[6: AND THE SILENCE SURROUNDS YOU]

THE ADDRESS ON LOGAN WILDE’S ID led them to Canton—a neighborhood of narrow brick townhouses crammed together in slim lines like stripes of stone, all neat sharp edges tinged with a touch of old world charm. Wilde’s building was locked by an access code, and when Seong-Jae pressed the buzzer for Wilde’s unit, no one answered.

Malcolm lingered a few steps down from him on the front stoop and peered at the names penned in above the mail slots. “None of these are labeled for a site super or apartment manager. We might have to find out who manages the property and—”

Seong-Jae had stopped listening approximately thirty seconds ago, and rolled his lockpicks out from his pocket to select an appropriate one for the rather simple Mortise lock on the door.

“…goddammit, Seong-Jae.”

Bending, Seong-Jae slipped the pick into the keyhole and twisted carefully. “Do you want to get inside, or not?”

“Not by breaking and entering.”

“We are police officers seeking to search the home of a homicide victim in the hopes of unearthing clues as to his murder.” Seong-Jae listened and felt delicately—then with an abrupt twist, slipped the latch easily; the door practically sprang open in his hand. “I believe this counts as lawful entry.”

“Does my apartment count as lawful entry?”

Seong-Jae twitched.

Bit back the snarl that rose unbidden in his throat.

And slipped inside into the clean, sunny lobby, ignoring Malcolm as he strode across the white tile.

After a moment, Malcolm trailed after him, then ducked around him, heading for the stairs. “One day we’re going to have a talk about you and those lockpicks.”

“Are we?”

Malcolm just grunted and led the way upstairs, his long, loping strides taking him up two steps at a time.

And he clearly had nothing to say when, after no one answered at Wilde’s door, Seong-Jae once more picked the lock to gain them entry into the apartment.

An apartment that struck Seong-Jae with an odd sense of déjà vu.

He had never been here before…but as he stepped inside and trailed slowly through the living room, taking in the space around him, it roused a strange, tugging sense of familiarity nonetheless. The classical furniture, the way the small cramped townhouse rooms had been decorated to give the impression of an open floor plan, the rows of leatherbound books on neatly organized shelves, the tasteful decorations with a subtle hint of elegant Eastern influence paired with an almost Victorian sensibility…

He frowned and drifted to the mantle. It was lined with little wooden carvings, each one clearly handmade, collector’s items. The carvings themselves were of less interest than what was not there.

“No family photographs,” he realized. “Not of relatives, or partners…no photographs at all. Not even friends.”

“Probably single,” Malcolm murmured, standing before a massive imitation Monet hanging on one wall, looking up at it thoughtfully. “And if he was definitely gay, then with his age and his generation, probably cut off from family.”

“But were there no friends? No one in his life?”

Malcolm smiled faintly, wistfully. “Back then, you were careful about exposing your people with things like careless photographs, documented moments. Old habits die hard, even in a changing world.”

“Ah. I see.” Seong-Jae frowned, crouching down to look at a wooden box under one of the fluted end tables, peering in at a collection of old vinyl records. “So even if he had a prior connection with the suspect, we are unlikely to find it here.”

“Sounds about right. I’d hoped we could dig up something useful, but right now this feels like trespassing on the dead.”

“Then we should finish our search as quickly as possible, and depart.”

“…yeah.”

Seong-Jae pulled away from the box of records and stood, making another circuit of the room, careful not to touch anything, watching from the corner of his eye as Malcolm ducked into the bedroom, before a glint of metallic luster caught Seong-Jae’s attention. Awards on the walls, he noted, and stopped to read one of the engravings.

“James Beard Award.” He frowned. “Wilde was a chef?”

“Looks like.” Malcolm emerged from the bedroom and drifted to Seong-Jae’s side, scanning the rows of plaques. “Retired, I’m thinking. Dates stop a few years ago.”

“Then he settled to live out his life in peace, only to become a victim.”

“Yeah.” Malcolm looked down at a slim sideboard table running the length of the wall, the surface lined with knick-knacks, underneath several round slots supporting bottles of wine; Seong-Jae followed his gaze to a fishbowl full of multicolored matchbooks and napkins, all printed with the logos of different establishments. “…these are from just about every gay bar in Baltimore. I guess he was living the high life in his leisure time. Getting out on the club circuit. If he made a habit of one-night stands, the killer probably used that to target him.”

“Ah.” Seong-Jae sighed, glancing toward the window. Outside the sun was beginning to set in a haze of murky gold; somehow the day had disappeared, between witness interviews, trips to the office, and travel between locations. “I feel strange, coming to know him this way.”

