Chapter Text
It is the 28th of June ‘51, 11:00, and Kim and Harry are interviewing a potential suspect in a robbery. She is chatty, tells them about her dying plant and missing cat, and Harry tells her that it might be a sign of the incoming apocalypse, and Kim sighs to hide his amusement. So far, it is a normal day - their caseload has experienced something of a relief recently so they might even be able to head home on time today - that is until Lieutenant Vicquemare walks past Kim’s desk and laughs at Harry’s prophetic announcement.
Something about the moment catches Kim's attention. Perhaps because this might be the first genuine laugh Kim has heard from the lieutenant, certainly the first time he has laughed at something Harry has said without any malice. Perhaps it is the way the lieutenant’s face changes as he lets go of the tightness around his lips, the frown etched into his face. Or perhaps it is Harry’s face as he looks up at the lieutenant and grins like he was telling a joke, like Vicquemare’s laugh was the intended effect of his words all along. Perhaps it is the way they look at each other when they're eyes meet, something intense, something adoring in their gazes.
Then, Harry rights himself, only the ghost of a smile still left on his face, and carries on with the interview, the apocalypse forgotten in favour of razor sharp questions, no stone left unturned, obsessive to the point of insanity, and yet Kim can’t help but marvel at his self-destructive dedication, his reckless intuition… He needs to control himself, but between the sun coming in warm through the window, the suspect’s engaging storytelling (Harry’s erratic eyes stilling for once as they rest on her face) and the echo of Vicquemare’s laugh still in the room, it is almost easy to forget why.
Kim’s thoughts wander as he lets Harry take over the interview fully, confident that for now, the detective can be trusted not to say anything significantly above his usual level of insanity. He really has been trying hard, Kim muses. Remembering things sometimes, and sometimes not, drinking sometimes, and sometimes not. There have been no incidents - or perhaps Kim’s definition of incidents has shifted, he notes to himself drily.
Three months ago he would not have been fighting a smile like right now as Harry jumps up, seemingly done with the interview, and makes the suspect - who does not seem to be a suspect anymore, not to Harry - a cup of coffee. He might be trying, might be stable, for Du Bois standards - every time a case of theirs drags long the precinct collectively stares at Harry like they are expecting him to start smashing things, but he hasn't yet - but he is still unpredictable (in the most delightful way).
And yet Vicquemare seems to be able to predict him just the same, Kim thinks, eyes drifting to Vicquemare who watches Harry struggle with the coffee-machine with a knowing smirk. Even stranger, the skill is mutual: Where others see the same angry man every day, Harry can distinguish between Vicquemare’s moods like it is second nature, even when he can barely remember his own address. Kim knows because Harry tells him, practically every day, how Vicquemare is feeling, how he is acting, something sickeningly obsessive in him, like Vicquemare is a case he is trying to solve. Like he is trying to catch up to three years of friendship and then go even further.
And Kim likes to listen, likes to hear Harry's shrewd observations and as he's perceived Vicquemare through Harry's eyes he's warmed to the lieutenant, to his stormcloud of misery barely masked by anger, his vicious humour, his harsh resentment and helpless loyalty. It is perhaps worrying, this warm fondness he's developed for Vicquemare, just as he once did for Harry.
It is worrying and Kim needs to focus on other things, like the “Case of the Forbidden Snake Eggs” that they are currently investigating. He waits until the suspect finishes her coffee to escort her out of the precinct and she leaves with warm smiles and kind words. Harry stands in front of the precinct forlornly for a moment when she's gone, like a duckling without its mother, a magpie that's lost its treasure, until his gaze finds Kim and he smiles that strange grimacing smile of his and follows Kim inside.
