Archive of Our Own ^beta

VOLITION: It was a stupid thing to do in the first place. Stupid, stupid.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: But that’s you all over, isn’t it, Harry-baby? Always reaching for the next bad choice.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: Agreeing to that late night patrol duty on Boogie Street was the first mistake. You’re tired already. Sore as fuck. You’ve only been back on the job for a few weeks and they didn’t ease you in gently; you did your competency assessment at Jean’s aggressively-phrased request, you let Gottlieb press and poke at every aching pressure point and passed your physical exam by the skin of your teeth, in part because Gottlieb was rushing through his checklist with that same dismissive mocking tone you’d already heard over the radio; he was no gentler in person.

INLAND EMPIRE: You sat at your desk that first day and experienced the pure void of yawning terror. None of this was familiar to you. A view from the window that you’d never seen before, an alien landscape; Jamrock rooftops, pigeons circling, the greenery of the Botanical Gardens to the east. There were papers and forms that you didn’t understand. People you didn’t recognise stopping by your desk. A cocktail of stress and exhaustion in your head so heavy you felt it as a physical weight pulling you down and you knew with so much certainty that the only way to keep moving was to dig into the junk-and-trash filled drawers on the side of your desk and find the round orange bottle of friendly white pills to force yourself to stay awake. To focus.

VOLITION: Funny, isn’t it? Everything you’ve forgotten, but you still remember that they’re there. That you put them there, before Martinaise, your emergency crutch. You didn’t touch them that day, despite everything, and you know that they’re still there, under the layered garbage that you shove in there so you don’t have to think about it.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: The Palaeozoic layer, coffee cup lids and little packets of sugar, and then the Mesozoic layer made up of crumpled receipts and chocolate bar wrappers, and then the Cenozoic layer of tare bottles and cans and a faint smell of stale beer. Then, buried beneath all of those like a prehistoric treasure, your round orange bottle of friendly white pills. A fossil. You don’t have to look to know them. You feel their presence like a thorn underneath your skin.

VOLITION: Recovery is a fragile thing, a vase pushed off a mantlepiece one too many times. Stuck back together over and over again until it’s unrecognisable, more glue than ceramic.

RHETORIC: The longer you stay in that office, at that desk, in that world, the harder it gets for you. You have to have realised that by now, surely?

VOLITION: You’re dwelling, Harry. Snap out of it.

LOGIC: So your first mistake was agreeing to a six hour late patrol on Boogie Street on top of your regular shift. On top of your pain and your recovery too. Torson had gotten injured again; you hadn’t cared enough to ask what he’d done this time, once you knew that he was alive. Kim had sighed, imperceptibly, and covered up a yawn. Pushed aside his stack of paperwork, rolled his shoulders and subtly checked his watch. Perhaps it will be good to stretch my legs a little.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Your second mistake was running after that kid when you saw him snatch some girl’s purse.

You were talking to Kim, face turned towards him like a sunflower seeking the sun, distracting yourself, rattling off facts about- of all things- the shoes of people passing by. Surprising even yourself with the sheer volume of information coming out of your mouth.

VISUAL CALCULUS: Those are Amala Desmoulins, they’re worth three months of an RCM officer’s salary- she’s definitely slumming it in Boogie Street. Money for the sake of money. You could get that quality for a quarter of the price. Those are limited edition FALN trainers- that design was discontinued after a month because of a manufacturing error causing the sole to peel away from the body of the shoe. See how you can see the glue threads? It’s been repaired recently, he’s stuck them back together with superglue.

KIM KITSURAGI: And he listens. Content to just let you talk. He watches you with an unreadable expression, sharp angles of his cheeks and nose catching all the neon lights. Sometimes you wonder if he’s even seeing the shoes you’re telling him about; his eyes are nailed to your face.

VISUAL CALCULUS: Those ones, there, the red platform wedges- they’re just no brand cheapie shoes from the market, but look at that colour. Look at the shade of red. It’s beautiful, and-

And the girl in the red wedges had been watching her step, ankles swaying slightly, reaching for her friend to stabilise her, and just as she’d reached out her arm the kid had darted out of nowhere and grabbed her handbag, sprinting off. Swallowed by the open throat of the crowd. You’d cut yourself off half-way through the sentence and launched into a chase.

It was going fine to start with. Muscle memory. You’d not done it for a while, but the body remembered even if the mind forgot. You’re a runner, coach, a sprinter. You’re a speedfreak, a body built for speed and endurance, made to pound the pavement into dust beneath the ball of your foot. Born to run. Your muscles flexed and contracted with the machine-esque precision of a piston, and your sturdy muscle-corded legs carried you in leaps and bounds through the twists and turns of Boogie paradise, pushing down the awareness that you’ll feel the pain of all this movement tomorrow.

CONCEPTUALISATION: Your crocodile-skin shoes biting at the pavement. Dull wet impact thuds in the puddles, the glassy reflections of all the Boogie Street lights. The bar signs, the streetlights, the colourful neon bars that lined the club windows.

ENDURANCE: Regretting your dinner-time kebab. It jostles in your stomach.

Loud people all around you, crowds, pressing in. Shouting. The music rattles your skull.

CONCEPTUALISATION: Every step shattered the watery mirror to pieces. Sent tiny shards of wet light sailing in your wake, brilliant pinks and greens and golds.

You squeezed your way through the crowd, amongst Revachol’s party kids, trying to keep eyes on the kid as he caught hold of a metal fire escape, hanging off the side of a bar loudly proclaiming its name to be Menage a Trois in hot pink neon lights. The kid sprinted up the steps, his black knock-off FALN trainers clanking on the metal. A flash of bright windbreaker jacket, yellow, pink, white, all lit up by the sickly green glow of the fire exit sign.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: You hurled yourself after him, reckless, feet skidding a little on the rain slick metal.

PERCEPTION: That’s where you find yourself now, clinging to the railing, the fire in your hip scalding with every step.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: You’re losing him! He’s getting away!

RHETORIC: Does it even matter? What’ll he do with that purse anyway? Get himself a meal? What exactly do you think you’re achieving here?

LOGIC: It was a high-risk low reward crime. A crime of necessity or desperation.

RHETORIC: And can you really blame him, Mr Communist? Crime is a product of wider society, a symptom of the neglect that-

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Stop fucking theorising and focus on your feet, slipping and sliding along the fire escape. Focus on the chase. Up onto the synthetic rubber-clad flat roof, across and down onto the next building. Down their fire escape, down into the alleyway network that runs parallel to Boogie Street.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: You’re like a dog once you’ve caught the scent. No diverting from your course.

REACTION SPEED: Your foot skids again. Your muscle clenches.

PAIN THRESHOLD: Agony suddenly, hot and flashing.

INLAND EMPIRE: It’s been raining solidly for months, it feels like. Against the window of a tenement just off Boogie Street, a girl follows the trail of a rain drop down the window frame with her forefinger and feels the vibration in the pane of glass. The music rolls out of the clubs in waves and with every pulse the foundations shake. A pounding anodic dance beat, great to dance to but less great to study to. Lights from the street cast patterns over the ceiling. The noise keeps the rent low, though, so she doesn’t complain except to her housemate, and she keeps a pair of cheap knockoff FALN headphones by her pillow. She watches a pair of figures, silhouetted against the clouded night sky, clambering at a rapid pace across the fire escape. She watches for a while, until the figures crest the rooftops and begin their descent back to ground level. She frowns and turns her attention back to her book.

REACTION SPEED: And the ground rises up to meet you.

You’re not sure exactly how it happens. One moment you’re running, one foot on the fire escape and the other on the tarmac, looking wildly around to see if you can catch a glimpse of where your perp might have fled to, and the next moment your hip gives out and you’re falling knees-first onto the wet ground.

PAIN THRESHOLD: Sheer mind-vibrating pain. Your vision goes white.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: It shoots through the medial genicular, the infrapatellar nerve, the femoral nerve and burrows deep into the psoas major and iliacus muscles.

HALF-LIGHT: A deep screeching pain. High pitched. Wailing. There is a sound like a kicked dog and it takes a moment for you to realise that it’s coming from your own mouth.

PAIN THRESHOLD: Hurty hurty hurty. Ow ow ow.

LOGIC: Why the fuck did you think it was a good idea to come back to work?

HALF-LIGHT: Why the fuck did Gottlieb clear you?

EMPATHY: The precinct is running on less than half the staff it should have, and at least part of that is your fault.

VOLITION: No. No. You’re fine, you’re all good. You can fix this. Get up off the ground.

A deep stuttering breath. A shiver. The rain is a fine mist. Your hair is starting to curl in the wetness.

VOLITION: Get up, Harry. You can still catch him, if you just get up now.

PERCEPTION: No. No, you definitely can’t. You’ve totally lost him.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: You’ve also lost Kim, which is a whole other kind of problem.

PERCEPTION: He was definitely behind you when you started running. Always steady at your elbow, arms folded behind his back, ears pricked for the first sign of danger. He’s especially on edge here, amongst the numerous juveniles trying to sneak into places they’re not supposed to be. Hand always fluttering towards his gun. He’d follow you. You know that with total certainty. But in that crowd, you can’t be sure if-

You attune your ears. There are no footsteps on the metal stairway behind you. No squeaky grind of rubber on metal. You really have lost him.

VOLITION: Come on. Get up.

INLAND EMPIRE: A wash of misery hits you. A sad little man, misshapen and broken in all sorts of new and interesting places, sat on the dirty concrete by the dumpsters and the piled up boxes of a dark glittering club full of pretty young things too shiny for you to even bare to look at. The rain is soaking in to the knees of your disco pants.

ENDURANCE: You force yourself to your feet, clutching on to the end post of the stair rail, gritting your teeth against the pain.

COMPOSURE: If I wasn’t doing my job right now, you’d be screaming.

REACTION SPEED: Wait.

PERCEPTION: Wait-wait-wait, Harry, what was that?

You: What was what?

PERCEPTION: That sound, there. A shuffling sound.

You: Where?

PERCEPTION: Coming from the pile of boxes over there, overflow from the huge metal trash container that’s backed up against the side of the building.

HALF-LIGHT: It’s rats. A thousand rats to eat you up, to peel the flesh from your bones.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: A cryptid, maybe. Some undiscovered wonderful creature. There must be more out there. Maybe that’s your calling, to discover and catalogue more and more of these fantastical things. We could write a guide.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Yeah! Quit the RCM and become a cryptid hunter. It’s your calling! Feel that pulling feeling in your chest? That’s the call of adventure right there.

PAIN THRESHOLD: It feels like a pulled muscle actually. Like maybe you pulled something when you fell and tried to catch yourself.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Unimportant! Cryptid!

