voice says from the doorway, “is the cover of your pulp novel right there.”
He wheels around, and there is Rodney McKay, leaning a solid shoulder up against the doorframe. His suit is as immaculately sharp as the last time they met - black over black today, offset by an ultramarine tie. His eyes are still the bluest John has ever seen.
There is a moment when the clock on the wall ticks the seconds away, but John’s heart doesn’t seem to beat at all.
“Mute astonishment I can work with,” McKay says. “But you might want to put that away?”
He nods at the gun still in John’s hand, a quirk of amusement on his thin lips. But beneath the humor, there is a controlled wariness John recognizes only too well. The sharp caution of those who’ve seen more than their share of action, who’ve learnt the hard way that if there’s a weapon in the room, you’d better make damn sure you know where it is.
He shakes himself, and makes quick work of sticking the gun back in its holster.
“You could give a guy some warning,” he says. “What’d you do, beam down from the mothership?”
The twist of McKay’s lips grows into a confident smile, and John stifles an impulse to smack himself upside the head.
“You have a remarkable knack for walking into those,” McKay says, stepping closer, hands in the pockets of his pants. John had thought he remembered, every detail clear from that day in the desert, but he knows now he’d forgotten, the memory watered down with time. He isn’t prepared at all for how McKay’s presence fills the room, pushes the air out so that all that’s left for John to breathe is him. He’s suddenly glad the desk is between them. “Sure you’re not an SF fan?”
“I had a phase,” John says. “It passed.” His voice comes out harsh, the kind of smooth drawl he used to save for commanding officers, all spikes and thorns beneath. It’s not what he wants, but he’s glad he’s managing to speak at all. “There’s a mothership?”
McKay shrugs, the perfectly tailored jacket shifting over his shoulders, gleam and shadow as the fabric moves under the overhead light. John wants to smooth it out, stroke it down where it’s bunched at the base of McKay’s neck. He shoves his fingers in the back pockets of his jeans.
“There’s a ship. The commander owed me a favor. I’m not…” McKay pauses, his eyes shifting away before seeking John’s again, but there’s no hesitation in them. “This was a work trip. I’ll be going straight back to Pegasus tomorrow at the latest. But I figured, while I’m Earth-side, I should cash in on that drink you owe me.”
No hesitation, but maybe a question.
“There’s somewhere I have to be,” John says. “Still on the clock, here.” He’s tasting panic, iron-thick and copper-sharp at the back of his throat, and he could make those words a dismissal, could take the easy way out and let his answer be no. He’s almost sure McKay would accept it. He grabs his jacket from the back of his chair and says, “You could tag along, if you want.”
“Who am I to pass up a chance to see the great detective in action?” McKay says. The sarcasm is so heavy that John has to table the question of whether he’s more relieved than freaked out in favor of rolling his eyes. McKay smirks and gestures at the door. “Lead the way.”
John does.
He isn’t used to anyone riding in the Camaro with him, unless they're handcuffed in the back, and McKay’s presence beside him in the shotgun seat is heavy and distracting. Close enough to reach out, and the thought of that makes him grip the wheel tighter, keep his eyes carefully on the swarm of city traffic. They’re almost at the docks when McKay breaks the silence.
"After hearing you babble your way through all those phone messages, I forgot how manfully taciturn you are when there’s actually someone there for you to talk to. My mistake, obviously."
John changes gears, slowing into a turn, pushing the stick forward with more force than necessary.
"No one said you had to listen to them," he says.
He doesn’t say, I didn’t expect you to.
McKay looks over at him, looks away out the passenger side window, at the row of warehouses sweeping by outside, the glimpses of deep grey water in-between, reflecting the sky.
"We’re fighting a war no one seems to want us to fight," he says at last. "We’ve lost a lot of good people, and sometimes I have no idea why we’re doing it, because it’s not like any of the locals really want us there. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job, the scientific discoveries we’re making, all the things we’re learning. The city, I wish you could see that, the spires of Atlantis and the ocean all around and everything the Ancients left for us to uncover. It’s..." He raises his hands from his lap, makes a flickering gesture John can’t decipher out of the corner of his eye. "...pretty incredible. But it gets a bit isolated, to say the least. So it was, you know, good. Having you talking to me."
