by Cole McCade
One stroke at a time, the knit of Seong-Jae’s brows relaxed; his lashes no longer squeezed tight against his cheeks, but lay in quiet soft curves. His shoulders slowly came down, rather than hunching around his neck, easing to leave Seong-Jae in a loose sprawl with his hand curled against Malcolm’s calf, his lips parted, his feet hanging off the foot of the bed despite its size.
Seong-Jae was too damned tall.
But Malcolm smiled slightly, to watch him let go of the rock-hard tension that had gripped him from the moment they’d stepped off the plane. This was soothing for Malcolm, too—letting him fully reduce his focus down to Seong-Jae and Seong-Jae alone, shutting out everything else. Every last nightmare image stamped on his mind, frozen in his brain in a moment of sensory impression that he knew would rise up later—in his sleep, in his dreams, to plunge him into the scent of congealing blood and bloating bodies and the texture of rubbery skin through vinyl gloves as he examined a neatly skinned hide.
No.
He shoved it away again.
Pushed it far down, down where he couldn’t reach with the darkest and most hurtful of his thoughts.
But he remembered his father.
Remembered his father reading from the Torah, and teaching him about the violation and the sin of nivvul ha-met.
He might not practice anymore…
But some parts of the faith still lived inside him.
Respect the dead.
Always, always respect the dead. Respect kevod ha-met.
It was something he could look past, with autopsy dissections. Those dissections served a purpose—to solve a case, to find a killer, to prevent further loss of life. Those could be permitted by the Torah, and turned the desecration of the body into the preservation of life.
But there was nothing redeeming about what that monster had done.
Nothing that made even the slightest sense.
Nothing human, and yet…
What made it worse was that the killer was only a man.
Just like any other.
If Malcolm dismissed him as a monster, then…
In his own way, he was disrespecting the dead himself.
By refusing to grapple with the darkness of the human soul, and reckon with his responsibility to bring that man to justice.
“Malcolm…?” Seong-Jae’s soft voice broke into his thoughts—tired, but calmer than it had been when he’d broken in Malcolm’s arms earlier, holding fast to him and pressing in tight. “You stopped.”
“…sorry.” Malcolm focused on Seong-Jae once more, tracing his fingertip up along his jaw to its sharpest crest, until he could slip his fingers into Seong-Jae’s hair. “My mind drifted. Are you feeling any better?”
“As much as I can.” Seong-Jae shifted to fold one arm under his head, the other draping across Malcolm’s thigh, as he settled deeper against Malcolm’s lap. His eyes slipped open, the thinnest pensive slits allowing an unbroken darkness to glimmer past. “I am…sorry. I did not expect all of this to affect me so powerfully. Considering I was already familiar with the case, I had thought I would be more desensitized.”
“It’s okay that you’re not. Fuck, I’d rather you weren’t.” Malcolm smiled bitterly. “I’d had to be alone in having a complete mental breakdown.”
“…I should not have dragged you into this.” Seong-Jae turned his head, burying his face against Malcolm’s inner thigh, practically hiding. His hair washed loosely against the dark gray of Malcolm’s slacks. “I hate that I need you.”
From anyone else, that might have stung.
And yet…
At this point, Malcolm knew Seong-Jae.
It wasn’t that Seong-Jae hated having to depend on him.
It was that he hated that he couldn’t let Malcolm go—couldn’t let Malcolm turn away from this just to spare him the horror of it all in its entirety.
“Hey,” he said, curling his knuckles against Seong-Jae’s throat, feeling the steady, strong beat of his pulse. “We carry this together. So it doesn’t crush us. You weren’t wrong, with what you told Joshi. We’re better together. Better at solves. Better at handling the aftermath.”
Seong-Jae smiled, just the feeling of his lips curving against Malcolm’s thigh. “You only say that because I am still your ranking officer, and you have finally accepted my superiority.”
“Hey.” Malcolm huffed. “I could make Lieutenant if I wanted to.”
“Not if the Captain has anything to say about it.”
“…if the Captain had anything to say about it, I’d be dead.” He wrinkled his nose. “This was one way to get us off suspension, at least.”