Jean is standing in the office door waiting for them, a looming vision, and something flashes inside Kim. An old hurt, a fierce yearning, a vicious pressure erasing it the moment it is born. But not fast enough, Kim thinks, as an image flashes in his mind, of coming home with Harry at his back to Jean’s annoyed face in the doorway, softened by the warm light of a shared apartment. Stop, he commands, and the thought melts away obediently, and Kim stands up straighter. The image is replaced by another, of Kim coming home day after day to an empty apartment, sparsely heated because he is rarely home anyway, and sometimes he spends hours after work driving, eating in his car, because returning home turns all the meaning he finds at work to dust. Sometimes, when he stands in the doorway in the dark, he can barely remember what Harry's voice sounds like.
“Join me for a smoke?” Vicquemare asks, and he is not addressing anyone but he is looking at Harry, open and meaningful, and Kim knows the invitation is intended for Harry’s ears only. He also knows that Harry will say yes, lighting up at the offer like a fern reaching for sunlight.
It is how they work, Harry and his satellite-officer, attached in a natural way that Kim can’t even conceive of, much less emulate. It is like the world is a joke that only the two of them are in on. It would be beautiful if Kim didn't wish to be in on it too, desperately, hopelessly.
Kim excuses himself before they get the chance to leave. “I can get started on the paperwork in the meantime,” he says and heads into the office, pretending not to feel both their gazes following him inside. It is easier this way, he thinks, although breathing feels difficult right now. It will get easier.
*
Harry gets shot again in August, the stupid shitkid, completely incapable of taking care of himself, and his new partner apparently also incapable of taking care of him. Jean is fuming as he storms into Harry’s hospital room, where Harry sits on a hospital bed, Kitsuragi by his side.
Harry grins as he sees Jean, content to ignore the fury on his face (probably due to the drugs they have pumped him full of, Jean thinks as he takes in the sight of Harry hooked up to an IV, shoulder bandaged but otherwise looking just fine). “Nice of you to come,” Harry says, soft tone at odds with the synthetically happy look on his face.
The sentence triggers another flash of anger in Jean, “I’m not here to be nice, shitkid, I’m here because you managed to get yourself shot. Again. Putting us down a man. Again.” He breathes in deeply, then growls, trying his hardest to break through the drug-addled euphoria he hates so much, “And we cannot afford to be down a man.”
“Yeah, I know,” Harry says, the grin falling off his face, and Jean counts that as a success. The task force’s caseload has lessened considerably over the summer, but they were still understaffed, and injured officers were a luxury they could not afford.
“But the doctor said it's only a week off work, and I can still do paperwork,” Harry says and looks to Kim as if for reassurance.
Kim nods in confirmation. “You got lucky that it hit your left shoulder, detective,” he says, the ghost of a smile twisting his lips.
And Jean is angry again, doesn't even try to understand why, instead ranting, “That’s a week of more work for all of us, not to mention you're leaving Lieutenant Kitsuragi without a partner.” He hopes that if nothing else, that last thing would make Harry remorseful.
“Kim can partner with you, can't he?” Harry asks, his sudden grin even brighter than it was before, “You guys would make great partners.”
“They must be giving you great drugs,” Jean mutters, doing his best not to look at Kitsuragi.
The thing is, despite everything (despite the fact that Kitsuragi has stolen his partner, has reappropriated him, has… replaced Jean after all the work he's done for Harry, all the pain and suffering, and what does Kim even know of Harry, or sacrifice?) Jean respects Kitsuragi, he truly does. And he wants to work with him, with his steady manner, his meticulous attentiveness, his deadpan humour that he hides so well. Kitsuragi makes him feel at ease somehow, but he shouldn't, and Jean hates it.
“They're not giving me anything but drouamine,” Harry responds to Jean, narrowing his eyes like he isn't sure if this was an attack on Kim, if he should be defending his partner’s honour. Jean would be angry about that too, but he's still hung up on the part about the drouamine.
“Kim told them I have a ‘history of substance-abuse’, so they wouldn't give me anything stronger,” Harry explains offhandedly, seeming almost (almost) unbothered by the fact, even though Jean knows at least one voice in his head must be screaming.