ESPRIT DE CORPS: No, no, it’s got to be the kid, hiding from the consequences of his actions.

VOLITION: And isn’t that a familiar feeling?

You take a shuffling step towards the boxes.

COMPOSURE: A bit of a lurch, really. Ungainly, inelegant.

PERCEPTION: A scratching sound again. Something organic and animal. It makes you shiver, sends spirals down your spine.

It’s definitely coming from the boxes. You reach out a hand, slowly, and knock the top box aside.

HALF-LIGHT: You’re gonna die. This is a certainty. Clenching fear in your chest.

PERCEPTION: No, no. Look!

And the fear seeps out of you like coffee percolating into the pot.

PERCEPTION: It’s a pigeon.

HALF-LIGHT: Oh. Just a pigeon.

PERCEPTION: It is nestled deep in the pile of boxes, awkwardly perched, its eyes wide and fearful. A scraggly little thing, big black eyes and a green-purple iridescent ring around its neck and the back of its head. Its feathers are warm grey and buff, white at the tips. It shuffles back as far as it can amongst the pile of trash, shrinking away from you.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: A creature!

VOLITION: A miserable little thing, curled up in the garbage. You know the feeling.

“Hey there, little guy,” you murmur sympathetically.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: It’s not a guy, actually. Male pigeons tend to have a thicker neck and wider head than female. Takes a trained eye to be sure, but…

PERCEPTION: You’re sure. This bird is a lady.

“Hey there, little lady,” you amend. The pigeon cries her strange ghostly call in answer, wordless. Her eyes are wild. The distant music pounds in her chest.

PERCEPTION: She’s injured. The left wing- it’s hanging down at an awkward angle and she holds it stiffly like it hurts to move.

PAIN THRESHOLD: Likely she hasn’t eaten in a while, if her wing is hurt so bad. She’s in a bad way.

HALF-LIGHT: You should snap her neck. A kindness, not a cruelty, at this stage.

EMPATHY: No! You can’t. Look at her.

SHIVERS: A SISTER. PROTECT HER. LOVE HER. SHE’LL KEEP YOU ALIVE.

PERCEPTION: A shiver runs down the meat that covers your spine. You wince.

EMPATHY: She is shivering too. She doesn’t seem to be able to move far, her useless wing flopping sadly at her side, but she shrinks back as much as she can within the box.

“Oh no, no, I’m not going to hurt you,” you say, clumsily holding out a broad hair-lined hand. The pigeon flinches, then, as you hold your hand as still as you can and make no move to harm her, regards you with a mix between fear and curiosity.

LOGIC: She’ll die without you, Harry. Maybe she’ll die with you too. Is this a responsibility you can bear?

You: What do I do now? How do I help?

ENCYCLOPEDIA: Pigeons are found on every known isola on the freckled face of Elysium. One of the most common nuisance animals, with their loud calls and their bedraggled appearances, they are widely viewed as pests. A Revacholian newspaper, while discussing the persistent pigeon problem in Jamrock Central, is noted for referring to them as “the rats of the sky.”

You: Thanks. That’s useless.

PERCEPTION: The sky rat in the box in front of you makes a hooting chittering sound, and ruffles up its tattered feathers. Makes itself round.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Like a football. Or a shotput.

VOLITION: I beg you, do not think about shotputting the bird.

“You’re a round lady, aren’t you?” You stretch out a finger carefully, delicately, and run a finger over the slightly oily feathers of her head. Soft touch. “Pretty. You’re not having a very good day, are you?”

PERCEPTION: The pigeon almost seems to let out a sigh.

“Me neither.” You shift uncomfortably on the floor. “I guess you saw me wipe out on the stairs. I’m not very good at running anymore. I used to be, though. I’m shit at my job now.” The pigeon listens silently. Considering the weight of your words. “You’re hurt too, aren’t you?”

PERCEPTION: She shifts, uncomfortable, on the wet cardboard.

PAIN THRESHOLD: She is hurt and it’s bad. She wouldn’t be letting you near her if she wasn’t hurt. She’d have flown off the moment you moved the boxes.

“Yeah.” You hold out a hand for her to smell, like you would a dog. “I thought so.”

LOGIC: That’s not how that works. Not all animals work the same, you know.

“It’s been a bad day,” you say to the pigeon. “For both of us, hmm?” A pause. When the pigeon offers no input, no great words of wisdom, you carry on talking. “I’ve been on the clock for nearly fourteen hours. I got shot a few months ago, you know.”

ESPRIT DE CORPS: They’re chewing you up. They’ll spit you out soon enough.

“And none of that would matter if we were actually helping people. I’m a tough guy. I can take it.”

ENDURANCE: Hell yeah you are, brother.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: You tense your muscles slightly. Flex. The pigeon does not seem to be impressed.

“But we aren’t. Nothing we do helps. Sometimes we actively make things worse for people.”

INLAND EMPIRE: The pigeon blinks slowly, once. You should quit your job, she says.

“What?”

INLAND EMPIRE: Nothing. No answer. The pigeon is silent.

PERCEPTION: Her feathers are all fluffed up around her, a thick coat around her shoulders. Often when creatures fluff themselves up like that it means that they are freezing cold. She needs to get warm, and quickly.

EMPATHY: You’ve been too distracted. Selfish, rambling about your work. The pigeon is probably dying.

PERCEPTION: There is something wrong with its heartbeat. It beats in triplicate, hard, like some foreign drum beat.

INLAND EMPIRE: Some kind of ancestral genetic malfunction, a little piece of inherited pale damage from its ancestors across the seas. A tiny nervous murmur. Ba-dum-ba. Ba-dum-ba.

“Oh, sorry.” You stop yourself, abashed. “Not to take away from your problems, obviously. It must be very difficult being a pigeon.”

LOGIC: Options, options, options. What do you do? What can you do?

“Maybe you should come home with me.”

You still have one of Kim’s handkerchiefs in your pocket. He gave it to you at lunchtime when you managed to smear your kebab’s yoghurty sauce all over your face, fighting back the urge to dab at your beard himself.

EMPATHY: He won’t be too happy if you sully his nice handkerchief with wild animal germs, though.

LOGIC: You’ll get it dry cleaned. Or buy him a new one. This is more important than a little square of cotton, even one that belongs to Kim.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Even one with K.K. neatly embroidered on the top left corner. Running your thumb over the neat small stitches is soothing.

You reach out gently, cupping the soft round body from beneath. She’s lighter than you expect, her feathers fluffed up and full of air. You’re careful not to jostle the wing but she still seems panicked, her feet kicking and her non-defunct wing flailing frantically. “Hey, hey,” you say, trying to calm her. Your voice is not one that is made to be soft but you soften it as much as you’re capable of, wrap it in cotton wool and sand down the rough corners. She doesn’t calm, exactly, but she stills. You can feel the thrum of her heart through the thin stuff of the handkerchief that you’ve wrapped her in. Immobilising the wonky wing. It seems like the best thing you can do. “See? You’re alright. It’s all alright. I’m going to look after you, okay?”

HALF-LIGHT: No. Not okay. You’re scaring the shit out of her, Harry-boy, with your big scary hands and your big scary face and your open toothy mouth.

PERCEPTION: The bird in your hands makes a noise like a deflating balloon. Its eyelids flutter shut. It is trembling, pained and tired and shit-scared. Heart like a jackhammer.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: The most dominant species of pigeon in Revachol are the common rock pigeons and collared doves, but the third most common pigeon is the Insulindian Domestic Dove- also known as the Revacholian Squabbler because of its distinctive yodelling call. High pitched and ragged, like a squeaky toy well beloved by an enthusiastically toothy dog. Almost wheezing. This pigeon, certainly, is a Revacholian Squabbler.

PERCEPTION: She sits in your hands. You can hear little breaths whistling through her beak- too fast, maybe? You don’t know enough about birds to tell, although you think maybe you used to.

INLAND EMPIRE: You’d been surprised to find multiple books about birdwatching on your shelf when you’d first returned to your apartment after Martinaise. A set of binoculars too, well-tended glass lenses from the previous century, bought cheap from a junk shop and cleaned up. You can tell, because the five real sticker tag is still stuck to the left barrel and the collecting lens has a very slight scratch across it that has been lovingly buffed away with a tub of lens polish.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: The Revacholian Squabbler is often a ragged-looking thing. They typically have longer necks than the others in their taxonomical branch, and are somewhat smaller. They have rounded bodies, grey heads and necks, iridescent ruffs around the base of their skullls, and grey-white piebald patterning on their primary wing feathers, giving them a tattered look.

CONCEPTUALISATION: Like a wedding veil, delicate woven lace trodden through the mud. Sad little jilted brides.

PERCEPTION: The pigeon lets out another pathetic cry.

“I know, I know,” you say. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m trying to help, I promise.”

PERCEPTION: There’s a small lidded box near the bottom of the garbage stack, mostly undamaged by the persistent rain, and so you snag it and tuck her gently inside.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: IconoBar 8 inch transparent plastic straws, bendable, in assorted neon- pack of 500. The writing is black, and the box is plain white with brown parcel tape stuck to the edges.

HALF-LIGHT: Darkness helps. When everything is pain and fear and sharp neon light, the darkness is a comfort.

You close the box over her head. Inside the box, still wrapped in the handkerchief to hold the wing still, she goes very very still.

“There,” you say. “It’s okay. You’re okay. It’s nice and dark and calm now.”

EMPATHY: It’s a relief not to see the world.

PAIN THRESHOLD: Sensory deprivation box. You should try it. It might fix you.

VOLITION: You’re unfixable, let’s be honest. Yet we still keep on trying.

KIM KITSURAGI: “Harry?” You hear suddenly, and footsteps on the stairway.

PERCEPTION: Kim! He’s out of breath slightly, but his eyes light up with relief when he sees you…

EMPATHY: …then drop into concern when he sees you on the ground.

KIM KITSURAGI: “Harry? Is everything alright?”

You nod, go to stand, but the nerve in your hip spasms in protest. “Ow. Uh, yeah, yeah, I’m good.”

SAVOIR FAIRE: Finger guns. Just to really hammer home how okay you are.

KIM KITSURAGI: Kim looks at you with a slight frown of concern.

ENDURANCE: You’re unsteady on your feet. You really should have retired the crocodile shoes after your injury but they’re just so comfortable.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: You are sweating through your shirt too. Just so you know. Big wet semicircles under your armpits.

PERCEPTION: Stinky boy.

EMPATHY: Kim isn’t looking at that, though. He’s looking at the rip in your disco pants, the knee scuffed and muddied. I can fix that, he thinks. It’s calming, finding the right shade of thread, deciding if it needs a patch or if it can just be stitched back together. Handsewn or machine. He likes to have a task, some material way to do something.