“Makes the case too personal, doesn’t it? Fuck.” Malcolm made a bitter sound almost under his breath. “This could be my home. My life.” Turning, he gestured toward the apartment, slate blue eyes flicking over the living room. “Ten, fifteen years from now. Me and my wine and my music and my little antique curios, and one night some fresh young thing I bring home with me decides to murder me.”

That was when it struck Seong-Jae—the familiarity, the sense of déjà vu.

Somehow, in walking around this bizarre memorial to a dead man, searching through a home that did not yet know its owner had passed to leave it lonely and empty…

He felt as though he were visiting Malcolm’s tomb, and that sense of the haunting and shadowed dead turned oppressive as Malcolm so easily, so calmly talked about being killed.

Cara had, apparently, been right. That Seong-Jae would explode—and yet it was not his unwanted infatuation that pushed him to the edge, but a sudden and irrational horror, a prickling and drowning fear of something that had not even happened. A fear he needed to walk away from; he needed to be away from this apartment, away from Malcolm, out in the open air where he could breathe.

He turned away from Malcolm, walked from the apartment, and ignored the worried, growling voice calling after him.

“Seong-Jae? ...Seong-Jae! Hey!”

The apartment door slammed shut behind him, cutting off Malcolm’s call of his name. Without thinking, not truly looking where he was going, he took the stairs up in fleeing leaps until he hit the roof access door and burst outside into the fading rush of blush-colored sunlight, the air slapping him with a cold brisk wash of reality to rip and pull and shred at the cobwebs of sickness that had nearly crushed him inside that room.

Breathing hard, he stood there for long moments, staring out over the Baltimore city skyline, leaning against the wall of the roof access shed—then reaching up to grip the edge of the shed’s concrete roof, pulling himself up with a foot braced against the wall. Sighing, he settled on the edge with his feet dangling over, and dropped his face into his palms.

Fuck, he was getting more and more erratic and unstable.

The door beneath him banged open a moment later, the impact vibrating up through his thighs, and Malcolm stepped out onto the roof. “Seong-Jae…?”

Seong-Jae watched him for a few secret moments—the unguarded concern on Malcolm’s face, the naked emotion. For a man who tried to hide behind his scars, Malcolm was so expressive, those blue eyes and that gentle, kind mouth giving him away every time.

“Seong-Jae!”

“…up here,” he said, relenting.

Malcolm jolted, then turned, looking up at Seong-Jae. The scar over his eye pulled and twitched as he quirked a brow. “You would be up there.”

He eyed the shed, shucked his suit coat and waistcoat to let them fall to the concrete roof, then reached up to grip the upper edge of the shed, his entire body straining in an impressive flex of heavy muscle as he hauled himself up, grunting half under his breath.

“…too goddamned old for this…”

Seong-Jae rolled his eyes and reached over to give Malcolm his arm, grasping the old wolf’s forearm just below the elbow and pulling back to give him one last boost to haul himself up. Malcolm twisted as he settled, moving gracefully to sit next to Seong-Jae with his legs hanging over the edge. Fingers busy uncuffing his shirt sleeves and rolling them back over thickly knotted forearm muscles and coarse curves of hair, he watched Seong-Jae in a way that felt almost careful, as if afraid to light a match in a room full of dynamite.

“Hey. What was that?”

“I needed air.”

“Did I say something to upset you?”

Seong-Jae hissed under his breath. “Do you think I enjoy listening to you talk about dying? About being murdered?”

“I’m sorry.” Malcolm finished with his sleeves and slumped forward, hands hanging between powerful spread thighs. “As many times as I’ve been shot, stabbed, hit by a car—”

“Jumped in front of the car.”

“…jumped in front of the car,” Malcolm conceded with a small, self-deprecating smile. “I guess I get nonchalant about it. Glib. Because I just don’t know when or how it’ll happen; I just know it’s a lot more likely than it could be if I was still a college professor. So I just kind of accept it, because I don’t know what else I can do.”

Seong-Jae let that answer hang between them when he did not like it but could not do anything but accept it, either, especially when he understood in his own way. He leaned back on his arms, looking up at the sky as twilight began to melt its way through the clouds, as if the night dissolved them away to reveal the star-strewn darkness underneath. Up here the air did not smell so deeply of exhaust and concrete and sweat, and he could taste the promise of rain somewhere on the wind.

“Why did you stop teaching?” he asked.

“It made me feel like an old dog ready to be put down.” Malcolm’s shoulders shook in a soundless laugh, his barrel chest swelling and relaxing. “After I quit narcotics, I left the force for a while. Started working at the university. But I just…” His lips quirked. “I couldn’t sit still.”