“Then why so happy? You just got shot, shitkid,” Jean asks, anger faded into bitterness. It seems incomprehensible to him, that Harry can be so cheerful for no discernable reason (when Jean just ran through half the district to get here as fast as possible, because even though it was just a flesh wound he was worried, and isn't that just sickening?)
“I’m just happy you're both here,” Harry says earnestly, the slightest tint of red on his face, and Jean wants to make fun of him, humiliate him, or maybe just make him blush harder, but he can't, because he understands suddenly that Harry thought… He really thought no one would visit him. That he is looking at Jean like that because he is just so damn grateful Jean even showed up, it doesn't even matter that he showed up to yell.
Something in Jean aches at that. (Aches because the last few times, Jean didn't show up, was unwilling to see what Harry had done to himself, getting piss-drunk in a bar instead, and he thinks Harry might remember that now. Jean will never ask.) He sighs, wants to say something kind, or as kind as he can manage to be, but Kim is faster, of course he is.
“Of course we are here, Harry,” he says steadily, something almost imperceptibly gentle not in his tone, but in his use of Harry’s first name, something Jean has never heard him use before (and judging by the brightening of Harry's face at the word, he doesn't hear very often either). Kim raises a hand to Harry's shoulder, and his gloves are off (they must have gotten bloody) and his little finger is brushing against Harry's neck, Jean notices suddenly, heartbeat quickening at the sight of Kim's bare fingers, long and slender. He also sees the way Harry’s skin runs red starting from that very point of contact between Kitsuragi’s finger and his skin, the way his eyes brighten as he looks at Kitsuragi.
Jean stares at them even as he wants to close his eyes, tells himself he doesn't want to see the way Harry and Kim look at each other, the way they go soft for each other, because it is disgusting, not because it makes his heart twist viciously in his chest. It is that quiet yearning that he used to think he'd gotten used to over the years, but it's so much worse now. It's worse because it is so much easier to want with this Harry, this Harry that can be kind when he pulls his head out of his own or Kim’s ass every once in a while, this Harry who still seems to know Jean, more and more each day, but never uses that knowledge to hurt him, not on purpose anyway, who makes Jean rethink all the ways he has gotten used to hurting his (former) partner.
And then there's Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi, who makes everything even worse. Kitsuragi is a man of impeccable self-control and impeachable standards, that much is clear to anyone who looks at him. But that isn't what draws Jean to him, no, it's the air of loneliness that accompanies him, the fact that his steady indifference is so clearly an armour, the way he doesn't respond to insults because he knows there's no point, no justice, because he has to put himself above other’s opinions to stay himself. It's the way he softens around Harry sometimes, barely perceptively, the way Harry’s relentless openness and admiration seem to fluster him, like he doesn't know how to respond to his unconditional trust, his endless ability to encroach on Kitsuragi’s carefully maintained space, undeterred by Kitsuragi’s surface-level reticence.
People seem to think that it is Harry who follows Kitsuragi around, but Jean sees the way Kitsuragi gravitates towards his partner, in a way that is so much more significant in someone who seems impervious to gravity.
Maybe Jean should stop obsessing over such things, maybe it is bad for him to spend so much time thinking about the things he can't have, but Jean is a whore for his own suffering. He loves this, loves staring at Harry and Kim as they smile at each other and feel the icy longing and jealousy in his chest. This is what love should feel like, he thinks, like pain.
*
The mid-September sun is burning and sweat rolls down Harry’s back as he runs, but he doesn't care, relishes in the feeling, the feeling of the city alive around him, his body on fire, from heat and exertion. By the time he arrives at home he is sweaty and disgusting, but there is no stopping him, he is unstoppable, the sun has turned him into a supernova and he will never stop.
The buzzing in his head drowns out the constant itch for alcohol, the mismatched workings of his mind, the city’s whispers that these are the last warm days of the year, its tale of the dark days to come. As he arrives in his apartment he throws the window open to let the noise and the warmth in, to wash away the voices in the walls, the whispers of the cupboards that used to hold his booze, the call of the bathtub where he once overdosed, Dora’s breath from the bedroom, which he knows she's never actually entered, but she made herself at home in his dreams and erasing her from those has been hard.
