Freefall, Part 4
4 -Bitter For Sweet
It wasn’t far from the coffee shop to Dylan’s place, but he still sat in the parking lot for a moment, looking over the first pages of the case file. It was better than reading them at the light.
From what he could tell, in the early stages, this case was solid; everything was done by the book, everything was done right. If it kept up this way throughout - and with Sadowski part of the investigation in the early stages, it was likely - then there’d be nothing to look for. The problem with some cases is that you could do everything perfectly; you could do everything by the book, collect evidence, do everything you’re supposed to do … and still be unable to close the case. It was the hell of it all, proof that life was indeed unfair. Having everything and yet nothing all at once seemed like a violation of some natural law, a slap in the face of physics, but it happened quite a bit. If cop life was exactly like a procedural television show, as soon as you had carpet fibers or blood splatters, you’d have enough to slam a case shut, but it wasn’t that way in real life. Sometimes you had almost nothing and could close a case; sometimes you had everything, and it wasn’t enough. It seemed like a grotesque joke.
But that was life. The first guy you genuinely fall in love with turns out to be a tortured alcoholic who almost but never quite gets his shit together; the guy who you feel is your soul mate, a bullshit term you always dismissed as romantic fantasy, dies too young because his stupid fucking infection eats him from the inside out. And now you were with a beautiful young guy whom you liked an awful lot, but just couldn’t love, because your soul felt burnt. He felt a great deal of affection for Dylan, he kind of wished he could love him, but Paris seemed to take all the love he had with him. He knew he should be fair to Dylan and cut him loose, but Roan was a fucking coward and sure he couldn’t take being alone at the moment. Dylan had helped save his life, and he wasn’t sure he was strong enough yet to maintain it on his own. Horrible. If Dylan looked back on this one day and hated his fucking guts, he wouldn’t blame him in the slightest.
He put the papers down and headed in to face Dylan. His apartment building had had several identity crises over its many years of existence, which was probably the only excuse for it having a sort of sprawling H shape, like an old style hotel, whitewashed exterior walls so bright they seemed to glow, and a red Spanish tiled roof that would have made more architectural sense in California than here. To add to the overall dissonance, the apartment building was named The Elysian. A lot of artistic types lived here, which was pretty much code for nearly everyone being queerer than a four dollar bill.
It explained the mural in the main lobby, which was abstract, swirls and blobs and waves and splatters of colors in patches that almost suggested a more traditional painting seen far too close up. Dylan admitted “helping” a bit with it, but said there were a number of people involved in it, a sort of building mural party. Roan passed someone’s lovingly tended rubber plant (it was well over six feet tall and still climbing) as he took the staircase up to the second floor, and drifted down the red carpeted hallway like a ghost, hearing Suzanne Vega coming from one apartment on his left and Blaqk Audio coming from one apartment on his right. Nothing quite said gay like that audio battle.
Dylan’s apartment was at the end of the hall, the one with the best view of the street, and Roan had barely finished knocking when the door swung open and he was greeted by Dylan. “Oh no, it’s the fuzz,” he teased, grabbing him by the front of the shirt and pulling him into a long, sweet kiss. He hadn’t shaved this morning, the stubble lightly scraped his face, and Roan held him by the hip as he gently shoved Dylan back into the apartment and walked in, kicking the door shut behind them. So he didn’t think he was joking about the quickie, huh? That was nice to know.
But twinges of guilt competing with the lust made him break away from him. “You greet everyone who comes to your door like that?” he teased, smoothing back Dylan’s attractively mussed hair and smiling at him as he rested his forehead against his.
Dylan had been working with charcoals recently; Roan could smell it on his skin. And it would have to be his skin, as he was shirtless and barefoot, wearing nothing but comfortable old jeans that had several stains and holes in them and just loosely hung on at his hips. In other words, he was brain meltingly sexy in a very uncalculating way, although he must have had some idea of the effect he had, since the sight of him shirtless could make only slightly tipsy men give him a twenty dollar tip. No matter how Buddhist and Zen he was, he had to know he was a sex bomb.
Dylan slid a hand under his shirt, up his back. “Only you and the pizza boy.”
“Very funny. So where’s this painting you were talking about?”
Dylan groaned dramatically and dropped his head onto his shoulder. “You won’t let me butter you up first, huh?”
“Literally or figuratively?”
As Dylan slipped out of his arms, he raised his eyebrows suggestively. “You’ll have to let me do it to find out.”
“There’s always a catch.” There was little actual doubt where the painting was, as there was an easel set up in front of his television, covered with an old sheet whose spatters of various colors attested to its new life as a drop cloth. Roan took a step towards it, and Dylan matched him, blocking his way.