KIM KITSURAGI: “What happened?” He says instead, corralling his eyes upwards to the box in your hands. “Why are you holding a box of straws?”

You grit your teeth. “I lost the guy,” you say with a self deprecating huff of air through your nose. “Nearly had him too. Just came down the stairs too fast and skidded, and-” You gesture to your knees, your shitty hip, your sad bloated corpse. Kim sighs slightly, his head tilted.

EMPATHY: It’s hard to see with the glasses in your way, but his eyes are lit up with sympathy. He wants desperately to help you but he doesn’t want to overstep and make you feel patronised. He holds his hand out wordlessly, and, with a groan, you let him help you up to your feet.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You’re heavier than he expected. His hand wraps broadly around your forearm, steadying, and his tongue darts out to wet his lips. His eyes are huge in the dark.

LOGIC: But you have other priorities right now.

EMPATHY: Trying desperately not to jostle the box too much.

“I lost the guy,” you repeat. “But I found a pigeon. I think she’s hurt. I think we should take her to the vet or-”

KIM KITSURAGI: Kim sighs. He hasn’t taken his hand off your arm, you notice, but he’s got his eyebrows raised just slightly in that slightly bewildered expression he always makes when he thinks you’re being ridiculous. “You found a pigeon?”

“Yeah, I said that. She was in the boxes. Anyway, I need to take her to the-”

KIM KITSURAGI: “You just picked up a pigeon that you found in the trash and put it in a box? Are you sure that it’s even... alive?”

DRAMA: He doubts you, sire. He doubts your ability to tell an alive pigeon from a dead one.He H

You crack the top of the box open at the top and tilt it gently towards him so that he can peer inside. “Yeah, see?”

Rounded orange eyes blink back at him. Glossy black pupils, shrinking as they adjust to the sudden light exposure once more. The streetlamps pour golden light over you like honey.

PERCEPTION: You can hear the frantic pace of her breathing.

“Hey, you’re okay,” you say, murmuring, stroking a finger over her head soothingly before you close the box again. “It’ll all be alright.”

KIM KITSURAGI: His fingers tighten on your arm. “Is that my handkerchief?”

“Uhh. No?”

KIM KITSURAGI: “It has my initials embroidered on it. I embroidered them.”

“Alright, fine, yes.” You give him your best pleading eyes. “I’ll get it drycleaned. Or I’ll buy you a new one. I’m sorry. It was an emergency.”

Oh no. The eyebrow.

You’re powerless against that fucking eyebrow.

You can see the gears ticking over in Kim’s head, neatly pinned under his sharp brown gaze, but eventually his smile cracks. He was enjoying watching you squirm. His fingers loosen, one by one, and he slowly releases your arm. His fingers trail briefly over the soft paler skin on the inside of your wrist. You begin to miss him immediately. “How’s your hip?”

You stretch awkwardly, experimentally, and wince. “Been better,” you say. “But I’m good to keep going.”

KIM KITSURAGI: Kim shakes his head. “It’s so close to the end of our shift and we’ve accomplished very little. I don’t see the point in extending it when you’re already in pain. You need rest.” A pause. “And you can’t carry on patrolling with a pigeon in a box anyway.”

LOGIC: Hmm. He has a fair point.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: You could recruit her. You have police dogs, police horses… Why not a police pigeon?

RHETORIC: Let’s not bring innocent animals into our oppressive brutally enforced state controlled regime. She’s free. She doesn’t have to worry about all of that shit. It would be better for you to join her than for her to join you.

KIM KITSURAGI: “Vets will be closed this time of night, if you can find one that’ll even see birds in this part of town. You’d have better luck on the outskirts of the city, maybe, up towards the other side of the river, but…” Kim smooths his moustache thoughtfully. “You’ll have to do what you can yourself tonight, if you’re really sure that you want to help it.” He looks less enthused by the idea of leaving her behind now, though, now that he’s looked into her eyes and heard her pathetic frightened breaths.

“I’ll stay up all night if I have to,” you say.

“Khm. Well, let’s hope that it doesn’t come to that,” Kim says, supressing a small smile. “Come on. I’ll drive you home.”

You limp after him to the Kineema, box full of pigeon cradled to your chest.

EMPATHY: Kim helps you into the back seat, arm tight around your broad shoulders, and for a moment you let your eyes fall shut and imagine that the touch isn’t only for utility. Its a nice thought, to imagine Kim touching you because he wants to and not just because he’s being helpful.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Wanting to smooth his hand down the back of your jacket, wanting to touch the smooth leather of his gloves to your lips, wanting, wanting, wanting.

VOLITION: But he doesn’t want to. And you know he doesn’t. So you try not to let yourself lean into the touch.

PERCEPTION: As you shuffle over onto your seat his glove-clad hand slides over your spine. It makes you shiver.

You keep the cardboard box shut on your lap and you stare out of the window as Kim drives you home. Other cars passing, obscured by the trails of rainwater running down the glass windows of the Kineema.

SHIVERS: Across the city, a student sits and watches her cup of tea vibrate from the pumping anodic dance beat. They’re playing that Van Eyck one again. Fifth time tonight. A scruffy boy catches his breath in the doorway of an abandoned apartment building, watching over his shoulder like a nervous rabbit, holding a red purse like it’s his last meal. He pours the contents out onto the cold concrete step. A black plastic tube of cheap lipstick, a couple of tampons, a condom in a little silver packet, a few blister plasters. A handful of centim plink down on the hard grey ground. Nothing of use. Fuck, he says to himself, and then louder, FUCK. In a fit of pique he throws the bag as hard as he can, launching it out into the abandoned courtyard area. It’s filled with litter, with abandoned things. The kid sniffs and lights a cigarette, a grubby one that’s been languishing loose in his pocket, and begins to scoop up every last centim.

Kim turns over the engine of the Kineema and pulls out onto Boogie Street. It’s a difficult street to drive down; drunk people mill about in the street, lurch into the road, laugh and tap against the windows when they realise it’s a cop car. It’s dangerous. Especially with the Kineema’s weird front wires. You could easily slice someone into meat chunks with those.

He navigates out onto the side street that will take you in the direction of your apartment. He’s been there before, of course, to drop you off or pick you up. He brought you groceries when you were on medical leave, too, and stayed a while. You think it was out of social obligation.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You stare at the back of his neck. He’s concentrating on the road, very serious and stern, but there’s a perfect little curl at the back of his neck and you want to poke your finger through it.

LOGIC: It’s called a ducktail. His hair is shaved on the sides and comes to a point at the back and there’s just one perfect curl there. Maybe he can’t reach with his comb.

EMPATHY: Either way. You want to bite it. Gently, like a mother cat carrying a kitten by the scruff of its neck.

“Will you come up to my place for a while?” You hear your voice saying without your permission. “For a-”

VOLITION: Don’t say drink. Don’t say drink.

“-cup of tea or something?”

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Pfft. Weak. Like an old maiden aunt.

KIM KITSURAGI: He’s quiet for a while and you think he might be pretending he hasn’t heard you, because he does that sometimes when you say something ridiculous, but then you see the curve of his cheek lift as he smiles. “Why not?”

EMPATHY: Why shouldn’t I let myself have something I want for once?

You: Huh?

EMPATHY: Never mind.

“You might need a hand, anyway,” he adds. “With your hip. And your pigeon.”

You watch the blobs of traffic lights and other motor carriages travelling past. It’s weird, the idea of having guests in your apartment.

EMPATHY: Two guests, even! Kim and your little feathered friend. You clutch the box a little tighter.

COMPOSURE: It’ll be nice not to be alone.

INLAND EMPIRE: Back when you came home from Martinaise and finally worked out where you lived, alone in your apartment and bored out of your mind on sick leave, you held out for three days before caving to your electrochemical impulses. Three days of sitting on your piece of shit couch, pacing- limping- a groove into your stained carpet and lying on the cool tiles of the kitchen staring miserably at the water-stained ceiling, before you went to the nearest Frittte! and bought a six pack of potent pilsner.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: A sing-songy tune in your head. Shitty shitty shitty beer. Tastes like hoppy piss.

INLAND EMPIRE: Like daydreamy piss. Like fun and excitement and a sparking shut-off switch for the weird electric uncertainty that had been firing off in your brain ever since you returned to that tiny box-like set of rooms. You felt frantic. Like your blood had been replaced with soda, like you’d mainlined too much caffeine directly into your brain, like you couldn’t sit still. Like you couldn’t breathe. You wanted to fight your way out of your own skin. Just wanted to forget.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Oh, we remember, though. Parts of your brain that had lain dormant since the third day in Martinaise sparked to life just from your finger pads touching the smooth cold glass. Fizzy sparks of fear and dopamine in the brain stem. You felt your pulse fluttering at the tip of your nose, the rapid twitching behind your eyeballs, and the anxiety sink deeper and deeper into your skin.

VOLITION: You drank three of the cans before I wrested back control of the driving seat and dumped the last three down the sink.

EMPATHY: Lonely. Out of your mind with pure liquid Lonely. Your neighbours look at you when you limp down the stairs to take the trash out and their eyes are full of memories that you don’t share with them anymore.

INLAND EMPIRE: Kim visited the next day, unexpectedly, bearing groceries, a pack of the cheapest cigarettes Frittte! sell, and a box of playing cards. You knew he must have seen the cans in your trash, but he very deliberately did not look in that direction for the duration of his visit. He looked at you instead, at your poor watery light-sensitive eyes and your line-scored forehead and your dry chapped lips, and he smiled at you with that private smile that you wanted to wrap up in tissue paper, like a trinket from one of those fancy jewellery shops in Revachol East, and keep somewhere safe forever. He talked about his day. Processing the paperwork for his transfer, arguing with some kid he caught graffitoing on the sheer blank walls of the harbour, patrolling the shipping container maze that makes up most of GRIH. Slouched a little on your shitty beer-stained couch, punctuating his words with his hands, shoulders more relaxed than you’d ever seen him. You pointed out the birds outside the window. The pigeons on the rooftop, the swallows in the sky.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Eyes shining behind his glasses. Laughing. The sound of his laugh could be a new addiction, something all consuming. You want to drown in him.

VOLITION: You weren’t sure you’d be able to handle it- the weeks of leave, then the weeks of waiting for his transfer. All alone and lonely. You were convinced you’d implode.

RHETORIC: And you nearly didn’t. By the time his transfer went through and he showed up for his first day on the job, you had started processing a thought project about quitting.