There is also Kim’s smile on his wall, Jean’s laughter on the windowsill, one photo new and one old. There is Kim’s torn jacket thrown across his couch, which has a dry sense of humour and makes fun of Harry for lying to Kim about his sewing abilities to get him to give him an old piece of clothing “like a nesting animal”. There is Jean’s keys on the shelf that Jean dropped into his hands unceremoniously back in May, and the keys were bitter at first but they warmed up to Harry after hours spent trying to find the perfect spot for them, and now they tell him old stories about Harry and Jean, about how Jean had taken the keys from him in a vicious fight in December that Harry only fractionally remembers (and he's desperately grateful for it), about how much it meant for Jean to return them to Harry.
There is the stain on the floor that not even Jean knows the origin of but that Kim spent hours scrubbing at in March, not succeeding in removing it but taking away some of the bite in its voice and making Harry cry in the process, at the inconceivable thought that someone would be so kind to him. There is the floral vase on the shelf that Jean does know the origin of, says they stole it drunk from a restaurant after they realised neither of them could pay the bill, and when Jean received flowers from a robbery victim whose case he solved in August, he came by after work and placed them wordlessly in that vase, the stubborn set of his jaw not allowing any questions about it, and Harry has watched them die and dry and will leave them there until they turn to dust and longer. Even in death they sing beautiful songs to him.
Harry likes his apartment now, if only because he has filled it with the presence of people he loves, with new objects and memories to cover up the old. Late take-out dinners with Kim while working a case. Suzerainty nights with Kim, Trant and Judit in April, adding a reluctant Jean to the mix in May. Sharing cigarettes with Jean at the window. Kim, bright-eyed as he talks about his Kineema (miraculously having made the transfer with him to Precinct 41), loose-tongued from the wine they shared. Jean, walking around the apartment with a faraway gaze, sharing memories of Harry’s furniture and trying to hide his disappointment when Harry can't remember, his hope when Harry does. Kim, awkward and flustered and wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, asking for help finding his glasses after taking a shower in Harry’s bathroom (Harry wasn't sure if his heartbeat would ever recover). Jean, sprawled across Harry’s couch with his legs in Harry’s lap, looking tired but at home.
Jean and Kim, bent intently over case files at Harry’s kitchen table, speaking in hushed tones while Harry naps on the couch, his shoulder aching from the bullet wound. Kim and Jean, arguing over the right way to cook rice while Harry struggles to make coffee next to them. Jean and Kim, coming over to help Harry hang up the stupid painting he made and trying their hardest to be supportive when Harry bursts into tears and sets the painting on fire. Kim and Jean, dragging Harry out to buy new art supplies after work the next day, their conspiratory gazes crossing above Harry’s head as he digs through paint brushes until he finds one that speaks to him. Jean and Kim, reluctantly joining Harry as he dances to a record Jean likes, and Harry doesn't laugh at their moves even though he really wants to. They are disco enough for him, he decides generously.
So many memories, and so many more to come, Harry tells himself as he stands in his kitchen, staring hopelessly at the ingredients he's bought for dinner. I have two men to woo and you will not stand in my way, he thinks at them, You will not defeat me. They will not defeat him because this is important, because he is doing something good. Something brave. He is ignoring the frayed memory of Dora’s face, the doubting whispers of his mind, and he's going to ask Kim and Jean out tonight, on a date, a relationship, to move in together… He will take anything they are willing to give. And if he just makes everything perfect tonight, maybe, just maybe, they will say yes… The hope of it is a dangerous thing, burning like gasoline in his chest.
By the time the doorbell rings at exactly 19:00, Harry has managed to produce pasta and a tomato sauce that he deems presentable and, hopefully, edible. He huffs out a sigh as he heads to the door - he's given Kim the keys to his apartment but he insists on using the doorbell every time anyway, not wanting to “abuse Harry's trust”. Jean has no such reservations, and doesn't share Kim’s proclivity for punctuality either, so Harry knows already that it will be Kim’s face that greets him as he opens the door.
