Work Text:
These are the things Bradley left behind:
- twenty three dollars and forty-two cents
- an empty lighter
- a shirt with a hole in the sleeve
- one sock
- a slightly singed tie
- his key to Hyde’s apartment
- Hyde
Hyde spends the money, throws the sock away and wears the shirt until it doesn’t smell of Bradley anymore. He keeps the lighter in his back pocket and keeps forgetting it’s empty. He wears the tie when he goes to resign; if anyone at the precinct recognises it, they don’t say anything.
He takes the key with him, tells his landlord that Bradley must’ve still had it when he-
The landlord makes him pay for a new lock when he leaves; Hyde’s new place is smaller, but he can walk through it without seeing Bradley everywhere, so that more than makes up for it.
The people at the precinct were never exactly kind about it. About them. It wasn’t- they weren’t open about it, but everyone knew. Everyone knew that Hyde and Bradley, well, they were just a little more than partners. And they kept their mouths shut about it, because Bradley could be nasty when he wanted to be and Hyde was- Hyde was Hyde, and people liked him, even though he was rough around the edges.
But they’re not kind afterwards. They’re not kind when Hyde can still see Bradley falling whenever he blinks, not kind when Hyde can still see the shape the blood made when it bloomed across his chest. Not kind when Hyde comes in to work, sleep deprived and angry, and is told that he’s off the case, and he’s lucky they’re not suspending him. Lucky that he has Bradley’s blood on his hands and a cold and empty room to go home to.
He makes up his mind to leave when he hears someone say, just after he leaves the room, maybe it was just an argument taken too far, and people make agreeing noises. Like he’s the kind of sick fuck who’d shoot someone he lov-
His resignation’s on the chief’s desk the next day, and Hyde won’t hear a word to stop him.
He never really called him Brian. Sometimes Hyde wonders if things would’ve been different if he had, but that’s a fool’s dream and besides, by the time they got to- to that, calling him Brian would have felt weird. Even Bradley usually called him Hyde – sometimes, when it was dark and the room was stuffy and hot and they’d both had more to drink than maybe they should have, sometimes Bradley called him Kyle.
Hyde never reciprocated, and Bradley never asked him to.