Seong-Jae turned his head, watching Malcolm over his own upthrust shoulder—the way the fading light fell over him in crimson and golden shades to make him some strange and ancient story, carved out of stone crags in pictographs and crude-edged shapes.

“Why did you leave the BPD in the first place?” he asked softly.

But Malcolm said nothing, only looking down at his loosely laced fingers, and Seong-Jae let it go.

Some things, he likely should not ask.

He pushed himself to sit upright. “We should go back down.”

“Why?” Malcolm asked. “There’s nothing that will help us down there.” With a tired half-smile, he pulled his hair loose, then ran his fingers through it to let it pour like water through the rising evening breeze, wafting and swaying around his face as if reading the stories in his skin by touch. “Let’s stay like this for a little while.”

“Ah.” Seong-Jae caught himself watching, mesmerized by the strange quiet masculine beauty that was Malcolm Khalaji, a broken thing that was all the more perfect for its many rough-edged pieces. He made himself look away, instead, focusing on the last shimmer-haze arc of the sun, disappearing beyond the city’s highest spires. “As you say.”

^

THIS, HERE, WAS EVERYTHING MALCOLM had missed about being with Seong-Jae.

Even if Seong-Jae was brooding and silent, even if Malcolm was conflicted inside, even if they seemed a tangled nest of thorny secrets…

This quiet felt right, with Seong-Jae at his side and simply occupying space.

Sometimes it was nice to just be with his partner, and feel the way they pushed and pulled on the warp and weft of each other’s selves.

They remained as the sun set in all its fullness to leave the night in all its darkness, the moon near-gone and whittled away to a slender sliver that fought with the stars for brightglow space against the black. As the last of the light faded, the temperature began to drop, raising shivers down Malcolm’s spine, but he didn’t want to move to retrieve his coat. Not if it meant ending this, and breaking the quiet spell that had settled over them.

He’d spent more time watching Seong-Jae than watching the sky, though—and it was hard to miss the troubled set of his brows, the preoccupied line of his mouth, the way one moment his gaze would be on the last few fading clouds with drifting contemplation, and the next slipping far away into some inner world where Malcolm couldn’t follow, some turmoil inside him seeming to rebel against the peace of descending night.

“Hey.” Breaking the silence felt like sacrilege, demanding whispers, gentle words. He shifted to lean on his hands, turning his head toward Seong-Jae. “Are you still thinking about the Mitchell case?”

Seong-Jae didn’t look at him, but a faint smile flitted across his lush bruise-red mouth. “Do you really intend to guess until I finally tell you what is on my mind?”

“Worth a shot,” Mal ventured, then chuckled. “If you want me to shut up, you can hit me again.”

That hint of a smile lingered, but Seong-Jae remained silent. Malcolm was prepared to let it go, let it drop, fall back into the silence and the peace, but after long minutes Seong-Jae finally spoke, soft and thoughtful and distant with recollection.

“When I worked the FBI field office in L.A….” He angled his head, dark eyes slipping toward Malcolm, sly and foxlike in the glimmering night shadows. “There was never a question of ‘is the murderer justified?’” His gaze slid away again, lips creasing. “Serial killers. Mass shooters. I knew who they were. I knew them too well. I knew the darkness inside them. I left to escape that, yet I stepped into a world where rather than mass victims, each is an individual. A different story, a different pattern to trace. Different people to know. And when I know the killers as well, sometimes I must ask myself…” He trailed off, his husky, throbbingly deep, silk-and-sand voice thoughtful. “Would I have killed, too, to save my life or the life of someone I loved? Would I have made the same choice as Stacy Mitchell?” His lashes lowered, his gaze drifting down, that distant look taking him somewhere miles away once more. “I do not know the answer to that question, Malcolm.”

Malcolm lingered on the way the evening light played over his cheekbones, as if they were mirrors reflecting the night into the black glass shards of his eyes. “Have you never had to pull the trigger in the line of duty?”

“Seventeen times,” Seong-Jae murmured. “I never shot to kill.”

“But did you?”

“When there was no other choice…once.”

In that word was the weight of thousands…and after a hesitant moment, Malcolm reached over to lightly cover Seong-Jae’s hand with his own, where it rested against the concrete between them.

“Seong-Jae.”

But Seong-Jae pulled his hand away, the movement oddly gentle and yet a separation nonetheless, as he shifted forward to prop his elbows on his knees and lace his fingers together, out of Malcolm’s reach.

Malcolm took a deep breath.

Right.

Distance.

Okay, then.

If this distance was going to widen between them no matter what he did or didn’t say, then…he might as well damn himself entirely, and ask the question he’d been refusing to acknowledge head-on or even a consider a possibility since the moment he’d woken up to find Seong-Jae standing over him this morning.