“I would prefer to still be on suspension, and looking for apartments,” Seong-Jae grumbled. “While that…twisted monster remained in prison.”
Malcolm sighed. “…yeah.” He settled to lean back more against the headboard, slouching down a bit more so he was half laying with Seong-Jae, and tilted his head back to look up at the ceiling. “I don’t like the whole thing. It’s…fucked.”
“It never should have happened,” Seong-Jae said. “Everything is wrong, from the lack of footage to the response of the guards, and how easy it was for the suspect to take such drastic action with no one moving to stop him, both during the massacre and after.” He moved in Malcolm’s lap to slide onto his back, broad shoulders spanning between Malcolm’s thighs, his tight black t-shirt pulling against his chest. “It is as if…he knew. Eventually someone would trigger him, and he knew exactly what he had to do to escape.”
“Do you think someone on the outside warned him to be ready?”
“I do not know.” Seong-Jae scowled, drawing that fierce scar into an angry line. He tilted his head enough to look up at Malcolm upside down. “But there must have been some outside presence. We should review visitor logs and correspondence. Unless one of the guards was his accomplice, someone must have smuggled the mask and any other materials he used in his escape from outside the prison.”
Malcolm considered. “Do you think one of the guard was in on it? Might explain the convenient security blackouts, and how he walked through so many areas untouched.”
“I do not know.” With a deep exhale, pursing his lips, Seong-Jae buried both hands in his hair, the ridges of his knuckles standing out taut. “I do not know anything except that I am afraid to sleep tonight, Malcolm. I am afraid of what will happen in my dreams.”
Sometimes…
Sometimes, Seong-Jae said the most heart-wrenching things with such blunt, calm honesty.
And that was when Malcolm knew they were cutting him the deepest.
He shifted to tug at Seong-Jae, drawing him up, coaxing him to sit up and settle in Malcolm’s arms. Seong-Jae resisted for a moment, but then let Malcolm nudge him into adjusting to sit practically in his lap, sideways with his cheek resting against Malcolm’s chest and his legs arching over one of Malcolm’s thighs to stretch to the side. Malcolm resettled his hands to lace together over Seong-Jae’s hip, rough black denim against his palm, and rested his chin to the top of Seong-Jae’s head.
Yeah.
This, his omr-an held close where Malcolm could at least pretend he could shelter him somehow, use his own body as a shield to hold him, keep him, save him…
This was what Malcolm needed, right now.
This was what soothed the rawness inside him.
He couldn’t focus on himself right now.
But being able to do something for Seong-Jae…
That made everything better.
“Talk to me,” he murmured. “I don’t think either of us will sleep well after that, but…what are you most afraid of?”
Seong-Jae said nothing, for several long seconds—until he turned his head to nose at the collar of Malcolm’s unbuttoned dress shirt, fingers sliding along his loosened tie before slipping up to curl against his throat. Seong-Jae’s thumb found the mark of Malcolm’s scar unerringly, tracing over it, bringing the disparity in texture of Malcolm’s own skin into stark re
lief just by how differently he felt the rough pad of Seong-Jae’s thumb, moving over and over the raised line in a gesture that at once relaxed him and made him shiver to the touch over his vulnerable pulse.
“Becoming him,” Seong-Jae finally said, a small, barely-there whisper.
Malcolm let his eyes close, turning his head to rest his cheek against Seong-Jae’s head, letting his omr-an’s hair tangle with his beard, the feeling cool and sweet against his skin. “Is that what happens in your dreams? You become them?”
“Yes.” Seong-Jae’s sigh seemed to take all the air out of his body, deflating him until he was somehow smaller, in Malcolm’s arms. “It is one thing when I am awake, trying to understand them, trying to think as they do…but…it stays with me, Malcolm. That feeling. When I stand in their shoes, and I feel…the blade in my hand, the yield of flesh…the blood. The scent of fear, all of it—” His voice caught, thick and heavy and hurting, and he shuddered against Malcolm, lean muscle drawing up tight between them. “I feel it. And I feel it not with my horror and disgust, but…” He swallowed. “With their pleasure. When I am awake, it is only my imagination, but…”
“…when you’re asleep, it’s real,” Malcolm finished. “It’s you killing them. It’s you enjoying it. It’s you wanting it.”