John bites his lip, twists his head to look for street signs, more to be doing something than because he really needs to. He can’t imagine the city McKay is talking about, that alien world, but he knows what it’s like to be stationed somewhere far away, somewhere you’re not wanted, and the thought of McKay out there, listening to his stupid messages, of that somehow making it easier… He has no clue how to begin to respond to that.
“Look,” McKay says, turning sideways in his seat to fully face John. “I’m aware that I should have gotten back to you more. Really, I don’t think I want to know what it says about you that you just kept on calling, regardless, beyond the obvious facts that you’re a stubborn lunatic and have no social life, and I already had those straight, but I would have liked to respond more, and I would have, if we’d been able to dial Earth at all after…”
John slams the break, jerks the wheel to make the Camaro spin one-eighty on the near-empty street, tires screeching against the blacktop. He’s fast enough to see that he’s right - the lanky man with dirty blond hair they just drove by is certainly Carl Rivers - but not fast enough to make this easy. Rivers knows he’s wanted, knows to be paranoid, and he’s running before John has finished turning, dropping the grocery bag he’s carrying to dive down a pathway between two warehouses, too narrow for the car to follow.
"What are you...?" McKay starts, confused, voice raised in alarm shown as anger, then cuts himself off again with an "Oh" of comprehension as he catches sight of Rivers.
“Sit tight,” John tells him, throwing the driver’s side door open almost before he’s brought the car to a standstill, running flat out in pursuit without looking back. He pulls his gun as he enters the space between the buildings, calls out to identify himself as police. Ahead of him, Rivers doesn’t slow down.
It doesn’t matter, though, because John is the stronger runner, is gaining already with every step. And he was wrong, because this is easy, this chase, just letting his body act without thoughts or emotions, hurtling forward into the salt sea air, the anonymous walls on either side of him so close he almost feels them scrape his elbows, the sound of his own footsteps, Rivers’s footsteps bouncing off the concrete the only thing he hears, except for the waves against the docks, and he can see the water now, through the gap between the buildings, seagulls soaring white against the grey, and Rivers is turning, at the far end of the warehouse, stumbling as he rounds the corner, and John pushes, pushes through the scraping in his lungs, takes the corner and lunges, and Rivers goes down beneath him, thud of crashing bodies, and he’s got his knee in Rivers’s back, his gun to his head, and he’s good at this, better than most, and he’s got Rodney McKay, PhD, PhD waiting for him back at the car, and he’s scared to death, but he isn’t going to scare himself off.
He slaps his cuffs on Rivers, reads him the litany of his rights before yanking him upright, dragging him back the distance they’ve just run. Rivers curses under his breath between wheezing pants, but he comes without a struggle, letting John lead him by the arm without any real resistance, the fight gone out of him.
McKay is standing at the car, leaning back against it with his legs crossed at the ankles, his hands in his pockets beneath the buttoned jacket of his suit. From where he is, he can watch John and Rivers approaching the entire length of the warehouses. His gaze is like a weight in John’s belly, a tightness around his throat. The entire length of the warehouses, John watches back.
“Well,” McKay says when they get close enough to talk, “at least I see the phone messages weren’t false advertising.”
John gives him a crooked smile, all challenge at the edges.
“Would be some pretty boring pulp fiction if I never got my man, don’t you think?”
McKay’s eyes don’t waver, but he swallows, once, his Adam’s apple moving just above the precise knot of his tie.
“I think we can do without boring,” he says.
John shoves Rivers up against the car and leans inside to fold the front seat forward, making room for the prisoner to get in.
The weight of McKay's gaze doesn't leave him.
“I’ll wait here,” McKay says, as he takes Rivers away to booking, but John still feels jittery, on edge, all through the interrogation that follows. He doesn’t want to find he’s been left with a note this time, a pack of gum, some cryptic message, but the idea of McKay actually being there when his work is done makes his pulse race faster, his palms turn clammy with sweat.