The smile that crosses his face as he lays eyes on Kim is entirely involuntary, the world brightening just a little bit. “Come in,” Harry says, opening the door wider. He watches Kim as he takes in the sight of the living room, the self-cooked meal and the meticulously set table with a candle in the middle, watches his eyes widen ever-so-slightly in surprise.
“Lieutenant Vicquemare is still coming, right?” Kim asks cautiously, as if afraid of the answer. His eyes are still fixed on the table like he thinks it might disappear if he looks away for too long.
Harry is uncertain suddenly. “I hope so,” he says, hand drifting up to his neck as fear washes over him like a wave. What if Jean didn't show?
That makes Kim tear his eyes away from the table and turn his steady gaze to Harry, “If he said he'll come, he will.”
His unshaking certainty is enough to convince Harry and the fear fades into the same background noise it has been all day.
“You could just call him Jean,” Harry remarks as he takes Kim’s jacket, their fingers brushing for a second, and Harry’s head spins like he is drunk, and he wants.
“We are not on a first name basis.” It is said as a simple fact, unchangeable, and the unaffected way Kim speaks almost masks the way he looks at Harry as their eyes meet in the half-light, gaze burning. Harry blinks, looks away, scared again.
He goes for the verbal attack instead, instead of lunging at Kim and kissing him like half his brain is telling him to. “Because you're both too scared to ask,” he says, the buzzing in his blood relenting slowly as he stares stubbornly at his new RCM jacket, and listens to its authoritative commands to get himself under control.
“I… do not mean to infringe on any boundaries,” Kim replies, careful in that strange way he sometimes gets about Jean. It's what happens when he cares, Harry thinks, brain restarting into analysing Kim. Because Kim does not know how to get close to people. But that's okay, Harry can drag him in, him and Jean, because he sees the way they look at each other when the other isn't watching.
“You should try,” Harry says, eyes locking onto Kim’s again, serious.
He wants to say more, but he is interrupted by Jean’s keys turning in his lock, and there he is in the doorway, tall and so good-looking in his black jacket and plain white shirt. “Jean, hey,” Harry beams at him, and counts it as a win when Jean barely hesitates before grinning back.
“Hey,” he says, putting an arm around Harry’s shoulder and pulling him into a one-armed hug. He smells good, Harry thinks, like the brightly lit highway of Revachol if it were filled with pine trees instead of motor carriages, and just as fleeting, and he wishes he could hold on when Jean pulls away after just a second - just a second too long to be appropriate, Harry knows, but still much too short.
Jean is looking away already, at Kim. They stare at each other for a tense moment, and Harry almost sighs as they settle for awkward Heys and Hellos as a greeting, even with Jean’s arm half-raised as if to go in for a hug, and Kim’s eyes gleaming with a quiet yearning for more.
It is Harry who puts an arm around Kim instead as he leads them towards the table, and he ignores Kim’s huff of a scolding Detective because he can tell Kim sinks into his embrace for just a moment, and his face seems lighter again. It makes Harry's skin itch with a warring sadness and desire, how quickly Kim responds to his touch, like it's the only affection he ever gets (and it is, Harry has come to know).
“Look, I made dinner,” Harry says proudly when they stop in front of the table.
“We can see that,” Jean remarks drily, but the look on his face as he takes in Harry’s hard work is not so different from Kim’s just a minute ago. There is something shining in his eyes as he turns to Harry. “I…” I’m proud of you, he doesn't say, but Harry hears it all the same, something soft and very fragile in his chest, but he will not cry, not tonight. “You did good, Harry,” Jean says finally, the faintest hint of a smile relaxing his face, and Harry's heart flutters.
“Don't make him cry, Lieutenant Vicquemare,” Kim says, deadpan, although he is looking at Harry like he is ready to whip out his handkerchief at any second (and that only makes Harry want to cry even more).