“Yes,” Seong-Jae admitted raggedly, his hand stilling against Malcolm’s throat, his long fingers curling around his neck—yet there was no threat in the gesture. Only a sort of quiet clinging desperation, holding on to Malcolm’s very life. “It frightens me, because it means…it means that is inside me. That desire. The ability to be like them. And perhaps, one day…something in me will snap, and I will give in to that desire.”
“Seong-Jae.” Malcolm caught Seong-Jae’s face in his palms, gently guiding him up to look at him. Eye to eye, leaning in close in that familiar warm way until they could only see each other, their temples and the tips of their noses touching until they were breath to breath, too. “Empathy and desire aren’t the same thing. You know that. I know sometimes you need to deny how deeply you feel other people’s emotions, but…”
“I have to,” Seong-Jae said, a trembling gasp, his lashes shivering in dark feathery spears. “I cannot feel everything everyone else feels, it…it will drown me, if I let it…”
“I know. I know, beloved.” Malcolm kept his voice low, soothing, as he leaned harder into Seong-Jae. He could feel their hearts beating together, chests caged and locked, that pounding in frantic alternating tandem. “But that means you only let those walls down to let the bad things in. That can make it feel like those things are all you are…but they’re not. You just…need to let the walls down for the good things, too. To balance it out.”
Seong-Jae swallowed, a harsh needy sound in the back of his throat, then closed his eyes and pressed into Malcolm hard. “…I let you in.”
“Yeah…you do. And I’m glad, omr-an. So glad.” Malcolm brushed his mouth against Seong-Jae’s, kissing him as if he could kiss every sweet thing he knew Seong-Jae was into his skin—every sweet thing, every dark thing, every prickly thorn, every nightmare fear and passionate warmth and all the things in between when Seong-Jae was so much more than one thing or the other, but where it all met in this glorious tangle that left Malcolm so twisted up.
And when Seong-Jae leaned into him, palm hot against his throat, fingers stroking along his jugular…
For a moment, Malcolm let himself forget.
Let himself forget the pain, the harshness, the fear…
Let himself forget the nightmares that would be haunting him tonight, too.
Let himself forget everything but the taste of Seong-Jae’s lips, warm and so very deep with how Seong-Jae parted to let him in, sighing and sinking close and letting Malcolm taste the ripeness of his mouth until Malcolm was melted with it—as if he was dissolving into Seong-Jae. Dissolving into the heat of his lips.
Dissolving into the safe, deep waters of this love Malcolm could not deny.
He felt like he would break if he held this any longer, when he was so raw even the warmth of it, the need of it, scraped against his tender, exposed insides—and finally he parted the wet-slick lock of their mouths, taking in a deep breath and stroking his fingers back through Seong-Jae’s hair, cool strands pouring waterfalls over his fingers.
“Tell me a good memory,” he whispered. “Any one. Just one. One that makes you laugh.”
Seong-Jae hesitated, then asked, “…will you do the same?”
“I will,” Malcolm promised. “Just tell me.”
Still Seong-Jae did not answer for several moments, his angled eyes slipping open to regard Malcolm; he looked almost lost, as if he didn’t know what to say, and it made Malcolm ache to wonder how far back Seong-Jae had to dig through years of pain, of tight-locked attempts at self-control, of betrayal, of loss, of addiction…
To just…find one truly good thing to share.
But after a few moments, a faint smile ghosted across Seong-Jae’s lips. “My coming-of-age ceremony,” he murmured.
Malcolm chuckled, shifting them once more to sink deeper against the overstuffed mess of pillows against the headboard, once more settling his arms to cradle Seong-Jae. “They do those in Korea?”
“In South Korea, yes. But a little later than your bar and bat mitzvahs.”
Seong-Jae shifted against him, laying his head to Malcolm’s chest again; his hand slipped inside Malcolm’s suit coat, resting over his heart—and Malcolm’s heart beat all the harder for it.