He might have dreamt the whole thing, he thinks, as he confronts Rivers with his fingerprints found on the murder weapon. It’s certainly surreal enough, alien cities and wars in space worlds away from the concrete reality of the bloodstained carving knife he places on the table, the dead expression in Rivers’s eyes when he looks at it. But he gets his confession soon enough, and there is nothing dreamlike about the sight of McKay waiting for him in the corridor outside the interrogation room, impatiently tapping his fingers on the armrest of the chair he’s settled in - his thickset body is intangible only in as far as John keeps his hands in his pockets and tries not to think about touch. Not here.
And there is something in the way McKay springs to his feet as soon as he lays eyes on him that makes John’s stomach twist, his heart slam up hard against the inside of his chest. It occurs to him that perhaps McKay is doubting the reality of this as much as he is.
“Oh, finally,” McKay says. “Are you done, or do you need to go back in there and whack that guy over the head with the phonebook a few more times?”
“Nah,” John says. “I think he’s had what he can take.” He nods his head toward the elevators. “You wanna…?”
“Sure, yes,” McKay says, and falls into step with him as he turns down the corridor.
There are still plenty of people left in the building, uniforms and civilians who pass them in the hallways, and it’s not until the front door is swinging shut behind them that McKay starts talking again.
“I was about to say, earlier, before you went all Starsky & Hutch on me… We found a new ZPM, for Atlantis. Which means nothing to you, obviously, except now we have the power to contact Earth regularly, I could do better as an intergalactic correspondent. If that’s something you want.”
It’s rained while they’ve been indoors, and the air is still fresh with it, the light of the early moon blending with the glow of the street lamps, shimmering off the wet asphalt in the parking lot, refractions of silver and gold. John sidesteps a puddle, cuts across between a Chevy van and a department SUV to get to the Camaro.
“You’re right,” he says, pausing by the passenger’s side door. “I suck at talking when I know someone’s listening.” On the roof of the car, the water-smudged edges of his reflection bleed into the dark outline of McKay’s image. He pulls his gaze up, makes himself look directly at the man beside him, into the near black of his wide eyes. “But I don’t think you came here to talk.”
McKay’s lips twitch - almost, not quite, a smile.
“No, Detective? Then what did I come for?”
John glances around, but he knows the opportunity is there - the van shielding them from the station windows, the two women he can see at the other end of the lot heading away - and he’s already moving, closing the last bit of distance between them to fist his hands in the lapels of McKay’s jacket, push him up against the side of the car. McKay makes a sound that’s high-pitched and broken and graceless and the hottest damn thing John has ever heard, and grabs him by the back of the neck, yanks him down into a kiss.
It’s open-mouthed and uncontrolled, teeth against his tongue and blunt nails against his scalp and he’s hard even before his hips press against the warm bulk of McKay’s body and McKay jerks forward into him, deepening the kiss into something that flares beyond urgency, clear and startling and violently physical, searing and alive. He lets it go on for seconds, minutes, far longer than he meant to, but the need is everywhere, reflected off every surface of him, moonlight on water, and he doesn’t want to know how to make it stop.
Even after he remembers where they are, after he makes himself pull away, his hands refuse to leave McKay’s chest, lingering to flatten out the soft wool they’ve just wrinkled.
McKay releases his grip on his neck, but his hand drifts down to John’s wrist instead, absently rubbing his pulse point, as if caught somewhere midway between holding him there and forcing him to let go.
“You have to live somewhere, right?” McKay says. He’s breathing heavily; John can feel the quick expand-and-contract of his lungs under his knuckles, against the backs of his fingers beneath the lapels of the suit. When he licks his lips, he can taste McKay’s breath there, residue of heat at the corners of his mouth. “Somewhere we can go and test that deduction?”
John tilts his head, pretends to consider. Or maybe he’s just stalling for time to figure out what the hell it is he’s doing here.
As if he hasn’t known since the moment he picked McKay’s card out of that goddamn pack of gum.
“I thought I was supposed to pay up on that drink you think I owe you?”
“Rain check,” McKay says. “Definitely. Rain check. What you’re supposed to do is get in the car and drive.”