THOUGHT GAINED: LEFTOVER BACON

How long does bacon take to expire? Plastic-wrap packaging peeled open, left on the counter for the flies? Maybe a week in the refrigerator, two if it hadn’t been opened, but open and vulnerable on the counter? It doesn’t stand a chance. It has at most a few days before the rot sets in. It’s already there, in the belly, back and sides- the areas with the highest fat content. You’ve poured every bit of meat in your body into the RCM. Your heart, your lungs, your liver, the grey porridgey contents of your skull. Anything for the city that you love. But the RCM left you to spoil on the kitchen counter. You’re nearly expired. Three people died under your watch. You failed them, but it’s more than that; the system failed them. How many more people have to die before it finally sinks in?

KIM KITSURAGI: Kim brakes the Kineema hard suddenly, the sound of him leaning on the horn snapping you back to the present as a pedestrian steps out into the road with no regard for their own safety. The walker swears back, smacking a hand on the Kineema’s front bumper as he passes. “Fucking psychopath,” Kim mutters under his breath.

DRAMA: He’s holding himself back, sire. If he were alone, he would be swearing up a storm.

KIM KITSURAGI: “I hate driving in this bit of Jamrock,” he says. Voice full of concern for his baby. He parks as close to your building as he can get, though, although you know that he hates subjecting the Kineema to roadside parking.

INLQND EMPIRE: His presence at your side makes the walk up the four flights of stairs to your front door feel unfamiliar somehow, although you’ve made the walk a thousand times before.

VOLITION: Wait. Shit. Have you tidied recently?

LOGIC: Of course not. But he won’t mind as long as you’re staying hygienic, right?

You push open your front door with your free hand, paint flaking underneath your palm. The door catches on your doormat but you give it a hard shove and wave Kim inside.

PERCEPTION: It’s not too bad in here actually. You flip the light switch on, and the room fills with the low buzz of electricity and with shitty yellow light. You must have cleaned away the mess from your dinner the night before, and the door to your bedroom is shut.

“Water, first. That seems like the most important thing if she’s been immobile for a while.”

LOGIC: She’s likely dehydrated, despite all that rain.

KIM KITSURAGI: “That sounds like a good idea,” the lieutenant says. He’s doing his best not to look around your apartment, not to stare, keeping his eyes fixed on you or on the straw box on the little table in front of him. He’s here for utility, not for pleasure, so he doesn’t allow himself to satisfy his curiosity.

EMPATHY: Or he doesn’t want to embarrass you by showing too much interest in the mess and clutter that you’ve filled your apartment with.

CONCEPTUALISATION: Hey. It’s not mess. It’s a rich and wonderful aesthetic choice; you’re a maximalist.

RHETORIC: You’re not a maximalist. Rich people are maximalists. You’re a hoarder.

PERCEPTION: There’s a stack of laundry on the sofa that you haven’t put away yet. A high shelf runs around the entire perimeter of your living room. It’s lined with books- entroponetics, bird watching, mysteries and sci-fi- and with trinkets. A handful of painted pebbles, a glued-together mug with a jumble of pens inside, a ceramic piggy bank with a construction paper top hat stuck on its head, a pair of women’s earrings. A couple of fat white candles for when the power goes out during the strikes. A flourishing spider plant, pale anaemic leaves and reaching roots. A card, yellowed with age and signed by a million names in childish handwriting you don’t recognise; to Mr Du Bois, sorry you’re leaving! The plant is a new addition but everything else was covered in a thick layer of dust when you’d finally managed to get back into your apartment after Martinaise.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: There is an empty sun-bleached space on the wall where a frame once hung. A blue patrol uniform, framed in black plastic. It was one of the first things you got rid of, after all the bottles and the mouldy bit of carpet. Of all the things you’ve heaped on your trash pile, that was our favourite. We miss it.

KIM KITSURAGI: Kim gives you a half-nod. He’s standing so stiffly, shoulders back, feet slightly apart. Parade rest. “I’ll get it. You should sit down.”

AUTHORITY: Don’t let him patronise you.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Are you fucking kidding? Let him play the knight in shining armour if he wants to. It’s not likely you’ll get that kind of offer again.

“No, no, I’m good,” you say, punctuated with finger guns, and you step into the kitchen. “I know where things are, anyway, it’s easier if I do it.”

LOGIC: Do you? You’re still familiarising yourself with this life that isn’t really yours.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: You remember hearing a story, an Ubi legend, about strange welkin-esque creatures from beyond the pale who would steal away human babies and leave one of their own young in return. Blinking, muzzy-eyed changelings, little cuckoos who stole the lives originally intended for someone else and never really filled the role adequately.

INLAND EMPIRE: You really are a bird, aren’t you, Harry? A fuckupatoo, a harrier hawk, a magpie, a tiny swallow orbiting the hole at the heart of the world. A nasty little cuckoo. It’s not even your name you’re wearing. You stole that from the one who came before you too.

LOGIC: You’re the same person. Even if you don’t want to be.

VOLITION: Stop dwelling. Get moving. For her sake if not your own.

INLAND EMPIRE: In the other room, out of your sight, Kim lets his shoulders relax slightly. Not enough to stave off the back ache coming for him, never enough for that, but enough that his silhouette rounds out at the corners. He lets his eyes roam, off leash, and submits to his curiosity a little. Your shelves, weighed down with trinkets and anecdotes. Your froggy visor, your bolo tie, both hung from a hook. Your bird watching book. That card from your old students. His eyes pause on a pair of tiny motorcycles, the kind that come free in boxes of sugary cereals, one a light teal blue and the other a bright racing orange. They are made of plastic and metal, and the wheels rattle when they turn. They are painted realistically enough, checkerboard patterns on the sides like the proper circuit racer bikes. You kept them because you thought he might like them, but the more you thought about it the more you felt silly. He reaches out with a careful finger and spins the wheel, watches the silver spokes blur into a silver halo around his finger. The plasticky whirring sound makes him smile.

VOLITION: Harry. Focus.

PERCEPTION: You try the top cupboard first, the one over the hob. The doors are cheap orange wood, painted in the centre with a bold flaking green lacquer. A very 30’s style. The ceramic basin of the sink, too, is green. It is cracked in multiple places, not quite enough to affect functionality but enough to worry you. This cupboard is where you keep all your cups, the World’s Best Detective mug that still gives you a migraine every time you look at it too long and the fluted cut glass goblets made of faintly radioactive glass that you fished out of the bargain bin of a charity shop just in case you ever felt inclined to have company for dinner (you’ve never needed them yet, but you still hope) but a cup would be too awkward for the little bird to drink from. A saucer would be best. You stoop down to one of the lower cupboards, where you keep your plates- all mismatched things from junk shops or jumble sales, or in some cases crime scenes, digging through until-

“Aha,” you call to Kim in the other room. “Found it.” A little dish, short and wide, with pink and green flowers swirling out from a point in the centre. The sides are high enough to allow it to fill with water from the creaking copper tap and lay in front of the waiting pigeon like an offering to some pre-perikarnassian god. She eyes it suspiciously, curious, before dehydration takes precedence over concern and she takes a careful drink. She uses her beak as a straw and once she starts drinking she doesn’t stop. "Wow,” you say. “You really needed that, huh?”

KIM KITSURAGI: Beside you, Kim shifts and leans forward; his shoulder bumps softly against yours. He’s examining the bird. “She must have been extremely dehydrated.”

“I think she’d been in that trash pile for a while,” you say. Her functioning wing flutters as she tries to get comfortable. Lacy grey-and-black patterns in her feathers. She’s like a fancy Sur-la-Clef lady. “I think she’d decided to give up. If she can’t fly, then...”

KIM KITSURAGI: “You think it’s the wing?”

“Look at the angle, the way it’s hanging,” you say. “You should have a look at her. You’re first aid trained, after all.”

LOGIC: He saved your life, after all.

KIM KITSURAGI: He huffs a not-quite laugh. “I’m first aid trained on humans, Harry. Not on birds.”

EMPATHY: Still, he does as you ask. He’s gentle. He tries not to touch her too much; she doesn’t seem bothered anyway. She continues to drink, sucking up the water through her beak like a straw, flicking arcs of water across the table. His fingers skim carefully over the light grey feathers clustered at her breast, over the iridescent green-purple ruff of her neck. His brow furrows in concentration.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: To Kim, the body is like a machine. You put in nutrients and water and sleep, and you get out appropriate performance. He fixes injuries the same way he would repair the suspension on the Kineema, following a carefully memorised set of guidelines and handbooks.

INLAND EMPIRE: In the glove compartment of the Kineema, there is a book. A layman’s guide to first aid, well below his experience level, but it makes him feel safer to have the instructions. Helps him feel more sure that he won’t do something wrong.

EMPATHY: You gave him quite a scare in Martinaise. He likes to be prepared.

KIM KITSURAGI: Kim gestures to the wing, slow, wary of startling the little bird, but she doesn’t stir. Too invested in gulping down as much water as she can. “It’s a nasty break,” he says. “She wouldn’t survive it if she was out in the wild, but I think that the break is the only problem. She doesn’t appear to be feverish or anything, just hungry. We could take her to the RSPAB, but...”

ENCYCLOPEDIA: The Revachol Society for the Preservation of Animals and Birds. A society for birdwatchers and wildlife lovers, dedicated to the preservation of Insulinde’s native wildlife. A lot of wild bird species in Revachol are at high-risk alert status due to human encroachment on their territories and industrial interference in their water supplies. There is a lot of work to be done, especially around the area of the People’s Pile where many creatures were caught up in the nuclear spill.

RHETORIC: They’re overworked and underfunded. Most animals and birds bought to them end up being put down due to lack of resources for their rehabilitation.

HALF-LIGHT: It’s a kindness. No place in the world for broken things that can’t fend for themselves.

RHETORIC: That’s not true. There are always people willing to help. And you’ll help them in turn. That’s how community grows.

EMPATHY: Are we still talking about the bird, Harry?

ENCYCLOPEDIA: The RSPAB classifies the Revacholian Squabbler as a nuisance species, anyway. Close to being invasive. Yes they’re called Revacholian but they’re originally from Ubi Sunt?. They came through the Pale, an experiment by the captain of a trader ship wanting to send messages back home from within the Pale without radio communications being scrambled or diverted. He picked them for their excellent homing instinct and ability to last for days without food or water, believing it may be strong enough for them to navigate entirely through the Pale, and was convinced that this resilience would also translate into his pigeons remaining unaffected by pale sickness. He was not entirely wrong. Most of the Squabblers that he sent eventually made it to their location, washed up on the shore, their messages still tied in little cannisters to their pink ridged ankles, glossy black eyes half eaten by crabs. But the ones who survived, the ones who made it to Revachol! They proliferated. They flourished. Rich folks bred them purposefully as messenger birds, and a strong-winged fast Squabbler was a precious resource. Even into the early part of the last century, pigeons were working birds. When radio technology finally became cheap enough to be widespread across the city, the Squabblers became obsolete. They were turned out of their fancy little bird houses and the steady supply of birdseed and corn dried up.

