by M. K. York
“Yeah, well, maybe I should have listened.”
“Told you it was an art.”
Mark shot him a dazzling smile. “You did, didn’t you? And I told you I was a Leo.”
“Don’t even start that.”
“You don’t want to hear about astrology?”
“Not even a tiny bit.”
“Are we going to hang out here until the ass-crack of dawn?”
“Probably.”
“Well, then, I think we have more than enough time for me to tell you everything I was forced to learn about astrology in self-defense by a college boyfriend who figured it was the key to understanding everything you needed to know about people.” Mark leaned back, getting more comfortable, and launched into a catalog of the signs, their primary characteristics, and stories about friends doing things that appeared to confirm those biases.
Meanwhile Lukas’s brain had tripped on college boyfriend, and even though this was not new information, he’d known Mark was gay, it was one thing to have something from print and another entirely to have the primary source verbally confirm it one-on-one.
College boyfriend—a college boyfriend—so he’d had more than one. Of course he had. Mark was attractive, no getting around that. And he’d decided he was comfortable enough with Lukas to just drop it into conversation.
It didn’t mean anything; it couldn’t mean anything, for reasons Mark had already delineated and Lukas had already considered. But somehow Lukas couldn’t convince his traitorous stomach, which was back to buzzing with tension.
“It’s all Barnum effects, anyway,” Mark finished.
“I do know what those are. I did Psych 101.”
“Good, you got the important thing, then.” Mark didn’t seem put out at having his chance to look smarter taken away.
“You do the Myers Briggs thing?”
“Oh God, they made us do it in orientation!” Mark leaned back, laughing. “I got ENTJ. You?”
“INTJ.”
“Mastermind. Nice. I like it. It fits, doesn’t it?”
“I mean, that’s the point. It’ll fit practically everyone.”
“Mmm.”
They sat in companionable silence for a while longer. Mark peppered the night with anecdotes, questions Lukas deflected, and by four a.m., Mark was clearly on the verge of sleep.
He had his head tipped back against the headrest, and Lukas glanced over at him. Mark’s eyes were closed.
“Don’t snore,” Lukas said, almost under his breath.
“I don’t,” said Mark without opening his eyes. “Probably. No one’s ever complained about it.”
Lukas jerked his eyes forward again. He was reaching the end of his own tether—he could feel it—and the sensation, sleep deprivation and the long hours of unnatural stillness, made him feel dangerously loose-lipped.
Something about Mark’s face in the light filtering in sideways from the streetlights, orange and hazy with rain, was impossibly vulnerable. Lukas could see it in his head as clearly as if it were happening: leaning over to him, putting his mouth on Mark’s, swallowing the gasp of surprise— Mark said, eyes still shut, “What about you? Do you snore?”
“Yeah.” Lukas pulled his body back against the seat; somehow he’d started to lean forward. “Like a freight train.”
“This feels like camp. Doesn’t this feel like camp? Like sleepaway, where you stay up all night telling secrets that don’t mean anything and in the morning you eat bad scrambled eggs.”
“I never went to camp.”
“What, really?” Mark’s eyes opened. He was looking directly at Lukas; Lukas realized he’d been watching Mark, and forced his eyes back to the warehouse. It had been still for hours, but who knew when something would happen.
“Yeah.”
“I figured there was some sort of, I don’t know, ship-building camp for Swedes.”
“Scandinavians, and there is, but it’s day camp.”
“Well, you missed out, then.” Mark’s eyes drifted shut. “I can’t say rural Ohio was all that spectacular, but it was the first time I ever got to make out, so I have fond memories.”
Something thick, hot, choking, beat in Lukas’s chest.
“Sorry,” Mark said after a minute. “I forgot we’re not talking about that.” He yawned hugely.
“It’s fine.”
“I’m guessing you’re in the closet.”
For a moment Lukas’s mouth was logjammed with a dozen different things he could say, things he’d said before, things he wanted to say even though he knew better. In the end he managed to say, “Yeah.”
“Figured.” Mark tipped his head farther back still, exposing the line of his throat, Adam’s apple bobbing as he yawned again. “Your friends seem very...football.”
“Football?”
“You know. They can tell me our chances for the playoffs in excruciating detail, but if Frank can tell me what amendment gave women the right to vote, I’ll eat my hat.”
Lukas considered this assessment for a minute. “Fair.”
“Nice guys, don’t get me wrong. But I bet they eat a lot of pizza and talk about their ‘ball and chain.’”
“Yeah.”
“How about your family?”
Lukas just stared straight ahead. “Same.”
“They football people too?”
“Jesus people.”
“Oh, fun.” Mark’s voice was heavy with irony, but it skewed out into a yawn at the end again. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“You know,” said Mark, and some note in his voice made Lukas glance at him quickly, alarmed, to find that he still had his eyes closed, “I didn’t notice until—”
He trailed off, and it took everything Lukas had not to put a hand on his shoulder and demand to know what he’d noticed, when, when did you start to think of me like that, and there were a hundred other questions looped in on that. When had he ever thought of himself as quiet, this was a cacophony ringing inside his brain, who did you make out with at summer camp, were you flirting with me, are you flirting with me now, why did you come along tonight?