“Seong-Jae?” he repeated.

“Hm?”

“Are you upset my ex-wife is staying with me?”

He expected a cutting look. A dismissal. A refusal to invest in something so vulnerable and emotional, let alone something that involved Malcolm and Seong-Jae’s feelings toward Malcolm in particular.

But instead there was only silence, long and considering, Seong-Jae staring blankly down at his interlaced knuckles, before murmuring, “No.”

No explosions and knife-edged words. Yet. Malcolm took a deep breath and pressed, “Are you upset I’m sleeping with my ex-wife, then?”

He thought anyone who didn’t know Seong-Jae would miss it: the tightening of his shoulders, the way his hands briefly clasped at each other until the knuckles went white, the tightness around his eyes, the hardening of his mouth. Microscopic things, and yet they added up into something that made a lie of his carefully neutral voice, words, response.

“Why should I be?”

“That’s not an answer.”

Seong-Jae shrugged tightly. “I would not know you were sleeping with your ex-wife if you locked doors, and if I bothered with knocking.”

“That’s not an answer, either.”

“Is it not?”

It was an answer in Seong-Jae’s own way, and Malcolm damned well knew it—but fuck if he could stand it. The pointed detachment, the way Seong-Jae tried to pretend that whatever was bothering him just slid off him when clearly it was riding his shoulders and gnawing at him with angry teeth.

Malcolm didn’t owe Seong-Jae anything—not an explanation, nothing. And yet…and yet it felt important, somehow, to clear the air. To be clear.

It felt like if he didn’t lay things out now, he might forever lose even a chance to grasp at something beautiful.

“It…doesn’t mean anything,” he straggled out. His throat was tight, making it hard to breathe, but he forced a few slow, measured inhalations and looked away. He couldn’t watch Seong-Jae, watch that icy, disdainful aloofness, and say these things, bare himself to someone who hadn’t even asked. “It’s just something we do sometimes because it’s easy and familiar. Ingrained. An old habit. It’s comforting until it’s not anymore. It reminds us of when things used to be okay, until we start to remember they never will be again.”

Seong-Jae lifted his head, fixing Malcolm with a long, discerning look, utterly inscrutable. “Are you certain it does not mean anything?”

“It’s just…” He made a helpless sound. “I don’t know. It hurts so much to be around her that sometimes I can’t even talk to her, but it’s so complicated that I just…don’t know.”

Seong-Jae rocked back to draw his legs up, bracing his feet against the edge to rise. “Perhaps you should figure it out.”

“Do I have a reason to?”

But Seong-Jae was standing, turning away, wordless—only to halt when Malcolm rose, reaching out to gently grip his arm, trying to ask with that touch instead of demand, only he couldn’t let Seong-Jae walk away from this again.

“Seong-Jae,” he breathed.

Seong-Jae held stock-still, head bowed—only to suck in a sharp breath as Malcolm lightly drew on him, coaxing him closer, one halting step at a time. He was all scarecrow angles and flowing crow-feather black and parted lips and averted eyes…but he didn’t stop Malcolm, as Malcolm tucked his arms around him. All those sharp edges somehow failed to cut into him, as he discovered that Seong-Jae fit against him with such rightness that it felt like something he had known all along, and was only waiting to rediscover: this warmth, this trembling thing that made his blood feel as though it had come alive.

“Don’t pull back,” he whispered, and tentatively slipped his fingers into Seong-Jae’s hair, cradling him, letting cool washes of silk pour over his fingers. “Please, just this once. We don’t have to talk about it, but…stay like this. If you want to.” The knot in his throat was trying to kill him, trying to choke him into nothing. “Do you want to?”

Nothing. A waiting and trembling nothing.

Until Seong-Jae’s arms were around his shoulders, draped loosely, fingers laced against the back of his neck.

And Seong-Jae’s head was on his shoulder, resting there quietly, tensely, as if waiting to be pushed away.

“Mn.”

“Okay,” Malcolm said, breathing him in, absorbing that scent of diesel and smoke, as he curled his hands against the small of Seong-Jae’s back and held while he could. “Okay, then.”

And he simply stayed.

He didn’t know how long they remained that way. He didn’t care.

He only knew that he could feel Seong-Jae’s heart beating against him, and it moved as swift and strange as Malcolm’s own.

And as Seong-Jae spoke, breaking the silence, his breaths washed warm against Malcolm’s throat. “I am not the one pushing the lines this time, Malcolm.”

“No…no, you’re not.” Malcolm turned his head, resting his cheek to the soft, wild thatch of Seong-Jae’s hair. “I’m sorry. I’ve been trying so hard not to.”