He pulls John’s hand from his body, but even when John steps away around the hood of the Camaro, he doesn’t feel as if he’s been let go. There is no midway here, after all, no either/or. McKay didn’t need touch to grab him, back in Vegas, doesn’t need it to hold on to him now.
They drive in silence, like before, but this time the quiet has a different shape.
He lets McKay walk past him into the apartment, his frame a broad, crisp-edged silhouette against the yellow street-light from the kitchen window as he looks around.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard,” he says, “but there’s this incredible new invention, it’s only, oh, maybe ten thousand years old? Called furniture?”
“Yeah,” John says, tearing his gaze away to shut the door. “There’s also this thing called gambling debts.”
His hand isn’t quite steady as he turns the lock, and he closes his eyes, just for a heartbeat, just for the space between breaths. He wants to move, but he doesn’t know how.
Then McKay is there behind him, and he doesn’t have to.
Fingers close around his wrists, yank his hands up, pressing them flat against the door, level with his head. He doesn’t fight it, doesn’t struggle. Lets the weight of McKay’s body push him into the solid wood, lets himself push back.
McKay’s lips are at his ear, on his neck, shaky exhales like restless caresses on his skin, and he makes a noise like a wounded animal, desperate and rough. McKay licks at his jaw, drives his hips against his ass.
“God,” he says, squeezing John’s wrists. “I wanted to do this the first time I saw you. You were so gorgeous, and so dead inside, and I wanted to push you down on that interrogation room table and make you feel.”
“You wanted to shock me,” John says, and he’s known that all along, but it feels different, saying it out loud, all the connections clearer in his head. It’s easier to talk like this, to be like this, not having to meet the edge of McKay’s gaze. He arcs his back, rubs his body against McKay’s. Through the layers of denim and wool, he can feel the hard length of McKay’s cock. “All that stuff. About aliens, other dimensions. All that detail.”
McKay’s hands slide down his arms, slip around to stroke his chest, wide palms dragging across his nipples, fingers digging into muscle. John’s hands stay where they’ve been put, his nails catching on peeling paint when his fingers curl, clawing.
“It worked, though, didn’t it?” McKay says, and there’s a smugness, a confidence in his voice that makes John shudder, makes him pant. McKay reaches down, cups John’s hard-on through his jeans. “It did touch you.”
You, John doesn’t say. You touched me.
He’s pretty sure McKay knows.
“I want to fuck you,” McKay says, a low, greedy whisper, heating the trickle of sweat at the back of John’s neck, and it’s not a question.
John groans, shoves himself into the steady grip of McKay’s hand.
“There’s…” He swallows, licks his lips to make them let words out. “There’s stuff…in the bedroom.”
“Hmm,” McKay breathes, an approving purr as he pulls away. “Don’t move.” His fingers squeeze John’s hip before letting go; their imprint burns in the sudden chill, bright, like the fresh mark of an iron.
John leans his forehead against the door and keeps himself still. Listens to McKay moving in the bedroom.
There is a rustle of papers. Silence. From the apartment below, he hears music; a girl's voice, angry, over a heavy hip-hop beat.
“Huh,” McKay says. “I think I’ll have to revise my opinion of your math skills. You might actually be able to comprehend an explanation, however rudimentary, of why you’re completely wrong and I was right on Riemann.”
John lifts his head, lets it fall back against the door with a thump.
“McKay, if you want to give me math lessons, feel free to write another email.”
“Lack of patience,” McKay huffs. “It was right there in your file next to the part about spearmint gum and an unhealthy attachment to The Man in Black. Which I see is still in full effect.” But the words are followed by the scraping noise of a drawer being pulled open, the bump when the movement makes John’s rickety nightstand shift on the uneven floor. Then there are McKay’s footsteps, coming back.
Air between them, this time, even when McKay stops, inches behind him. A long, shivering moment of anticipation, and John gasps when McKay touches him, a quick intake of breath. McKay’s fingers trace the curve of his ass, slide beneath the hem of his shirt - up underneath the fabric, skin against skin across his back.
“I’m pretty sure I’m a better teacher in person,” he says, mapping the edge of John’s shoulder blade with his fingertips. “As long as you don’t expect kid gloves.”
