Hard Bitten

by M. K. York

  “Oh my God, fine.” Mark rolled his eyes, a hint of laughter in his voice. “Show me this miracle of nature.”

  “It’s not nature, it’s—okay, anyway, we’ve got to cross.” There were bridges over the locks that swung back and forth as the locks filled and emptied. None of the warning bells were sounding, so they crisscrossed over the bridges, and then over the dam beside the Locks. Mark got sidetracked, leaning over to watch a heron that was sitting in a tree, glaring malevolently over the water. A few people straggled past them, bundled up in their puffy jackets, walking dogs.

  Lukas watched Mark, leaning on the rail next to him. He’d seen more than enough herons in his lifetime. He loved the smell—cold and rich, the mingling smells of seaweed, rot, all the things that lived and died in the salt water. Mark’s hair was blowing in the wind, the careful waves rearranged. It was endearing.

  The heron saw something it liked and in a split second was crashing down, emerging with empty claws. It flapped dispiritedly back to its skeletal tree.

  “Damn,” said Mark. “It looked like it thought it had something.”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right, let’s go.” Mark turned and followed the thin walkway forward. They got to the fish ladder on the other side. It felt like a cross between a theater and a bunker, really, concrete walls, buried underground. The wall on one side was windows into the water of the fish ladder. On a good day, in the right season, they’d be framing salmon, packed so tightly the whole wall was shimmering silver. Today, it was just a murky green, lit with a diffuse glow from above. Bubbles streamed through the water, little glittering orbs.

  “Hmm.” Mark stared at the windows; the room was stepped, so people could sit down to watch the windows, and they were about halfway up, on the main path through the room. “So there would be fish?”

  “Yeah, there’d be fish.”

  “And what’s this?” Mark turned to check out the educational displays. There was a rack of salmon eggs in various stages of development, preserved in formalin, with a magnifier glass that could be slid along to take a closer look at any one of them. “Oh damn, they’re so weird-looking!”

  “Yeah.”

  It was even cooler underground than above it, the walls faintly damp with the clinging moisture in the air. Lukas watched Mark fold his arms across his chest, huddling deeper into the flimsy protection of his hoodie, and unzipped his coat.

  “What?” Mark looked up and took in Lukas, arms awkwardly half-out of his jacket. “Oh.” His face softened, and he smiled at Lukas, a big, goofy smile that made Lukas’s chest tighten.

  “Here.” Lukas handed him the coat. “Since you’re clearly a wuss.”

  “I am not—! I’ll have you know I’m very tough. It’s just fucking freezing out here.”

  “It’s how wet the air gets.”

  “Yeah, I keep forgetting we’re in your hood. Your old stomping grounds, as the saying goes.” Mark held out his arms; the jacket sleeves fit fairly well, hitting just at his wrist bone. “Do you have short arms for a tall guy, or do I have long arms?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  Mark rolled his eyes, smirking with one side of his mouth, and slid the magnifying glass to the next developmental stage of the salmon. The translucent orange eggs glowed and wavered under the round lens.

  Like most of his truly bad decisions, Lukas didn’t realize he was going to do it until it was in progress. He was leaning in, one hand going to Mark’s waist, and as Mark turned to him already starting to ask what are you doing, he tilted his head down the fraction required, and kissed Mark.

  There was one moment where Mark kissed back, a breath escaping him like he’d been sucker punched. Then Mark drew back and inhaled deeply, looking away. Lukas could feel his stomach sinking all the way to his shoes.

  “I—” Mark said. “You know I’d—you—but you’re a witness. I can’t.”

  Lukas was still touching Mark, still had a hand on Mark’s hip. He tried to make himself let go.

  Mark palmed his face and took another shuddering breath. He didn’t move any farther away.

  Somehow Lukas picked up his hand, took it back. “I know,” he said, and didn’t recognize his own voice.

  They stood there for a long couple of minutes, staring at the bubbles moving in the turbulent water, until a group of tourists came in. Their voices echoed off the cement walls, and Mark turned convulsively away from the horde.