Jean laughs in that delightfully surprised way he always does at Kim’s dry humour, like there is nothing he finds funnier and yet he is surprised he even gets to hear it. “You're right, Lieutenant, I shouldn't,” he says and turns to Harry, a twinkle in his eye. “Shitkid, I can't believe you are serving us this shit.”
Idiots, Harry thinks, and hopes they can hear it like he could.
He brings out the bottle of wine from the kitchen unopened (he does not want them to think he drank from it before) and pours them each a glass. He fills his own too, ignores Jean and Kim's hesitant gazes as they watch him do so. He's going to need that glass, just one glass, for courage. To shut up the choir of fear in his mind.
Harry is quiet while they eat, enjoys the sounds of the city from the window, drinks his wine with cautious sips on the edge of turning greedy and listens comfortably to Jean and Kim as they fill the room with steady conversation - which, with them, quickly devolves into a lively discussion about Kim’s Kineema.
“It is just unfair, that Harry gets a new motor carriage while I get nothing, even though he's the one who crashed ours,” Jean says, and he's not even looking at Harry, the slight not intended towards him but towards Kim, the dealer of this supposed injustice.
“Maybe you need to pick your partners better, Lieutenant,” Kim says smoothly, something warm and dark in his gaze that seems to pin Jean in place. Harry watches, mesmerised, as Jean struggles against it, yet relishes in it. After one or two glasses of wine, Jean's face becomes an open book.
“So I should just partner up with you? And you ditch Harry?” Jean asks, leaning forward.
“Make me a good enough deal and I’ll consider it,” Kim throws back, leaning forward as well, an excited gleam in his eyes. He is tipsy and he loves the fight, Harry knows, and the fight comes so easily with Jean.
Jean hums. “I can get us tickets to a TipTop race. That a good enough deal for you, Kim?” Jean says the name carefully, like it is something to be cherished, but decisively, like it is a weapon. And it is, because Kim blinks, mouth half-open, momentarily stunned into silence.
Then he smiles a very soft smile, the edges of his mouth barely moving but a cautious openness spreading across his face to replace the dark look from before. “A good offer, Jean,” he says, voice still steady but with a fearful note of hope underneath.
What it feels like to let someone in, Harry thinks, and there is a quiet but overwhelming warmth aching in his chest as he looks at them, at the careful way they regard each other, the gentle affection between them, for once allowed to exist in the open. Harry's glass is empty and he knows that means it's time. For once, he is not scared (he should be).
“Kim,” he says softly, and Kim turns to him for where he sits next to Harry at the table. His face is softened by alcohol and affection and his eyes glint in the lamplight. Harry wants so badly to reach out to him, to grab his shirt and pull him close and kiss him, make him pant and gasp and melt under his lips. And for once, he lets go and does exactly that.
He sees the surprise on Kim’s face as he is pulled in, but when their lips meet Kim responds almost instantly, hands raising to grab Harry by the neck and press him closer, like he has been waiting for this for months, or years. They are rough and greedy and it feels impossible to have this, this vicious grip on Kim, untouchable and unholdable and yet here he is, under Harry's hands and lips, right here.
And then it is over as Harry pulls away to turn to Jean, where he sits across the table with eyes wide and Harry… Harry cannot read his face. He wants to kiss Jean, too, that was the plan after all, but before he can move Jean is standing up, and Harry still can’t read his expression but his movements are stuttered and sudden and something is wrong because he is heading towards the door, leaving without a word. Harry’s heart twists in his chest and he feels sick suddenly as he watches him leave, a wave of memories crashing over him, of Jean slipping out of the hospital after bringing Harry in after an overdose, gone by the time Harry woke up. Of Dora disappearing into the night and only ever returning in his dreams, an ache that never ever goes away. The vision immobilises him and Harry cannot get up, cannot call after Jean, he just sits and watches, helpless, as Jean stands in the door for a moment and then says, voice hushed, its tremor barely concealed, “I’ll leave you to it.”