RHETORIC: Thrown away once they’d ran out of usefulness. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

INLAND EMPIRE: Tale as old as time.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: Your eyes flick up to the sun-bleached spot on the wall where your framed patrol uniform used to sit on display.

KIM KITSURAGI: Kim clears his throat. “But I imagine that they would probably put her down.”

ENCYCLOPEDIA: The quickest and most painless way to euthanize a bird is via carbon dioxide inhalation; the second is swift decapitation.

HALF-LIGHT: A cold metal slab. Cool hands in blue latex gloves. Calm music in the waiting room. It would be easier.

CONCEPTUALISATION: Sweet relief. The taste of darkness, like clean metallic water and petrichor.

VOLITION: Absolutely not.

“We’re not doing that,” you say defensively. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

KIM KITSURAGI: “No. I thought that’s what you’d say.” Kim tilts his head. “What do pigeons eat? I imagine she’s probably quite hungry as well.”

PERCEPTION: There is a tub of wild bird seed mix somewhere on your shelf. There, on the side, next to your binoculars.

INLAND EMPIRE: It had been a treat for yourself when you were on medical leave, only really meant to limp out of bed to piss or to feed yourself; you’d ordered it, alongside a transparent plastic window bird feeder with a sticky round suction cup, over the phone from an advert in the newspaper Kim had bought you. It had been delivered a few days later, just as you were really starting to lose your mind, and it had soothed you, watching the birds feeding outside your window.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: Common blackbirds, starlings, dunnocks or hedge sparrows, seagulls, house martins.

You fetch another dry saucer from the kitchen and fill it up with a handful of the dry mix.

EMPATHY: The pigeon is not as interested at first, not as keen as she was on the water, but when you push the saucer in front of her more insistently, she eventually starts to eat a little. She picks through the seeds, discards most of them. She likes the big, dried pieces of corn.

“She’s picky,” you say to Kim. “Just like you.”

KIM KITSURAGI: “Just because I have taste does not mean I’m picky.”

EMPATHY: He is a grown man. He doesn’t like to be seen as a picky eater- he sees it as a childish thing that he should have left behind long ago.

KIM KITSURAGI: He turns the eyebrow on you for a second, but you can see him holding back a smile. “We should try the library tomorrow, maybe. See if they have any specific books on pigeon care.”

“Good idea.” Her claws tap on the table surface. She’s made her way nervously out of the box, blinking in the light, circling around the dish of birdseed. “We should give her a name.”

KIM KITSURAGI: His brow furrows slightly. “I suppose her chances of living through the night have significantly increased now that she’s had some food and water. Still, it’s not a good idea to get too attached.”

EMPATHY: Attached? You’re already in love. This bird is your child. You would die for her.

SHIVERS: YOU ARE MY HANDS, HARRY, AND SHE IS MY EYES. YOU ARE MY LUNGS AND SHE IS MY HEART. YOU ARE MY VOICE AND SHE IS MY WINGS.

EMPATHY: You shiver. The window is open just a crack and the rain is getting in.

You and Kim watch your pigeon eat in silence, you sat on your one chair resting your hip and him standing at your shoulder and observing.

KIM KITSURAGI: “She’s pretty,” Kim says softly, eventually. “Reminds me of…” He cuts himself off, laughs quietly.

“What?”

KIM KITSURAGI: “Nothing. It’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid.” You pull your eyes away from the pigeon to look at his face. “Nothing you ever say is stupid.”

CONCEPTUALISATION: Everything he says is true and beautiful.

VOLITION: Hey. Stop that. We’re not doing that all over again.

KIM KITSURAGI: He sighs. Affectionate. He likes that you care enough to try and pull all these stories out of him. He likes talking, too, you’ve found, once he gets going. A lot of things he’s never told anyone else before. “When I was a kid, there was a woman who donated money to the orphanage- from over in Revachol East, and by then the other side of the river was fully rebuilt. Sometimes she’d invite the more well behaved children to have tea with her, and we’d all pack into a tram and cross over into this... perfect place. I mean, obviously it wasn’t perfect.” He laughs. “Nowhere in Revachol is. But compared to the West Side... To a kid, it was like a different world. She had a cook who made these wonderful cakes.” His eyes close for a second.

EMPATHY: Even with his mediocre conceptualisation skills, his picky eating and aversion to most foods, he can still imagine the taste of those cakes on his tongue.

INLAND EMPIRE: Orange curd and dense buttercream. Dusted with powdered sugar.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Your stomach grumbles in sympathy.

KIM KITSURAGI: There’s a smile curling at the edges of his cheeks, only there if you really know how to read the signs. “She had these lacy doily things over every single surface of her house. Little paper ones on the cake plates. That’s what these wings remind me of. The doilies. All these intricate patterns. They were meant to look like flowers, I think, but we used to make up all sorts of pictures we could see in them. Sometimes the cook would let us take them home.” He huffs another laugh. Fond. “Extra bits of cake wrapped in doilies. I had a stack of them by the time I aged out. I used to keep them in between the pages of my school books. Each one was different.”

“What was her name?”

“The lady? I don’t remember.” He furrows his brow, thinking.

RHETORIC: Private charity. Rich people making themselves the arbiters of who gets the funds. Selfish little gods, distributing kindness to their pleading worshippers.

EMPATHY: She was trying to be kind. She was lonely.

RHETORIC: She was purchasing affection.

LOGIC: Didn’t work, did it? He can’t even remember her name.

KIM KITSURAGI: “She was tall,” Kim says. “I remember that. Husband was some rich guy who bought a spa out on Resurrectiòn and quadrupled his fortune.”

“What about the lady who made the cakes?”

EMPATHY: If Kim liked her, she must have been good.

LOGIC: Kim likes you. Do you really think he’s such a good judge of character?

KIM KITSURAGI: “Hmm. It was a long time ago. Gwen, we called her. She was Ubi, I think. I wonder what happened to her.”

“Gwen,” you say thoughtfully. “Nice name. Could use that.”

KIM KITSURAGI: He snorts. “Are you thinking of the pigeon?”

“She looks like a Gwen to me. What do you think?”

KIM KITSURAGI: He rolls his eyes slightly, humouring you, but he fixes her with a long hard stare. “Gwen,” he says. “Yes. Alright.”

“And what do you think?” You say, turning to the pigeon.

EMPATHY: She tilts her head in approval.

LOGIC: Or maybe she’s just tired.

EMPATHY: No, no, she definitely likes it. I can tell.

“She likes it,” you say. “Gwen.”

PERCEPTION: She isn’t interested in the food anymore.

PAIN THRESHOLD: She’s had a few of the corn kernels and it’s brightened up her eyes a little bit but you can see that she’s flagging now. She’s shaking with exhaustion and her orange-black eyes are boring into you.

INTERFACING: You need to build her a nest. Something comfortable.

CONCEPTUALISATION: The safest softest place. Everything she deserves.

KIM KITSURAGI: “You really should rest,” Kim says, watching with a slight smile. He’s enjoying this side of you. The side that pets mailboxes and tries to help every living thing you come across. It frustrated him a little in Martinaise, when you were up against the clock and mercs with more firepower than patience, but here in the safe of your apartment he’s looking at you with something more than fondness. “And so should she.”

You snag a shirt from the stack of laundry on the sofa and bunch it up into the empty cardboard box.

PERCEPTION: An old RCM issue workout shirt, that soft worn-out jersey material that’s getting thin with wear and bobbly along the side seams. The fabric feels well loved. You must have worn it a lot.

INLAND EMPIRE: A healthy outlet for your bubbling-over frustration, in the better times post-Dora when you were still trying to get better. The dull weeping thunk of weights hitting the floor over and over again, the smell of chalk dust and sweat.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: You should start hitting up the gym again, coach. It’d be good for you; you’re letting yourself get all weak and soft.

PAIN THRESHOLD: Are you joking? You’re joking right?

PERCEPTION: Your thumb smooths over the too-soft fabric. Fold it, in half and in half again.

CONCEPTUALISATION: Making a nest.

EMPATHY: When you pick her up, carefully, from underneath, she puts up a token protest.

HALF-LIGHT: That’s an improvement from before- if she’s well enough to fight back then she’s definitely getting better. Her claw feet scrabble against your palms and her good wing flutters uselessly, frantic.

“Hey," you shush. “I'm trying to help you.”

HALF-LIGHT: You could crush her in your big palms so easily. She's so impossibly light.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: Birds have hollow bones, pneumatised bones.

PERCEPTION: Her feathers are mostly just fluff too- full of air. Fluffy little underfeathers. They frill out around her legs like old fashioned bloomers. The feathers on her wings are sleek and smooth, even as she flails to get out of your hands, powder-down feathers dusted in a fine coating of keratin particulate. A little bit oily-feeling. Underneath, on her pale underbelly, the feathers are much fluffier.

EMPATHY: When you set her in the box nest again she stops flapping in panic. Surprisingly calm. It comes on suddenly as if someone has whispered to her the magic words. She's just looking at you now. There is an uncanny intelligence in her eyes.

SHIVERS: She knows you're just trying to help. The city told her.

“There you go,” you say. “A nest. I've made a nest.”

KIM KITSURAGI: “Well done,” Kim says, tongue in cheek. “It's a beautiful nest. Structurally sound.”

“Of course. I'm a qualified building inspector, after all.”

PERCEPTION: He laughs at that. Low and quiet. The sound vibrates in the base of your skull. Beautiful.

EMPATHY: He’s so patient. How has he stuck around with you for so long? You invited him up here for coffee and you haven’t even offered him a drink yet. You’ve not even taken his coat.

“Oh fuck.”

KIM KITSURAGI: “Everything alright?”

“I’m a terrible host. I didn’t offer you a drink. I didn’t take your jacket. Here, let me-”

KIM KITSURAGI: Kim huffs out a smile, shrugs your reaching hand away with a fractionally raised eyebrow. “If it’s all the same to you, detective, I’ll keep my jacket on.”

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: A shame. It’s always a pleasure to see the Lieutenant’s arms. It’s a rare enough sight, so you savour it, drink it all up whenever you can.

KIM KITSURAGI: “It’s cold in here.”

LOGIC: Ahhh yes. The consequences of developing amnesia so severe you forget to pay your heating bill. It’s proving to be a thorny tangle that even the smoothest of motherfuckers would struggle to unravel. Bureaucracy. The curse of modern man.

HALF-LIGHT: We should all grow fins and get back in the sea.

“And coffee?”