  “What’s up this way?” Mark said, with a forced normalcy.

  “Sculptures.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  They made their way up the staircase to the other side of the fish ladder, emerging back into the uniform gray light. There was the little plaza, with the hammered metal sculptures of waves, blue lights rimming them.

  “I used to think they were tentacles,” said Lukas, a peace offering.

  Mark took it. “I can see it! The little—what are they, rivets? Kind of look like sucker cups.”

  “Yeah.” Lukas felt like producing even this amount of speech had taken a Herculean effort, and ought to earn him a reprieve.

  Mark seemed to feel the same way. They didn’t talk on their way back across to the north side of the Locks, and when they got into the garden, Mark said, “I should probably...”

  “Yeah.”

  Mark pulled off Lukas’s jacket, reluctantly. “I’ll just get an Uber from here. I can wait at the fish-and-chips joint. Which is a little on the nose, by the way.”

  “No one ever accused fishermen of subtlety.”

  Mark laughed, a scratchy noise. “Yeah.”

  Lukas tilted his head back up the hill. “I’m just going to head home.”

  “Yeah. Let me know if you, uh, decide to do any more surveillance, okay? And I’ll call you if anything happens on the case.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “It sounds like shit,” said Mark, “but it’s the best I can do.”

  “It’s okay. Seriously.”

  Mark was blinking rapidly, looking off into the distance. “Sure. Just like all the rest of this is okay. I’m going to be fucking glad when this case is over.”

  “Well.” Lukas shrugged. “You know where I’ll be.”

  He figured that was pretty functional, as far as last words to have in a conversation went, and turned away. He didn’t look back as he crossed the train tracks, and then the street, and then headed back up to his place.

  *

  Mark was at a loss. He ordered fish ’n’ chips out of instinct, more than any actual physical hunger, but when he got them he realized he was starving. He dug in and settled down to wait for his ride.

  His fingers kept itching to go for his phone and text, something, anything. His brain was full of buzzing like a hive of bees. But he knew better, was the problem, he damn well knew better than to jeopardize his case like that. It wouldn’t take much to create a conflict of interest. Hell, really, there already was a conflict of interest. It was bad enough that he hadn’t stopped Lukas somehow from the extra investigation. It was worse that he’d gone along for the surveillance. This whatever it was that was developing—unfolding, he thought, like a map, new places appearing out of nowhere that he had to pay attention to—was a problem, and one they’d have to solve with professionalism.

  Professionalism. Yeah. Right. That meant keeping his sticky fingers away from Lukas, and that was not going to be fun. At the beginning—at the beginning, he’d just noticed that Lukas was hot, and funny. But somewhere along the line he’d started noticing that Lukas was really funny. Sharp as a tack. And from that point, something had started to happen, feelings erupting out of somewhere, threading through him like a river delta.

  He didn’t just want to fuck Lukas and watch detective shows with him. He wanted—whatever he wanted, it wasn’t on the table.

  Because you never fuck a witness.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Hi, this is Mark.”

  “Good, I was afraid I’d called the National
Guard.”

  Mark sat down, file in hand, and slowly closed the drawer of the filing cabinet, which went clang despite his attempt to be gentle. “Hey, what’s up?”

  Lukas said, “I’m going to do another surveillance night, this Friday. And I did tell you I’d keep you apprised of the situation.”

  “That you did.” Mark chewed on his lower lip thoughtfully. “You want company?”

  There was a long pause. “You’re giving me a choice, this time?”

  “It seems...fair.” Mark didn’t want to say, in case, you know, you’re too uncomfortable with me in the car for a million years.

  “Which would you prefer?” Lukas sounded oddly cautious.

  “I’d rather go. God only knows what you’re in for. You should at least have somebody there to scream and flail.”

  “Not sure about your killer instincts?”

