[7: NOT LIKE YOU KILLED SOMEONE]

SEONG-JAE YOON HAD NO EARTHLY idea what he was doing.

Other than looking anywhere but at Malcolm, staring down at his phone and fiddling with the message window even if he had no new texts, and no desire to reread old ones. It gave him something to do, so he could stop feeling so strange and so unsteady.

He was not quite certain what had happened on that rooftop, tonight. Only that he and Malcolm had both spoken of personal things, forbidden things, and Malcolm seemed intent on expressing that he…he…

Had he meant to imply that he had actual feelings for Seong-Jae?

Fuck, Seong-Jae needed to lock down, compartmentalize, and get his mind back into the case.

Especially when Malcolm parked the Camaro outside a bar with WET STEEL in massive cursive letters in scrolling blue neon out front. Seong-Jae had expected a more lively club scene like The Padrille, but what they found was instead closer to a quiet dive bar that smelled of cigarette smoke and tired, faded dreams. Several men drank alone at the bar or at tables; others played pool beneath dusty cones of overhead lights, while still others avoided the illumination entirely to be just whispered smiles and the flash of teeth and hands as they leaned into each other and made promises in the dark.

Yes, Seong-Jae thought as he trailed Malcolm inside and to the bar. He could see it—the killer, flashing a smile at Logan Wilde down the length of the bar, edging him farther and farther away from the light with alluring whispers until he was fully ready to step into the dark.

“This would seem ideal hunting grounds for the type of psychological profile we seek,” he murmured—the first thing he had said since they left the rooftop; his voice felt rusty, and his mouth tasted of their secrets.

Malcolm glanced at him with a brief, approving nod, but said nothing to Seong-Jae as the bartender—a thick-set bear of a man with a heavy beard and a Green Bay Packers t-shirt—sauntered toward them. “What can I get you?”

“Information on one of your patrons,” Malcolm answered, and pulled his phone out to flash a photograph taken of Logan Wild’s ID at the crime scene. “BPD. You know this guy?”

“Him?” The bartender leaned in, squinting. “Seen him once or twice, not really a regular around here, but he’d drop in now and then. Usually hook up pretty fast and leave. Most guys here do.”

Seong-Jae leaned his elbows on the bar. “Did you see him last night?”

“Yeah,” the bartender said. His rag squealed against the glass, louder than the low murmur of music in the background, something that sounded like a bad remix of Nine Inch Nails. “He left with some kid.”

“Anyone you see around here often?” Malcolm asked.

“Not that I can trace. He might’ve looked a little familiar, but I don’t have a name or anything for you.” The bartender set down one glass and started on another. “I just remember his hair. Bright red. Like, not natural. That kind of ‘pay attention to me’ red.”

Seong-Jae exchanged a significant look with Malcolm. So that was what had been hiding under that wig; hair that would make him easily identifiable in any lineup. Seong-Jae tried to picture it, a shorter crop, violently red, filling in his mental profile of the suspect more and more.

Look at me, look at me, look only at me.

Malcolm tucked his phone away and replaced it with one of his cards. “If he comes in again, call me.” He slid the card across the bar. “Don’t talk to him, don’t do anything to tip him off. Just call me. Get his name if you can.”

With a snort, the bartender eyed them both. “And how am I supposed to do that without tipping him off?”

“It is a bar,” Seong-Jae said flatly. “People drink. If he orders a drink, check his ID.” With an irritated sigh, he beckoned to Malcolm. “Come.”

Malcolm fell into stride with him, giving him an amused look. “Now you’re snapping at civilians? I wonder what’s got you so worked up.”

“Do not be an ass, Malcolm.”

“I can’t help i—”

“Hey.” A thick, subtly accented voice interjected, underscored by an inebriated slur. Seong-Jae turned back, Malcolm at his back, as a man perched alone at one of the tables stretched an arm out to them, practically laying against the table. “You wanna know about the redheaded kid?”