KIM KITSURAGI: “Sure,” he says. “Decaf if you have it. It’s...” He checks his watch. “Wow. It’s later than I thought. Milk, no sugar, please.”

EMPATHY: He likes it black, but only when it’s his one specific favourite brand. He assumes you’ve only got the cheap instant kind.

LOGIC: He assumes right.

EMPATHY: Coffee is one of his vices, alongside his one-a-day cigarette. He likes it strong and bitter enough to make him wince, packed with enough caffeine to force him to keep going through the day.

You make up two cups- one with more sugars than you care to count, one without.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Your sugar cravings have been through the roof since you stopped enjoying the more fun substances. Can’t deny yourself all the pleasures.

KIM KITSURAGI: When you come back into the living room, Kim has shuffled the laundry off the sofa onto the table and he’s leaning over the arm of the sofa to watch the pigeon. He sits up when you come in, straightens his spine a little and tries to look less interested than he is.

PERCEPTION: Her eyes have shut and she’s tucked her head down into her breast. Her feathers ruffle when she breathes.

KIM KITSURAGI: “I think her breathing has normalised,” he says. “She was panicking earlier. She’s asleep now.”

EMPATHY: It’s not typically in his wheelhouse, caring for a creature like this. He’s equally standoffish around animals as he is with children. But there’s something about the way that he’s looking at this pigeon right now that makes your heart melt a little.

INLAND EMPIRE: She reminds him of you.

You: What?

SHIVERS: No, really. A strong, sturdy thing. Resilient. A city-bird, picking through the leftovers that Revachol throws you, always coming up lucky. You’ll survive anything. The city loves you.

KIM KITSURAGI: He takes his coffee with a nod and shuffles up on the sofa to make room as you flop carelessly down beside him.

“Do you think she’s going to make it?” You ask, flopping onto the sofa beside him.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Your shoulders brush together. You feel him tense against your upper arm at the contact, the fizzy rushed tension in the front part of your skull.

EMPATHY: Then he relaxes. His arm eases slowly into the touch until there’s a burning line of contact between you from shoulder to elbow. There’s that look in his eyes that you see on him so rarely, that melted molasses look of soft affection.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: His version of party eyes. Big dark brown hollows.

EMPATHY: You love him more than your lungs can contain suddenly.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: What. No. You breathe in and out slowly.

KIM KITSURAGI: “I think if she makes it through the night, she should be okay,” he says.

The back of your hand is casually brushing the outside of his thigh. Or it was casual. Now that you’ve noticed it it’s all you can think about.

KIM KITSURAGI: “You’re going to have to call Gottlieb in the morning,” Kim says. “You’re not healed enough to be back at work. You need to be back on leave.”

HALF-LIGHT: No chance. You’ll lose your mind. You won’t find it again this time.

ENDURANCE: Gotta keep going. Keep pushing forward.

PAIN THRESHOLD: Harry, please understand that you will eventually collapse for good.

RHETORIC: You do no one any favours by pushing yourself. The more work you do, the more work they give you. The only reward for hard work is more work.

PAIN THRESHOLD: Rest. Your body is desperate for it. It claws at your insides, like hunger, like thirst.

LOGIC: And there’s something stirring in your brain, too.

RHETORIC: A thought so close to being completed.

EMPATHY: But not yet. Not tonight.

PERCEPTION: You can feel his pulse through the thin nylon of his jacket. A thin thread of twitchy fidgeting that’s running through him.

EMPATHY: Keep talking. Don’t go silent on him now. Don’t make it weird. Say anything.

“Hey, Kim. Do you want some pigeon facts?”

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: No.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: Please say yes, please say yes.

“Sure,” Kim says. His tone is of someone extremely resigned to his fate, but his expression gives him away. The smallest curl of a smile. It’s your favourite thing. Has been, ever since Martinaise. You want to touch it, press it into his skin so that it stays there forever. “Why not?”

EMPATHY: He likes listening to you talk. He likes hearing your useless facts.

INLAND EMPIRE: It’s better than living in the silence alone.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: This is the best day of my life.

“Pigeons recognise themselves in mirrors.”

KIM KITSURAGI: “Like dolphins and monkeys,” he says with a nod. “I knew that.”

EMPATHY: Spoilsport.

“They have amazing hearing; they can hear a storm coming from miles away.”

KIM KITSURAGI: “Knew that.”

ENCYCLOPEDIA: Oh, he’s doing this on purpose.

“Pigeons mate for life. They’re highly sociable birds.”

KIM KITSURAGI: He raises an eyebrow. A challenge. “I knew that one too.”

RHETORIC: Gotta up the ante.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: Okay, okay, I’ve got a good one for you.

“Okay, okay,” you say. “Pigeons are art critics.”

CONCEPTUALISATION: She really is your sister in spirit.

Kim frowns. “Elaborate.”

ENCYCLOPEDIA: Useless facts. This is our time to shine.

“There was some guy in Graad, a professor of… pigeons? Animal behaviour? Something like that. And he had this little group of pigeons that he studied and he did this experiment where he trained pigeons to recognise good and bad artwork.”

CONCEPTUALISATION: Is there really such a thing as bad artwork?

LOGIC: According to pigeons, yes.

“He gave them treats when they indicated good artwork and they learned the patterns so well that they were eventually able to look at student’s work from the local art college and predict which students would pass and which students would fail with near 100% accuracy. They’re clever little things.”

KIM KITSURAGI: “They’re easy to train. Good at pattern recognition.”

“No, no, it’s more than that. They recognise the patterns, sure, but they enjoyed the good artworks more too, and they made the decisions themselves. They’re smart. They truly learned to appreciate artistic creation.”

DRAMA: You’re adding flourishes to your fun facts, sire, and he is fully aware of that, but he’s enjoying it anyway.  

KIM KITSURAGI: He chuckles softly to himself. “You have more in common with her than I thought.”

“Pfft. She’s probably smarter than me by a long shot,” you say, looking fondly at the little creature sleeping on the table.

CONCEPTUALISATION: Smart enough to have been born a silly little creature, with nothing to worry about except food and art.

RHETORIC: Smart enough to have never been a cop.

EMPATHY: There we go. That thought project is nearly ready.

“Kim.” Your voice is slow, careful, like you’re coaxing a wounded animal. “Do you ever think about the tribunal still?”

PERCEPTION: You hear his breathing intake sharply.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: He didn’t expect you to ask about that out of the blue. He wraps both hands around his coffee cup and takes a drink. His thoughts are scrambled, just for a moment, by a violent red.

INLAND EMPIRE: Pain and dizziness, you, all burning fire and sunrays, going down. You’re fading out like evening light and he’s watching red spread across the yellow fabric of your thigh and he’s pressing hard at the gape of the wound trying to hold back the sunset. Chaos, sound and movement, but he’s zeroed in on you. God, please…

KIM KITSURAGI: He clears his throat and supresses a shiver. “Khm. No more than normal, I imagine,” he says. His arm twitches against yours like he’s reaching for the inside of his jacket, for his chest holster, just to feel the reassuring weight of the gun there. “It happened. It was a clusterfuck. We failed.”

“We did everything we could, didn’t we?”

KIM KITSURAGI: His eyes narrow slightly. There’s something there, isn’t there, a quiet anger beneath the surface that you’ve stirred up with your question? Something he’s been trying to supress. “When I say ‘we,’ I don’t mean you and I, detective. We tried our best.” He withdraws his arm from your side, slides his glasses off to polish them against the hem of his jacket. “Three people died. It could have been worse and it could have been better, there are a thousand ways it could have gone, but I don’t mean us when I say ‘we.’ I mean the RCM. The RCM have been failing Martinaise for a long time, and we really hammered the nail into the coffin that day.”

“It’s not much of a citizen’s militia if we’re not protecting all the citizens,” you say.

RHETORIC: Not much of a Citizen’s Militia if you’re failing everyone over and over. If you’re taking the word of law and using it to crush the citizens underneath your boot heel.

KIM KITSURAGI: “Hmm.” He hums through his nose and puts his glasses back on, squinting as his eyes readjust. “No. It’s not.”

“It’s not just Martinaise, either, is it?” You say.

PERCEPTION: The pigeon ruffles her feathers up a little, fluttering in her sleep.

INLAND EMPIRE: Do pigeons have dreams?

KIM KITSURAGI: He sighs, long and low. His arm is back against your side again. He doesn’t even seem to be aware that he’s doing it, reaching out for comfort from human contact. “No. We’re not- I don’t know.” He raises his other hand to his forehead, to his temple, as if shot through by a sudden headache. “Sometimes it feels like we’re making it all worse. The tension in the city; we’re just exacerbating it. We aren’t allowed to intervene until it’s too late and we’re so underfunded that we can’t afford the equipment we actually need. Sometimes…” He sighs again.

EMPATHY: His lungs hurt.

CONCEPTUALISATION: Like a little kid going to confession. Admitting to doubts about the beloved religion that he’s made for himself out of all the broken pieces of everything that came before.

KIM KITSURAGI: He lowers his voice. “Sometimes I think that they’re setting us up for failure. The moralintern.”

RHETORIC: Even with his mind filled with doubts, there’s an undercurrent of respect still in his voice. Something akin to fear, too.

LOGIC: With enough consecutive failures, they can sweep in to save the day. Their own failures forgotten, their own problems swept nicely under the rug. When the world crumbles enough, they can make themselves the saviours.

“They want war?”

KIM KITSURAGI: “I don’t know.” The back of his hand shifts against yours. He’s not wearing gloves, and his hands are impossibly soft. “I shouldn’t be speculating. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“You do,” you say. “I think you’re right.”

EMPATHY: He looks at you, meets your eyes. It strikes you suddenly that that’s unusual; he usually looks slightly to the left of you or slightly to the right, and you’ve always written it off as the glare from his glasses making his eyeline look off, but now that he’s looking at you, looking at you really, it makes the air slowly seep out of your lungs.

KIM KITSURAGI: “And the lack of- the RCM have a duty of care to everyone. Every person, in every district. Civilians,” he doesn’t blink. Doesn’t look away from your sea-glass green eyes. “And officers.”

EMPATHY: You’re nodding, although you don’t really understand what he means.

KIM KITSURAGI: “They shouldn’t have approved your return from medical leave.”

“Huh?”

KIM KITSURAGI: “If they can’t even take care of their own officers, if they can’t afford to let them recover properly before they put them back on the frontline-”

RHETORIC: That’s by far not the biggest problem of the RCM.

EMPATHY: True. But give him time. This is progress.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: And he’s saying it because he cares about you! He’s worried, Harry-baby.