Harry wants to protest, no, this is not what he wanted, he didn't want Jean to leave them to it, he wanted Jean to stay right here, to be part of it, but Jean is gone already, and all that is left is Kim and silence and Kim’s eyes burning into the side of his face.
“That wasn't…” There is a desperation in Harry's voice that he just can't get rid of, it is clawing at his throat and it hurts. He cannot look away from the door. “That wasn't what was supposed to happen,” he says, chokes on it, because there is something irreversibly wrong about watching someone he loves leave and he knows that Jean isn't coming back.
He's almost forgotten that Kim's there, but that is not why Kim’s voice takes him by susprise, no, it's that edge in his voice as he asks, “What was supposed to happen, detective?”
Harry looks at him in dawning horror because he does not understand what is going wrong but he feels Kim slipping out of his grasp too, even though he was just here a second ago.
“I… I wanted to kiss him,” he says softly and he is begging Kim to understand, to save him from this suffocating feeling that is making it impossible to speak, to breathe, and he lifts a hand to his throat but he doesn't know what to do with it to make the pain go away. He needs Kim to tell him what to do, to put his hand on his and guide him, to bring Jean back, but that isn't what Kim does.
“I see,” he says, voice monotone and feeling like ice on Harry's back, and he looks stricken, an open pain on his face that Harry has never seen before. Like, like… like Harry has hurt him, betrayed his carefully given trust. And Harry doesn't understand, he wants to help and make that look disappear but he doesn't understand and he can't move, can't speak. He is dying.
“Have a good night, officer,” Kim says and doesn't mean it and Harry watches through his tears as he, too, leaves.
Harry is crying now, left all alone in his cramped living room, and it is incomprehensible. Because he had the world right in the palm of his hands just now and somehow, somehow he has managed to crush it. In classic Du Bois fashion, he thinks and hates himself with a fiery vitriol, still grasping at his throat trying to breathe. His heart is hammering against his ribs in devastation, in a fierce but fruitless attempt to escape from its cage. There is no escaping the misery, Harry knows, has always known, but he forgot for a while, somehow he let himself forget. He remembers now.
It was warm here just a minute ago, voices in the air and smiles lit up by candlelight, but the scene has burned to ash, leaving behind only the cold and lonely truth. And a bottle of wine on the table.
Harry lets go of his throat and reaches for it, and the air returns to his lungs and the erratic thumping of his heart eases as he touches the smooth glass of the bottle, and it is almost as good as holding Kim’s face in his hands, feeling his lips against Harry’s, his stubble against Harry's cheek, his breaths in Harry’s mouth. It feels better, he tells himself, so much better, nothing could feel as good as this, not Jean’s embrace, not Kim’s smile, no.
It is the second bottle Harry opened for the dinner and it is still almost full, and Harry drinks like he is dying of thirst and not even his desperate gasps for air can stop him from emptying the bottle within minutes. There is a haze drifting over the bleak world now, muddying and electrifying it, and it is a sensation he has not felt in so long, a sensation he has missed endlessly. He has almost forgotten what it is like, to sink into the waves of intoxication, giving up control and letting the ride take him. There is another bottle of wine in the kitchen (he prepared for this night, and maybe he was preparing for this outcome too) and he opens that one too, drinks and drinks and drinks, gripping the bottle like a lifeline. He stands up and he dances, although there is no music, swaying on the waves of intoxication, steps keeping time with his sobs. The bottle is still in his hands (he is never letting it go) but it is empty, silent. Harry is alone.
He drops the bottle, hears the clunk as it drops, and he wants to smash it now, hear it shatter to pieces. Swallow those pieces to make his throat bleed. That would be a good way to go. He throws up instead, the remains of the dinner he cooked splattering onto the floor, right where they belong. He sits down to join them, back against the wall, and stares at the puddle of half-digested food and bile that seems to represent the state of his dreams until his misery shallows into hollow acceptance. This animal is exactly what he was meant to be.