Seong-Jae arched a brow, glancing at Malcolm, then at the man; he was somewhere between Malcolm’s and Seong-Jae’s ages, with a square-cut, handsomely tanned face currently slack with liquor, his black hair slicked back with gel, a plaid button-down shirt clinging to a thick-set body beginning to soften with age, sleeves cuffed to the elbows.

“And who might you be?” Seong-Jae asked.

“Someone who fucked him,” the man answered bluntly.

Well.

That was most interesting, indeed.

Seong-Jae pulled out a chair at the man’s table and sank down; Malcolm hovered at his shoulder like some kind of watchful guardian, towering over him. “I can say I admire straightforwardness,” Seong-Jae murmured. “Do tell.”

The man’s grin was half grimace, half leer. “Why should I talk to the cops?”

“Why did you call for us if you did not want to speak?” Seong-Jae challenged.

The man just snorted, practically burying his face into a foaming glass tankard of beer. Seong-Jae sighed. He was out of patience for games, for—

“Next drink’s on me,” Malcolm said.

Seong-Jae tilted to lean back and look up at Malcolm. “A drunk testimony is not reliable testimony, Malcolm.”

“This isn’t testimony.” Malcolm pulled out one of the other chairs with an easy, one-sided grin. “This is just a little information changing hands.” He leaned forward, locking eyes with the man, who most certainly looked at the very least curious, now. “So. About the redhead. You got a name?”

The man considered them both shrewdly, then seemed to come to a decision. “No name,” he said. “He don’t do names. But he likes to meet up with people down at the Black Whip. Tends to go for older folk.”

Seong-Jae lofted both brows at Malcolm, since he was such a purveyor of the local gay club scene—but Malcolm blinked at him innocently. “Don’t look at me. I don’t know that one.”

The man sniggered. “If you don’t know what kind of place the Black Whip is, I’m not gonna tell you.”

“The name,” Seong-Jae said dryly, “is indicative enough.”

“Somewhere you like to hang out, huh?” Malcolm prompted.

The man shrugged almost sullenly. “Everybody’s got their thing.”

“Is that where you met him?” Malcolm asked.

“Yeah.” The man looked mildly embarrassed. “I paid my tab, and he did the things I like.”

Seong-Jae’s eyes widened. “He is a sex worker?”

“Dunno if that’s a full-time job, but you know.” The man shrugged again, half slumping over his drink with the motion. “In the scene, sometimes you gotta pay for particular specialized skills.”

“I did not know that,” Seong-Jae retorted coolly. “But thank you for informing us. Is there anything else you can tell us about him?”

The man squinted one eye up dramatically, before nodding with decisive force. “He’s addicted to something. He starts shaking, then shuts himself in the bathroom, comes out, he’s fine. At least, that’s what happened that one time.”

Only years of practice let Seong-Jae hide his flinch.

“You were only with him once?” Malcolm interjected.

“He doesn’t do repeats. And he disappears for a long time before showing up again to find someone new to play with.” The man’s voice dropped to an exaggerated stage whisper. “Nobody knows where he goes.”

Seong-Jae bit back a curse. It would appear they were rapidly nearing the end of this informant’s usefulness, if his inebriated memory could be trusted at all.

It had been rather nice, however, to once again fall so seamlessly into working with Malcolm, the two of them tossing things back and forth with complementing questions.

He pushed his chair back, standing. “Thank you. You have been very helpful, Mr….?”

“Andy. Andy Ortiz.”

Malcolm offered his hand. “Thank you, Mr. Ortiz.” A clumsy handshake took place, before Malcolm pulled back, reached into his inside coat pocket, and crossed the small room to the bar, within just a few strides producing a folded roll of bills that he passed across to the bartender. “His tab’s on me. Make sure he gets a cab home safe.”

The bartender only nodded, pocketing the money; Seong-Jae lingered near the doorway, waiting while Malcolm returned to him. They stepped outside into the night, and a darkness that said the evening’s work was likely almost at an end.

“That was surprisingly useful,” Malcolm said. “I wasn’t expecting to get that much intel.”