“I never expect anything,” John shoots back.
McKay’s hand stills, flat against the center of his spine.
“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”
The tone of his voice makes John’s chest tight, and he almost turns, almost moves to touch, but then McKay’s free hand is at the gun on his hip, and he freezes, muscles tensing on reflex.
“No, don’t be stupid, it’s okay,” McKay says, and pulls the Glock from its holster.
“McKay…” John starts, warning in his voice, but all McKay does is crouch down, place the gun carefully on the floor and slide it away, metal scraping over wood.
John is about to make a bad joke about safe sex, but then McKay stands back up, closer now, and slides his hands around, along the waistband of John’s jeans. If he had a coherent train of thought, it leaps off the tracks when McKay’s fingers reach for the buttons on his fly. He groans when McKay pushes his hand inside, arcs into the touch, but McKay makes no move to jerk him off, simply holds him, the lightest grip around his cock and balls, while his other hand eases jeans and underwear off. He lets go far too soon, bending low to yank John’s pants down around his ankles. John bites his lip, but some sound of protest must escape him, because McKay strokes a hand up his thigh, soothing, almost, and tells him:
“Yes, yes, me too. I mean, seriously, I barely dare to touch you, because I don’t know if I can stop. I didn’t know, back in Vegas.” His hands disappear, and John hears rustling, hears the plastic snap of a bottle cap flipped open. When McKay’s fingers return, they are slippery, slick, dipping into the cleft of John’s ass. “God, John. I’ve thought about this. Every day since, I’ve…”
“You don’t…” John grits out, pushing back, spreading his trapped legs as far as they will go. “You shouldn’t stop.”
McKay practically growls, and his left hand grips John’s hip, holds him still while he rubs John’s opening, his middle finger pressing in.
It’s almost too good, the slow, dark burn as his body opens, too long since he did this, since he let anyone see him ache with it, and he’d forgotten, how terrifying it is, how little he can hide of all it makes him feel. By the time McKay has three fingers buried inside him, circling his prostate with firm, careful strokes, it’s all he can do to hold himself upright, to not shake apart. But he can hear the quick, shallow rush of McKay’s breath, feel his hand tremble against his hip bone. Can feel the need spark between them, current flowing in an unbroken circuit. He’s not here alone.
“Come on,” he snarls, daring to glance over his shoulder. “I thought you wanted to fuck me.”
McKay leans in, leans up, grinds his fingers deeper, rough and relentless, and John gasps, his eyes dropping shut against the stab of pleasure. McKay’s lips brush his cheek, and he can feel the scent of him, sweat and heat and desire.
“You have no idea how much,” he says.
He pulls his fingers out, wipes them on the tail of John’s shirt. The sudden emptiness inside is almost harder to take than the fullness, but the sounds of McKay pulling his zipper down, tearing a condom wrapper open, makes John’s cock twitch, his hole clench in anticipation. He can taste his own hunger, sharper and more clear than mint on his tongue.
Then McKay is there, pushing in, and there isn’t room for anything else. Just the wide, deep stretch of McKay filling him, the tight hold of McKay’s hands on his shoulder, at his waist.
“Oh, Christ. John,” McKay says, and starts to fuck him.
Slow, and hard, and without mercy, and John doesn’t want to escape. Wants only to take it, whatever McKay wants to give. He braces his forearms on the door, feels his cock slap against his belly with every thrust that wracks his body, makes the wood shake, the lock rattle.
Against the backs of his thighs, there is the fine wool of McKay’s pants, and stroking his flank, there is silk, the inside lining of McKay’s jacket. McKay fucking him, fucking his naked ass, still fully dressed in that perfect, goddamn suit, and of all things it’s that, the mental image of how they must look, that sends him over.
“Please,” he pants, “please, McKay, come on.” He’s waited (hoped, it’s okay to call it hoped) almost a year for this, and suddenly it’s as though he can’t wait a second longer.