  “Hey, I have killer instincts! It’s just that they’re a lot more helpful when it comes to tackling a nice six-course tasting menu at Wild Ginger than when I’m facing the threat of imminent bodily harm.”

  “Okay, so you acknowledge that you’d be useless, but you still want to come along.” He could hear that Lukas was smiling.

  “Yeah. I would.”

  “Fine. I wanted to get started around nine. Did you want to meet at your place or your work?”

  “Better make it my place. I might get home on time and have a chance to grab, you know, a shower. Food.”

  “Right,” said Lukas with a little cough. “Human things.”

  “Human things, yes.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you then.”

  “Should I bring anything?”

  “No.”

  “Better snacks. I promised you those last time.”

  “You got a problem with pistachios?”

  “Yes! They take time to shell—”

  “—which is time you’re killing anyway, that’s a good thing.”

  “—and there are only so many pistachios I can eat before I go bugfuck crazy. I’ll get something fun.”

  “Nothing that smells.”

  “Okay, I’ll cross raw onions right off the list.”

  “Please do.”

  “Did I ever tell you about the client—”

  “Save it for the stakeout,” said Lukas, openly laughing. “If it’s a good story, I can hear it then.”

  “All right, all right, but you don’t know what you’re missing out on.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  *

  Mark had time to shower and shave and get dressed in his most comfortable clothes—he’d learned the hard way on the last stakeout that wearing slightly too-tight pants while sitting as still as possible for that long meant a red indented ring of pain around his waistband, and this time he was going to be smarter about it. So he wore a T-shirt and track pants. Track pants: God’s answer to wearing sweatpants while looking like you were about to go running any second. Like yoga pants for women.

  He also had a lunch box packed, which seemed more ridiculous with every passing moment. He kept considering taking everything out and stashing it in a paper bag, to look manlier or something, but then it was too late; Lukas was texting him from out front, parked in what was definitely not a parking space in the legal sense of the term.

  He ran out. The weather had eased off a little from the driving rain they’d gotten earlier in the day, but it was still enough that he could feel his hair getting wet in the distance between his apartment and clambering into the passenger side of Lukas’s car. He laughed, out of breath, as he slammed the door behind him. “Damn! Going to be able to get good footage tonight?”

  “I think so.” Lukas pulled the car out into traffic. Mark couldn’t stop sneaking glances at him—in profile, in the hazy orange glow of the streetlights, Lukas looked unreal. Mark wanted to touch Lukas’s hair, wanted to run a hand over his face, touch that divot in his chin.

  “Cool. Music? Please? Just until we get there?” He could hear the pleading note in his own voice and would have been more annoyed about it if he couldn’t see Lukas bite his lip in thought.

  Lukas sighed heavily. “Fine. Whatever.”

  Mark immediately plugged in his phone and put on the latest album he’d started listening to. It was good, a British band—you could hear it when they hit certain vowels—atmospheric and relaxed.

  Lukas seemed to be slowly losing the struggle to dislike it. After a few minutes, he said over the music, “Anything interesting at work?”

  “Oh my God, I was going to tell you the onions story!” Mark sat forward in excitement, grinning. “I had a client who ate three raw onions every day, with lemon juice, straight, no sugar, just lemon juice, because he thought it was going to cure him.”

  “Of what? Human contact?”

  “Pleurisy.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know! I don’t know what pleurisy is. It sounds old. Anyway, it did not cure him, and he smelled so bad. He was hands down the worst-smelling client I have ever had, and I’m including the ones who’ve been marinating in their own alcohol-induced excessive urination in jail over a three-day weekend.”

  “That...is truly horrifying.”

  “You’re telling me!”

  “Anything less gross happening that’s interesting?”

  “Hmm. Not really. I mean, we’re still waiting on the audit, no new info from the client. Nothing new. And my other clients are all currently mouth-breathing wastes of space.”

  “Don’t sugarcoat it, please.”

  Mark shrugged, turning to stare out the window. “You try maintaining a meaningful sense of sympathy for these jackasses when they show up in your office for the third time whining about how their license is getting revoked because they will not stop getting shitfaced before they get behind the wheel.”