“For all we know, it is just enough to send us chasing our tails in the wrong direction. But I suppose the next logical conclusion to follow up is to visit the Black Whip.”

When Malcolm only grinned, slow and just a little bit dirtier than Seong-Jae’s likings…he was only too willing to consider re-opening that split in Malcolm’s lower lip, especially when the lingering look Malcolm fixed on him left him far too warm.

“I am not going to a fetish dungeon with you, Malcolm,” Seong-Jae said firmly.

“I could go by myself.” Arching both brows, Malcolm cast him a mock-innocent look. “Who knows what kind of trouble I’d get into on my own?”

Seong-Jae groaned and rolled his eyes. Fuck. He supposed he was, in fact, going to a fetish dungeon with Malcolm.

“Why are you such an asshole?” he asked.

“Because I love it when you call me one,” Malcolm replied, with a completely unrepentant grin. Seong-Jae bit his tongue.

One of these days, Malcolm Khalaji was going to drive him to absolute violence.

^

MALCOLM THOUGHT THEY JUST MIGHT be a little underdressed for the Black Whip.

From the outside, the fetish club was more discreet than most, just a simple sign posted to one side of a set of stairs leading belowground. The only indicator that anything might be a little different was the people filing up and down those stairs; every few minutes someone was walked in or out on a leash, or went strutting through in six-inch platform boots and a latex catsuit, or came mincing out with ankles hobbled together.

Malcolm draped his arms over the steering wheel, leaning on them, and lingered on the stairs—but in truth he was lingering on Seong-Jae, and the way the light of the street lamps reflected off his profile as he stared fixedly out the window of the car.

“I don’t see anyone matching the suspect’s description,” he said. “Not yet. Do you want to go in?”

“We might have no choice, if we want to be thorough—though we will be terribly out of place.” Seong-Jae frowned. “And yet…”

“And yet…?”

Seong-Jae shook his head. “I do not believe we will find the suspect here.”

“How do you know?”

“Call it a feeling. A sense that he is not here.” Seong-Jae looked almost embarrassed to be admitting that he was trusting his intuition, and he cleared his throat, glancing at Malcolm briefly before looking stiffly out the window again. “Mr. Ortiz also mentioned that he visits sporadically, and I would imagine his disappearances coincide with any illicit behavior. Since he has recently made a kill…”

Malcolm drummed his fingers to the steering wheel. “You think Wilde wasn’t his first? That he’s had others?”

“It is possible. Likely, even.”

“That feeling telling you so? Or something else?”

A murderous look flashed his way. “You can very easily shut up.”

Malcolm grinned. “I’m not questioning you. You’re probably right.” Pushing back from the steering wheel, he unclasped his seatbelt. “But let’s go have a look around inside just in case.”

They stepped out of the car and crossed the street to the descending stairs. A bouncer waited outside, the usual cutout of his type, tall and thick-set, the only difference being the leather bondage harness and leather pants versus the typical black suit or black t-shirt. Malcolm expected to be challenged for not meeting the dress code or looking like they didn’t belong, but the bouncer was strictly business as he just checked their IDs and waved them through.

“Discreet,” Malcolm murmured in amusement, and held the door for Seong-Jae before ducking in after him—and stepping into a smoky world of low, throbbing music and subtly strobing lights, clouded with a hazy smell of something sweet he couldn’t quite identify, but that made him think of sweet liqueur.

It was hard to see in the darkness, but what he could make out was…well then. People tied to racks, others suspended from rope harnesses, still others teasing them with floggers or riding crops or various other implements, including a few things Malcolm was not prepared to see inserted into a straining, bound man’s body. Leather, vinyl, and lace seemed the order of the evening, and everywhere Malcolm looked there were people in various stages of dress or undress, some casually chatting at isolated tables while idly watching a caning, others gasping and writhing on each other in plunging motions not feet away from someone casually reading a book on a deep, lush red leather sofa.

He tilted his head, then shrugged. “We definitely stand out.”

“A pity. I left my good collar at home.”