But Mark let a single soft snore escape, mouth slack, and Lukas rested his hands carefully on the steering wheel, gripping tightly.
A minute later Mark hiccupped himself awake. “Oh, hey,” he said, “it’s almost four thirty, don’t you want to head back soon?”
There was a pleading note in Mark’s voice. He looked like hell. Lukas said, “Sure,” and started the car.
He drove Mark back to Mark’s apartment, and when they got there he had to shake Mark awake. Mark startled, badly, flailing for a minute before seeming to remember where they were.
“Oh shit.” Mark dragged a hand over his face. “Back already?”
“Yeah. You good to get inside or you going to fall asleep on the sidewalk?”
“I’ll be—I’m good.” Mark fumbled in his pocket, pulling his keys out as he opened the door. “Hey, thanks for letting me tag along.”
“Anytime,” said Lukas, bemused, and only heard what he’d said a second later.
Of course Mark noticed. He leaned on the doorframe, pointing back into the car. “I’ll take you up on that. Next shitty decision you make, call me first, okay?”
Lukas sighed heavily. “Why not?”
“That’s the spirit! Good night.” Mark straightened, slamming the door behind him, and Lukas was left to head home. Ballard was a sea of lights in the dark, with the sun just barely starting to lighten the horizon.
Chapter Fifteen
Mark got up around noon, puttering in his kitchen, putting on the coffee. The sky was like hammered sheets of lead outside the windows, not worth looking at. Everything was chilly. He stuffed his arms into his ratty bathrobe. He was standing in his bare feet on the cold tiles, watching the machine sputter and hiss, when a memory from the night before hit him like a two-by-four to the side of the head.
He’d said—what was it, exactly? The memory came back ga
rbled, as if he’d been drinking. I forgot we’re not talking about that.
He stared off into space, over the coffee maker, and tried to think what on earth had possessed him to bring it up.
He was just starting to doctor his coffee appropriately when his cell phone buzzed. He grabbed it off the counter.
thinking surveillance on the owner
Are you voluntarily telling me your stupid plans now?
why not
Thanks. When?
booked this week, probably not til Saturday
I’ll join you then
you really don’t have to at all even a little bit
Boo fucking hoo. I’ll bring better snacks this time
His phone rang in his hand, startling him. “Hello?”
“Here’s the thing,” said Lukas, cool as a cucumber. A cucumber that hadn’t stayed up all goddamn night and then gotten, what, seven hours of sleep, max. “What happens if I get made? It’s a nicer neighborhood, probably has neighborhood watch. Cops get called, or even just Williams comes out and IDs me—recognizes me as the investigator who interviewed him.”
“Ouch.” Mark flinched.
“Yeah. And that’s the best-case scenario. What happens if you’re there with me?”
“... Oh.”
“It compromises your whole office. This way if I get made, we play it off as I’m just some asshole who wanted to play detective.”
Mark winced at the words. “Uh. God.”
“No, it’s cool. I know.” He could practically hear Lukas shrugging on the other end. “It’s what I am doing. I know.”
“I think you’re—really brave, though, doing it,” said Mark awkwardly. “You made good points about what we’re doing with building the case.”
Lukas laughed. It was a rich, quiet laugh. Mark had to shut his eyes for a second. “Sure, whatever. Anyway, I don’t think you should come with me on this one. It’s a good neighborhood, Williams isn’t going to shoot me on his own front lawn. I’m safe.”
“You’re probably right.”
“I’m definitely right. I know who’s going to try to shoot at me and who’s not.”
“Wait, have you been shot at before?”
“Figure of speech.”
“Have you?”
“Just once.”
“Just once?”
“Mark. Ease up. He wasn’t even close to hitting me and I don’t think he was trying.”
“Somebody shot at you!”
“Yeah, well, work in criminal defense long enough and I bet somebody’ll shoot at you eventually.”
“Not. Comforting.”
Lukas started laughing uncontrollably, until he was really belly-laughing. “It’s fine,” he eventually got out.
“Fine!”
“Breathe. Breathe.”
“Are you kidding me? You’re kidding me, aren’t you? You’ve never actually been shot at. This is just pranking the gullible necktie-wearing office schlub.”
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly? What the fucking fuck does that mean?”
“I mean, I was shot at. But it really was only the one time, and the guy was so drunk he only managed to shoot in my general direction. I think he hit a tree.”
“Do you have a gun?”
“I do. I don’t bring it anywhere. Gun safe, locked up.”
“Why do you have a gun?”
“It was a gift, actually.”
“Jesus. This is not how I pictured waking up. I haven’t even had my first coffee yet.”
“Make sure you get to bed at a reasonable time tonight. Your body’s not going to want to.”
“How do you deal with this? With the stupid hours that are all over the place?”
Lukas laughed again. “Badly.”
Mark took a long slug of his coffee and wandered over to look out the window while a comfortable silence sat between them.
“Kind of a shame,” Mark said, peering up at the clouds, trying to decipher whether they were actively raining or just suggesting it strongly. “It was fun. I’d do it again.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No. It was a nice change of pace.”