  “... Yeah.”

  “I don’t know if I want to stay with being a defense attorney forever. It’s satisfying when it goes right, but more often than not, I’m just watching these dickbags go through jail like it’s a revolving door on their eventual way to prison for something worse.”

  “That sounds pretty shitty.”

  “Yeah. They’re offering me a contract renewal, though, for the next year. I’m planning to sign. That way I’ll have a good chunk of trial experience on my résumé when I try to find something better.”

  “Makes sense.” Lukas rolled his neck as they paused at a red light. Mark snuck another look at him, the big shoulders moving.

  “What about you? Going to stick with the PI business?”

  “Yeah, I think so. The hope is I build enough business over time that I can start a firm.”

  “Hire other guys, that kind of thing?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Sounds exhausting.”

  Lukas shot him a sidelong grin. “As opposed to what you do.”

  “Hah, ouch.”

  “How many cups of coffee did you drink today? No estimates.”

  “... Four.”

  “That’s more than I think you’re supposed to.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  They gave each other a little shit as they got down to SoDo, and then Lukas’s face got more grave and he reached out to switch off the stereo in mid-word.

  “Oh, great,” said Mark. “Now that’s going to be stuck in my head all night.”

  “You can always hum Green Day to get it out.”

  “What? No. That’s worse.”

  “It works, though.”

  “What do you use to get Green Day out?”

  “Oscar Mayer wiener song.”

  “... Get out of this car.”

  “It’s my car.”

  “I’ve changed my mind. Let me out.”

  “Too late,” said Lukas as he pulled into the parking lot. “Hand me that gym bag from the back.”

  Mark handed it over, and Lukas got set up, intently staring at the tiny screen as he got it focused, until he leaned back and dr
aped the cloth over the viewfinder.

  They talked a little—Mark just couldn’t go too long without talking; he could feel a building tension every time, before he started—and time passed, like drowning in a river of syrup. Around one in the morning, Mark said, “Fuck it, I’m getting hungry.”

  Lukas held out a bag he’d been quietly snacking from. “Pistachio?”

  “No. I came prepared for this.” He pulled his lunch box up off the floor, where it had been sitting at his feet. “I’m going to blow your mind here.”

  “Go right ahead.” Lukas leaned back, chewing noisily on a pistachio.

  “Ta-da!” Mark opened the clasp on the lunch box and pulled out a wax paper bag from his favorite bakery. “You want a kouign-amann?”

  “A queen what now?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t go to Honoré. It’s, like, four blocks from you. Best macarons in the city. Jen will not shut up about it.”

  Lukas rolled his eyes. “I was raised on hearty seagoing fare. My parents didn’t hold with indulgent French excesses.”

  “Then I really am going to blow your mind. Here.” Mark held out one of them—he’d gotten two, because goddamn it, the soft spot in his head was related to a soft spot in his heart, and he’d pictured Lukas being caught off guard by a treat, but he hadn’t imagined Lukas would never have had one.

  Lukas glanced down at it dubiously, but took it, his fingers grazing Mark’s on the sticky-sweet shining crust that covered the pastry.

  Lukas took a bite—Mark kept watching him, even though he had a feeling he should be watching the warehouse instead.

  “Oh, Jesus.” Lukas closed his eyes, savoring the taste. Mark had to swallow hard.

  Mark said, voice rougher than he would have liked, “Good, right?”

  “So good.” Lukas made another noise of pleasure, and Mark realized with dismay that track pants, which had seemed like such a good idea, had a distinct disadvantage. At least he still had the lunch box on his lap.

  Lukas got to the end of it, at length, and licked his fingers clean of sugar. He glanced up to see Mark staring at him, and Mark knew that the lunch box wasn’t going to help. Everything he was thinking was written on his face. And he knew, with perfect certainty, that was the case, because of the way Lukas’s breath hitched as he stared at Mark.