“Yesyesyes, that’s it,” McKay says, and his hand clutches harder at John’s shoulder, the tips of his fingers digging in just above the collar-bone, bruising and painful. But it’s all right, because it’s leverage, an anchor point to let McKay fuck him faster, pound into him with quick, short thrusts, and somehow the angle is different now, every stroke sending pleasure flaring, bright and brutal, outwards from his prostate, spreading like rings on water, and he’s shaking with it, down to his toes, up to the tips of his curling fingers. He belongs to it, lies open to it. But it’s okay - McKay already knows, has already seen whatever there is to see, long before today.
He reaches down, finds McKay’s hand at his hip and tugs it loose, wraps it around his cock. Guides it through the first stroke, the second, his fingers furled over McKay’s. McKay makes a noise - breathless, raw - and squeezes down, slams into him as if he wants to break his way through, tear his way in.
John comes, helpless and wild, thrashing in the closed space between McKay’s body and the door. The groan he gives could just as well be a sob.
McKay says his name, then, over and over, until his body stiffens and his head falls forward against the back of John’s neck, and his cock jerks inside him. Through the fabric of his shirt, John feels lips against his spine, the warm outline of a kiss.
He’s still trembling, boneless and tired and naked under McKay’s attention, but there is only one thing he’s afraid of.
“I’m not him,” he says. “That other… I can’t be him.”
McKay’s hand leaves his shoulder, comes up to close over his where it’s pressed against the door.
“If you were,” he says, “you wouldn’t be mine.” His thumb strokes over John’s, a slow, gentle pattern. Almost as an afterthought, he adds, “And then who would cater to my newfound taste for True Crime?”
John snorts, and lets his body relax. McKay rests his forehead against his back.
He comes out of the bathroom to find McKay sitting on the edge of the bed. The jacket and tie are lying on the mattress beside him, and his shirt is open at the collar, revealing pale skin at the hollow of his throat, light hair in the shadows below. He looks vulnerable like this, and John’s hands flex at his sides, wanting to touch.
McKay looks up when he enters the room, his gaze traveling up John’s body, taking in his bare feet, the worn jeans he’s changed into, his naked chest. The expression on his face is more than flattering, but then his eyes widen, his mouth turning down at the corner.
“Is that…?” He gestures at John’s chest, a complicated wave of his hand. “Where the Wraith…?”
John glances down at himself, at the scar he hardly even notices anymore.
“Yeah. Pretty crap shot for an alien super-soldier, if you ask me.”
McKay’s face twists in something like disapproval. When his guard is down, his features are almost ridiculously mobile.
“Here,” he says. “Let me…”
John steps forward, lets McKay reach for him and pull him in to stand between his parted knees. McKay’s hand slides up his flank, curves warm around his ribcage, thumb softly tracing the rough outline of the healed bullet hole.
“I didn’t intend this,” he says. “I pushed for something to break, but this wasn’t what I wanted.”
“Yeah,” John says. His voice sounds choked to his own ears. He doesn’t say, maybe that’s where the fracture had to be, for the bone to be set right.
For a minute, they’re silent, the only movement the rise and fall of John’s chest into the cup of McKay’s palm.
Then John says,
“In that other universe… The Sheppard and McKay there, did they…?”
He doesn’t quite know how to finish the sentence, so he waves his hand, indicating himself and McKay, the space between them. Somehow his hand ends up settling on McKay’s shoulder.
“What?” McKay says. “Barely make it through the front door before fucking each other’s brains out? I’m guessing yes, but it wasn’t something they talked about.” He tilts his head, as if considering. “They did seem to play an awful lot of chess.”
“Huh,” John says. His fingers have found their way inside the open neck of McKay’s shirt, stroking along his collar-bone, along the line just beneath it where his chest hair starts. “I used to be pretty good at chess.”
McKay lifts his chin to meet his eyes directly.
“You do realize that I am literally a genius, right?”
John smiles, tease and challenge, the barely-there hint of a grin that makes criminals nervous.
“You do realize that you needed a local cop who failed his detective’s exam twice to stop your alien invasion, right?”
There’s a glint in McKay’s eyes that is hungry, razor-sharp, almost savage.
“Oh,” he says, “you are on.”
John laughs - suddenly, uncontrollably glad - and bends to kiss him.