“Can I preface this with a few things first?” Dylan asked, hands raised slightly in a gesture that was both placating and meant to stop him. He grimaced slightly, as if embarrassed, and then continued. “Painting sometimes helps me understand things. Sometimes I’m not sure how I feel about certain things until I draw or paint it out. It’s like I have to get out of my own way before I can see things clearly. I wanted to do a portrait of you - not a sketch - because you have the kind of face that an artist dreams of, you know. Sharp angles that aren’t severe, and a face that’s equally feline and vulpine while being undeniably Human. Just very, very striking. But I knew you wouldn’t be crazy about it, so I decided to just do it on my own and keep it to myself. It was cathartic, though, and helped me sort through my feelings for you. You don’t know this, but they were kind of conflicted. I do like you - I love you, even though I know you’re not ready to hear that right now - but sometimes you freaked me out a little.”
“Only a little? Are you paying attention?”
“You do know you have a death wish, right?”
Roan scoffed, caught off guard, and studied his face to see if this was a joke. But Dylan’s brown eyes reflected a sort of earnest sincerity that was painful to look at. “Are you shitting me?”
“Roan, if you’re honest with yourself, you know it. I am not trying to pick a fight with you or second guess you. I’m just saying …” he paused, sighing, running a hand through his hair. “You know I’m not a weak guy. I have to keep in shape because, sadly, right now a good deal of my paycheck depends on my physical appearance. But remember the night you first kissed me, when you were dosed at the rave? You grabbed me so hard I had bruises in the shapes of your fingers on my arms for almost a week. For so long I had wanted you to kiss me, but it seemed like karma was trying to warn me about being wary of what I wish for, because you threw me so hard against the wall I thought I broke a rib. Then you didn’t just kiss me; the whole time you were growling. Not sexy growling like when you get aroused, or a regular person imitating a growl, but big angry thing outside the tent growling, and when you bit me I was half convinced you were going to rip out my jugular. I wanted you but god, you scared the living shit out of me. So I found myself dealing with conflicting feelings, and I wasn’t sure how to reconcile them. It was sort of comforting to realize you didn’t know how to do it either, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized you were actually trying to fool yourself. You refer to the lion in you as an other, as something you fight and share your body with, but you’d never be afraid of a lion, Roan. Why would it come out if you were on liquid X or vitamin K or whatever you were dosed with? That didn’t make sense. The only thing that did make sense, that made all of this fall together, was the lion was simply you. You liked to think it was its own separate thing, and it is when you transform and the virus takes over, but the rest of the time it’s just a part of you that you ascribe to the lion. But it’s all you. You wouldn’t be afraid of a cat, but you’d be afraid of you; the drugs would shut down your inhibitions, bring things forth, but not the cat. It’s like your id, your shadow self, that you’ve channeled into this thing you call the lion, but it’s not that. You’re the detective, Roan - put it together. You know I’m right.”
He couldn’t believe he was hearing this. He couldn’t actually decide how he felt about any of this. Enraged? Disbelieving? Maybe a little bit scared? All of the above? His heart was pounding, blood roaring in his ears, and he settled on anger, because it was easiest. Anger was always easiest; his default setting. “What the fuck do you have under the sheet? A psychology dissertation?”
Roan must have spit out the words pretty hard, because Dylan seemed to flinch slightly, glancing towards the threadbare carpet. Were there tears in his eyes? If so, he quickly blinked them away, and Roan wasn’t sure he’d seen them. “I just want you to know that I love you. All of you. I wish you could accept yourself as easily.” He reached behind himself blindly and pulled off the sheet, letting it fall to the floor.
What Roan saw was a portrait of himself from the shoulders up, larger than life in order to fill most of the canvas, which had a black background to highlight the face. He was just staring straight ahead, and Dylan had done an unbelievable job capturing his face, especially since he didn’t sit for the portrait. He even painted in the scar. He could have been looking in a mirror … well, one half of a mirror. Only the right side of his face was Human; there was a subtle blurring and shifting, and the left half of his face became that of a lion with mostly tawny fur, but its mane was shot through with fur the exact color of his hair. And not only that, but the Human half of the face had a lion’s eye, and the lion half of the face had a Human’s eye. It was so subtle that he almost didn’t realize it at first.
The morphing was almost computer perfect really - he looked like the lion, the lion looked him. It was almost impossible to separate the two … which was undoubtedly the point. But as the shock rippled through him and started to wear off, he became aware of the fact that there was no way Dylan could have painted that mane on speculation. He felt a cold chill that seemed to start in the center of his spine and spread throughout his body, diffusing like a drop of blood in water. “You’ve seen me transformed,” he said, and gave Dylan a sharp look. “I told you never to go into the basement when it’s my time of the month.”
“I’ve never - I stayed on the stairs. I never went down to -”
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Roan exploded, aware his anger was way out of proportion to what was essentially water under the bridge. But he didn’t care. His heart was racing, and he was vaguely aware that the painting, for whatever reason, scared the shit out of him. “The cage door has been broken before, and so has the basement door! Do you think I want to come to and find that I killed you?!”
Dylan was shaking his head, eyes wide with surprise. He expected a possibly negative reaction, but probably not this. “Roan, I was very careful. I wasn’t there long, I stayed on the top half of the steps -”
“I don’t give a shit! That was fucking dangerous, Dylan! I don’t want your blood on my hands.”