“You do not have to apologize. If I did not want you to, I would not let you.”

Malcolm only smiled to himself, and wished this bittersweet wonder wouldn’t have to break.

And wondered if he could ever be someone Seong-Jae could truly want, rather than merely allowing these little deviances now and again.

“It…really bothers you how much I sleep around, doesn’t it?” he asked softly.

Seong-Jae sounded skeptical, but amused. “I think you may be projecting.”

“Seong-Jae.”

Sighing, Seong-Jae lifted his head enough to look at Malcolm. This close it was nothing but shadows between them, and in those shadows Seong-Jae’s eyes were wary, guarded, yet it seemed an old and distant pain that was caused by something far deeper than Malcolm.

“It is less that it bothers me and more that it is not an experience I wholly understand,” he said. “You can clearly separate sex from emotional involvement, and I understand that. It is simply not something I am capable of, and so to avoid emotional entanglements, I avoid sex entirely.” Seong-Jae’s voice chilled several degrees. “So I find your habits to be a detriment to our work.”

“Our work. That’s why you’ve been so angry with me? Because my sex life affects our work?”

“Anything else is none of my business.”

“Then you’re going to keep pretending.”

Dark eyes flashed warning. “About what?”

“This. Us. Seong-Jae…” Malcolm felt like he was taking too many liberties with the intimacy of Seong-Jae’s name, and yet every time he said it his gut knotted tight with something almost like anticipation to taste it, soft and whispered and luscious, on his tongue. “Tell me I’m not the only one feeling this.” He searched those unreadable eyes, looking for…for…anything. “I can’t get you out of me, and it’s fucking up my head.”

Seong-Jae’s arms withdrew from around him, palms pressing to Malcolm’s chest as Seong-Jae turned his face aside, looking away. “Just because you cannot control your libido does not mean I am the same.”

“It’s not libido. It’s…it’s…” It’s everything. It’s that one word I’m terrified to say because it’s too much, too soon, but God I can’t get over this… “You piss me off and frustrate me and challenge me, and you are the biggest fucking asshole I’ve ever met.” Malcolm stopped himself with a frustrated sound, struggling to take these feelings and crush them down small enough to fit into the loops and curves and lilts and syllables of inadequate words. “And I’m not happy if I’m not around you. It’s like every fucking aggravation is everything I need to just…”

“Malcolm.” Seong-Jae cut him off gently, rough, graceful fingertips pressing to his lips. “Do you not understand that you and I are fundamentally, incompatibly different?” A subtle shake of his head, as he finally looked at Malcolm fully again. “We are just…not wired the same way.”

Oh.

Oh.

It shouldn’t have taken this long for the puzzle pieces to fall together. In his own way Seong-Jae had told him a dozen times, but Malcolm had been trying so hard not to pry that he hadn’t seen it. But something about those words, not wired the same way…

Even as they twisted his heart, they also made certain things make sense.

“Oh,” he repeated aloud, words blurting out before he could really stop them. “You’re ace.”

Seong-Jae winced as if bracing for a blow, and fuck Malcolm if he didn’t want to just wrap him up and shelter him from whatever taught him to expect that reaction.

“…ah.”

“You’re asexual and you think that I…” He almost laughed, even if it was more at himself than anything else. Fuck, his habits were coming back to bite him in the ass. “You think I’m too much of a horny asshole to want you without making everything about sex.”

That actually prompted a smile, dry but genuine. “Once again, you are more astute than I expected.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“…I will avoid the obvious rejoinder to that.” Seong-Jae’s fingers curled, knotting up tangles of Malcolm’s shirt. “You were first attracted to me because of my appearance, were you not?”

“Probably. That’s just…how I’m made, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with feeling other ways about attraction, either.” Especially when Seong-Jae was still in his arms, stiff but not pulling away. “And it doesn’t mean that’s all it is for me now.”

Seong-Jae stilled, dark eyes searching. “What is it for you, then?”

“I…” Malcolm smiled wryly. “I don’t…think I should say right now when this is the first time we’ve spoken to each other without snapping in weeks.”

“Now who is the one avoiding the topic?”

“I know. But I’m trying to process a few things, and need time to find the right words.” Malcolm tightened his hold, tentatively pulling Seong-Jae in against him, wordlessly asking if Seong-Jae would let them stay like this still. He tiled his head, looking up at his partner, handsome in the faint blue and gold tints of night. “Just…if you’re afraid I won’t understand the ace thing…tell me? You don’t owe me an explanation, you don’t owe me anything, but I’m…I’m asking to understand.”