The body is lying at the water’s edge. A young girl, fully dressed, one bare leg splayed out at an unnatural angle, her sandaled foot bobbing on the brownish surface of the river. Crouching at her side, he has an impulse to reach for it and tuck it in next to its mate, but of course he knows better than to disturb the scene.
“Rough estimate, I’d place time of death somewhere between nine and midnight last night,” the medical examiner says, putting his instruments away in his kit and closing it up. “Looks like she was strangled, but I’ll have more for you after the autopsy.”
John nods. There is a streak of mud on the girl’s face, down her cheek, across her pink-painted lips. The bruising on her neck is dark and glaring. He puts his sunglasses on and stands up.
“Thanks, Mark,” he tells the ME. “I’ll go back up and see what’s keeping the crime scene guys.”
He retraces his own steps as well as he can, up the low incline to the dirt road. This is only a dump site - he can see the marks in the grass where the girl’s body rolled down the slope, can imagine her pushed from a car - but there could still be some kind of physical evidence they can use, and he’s careful not to trample anything. He nods to the uniforms wrapping the scene in yellow tape, walks past them towards his Camaro, parked at the side of the road.
In the distance, he hears the sound of an engine, and he looks up, sweeps the horizon to find it.
The morning is still fresh, a soft haze lingering over the waters of the bayou, dissolving in the first sun. Above the rich, green line of the treetops, a Cessna is coming in low, its wings reflecting the rose-gold of the early light as it passes over them. John lets his gaze follow it, until it fades into the blue.
It strikes him that he doesn’t know when he started doing that again. In Vegas, he always kept his eyes on the ground.
He fishes in the inside pocket of his jacket for his cell phone, dials the familiar number. He’s been ready to make this call since day before yesterday, but this feels like a good enough moment.
“Knight,” he tells McKay’s voice mail, tells McKay. “F7 to D6. I’m pretty sure that’s checkmate, there, genius.” There’s a car coming around the bend of the road, the CSI team’s SUV, and he’s about to hang up. Then, on impulse, he adds, “Next time you’re here, I think I’m gonna take you flying.”
McKay will probably read that as a bad euphemism, but what the hell. It’s not like John isn’t up for that interpretation, too.
The SUV pulls to a stop next to the ME’s van, and he’s pleased to see Patricia Davies’s blond head peak over the driver’s side door when it opens. They work well together - he trusts her instincts, the high quality of her work, and he would like to think that maybe by now she feels the same about him. Even though she never will let him live down admitting to his taste in music. She’s got Sanchez with her, and a young black guy he isn’t sure he’s seen before.
“Hey, cowboy,” Davies calls out. “I found your new partner wandering around the station. He looked a bit lost and lonesome, so I brought him along.”
Right. That was today. Avoid having a partner long enough, and sooner or later they stick you with the rookie.
“Detective Sheppard,” the kid says, coming towards him with long, efficient strides. “I thought I might as well get my feet wet straight away. Wouldn’t be much use sitting around the office. Hope you don’t mind?”
John walks over to meet him half way, sizing up his tall, lean body, his neatly pressed grey suit and white shirt. He’s already had a look at the guy’s record: Marine Corps, one tour in Iraq, injured in a suicide bombing and sent home with a busted shoulder and an honorable discharge. His choice of a new career may be the same as John’s own, but he honestly hopes it was made for better reasons.
“Not at all,” he says. “You want to dive in at the deep end, Detective, I’ll be happy to arrange it.” He pulls his shades off, holds out his hand. “John Sheppard.”
The kid takes it, gives him a wide grin. He looks younger up close than the picture in his file, good-looking in a way that’s more cute than handsome, but his handshake is firm, energetic.
“Aiden Ford,” he says. “Looking forward to working with you.”
There is a straightforward eagerness to his smile that is hard to resist.
John finds himself meaning it when he smiles back.
Overhead, he can hear the Cessna again, turning, circling higher. He doesn’t have to look up to feel the tug of it, warm and alive within the beats of his heart: all the possibilities of flight.
“Okay, then, Detective Ford,” he says. “Let’s get started.”