Malcolm blinked, glancing at Seong-Jae, but his partner’s stone-faced expression hadn’t changed. He. What. Was Seong-Jae fucking with him, or…?

“Uh.” He cleared his throat. “Come on. We’re drawing attention just standing here. Let’s find somewhere to sit.”

They wove through what was less a crowd and more a press of gasping flesh, until they found an empty table with a good vantage point over the low-ceilinged room. From here it was easier to see that the club had been separated into multiple staging areas, each catering to people’s specific tastes. Malcolm scanned the patrons, but didn’t see anyone who might match their suspect’s description.

“I think you’re right,” he said, shaking his head. “Unless he’s one of the ones in the full facial masks, I don’t think he’s here.”

“Should we ask around regarding anyone who might know him?”

“I don’t think it’s safe here. At a general gay bar, it’s not so suspicious. Here, people would talk. Word would get back to him. He’d be on the run in no time. Communities like this are tight.” He glanced away from watching a girl have a bridle fitted over her head, watching Seong-Jae in the low light. “Are you okay here? Is this making you uncomfortable?”

Seong-Jae glanced at him, arching a brow in dry amusement. “Now who is trying to protect whose delicate sensibilities?”

Malcolm winced. “I just…you know. With you and sex.”

“Watching ordinary people do rather commonplace things to find their particular pleasures does not disturb me, no. It simply does not arouse me, either.” Seong-Jae shrugged. “As long as they are not attempting to touch me, I find this roughly as interesting and risqué as grocery shopping.”

Malcolm chuckled. “I’m sure there’s a fetish for that, too.”

“Does the fetish community make you uncomfortable, Malcolm?”

“Me? Nah. No one’s hurting anyone. Well, unless they want to be hurt.” He let his gaze wander again, just taking in the room. How they seemed to speak a common language in how they expressed themselves; how they formed a sense of community with visual signifiers and their own standards of behavior. “Things like this…” He shook his head. “I only get mad when I think about how predators take advantage of people like this. You get these sick fucks who infiltrate smaller, already misunderstood groups and use group rules to mask themselves, so they can abuse and hurt people under the guise of following community guidelines. Then…” He frowned. “It gets out of that inner circle, and reinforces misunderstandings about already misunderstood people. Watch, if this case hits the news—they’ll latch on to the kink and fetish aspect of it, the performative fake occultism, and act like it’s tied directly into the sickness of the crime.”

“Is that not as much the fault of the criminals using these communities as it is the fault of those perpetuating the misunderstandings?”

“Yeah,” Malcolm mused. “But maybe if people didn’t misunderstand so much, it wouldn’t be so easy for these assholes to hide in plain sight.”

“Malcolm?”

He glanced back to Seong-Jae—to find an unusually penetrating stare fixed on him, the shadows turning Seong-Jae’s eyes into lightless, almost unnerving pits.

“Uh. Yeah?”

“You are unusually passionate regarding this subject.” Seong-Jae articulated every word slowly, precisely. “Are you about to tell me that you are a Dom?”

Malcolm blinked, then pressed his knuckles to his mouth to stifle a sudden loud bark of laughter that would have drawn every eye in the quiet room. He swallowed it back, taking a few breaths, managing to ramp it down to a chuckle.

“No,” he said. “I don’t have a problem with it, live and let live, but I don’t live it, either. It’s just not me. Not even when I was younger.” He eyed Seong-Jae. “I could see you like that, though. You’ve got the look.”

That same look was currently trying to cut holes into Malcolm. “I am not amused.”

“I’m just saying.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “No, I just…” Leaning forward, he folded his elbows on the table. “Look at us both. Queer children of immigrants. Part of two separate smaller communities that people often misunderstand, and that makes our communities easy for people to prey on. I guess knowing that…” He shrugged. “It makes it easy to see it in other groups, too. And it makes me angry.”

Seong-Jae tilted his head curiously, in that way that made him look like a particularly inquisitive crow, observant and alert. “You have unusually high empathy for a police detective, Malcolm.”