Dylan took a deep, calming breath, and his expression took on that Zen like look that it always did before he shared wisdom that was far beyond his years. “Roan, this isn’t what you’re really angry about. Let’s -” Dylan put a hand on his shoulder.
That was a huge mistake. He jerked his arm away violently and backed away from him. “Don’t touch me unless you want to pull back a bloody stump.”
“Okay. I understand that -”
“You don’t understand shit! You don’t know me at all.”
“You’re right,” he agreed reasonably. Dylan didn’t know it, or at least wasn’t consciously aware of it, but he had his own version of the cop voice. “I don’t know you, not really. None of us can completely know another person; we can’t inhabit their skin, see from behind their eyes. We can only guess, project, do the best we can. I love you, Roan, and I want to be a part of your life if you’d let me. But you’re in so much pain -”
“Fuck you! I don’t need this bullshit,” he snapped, turning to go, stalking towards the door. “Do whatever you fucking want with your painting - it’s your painting. But don’t expect me to be around to see it.”
“Roan, please don’t go away angry.”
“Too late,” he said, opening the door and storming out like a big old drama queen. He was absolutely furious with himself, with Dylan, and he wasn’t sure why. The painting upset him, and he wasn’t sure why. He wanted to rip it off the easel and put his fist through it, then tear the remains into confetti. And he wasn’t sure why. The hell of it was he was absolutely enraged, and he didn’t know why.
Was it Dylan’s know-it-all attitude? His sense of unearned wisdom? His implication that he didn’t fight the lion but fought himself? How would he fucking know?! The stupid bastard wasn’t even infected, didn’t live with this goddamn thing hijacking his DNA and turning his body inside out for the sheer fucking fun of it, making him a freak who actually had to worry about ripping out his stupid boyfriend’s fucking throat when the virus took over, or worry about ripping a robber’s head off his shoulders like a bottle cap even when the virus was dormant. He was starting to become something else and Dylan had no fucking right to imply it was just him, that it was all his hang ups or his “shadow” or whatever the fuck swamping him, and that he just thought of it as the lion because it made it easier to excuse, easier to blame, freeing himself from any responsibility.
It couldn’t be that simple, could it? Nothing was that simple. Nothing.
Except this was exactly what was necessary, wasn’t it? It was time to break away from Dylan, let him go. If he was smart, he’d call him to meet for coffee tonight, somewhere public and neutral, and tell him he couldn’t be in this relationship. Roan stood on the sidewalk outside the Elysian and wondered if Connor had ever thought that, that Roan should break away for his own good, just grab his shit and run for the hills. Could you be self-destructive and not be aware of it on some level, even if only for a single fleeting moment?
This was bullshit. He wasn’t Connor, he didn’t have a fucking death wish, and he wasn’t his own worst enemy or whatever it was Dylan was implying. Being a Buddhist didn’t make him the fucking Buddha; he couldn’t see into his mind, and he had no enlightenment to offer him.
Roan headed for his car, only wanting to crank up These Arms Are Snakes, bury himself in the sonic wash of their chaos, and pop a couple of codeine if only to take the edge off his anger. He really needed to go home and work the heavy bag, although that wasn’t what he really wanted to do; he wanted to get into a fight, a big one, burn some of this adrenaline off. But for the life of him, he had no idea why he was so mad.
He noticed there was a buzzing against his side, and realized it was his cell phone set on vibrate going off in his coat pocket. He pulled it out and answered with a sharp, “What?”
“Whoa, who pissed on your Wheaties?” Murphy replied.
He sighed through his nose and rubbed his eyes. “What is it, Dropkick?”
“Are you actually being pissed at me? Really? Considering you stood me up?”
He suddenly remembered he’d agreed to meet her at the office and give her copies of the photos he took last night, trailing Dallas Faraday. “Oh shit, is it three thirty already?” Even as he asked, he looked at his watch, and indeed confirmed it was a quarter to four. “God, I’m sorry Murph. I got … caught up in something.”
“It sounds like you’re gonna bust a nut. What the hell’s going on with you? Those church assholes still threatening you?”
“Oh, yeah, but they’re gnats. Who gives a fuck about them? Look, I’m not far from the office. You still there?”
“Sitting in the parking lot, feeling like an ass,” she confirmed.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said, heading down the sidewalk and reaching into his pocket for his keys. “I’m really sorry Murph. Today’s been kinda shitty.”
As if to confirm that, a young man suddenly veered into his path on the sidewalk. Roan stopped short of a collision, but he knew instantly something was wrong. For one thing, he was infected and hadn’t showered in maybe a day, so the scent of his strain - cougar - was strong on him. But not strong enough to conceal the scent of gun oil.
He had a hand in his coat pocket and the flat, dead eyed look of a suicide bomber. Roan instantly knew who he was and why he was there even before he said, “We warned you.”
Roan grabbed for his weapon as the concealed gun went off.