Seong-Jae looked as if he might balk, his lips parting and then closing again, before he sighed, once more settling his arms around Malcolm’s shoulders, fingertips trailing down his back. “My place on the asexual spectrum is…complicated, and my understanding of it often shifts. However, I believe my last boyfriend described me as ‘gay gray-ace with demi sprinkles.’” His nose wrinkled. “I do not understand that description. I am not a confection. I do not require sprinkles.”

Malcolm chuckled, watching him fondly. “You understand. I can tell when you’re pretending with that Vulcan act, you know.”

“It does seem to amuse you.” Seong-Jae smiled slightly, almost shyly. “At times, I like amusing you.”

“So when you said you felt nothing when you kissed me…”

“I felt some physical pleasure in the kiss, merely from stimulation. At the time, however, I did not know you well enough to feel…more.” He said it as clinically and coolly as he said everything else, but the warmth of his tall, feline body pressed close and the quiet space between their moving lips made each word into an intimate murmur. “It is not that I am incapable of or repulsed by sex, Malcolm. Some asexuals are sex-averse. I am not. I simply do not contextualize my feelings toward others in terms of sexual attraction very often. That does not mean I am not capable of feeling pleasure or arousal, or experiencing moments of great passion and desire.”

great passion and desire, Seong-Jae flushed beneath him, body straining, cock pressing hard against Malcolm’s, fury and something else flashing in black eyes

Malcolm’s face heated, but he ignored it—while Seong-Jae continued, vouchsafing these things to him in soft words that knew nothing of the pulse in Malcolm’s body.

“I,” Seong-Jae murmured, black eyes holding Malcolm spellbound, reaching deep inside him to stroke the contracting chambers of his heart, “am capable of powerful physical reactions to someone I am emotionally connected to, and when I wish to experience sexual intercourse it is out of a desire for an intense connection to another, not urges driven by sexual attraction.” And for all that that dispassionate, alluringly lyrical voice never changed…there was something kindling in Seong-Jae’s eyes, in the touch of blunt fingertips lightly circling between Malcolm’s shoulder blades. “My desires are simply motivated by more than how aesthetically pleasing I might find someone’s body, or the physical need for sexual gratification. I suppose the most concise way to put it would be that I am capable of sex, but not driven by sex.”

But when you were underneath me, sweating and gasping and straining…

Too many questions. Too many wonderings, too many confused and conflicted thoughts. The ache that wondered how Seong-Jae felt about him redoubled, now that he understood.

Now that he understood that for Seong-Jae, those feelings or lack thereof could mean everything, and it would be so easy for Malcolm to tread on them.

He smiled faintly, lowering his eyes, lingering on the swift, rhythmic movement of Seong-Jae’s pulse against his throat. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That night at the club, that whole act…if I put you in an uncomfortable position, I’m sorry.”

“It was necessary for work,” Seong-Jae said. “It did not bother me.”

“Any more than kissing me bothered you, right?”

“It was what it was.”

“I…” Malcolm wet his lips. “Thank you for telling me. For trusting me with that.”

Long fingers slipped into Malcolm’s hair, weaving down to his nape, and he nearly shuddered himself to the ground as a weakening sensation went through him, pulling at him both heart and body, as melting as that smoldering voice.

“Partners trust each other, do they not?”

“Y-yeah.” Malcolm’s fingers clenched against Seong-Jae’s back, as he tried to pull himself back into one breathless piece. This man was going to fuck him up in all the worst ways, and Malcolm was going to let him. He swallowed hard, his tongue thick as he asked, “So if I kiss you now…?”

“How do you think Ms. Leon-Khalaji would feel about that?”

Well.

Fuck.

That was one hell of a splash of ice water.

Swearing, Malcolm closed his eyes—and he was the one who pulled back now, breaking their hold on each other. Trailing off, he took a hitching breath and rubbed his hand through his hair, scrubbing at the back of his neck as if he could chase away the last of that melting sensation that scattered his thoughts.

“You,” he said tightly, opening his eyes, “have immensely bad timing.”

Seong-Jae drifted to stand at his side, looking out over the edge of the roof. “There are complexities here that I cannot ignore. Your ex-wife is one of them. Clearly you still have feelings for her.”

“Do I? Because that doesn’t seem clear to me at all.” He dragged his hands over his face. “It’s complicated. It’s not like we divorced because we hated each other, but we just…I don’t know. We just don’t fit anymore.”

Seong-Jae regarded him sidelong, and gently prompted, “May I ask…?”

From breathless warmth and tentative hope to the black and miring pit of memory, pain, grief in a matter of seconds—like plunging from the clouds into a cold and unforgiving ocean of agony. Malcolm just…stared at Seong-Jae—then away, breathing swiftly and shallowly when he felt like his chest had cracked and was leaking out more air than he could take in.