“Do I?”

“Yes,” Seong-Jae said coolly. “It is part of what I admire about you.”

Malcolm blinked, jerking his head back toward Seong-Jae and just staring at him—but Seong-Jae wasn’t looking at him, his distant gaze somewhere across the club.

But if Malcolm wasn’t mistaken, there was a touch of pink in his cheeks that had nothing to do with the subtle interplay of colored strobing lights playing over the room.

Well. He guessed Seong-Jae wasn’t pissed at him anymore, then.

“Hey. No flattering me. I blush too easily.” He shifted to nudge Seong-Jae’s thigh under the table with his knee. “As much as you try to pretend you don’t…you hit pretty heavy on the empathy chart yourself, partner.”

Seong-Jae sniffed. “I most certainly do not.”

“Liar,” Malcolm said gently. “You can never quite look them in the face. The victims. I watch you at every crime scene, and you never look at them, or won’t for long. You feel too much for them, so you try to detach. I see it every time your eyes glass over, as you try to look at a scene logically for clues. You’re trying to be cold not for your own sake, but theirs, because if you’re cold you can hone in on the details and solve the case that much faster.” Another nudge, but this time he lingered, lightly pressing knee to thigh, offering a touch of physical comfort and grounding if Seong-Jae wanted it, when discussing something so personal. “And it takes someone with high empathy to step into a killer’s shoes the way you do. To feel them the way you do. I’ve never seen anyone able to project so well, and who can work up the kind of psych profiles you manage.”

Seong-Jae’s eyes were just a little too wide as he looked at Malcolm, a touch of that rare vulnerability, uncertainty flickering in his eyes, silent reminder that no matter his composure, his authoritarian nature, he was still ten years Malcolm’s junior. He parted his lips, then closed them again, before starting once more.

“…thank you,” Seong-Jae said softly.

“I wasn’t expecting that.” Denial, irritation…but not that soft, quietly honest murmur of thank you.

“Mm.” Seong-Jae briefly jittered his leg under the table, a restless deflection…but he didn’t pull away, keeping that contact with Malcolm. “Did I ever tell you why I left the BAU?”

“I’m pretty sure you bit my head off last time I asked.”

“Likely.” Those pensive black eyes drifted across the room. “I frightened myself, Malcolm. By doing exactly what you admire.” Seong-Jae’s mouth tightened into a self-recriminating line; he leaned one arm against the table, tapping his fingertips in slow sequence. “I was afraid it was so easy for me because I was like them. That I was not projecting them onto myself; I was projecting myself onto them.”

“I don’t think so.” Malcolm couldn’t help smiling as he watched Seong-Jae, that tight, heavy, warm feeling in his chest almost unbearable. Fuck, he had it bad, didn’t he? “You’re soft inside, Seong-Jae. And I think there’s a lot of warmth inside you. You’re just very subtle in how you choose to show it.”

Another wide-eyed, startled glance. “Ah?”

“Yeah.” Malcolm reached over and lightly flicked Seong-Jae’s wrist. “Thanks for trusting me enough to let me see it now and then.”

“I do no such thing.” A proud, haughty lift of his chin, stubborn as damned always. “You simply happen to be present at fortuitous times, on occasion.”

Malcolm grinned. “There’s the thorns.”

“Fuck off.”

If anything, that only made him grin wider. “God, I love working with you. It’s like pulling a wet cat’s tail.”

“Jot,” Seong-Jae flung at him in scathing tones, scowling—but Malcolm only leaned in closer.

“…call me that again.”

Seong-Jae recoiled, then huffed. “No.” He looked away, practically pouting, with a sullen mumble. “You enjoy it too much.”

Yeah…yeah, I do.

Malcolm pushed his chair back and rose, snagging his coat from the back of the seat. “C’mon. This is a dead end. We’re sore thumbs in this crowd, and he’s not here.” He shrugged into the coat, then tossed his head to Seong-Jae. “Let’s go home, and try our next lead tomorrow.”