“It is not something we do in North Korea; at seventeen you simply become…a registered party member,” Seong-Jae continued. “But my parents heard it was something done in South Korea at nineteen, so…to celebrate surviving my first year of university, they decided they would try.” With every word his voice grew softer, gentler, slipping into quiet warmth, fondness; his eyes creased at the corners with his faint smile. “Only they had no idea what to do. So we all wore hanbok. They even put Seong-Ja in hanbok when she was only a year old, and my mother made more food than we could eat in a week, and my father grew very, very drunk on soju.” His shoulders shook, a silent chuckle. “I…do not know how I did not realize my father knew about me and rehab, then. He never once pressed me to drink. But he made me sing…and then he took the microphone from me, and did a very spirited rendition of ‘Shine On, Crazy Diamond.’” He paused, then added, “…my father’s English is not very good.”
Malcolm laughed, closing his eyes and relaxing his shoulders, just letting Seong-Jae’s weight melt him, relax him. “Somehow I can picture your father and my father getting on just a little too well.”
“My father would probably hate Arash Khalaji for being so gregarious, then slowly become as charmed by him as I am.” Seong-Jae tilted his head against Malcolm’s shoulder enough to catch a glimpse of black eyes, watching him thoughtfully. “We should visit your parents again, when we return to Baltimore.”
Blinking, Malcolm arched a brow. “Which one of them bribed you to say that?”
A hint of something sly glimmered in Seong-Jae’s eyes. “The one who also bribed me not to tell you which one.”
Malcolm snorted. “That’s terrible. Using my own boyfriend against me.”
“If it works.” Seong-Jae deliberately dug his chin into Malcolm’s shoulder in a pointed poke. “Parents are important.”
“I know, I know…we’re just always so busy. You mind doing Shabbat again one weekend?”
“This time I may actually participate in the blessings properly.”
“Don’t worry if you can’t.” Malcolm nudged Seong-Jae right back, lifting his shoulder in a gentle push. “They’ll just be happy we came.”
“Which is why I do not mind nagging you,” Seong-Jae said.
“Terrible. Absolutely terrible.”
“Yes, and you seem to be fond of terrible.” Seong-Jae curled the hand inside Malcolm’s coat, gripping his shirt in an almost childish tug. “It is your turn. Tell me a good memory.” He
paused, before his brows drew together sharply. “Not of Ms. Leon-Khalaji.”
“…yikes. Jealous streak out much tonight? With your ex-boyfriend one suite over?”
“I left him for a reason.” Seong-Jae scowled.
“Feel like easing my mind by telling me what that reason was?”
“I did not love him,” Seong-Jae said simply. “And I could not feel the way I needed to feel to be comfortable with sexual interaction with him. He felt deprived, while I felt cornered…and so I left. I had tried to approach a relationship from an allosexual perspective, and I failed.”
Humming to himself, Malcolm turned that over. “You know he’s not over you, right?”
“He believes he is not,” Seong-Jae said matter-of-factly. “What he is actually not over is the idea that I could detach from him so quickly and easily. He feels used, and his ego cannot deal with the sense of something unfinished, the idea that he could have convinced me given time, and so he believes he still has feelings for me.”
I’m not sure that’s all it is, Malcolm thought.
But if that was what Seong-Jae needed to believe to be comfortable working with Joshi, Malcolm wouldn’t contradict it.
“Now,” Seong-Jae continued. “Your turn. But I repeat: no stories of Ms. Leon-Khalaji.”
“Fair.” Malcolm turned that over, sifting back through his memories. He could name a number of good ones, several terrible ones, a few that stood out so bright…even if all his other thoughts went dark, he could pick them out like stars against the night. And he smiled, as he remembered, “…my parents’ recommitment ceremony. A few years ago.”
Seong-Jae blinked. “Your parents were remarried?”
“Not quite. It’s…one of those things some people do. Like a second wedding, or a third. Renewing their vows? That. Kind of their way of celebrating how long they’ve been together. I always thought it was a little silly…until I saw them that day.” The ache in his chest was just as strong as it had been that day, too—warm and deep and pulsing with love, with pride. “My mother had her original wedding dress adjusted, and my father wore a black suit with a kitel over it—this white robe, it’s symbolic. Their first wedding was at synagogue, but…this time, it was under the sky, in the park. Just flowers on the grass everywhere, and all the people who loved them around them.”
