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He’s careful not to touch me. He doesn’t say anything now and his silence is a comfort. There’s no expectation for me to fill the void with words. Only a comfortable companionship as Gabriel stares ahead at the blank gray wall, the rest of the people here going about their business. Death is their job the same way it’s mine, except they’re tasked to keep it at bay and I’m tasked to find the culprit.
Instead of the flashbacks, though, or me giving in to the spiral my psyche craves, I lower my guard and lean against him. Because him being here, no matter what I tell myself, does mean something.
The heat of his body seeps into me and I use it to warm my own.
The walls I’ve kept up between us have done nothing but help me stay safe. Help me stay one step ahead of more heartbreak because when you let people in, they leave you. It’s that simple. Death takes everyone eventually, but for people in my life, friends or family, death comes so much sooner.
Gabriel becomes the only thing I feel and know while I wait. An anchor to life when I just want to…float away.
“You don’t have to stay here,” I manage to say eventually. “I’m sure you have places to be, people to murder.”
“I’m right where I want to be,” he replies.
I let out a shuddering half laugh before asking, “What is it about hospitals that makes them so fucking awful?”
It’s so strange to watch him turn to me, to physically see the change in him as he releases his own armor. His shoulders shift forward the smallest bit, his muscles relaxing, and the cold haze of his neutral expression starts to melt as he balances his elbows on his knees.
He still hasn’t touched me.
“It’s how hard they struggle against the inevitable. The delusion that there is some control over what happens.”
“My father was an emotionally abusive asshole when he drank.” It’s not as hard as I always imagined it would be to tell this story. The worst part is that I halfway wonder what Gabriel will think of me once I get it out there. “He never laid a finger on me, not after what happened to Mom, but…times were tough. And he was never the same once my mom killed herself. I don’t blame him. Who can come back from something like that? Especially since her mind splintered after her rape.”
Gabriel stiffens at the word.
Yet as I continue the story, we both relax, although the tension never fully drains away.
A distraction.
That’s all this is.
“He wasn’t a bad guy, in his own way. I think, now, that Dad knew something was wrong the night he was killed. He didn’t want me involved, and had me count to a hundred while I waited for him to come back. Told me to stay put and he would find me. One hundred became two, then three. Finally I disobeyed him and went down to the convenience store and I…found him.”
The scene flashes through my memory strong enough to leave a bitter taste in my mouth. “I stole the lighter before the cops got there,” I finish.
“Of course you did.” There’s no condemnation in his voice.
I like talking to him without having to censor myself. So maybe he isn’t really bad at this comfort thing. Not like he tells himself.
I file all these new pieces of information about him away to look at later.
Not as if it really matters, though.
Once this case is solved, then we go our separate ways.
Maybe I’ll even be forced to arrest him one day.
But he’ll be gone, and so will I.
“What about you?” I ask.
His eyes light. “You haven’t researched me? I’d think you would want to know all about Daddy Thor.”
I had done a few searches, of course, but I want to hear him tell me himself. From his lips and his experience instead of the meager information gathered on this killer by someone else.
“Distract me,” I urge.
I’m the one who touches him first, who stops stifling the urge to rest my hand on his forearm.