“You said it was so boring your brain was going to ooze out your nose.”
“Well, that was also true, but come on, day in day out at the office gets pretty boring too. You must have figured that, seems like you managed to avoid it.”
“I never liked offices very much.”
“What did you do before you started being Magnum PI?”
“You do realize every single one of my friends has made that joke before you, and they are all idiots.”
“So I don’t get points for originality on my sense of humor?”
“No. You do not.”
Mark let the silence sit for another minute. It was more natural for them, now, after all the long pauses in conversation of the night before.
“I worked a lot of different jobs,” Lukas said. “I was a bouncer for a while.”
“I can picture that.”
“Can you?” Lukas sounded too amused.
“Yeah, what’s there to imagine? You’re a big guy, just put you out front of the club and have you glare at people.”
“I wore a ripped white tank top and beat-up jeans. Management said it made me look like rough trade.”
Mark choked. “Did they...understand what they were implying?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
“Straight people shouldn’t be allowed to use phrases they did not invent.”
“Yeah. Anyway, I didn’t love that job. I worked at a pet groomer’s, I was a temp for a while. Secretary stuff.”
“So you’re well-rounded.”
“Yeah, that’s one way to put it.”
“It’s the way I put it.”
Lukas hummed noncommittally. “I don’t think offices were ever going to work great for me.”
Mark knew he should end the conversation, get off the phone. He knew damn well why he hadn’t been able to not mention the elephant in the room—well, the sensible four-door gray sedan—the night before. He knew all the reasons why he shouldn’t get involved with Lukas, and here he was. Unable to talk down the rising giddy elation in the pit of his stomach at the prospect of talking to Lukas, knowing that for at least this window of time he had Lukas’s attention.
“So what do you think our playoff chances are?” he asked, instead.
*
Gavin frowned quizzically when Mark showed up on Monday. Jen was handling arraignments.
“Good weekend?” Gavin asked, taking a long sip of coffee.
Mark shrugged. “Fine.”
“Any action?”
Mark briefly debated admitting to Gavin that he’d gone on an unauthorized stakeout and decided against it. “Nah. Just hung around the apartment. Slept a lot.”
“That’s good. You look better.”
“I was looking shitty?”
Gavin shrugged, confirming it wordlessly.
Mark and Lukas had talked it over and had decided not to talk to Lena about any findings until or unless there was something that conclusively called for it. Lukas had been torn between obvious disappointment and equally obvious relief.
Mark’s other cases called for urgent attention, anyway, so he could dive into them and lose himself for a few hours. It let him neatly sidestep the question of whether he had to do something about the situation with Lukas or not, and what that action would consist of.
After arraignments, Jen was in a pissy mood. “You want to get lunch?” Mark asked, sticking his head into her tiny closet of an office.
She sighed, letting the file she was glaring at fall shut. “Yeah, that sounds good.”
They were eating at Mark’s preferred sketchy teriyaki joint when Jen said, “Mary Lynn’s kind of freaked out.”
“What? About what?”
“Something at work. She won’t say what.”
“That’s...crappy?”
Jen si
ghed, spearing a chunk of chicken. “Yeah. Like, every time I even mention work she gets all tense. And I’m not seeing her as much. She’s working all the time.”
“Damn.”
“I never thought I’d be complaining about dating a workaholic.” Jen laughed, a flat, sad little laugh. “I thought she’d be complaining about me.”
“Is it a case?”
“You know, that’s the weird thing. I don’t think it is. I kind of asked about whether she had something big on the burner and she was just, like, ‘No,’ like she was confused about why I asked.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah.” She went back to her chicken morosely.
*
Lukas spent the better part of Friday night parked, very carefully, in a deliberately very dark car, as far away from Ron Williams’s house as he could manage. This was definitely the kind of neighborhood where he needed to be ready to gun it and go at a moment’s notice. The landscaping alone screamed that this was Money with a capital M. He parked almost perfectly equidistant between two houses, hoping for some measure of protection from that. Sometimes it was easier if a neighbor was having a party, sometimes harder. But the neighborhood was quiet that night.
It got dark early, with the thick cloud cover getting thicker, heavy columns forming here and there in the distance, where the rain was starting to pour.
He glanced down at his phone out of habit, shuffling it under the edge of his thigh so it wouldn’t light up. Mark had been texting him intermittently that week, nothing much. He felt like he knew what it was—Mark wanted to stay in touch, wanted to be, whatever, friends. And he couldn’t pretend he didn’t want something too. A connection. So he’d been replying.
Mark knew he wasn’t supposed to text on nighttime surveillance. He figured Mark probably wouldn’t text.
He told himself that was not disappointing, because it meant Mark was paying attention to the things Lukas had been saying.
It was nearly eleven when his phone buzzed. By then he’d half forgotten it was there, and the sensation on the back of his thigh made him jump. He eased it out, turning the screen down, and slid it into the cover of his jacket to check it.
Sorry I know you’re working but anything yet?
no, he typed out.
Ok, let me know if anything happens A minute later he got the follow-up, Like if you need bail or legal representation.