Was he really supposed to just…tell Seong-Jae this, just like that?

Pour this out of himself into those aloof hands, and hope that when he was done Seong-Jae wouldn’t pulverize these fragments of him to dust?

But Seong-Jae was only watching him, and in that waiting, expectant silence was that quiet sense of understanding that always seemed to find them in the wordless moments. Asking him if he could open himself to Seong-Jae, if he ever wanted Seong-Jae to open himself in return.

He could try....couldn’t he?

He curled a hand against his aching throat, as if pressure could ease the pain, the tightness. “You said partners trust each other, right?”

Still, it was hard to begin. Hard to say those words, when they took him back to a time and a place and a self he’d never wanted to live again. He tilted his head back, looking up into the biting and windy sky, but the moon’s inscrutable smile offered no answer, no reprieve.

“She was pregnant,” he said hoarsely. Three words, but they fell in ringing strokes, and in their vibrating, powerful ripples came more words, more memories, more things made up of the meat and viscera of him. “Everything was going fine. I was working a lot of late nights, picking up extra shifts on patrol, wanting to…” pointless useless if you’d just been there “…wanting to start putting away a college fund for the baby before she was even born. I was on narcotics then, and one night my partner and I, we…we were staking out a hideout, trying to pick up a gang member for a drug-related murder. We were pinned down. If we’d broken our cover, we’d have been shot on sight.”

Excuses. It all felt like excuses now, pathetic justifications, when deep down he knew rationally that nothing he had done, no choice he had made, would have changed the final outcome.

Still the moon was smiling at him, as if laughing at this pain and baring slim biting needles of teeth, promising more. But Seong-Jae didn’t smile; Seong-Jae didn’t laugh.

He only listened, waiting with a silence that seemed to say It is all right. I am here.

Malcolm clenched his fists helplessly, fingertips biting into his palms, and tore a few more pieces out of his beating heart to shape into words. “Gabrielle texted me saying she was in pain, having labor contractions, when she was barely through her second trimester. I told her to call 911 and I’d be there soon.” He couldn’t speak for a moment, throat clotting, and it took everything in him to continue. “I…I couldn’t just leave my partner. He’d have been killed. But I wasn’t staying, either. I radioed for backup so we could extract. Those wasted minutes…”

wasted life

“…I raced home as fast as I could. When I called Gabrielle on the drive she was sobbing in agony, said the paramedics weren’t there yet. When I got there…” He could still see it. Just like that hotel room where Logan Wilde had died…red everywhere, needing no words to deliver its terrible message. His lips trembled. He could barely manage a whisper. “So much blood. So much fucking blood. I should’ve been there sooner.”

should have doesn’t change anything

“I…I started to bundle her up to take her to the hospital, but the paramedics got there and…” His chest, his eyes, his throat all burned, as if he was ashes inside and trying to breathe those pitiful remains, that strangling dust. “They couldn’t save the baby. I made the wrong choice and I left my wife there to bleed while I put work and someone else’s life first, and they couldn’t save our baby. I…I couldn’t save our baby, Seong-Jae.”

He didn’t know what he expected. A coldly analytical response telling him how irrational his emotions were. A quiet, uncomfortable platitude, unsure what to do with so much, such heaviness.

Anything but the soft, heartfelt murmur of “Malcolm,” and the strong arms that slid around him, pulling him firmly close as Seong-Jae entreated, “Come here. Come here, please.”

Malcolm fell against Seong-Jae, and simply…broke.

How many years had passed since he had let himself cry over this? He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember anymore, and that was the hell of it, that his psyche had tried to shelter him by turning the memory into this fuzzy timeless thing of a distant and forgotten past, but it only made him feel farther and farther away from the child he’d lost and the father he could have been. He tried to be quiet about the hoarse and wretched sobs that racked through him; about wetting Seong-Jae’s shoulder as he curled his hands in the lapels of Seong-Jae’s coat and held on as if he might come out on the other side of this okay, so long as he didn’t let go.

Somehow…somehow he’d never finished grieving, never let himself find closure.

But there was something about this that felt complete, as he spent his confession in Seong-Jae’s arms.

Wordless, Seong-Jae held him, his embrace so warm, so comforting, long fingers threading through Malcolm’s hair in soothing strokes. He said so much through touch, more than most managed with the longest speeches, and that touch right now promised safety, promised forgiveness, promised kindness, promised acceptance.

Whatever Malcolm’s crimes of the past…

Here, in this now, in Seong-Jae’s arms, he finally felt whole again.