INLAND EMPIRE: Arriving at the bloody murder precinct, for his first shift. There’s a stain in the stairwell, blood that’s sunk so deep into the carpet that they can’t get it out. Unrelated, but Torson’s been stabbed for trying to get involved with a bar fight, and Gottlieb’s patching him up to send him back out there. There’s a man in the cells with an orbital fracture from resisting one of Berdyayeva’s lieutenants when they tried to arrest him. Drunk and disorderly. Some minor crime that nearly every officer in the precinct has been guilty of and yet now the guy will not be able to blow his nose for weeks and he might even see time.

RHETORIC: He’s seeing it, truly seeing it. The violence inherent in the system. It’s easier to read arrest reports and feel admiration for those crazy-high stats when you don’t have to look at the blood on the carpet. Precinct 41 was far more removed from the trauma site, in the harbour, where most crime was misappropriation of goods or import fraud, or gang fighting. It’s easier to ignore the panic and stressor disorder from his time in the juvenile crime department, to pretend that it’s normal to feel that kind of fear, to pretend that it doesn’t bother him that Martinaise was not the first case that met a bloody end.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: To pretend that he doesn’t see that kid’s blood on the concrete, the smoke from the barrel of his own gun and the way the bullet rendered his skull useless at protecting his grey matter, behind his eyelids when he closes his eyes.

EMPATHY: He sees it most with you, though, all the failures of the RCM. The brain-blending pressure. A case a week with no respite, all the speed to keep up with the workload. He even considered it himself, briefly. If it would make him a better detective… The thought dispelled when he looked at you again, your craggy face and your deep eye bags. The force has chewed you up and spat you out in a broken little pile alongside god knows how many others.

RHETORIC: And what about all the civilians who met the business end of a wire-trigger super-nervy cop and caught their death? What about the effect of unleashing these systematically wrung out shell-people on the community with a nasty combination of guns and plausible deniability?

EMPATHY: He feels that weight all the time.

SHIVERS: It is lighter when you’re with him, at least.

INLAND EMPIRE: When the time finally comes for him to walk away he will do so with you at his side.

PERCEPTION: He breaks your gaze.

KIM KITSURAGI: “I’m sorry you got hurt again tonight,” he says suddenly.

“I’m fine.”

KIM KITSURAGI: “No, you’re not. Your return-to-work assessment cannot have been completed correctly; there’s no way that you should have been allowed to take a patrol shift after…” He lets himself trail off.

EMPATHY: Self-conscious. He’s aware that he has a tendency to lecture. He doesn’t want to talk down to you.

PAIN THRESHOLD: You can still feel it, you know. Just a reminder. The ghost of a bullet wound in your thigh, pulsing with little stutters of pain.

ENDURANCE: You’re fine. You can always keep going a little while longer. Until you collapse and they have to wheel you away.

RHETORIC: This? This right here is exactly the problem. People are not disposable.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: On the other side of town two RCM officers stand looking at the anti-trespass spikes that have been put up around the back of the Frittte! minimart on Rue de la Gare. In the winter especially, in the snowy weather, people used to congregate there near the big generator. It gets warm, keeps them alive a little longer. The company loathe it, hence the spikes. But someone has dragged an old mattress there, laid it over the spikes so that they don’t hurt, and set up camp. ‘There’s no one here now, though,’ Patrol Officer Cartier says with a shrug. ‘Do we really have to destroy the whole camp?’ He stamps his feet to warm his toes. The rain is relentless tonight, even under the shelter of the sheet-metal roof that covers the alleyway.

PERCEPTION: The harsh light from your shitty electric bulbs makes Kim’s cheekbones stand out sharply. The soft round curve of his jaw is traced by the white glow. He’s lost in thought. You move your hand gently against his. The pigeon stirs again in her sleep, flutters slightly.

EMPATHY: She’s woken herself up with her fussing. She looks at you with worry in her brilliant orange eyes.

INLAND EMPIRE: You can’t carry on like this. Neither of you can.

PERCEPTION: You feel her voice more than hear it. You glance to Kim, but he hasn’t noticed anything or at least he doesn’t bat an eyelid.

KIM KITSURAGI: “If you’re going to keep her you’ll have to get her a perch,” he says absently. “Birds like that don’t feel safe if they’re not high up.”

“Of course I’m going to keep her. If she can’t go back to the wild, I mean.”

KIM KITSURAGI: “That type of break… they heal poorly. She likely will never fly again.”

“But if she can’t fly…” you leave the rest of the sentence unsaid.

HALF-LIGHT: Then she’s vulnerable. Prey.

LOGIC: Just like you.

KIM KITSURAGI: He notices your expression starting to droop, starting to grow morose, and he grimaces. “She could still make a full recovery,” he says, encouraging.

LOGIC: But it’s more likely that she won’t.

“Sometimes we get sick,” you say quietly. “And we don’t get better. We don’t die but we never feel well again.”

KIM KITSURAGI: “Yes. That’s true.” Kim presses his little finger against yours. Bare hands. Neat, well shaped nails and a faint fuzz of light hair on the back of his wrists. “But she’ll have you to look after her. She’s somewhere safe and warm, she has food.”

EMPATHY: That’s all he wants, too.

“Do you think I’ll ever get better?”

COMPOSURE: The words leave your mouth before you can think better of them, and clang into the conversation like a stone into a bucket.

KIM KITSURAGI: “Khm.” He clears his throat. “You know I can’t answer that, Harrier. I don’t know.” He’s still absently moving his little finger against yours, repetitive soothing motions. “Sometimes things get better in other ways though. There’s a world beyond pain.” His brow furrows. “I do not mean to say that the pain doesn’t matter or that it’s not important. It’s a huge part of your life. But... there’s life beyond it.” The ghost of a smile flickers across his face and he gestures towards your stack of CDs. The OO sit on the top of the stack. “We go on,” he says. You can hear the smile in his voice, turning it warm and golden like honey.

“We go on,” you repeat.

VOLITION: It hurts less when you’re looking at him.

EMPATHY: A trite emotion shockingly backed up in fact. Just like how swearing produces some pain-mitigating effects on the brain, so does the presence of loved ones.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Excess dopamine shorting out pain pathways or something, I don’t know, and I don’t care. Just don’t stop looking at him.

KIM KITSURAGI: His little finger moves slightly. Strokes against the broad calluses of your pinky finger.

You move suddenly, startling him, and hook your little fingers together. Interlocked. He stares at your joined hands, blinking just a little too fast.

“I hope so,” you say, looking back to the scruffy little bird sitting on the kitchen table.

KIM KITSURAGI: He processes it for a moment. Then his fingers slide around yours and tighten. His fingers are dwarfed by yours, his palm soft and smooth.

PERCEPTION: Not like yours, rough and calloused from constant picking and fidgeting. He takes care of his hands. Maybe he even uses hand cream.

“Hey, Kim,” you say.

KIM KITSURAGI: He raises an eyebrow. “Hello.”

“It’s a long way to drive,” you say. “And its already late.”

LOGIC: And I’m lonely. And I can’t be alone.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: And I want you to stay more than I want anyone else in the world.

KIM KITSURAGI: He raises an eyebrow. His hand twitches slightly, wrapped up in your own, and you wonder what it is that he’s reading on your face. “It is,” he agrees, his voice low.

“You could stay.”

KIM KITSURAGI: “I could.” The eyebrow stays raised. But I won’t. Why would I? I’m doing a kindness for a colleague, nothing more. Some sad scared creature I found in the trash.

“But?”

KIM KITSURAGI: “But,” he says. “Do you really think it’s a good idea?” And he sways slightly in his seat, the wooden core of his stiff posture bending like a silver birch in a breeze.

EMPATHY: He’s leaning in without even thinking, closer, closer.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You’re dizzy off it, this sudden closeness, and it makes you stupid. You’re staring at him. Staring into his eyes. Your own eyes wide and bewildered.

HALF-LIGHT: It’s like you’ve been hypnotised.

ENDURANCE: Brainwashed by the communists.

PERCEPTION: On the table, Gwen settles down again in the nest that you’ve made for her in the open box. She coos softly.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Your focus doesn’t leave Kim’s face.

KIM KITSURAGI: The corners of Kim’s mouth twitch. “Harry.”

“Mm?”

KIM KITSURAGI: “Harry.” He taps his fingers against yours. “Answer the question. Do you think that would be a good idea?”

“Uhh, well.” You’ve forgotten the question. It doesn’t matter. No answer you give will be good enough anyway. “Yeah. Why not?”

SAVOIR FAIRE: Make your move, Harry-boy.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Enough of the serious shit. Stick your tongue down his throat before you get stuck being boring forever.

KIM KITSURAGI: He sways further towards you. A magnet drawn towards you. Just like you’re drawn towards him.

CONCEPTUALISATION: A pair of homing pigeons. You’ll always come back to each other.

VOLITION: You and your vast oceanic soul, right?

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: A needle of anxiety runs through you, belly to throat, and you have to blink away wetness from your eyes suddenly.

CONCEPTUALISATION: No. It’s different this time. Imagine a better future for yourself; he’ll come back.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: Avian hippocampal formation contributes to better map-like understanding of spatial reasoning. Homing pigeons often have a larger left hyperpallium apicale, right nidopallium, left hippocampus and right optic tectum than non-homing birds.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Irrelevant. Look. He’s staring at your lips.

INLAND EMPIRE: Surprisingly full underneath the full bottle-bristle of your moustache. Pink. You smell like sweat and slightly floral laundry powder. Apple shampoo.

KIM KITSURAGI: “Harry,” he says, sighs really, and that’s it. You veer off the edge of the cliff.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: His hand tightens around yours, your free hand coming up to cup the back of his neck as you lean in and bump your noses together. He tilts his head, lips ghosting over yours. The barest hint of a touch. Your moustache rasps rough against his soft skin. Not quite kissing. Just sharing breath. You can smell coffee, pine, the faintest trace of motor oil and cigarettes. You press your lips against his, careful at first and then more insistent, lapping at the closed seam of his lips until he parts them with a little sigh and lets you crawl inside. You want him to devour you; you want to be consumed. You want there to be nothing left of you but feathers and blood.

INLAND EMPIRE: Roadkill. Something splattered on the tarmac roadside over on the 8/81, braced against the hard shoulder.

KIM KITSURAGI: The hand that isn’t holding yours flutters for a moment for somewhere to lie before coming to rest on your chest. The dip between your pecs. Your heart jumps at his touch, tries to hurl itself out of your ribcage and into his hands so he can hold it forever. “Harry,” Kim says, his voice surprisingly steady as he pushes you back against the arm of the sofa and deposits himself onto your lap. Careful to avoid the pain point in your thigh. It startles a grunt out of you, the sudden weight of him, the warmth and the pressure of another human body. “Harrier. I do not want you to misunderstand my intentions.”