Slowly the raw burn of tears subsided. Slowly he found his voice again, even if the words were heavy and hard, slurred and thick, muffled against Seong-Jae’s coat—but their story didn’t end with the miscarriage. “She didn’t hate me for it,” he murmured. “That’s…that’s somehow even worse. She didn’t hate me. I hated myself. I still hate myself. But even if she was grieving, she said…she didn’t have to forgive me because there was nothing to forgive. That sometimes things just happen in ways where there’s no right answer to make everything come out okay. Whether I’d been there that night or not, she’d still have lost the baby because sometimes biology is a fucking asshole. But we were just…never the same after that.” He blocked out the night by focusing on Seong-Jae; blocked out the pain by focusing on Seong-Jae, lingering on the close-pressed line of his jaw. “Hurting and grief-stricken all the time, and being around each other only amplified it. We never fought. We just…somehow quietly broke, and realized if we were going to heal we couldn’t do it together.”

but is this healing

“So we split,” he finished, taking in and letting out a deep sigh, as if that could clear all these wrecking residual feelings from him. “She moved back home to D.C. to be with her parents. I sold our house and stayed here…and that’s the end of our story.”

“You still love her,” thrummed against his ear, rich and soft.

“I’ll always love her,” Malcolm admitted. “Just not as her husband…not anymore. I don’t deserve that. But I’ll always love her as a friend, as the woman I cherished enough to marry and make a life with. The place she has in my heart is different, unique, but…” He fumbled to a halt, shaking his head, his cheek rubbing to Seong-Jae’s shoulder, beard catching against his jacket. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“You do not have to know what you are saying, Malcolm,” Seong-Jae said huskily. “You do not have to say anything at all. Sometimes pain and grief need no words.” His hold on Malcolm strengthened, and yet it was a sheltering strength, a promise of protection, of safety, enveloping Malcolm in a way he never had been before. “You may simply stay like this, if you like.”

Malcolm relaxed his grip on Seong-Jae’s coat, and slowly crept his arms up to slip around his neck. “Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you,” Malcolm said, and closed his eyes to just…

Breathe Seong-Jae in, and be in this moment and no other.

The silence, then, was perfect and calm, and Malcolm remembered listening to Seong-Jae breathe just this way as they fell asleep with miles between them and only a digital signal connecting this tandem of breath to breath, body to body, heart to heart. He could be like this every day, every night, and be content, he thought, but didn’t know how to say that to Seong-Jae.

And so he only held fast to this, until Seong-Jae’s voice broke the silence with a gentle call of his name, whisper-soft against his ear. “Malcolm?”

“Hm?”

“What happened in your marriage…is that why you were so adamantly against having a partner?”

“Yeah,” Malcolm admitted, and smiled slightly, pulling back enough to look up at Seong-Jae. “I don’t ever want to have to make that kind of choice again.”

“I will never expect you to put my life above the life and well-being of someone you love, Malcolm.” Dark eyes held his with such promise, such painful and quiet understanding. “No matter what your sense of duty expects.”

Don’t you know that right now…

You’re the one I’d give up life and limb for?

You’re the one I’d put above anyone and everyone else?

But “I know you wouldn’t,” was all he said aloud. “That’s why I trust you with everything.”

Seong-Jae’s lips parted—but whatever he said was cut off by the sound of a police siren slicing through the night, a piercing thing that stabbed deep into Malcolm’s aching and lonely heart. That sound was a rallying cry, a call into the wild, a reminder of who and what they were, and as the walls below lit up blue and red, a patrol car went flashing past, its voice a clarion call into the night, breaking them apart.

Malcolm felt cold, where Seong-Jae had been pressed against him, but he managed to dredge up a smile. “We should probably go check out that bar.”

A motionless Seong-Jae studied him intently, then inclined his head. “Likely.”

“And then what happens?”

“I…” Seong-Jae ducked his head, a subtle hitch at the edge of his voice betraying something—something raw, some deep and unfettered emotion fighting its way to the light. “I do not know, Malcolm.”

“No?”

Stepping closer, Malcolm caught the stubborn peak of Seong-Jae’s chin, gently coaxing him up, just…wanting to see him, one more time, before they had to be detectives again. Wanting to see those dark eyes full of mysteries, questions, entire universes of depth and emotion. Malcolm ached to kiss him again, ached to taste him, but if he did…

And so he only traced his thumb against that plush lower lip, and smiled.

“Neither do I,” he said.

Then pulled back, and sank down to leap down to the rooftop and catch up his suit coat before the wind could blow it away. Seong-Jae followed, dropping down lithely and slipping past Malcolm to the stairwell door.

His hand brushed Malcolm’s momentarily in passing, and their fingers tangled, curled.

And stayed that way for a few moments longer than needed, before they parted on the stairs and were on their way.