COMPOSURE: He sounds like the lead from some old-timey Vespertine romance novel, about to proposition his delicate blushing lady-love.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: You are blushing for sure. A sweaty blotchy rush running up the front of your chest, over your neck, across your cheeks.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: He chases it with his eyes.

KIM KITSURAGI: “I’m too old for fucking around,” he says. His fingers tighten around yours like he doesn’t want to let go. “I don’t just want to-”

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Anything. Anything he’ll give you.

HALF-LIGHT: Respite.

“No, no,” you say, trying to close the gap between you again. “Whatever you want. I get it.”

KIM KITSURAGI: “Do you?” He holds you still with that palm on your chest. The tips of his fingers tease at the open top button, at the thick hair that curls out over the hem. “I don’t want one night.”

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Your fingertips are tingling with a peculiar kind of numbness.

EMPATHY: Oh!

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Disco.

Your words fall out of your mouth before you have time to consider them, before you have time to check that they make sense. “Sure, that’s cool. Disco,” you say, words falling flat into the space between you. “I love you.” And you return your mouth to his skin- to any bit of skin you can get your mouth on.

EMPATHY: You see Kim’s eyes widen slightly at that, blurry and far too close to your face. He isn’t sure if he heard you right.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: He doesn’t seem to be perturbed by it though. You feel him smile more than you see it, and then he’s right back to gripping your hand like he’s trying to break every tiny hollow bone and kissing you like he doesn’t need air anymore.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: Birds have hollow bones because they need significantly more oxygen than mammals do to be able to fly. The functionality of their lungs extends into the hollow air sacs within the centre of their bones via passages known as diverticula.

CONCEPTUALISATION: Right now, your bones could be glowing too.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You never even imagined this going so well.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Pick him up. Throw him over your shoulder and take him to bed.

INLAND EMPIRE: Spread him on the bed like butter on bread, crawl on top of him, continue your ongoing project of trying to climb inside his mouth.

PAIN THRESHOLD: I hate to throw cold water over proceedings but there’s no way that you’re going to be able to-

KIM KITSURAGI: He pulls away, detangles himself from you suddenly. Cold air fills the space between your chests. “When I say I’ll stay the night,” he says. “I do mean to sleep.”

EMPATHY: It’s been a long day. A long evening. A long night.

“You’ll take the bed though, right?” You say. Anything he wants. “I’m fine on the sofa.”

KIM KITSURAGI: “I’m not exiling you to the sofa in your own house,” Kim says, laughing slightly. He lets himself slip sideways off your lap, back onto his own seat, and straightens his glasses. “We can share. As long as you can…” As long as you can keep your hands to yourself.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Are you imagining it or did he just wink at you, whip-fast?

As he stands to head to the bathroom, unzipping his jacket as he goes, you wrap a hand around his thigh and hold him there for just a moment, knee bumping the edge of the sofa, you looking up at him. There’s something you want to say but when you open your mouth your words get all tangled and suddenly you can’t remember what it was. You gape at him like a fish for a moment. “Thank you,” you say eventually.

KIM KITSURAGI: “Thank you for what?” He looks a little confused, a little concerned.

“Being here. Helping with Gwen. Talking. It all helps.”

KIM KITSURAGI: His smile comes on again startlingly quick and he gives you a short nod before he continues to the bathroom.

VOLITON: You get up too, and show him where the soap and the toothpaste is. You let him use your toothbrush.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You dig him out a pair of big baggy joggers and they just about fit if he tightens the drawstring all the way, but they sit low on his hips, exposing a strip of skin between his hipbones and the hem of his undershirt that you want to put the flat of your tongue against just to see what he tastes like. You catch his eye in the mirror while you diligently floss; you need all the help you can get with your teeth. Your expression makes him snicker. He uses your shower gel to wash with and it makes him smell like you, a bit. That makes the possessive dog-creature in your brain go absolutely wild. He’s yours, Harry-boy. He’s wearing you.

VOLITION: But you can’t let your thoughts go too far down that alleyway. Not tonight. You say goodnight to Gwen, in her t-shirt-wrapped box on the table, and flick out the living room light. You busy yourself with a quick once-over tidy of your bedroom before Kim comes in, hiding away all the embarrassing books and magazines strewn about the place, and shaking out the bedsheets so that it looks somewhat made.

KIM KITSURAGI: When he comes in, you shuffle awkwardly sideways in the bed to make room for him and he lays down at your side, sliding off his glasses and setting them aside. The left hand half of the bed, the side closest to the door, just like you thought he would choose. You’ve left him a glass of water on the bedside table there. He’s gone all stiff-jointed again, like a wooden soldier doll, his jaw tense.

“Are you alright, Kim?” Your hand finds his, somewhere buried beneath the covers, and he squeezes back.

HALF-LIGHT: Too tight. Anxiety flares through you, too, and you crush it in return.

KIM KITSURAGI: “I’m fine,” he says. He tries to relax, shifting, rounding out his shoulders. The mattress shifts underneath his weight. He breathes out slowly, lungs filling the room. “It’s been a long time since I’ve slept next to someone.”

INLAND EMPIRE: They had to sleep together for warmth sometimes, when he was younger, when the import routes were disrupted and there was no coal for the heater for weeks at a time. Parentless children, topped and tailed, two or three to a bed. Since then… there’s been a night, here and there.

EMPATHY: He doesn’t want to intrude on your space, but that one single point of contact where your palms touch is suddenly not even close to being enough.

You reach an arm around his waist and pull him closer, and he lets you with a slight grumble. “There,” you murmur, your face buried into the soft short hair at the back of his neck. “Comfortable?”

EMPATHY: Your breath is hot and spearmint-scented on his skin. It’s like you’ve broken something in him, or short-circuited him somehow.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: When he makes a quiet sound of approval at the contact you press your lips to the topmost nub of his spine. Sweat. Mint. He wriggles back so that he’s pressed entirely against you and tugs your arms tighter around him. One hand loops loosely round your wrist.

INLAND EMPIRE: Your dreams are full of pine tree forests and warmth.

PERCEPTION: The electric blinking lights on the clock read 06:36 when you wake up the next morning. Kim has detached himself from your arms at some point during the night and he’s lying splayed out across your pillows, encroaching nearly entirely onto your side of the bed.

EMPATHY: It’s lovely watching him sleep. Eyes shut and long lashes spread out over his cheeks. Mouth slack. There’s a diamond of drool at the corner of his mouth. He doesn’t snore, but his breath whistles through his nose slightly.

VOLITION: Get up. Make him coffee. Make amends for the faux pas of last night.

EMPATHY: And check on Gwen! You need to see your pigeon.

SAVOIR FAIRE: You extract yourself from the duvet like its muscle memory, creeping out of bed before your partner wakes up.

PERCEPTION: In the living room, you see Gwen still sat in her little nest. She flutters when you come in, eyes following you as you approach, and when you move to take away her water bowl to refill it she coos.

“Hey, shush,” you say with a smile. “Kim’s sleeping.”

EMPATHY: You reach for the bag of wild birdseed and fish out a handful, holding it out for her. Palm flat, fingers together. She eyes it disdainfully from a distance for a moment, and then she begins once again to delicately pick at the food. Discarded seeds bounce over the surface of the table.

“This is all your doing,” you tell the bird. She coos softly. “You’re lucky. My lucky birdy.”

PAIN THRESHOLD: You hold yourself still, without flinching at the sharp tickle of her keratinous beak pecking into your palm. She still picks out all the bits of corn before she even begins to entertain the idea of eating the rest.

KIM KITSURAGI: There is the sound of someone clearing their throat behind you. Kim is leaning against the doorframe, in his white cotton undershirt and his white briefs. Glasses-free and rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. He looks different without them. Vulnerable.

HALF-LIGHT: His psionic shield against the world. He trusts you enough to go without it.

“Ahh shit, sorry, Kim,” you say, straightening up. “Didn’t mean to wake you up.”

KIM KITSURAGI: “Don’t worry, you didn’t,” he says, voice low with sleep. “Just- come back to bed.”

EMPATHY: He’s embarrassed, tips of his ears turning pink.

DRAMA: He missed you, sire. He wants you back by his side.

KIM KITSURAGI: “It’s getting... cold,” he says unwillingly when you let the silence drag on. “Without you.”

“You missed me, didn’t you?”

KIM KITSURAGI: “Don’t push your luck,” Kim says, with his brow raised. “Bed. Leave the bird alone; she’s fine.”

PERCEPTION: He gets back into bed and you follow a moment later after putting the pigeon back in her box. He’s slouching on the pillows when you come back into the bedroom. Not the stiff parade rest posture he keeps to usually, but a proper relaxed slouch. He doesn’t flinch when you climb onto the bed beside him, or when you duck under his arms and pillow your head on his chest, soft fabric of his undershirt catching on your mutton chops, and you let yourself slide downwards until your chin is resting on the soft pouch of his stomach where he’s softened up with age.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You have truly never been so comfortable.

PERCEPTION: He’s picked up a book from your shelf, some sci-fi thing that you must have read pre-amnesia because you don’t remember a bit of it, but you remember the cover. A man holding a massive complicated ray gun, standing in front of a peculiar and inexplicable spaceship.

INTERFACING: Yeah. His affection for the Kineema suddenly makes a lot more sense within the context of his affinity for bizarre futuristic spaceships.

KIM KITSURAGI: He doesn’t look at you, eyes never leaving your book as he reads, but his face cracks into one of those just-for-you smiles and after a moment his hand finds the top of your head, fingernails gently raking over your scalp.

ELECTROCHEMSITRY: Fuck, that feels good. Makes you shudder from your toes to your nose. You sigh, relaxing into him.

KIM KITSURAGI: He’s smiling still, with his eyes, though they never leave the pages of his book. Cat that got the cream. There’s a satisfaction in his face that borders on smug.

HALF-LIGHT: Cat that finally snagged itself a bird.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: And you went so easily, barely even chirping in protest as he wrapped his jaws around you.

EMPATHY: Just happy to be held. His fingers rake through the slightly greasy hair at the roots, smoothing down the fly-aways, massaging all the tension out of you. You could stay like this forever.

RHETORIC: This is what the world should always be like.

INLAND EMPIRE: One day, you’ll quit your job. Kim will follow not long after. You’ll have more mornings like this before the world implodes around you. Not enough, never enough, but at least you get to experience them and you’re grateful for that. Gwen won’t recover, not properly, but you’ll cook breakfast with her perched on your shoulder as you sing along to the music from the radio as Kim sits at the table in the other room and does his crossword. Number fourty two down, seven letters. A messenger bird with a fondness for statues. Rats of the sky.

On your shoulder, somewhere in a potential future, Gwen coos.